Blueprint Packs for Users
This is the Blueprint-Pack Guide for users.
First, let's start with the basics. A Blueprint is the Structurize representation of a Schematic. That is, essentially a representation of a structure in Minecraft including all the necessary blocks, entities, etc to build it.
A Blueprint-Pack is a collection of one or more Blueprints.
You can find all installed Structure-Packs Ingame in the Pack Overview Window.
You can navigate there by clicking on the "Switch Pack" button on the top left corner in the build tool.
In there you will then find all installed packs in a scrollable list. Each pack has a name, description, picture and list of authors.
By default each user always has one Blueprint-Pack installed which is generated on startup. This pack has your username as the pack name. This is also the place where your personal scans go.
Once you select a pack, you are thrown back into the build tool window where you can then select your blueprint. The main folders of the pack are displayed over your hotbar. You can search through the folder by clicking on the icons.
When clicking on the icon you can see either further folders (arbitrary depth) or then a list of blueprints. On selecting a blueprint it is displayed in the world, you can manipulate it with the manipulation grid on the right or with the arrow keys on the keyboard and you can place it with the green tick button.
Physically on your machine, Blueprint-Packs are located in one of two possible locations:
- In a mod jar.
- In the "blueprints" folder in your Minecraft home.
When you go to your Minecraft home (where you find the mods, logs, etc folders) you will find a "blueprints" folder. In this folder you will find your personal Blueprint-Pack (with your name), Blueprint-Packs you automatically downloaded when joining a server, or Blueprint-Packs you downloaded somewhere else and dropped them there.
First of all, you'll need some Blueprints. The best way to make them is with the help of the Scan-Tool. Build a structure in the world, mark one corner with the scan tool right click, one with the scan tool left click, right-click in the air, fill in a name and click save. This will store the blueprint with the filled-in name in your personal Blueprint-Pack in your Minecraft home.
You can create as many folders within your Blueprint-Pack as you want and also can have a folder structure as deep as you want. For usability reasons, we advise adding not more than 9 main categories and not more than a depth of 3 per main category.
The main categories are the folders in the root directory of your pack. These main categories can have special icons. You can make your own icons (just make sure they got equal height/width) and drop them in the folder with the "icon.png" name and one with a disabled texture variant as "icon_disabled.png".
While they might be of arbitrary size, we advise not making them any larger than 64x64 pixels.
Okay okay, I understood, but how do I change the name and description, so that I can share the pack with my friends?
Good question. In the pack root you should've noticed a "pack.json" file as well. You can edit this with a text editor and you'll find the following data:
{
"icon": "icon_name.png",
"name": "Pack Name",
"authors": [
"list","of","authors"
],
"desc": "Your very good pack description",
"mods": [
"list",
"of",
"required",
"mods"
],
"version": "1",
"pack-format": "1"
}
The name, list of authors, and description should be self-explanatory. The icon is the name of the icon that displays in the Switch Pack Window we explained above. You should drop that icon right next to thepack.json. The list of required mods has the ids of the mods that people need to play your pack, if they're missing a mod, the pack won't load on their side. The version if the version of your pack. Case you decide to update the pack in the future, by changing the version, when server owners put the pack in the server root "blueprints" folder, clients connecting with an older version of your pack will automatically update their local versions.
Finally, the "pack-format" is a structurize internal thing, in case we'd change the pack structure in the future.
As already mentioned, if you put a Blueprint-Pack in the "blueprints" folder in your server root, the packs get distributed to clients automatically on connect. Make sure to increment the version number when you update pack such that clients get updated automatically on connect again.
There are some special blocks that alter the behavior of blueprints. If the block is the anchor of the blueprint, it will change the way the blueprint behaves or is displayed. This is just a superficial description, a more detailed one can be found in the developer's guide here.
An old concept are anchors. Some blocks are internally marked as anchors and if such a block exists in the blueprint you created it will be automatically used an anchor for rotation and mirroring.
Some blocks are marked as potentially invisible. Such that, if such a block is in your blueprint, the blueprint will never show up in the buildtool window (e.g. barracks towers from minecolonies). Others might need an "invisible" tag with the tag tool.
Some other blocks have special requirements and cannot be placed anywhere in the world or not without fulfilling other requirements first. You can see which requirements those are by hovering the blueprint in the UI.
Again others can be leveled and will automatically be bunched together (e.g. wall1, wall2, wall3) and will have a special level selector them.
Then there are named blueprints, where it doesn't matter which name you gave the file, as the name of the anchor is displayed. If you to several with the same name, similar to the leveling, they will be bunched together and you can then see an "alternative selector" when clicking on the blueprint.