Blocks that spawn a certain of other blocks

[The Great Duck]

Basically, is there a way to make a block (let's say for iron) that when another block (let's say fire) is placed on one side, starts spawning iron blocks out the side until 5 (or whatever) have been placed at which it is 'empty' and breaks into nothing. Said block cannot be mined once placed so as to not get infinite materials. Any way to do this? Preferably with a containment number somehow specified in its crafting recipe.

 

This is to make self-building structures at certain points in my map when certain events are triggered, however I think the potential is endless and could bring the possibility of more ways of moving parts within minecraft.

[Ernio]

There are few ways to handle triggering, but you will have to make sure you won't run into infinite recursive block spawning.

 

 

"starts spawning iron blocks out the side until 5 (or whatever) have been placed at which it is 'empty' and breaks into nothing"

- Explain more (or is it me?).

 

Best shot would be to make custom block which would be "base" of something (structure), then there is Block#onNeighborBlockChanged - this would allow you to detect when something is placed near block. Then you can trigger self build-up.

 

Other way would be to use TileEntity which would build the structure in update() method in some time (in ticks).

To avoid using TileEntity you can implement some system that would utilize ServerTickEvent and invoke structure building with given shape in given location over some ticks (imagine copy-pasting schematic into world).

 

You can make block not-minable by simply setting material/harvest level. You can utilize metadata to make e.g meta = 0 - block is minable, meta = 1 - is not.

 

I have no idea what you mean when saying this last stuff about recipes...

 

What exacly are we talking about here?

[saxon564]

Basically, is there a way to make a block (let's say for iron) that when another block (let's say fire) is placed on one side, starts spawning iron blocks out the side until 5 (or whatever) have been placed at which it is 'empty' and breaks into nothing. Said block cannot be mined once placed so as to not get infinite materials. Any way to do this? Preferably with a containment number somehow specified in its crafting recipe.

 

This is to make self-building structures at certain points in my map when certain events are triggered, however I think the potential is endless and could bring the possibility of more ways of moving parts within minecraft.

 

To find if the block has a certain block next to it you would use Block#onNeighborBlockChange and check if the neighbor is the block you want it to be, then use World#setBlock to place the block you want placed, after which you would set your block to air to get rid of it. As to determining what block is crafted, you could make several different blocks for each possible block. Otherwise you would have to use NBT data because metadata isn't large enough to cover every possibility.

 

Finally making it so you cannot mine it you can do what Ernio said, or you can let them mine it and set Block#getItemDropped to null.

 

Note that all this is for 1.7.10 there are some differences in 1.8. As you do no specify what version you are using I can only assume you are with the majority that are still using 1.7.10.

[The Great Duck]

""starts spawning iron blocks out the side until 5 (or whatever) have been placed at which it is 'empty' and breaks into nothing"

- Explain more (or is it me?)."

 

Like, lets say there is an iron spawning block. If you place fire on the left side, iron starts spawning in a line until five have been placed at which point the block will break.

 

If you put fire on the north and left, iron will spawn south and right (not diagonally. Two separate lines.). Once 5 TOTAL spawn, the block breaks.

 

 

Only the number is variable, btw, not the block type. I was already aware that different types require different block.

 

And no, I use 1.8.1, the latest version.