The Essential Fill Guide for Builder+

Welcome to the World of Minecraft Fill Guide. This guide is intended to explain step-by-step how each fill in World of Minecraft is used. Note that not all the fills described here will be available to all ranks. As a first step, one should always type /help [fill you need help with] in-game to read a brief description on how the fill works. This guide however will hopefully enlighten people on the finer points of using fills. I will include screenshots throughout the guide for further clarification.

A few points before we begin:

• Always use fills in moderation. Never try and do too much at once or the server will lag. Maturity and common-sense is essential here to stay out of the bad-books of staff members.

• If you are unsure about anything, ask a staff-member first!

• type /tiles in-game to see a list of all the tiles available.

• Remember to type /rollback if you make a mistake. But it will only rollback the last fill you did, so be careful!

• If you must do a large fill that you know will probably cause lag, ask a staff-member first, and warn people of incoming lag.

• Practice makes perfect.

• Most of the images in this guide are screenshots. Just click to enlarge.

/fill [tile]

The most common fill you will use. Simply pick two points that will encompass the whole area you want to fill and type /fill [tile].

In this picture I want to fill an area over the grey platform so I mark one point in the bottom left corner and one point up the top right. I type /fill solidgold, click the markers and...

result.

/fill [tile] [replace tile]

A slightly more advanced form of /fill, this time you type two tile names one after the other. The first tile is the tile you want to fill with, the second is the tile you want to replace. Again pick the area you want to fill but this time the fill will only place the first type of tile in place of the second type of tile you specified. This is useful for making large areas of water or lava by making the bit you want as water or lava out of a solid tile and then turning the whole mass at once into liquid.

In this example, I want to fill the carved out area with water to make a pond in the dirt.

I typed /fill water air and clicked on the red markers (circled in the picture for clarity). I get the desired effect. Water fills all the air leaving the dirt intact.

/pyramid [tile]

To make a pyramid, place blocks at opposite corners of where you want the pyramid base to be. This will create a pyramid with a base as long and as wide as you marked the base to be, inclining upwards one block-space at a time.

In this picture I place two markers at opposing points on the platform.

I type /pyramid yellow, click the markers and a yellow pyramid springs up on the platform according to where I placed my markers.

Alternatively, I can specify the height of the pyramid by placing one of the markers at the desired height, however the base of the pyramid will still only be as long and wide as the length and width of space between the markers, and if the marker is too high the pyramid will stop when it has narrowed to one block and not go higher, or, on the other hand, if the block is placed lower than the point where the pyramid would naturally end, the pyramid gets cut off at that point.

As you can see, in this image I placed one of the markers up a few spaces. The pyramid was cut off at that height, exposing the hollow inside. Of course, in some cases, this may be the desired effect.

If you are placing a pyramid between markers that are separated by height as well as length and width, the order in which you click the tiles is important. Clicking from bottom to top will create a pyramid that raises upwards. Clicking the markers from top to bottom will place an upside-down pyramid.

In this example, I clicked the markers from top to bottom creating an upside-down pyramid.

In order to make the pyramid solid simply type /pyramid [tile] 1. But creating a large solid pyramid risks lagging the server.

/esolid [tile]

This is one of the more difficult yet more impressive fills in World of Minecraft. If one desires simply to create a random elliptical shape, the process is not too difficult. Simply place two points separated by length, width, and height, type /esolid [tile] and click the markers. Bear in mind that /esolid creates an elliptical shape between the two points so the points must always have at least one block-space between them. If there is no space between them on either the vertical or horizontal planes, nothing will happen.

Here I have placed two markers set a certain distance apart horizontally and vertically. I type /esolid water, click the markers, and an elliptical shape forms between them.

In this example, I decide to create just a flat circle. I place my markers the minimum distance apart required for an esolid. As you can see there is only one block-space between them.

I type /esolid water and a flat circle appears.

One favourite but more difficult use of esolid is to create a sphere. Essentially to do this, you need to mark two points at opposite corners of the frame of a cube. But it can be impractical and time-consuming to work out a cube-shape every time you want to make a sphere. Therefore it helps to be familiar with using the client's coordinates and the command /place [tile], and /place [tile] [xyz].
Up the top of the World of Minecraft client you should see a bar like this:

The bit underlined in red is the information relevant to your character's position on the map and point of view. xyz shows your character's coordinates on the map's 3D grid, x being your longitudinal position, y being your latitudinal position and z being your altitude. v measures the angle of your line of vision, 0 degrees being a level line of vision perpendicular with your body, 90 degrees meaning your character is looking straight up in the air, -90 degrees meaning your character is looking straight down at the ground. f measures the angle of your direction, 180 degrees being due north, 90 degrees being due west, and so on. Being familiar with this information is vital to some of the more advanced fill techniques.

To make a sphere, I usually begin by typing /place red to place a red marker at my feet.

In this image, you can see how the marker is placed according to the coordinates displayed up top.

Now I want to place another marker at coordinates equidistant from the first set. So if the first set of coordinates is xyz and we take the letter q to be the distance variable between the coordinates then the second set will be x+/-q, y+/-q, z+/-q. The distance variable q is added to or subtracted from the original coordinates depending on whether you want to place the second point north, south, east, west, above, or below the orginal ones.

In this example, my first marker was placed at the coordinates 300, 371, 160. I decide to place my second marker east, south, and below my first marker by 30 points. I type /place red 270, 341, 130 and a second marker is created at coordinates equidistant from my first one.

I type /esolid water and a sphere materialises.
If I want to create concentric spheres within or around my first sphere I simply make new markers along the diagonal line between the two points.

In this example, I placed two new markers further in on the diagonal line in order to create a lava sphere just within the water one.

This image shows the positioning of both the new markers above and below the sphere.

In order to make a sphere solid (again, this risks lagging the server) type /esolid [tile] solid.

/copy [file name]

/copy is a straightforward command. In the same way you would mark points for /fill, simply pick two points that encompass the whole object you want copied, type /copy [file name], and click the points. The file name is whatever you want your copy file to be called. You will need to remember it when you come to paste. When you copy an area, the client tells you the dimensions of the area copied. This can therefore be a good way of measuring the distance between two points. Even if you have no intention of pasting the object, I sometimes use /copy just for measurement purposes.

It may help now, before we come to /paste, to note which corner the object will be pasted from. Simply turn your character until you are facing due north (180 degrees) and find the bottom right corner of the object. The object will be pasted from that corner.

/paste [file name]

The important thing with /paste is to know what direction the object will paste in. Beginners frequently become exasperated with the apparent unpredictable nature of this command; they never know just which direction the object will go when they click. To properly understand /paste it helps to have an understanding of the matrix grid of the server map:

As you can see to the left of this image, the server map is essentially a giant cube with x measuring the width, y the length, and z the height of the cube. Using the graph to the right of the image, we can see how these directions correspond to the position you will paste from. The center of the graph marks the Paste Point. If the character moves north, i.e. at 180 degrees, he moves positively up the y-axis, and the coordinates up the top of the client will increase. Similarly if he moves west, the numbers along the x-axis will increase. Moving south or east means moving in a negative direction, and so the coordinates will decrease.

/paste always pastes the object positively, meaning that it will paste the object north, west, and up, i.e. positively along the x, y, z-axes. Thus, to judge in which direction the object will be pasted, simply turn until the f up the top of the client shows 180, i.e. until you are facing north. The object will then be pasted forward, left, and up from that point.

Here, I want to paste an object on top of this rock platform. I turn until I am facing due north (180 degrees) and mark the corner that I will need to paste from with a cyan block. If I paste on this block, the object should be pasted so that it sits on top of the platform.

I type /paste oredds, click on top of the blue block and the object is pasted in exactly the direction I predicted, north, west, and upwards. Admittedly, it is the wrong way around, but this is because the object that I copied was in this direction too. Pasting from a different corner will not change the direction of the object. We will cover rotation in the next step.

/paste [file name] [direction]

This command is used to paste an object so that it is rotated either 90, 180, or 270 degrees. But note that the direction in which the object is pasted will still be the same. In other words, no matter how much the object is rotated, it will still paste positively up the x, y, and z-axes. To rotate the object 90, 180, or 270 degrees when you paste, simply put in the direction - either south, east, or west - after you have typed /paste [file name].

Here I typed /paste oredds west. I clicked on the same blue block as before and the object pasted in the same direction to sit atop the platform, but this time it was rotated 270 degrees.

I type /paste oredds east, and the object now faces east.

Finally, I type /paste oredds south, rotating the object 180 degrees, giving me the desired direction. The object sits atop the platform looking towards me.

/continuous 1/0

This command is useful if you have to paste the same object over and over. You type this command right after you type your /paste command. By typing /continuous 1, you initiate continuous pasting, allowing you to paste with every click, without having to type in the command each time. Type /continuous 0 to turn continuous pasting off. Many times I have forgotten to turn it off, and have pasted the object over work which I was merely trying to edit.

/mpaste [file] xyz

This is by far the most complicated of all World of Minecraft's commands and very few people, even staff, know how to use it. It requires an intimate knowledge of the server's matrix grid system and so can be very confusing. But its concept is actually quite simple. I will attempt to walk you through the steps here.

/mpaste, unlike /paste, is not restricted to pasting positively along the x, y, and z-axes. In fact, one of its main uses is to allow negative transformations of the object, allowing it to be not just rotated, but turned on its side, or turned upside-down as well. Once mastered, this is an exciting command to use, but it requires a bit of practice.

If you want to /mpaste an object, you need to first visualise the position in which you want to paste it. I find it helps to plot the current position of the object and the new-desired position on a graph to help visualise:

The red object in the left graph marks the object's current position in relation to the Paste Point (remember the Paste Point is the centre point of the graph). The orange object marks the position in which I want the object to be pasted. Note that these graphs do not present the object's geographical position, i.e. its actual position on the map; thus, the coordinates, 1, 2, 3 on the graph are not actual in-game coordinates. The graph coordinates are merely representative of the coordinates in-game, meaning that they are imaginary coordinates used to visualise the position of the object in relation to the Paste Point. The object in the graph, furthermore, does not present the dimensions of the actual object being copied. It is an object of figurative dimensions, all of different values, so that we might visualise different positions for the object. The coordinates on these graphs and the objects drawn are representative of any in-game coordinates and objects.

/mpaste changes an object's position in two ways: 1) by translating an object negatively on the x, y, or z-axes, and 2) by rearranging the x, y, and z values of the object. xyz in lower-case represents a positive translation of the values. XYZ in upper-case represents a negative translation. By rearranging the order of xyz, I can rearrange the values of the object so that it alters its position on the graph. As we can see, the xyz values for the red object are 2, 1, 3. If I typed /mpaste [file name] xyz the object would be pasted in its current position exactly as if I had typed /paste [file name]. If I type /mpaste [file name] XYZ the object would be pasted as a mirror-image of the first as shown in the image below:

The blue object in this diagram has values of -2, -1, -3, exactly the opposite of the red object.

The values of the orange object in the earlier image are -2, 3, -1. In this case, there is not just a negative translation of some of the values but the values are in a different order as well. The x-value of the orange object remains the same except for a negative translation. The y-value of the orange object has acquired the z-value of the red object. The z-value of the orange object has acquired the y-value of the red object and has acquired a negative translation as well. We can list the coordinates like this:

As you can see, the coordinates of the red object have essentially been rearranged and negatively translated to form the coordinates of the orange object. To express this we simply describe the orange object's values as a rearranged form of the red object's ones. Thus, xyz becomes XZy. This is how we must describe the orange object in order to paste the red object in its new position.
I type /mpaste oredds XZy and...


The Paste Point in these images represents the centre of the graph that is the point that I paste from. You can see how the object's old and new positions correspond correctly with red and orange objects in the graph above.