How To Make A Minecraft Survival Island Map (Part One)
You might be wondering how it is that all these modders manage to create chunks of island floating in space. SkyBlock, one of the most popular minecraft survival maps of all time, is little more than a few blocks of dirt, a little bit of sand and a tree. But it's difficult to generate a minecraft island floating in the void – or is it? This two part series shows you how to use simple, free tools to create your very own minecraft survival maps.
I use MC Edit, a minecraft world editing program that you can use to either edit existing minecraft worlds, or to invent entirely new worlds from scratch. If you're going for a 'survival island' floating in the void sort of arrangement, I'd recommend starting with an entirely new world. This means you'll need to select the 'Create New World' function.
TIP 1: Make sure minecraft is closed before you open MC Edit. If it isn't, corruption can result.
You'll then get to choose how large you want your world to be. Now, in the case of a void style map, what you're really choosing is how far away solid land will be. Keep in mind that each 'chunk' is 16 blocks, so if you choose to create a 64 x 64 grid world, you're going to get one that is 1024 x 1024 blocks. That's really quite large and, depending on the processing power of the computer you're working on, could take a long time to do anything with. Keep in mind, every time you hit 'save' in your new world, the engine will have to 're-light' all the chunks, and that gets tedious. If you go too small however, you'll be able to see the edge of the void whilst standing on the island. So it really is one of those six to one, half a dozen to the other sorts of decisions.
The more important setting, if you want
to be working in the void, is the 'height' setting. Set this to 0 if
you don't want any land to be generated in your world – which –
if you're creating a survival island style map, you don't. (You will still get some vestigial bedrock, but I show you how to deal with that in Part Two of this series.)
TIP 2: Activating 'Fly Mode' in MC Edit options makes flying much more like flying in creative mode. If you leave it at the default settings you'll tend to rise and fall whilst you fly.
TIP 3: You can switch the world between 'Creative' and 'Survival' mode by pressing CRL I. This is very useful, especially if you want to play test your world in creative mode before releasing it.
