#like come on. the game is called minecraft. there are even naturally generated mineshaft structures.

[wetthandss]

i have never and will never use rails and minecarts in minecraft because they are just so inefficient and expensive for such little gain. theyre incredibly slow unless you use a rare and expensive material thats difficult to find and much more so get in large amounts to make a small number of powered rails that you have to place pretty close to one another if you want to reach an actually useful speed, and if youre making a rail system that small whats the point you can just walk or run there. there are no other relevant blocks for rails except detectors. no bumpers or launchers or stations or anything, very little utility outside of complicated redstone machines for furnace, hopper and chest minecarts that most players arent concerned with. i think theyre a horribly underdeveloped feature but also one that has SO MUCH potential. here's what i would do to make this feature better and how i actually would use it if it was that way.

i would remove the need for powered rails to go at any useful speed. you could travel in the minecart at the speed you can with a powered rail in the game now just by holding the direction you wanna go. powered rails are still there, and you can use them to go even faster if you want. they're like a speed upgrade rather than a necessity for travel. secondly, you dont have to keep holding down the button to keep moving, the minecart wont lose speed as it goes unless it hits a powered rail, where it will decrease in speed similarly to how it does in the base game, but only down to normal speed and not to a snail pace or complete stop. if you push a minecart (without being in it) it will slow down quickly to a stop, because itd be pretty annoying watching it run away on you if you accidentally push it. but also that already happens when you have to place powered rails down every 10 blocks and if the minecart touches them it just runs away on you. in my ideal update, to push a minecart down a track without losing speed, you can either get in it and get out of it when you reach speed, or you can use a powered rail to get it going. ADDITIONALLY, powered rails just act like normal rails when inactive instead of stopping entirely. if you want a rail that automatically stops the minecart, keep reading cause i have a replacement for this usage.

i would allow diagonal rails to exist, including on slopes. this is something i wish for other blocks that connect to each other in minecraft too, like fences, walls, iron bars etc. the zigzagging pattern is very ugly in most use cases and requires you to use double the materials. this would also be useful for setting up proper train stations where a train can be pulled to the side of the track either to let another train pass or to be filled with passengers/items.

i would allow multiple rails to connect to one another, letting you have multiple paths. a redstone activated directional rail could control which path you go on while in a minecart, while the default is just continuing straight.

I would add rail signals with an associate redstone connected rail that can decide when a minecart is allowed to pass or be stopped, or set a precise timer that counts down before making a redstone signal. you can set it to repeat or to only start its timer when receiving a redstone signal. would this remove the need for other forms of redstone timers? yes because i think its such a simple thing that requires incredibly complicated setups to do precisely that are frankly unnecessary to the average player and would allow them to make redstone more useful to them without having to spend nearly as much time and energy fine tuning multiple different complicated timer setups. you can still use the complicated timers if you want. no one is stopping you. anyways, this would let you automate trains a lot easier or automate a round trip rail system with consistent schedules, or to send a minecart back to you after sending it away.

Minecarts will have an updated model with a clear front side and a back side. you can flip directions whenever you want if youre riding in it, its mostly just an aesthetic change, but ive run into situations where if i stop a minecart on an inactive powered rail and activate it again, it will start going back in the direction it came from rather than continuing forwards and that is REALLY ANNOYING. i get that thats useful for sending a minecart back and forth but my bumpers would solve that issue while the clear front/back side fixes the one i mentioned above at the same time, as well as just making it more predictable and visually clear.

I would also aesthetically change the chest minecart cause i think it looks really ugly, i would prefer the chest minecart to show the minecart filled up with the sprites of the items that are inside it. i think that would be way cuter than just having a big wooden chest inside a metal minecart.

finally have actual linkages to tie minecarts together. it can just be a lead idc.

maybe a minecart that can be filled with rails that it automatically places as it goes? idk about this one

another maybe is that detector rails could be configured to only activate one-way.

a third maybe is having "lazy rails" that let the minecart travel at the speeds that they do now, so people who would inevitably complain about these changes ruining their finetuned overly-complex redstone rail machines could have something to use.

And finally i would have a bumper rail that can bounce back a minecart at half its speed, or its full speed with no loss if powered with redstone.

so i would definitely use rails and minecarts WAY more if these features were in place, they would be actually efficient for long and short distance travel, more versatile and less rigid in how you can actually place them, you can use redstone and train linkages to create more complicated railway setups if you want, it would all LOOK better, and it could actually be useful for putting in mineshafts. as it stands now, you have to put powered rails all over the place (a full chest minecart can only move 16 blocks per single powered rail boost! and it will slow down heavily before reaching the next too), fill up your stupid looking chest minecart and push it down where you then have to have a big redstone setup to automatically send the cart back, timed with a redstone timer (either a massive repeater one or a smarter comparator/observer one) so that the cart has time to unload into the hopper below it before being sent off again where it can make its way back to you.

in my update, you can fill the (good looking) chest minecart and use a single powered rail to push it where it will continue to the end (slowly, but at a far more consistent and as a baseline FASTER pace) where it will reach a detector rail connected to a rail signal which will start its timer, stopping the minecart. the cart will unload into the hopper, the timer will finish, sending the minecart into a powered bumper rail on the end where it will flip directions and be sent back, it will pass through the rail signal (because the detector block is on the other side) as if it were a normal rail, and come all the way back to me.

#i am not tagging this with minecraft im afraid if i do then rabid vanilla minecraft fans frothing at the mouth will attack me for not liking #their precious underdeveloped lost potential features that go #“umm actually i do it like this and its just fine *shows me the most unnecessarily complicated rail system ive ever seen in a video game*” #like come on. the game is called minecraft. there are even naturally generated mineshaft structures. #using minecarts as an actual utility WHILE YOURE MINING would be really fucking cool! #im not a modder and dont ask me to just get this mod or that mod. im talking about one of many underdeveloped features in vanilla minecraft #a game i do not even like without dozens or hundreds of mods. so yes i know. you can just mod it. #but sometimes you have to consider that if you have to mod a game so heavily to make it fun its probably not a fun vanilla game. #i want vanilla minecrafters to flourish and have a game with actual thought put into its features that havent seen any #meaningful updates in 10 years. unfortunately thats not what microsoft does with the game. #heres 8 new mobs that dont match the aesthetics of our game at all that have one super hyper-specific use that youll do once and then ignor

[westonaetdesign]

Unity from Minecraft

     Minecraft is a game with a wide range of mechanics and systems that seem complicated, but become simple to understand because of how well they are all incorporated and work together. Most of the systems in Minecraft make some logical sense and come naturally even to players playing for the first time. The reason Minecraft is so successful in this respect is because of its strong adherence to the concepts of Unity.

     Minecraft is a game about building and is comprised entirely of blocks and cubes. Much like Legos, all the blocks fit together and can be used in nearly any fashion. Because everything is built out of blocks, the game adheres to a strict Alignment to a cubic grid in the world. Blocks cannot be placed halfway between two points on the grid and cannot be placed diagonally.

     But outside of the rigid definitions of unity, Minecraft incorporates many other elements of unity into its gameplay. Each biome within the game (plains, jungle, tundra, etc.), and all 3 dimensions (overworld, nether, end) in the game follow Conceptual Unity. If a biome is cold for instance, there will be snow on the ground, pine trees, berry bushes, and special winter variants of mobs. In much the same way, the nether is filled with red fleshy stone, pools of lava, and demonic creatures to mirror its role as what is essentially hell (see above).

     Because Minecraft is randomly generated, it also has to rely on unity to ensure that it doesn’t devolve into complete chaos. Many objects that spawn in the world will spawn at specific locations or within certain Proximity to each other. For instance, diamonds will only spawn deep underground, while villages will only spawn on the surface. Another example would be that ocean monuments will only spawn in the ocean (duh). 

     Visual Unity is also used to unify the world. Certain structures such as abandoned mineshafts will randomly generate their layout. To ensure that the player is able to explore these mineshafts effectively, they have a unique visual style. In the image you can see that they are comprised primarily of wood blocks you wouldn’t find anywhere else underground, fence posts, spider webs, and minecart rails. You can also see that they are always three block wide and four blocks tall. This lets the player identify mineshafts and explore them regardless of their layout. Along with this, many ores will spawn in similarly sized clusters and in similar locations, creating Repetition and familiarity with the mining systems in Minecraft.

     Minecraft even uses Contrast to contribute to its unity. The Ender Dragon is the final boss of the game and is meant to be a formidable foe. To emphasize this point, the dragon is a huge creature the looks dark and evil so that it is intimidating and evokes the emotion that the designers wanted it to.

     All of these separate parts, the mobs, the biomes, the dimensions, and the mechanics combine together to create the greater Unity of what we call Minecraft.

You can see a glossary of unity terms here