Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
9.
Redstone, Rails, and More
In This Chapter
Create automated contraptions with redstone power sources and components.
Build cool circuits with redstone wiring.
Understand different types of power to avoid wiring problems.
Create a perimeter warning system, piston-powered doors, repeater loops, and more.
Learn to use AND, OR, and NOT gates.
Use redstone to build powered rails for a minecart transport system.
Hop into hoppers to automatically load and unload items from containers and carts.
Redstone and rails create an entirely new Minecraft experience.
Redstone
is one of the ores you will probably have seen in mines. When dug out
and placed on the ground it provides a way to transmit power between different
devices, like a strand of electrical wire, and is used for operating pistons, controlling
doors, and doing all sorts of other neat tricks.
Rails
are tracks on which minecarts run, and when those rails are powered by red-
stone, they provide a system like an electric train track that can transport goods
between different areas, and also give you, sitting in a minecart, quite a thrill ride.
It's a brilliant, almost magical system that draws on some real-life parallels with electrical
circuits but is different enough to be absolutely confusing, even baffling, at the same time.
It will challenge you to rethink everything you already know. Is it worth it? Absolutely.
The trick to understanding redstone is to try your very best not to bring any real-world as-
sumptions with you. It's a different type of energy than electricity. For example, it runs on
a single strand so doesn't have positive and negative wires, and it can be created by many
types of devices, even a lever stuck in the ground, or a wooden button attached to the wall.
Redstone has its own rules, its own behavior, and its own results. Some of those are almost
beyondimagination.I'mbettingwhenMojangstartedthinkingaboutaddingafewlogiccir-
cuits to redstone, they didn't think someone would spend possibly months of his life build-
ing a simulacrum of a computer complete with a 1,000-pixel graphical display, the entire
system filling hundreds of acres and using tens of thousands of components.
Inthe same waythat the building blocks ofMinecraft deliver anarchitecturally infinite con-
struction playground, redstone adds a whole new dimension. In some ways, it harks back
to the genesis of the electronics industry, simulating the breadboarding of electronics with
wires and vacuum tubes. Very retro.
