This includes the entire range of popular Minecraft Titles I recently reviewed such as:
Building Minecraft Server Modifications, Minecraft Design – How to, and more.
Following on from the success of last year’s festive offer, Packt will be celebrating the holiday season with an even bigger $5 Bonanza. From December 19th, customers will be able to get any eBook or Video from Packt for just $5. This sale covers every title in the 1700+ range and customers can grab as many as they like until January 3rd 2014 – more information is available at http://bit.ly/1jdCr2W
Ever wanted to learn the ins and outs of creating and managing a Minecraft multiplayer server? I remember the first time I decided I wanted to have my own server, well if it was a vanilla Minecraft server then no problem, but if you wanted to protect your Minecraft World from griefer’s or potential accidents learning how to implement and maintain a server could be a daunting task.
Building Minecraft Server Modification walks you through setting up a Craftbukkit server and the essential plugins. Then it takes you further into explaining how you too can build custom plugins to work with Minecraft. I am only currently half way through the book, but am totally delighted. I have read and reviewed other books thinking I just wasted so much time and it didn’t even deliver what the title promised. I am very pleased with this book so far. If you are excited and want to learn about Minecraft multiplayer servers I recommend this title.
What You’ll Learn:
Chapter 1: Deploying a CraftBukkit Server (Installation, Setup, Minecraft/Bukkit Server Commands)
I am all about “All Things Minecraft” so when I was asked to review Packt Publishing newest Minecraft eBook “Instant Minecraft: PI Edition Coding How To” I was very excited to say the least.
Like the title says “Some assembly required”, in order to take full advantage of this book one must have a Raspberry PI. What is a Raspberry PI? Glad you asked! According to the Raspberry Pi website (http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs) The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming. So in the spirit of full disclosure, while I was tempted to purchase a Raspberry PI (which can be purchased for under $100) while walking through the tutorials in the eBook, I refrained and merely settled for reading the book.
The book is a novel idea and for those wishing to delve it to coding in Minecraft it provides a unique opportunity. The book covers setting up Minecraft on a Raspberry PI device as well as coding in Python. Along the way it shows you how to create a reversi game to play inside Minecraft and for those truly adventurous souls how to use the Raspberry PI and a few other components to create a secret door and burglar alarm for Minecraft.
The concepts seem good and straight forward, but without having a Raspberry PI to test on I can only assume that the book is correct. Although I was able to get the book for review it would have been nice to know ahead of time that a Raspberry PI computer was needed to fully utilize the examples in the book. Of course, had I been more versed in the Raspberry PI prior to this book I would have automatically assumed so just be the title.
My recommendation if you are interested in coding in Minecraft and love tinkering with electronic devices then this book is a must have. If you don’t currently have a Raspberry PI, they are relatively inexpensive so the $$$ to purchase one should not be a hindrance.
I continue to enjoy the books the Packt Publishing is producing for Minecraft enthusiast and look forward to the next edition of Instant Minecraft.
As previously mentioned, I was asked and volunteered to review an eBook from Packt Publishing titled, “Instant Minecraft Designs How To” by Mephisto Waltz.
This was day 2 and I want to start off by sharing something I learned years ago when working with computers. If you find yourself confused or getting frustrated it is often better to just step away from a day or two so your mind can clear and comeback later. Following that advice I had much better success on Day 2.
Beginning where I left off I was able to finishing the Tudor Style structure and just below are a few images of the finished work.
The book was created to teach someone how to use VoxelSniper and WorldEdit. I can tell you WorldEdit seemed to be the most useful in my opinion. VoxelSniper, at least for the first couple of designs, seemed to have little value and quite honestly was a pain to get installed and working correctly due to the recent upgrades from Minecraft 1.4.7 to 1.5.1
The book was originally written with 1.4.7 as the example and as with any software that is constantly evolving (which is a good thing for all of us) there can be problems when new versions come out and either the plugin upgrades are not available yet or in this particular case there was three different instructions and possibilities to install VoxelSniper on the server, but only one actually worked (see my other blog here on the right way to do it).
But I digress. So coming from a total noob to the admin, craftbukkit, and plugins world I will say that after I got everything sorted out I was able to get the structure built with a lot less frustration. The word “Instant” in the title could be a bit deceiving, because honestly I didn’t find anything very instant, but this was just a starting place to learn how to use plugins such as WorldEdit to assist people in making builds.
On my first try while learning how to use the plugins, I found that I could have built the structures in creative almost as fast as trying to learn how to do it using WorldEdit, however once I went through the steps a few times I realized how valuable WorldEdit could be especially if you are creating a multiplayer server and you want to create a spawnpoint city.
On a rating system I would probably give the book a 4 out of 5 stars mainly because the timing of the book being published after Minecraft 1.4.7 had been replaced by 1.5.1. Also, I wished and thought based on the title that there would be more great designs to follow along with in the book, but again, I have only finsihed 1-1/2 projects (there are 4 projects total in the book).
The last two projects which include building a Pagoda and a Futuristic City both look awesome and are quite complex. If you want a great spawnpoint for a new multiplayer server world then the Futuristic City design might do nicely.
There is still a lot to explore in the book and trust me it does take time especially for someone who has never used these tools before, but if you want to learn how to build these designs and use WorldEdit and VoxelSniper to speed up the process then this book will be right for you. For my money though I would purchase the less expensive eBook or PDF rather than the more expensive print book.
Now I will just leave you with a quick video of my final creation.
I was asked and volunteered to review an eBook from Packt Publishing titled, “Instant Minecraft Designs How To” by Mephisto Waltz.
Due to the fact that Minecraft and more specifically CraftBukkit had been updated to 1.5.1 and the book was written using 1.4.7 I had a few issues installing the server and plugins.
First off, in the book the instructions say to use the author’s website found here for server installation instructions. On the site there is a new video titled, “Minecraft Server Install Guide Video” and while the video is very useful and instructional if you try to install the VoxelSniper plugin for the server from the link provided you will get an error when starting the server and wonder why. The first day trying to install the server this one misstep cost me hours or wasted time when I could have been going through the materials.
To successfully install the server to follow along with the book, at the bottom of the author’s website on the home page you should see the following image and click the “Learn More” for a successful, one time, and frustration free install.
After clicking learn more, if you go to Step 3 you will find direct links to all the downloads needed for a successful server install. For time sake and to help others out I will post the links below as well.
I was asked and volunteered to review an eBook from Packt Publishing titled, “Instant Minecraft Designs How To” by Mephisto Waltz.
First, I want to start off by saying that I have always considered myself a survivalist when it comes to Minecraft, rather than a builder, but I have always been fascinated and wanted to learn how people come up with great designs. Second, I just started joining multiplayer servers the first of this year and have always wondered how the admins use plugins to create these marvelous structures.
So on that preface here we go …
Okay, I am struggling with the review right now after spending nearly all day this past Saturday trying to get everything installed, started, and going. I really want to give a good review, but right now I need a little more assistance than just what the eBook has provided.
Here are a couple of issues I found.
1. When following the video to install World Edit and VoxelSniper on the CraftBukkit found on the author’s website he tells us to choose the proper Java version to install based on your PC’s requirements (time code 3:13). My PC has Java 7 32bit x86, but when I chose that option with BukkitGUI and started the server VoxelSniper would not work. I eventually went back and selected Java 7 64bit (quite by accident) just as in the instructions and VoxelSniper worked correctly. Not sure what the issue is here but I know my operating system in only 32bit so that may be in a bug in BukkitGUI, but it cost me about 2 hours before I could actually start using the tutorials.
2. In regards to WorldEdit CUI after installing and starting up the server (CraftBukkit 1.5.1 beta) I received an error message that WorldEdit CUI is out of date even though I downloaded the recommended version by the author. At first it did not work, but then after about 10 mins I could see the outline of the selection so even though I received the error message it appears to work. Just a little confusing.
3. On the Tudor house design (the one called Simple) I got to step 1 at the bottom of page 12 of the eBook that says, “1. Using the Wooden Axe, left-click to select the corner block of the house that is between the bottom of the windows and the floor.” I tried over and over to figure out which block the author was referring to with no success. I would like to continue the tutorial but unfortunately had to stop here. An image would have been nice in this instance just to make sure we were selecting the correct area.
I did get about half way through the Airship design but by then was just too tired to continue.
I enjoyed learning a little of what I could about WorldEdit and SniperVoxel, and would like to continue on, but need a little advice from perhaps someone more familiar with the system. By the way, while WorldEdit CUI is a nice addition that lets you know exactly what is selected it is not necessary to complete the tutorials since WorldEdit is actually what does the work. I found WorldEdit CUI extremely useful though while trying to work on the Airship to ensure I had actually selected all the blocks I thought I was selecting. A few times I found my calculations were off and because of WorldEdit CUI I could see that before actually going through with the commands.
As previously mentioned, I was asked and volunteered to review an eBook from Packt Publishing titled, “
Minecraft Times 