Bukkit

Tutorial - How to create your own prebuilt

This page will show you how to create your own prebuilt lanterns for Glowstone Lanterns, witch you can share with others if you like.

What are prebuilt lanterns?

Prebuilt lanterns are a really usefull feature in Glowstone Lanterns. You could place a prebuilt lantern by enableling the prebuilt lantern mode and then by placing a glass block or any other lantern block as your usually do with the normal lantern blocks. When you done that a lantern will spawn, for example when you place a glass block a lantern will spawn with a wooden base, a wooden fence pole and a glass/glowstone lantern on it. You could also spawn other prebuilt lanterns which could be used to hang on the ceiling for example. They are just really usefull because they will automaticly create a lantern. So the basic thing why there are prebuilt lanterns are is because you could easily create any lantern you want by only placing a glass block.

The possibility of prebuilt lanterns

You probably ask yourself what kind of prebuilt lanterns there are... There are a few build-in prebuilt lanterns, like 12 lanterns or so, which contains a lantern for the ceiling, a few lanterns to place on the ground, and even a fireplace lantern which turns on fire when its night. The possibilities are endless, you could easily create your own prebuilt lanterns and enlarge your lantern collection. You could also share your own prebuilt lanterns with other people so they could use your own created lantern.

How do they work?

Prebuilt lanterns are saved in seperated files (for each lantern a file) inside the 'Prebuilt Lanterns' folder inside the Glowstone Lanterns folder of your server. You could easily add another file to add other lanterns. The name of the file equals to the name of the lantern in-game

How does the files work?

Here I'm going to explain you how the prebuilt lantern files work so you could easily edit or make another lantern. In the lantern file there are different rows, every block of the lantern is on another row in the file. So if you have a lantern with contains 3 blocks your lantern file will probably have 3 rows. So the lanterns are saved in the file block by block. If the base block of your lantern is a wooden block you need to add a line that says that the bottom block is a wooden block, if your pole on top of it is a wooden fence you need to say that the block above that wooden block is a fence, and lastly if your lantern block above that pole is a glass block which turns into glowstone at night you need to add a line which says that that block is a lantern block which is glass when its day and glowstone when its night. Underneath here I'll explain how your really write this yourself.

How to make your own prebuilt lantern file

Here you could see an example of the lantern I was talking about, a wooden base block, a wooden pole and a lantern block on top of it.

    0,0,0;false;5;0;0;0;0;0
    0,1,0;false;85;0;0;0;0;0
    0,2,0;true;20;0;89;0;89;0

On every line is another block of the lantern defined, every line does look a little bit like this;

    0,0,0;false;0;0;0;0;0;0

With this example I'm going to explain how every line work. The first three zero's seperated with commas is the location of the current block, the first zero is the coordinate X, the seccond Y and the last Z. Those coordinates are relative, that means that 0,0,0 is the place where the player plased the glass block to place the prebuilt lantern. When you change the seccond zero to 1 that block will be above the glass block which you could set as a wooden fence block. The false text will tell the plugin if the current block is a lantern block, if this is set to false as shown in the example it is a regulair block, if it is set to true it's a lantern block which does mean that this block will be changed to another type of material when its going to be night. There are 6 more zero's behind the false text. The first and the seccond zero could be used to set the block type. So if you want to place a wooden block you need to set the first zero to 5 because the block ID of a wooden block is 5. If you want to make a lantern block which changed when its night you need to set true/false to true at first which indicates that that block will be a lantern block. Then you could set in the first two zero's what kind of block that lantern block will be when it's day, the third and fourth zero are the block ID and the data value of the block how it will ook like when it's night and the last two are used for the block when it's raining. With a normal block which isn't a lantern you need to set those last four zero's to 0 since they arent used because it isn't a lantern block. I hope I explaind this feature a little bit clear since it's hard to explain. So underneath here you'll find a little other example which shows you the thing I explained you again.

    x,y,z;is-lanternblock;id-day;data-day;id-night;data-night;id-rain;data-rain

I hope this will make it a bit more clear. You could also add a line with nothing on it, just a blank line to seperate two groups of blocks for example. (this doesn't affect the lantern result, its just to make it easier to read the file yourself). And as last thing you could also add a line which starts with the following character #, then you could type anything you want behind it. This could be used to make a comment inside the file, for example you could make a line which tells someone who looks in the file that the lantern has been made by you. Because this line will start with a # character the plugin will know that this is a comment line so it doesn't affect the lantern result. Underneath here you could also see another example.

    # This is a lantern example made by Tim Visée

    0,0,0;false;5;0;0;0;0;0
    0,1,0;false;85;0;0;0;0;0
    0,2,0;true;20;0;89;0;89;0

    # go to timvisee.com to check out my website

So here you could see you could use a line with a # character as a comment line and that you could plase a blank line anywhere in the file. As I already said a lantern which contains 3 blocks should have a file with three lines, but now you know if you place a comment or a blank line in the file the file will contain more lines. So one last thing, EVERY feature of the file is seperated in lines, blocks, comment lines and blank lines, you couldn't make two blocks on a single line.

Create your first prebuilt lantern

Now we are going to make your first prebuilt lantern. We will make a lantern which will look like this. A wooden base block, with a wooden fence pole on it. Then a lantern block on the pole which will be glass when it's day, glowstone when it's night and a jack'o'lantern when it's raining. And lastly a wooden slab on top of the lantern block. So this lantern will contain 4 blocks, three regulair blocks and 1 lantern block. Now open a simple text editor (notepad in windows, textedit on a mac) or any other program where you could type text in and start creating the file. On the first line you probably want a commant that the lantern has been made by you, for example a line like this

    # Example lantern, made by Tim Visée

Now make a blank line underneath this comment line. Then start making the blocks. The first block will be a wooden block (block ID = 5) on coordinate 0,0,0 since it should be on the place where the user placed the glass block, this isn't going to be a lantern block, just a regulair block so write a line like this;

    0,0,0;false;5;0;0;0;0;0

Then make the wooden pole on top of the base block (wooden fence ID = 85).

    0,1,0;false;85;0;0;0;0;0

Then make a lantern block which should be a glass block when its day, at night it should be a glowstone lantern and when it's raining a jack'o'lantern. The ID of a glass block is 20, a glowstone block 89 and a jack'o'lantern block 91. So write a line like this.

    0,2,0;true;20;0;89;0;91;0

and now the last block, the wooden slab on top of the lantern. The ID for this slab is 44 with a data value of 2, otherwise the slab will be a regulair stone slab. This is also an example for the data value usage. Now write that line like htis

    0,3,0;false;44;2;0;0;0;0

now the lantern is finished, and of course if you want to could also add some more blank lines and comment lines on the bottom, like a copyright line or something. Now how to save the file, open your window where you could save the file, in windows notepad you need to go to the file menu and then click Save As. Just navigate to your desktop or any other directory and name the file 'example.gllantern'. Make sure you give the file the file-extention '.gllantern' or else the plugin isn't able to open the lantern. Now just save it as 'example.gllantern' to any directory you want and close the text editor. Now navigate to the directory where you saved the file (probably your desktop as I suggested). There is your lantern file, now place that file you made in the 'Prebuilt Lanterns' folder inside the 'Glowstone Lanterns' folder inside your plugins folder of your plugin. When you done that you could start your server and start using your lantern. Please note that your lantern has been called 'example' since you saved the file with the name 'example.gllantern', if you save/rename the file to 'lantern.gllantern' the lantern will be called 'lantern'. Underneath here I will show you how to place the lantern you made.

How to place/use your lantern?

Now you probably made your lantern and placed it into the prebuilt lanterns directory of the plugin, if you haven't placed the lantern you want to use into that folder you aren't able to use the lantern. When you are in-game and when you've started your server you could use the command '/gl list lanterns' to list all the available lanterns, so the lantern you added which is probably called 'example' should be in this list too, if it is you added your lantern succesfully. Now use the command '/gl l <name-of-lantern>' to enable the prebuilt lantern mode with a prebuilt lantern selected. So if your lantern is called example you need to use this command '/gl l example' to enable prebuilt lanterns mode with the example lantern selected. When you have selected and enabled the prebuilt lantern mode a message should popup that you enabled this mode. Now select a glass block or any other block which could be used to place a lantern block or a prebuilt lantern (configurable in the config file) and place it on the ground, and your own lantern magically appears! (if your lantern doesn't appear and an error pop's up in the console you know something is wrong with your lantern file, please read this text again and try it again). Now you could easily place your own lantern anywhere you want.

I hope you understand how everything works know, if you know how it works it;s one of the easiest things to do! If you still don't know how to use this, please contact me on the Glowstone Lanterns bukkit.org forum page or anywhere else so I could answer your question. Please also take a look at the build-in prebuilt lanterns because they could help you a lot!