#minecraft u

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Minecraft U

The response to these roofing tutorials has been fairly positive, so I'll continue doing them. If there are other courses you'd like to see me do later, please let me know.

Do keep in mind: these courses are following the style I tend to use. There are other styles, obviously! But even if you don't like or use this style, I hope there is some value to you in reading.

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Roofing Special: Speed Roofing

A lot of people think that building a roof with stairs is extraordinarily time consuming, and it is if you do it in a time-consuming way. I imagine many of these people know where they want their roof, and then add the stairs by shift-hanging off the edge and placing it carefully against the previous stair block so that it faces the right way. Doing it this way, without practice, can take a long time.

There is another way, and it may not immediately occur to you. So it helps to understand a little bit about roofing: Shingles don't float in mid-air! You have to attach them to something, and we call this the deck. It's the surface you attach to the building's frame to which you apply the roofing.

If we put a deck on top of our building, one block under where we want the roof, we have a convenient surface to place stairs against, and it's much easier to get them facing the right way.

Fig. 1. A simple roof

You might be thinking, "I'll just make the gables* and then add the stairs side by side, like this:"

Fig. 2. Placing stairs against other stairs

Later you might think "this sucks because it takes so much time," and you'd be right. It does take a lot of time.

Fig. 3. Make a deck first

You can build much faster if you lay the deck first and then run along it placing the blocks.

Fig. 4. Placing stairs against the deck

Placing blocks this way gives you a larger target to click to get the stairs facing the right way, so it takes less time to aim.

Fig. 5. The deck from inside

The deck takes up space indoors, but does have its advantages. You can't attach things to the back of the stair roofing, for instance, like torches or paintings.

Fig. 6. Optional: remove the deck

Or, you can knock out the deck underneath the roof if you want more room.

If you find stair roofing to be a tedious, time-consuming process, give this a try. Not only is it easier and faster to place the stairs, it also helps plan out the roof, and can alert you to size or space problems early; if you make a mistake, removing stairs with regular tools is a pain, but removing regular blocks is much faster. I usually find that laying the deck, putting stairs over it, and then removing the deck afterwards still saves me time.

* Gables are the triangular parts of the building that fit into the sloped roof

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Roofing 102: Valleys

Stair-roofing looks extra good when you have intersecting inclines. Again, the more angular you can make a building in a world of blocks, the more it stands out. To make a building more interesting, try having different inclines connect at a point.

Fig. 1. Two inclines coming together

Here's a common situation. We have two sloped roofs that we want to smooth together into a valley.

Fig. 2. The valley

A valley is the inside angle made by two intersecting roof slopes. Simply put whole blocks where two stairs come together. If you think about it, what we really want is a 7/8 block, with just the corner taken out*. But since we can't do that, a whole block is the closest thing.

Fig. 3. Light it up!

Now you're able to light the roof without breaking its shape by placing torches on the blocks in the valley. 

If the roofs are of different heights, don't worry about it. You can connect them the same way, just by using a whole block where two stairs come together. Work from the bottom up to make it easier. Try putting a stair block where the lower ridge meets the upper ridge to help smooth the shape.

* The 7/8 comes from the boolean union of two stair blocks, each with the step facing inwards. Imagine you put the two stairs into the same block space; that's the shape we want to aim for.