Introduction

BuildAssist is a collection of useful tools that make building things in Minecraft easier and more fun. It offers easy mechanics to build complicated structures more quickly, as well as structures that cannot otherwise exist (such as a portcullis). It is meant to be fun, and offer realistic costs for constructing things, but to remove some of the tedium of construction.

What's new?

In v2.0, the portcullis has been completely redone with a fully in-game mechanic, introducing a craftable "Portcullis Gate Stone" that can be used to build a portcullis. v2.1 lets redstone repeaters and redstone torches also be associated with a portcullis to open it. This gives players the ability to have much more control over what opens a gate (any logic that you can build that lights up redstone can now open or close the gate). For example, hook up a daylight sensor to two not gates with the torch on the second not gate associated to the portcullis, and you have a portcullis that closes at night!

v2.2 adds support for more stone types, such as Sandstone (and chiseled and smooth varieties), etc. You can even make yourself a portcullis of Gold or Diamond if you're feeling like showing off your wealth.

v2.3 updates knocking so that the gate closes right after it opens. This maintains sync between any redstone controlling the gate, such as a daylight sensor, as otherwise knocking had the effect of reversing the meaning of the redstone activator.

v2.4 adds stats collection via mcstats.org; please see notes in Configuration section.

Features

Currently BuildAssist lets you:

build a working portcullis with the ability to knock to open it
quickly fill empty space with blocks of your choice (useful for walls, floors, ceilings, roads, fences, etc.)
extend custom layouts of blocks upwards
quickly clear filled space (creative mode only)
sound for ore beneath you
return to your bed for sixty seconds
automatically place torches based on the light level

Commands and Features

Portcullis

To build a portcullis, first craft "Portcullis Gate Stone" by surrounding a Stone on the left or right with Redstone (two blocks Redstone, one block Stone). Place it, and then right-click it while you have an empty inventory slot selected. Then drop as many fence blocks as are needed into the inventory that pops up. After that, right-click the gate stone with a lever, and place the lever anywhere you want. Now the lever opens or closes the portcullis.

This means you can create arbitrarily-shaped portcullises, and control them from anywhere! See the latest video below for an overview.

/baportcullisknockallow [player] and /baportcullisknockdeny [player]

Having built a portcullis, run one of these commands and then left-click a portcullis fence to grant another player the permission to open the portcullis by left-clicking it (anyone can open or close using the lever). Useful, because the lever is only on one side. This is essentially your "key" to open the portcullis from the other side.

/bafill [hollow]

Place two blocks, and if you have enough material and there's nothing in the way, /bafill will fill the volume described by those two blocks with the same material. Useful for quickly building large walls, floors, roads, etc. New in v0.6: specifying hollow will leave the interior space unfilled.

Once you place two blocks, just type "/bafill" and the volume described by those two blocks will be filled, and the required materials deducted from your inventory. If some of the blocks in that volume are already filled, you won't be charged for those blocks.

As of v0.6, this will not deduct inventory in creative mode.

/baclear

New in v0.6. Clears the space enclosed by the volume defined by the last two placed blocks; only works in creative mode for now since this is a rather powerful and destructive command with no appropriate cost function.

/bareset

New in v0.8. Resets the blocks that are tracked for the commands that use all blocks placed, such as /baextend. (Used to be called /bastart in v0.7).

/baextend [up|north|east|west|south] [count]

New in v0.8. Extends all blocks that have been placed [count] blocks in the specified direction (defaults to /baextend up 1). This lets you design custom layouts, especially non-straight walls, and build them up quickly. Compatible with /bafill (that is, if you fill blocks using /bafill, they are also extended by /baextend). Deducts from inventory as it extends.

Right now this can be a bit tricky to work with, because it's not super clear what blocks are being tracked, and it's easy to build in a way that it won't let you extend because there are blocks in the way. If you get stuck, just type /bereset and then build again and try /baextend again.

/basound [full]

Fires off a sounding charge which can detect how much ore is in the ground beneath you in a 9x9 grid centered on where you were standing when you fired the sounding charge. The charge takes some time to propagate down and process the echo, so it takes about one second for every twenty blocks you are above level 0.

If more accuracy is desired, run "/basound full" (which costs one gunpowder and takes about twice as long), and it will tell you how much of each ore is sitting below you.

/baquickreturn

Instantly returns you to your bed spawn location for 60 seconds, at the cost of one compass. After sixty seconds, you're teleported back to where you started. Useful for a quick restocking trip, dropping off mined blocks, and maybe tending the garden.

/baautotorch

Automatically place torches in low-light conditions (the block you're at is <= 7). Type /baautotorch to disable again. Consumes one torch per torch placed.

Video

Here's a tour of the new in-game mechanic for portcullises introduced in v2.0:

Here's a demonstration of how to use that to build a portcullis that opens during the day:

Permissions

As of v1.0 all commands have permissions. The permission is simply buildassist.<command>. For example, buildassist.bafill controlls whether a player can use the /bafill command. Note: building a portcullis currently no longer has a permission, as it is fully an in-game mechanic. One will be added back soon.

Configuration

As of v2.4 this plugin collects stats via MCStats.org. To opt-out, add or edit plugins/PluginMetrics/config.yml to have "opt-out: true" in it.

Future releases may offer configuration options, such as more control over the cost of building, or the timing of building (e.g. instant build vs. building the structure over a number of ticks proportional to the size of the structure), or limits (e.g. height of portcullis or number of blocks that can be placed).

Installation/Server notes

Just drop the .jar file into your plugins folder and reload plugins or restart your server. When reloading or restarting, all existing portcullises will be saved in a file called "BuildPortcullis.save". The contents of this file are not currently human-readable or editable.

Note: plugin is tested on CB 1.6.4 and CB 1.7.9, and works fine on both.

Comments, Suggestions

Thanks a bunch for trying out my plugin! If you like it, feel free to drop a comment. I'd like to make this flexible to meet most desires, so especially if it works in a way different than what you would expect or if you have a request to extend or enhance the functionality, let me know (please file a ticket)!