Minecraft is full of hills and mountains that are sometimes hard to scale. In this mod, you will learn how to build a staircase in front of the player whenever you need one.

To start this mod, we will need a chat command, stairs, that takes one parameter that will control how high the staircase will be.

For example, when the player types "stairs 40" in the chat, the mod should build the staircase 40 blocks high.

How will we build the staircase? Let's visualize the coordinates for the first level. The y level is 0 for all 3 blocks, z is 1, and x goes from -1 to 1 (left to right).

Adding on the next two levels, we get:

Do you see the pattern? For each level of blocks:

X always goes from -1 to 1.
Y increases by 1 so the next level goes up.
Z also increases by 1 so the next level is further away.

With this pattern in mind, we can now code a loop that will build each level of stairs.

Test the mod. You should now be able to build a staircase in front of the player.

Challenge A - Descending Stairs

Sometimes, being able to build stairs downward can be just as useful as building stairs upwards, especially when trying to descend in caves. Modify your code so that the player can choose between building stairs up or down.

To do that, you will add another parameter to the chat command.

When the player types "stairs 5 1" in the chat, the stairs will build up, but typing "stairs 5 -1" will make the stairs build down. If you get stuck, try making 2 separate mods.

One uses the chat command stairs which builds up while the other uses d_stairs which builds the stairs down.

Challenge B - Clearing a Path

Sometimes, blocks will get in the way of the stairs we build, as you can see here.

Make another version of your mod, using the chat command clear_stairs. This mod will both build the stairs and clear the blocks above each level. Just like before, you should have 2 versions of this mod for building up and down. The final result will look like this.

Building up:

Building down (an easy way to dig underground):

Hint for Challenge A

Now enjoy your mod! Use the results from challenge B to build stairs that dig into the ground.

Building Stairs