Blocktown

What it does #

Blocktown turns a square of the real world into blocks, right where you stand. Give it the coordinates of a place and a size, and it builds that place around you: the streets with their widths, every building on its footprint and at its height, the parks, squares, water and trees in between.

• Any place on Earth

  Copy the coordinates of a spot from any map app and give them to /blocktown build. Blocktown builds the square around it, centred where you stand.

• Real buildings, real height

  Every building keeps its footprint, and its mapped height or number of floors. Towers and domes that stand on a roof stand on that roof in the game.

• Streets and green

  Main roads with a dashed centre line, side streets, footpaths, cycle lanes, rails and parking, and the parks, woods, squares and water between them, with their trees.

• It makes room first

  The block under your feet becomes street level. Everything above it, over the square and a 4-block border, turns to air before the build goes in, up to the highest block there, so nothing old pokes through or floats above.

• Look before you build

  An orange outline that only you can see marks the square, and chat says what it will replace. Nothing changes until you confirm, and /blocktown undo puts back everything that was there, down to what the chests held.

• No lag spikes

  The build goes in a few thousand blocks per tick, in the background, while players keep playing. /blocktown status shows how far it got.

Who it is for #

Owners of Spigot and Paper servers who want to:

• give players their own city, campus or neighbourhood to explore;
• start a build server or a roleplay map from a real street plan instead of a blank world;
• set up lessons on a real place for a class;
• try a place in blocks before building it by hand.

How a build goes #

1. Copy the coordinates. In Google Maps, right-click the spot and click the coordinates at the top of the menu to copy them. Any map app that shows latitude and longitude works.
2. Stand where the middle should go and run /blocktown build 60.16975, 24.95215 64, with your coordinates and the size of the square in blocks.
3. Check the outline. An orange outline that only you can see marks the square and its border, and the chat says which heights will be replaced. Nothing has changed yet.
4. Confirm with /blocktown confirm. The build goes in a little at a time; /blocktown status shows how far it got, and /blocktown undo puts back what was there.

One block is one metre. The block under your feet becomes street level, and the square is built from there up. Everything above street level over the square is cleared, up to the highest block there, and undo brings all of it back.

Free and Pro #

Free builds real places on flat ground, up to 64 by 64 blocks, three times a day per server. Pro, coming soon, builds bigger places, with their hills and their roofs, as often as you like.

Pricing #

Pro is coming soon and not on sale yet. Free needs no key and no account.

Requirements #

Server software

Spigot or Paper, and their forks such as Purpur. Folia is not supported.

Minecraft

1.16.5 and newer, one jar for every version

Java

8 or newer

Other plugins

None. WorldEdit is not needed.

Storage

Its settings and the undo copies of recent builds live in plugins/Blocktown/.

Network

Each build asks an OpenStreetMap Overpass server over HTTPS for the map of that square (overpass.private.coffee, with maps.mail.ru to fall back on, in map-data.servers). The request carries the square's corners and the plugin's name and version, and nothing about your players. An anonymous usage report (versions and player counts) goes to coolapps.fyi once an hour; telemetry.enabled: false turns it off.

Get started #

1. Download Blocktown-0.1.0.jar (see Install), put it in your server's plugins/ folder and restart the server.
2. Fly to an open, flat spot in a test world, or in a new one.
3. Run /blocktown build with the coordinates of a place you know and a size of 64, check the outline and confirm.

The install guide covers the details, and the FAQ what to do when a place looks empty.

Map data #

The map data is © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (see openstreetmap.org/copyright). Blocktown builds what OpenStreetMap has mapped: well-mapped cities come out in detail, and places with little data come out with little. Anyone can improve the map at openstreetmap.org, and the next build of that place picks it up.

Support #

Write to [email protected]; the support page lists what to include. Answers to common questions are in the FAQ.