Pretty much what I was looking for. So if I were to build a large building with multiple floors, and divided each "room" with a wooden door, each door would count as a "house"? I guess I can just grab village info and test this.
Interior doors can be tricky, but they do still work as long as you make sure they still have more roof blocks on one side than the other.
Amusingly enough, I encountered a village with only a single librarian, his home, and a farm. Since I have just the one villager, I'll have to use a mod like Single Player Commands or something to manually generate a village spawn egg if I want the village to grow, right?
Or find another village and transport a villager by minecart. Or if you find it easier, you can build a string of fake houses and lead them away from their village at night by destroying visited doors to force them to move on to the next (starting with all the doors in the village.)
I've already built a house (which has two doors, so I'd guess it's actually two "houses"), so that should allow villagers to begin reproducing, right? Well, I guess I'd need to add another few houses (since 3 * 0.35 is 1.05, meaning I could only ever have two villagers, even if the game rounds up), but if I add a villager via spawn egg, they should begin reproducing naturally once I hit that point, right?
Well it would actually take nine houses to get any reproduction going. Six houses can support two villagers, but if you already have two villagers, they won't breed because the village can only support those two. If you only have one, it won't breed because, as they say, "it takes two." So in order to get them "feeling romantic," you need to have two villagers, and enough houses to support those two plus a third one.
Also, iron doors won't count as "houses" right?
Correct, only wooden doors are counted as houses.
EDIT: Thinking, a method of adding a lot of "houses" without making something quite as silly as a wall surrounded by doors (which I've seen was a successful villager farm), you could build a wall around the village and just add doors that essentially go to nowhere, right?
pretty cool
But is an instant villager breeder to get villagers and golems too complicated?
it is much more simple than this
just a closed room with doors everywhere on every blok with a roof on top of the doors with 1 vilager inside and then you have mini noses
"Much more simple than this." More simple than what? Do you mean that simply building a villager breeder is easier than reading the info I've put together here and actually understanding why such a contraption works the way it does in the first place? In that case, sure, yeah. You're absolutely right, just building the thing would be much more simple than reading about the mechanics of it and understanding why it works. But that's the easy way out, the lazy man's way.
On the other hand, reading this thread and understanding how villager breeding works would give you all the info you needed to come up with something similar on your own. This thread isn't intended as a tutorial on how to do one specific thing. It's not about "Here, build this. Trust me, it works." Rather it's more about "Here, this is how it works, and that is why it works, and if you understand this and that, then you can probably go ahead and figure out how to build one of these that works." It's an in-depth look at all the mechanics involved behind the scenes with villages and their inhabitants. If you did just want to build a villager breeder, the information in here would indicate how you could do so. Or if you would rather have a nice-looking village with houses that looked like houses, this thread would show you how to do that, as well. If you wanted to build an iron golem farm, well there's info in here that you could use to figure out how to do that too. See my point?
I have a question for any of you fine folks that might know a bit more about this than I --
In an effort to boost the population of a nearby village (and after reviewing this thread and others on the topic), I decided to create a series of doors to act as fake houses. In an effort to not ruin the aesthetics of the village, I built them underground (but still "in range" odf the current village hopefully). I used the town well (after removing the roof directly over the water) to act as the "outside" and placed the doors underground in rows facing the direction of the well (4 doors radiating out from the well so the last door was within 5 blocks of the water/outside) for a total of 32 doors. I was hoping to get an 11 extra villagers. And while I may have gotten some villagers, something else happened...
They got down there somehow. I can now hear villagers opening and closing doors, stuck underground near the well. I had the area closed off, so they must have spawned down there somehow. Anyone heard of villagers just spawning out of nowhere?
Anyone heard of villagers just spawning out of nowhere?
As far as I know, they can only "spawn" through breeding (or when the village is initially generated). You say you had the area closed off, but if there are villagers down there, they must have walked or fallen in; there has to be an opening somewhere.
I ended up just deciding to spawn villagers via spawn eggs using TMI. I could probably explore and find another village, but I'd like to continue using the same map come 1.3, and if I explore too far, I'm gonna have to go a LONG damn way to get emeralds and see the new structures and stuff, and I filled an entire map on creative checking the seed and the little lone librarian is the only village in the entire map area.
Problem is, they ain't makin babies! The spawned villagers all appear to be the garden variety villager (the one that can't spawn naturally, actually), and my librarian ran off somewhere and I'm assuming is dead, because I haven't seen him in a very long time. Depending on how many doors the zombies decide to just randomly break down, I've usually got between 8 and 12 houses registering according to Village Info... yet, I've never seen little kid villagers running around. I'm having fun enough expanding the village, but part of the fun is watching the population of the village grow.
Any idea why they wouldn't be breeding? Do villagers spawned via eggs not breed on their own? Is there any way to force them to breed?
The spawned villagers all appear to be the garden variety villager (the one that can't spawn naturally, actually),
With the green robes? I haven't used TMI for the purpose, but whenever I use a villager spawn egg in plain old creative mode, it always gives me the brown robe "farmer" type.
Any idea why they wouldn't be breeding? Do villagers spawned via eggs not breed on their own? Is there any way to force them to breed?
Again, I can't say for TMI but villagers spawned from plain old creative-mode eggs will breed just fine. However 8-12 is really not a lot of houses, in fact 12 houses can only support 4 villagers max. How many did you spawn in? It might just be that they're already at or over the population cap and so that's why they're not breeding. If you'd really like to get the population kicked into high gear, I'd recommend somewhere on the order of 50-60 houses (48 will allow the villagers to breed up to 16, at which point you can have a natural iron golem, too -- also you can put several doors on each bulding, so that each one counts as multiple "houses" and you don't actually need to build 48+ individual little huts.)
As far as I know, they can only "spawn" through breeding (or when the village is initially generated). You say you had the area closed off, but if there are villagers down there, they must have walked or fallen in; there has to be an opening somewhere.
I swear I checked and it was empty when I sealed it up. (But I'm only human so maybe something happened.) Could villagers use a pathing cheat (like wolves and ocelots) to teleport to locations they can sense but can't reach? The doors are close enough to the surface that villagers should be able to sense them (making it part of the village). Well, I will use MCEdit to delete them and will start running it again to see if they reappear. Thanks for the insight.
So just to be completely clear, I can create a "new" village by shoving a villager into a minecraft, pushing that minecart sufficiently outside the village radius, and then releasing the villager within range of a door that meets the inside/outside criteria?
So if I've created, say, a jungle full of treehouses, I could conceivably "ship" villagers there to "create" a new village?
On a related note, is it feasible to keep villagers in a treetop village? Will they wander off edges without railings? If they fall and survive but don't leave the village radius, will they just remain down there?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
This next test is very dangerous. To help you remain tranquil in the face of almost certain death, smooth jazz will be deployed in three. Two. One. [SMOOTH JAZZ]
So just to be completely clear, I can create a "new" village by shoving a villager into a minecraft, pushing that minecart sufficiently outside the village radius, and then releasing the villager within range of a door that meets the inside/outside criteria?
So if I've created, say, a jungle full of treehouses, I could conceivably "ship" villagers there to "create" a new village?
On a related note, is it feasible to keep villagers in a treetop village? Will they wander off edges without railings? If they fall and survive but don't leave the village radius, will they just remain down there?
*looks suspiciously at your location*
*doesn't panic*
Yes you can create a new village by building a valid "house" in a new location and then shoving a villager over to it.
Villagers won't intentionally walk over an edge more than 3 blocks high, but they will sometimes push each other off of it by accident. If they fall and can't find a path back to their house (any house, actually, I don't think they have a "their" house) at night, then they will just wander around aimlessly, and probably get eaten by zombies. I think they will try to stay within the village radius, but I'm not sure about that. May have to do some testing.
Hey there, nice guide. I do have a few questions for you.
In Marfagame's thread, he mentions not being able to have doors to houses facing each other within 5 blocks space. However, you don't mention that in your thread. It seems in post #25 that there are a bunch of doors facing each other within 5 blocks, although I can't really tell which way those doors are facing from just that image. Could you clarify a bit on this point?
There was also mention (don't remember which thread) that using water as the top layer would actually make that count as the outside of the house - meaning you could build houses underground if there was a pool of water up on the surface. Have you tested or verified this? The reason I'm asking is that everything I've built thus far is underwater, and my next underwater building will be a village. The large structure will be glass, with the actual villager houses being made of stone or dirt or whatever. There is usually a layer or two of water between the glass structure and the surface of the lake. I'm wondering if this is going to work at all. I'll give it a shot and report back here, but maybe you had some thoughts on this as well.
-LS
Yes I know building everything underwater isn't easy, but it looks awesome, and I'll be prepared for when the sea level rises.
Hey there, nice guide. I do have a few questions for you.
In Marfagame's thread, he mentions not being able to have doors to houses facing each other within 5 blocks space. However, you don't mention that in your thread.
Actually, he doesn't say that. I don't mention it because it's not a thing. He posted a picture of two doors that were not houses and happened to be facing each other, which people misinterpreted to be more significant than it actually was. This led to rumors that all doors which are facing each other somehow cancel each other out. But that's not the case, and it's not what he said. Here is the relevant part from his initial post:
And here left are 0 houses and the right 2 are 2 houses. The doors on the left get not negated through the other door, but through the one "roof" tile only in the range of 5 left and right from it.
It's true that those two doors on the left of the image do not count as houses, but it has nothing to do with the fact that they are facing each other. Rather, it's because (as he mentions in the quote) they each have one roof block on each side. Because of their proximity and design, each of them has one roof block one block away on one side, and another one five blocks away on the other side. If you were to move these blocks back, or put additional blocks behind them, then they would be six blocks away from the far door and not count as roof for it, but they would still be close enough to the nearer door to count as roof blocks for that one, creating the necessary imbalance that makes them into houses.
It seems in post #25 that there are a bunch of doors facing each other within 5 blocks, although I can't really tell which way those doors are facing from just that image. Could you clarify a bit on this point?
Those doors are all facing the same direction. Some of them are reversed, facing "the other way," but that doesn't really matter, as long as they're all oriented north-south, for example, the game doesn't care if they're "pointed" north or south. Either way, it checks both the north and south side for roof blocks, and designates whichever side has more of them the "inside."
There was also mention (don't remember which thread) that using water as the top layer would actually make that count as the outside of the house - meaning you could build houses underground if there was a pool of water up on the surface. Have you tested or verified this?
I remember what you're talking about, but I don't remember who mentioned it or in which thread (probably Marfagames' though). I haven't done any testing with it yet. Go ahead and let us know what you find out. The only thing I can think of, is that maybe water isn't really "opaque," so it doesn't get to count as a roof block, but it does block the sunlight (or at least diffuse it a little) from reaching the block below it so that one can't be a roof block either. It may turn out that building underwater is like building underground in reverse -- you'd need to make a shaft of opaque blocks all the way to the surface, instead of an empty shaft of air or glass. Or perhaps you'd just need one block on top, above the water.
EDIT: I just did some tinkering in creative, and from what I can tell, it looks like water (at least source blocks, didn't do any tests with flowing) counts as just another plain old roof block. So building underwater would be just like building underground; you'll need a shaft of air, glass, or some other transparent block all the way to the surface. I put a door under water, which did not count as a house initially but did count as soon as I put a shaft of glass up to the surface. And according to Village Info, this is a house in the picture (behind it you can see the trench I dug to make sure there were no other blocks besides glass within 5 blocks in either direction, and before I placed the water, when it was only glass, it did not register as a house):
I was going to mention this in the other thread, but here seems more appropriate. I think I have a way to prevent zombie sieges messing up your villagers, and still retain a normal "village" appearance.
Unfortunately I don't know how to add all those little icons to draw a picture of it, but essentially you make your whole village with a solid outer wall, a hole in the center (mine is 9x9), and all the doors on the inside of the hole. The houses are in the middle of the structure. Or to put it another way, think of it as a donut. The kind with a hole in the center.
Zombies still spawn, but they will spawn on the outside of the entire structure. With no way to reach the villagers, they can go about their business without interference.
And I don't have to do anything crazy like block in villagers. They can still roam "in" and "out" of their houses, and I don't have to watch them every second. Compared to a newly found village being COMPLETELY WIPED OUT BY ZOMBIES in just 2 nights (that still irks me; do you think zombies are a tad too aggressive maybe?), I like this solution a tad more.
Very handy info, thanks heaps for figuring all this out! I'd wondered at what point Golems spawned, amongst other things. A sidenote on the seige thing... the village I'm currently in has a zombie problem, regardless of its small size. *every* night there'll be at least one or 2 zombies trying to bash their way into the tavern - and it's *always* the same building they attack. I never had much to do with zombies in 1.2.5 (my gf prefers peaceful) but in 1.3.1 it's quite alarming to see...
I do have one qeury about Villagers, tho... the purple-y swirls?! http://picpaste.com/...45-SDXGcv4a.png - what do they signify? (sorry, I'm hopeless at embedding images)
Those are when the villager either has a new trade offer added, or an old one removed. I haven't put a section in here on villager trading yet, but for now, the wiki covers it pretty well.
Is this still true? Many auto-generated village houses have only stairs as roof blocks - isn't this contradicting your statement?
Those houses have plank ceilings underneath the peaked stair "roofs." It's the opaque planks that count as "roof blocks" in those cases. I'm pretty sure there are none with just the stairs. It doesn't have to be the highest block, just so long as there is an opaque block at or above the level of the door, the highest one (of those opaque blocks, in each column) will count as a roof block.
Perhaps it's easier to think of it in terms of "inside spaces" and "outside spaces" instead of roof blocks. An "outside" space is a transparent block or air space on the same level as the door that's exposed to sunlight during the day. An "inside" space is one with an opaque block in or above it, so that sunlight does not reach the block below. In other words, an inside space has a roof block in or above it, and an outside space does not.
What if the slabs are top-slabs? Do I have to make sure there is always a full opaque block (no slab/stair) as roof block?
I'm not sure, actually, as I haven't done any testing since the 1.3 update. I haven't even gotten around to writing the section on villager trading yet. I know (well, I've heard) that mobs can spawn and torches can be placed on upside-down slabs and stairs, so they're clearly treated differently in some way. But they still don't fill the entire block space, you can see through part of the cube, so they have to be treated as transparent by the rendering engine. Do you happen to know if they block light, or if they let it through like regular ones?
On the other hand, water is also visibly transparent (not only can you partially see through the water itself, it also fills up only like 9/10 of the block or so, or rather probably 15/16 of it actually -- there's one or two pixels of air space between the top of the water and the top of adjacent solid blocks,) yet that still counts as a roof block for village houses, so maybe there's something else going on. I'll have to put that on my to-do list, along with a section on trading eventually.
So I just did some testing in creative mode. It looks like leaves, slabs, and stairs do count as roof blocks; they don't even have to be upside-down! Also, they block light, which I think is new (at least for the slabs and stairs -- leaves only partially block the light, which they have always done), so even though they're transparent to the rendering engine, they're somehow opaque to the lighting engine which appears to be what matters in this case.
Today I did some experimenting, and I was able to get villagers to recognize houses and breed in the Nether, and then in the Overworld inside of a cave. I'm not sure of the full implications, but it pretty well destroys the "there must be a block open to sunlight" theory. What are your thoughts on this?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sometimes, I just wanna give up, say 'I'm done with this mess' and go to bed. But you know what; you can't shrug off your responsibilities. You got to pull yourself up and meet the challenges head on. That's the only way you're gonna get ahead in life."
Today I did some experimenting, and I was able to get villagers to recognize houses and breed in the Nether, and then in the Overworld inside of a cave. I'm not sure of the full implications, but it pretty well destroys the "there must be a block open to sunlight" theory. What are your thoughts on this?
For science, I must experiment with this. First step of course is to try and replicate your results -- what was your setup like, do you have screencaps?
Interior doors can be tricky, but they do still work as long as you make sure they still have more roof blocks on one side than the other.
Or find another village and transport a villager by minecart. Or if you find it easier, you can build a string of fake houses and lead them away from their village at night by destroying visited doors to force them to move on to the next (starting with all the doors in the village.)
Well it would actually take nine houses to get any reproduction going. Six houses can support two villagers, but if you already have two villagers, they won't breed because the village can only support those two. If you only have one, it won't breed because, as they say, "it takes two." So in order to get them "feeling romantic," you need to have two villagers, and enough houses to support those two plus a third one.
Correct, only wooden doors are counted as houses.
Yeah that should work just fine.
"Much more simple than this." More simple than what? Do you mean that simply building a villager breeder is easier than reading the info I've put together here and actually understanding why such a contraption works the way it does in the first place? In that case, sure, yeah. You're absolutely right, just building the thing would be much more simple than reading about the mechanics of it and understanding why it works. But that's the easy way out, the lazy man's way.
On the other hand, reading this thread and understanding how villager breeding works would give you all the info you needed to come up with something similar on your own. This thread isn't intended as a tutorial on how to do one specific thing. It's not about "Here, build this. Trust me, it works." Rather it's more about "Here, this is how it works, and that is why it works, and if you understand this and that, then you can probably go ahead and figure out how to build one of these that works." It's an in-depth look at all the mechanics involved behind the scenes with villages and their inhabitants. If you did just want to build a villager breeder, the information in here would indicate how you could do so. Or if you would rather have a nice-looking village with houses that looked like houses, this thread would show you how to do that, as well. If you wanted to build an iron golem farm, well there's info in here that you could use to figure out how to do that too. See my point?
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
In an effort to boost the population of a nearby village (and after reviewing this thread and others on the topic), I decided to create a series of doors to act as fake houses. In an effort to not ruin the aesthetics of the village, I built them underground (but still "in range" odf the current village hopefully). I used the town well (after removing the roof directly over the water) to act as the "outside" and placed the doors underground in rows facing the direction of the well (4 doors radiating out from the well so the last door was within 5 blocks of the water/outside) for a total of 32 doors. I was hoping to get an 11 extra villagers. And while I may have gotten some villagers, something else happened...
They got down there somehow. I can now hear villagers opening and closing doors, stuck underground near the well. I had the area closed off, so they must have spawned down there somehow. Anyone heard of villagers just spawning out of nowhere?
As far as I know, they can only "spawn" through breeding (or when the village is initially generated). You say you had the area closed off, but if there are villagers down there, they must have walked or fallen in; there has to be an opening somewhere.
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
Problem is, they ain't makin babies! The spawned villagers all appear to be the garden variety villager (the one that can't spawn naturally, actually), and my librarian ran off somewhere and I'm assuming is dead, because I haven't seen him in a very long time. Depending on how many doors the zombies decide to just randomly break down, I've usually got between 8 and 12 houses registering according to Village Info... yet, I've never seen little kid villagers running around. I'm having fun enough expanding the village, but part of the fun is watching the population of the village grow.
Any idea why they wouldn't be breeding? Do villagers spawned via eggs not breed on their own? Is there any way to force them to breed?
With the green robes? I haven't used TMI for the purpose, but whenever I use a villager spawn egg in plain old creative mode, it always gives me the brown robe "farmer" type.
Again, I can't say for TMI but villagers spawned from plain old creative-mode eggs will breed just fine. However 8-12 is really not a lot of houses, in fact 12 houses can only support 4 villagers max. How many did you spawn in? It might just be that they're already at or over the population cap and so that's why they're not breeding. If you'd really like to get the population kicked into high gear, I'd recommend somewhere on the order of 50-60 houses (48 will allow the villagers to breed up to 16, at which point you can have a natural iron golem, too -- also you can put several doors on each bulding, so that each one counts as multiple "houses" and you don't actually need to build 48+ individual little huts.)
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
I swear I checked and it was empty when I sealed it up. (But I'm only human so maybe something happened.) Could villagers use a pathing cheat (like wolves and ocelots) to teleport to locations they can sense but can't reach? The doors are close enough to the surface that villagers should be able to sense them (making it part of the village). Well, I will use MCEdit to delete them and will start running it again to see if they reappear. Thanks for the insight.
So if I've created, say, a jungle full of treehouses, I could conceivably "ship" villagers there to "create" a new village?
On a related note, is it feasible to keep villagers in a treetop village? Will they wander off edges without railings? If they fall and survive but don't leave the village radius, will they just remain down there?
*looks suspiciously at your location*
*doesn't panic*
Yes you can create a new village by building a valid "house" in a new location and then shoving a villager over to it.
Villagers won't intentionally walk over an edge more than 3 blocks high, but they will sometimes push each other off of it by accident. If they fall and can't find a path back to their house (any house, actually, I don't think they have a "their" house) at night, then they will just wander around aimlessly, and probably get eaten by zombies. I think they will try to stay within the village radius, but I'm not sure about that. May have to do some testing.
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
In Marfagame's thread, he mentions not being able to have doors to houses facing each other within 5 blocks space. However, you don't mention that in your thread. It seems in post #25 that there are a bunch of doors facing each other within 5 blocks, although I can't really tell which way those doors are facing from just that image. Could you clarify a bit on this point?
There was also mention (don't remember which thread) that using water as the top layer would actually make that count as the outside of the house - meaning you could build houses underground if there was a pool of water up on the surface. Have you tested or verified this? The reason I'm asking is that everything I've built thus far is underwater, and my next underwater building will be a village. The large structure will be glass, with the actual villager houses being made of stone or dirt or whatever. There is usually a layer or two of water between the glass structure and the surface of the lake. I'm wondering if this is going to work at all. I'll give it a shot and report back here, but maybe you had some thoughts on this as well.
-LS
Yes I know building everything underwater isn't easy, but it looks awesome, and I'll be prepared for when the sea level rises.
Actually, he doesn't say that. I don't mention it because it's not a thing. He posted a picture of two doors that were not houses and happened to be facing each other, which people misinterpreted to be more significant than it actually was. This led to rumors that all doors which are facing each other somehow cancel each other out. But that's not the case, and it's not what he said. Here is the relevant part from his initial post:
It's true that those two doors on the left of the image do not count as houses, but it has nothing to do with the fact that they are facing each other. Rather, it's because (as he mentions in the quote) they each have one roof block on each side. Because of their proximity and design, each of them has one roof block one block away on one side, and another one five blocks away on the other side. If you were to move these blocks back, or put additional blocks behind them, then they would be six blocks away from the far door and not count as roof for it, but they would still be close enough to the nearer door to count as roof blocks for that one, creating the necessary imbalance that makes them into houses.
Those doors are all facing the same direction. Some of them are reversed, facing "the other way," but that doesn't really matter, as long as they're all oriented north-south, for example, the game doesn't care if they're "pointed" north or south. Either way, it checks both the north and south side for roof blocks, and designates whichever side has more of them the "inside."
I remember what you're talking about, but I don't remember who mentioned it or in which thread (probably Marfagames' though). I haven't done any testing with it yet. Go ahead and let us know what you find out. The only thing I can think of, is that maybe water isn't really "opaque," so it doesn't get to count as a roof block, but it does block the sunlight (or at least diffuse it a little) from reaching the block below it so that one can't be a roof block either. It may turn out that building underwater is like building underground in reverse -- you'd need to make a shaft of opaque blocks all the way to the surface, instead of an empty shaft of air or glass. Or perhaps you'd just need one block on top, above the water.
EDIT: I just did some tinkering in creative, and from what I can tell, it looks like water (at least source blocks, didn't do any tests with flowing) counts as just another plain old roof block. So building underwater would be just like building underground; you'll need a shaft of air, glass, or some other transparent block all the way to the surface. I put a door under water, which did not count as a house initially but did count as soon as I put a shaft of glass up to the surface. And according to Village Info, this is a house in the picture (behind it you can see the trench I dug to make sure there were no other blocks besides glass within 5 blocks in either direction, and before I placed the water, when it was only glass, it did not register as a house):
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
Unfortunately I don't know how to add all those little icons to draw a picture of it, but essentially you make your whole village with a solid outer wall, a hole in the center (mine is 9x9), and all the doors on the inside of the hole. The houses are in the middle of the structure. Or to put it another way, think of it as a donut. The kind with a hole in the center.
Zombies still spawn, but they will spawn on the outside of the entire structure. With no way to reach the villagers, they can go about their business without interference.
And I don't have to do anything crazy like block in villagers. They can still roam "in" and "out" of their houses, and I don't have to watch them every second. Compared to a newly found village being COMPLETELY WIPED OUT BY ZOMBIES in just 2 nights (that still irks me; do you think zombies are a tad too aggressive maybe?), I like this solution a tad more.
I do have one qeury about Villagers, tho... the purple-y swirls?!
http://picpaste.com/2012-08-10_18.09.45-SDXGcv4a.png - what do they signify? (sorry, I'm hopeless at embedding images)
I am Vismonkey. Fear my Wrath. Give me shiny things.
Those are when the villager either has a new trade offer added, or an old one removed. I haven't put a section in here on villager trading yet, but for now, the wiki covers it pretty well.
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
Those houses have plank ceilings underneath the peaked stair "roofs." It's the opaque planks that count as "roof blocks" in those cases. I'm pretty sure there are none with just the stairs. It doesn't have to be the highest block, just so long as there is an opaque block at or above the level of the door, the highest one (of those opaque blocks, in each column) will count as a roof block.
Perhaps it's easier to think of it in terms of "inside spaces" and "outside spaces" instead of roof blocks. An "outside" space is a transparent block or air space on the same level as the door that's exposed to sunlight during the day. An "inside" space is one with an opaque block in or above it, so that sunlight does not reach the block below. In other words, an inside space has a roof block in or above it, and an outside space does not.
I'm not sure, actually, as I haven't done any testing since the 1.3 update. I haven't even gotten around to writing the section on villager trading yet. I know (well, I've heard) that mobs can spawn and torches can be placed on upside-down slabs and stairs, so they're clearly treated differently in some way. But they still don't fill the entire block space, you can see through part of the cube, so they have to be treated as transparent by the rendering engine. Do you happen to know if they block light, or if they let it through like regular ones?
On the other hand, water is also visibly transparent (not only can you partially see through the water itself, it also fills up only like 9/10 of the block or so, or rather probably 15/16 of it actually -- there's one or two pixels of air space between the top of the water and the top of adjacent solid blocks,) yet that still counts as a roof block for village houses, so maybe there's something else going on. I'll have to put that on my to-do list, along with a section on trading eventually.
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
If this be true, then I am a happy panda.
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.