AlLnAtuRalX's

MANUAL
Table of Contents :

Section 1: User Manual

1.1 ..........................................................................................................Minecraft Intro
1.2 ................................................................................................................The Screen
1.3 .......................................................................................Controls, Building, Basics
1.4 ................................................................................................................The Blocks
1.5 ......................................................................................................................Griefing

Section 2: Server Admin Manual / HowTo

2.1...................................................................................................What is the Server?

2.2...........................................................................................Downloading the Server
2.3.........................................................................................................Port Forwarding
2.4.................................................................................................OPs and Commands
2.5........................................................................................................Battling Griefers
1.1 –
Who is Minecraft?
Minecraft is a free block game developed by Maruks Persson, AKA Notch, whose
day job is to develop games for www.king.com. Notch started developing Minecraft
after being unsatisfied with InfiniMiner, and wanting to make many changes. He
follows an agile, suggestion-based development policy, and is very open to new ideas.

What is Minecraft?
Minecraft is a free block game which has no object. Mainly, the goal of the game
is to build amazing block-by-block structures with fellow miners from around the world
in multiplayer or by yourself in singleplayer. Mining currently has no benefits, but
building underground is extremely common. Minecraft is currently programmed in
Java, and runs off an applet in your browser. A stand-alone client is planned for the
future, and is slated to include things like fullscreen. The community is here.

How Much does Minecraft Cost?

Minecraft is currently free to play, however, will costs 20 euros once it's released.
Minecraft is in alpha, and thus features only one build mode. Currently, Minecraft costs
10 Euros to preorder. The only advantage at the moment is custom skins (custom
appearance for your player). We will talk about these later. When survival mode is
introduced (we will talk about that when it's released, it currently has no relevance), the
game will go into beta. Notch estimates about a month from this writing (the end of
July). At that point, Minecraft will cost 15 Euros to preorder, and only those who do will
enjoy survival. When Minecraft is released, it will almost definitely be Pay to Play, and
will cost 20 Euros.
1.2 – The Screen
E

B C

A
D

Above you can see the default Minecraft screen. The crosshair in the center is the
pointer. It will guide you, and it will select blocks for you to delete or select positions
in which to build. A is the chat feature, found only in multiplayer. Press T to talk and
see a small chat history. D is your current inventory. You can change the blocks in
your inventory by pressing the B key during the game, and selecting a block you want
to replace your highlighted block with. Middle clicking will also replace the highlighted
block if the block you middle clicked is not in your inventory already. E is the client
version, B is the FPS (or frames per second). You can increase your FPS by lowering
your Field of View using the F key, however, you will not be able to see as many blocks.
This especially helps people with slower computers. Lastly, C is the chunk updates
portion of the screen. Chunk updates represent how many blocks have changed since
your client last synchronized with the server.
1.3 – The Controls, How to Build, The Basics
The controls for Minecraft are simple. We won't spend much time on this, you
can pick it up yourself.

WASD to move
Space to jump
R to respawn at the spawn point.
G to add a mob
Y to swap mouse Y axis
F to toggle rendering distance
B to open the inventory
Enter to set a new spawn point. Escape to release mouse and open game menu
1-9 to change building block type
Left mouse button to remove or add a block
Right mouse button to switch editing mode
Scrollwheel to change block type
Middle mouse button to copy block type

In multiplayer:
Tab to list players
T to chat

The right mouse button editing mode switch is important, as it contains the
basics of building. Switching from creating and destroying blocks can be
accomplished like this. Now we will cover the two ways to build. One way is to build
off the ground. This is easy, and you will figure it out quickly. However, you can also
build in the sky. The easiest way to get up to a high place where you want to build is
by using a build tower. Use the right mouse button to switch to create mode, point
your selector down, and press space and left mouse repeatedly. Always use sand or
gravel for this as it can be collapsed from the ground (or any other point) if you or
another miner need to collapse your tower. If you want to build horizontally now, you
can set a spawn point using enter, move to the edge of the block, and build from there.
If your building will be primarily vertical you should make several build towers out of
sand as scaffolding. This allows you to dynamically adjust the height of your
scaffolding while building.

1.4 – The Blocks

Hunter712 made this

reference, and it details the

main kinds of blocks. The only

exceptions are water and lava

which will often flood

underground buildings. Water

can be absorbed by sponges,

which absorb and repel 5x5

areas of water. They are useful

deflooding tools. Lava can only be destroyed by filling the area that has lava with
blocks and deleting them. Both water and lava are infinite fluids, meaning one block
can spawn enough blocks to flood the entire map. Finite water and lava are planned
for the future. The only other blocks with special properties are gravel and sand, which
are affected by gravity. This makes them ideal for making collapsible build towers.

1.5 – Griefers / Griefing

For a while now, especially in public servers, Minecraft has been plagues by a
type of person known as a griefers. Now that you know all the controls, block types,
etc, you are ready to build. Griefers are people who get their fun by deleting other
peoples' structures. Unfortunately, you may find yourself doing constant maintenance
to fix holes in your structures made by griefers. I put this in the manual so the average
user won't be shocked when their towers are destroyed. Take screenshots, and enjoy
it while it lasts. You should also realize that people work hours and hours on their
structures, and destroying it is just not fair to them. Respect other peoples' work like
you expect them to respect yours.

That said, go out there, and have fun! If you are a server admin,
read on into the next section where I will cover every angle of
administrating a Minecraft server.

2.1 – What is the Minecraft server?

A Minecraft server is the piece of software that makes multiplayer possible. It

coordinates client movements, interactions, saves the map state, coordinates bans,
and much much more. If you want to run your own Minecraft server, the process can
seem daunting.

2.2 – Downloading the server

The link to download the Minecraft server is on the server list. After you
download it, extract the zip. I recommend running a Minecraft server from a dedicated
server but if you're reading this you're probably planning to do it from a home PC. A
dedicated server is a box that sits in a datacenter, with varying stats, but usually a
large amount of bandwidth (or unlimited) and a fast connection to the internet.

If you have a dedicated server, chances are it's running Linux and you would
extract the zip with the following command : unzip minecraft-server.zip. If you don't
have unzip, you can install it with your choice of package manager or compile it.

If you are on your home PC, extract the zip and change the values in
server.properties to what you want them to be (I recommend Notepad ++ on Windows
and nedit or nano on Linux as text editors). Then run the server with the command in
the README. The explanation of what everything in server.properties does is in the
README, and I won't go into it here.

2.3 – Port Forwarding

Does your server appear in the list, but you can't connect to it? Does it give you
an externalurl, but attempting to access it yields an error? If you're on your home PC,
you need to forward your ports. Search for your router model and port forwarding on a
search engine, and follow the instructions. The port you want to forward is the one
specified in server.properties. By default, this is port 25565.

2.4 – Ops and Commands

The first thing you are going to want to do when running the server is to add
your Minecraft username to admins.txt. This will ensure you are an OP, and can
administer from inside the game. Alternatively, you can join the game and type op
[yourname] in the console. The effect is the same. Once you are an op, you can run a
plethora of commands in order to administer and maintain your server. These
commands include the following:

/op <name> Ops the player with name <name>. They have to be logged in.

/deop <name> De-ops a player.

/kick <name> Kicks a player

/ban <name> Bans and kicks a player

/unban <name> Pardons a banned player

/banip <name> Bans a player by ip number. Cannot be undone ingame, you must
manually change banned-ip.txt

/say <message> Broadcasts <message> across the entire server.

/setspawn Sets the current location as the default spawn location for new
players

/tp <name> Teleports to a player.

/solid Switches between placing normal and placing unbreakable stone

These can also be used in the console to administer the server, but you do not include
the starting / . The notable exceptions to this are tp (teleport), setspawn, and solid.

2.5 – Battling Griefers

One of the biggest problems server admins face as they try to keep the
community happy is the combating of griefers. Griefers are part of the MC ecosystem,
and they are able to function because of the game's sandbox model. To stop them,
server admins use several techniques.

1) OP people you trust, and OP lots of people to be on 24/7

To give an example, Reddit Public has 90 ops, almost always on. Without ops
there is nobody to stop griefers.

2) IP ban on sight, and also ban the name afterwards.

 Combining ban types is the most successful way to combat griefers. When you
see a griefer ban without questions, as they will obviously deny what they are doing.
First, use the IP ban command as this command can only be used when they are on the
server. Then, use the ban command after they've been banned to ban their name as
well. This will stop tens of griefer connections every hour. Unfortunately, it also can
trap some legitimate people. Have a ban appeal process that is well publicized,
possibly within the join message of the server.

3) Keep backups

The utilities to do this are on the forum. A cronjob for Linux can be found here,
and an executable for Windows here. Keep 24 hours worth of backups, and be
prepared to restore from backup. To do so, kill your server, and replace the
server_level.dat with the backed up server_level.dat. Then, start the server with the
same command as you usually do. You may get errors, in which case you can either
wait 10 minutes and they should clear, change the port in server.properties or restart
the entire server box.

Congrats! You are now a Minecraft server admin!