Re: Minecraft Level Dat Editor Download
Eliane Lebouf
This overview is intended to introduce you to the parts of the Editor interface and the tools. The keyboard shortcuts, also known as keybindings, have been provided with each tool and in the table at the end of this document.
The Editor is in early preview and we're working to add more capabilities.It will change significantly as we get feedback from creators like you.Also, the images of Editor in this document might vary a little from what you have on your screen.
Hint: If you accidentally adjust things to where you can't read the settings to fix it, press the Alt F4 keys on your keyboard to close Editor. Then, launch Editor again and create a new project. (This is part of why we're doing this first.)
Crosshair Mode has more precise, single-block editing capabilities. It also uses the usual Minecraft keybindings you can see on the Settings > Controls > Keyboard & Mouse screen. When you move the mouse, you look around.
Practice: In the top right corner of the screen, select the "Crosshair Mode" button or press Ctrl Tab to go into Crosshair Mode. Note the differences. To go back to Tool Mode, you can press Ctrl Tab again or press Esc. You can also go from Tool Mode to Crosshair Mode by clicking the Crosshair Mode button in the upper right corner.
Moving around: In Tool Mode, hold the right mouse button down while you press W, A, S, D, Space, and Shift keys. You do not need to hold down the right mouse button to use the same keys to move around in Crosshair Mode.
Think of the Tool Mode UI as a collection of containers. The menu bar contains menus. The action bar contains buttons that do simple functions like Undo and Redo. The toolrail contains more complicated tools that have their own configuration windows where you can change the settings.
You can change the Brush Size, ranging from 1 to 16. Brush sizes are rendered as squares of the selected brush size. This means a brush size of 1 draws a 1x1 block shape. If you select a brush size of 3, you get a 3x3 block shape, or 9 total blocks arranged as a cube.
If the Face Mode checkbox is selected, the brush cursor acts like the Adjacent selection cursor - meaning you can select the air above a solid block to draw your blocks. This should make it easier to build up shapes from the ground - like mountains!
The Selection window that you use to configure the selection tool has sections where you can change the selection mode, transform the selection, fill the selection with blocks, or deselect your selection.
Freeform mode creates a selection area when you choose the x, z, and y coordinates, in that order. It can include air in the selection, but you can only click on a non-air block to choose it as a coordinate.
You can use the scroll wheel on the mouse to increase or decrease the distance between you and the selection cube.Fixed distance is the easiest mode to use if you want to select only air blocks.Like Freeform selection, you build the selection shape by selecting the x, z, and y coordinates (in that order).
Create a selection and click on a corner of the selection box. You will see a little cube with arrows appear. That's a Resize Gizmo! You can click and drag these arrows to adjust the size of your selection box.
As you probably already know, when you create a world in Minecraft, that world is stored in the minecraftWorlds folder in your com.Mojang folder.When you create a project in Editor, that file is also a world, so it is also stored in the minecraftWorlds folder but it is invisible to non-Editor Minecraft unless you import it.The Editor project file goes into the projectbackups folder only when you export it.
Editor Mode is controlled by a flag in the level data (not by the command line), so you need to launch the server either by having the server create a new Editor project, or by launching the server using an existing Editor project.
When the server is up and running, any client connections from Minecraft Bedrock Preview Edition will connect as editor sessions and present the editor interface. Connections from Non-Preview editions of Minecraft will be refused.
Since Minecraft has the fun mechanic of making the player the level editor, and since I've been binging Extra Credits videos, I found myself looking at my recent play through a different lens. Specifically, I was exploring some caverns with my brother, working together to make sense of them, and I noticed how much level design was a part of my process. I find it very neat that in order to solve problems as a player, I ended up solving problems as a designer.
An experienced Minecraft player will probably protest right about now by bringing up the coordinate system that you can view with F3. I love the coordinate system, and use it very often, but it is still a terrible way of conveying positional information. In-game chat is pretty much the best way to convey it, and once you need to parse even three coordinates at once, it becomes a time-consuming mess. And remember, there are monsters down here.
To use a position in-game to convey a message, the easiest, most robust way is through a sign. I'll talk about it first, (and yes, there are things to talk about,) but where things really got interesting to me was when we were using things other than signs to convey messages. Out of preference.
Note: In a way, the main reason I'm writing this is to give context to the very final section, where I tell you my new solution to the problem of marking dead ends without signs. I find the whole process important, though, so here we are.
Signs are versatile, powerful tools. Convey a four-line message, attached to a point, either rising from a block, or emblazoned upon its side. With so many options both in text to post and position to post at, there's way more content than I feel like talking about. What we care about here is: How is this affecting level design?
Then start with the obvious question: Where should we put our sign? Consider again the example of marking a dead-end, so that future players don't waste time going down it. Obviously, we want to put the sign near the entrance, to save the player the most time. But here are three very different placements to consider. Note in particular how the text changes based on position.
Now, more importantly, imagine just one sign being there at a time. What will the player do when they first walk into the intersection? This question plagued me when I realized an old habit of mine was folly. I used to always mark the boring areas with signs, to save time for other players. But if a player has to walk up to a sign to read it (and then change direction) at every minor intersection, not as much time gets saved. So, it's generally better to place the sign labeling the way the player wants to go, or perhaps in the middle, if both options are likely.
There are exceptions, of course, and they are important for level design. For instance, what if the boring path is almost entirely blocked off, and then a solitary sign says "DO NOT ENTER". Sure, the curious player will totally go for it, but most players won't even need to get close to get the message, especially if it shows up in a cavern more than once. What if the interesting path is hard to see, like a tiny offshoot of an otherwise wide walkway? Then a sign in the middle of the path, pointing towards the offshoot, is more effective.
And there's more to think about, things which surely come up naturally in any Minecraft player's travels. To give a taste, what about the fact that a sign can only face one way? There are certainly times when deciding which way it should face is important, and that decision drastically affects how the player responds to it. In general, signs are very interesting in how they affect players, and a game designer could probably have fun just placing various ones in a cavern and observing how a player reacts to them. What does it mean to a player if a sign faces a wall? What kind of text could you put there to make the player feel angry, happy, or a little creeped out? This is one of those things that makes game designing an art all to its own.
For those unfamiliar with torches, all you need to know is that they can be placed either on the top or side of a block, same as with signs. We have a general rule on the server I play on to place torches on the wall only on the left when exploring underground. The idea is that anyone, in anyone else's explored area, can find a way out by taking a path that keeps torches on the right wall. There are definitely some edge cases for which this doesn't really work, but it usually works fine since enemy mobs spawn only when the top of a block is too dark, so all lighting needs can be fulfilled by torches on top, making the wall torches "special".
The short story is that this works really well, for those aware of the convention. Think of it this way: While exploring, you already need to place lighting, so why not choose the placement in a way to convey information? Further, being able to return to the start easily without placing a single sign is a nice feature, especially since exploring an area with a sign system inevitably runs into the problem of "Why can't I find that one sign...".
Getting back to level design, we run into something interesting here. The torch system's greatest benefit is conveying information ("Which way is out?") at every position in a cavern. Ideally, wherever a player is, so long as a they're looking down a pathway, a wall-torch should be visible and prominent to indicate whether the pathway goes deeper or not. The best way to study this is to dive right into a cavern, light it up, tell another player of the convention, and watch them explore it, but I'll try to convey how this brings up real level design concerns in the following contrasting images. Both follow the convention with the same torch placement, but which is easier to interpret?
Yes, all I did was remove some blocks that were in the way. The thing is, what isn't conveyed in that image is that if I didn't remove those blocks, the only way to torch the place well would be ridiculous, with two or more extra torches.[1] In particular, this is only one vantage point; to fix the view from the opposite side, I removed more stone on that side of the torch, blocks which are visible in the picture, but not a problem from that angle. So you need to walk around as a player to get a feel for how to alter the place as a designer.
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