Cordeiro - Minecraft Redstone For Dummies

Minecraft Redstone For Dummies, Portable Edition

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Copyright 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014941047

ISBN 978-1-118-96830-7 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-96833-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-96832-1

Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

Jacob Cordeiro is a senior at the Stanford Online High School, and the writer of Minecraft For Dummies, Portable Edition and Gamestar Mechanic For Dummies. Jacob was a panelist at the ninth annual Games for Change conference, and has a passion for mathematics and game design.

Dedication

To my family and friends. You have all been great navigators, advisors, and peers.

Authors Acknowledgments

Thanks to Amy Fandrei, Kim Darosett, and Becky Whitney, the skilled editors who helped me make each of my books complete.

Thanks to the Nelson family for being excellent friends and technical editors.

Thanks to all of my instructors who taught me the skills that went into this book, including Theodore Alper from Stanford OHS, and Terry Kaufman and Edward Martin from the eIMACS online courses.

Thanks to the vast Minecraft community, which has constantly shown me new and fascinating ideas over the years.

Lastly, thanks to my parents my mother, whose continuous support provided me with the skills and resources to complete this project, and my father, who gave me every possible opportunity to discover my values and potential.

Publishers Acknowledgments

Acquisitions Editor: Amy Fandrei

Senior Project Editor: Kim Darosett

Copy Editor: Becky Whitney

Technical Editor: Ryan W. Nelson

Editorial Assistant: Claire Johnson

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Project Coordinator: Erin Zeltner

Cover Photo: Cover image courtesy of Jacob Cordeiro

Chapter 1

Introducing Redstone

In This Chapter

Understanding what redstone is and what you use it for

Exploring the essential concepts of redstone

Understanding the value and applicability of redstone

The world of the game Minecraft is appealing in its infiniteness. In a game where every piece of the world can be destroyed, modified, and rearranged, the possibilities are limitless for how you can work, construct, and venture to make the world your own. This feature is particularly visible in the study of a few choice blocks and items that can function together to form machines of enormous size and scale. The tools, and the science behind these machines, are referred to as redstone.

This chapter introduces you to the basic structure and possibilities of redstone machines.

Exploring Redstone Basics

Redstone is a dust that you can find underground and use like wiring. Redstone can connect power suppliers (such as levers and buttons) to devices (such as doors and pistons), using the power suppliers to activate the devices from any distance.

You can use redstone to build an automatic door, a light switch, or a trap for the monsters that haunt your Minecraft world. For example, Figure shows how a Minecraft player added a redstone circuit to his house so that he can turn on all the lights on the walls with the flip of a lever. Though these tricks are useful for improving your Minecraft experience, the full extent of redstones possibilities is much more expansive.

Figure 1-1: Designing a simple redstone light switch.

Redstone technology is often used to build functions machines that convert input (such as flipping a lever or tripping a tripwire) into output (such as activating TNT or moving blocks around). Simply connecting the input to the output with redstone dust is sufficient to design a function. However, you can create more complex functions with the tools I introduce in Chapter . For example, you may want your output to activate only if two buttons are pressed at the same time.