Data Wrench

[AceDexter]

Summary:

Primary Function: The Player can use the Data Wrench to rotate a single block forward with a [left-click] through its similar texture family (i.e. sand, sandstone, sandstone-pillar, sandstone-corner, etc).

Secondary Function: The player can use the Data Wrench to rotate a single block backward with a [right-click] through its similar texture family (i.e sand, sandstone, sandstone-pillar, sandstone-corner, etc).

Usefulness: This tool allows Players to quickly rotate through a block's related textures without accessing items from the inventory or breaking and replacing blocks.

Note: Should be not affect blocks around it (no physics)

[Zeboot]

keep in mind the main use of data wrench isn't to move through associated textures, but rather to change the "data value" of the current block. Associated textures are too resourcepack specific, if we want those we'd need a seperate tool and then have a properties file in which all the "texture families" can be defined

[AceDexter]

@ShiniOfTheGami

I noticed the way the Data Wrench works now is that it changes the data value but eventually changes back to the originally placed block. How come the Data Wrench doesn't cycle through all the materials in minecraft then?

[Zeboot]

wat? Why the hell would it cycle through all materials? The main use for the data wrench was to be able to cycle to alternate textures on a block, so what data values used to be (think coloured glowstone)

[AceDexter]

I'm not saying that's what I'd like to see it do, I'm just stating what it does and that I don't understand how it does it...

The data value changes, yes? So how does it change then? By incrementing the value? Or does it work with a list [if glowstone is selected then cycle only alternate glowstone data values]. Is that how it works?

[DukeVindzor]

The way Minecraft works now is that it replaced datavalues with labels. The blocks that used to be linked together by datavalues are still linked together, but by labels and not datavalues :)
Data wrench would always cycle back to the beginning, but in the past every block had 16 datavalues and many of them were not used by Minecraft. When they switched to labels they removed the unused datavalues.

[AceDexter]

@DukeVindzor

That makes it much easier to understand! So if Minecraft uses labels now, do we need to move forward in that direction or do we need to continue using datavalues?

[AceDexter]

Also, @ShiniOfTheGami mentioned that Minecraft may be going in the direction of being able to include custom blocks rather than manipulating the current blocks available. With that in mind and on the horizon, do we need to focus our development in that direction?

[Zeboot]

what we need to focus on is what's in the game currently. Any future changes to minecraft will be the content of updates to this plugin, not the base code

[AceDexter]

@ShiniOfTheGami I thought you'd might say that, and that's fair enough. I don't think I would want to have it any other way.

[DukeVindzor]

On the question of how blocks are changed, it is probably easiest to check some of the bukkit documentation, like http://wiki.bukkit.org/Plugin_Tutorial#Block_Manipulation :)

[AceDexter]

^Bookmarked!

@DukeVindzor The bukkit.org plugin tutorial WIKI page alone will be extremely helpful! =D