1. Taking Over a Castle

What You’ll Be Doing

Meet Coolcrafter10, a budding Minecraft engineer

Become a friend to digital shortcuts

Find a suitable (and sizable) place to call home with Thingiverse

Use Tinkercad to make a new home Minecraft compatible

Import a castle into a world with MCEdit

Move in!

“Not too bad,” said Coolcrafter10 to the only other moving creature in his vision, a sheep grazing randomly around the clearing. “My new house. What do you think?” The sheep looked up for a moment and then returned its attention to the nearby grass. “Uh, thanks.”

Coolcrafter10 had spent almost two hours building a small two-story house, complete with three rooms, five beds (for his friends DoubleDecker8, SuperSawSaw, ZombieFighterZ, and GreenFingers), a few chests to store his armor and weapons, and plenty of torches to discourage unfriendly nighttime visitors. Coolcrafter10 opened the front door, walked into his new home, and closed the door behind himself. A grin spread across his face as he examined his work. He already had some ideas for adding a few more rooms and maybe a basement, but for now he was content to take a rest.

The sunlight was fading, and Coolcrafter10 knew what that meant: skeletons, zombies, spiders, and the worst of the bunch…creepers. As an afterthought, Coolcrafter10 quickly ran outside and added four more torches to the outside of his house, one at each corner. He ran back inside, closed the door, and for added security dropped a big block of diorite behind the door—a block that he’d recently collected during one of his explorations. “That should keep ‘em out,” he said.

Coolcrafter10 yawned. Building your own home is a lot of work, he thought. He began walking to the stairs, ready to head up to his bedroom and take a well-deserved rest in his new bed, when he heard a loud knock on the front door.

Stay quiet, thought Coolcrafter10. Don’t make a sound. Don’t let them know you’re in here.

“Hey, you inside!” Coolcrafter10 didn’t recognize the voice. “Please let me in! I wasn’t able to get back to my house in time. Please hurry! I’m a friend!”

Coolcrafter10 thought for a moment. It doesn’t sound like a monster, and I know I’d hate to be caught outside at night. He nodded. “Hang on! I’m coming!”

Coolcrafter10 quickly removed the diorite block and opened the door. “Hurry, hurry! Get in!”

Coolcrafter10 slammed the door shut and added another block of diorite before turning to the new arrival.

A young woman dressed in diamond armor smiled back at Coolcrafter10. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I lost track of time and was being chased by a mob of zombies. You really saved the day!” She looked around the room and smiled. “Nice work. You’re new here, aren’t you? I’m Didgee-Engie. All my friends just call me Didgee. Nice to meet you.” She stuck out her hand.

Coolcrafter10 shook her hand and smiled. “I’m Coolcrafter10. And yeah, I just moved here. Do you live nearby?”

“No,” replied Didgee. “My castle is a good three days’ travel from here, although I have a few small cabins scattered around the world for when I get too far from home. The mob that was chasing me cut me off from the nearest cabin, but I saw your torches and ran this way.”

“You have a castle?” asked Coolcrafter10. “A real castle? With turrets and towers? That must have taken forever to build! Maybe one day I’ll be lucky enough to have one.”

“Well, Coolcrafter10,” said Didgee. “Today’s your lucky day. It looks like I’ll be needing to stay here tonight, but because you were so trusting and helped me, I’m going to help you out. You’ve got a nice big piece of land out here—plenty of room for a castle of your own. Would you like me to help you build one?”

Coolcrafter10 grinned. “Of course, but it’ll take forever. I only have a few other friends who can help me, and the kind of castle I’m thinking about will take weeks, maybe even months, for us to build!”

Didgee smiled and laughed. “Well, not really. I know a few tricks, if you’re interested. Why don’t you create a desk and a computer over in the corner? We have a long night ahead of us, and since we can’t go outside, how about I show you the steps you’ll need to create your own castle that you’ll be sleeping in tomorrow night?”

Coolcrafter10 shook his head in disbelief. “Are you serious?” he asked, as he quickly created a small desktop and a computer on its flat surface.

“Oh, yeah,” replied Didgee. “You’re going to be the envy of your friends tomorrow.”

But if you’ve got to hide for a while, why not hide in style? A house is great, but nothing beats a castle. Nothing.

But building a castle is obviously going to take more time than building a simple four-walled house with a single door, right? Not necessarily. If you choose to use the basic tools of Mine-craft to build a castle block-by-block-by-block-by-block-by-block…it’s going to take a while. There’s nothing wrong with putting in that kind of hard work and then enjoying the fruits of your labor. But remember that you live in a digital world, and you can take full advantage of an array of digital tools that can make your life easier and get your work done faster.

In this book, you’re going to learn how to use a number of digital tools that you can pair with Minecraft to create some amazing in-game surprises for other Minecrafters. These tools are not difficult to use, but you’re still going to have to learn their controls and how they work in order to get results. But don’t worry about that right now.

For now let’s skip the block-by-block-by-block assembly of a castle and take a shortcut—a big shortcut. And it all starts with a visit to a sort-of digital library that contains thousands and thousands of objects that you may want to put into your world—objects such as one seriously kick-butt castle.

My search for the perfect castle begins with a web browser and a trip to Thingiverse.com. Figure 1.1 shows the opening screen for Thingiverse, but keep in mind that the home page sometimes changes its look, so don’t worry if it doesn’t look exactly like the image shown in Figure 1.1 when you visit.

The secret to finding what you need on Thingiverse.com is using the Search bar found in the upper-right corner of the screen. Figure 1.2 shows that I’ve entered the word “castle” in the Search bar.

After entering a search term, I press the Enter key, and the browser’s screen changes. Instead of the Thingiverse home page, I see a scrolling window with small boxes containing photos of examples of the object I want to find.

In Figure 1.3, I’ve scrolled down a little bit to see what Thingiverse is offering in the way of castles today.

After spending a few minutes scrolling through the results, I think I’ve found a castle I’d be proud to call home. I click on the box containing the image I want, and the page changes to show me this particular castle’s information, as shown in Figure 1.4.

Before downloading this castle file so I can use it with Minecraft, I’d like to look at it from all sides. Thingiverse makes it easy to do this: Just click the Thingiview button.

When I click the Thingiview button, the image of the castle turns into an image I can rotate around and view from different angles. To rotate the castle, I click and hold the left mouse button anywhere on the castle while moving the mouse around. When I do this with the castle shown in Figure 1.4, I can see that one side of the castle has a large door, and the back (rear) of the castle is a solid wall, as shown in Figure 1.5. Yep, this is the castle I want!

Now that I’ve picked my castle, it’s time to download the castle file I’ll need in order to move this castle into my Minecraft world. To do that, I click the big blue Download This Thing! button. (It’s hard to miss but labeled in Figure 1.4 just in case.) When you click this button, the page jumps to the Thing Files tab, as shown in Figure 1.6.

When I click on the castbod6.stl file, it downloads to my computer. I’ll save that file in a folder that I can easily find later. For now, I’m done with Thingiverse.com, so I close down the browser and get ready for the next part of the process.

The next step involves another website, Tinkercad.com. You’ll learn much more about Tinkercad throughout this book, but right now I just want you to follow along as I prepare my castle for use in my Minecraft world.

Figure 1.7 shows Tinkercad.com. You need to create a user account to use it. It’s free, but do ask a parent or teacher for help (and permission) if you’re under age 13. Once you have an account, you can click the Sign In button to log in with your username and password.

I’ve used Tinkercad for some time now, so my login screen will show a lot of different projects. If you’ve never used Tinkercad, you won’t have any projects yet, but that will change fast!

To get my castle prepared for Minecraft, I need to first create a new project. To do that, I click the Create New Design button shown in Figure 1.8.

When you open a new project, you see the odd screen shown in Figure 1.9. Notice the blue grid in the center of the screen and the buttons running down the right side of the screen.

Tinkercad always gives a new project a really crazy name. The one in Figure 1.9 is called Surprising Tumelo-Trug. I have no idea what that means, and you probably don’t either. But don’t worry. You can easily change the name of the project later to something more useful and easier to decipher.

Right now, I need to bring that digital castle file I downloaded into Tinkercad. To do that, I’ll click the Choose File button in the Import section. This is where I’ll need to browse and find the folder where I stored my digital castle file. After selecting it, I click the Import button shown in Figure 1.10. (I don’t want to mess with any of the settings, such as Scale or Unit, at this point.)

After about 20 seconds, that empty grid is no longer empty. Figure 1.11 shows that the digital castle sitting on Tinkercad’s grid.

There are all kinds of tools in Tinkercad that I could use to do things like make it taller or shorter, add another door or tower, flip it upside down, or even cut it in half. I’ll explain how to use many of them later in this book.

But for now I just want to prepare this castle so it can be imported into Minecraft. And to do that, I click the Design menu to get the options shown in Figure 1.12.

Look at that! The sixth option from the top is Download for Minecraft. How cool is that? Tinkercad has an actual option for converting (also called exporting) an imported 3D object to something that will work with Minecraft!

When I select that option, a new window appears on my screen, as shown in Figure 1.13.

Once again, I won’t make any changes to the single option on the screen. Instead, I’ll simply click the Export button. A file downloads to your computer, and as you can see in Figure 1.14, it has the same name as my project (Surprising Tumelo-Trug) but instead of being an .stl file (like the one downloaded from Thingiverse), this one ends in .schematic.

Guess what? Files ending in .schematic can be imported into Minecraft. I’m almost done!

I’ve got a world called EngineerLand that will be a suitable home for this new castle. To move the castle into Minecraft, I’ll open MCEdit—but only after I close down Minecraft.

When I open MCEdit, I’m greeted with a very simple screen like the one in Figure 1.15.

I’ll show you additional uses for MCEdit later in the book, but right now all I want to do is get my castle into EngineerLand. To do this, I’ll click the Open button. When I do, I’m provided with a list of folders that contain names of the various worlds I have saved in Minecraft. Figure 1.16 shows just one world created right now (EngineerLand), but if I had multiple worlds, they would appear in this window as well.

Double-clicking the EngineerLand folder opens it and displays various other folders and files related to my EngineerLand world. The one I’m interested in is called level.dat, so I’ll select that file, as shown in Figure 1.17, and click the Open button.

When MCEdit opens my world, it looks a lot like Minecraft. But notice that there are some buttons running along the bottom and top edges of the screen, as shown in Figure 1.18.

I need to find a spot to place my castle, so I use the WASD keys on my keyboard to move around my world until I find a suitable spot, such as the one in Figure 1.19. Note that I’m “floating” above my world a bit so I can see more of it. (In Chapter 2 I’ll explain the controls shown in this screen.)

I click the Import button—the sixth button from the left on the bottom toolbar. (You can hover your mouse pointer over a button to see the name of each button.) A window like the one in Figure 1.20 appears.

I now select the .schematic file (the file that was created using Tinkercad) and click the Open button. A green box appears (in this case a very large green box) that I can move around on the screen by using the mouse pointer. If I stop moving the green box, the shape of the castle appears, as shown in Figure 1.21.

When I’m happy with the location, I simply left-click the mouse, and the green box is “locked” in place on the map. The Import button that’s visible on the left side of the screen becomes solid yellow (instead of gray), as shown in Figure 1.22.

I click that yellow Import button and BOOM! The new castle becomes a permanent structure in EngineerLand, as shown in Figure 1.23.

All that’s left to do is save my work and exit out of MCEdit. To do this, I click on the MCEdit menu in the upper-left corner of the screen, as shown in Figure 1.24, and select Save.

Next, I click the MCEdit menu again and choose Quit to close down MCEdit.

MCEdit is a powerful application with lots of special features, and you’ll learn about many of them later in the book. Right now, however, I want to go check out my new castle by opening up Minecraft.

I raced down the hill, swam across a small river, and ran around to the front of the castle. (Remember that there’s only one door.) Figure 1.26 shows that my castle was open and ready for me to move in.

The inside of the castle is completely empty, as you can see in Figure 1.27.

When I’m ready to start adding rooms, I’ll have a couple choices. I can do it block by block by block.… Or I can once again use Thingiverse to find a bunch of rooms, Tinkercad to convert them to .schematic files, and MCEdit to stick them inside the walls of the new castle. (Or maybe I can just find a smaller castle and tuck that one inside my larger castle!)

I have lots of options for my castle, and I’ll explore some of them in Chapter 2. For example, I can change the type of blocks that make up the castle. I can rotate the castle so the front door is facing away from the water. I can even raise it up so it’s a floating castle! You’ll be able to do these things and many more once you begin to explore the MCEdit application.

But right now I just want to enjoy my new home. I’ll have to add a door (a very big door) at some point, but right now I can just block it up if I want to keep critters out. It’s also going to need some torches because it gets really dark at night.

So read Chapter 2, learn as much as you can, and then I’ll show you in Chapter 3 how to add a fun (and useful) feature to your castle that I know you’re going to love.