Wizards of Lua

The Art of Spell Crafting

The Vertical Rails Spell

Spells are really great to add new game experience. For example, how nice would it be to have vertical rails for minecarts?

Here is a short video that shows a spell that transforms ladders to vertical rails.


Essentially the spell searches the world for all types of minecarts and checks if they are close to a ladder. If so, the minecart’s motion property is updated so that it moves upwards.

This spell must be inserted into a command block. As always, don’t forget to add /lua in front of it.

/lua speed=0.1;
exitMotions = {
  north = {0, 0, 0.2},
  south = {0, 0, -0.2},
  west = {0.2, 0, 0},
  east = {-0.2, 0, 0}
};
function addAll(t1, t2)
  for k,v in ipairs(t2) do
    table.insert(t1, v)
  end;
end;
while true do
  local minecarts = Entities.find('@e[type=minecart]');
  addAll(minecarts, Entities.find('@e[type=chest_minecart]'));
  addAll(minecarts, Entities.find('@e[type=furnace_minecart]'));
  addAll(minecarts, Entities.find('@e[type=hopper_minecart]'));
  addAll(minecarts, Entities.find('@e[type=spawner_minecart]'));
  addAll(minecarts, Entities.find('@e[type=tnt_minecart]'));

  for k, minecart in pairs(minecarts) do
    spell.pos = minecart.pos;
    if spell.block.name == 'ladder' then
      local blockX = math.floor(minecart.pos.x) + 0.5;
      local blockZ = math.floor(minecart.pos.z) + 0.5;
      local motion = {blockX - minecart.pos.x, speed, blockZ - minecart.pos.z};
      minecart:putNbt({Motion = motion});
    else --[[ The else part just gives the minecart a little boost when exiting a ladder ]]
      spell.pos = spell.pos - Vec3(0, 0.5, 0);
      if spell.block.name == 'ladder' then
        local motion = exitMotions[spell.block.data.facing];
        minecart:putNbt({Motion = motion});
      end;
    end;
  end;
  sleep(1);
end

When activated this spell loops until you manually break it.

Credits

This spell was created by Adrodoc55. Many thanks for that!

It was inspired by an amazing command block setup published by Sparks of Gamemode 4.

If you are curious, here is a video of it.