Trapdoors/Hatches - Part 5: Hatch

This is the last of a series of blogs on the new trapdoors released in Minecraft Beta 1.6.

The last use of the new trapdoor is going back to the basics, a Hatch.

Upon opening the hatch stairs are uncovered that go down to a chest. This is the most basic use of a trapdoor and is purely for decoration.

QOTD: What is your favorite use of the new trapdoor?

Trapdoors/Hatches - Part 4: Bridges

This is a continuation on my blog of the newly released trapdoors.

Another way that bridges can be used is a retractable bridge.

 

This particular example is only controlled from one end, it could be used to run away from another person. After crossing the bridge flipping the lever will cause the bridge to retract causing anything on it to fall.

This same setup could be used next to a door with a time delay so that the bridge retracts while the player is walking across possibly making them fall into lava or a deep pit.

QOTD: What other traps can you think of to use the trapdoor for?

Trapdoors/Hatches - Part 3: Dispenser

This is a continuation of my posts on the new trapdoor.

Another use for the trapdoor is as an item flow controller. To start this I made a small house with a trapdoor in the roof and a water source on the top which makes items flow over the trapdoor. In real use this would be hooked up to a mob farm of some kind.

Items will flow down into the trap door.

 When you want to receive the items, just open the trap door and they will fall to the floor.

QOTD: Are you happy with the way trapdoors work, if not how would you improve them?

Trapdoors/Hatches - Part 2: Stairs

Over the next few days i'll be going more in depth with the various uses of trapdoors, today I will be covering stairs.

The reason to use trapdoors as stairs is so that they can be retractable, this can be used as a design or a trap. For my example I used it as a two room house with a single hallway.

When you step onto the pressure plates the first two steps open, and you can walk through the hallway.

Looking back you can see that the stairs have fallen back into place automatically, and you are in the second room.

 To go back you simply walk on the pressure plates on the way back.

To get onto the stairs, simply jump over the pressure plates. If you don't want to jump every time you use the stairs you can attach the Redstone wire to a switch instead of a pressure plate, but this makes it take longer to go under the stairs. 

QOTD: What sounds better to you, pressure plates or a switch? 

Trapdoors/Hatches Part 1: Crafting

We'll I'm back, I started this blog for about a week a while ago then had to stop for a while, but now that its summer i'll start it up again.

To start things off again I'm going to take a look at the newly released Trapdoor.

The trapdoor is crafted using 6 wooden planks.

It is basically a sidways door, which can be seen easily so would be hard to acctually use this as a pvp trap, but it may be effective as a mob trap. Like doors it con be controlled using Redstone.







QOTD: What is your favorite part of the 1.6 update?

Alocto Stadium Part 2 - Archery Floors

This is a continuation of yesterday's post on the Alocto Stadium which can be seen here: http://tinyurl.com/3jy5gr3

Today I'll be talking the second and third floors of the building, which make up the archery floors.

The second floor has two stairs that come up from the Gladiator Floor, and come into mini rooms with four exits. This mini room goes into a larger room with four stairs going up to the third floor.

After getting up to the third floor, there is a great open space to snipe people on the second floor, but it is very open, so people can fire back at you and gain cover on the bottom. 

QOTD: Bows or Swords? 

Alocto Stadium Part 1 - Gladiator Floor

Over the next few day's i'll be talking about the 5 story PvP stadium that I've been  working on with a few other people.  First off, why Alocto? Well, I decided a while ago that it would be really cool to have a perfect octagon shaped building, but then I figured out that it's impossible, unless you make it really, really big. So I compromised and had the long sides be 17 blocks long , and the diagonal sides be 12 blocks long, making them 16.97 meters in length. (sqrt(2) *12). I was going for perfection, so I decided I couldn't call it the octagon stadium. So Instead it is named Almost Octagon Stadium, Alocto for short.

Today I'm going to talk about the first layer of the arena, the Gladiator Floor. On this floor we exclusively sword fight, with no arrows. The floor is very basic, simply being a large flat area. On either side there is a room with a bed to reset spawning points, and chests to store swords and armor.

QOTD: Do you ever PvP in Minecraft?