<spam>This message was brought to you by Spawn of Momentus; the mob spawner which everyone should give a try </spam> Hi gang! I know that the tool which I'm reviewing here has existed for quite some time now but because I only discovered it today (I usually stick to vanilla gameplay) and because I think this a very useful addition I figured I'd share. No kidding: this has become a permanent part of my toolset after trying it out for only half an hour or so, it really is that useful. Introduction Minecraft maps are massive. You can literally travel in a map for hours (in real life) and discover all sorts of different things. In normal gameplay that is exactly the whole idea: discover new areas, try to find villages and help protect them from the zombie onslaughts (after which you can hopefully do some good trading) and also try to find and repair the End portal so you can fight the Ender dragon. But what if you're playing a survival game and really want to find a particular area? For example a Mesa biome or maybe a mooshroom island? Even if you don't mind cheating a little bit and quickly switch to gamemode 1 or 3 (creative or spectator) then there's still no guarantee that you'll be able to find what you're looking for. A specific biome is easily missed afterall... Or another example... Say you discover a nice map seed (like the one mentioned in this post for instance) and you want to check it out. This basically means starting Minecraft, generating a new world, optionally switching game modes... And even then it remains to be seen that you'll get a good full impression of things. But now there's a very good solution for all that! AMIDST - the Advanced Minecraft Interface and Data/Structure Tracking Overview of the seed which I referred to earlier on... You can use AMIDST in several ways. It can load in an existing savefile so that you can clearly see your map as well as your own position, or you can provide it with a level seed (which I did above) and then it'll generate a complete overview of the map for you. As you can see above the world spawn (the house icon) sits in the middle on an island, and around it are several structures to be found. Each biome has its own color so it's very easy to find what you're looking for. And in case you only want to find one or more biomes and aren't interested in other things, then no problem. Click the pen icon in the lower right corner and just select the biomes to highlight: I loaded a save file (see steve icon: that's my position) and highlighted the Mesa biomes This makes it really easy to find what you're looking for without cheating too much. Hovering the mouse over an area will show you the biome name and the X/Z coordinates in the upper right corner which is basically all you need to know to make your way there. But there's more ;-) If you load a savefile then you can also right click on a map area to move your current position in the map. This could allow for whole new kinds of adventures without cheating too much. For example: I could simply teleport myself to that Mesa biome and then the challenge will be to find my way home again. Installation and usage Now this is the cool part: you don't have to install this. In Windows you basically download the executable, place it in a convenient location on your harddisk and then you can start using it right away. That's convenience for you. AMIDST is available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux (through Java) so you can basically run it anywhere you'd like. Are you still using Minecraft 1.7 (for example because of specific mods which only work there)? No worries! This program supports 1.7 and 1.8 easily. As long as you have a profile set up for the version you're using then this program can handle it. The moment you start AMIDST it'll ask you to select a profile. In my case the most obvious ones are those which I set up for use with 1.7.10 and the current 1.8.8. After selecting one you'll end up with an empty screen and you can now either generate a new random map, provide a seed value yourself or simply load an existing savefile. After starting AMIDST you're asked to select a profile And the most important feature of them all, at least in my opinion: AMIDST won't save any data unless you tell it to. So no matter how much you teleport yourself back and forth: your savefile won't be updated as long as you don't hit Control-S or select the 'Save player location' option. I think this is very important because this helps prevent any risks of data corruption. Conclusion If you like exploring Minecraft maps or if you're looking for new map seeds to play in then this is definitely a tool which you should consider to pick up. It can save you lots of time without intruding too much on your gameplay which you might get when "cheating" by using other gamemodes. You can download AMIDST from its official thread on the Minecraft forum, right here: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum...aft-tools/2626547-amidst-now-has-1-11-support Definitely worth checking out!
Notice how it indicates where temples are, etc. That would be a no. Hence why we don't reveal seeds. Please use this mod only on your private server/Single Player.
For the record: this is not a mod but a stand alone program. You can't use it with EMC (which is why I posted in the general Minecraft forum and not the community forum). Its main use is to quickly explore map seeds and/or your save files. Edit: If you're looking to get a good overview of the wastelands or frontier then you should check out an already existing feature: the livemaps. It basically does exactly the same thing (without the overlay which shows villagers, strongholds, etc, etc. of course).
