Newbie Minecraft Achievements

[Dutch guy]

I still think anybody who programs the Z axis to be anything other than the vertical axis should get a slap to the face while someone shouts: "What the hell are you thinking" at them.

(In all seriousness though, the standards for Carthesian coordinate systems take the Z axis to be vertical. Even aerospace coordinate systems use Z as being vertical (Although they make it more difficult by also inverting it and making positive Z DOWN). I know, I know, it's entirely arbitrary, but damn it, I am used to having Z be vertical...)

[Master Gunner]

I'm with you, Dutch, it still confuses and annoys me to no end. Unfortunately in computer systems, Y being the vertical seems to be more common for some reason (that reason likely dating back to before 3D rendering was feasible on computers, and screen coordinates were just X/Y. With the advent of 3D graphical technology, depth was then assigned to the Z-axis).

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Actually, in most of the engineering problems I encounter, the y axis is taken as vertical and z is labelled as either the second axis in the horizontal plane or coming out of the paper (in 2D problems, which do in fact require use of the z axis)

[Prospero101]

Perhaps it stems from what computer programming evolved out of. Math. When you're working on a two-dimensional grid in virtually any mathematical discipline you care to name, x is horizontal and y is vertical.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

And Z is "depth" when applicable in 3d.

It's just perspective. Maybe it should be standardised?

[Necabo]

While I understand their reasoning: they use this model

Click to Expand

what annoys me the most is that the y axis is inbetween the two horizontal axis

[Master Gunner]

Which is (one of the reasons) why I don't agree with using that model when you're primarily interacting with the horizontal plane. How you label the axis is rather arbitrary in the end (even if there are certain conventions in certain fields), but if you're primarily interacting with one plane, then the labels for the axis that make up that plane should be in alphabetical order.

[empath]

Gunner summed up my thoughts on 2d/3d coordinates more clearly than I'd been able to muster so far, so I'll let him speak for me.

[AdmiralMemo]

The thing that annoys me the most is that +X is South and -X is North, when I would have expected them the other way.

However, I know exactly why this is: Between the betas and release, Mojang rotated the directional plane 90 degrees. What's currently East used to be North. The sun rose in the North and set in the South. Apparently, this was too confusing for some people, so they rotated the world so the sun rose in the East, like the real world. By doing so, what was +Z East became +Z South, while +X North became +X East.

[Master Gunner]

Oh, how I remember the arguments on what "North" should be (for the record, I've always being in the "Sun should rise in the East" camp). When I started playing Minecraft again recently, it confused me because the convention used on the old LRRcraft server (and previous to even that) was to ignore Notch and say the clouds move to the north, and the sun rises in the east. So when I tried to use that for navigation again I quickly ended up completely lost.

[AdmiralMemo]

Well, don't the clouds currently move in the same direction as the sun? So having clouds moving north and sun rising in the east wouldn't work.

[Master Gunner]

The clouds used to move perpendicularly to the Sun. Evidently that was changed in one of the last updates before the "Official Release". I was just quickly glancing up to get the direction, and wasn't paying attention to how they were moving in relation to the sun.

[the amativeness]

A bit of additional info for those who are interested in that sort of thing:

The block of "random" numbers at the top has to do with chunk loading/visible/unloaded/active/etc. This can largely be ignored by your average user. The most "useful" info in this section is the E on the third line (rendered entities / total entities) and All on the fourth line (total loaded entities, including mobs and dropped items).

The stuff below the X/Y/Z coords is where the most useful info lies:

• f - "Facing". Clockwise cardinal directions, starting with "south". So 0=facing south, 1=facing west, etc.
• lc - Chunk Height. This is an over-estimated value, showing how high the highest piece of solid block is in the chunk you are standing in (16x16x16 blocks). So "79" in the pic means that the highest piece of stuff (stone, ore, dirt, grass, etc.) is in the vertical chunk that exists from y=64 to y=79.999
• bl - Block Light. Extremely useful bit of info. Most hostile mobs can only normally spawn in dark locations (light level 7 or lower), so if you're doing mood-lighting in your house, keep the bl value at least at 9 in all areas.
• sl - Sky Light. Slightly less useful, this shows the amount of light that the block you're head is in gets during the day (when the sun is fully out), as opposed to "block" sources like torches and redstone/glowstone lamps. Obviously means nothing at night.
• rl - Raw Light. The higher of Block Light and Sky Light, this field shows you the brightest it will ever be in the space where your head is. Can be used outside during the day to allow for efficient torch placement for "protected areas", but I'd rather just look at the Block Light instead.
• ws/fs - Walking & Flying speed.
• g - "Player is touching the ground, true or false" - can be used by game plugins to kick users for "flying" for too long =D

[AdmiralMemo]

Some of this will be updated to be more useful in 1.8

Also the SL value can be helpful if you're using Sun Sensors in Redstone wiring, since they don't account for torches and other lights.