Mining, Crafting, and mapping

[img_assist|nid=192|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=100|height=63]As might be obvious from the title (and the tags), I've been somewhat hooked on Minecraft for the past few weeks. I have a private multi-player server for just my girlfriend and me, and I've taken to experimenting with various map-generating software so to visualize where to build structures next. I've ended up settling on two packages, both Python-based. I've build some BASH scripts that would retrieve the current world data from my Minecraft serverNo, the server isn't publically available. It'll probably stay that way except for a few trusted friends., run the mapping software on it, and rsync the results to my website. All I have to do is kick them off on my Ubuntu laptop to update the maps.

pynemap

• overhead map
• topographical map

The first was pynemap, which currently simply creates a top-down view of the world. I have run and put up an overhead map and a topographical map. Note that pynemap seems to have to run through the entire world on each build, so it is pretty slow.

Minecraft-Overviewer

• Daytime Overviewer map
• Nighttime Overviewer map

A more impressive map builder is Minecraft-Overviewer. It uses the Google Maps API to give you a movable and zoomable isometric view of the Minecraft World. Here you can start seeing some details of what we've built so farAdmittedly, not a whole much compared to some servers. I just haven't had the time to just work on the map as I'd like. I've put up my overviewer map here. Unlike pynemap, Minecraft-Overviewer keeps track of what sections it had already mapped out; it will only update new or changed sections without having to re-run the entire map. The first run can be slow, slower than pynemap even, especially if you have a large map. Plus it has much more files it needs to upload to the websiteThough thanks to rsync, it'll only upload what has been changed. That said, this is a more visually impressive way of showing off your minecraft world.

Also note that I have merged in eminence's fixes to tint the grass and trees correctly, as the Minecraft halloween update had changed how grass and trees were textures slightly, resulting in the original Overviewer showing all grass and leaves as grey. Eminence's updates seem to simply tint them green for now, which works well enough.