Bars and Flats

More application of for loop and functions

The two functions below will be used frequently in this book. Function block() does the same thing as game.set_block(), except that it accepts the coordinates and material name directly. column() builds a post from (x, 1, z) to (x, h, z), using h number of blocks.

def block(x, y, z, m):
    game.set_block(Position(x, y, z), materials[m])

def column(x, z, h, m):
    for j in range(1, h + 1):
        block(x, j, z, m)

Let's look at a few examples.

Example 1: 3 lines of cobblestone blocks along x, y and z directions.

for i in range(10):
    block(i, 1, -20, 'cobblestone')    # loop through x
    block(0, i, -20, 'cobblestone')    # loop through y
    block(0, 1, i-20, 'cobblestone')   # loop through z

Example 2: Disconnected blocks along x, xy and xyz directions.

# loop x
for i in range(1, 20, 2):
    block(i, 10, -20, 'linen_yellow')

# loop xy
for i in range(1, 20, 2):
    block(i, i, -20, 'linen_blue')

# loop x,y,z
for i in range(1, 20, 2):
    block(i, i, -i, 'linen_red')

# add two y lines for reference
for j in range(1, 20, 2):
    block(0, j, -1, 'obsidian')
for j in range(1, 20, 2):
    block(19, j, -20, 'obsidian')

Example 3: Using nested loops we can make a two-dimensional array of blocks:

for i in range(1, 10, 2):
    for k in range(-15, -5, 2):
        block(i, 15, k, 'box_lime')

Here are all of the examples we just mentioned:

We can easily build multiple columns by putting column() inside a for loop:

Example 4: A line of columns along x axis, every 5 blocks

for i in range(0, 30, 5):
    column(i, -21, 10, 'cobblestone')

Example 5: Columns with different height and materials

# columns with increasing height
for i in range(11, 20, 2):
    column(i, -10, 5+i, 'linen_lime')    

# columns with different materials
for i in range(1, 10, 2):
    column(i,-10, 10, 'box_lime')
    column(i+10, -10+i, 10, 'box_pink')
    column(-i, -10+i, 10, 'box_purple')

Front view of example 5:

Side view of example 5: