User:Narc/Script for redstone basics tutorial

The tutorial is complete (and available on youtube), and this page will remain here as a later reference.

The Script
NARC (begin with fake Russian accent): Hyellow, and velcome to fake russian accent HOWTO on basick redstone.

Narc (sudden end to fake accent): No, I'm just messing with you about the first part -- I won't be doing that horrible accent, but I will teach you all I know about basic redstone technique in 15 minutes or less.

First demo: activating redstone dust, redstone states
[CUT to first demo setup: one redstone dust with pressure plates next to it, floating block above with lever on one side and button on the other. An unconnected wire trails away two blocks distant, on the lever side]

Narc (speaking relatively quickly): First and foremost, I'm going to teach you about how redstone behaves. Redstone dust can only be placed on a floor (demonstrates) and the floor may not be made of glass or single half-steps or a few other things.

Narc (still quickly): Redstone dust has two possible states: it is either powered, or unpowered. When powered (step on pressure plate), it lights up and glows red. When unpowered (step off pplate), it is a darker red.

Narc (in full demo mode): Redstone dust can be activated (brought to its powered state) by any of these devices: pressure plates (step onto a pplate, then step off), levers (toggle lever on, toggle lever off), buttons (press button), or redstone torches (place torch on floor under the button).

Narc: Active redstone dust will transmit power to more redstone dust placed next to it (place two redstone on floor to connect to trailing line, follow trailing line two more steps to where it goes up a block), and it will go up or down a block at a time... unless the diagonal path is blocked (place block above redstone dust on floor, breaking its connection up. After a second, break the block to show continued power transfer). However, if the block on the diagonal path is glass (look directly at glass above diagonal path down), then the power continues to flow.

Narc (walking down the redstone path until the power stops 15 blocks in): Power will only travel for 15 tiles of redstone wire before it is "too far" and simply cuts out. We will see what to do in those cases in a second, but first let me explain how to output power from redstone wire.

Second Demo: activating stuff with redstone
[Cut to second demo setup, redstone wire being powered by a lever and splitting into several branches, all one block above the ground. Camera goes sideways down the first branch, where the redstone dust line has been surrounded by colored cloth: white on the ground level, black on the level next to the wire.]

Narc: Redstone dust can power blocks that it is pointing directly at (look to the end of the wire, where there is one wire doing exactly that).

Narc (following another side-branch, which angles right before a black cloth block with a redstone torch on top): Do note that the presence of a redstone torch on top of a block can make it seem like the wire is pointing at the block (this may be a bug), but the block is not actually being powered. If it were, the redstone torch would be off (but you'll have to take my word on that for the moment).

[Cut to door surrounded by yellow cloth blocks]

Narc: Some redstone-powered devices are lenient in how they will accept power. Take this door, for instance -- the redstone dust may be pointing directly at it, or at any of these other yellow blocks. When any of them receives power, the door will open.

[Cut to door surrounded by yellow cloth blocks, now with the bottom one(s) replaced with blue cloth, and a redstone wire travelling sideways to the door]

Narc: Remember that redstone wire activates blocks that are both next to and below itself -- here, this passing wire is activating the blue block(s) underneath the door, which is going to trigger it (push a button, activating redstone and opening the door).

[Cut to music block]

Narc: Other redstone devices are more restrictive. This music box must be directly activated by redstone dust pointing directly at it or passing under it -- but in the case of the music box, the latter is unsuitable unless you wanted to use that exact instrument (demonstrate instrument with button).

[Cut to door and music block side by side]

Narc: The difference between the two is only knowable through testing, and I encourage you to try all combinations that you think should work, to see which ones actually do.

Third demo: input specifics
[Cut to input demo: floating blocks with redstone under them, above them, and off to the sides, carrying each input device: button, lever (on side), lever (above, E/W), lever (above, N/S), pplate, torch. Walkway provides access to the "above" ones. Begin with button]

Narc: Now let's look in more detail at the input devices -- and we'll start with the button. Buttons can only be placed on the sides of blocks, not on top or below them, and they will activate all the redstone dusts you see around it (press button).

Narc (walking to lever (on side)): Levers placed on the sides of blocks activate the same redstone positions as buttons do, but levers are toggles -- you turn them on and they stay on until you turn them off.

Narc (walking to lever (on top, E/W)): Levers can also be placed on top of a block, in which case (look at both levers atop blocks) they can have two possible orientations -- East-west, like this one, or north-south, like that one. When oriented east-west, the lever will activate redstone dust placed below the block it's placed on... (demonstrate, then walk over to N/S lever) ...whereas a north-south oriented lever will not (demonstrate).

Narc (walking to pressure plate): Finally, the pressure plate acts just like an east-west oriented lever, in that it, too, will activate redstone dust below the block it's placed on. This is half of the trick in making completely hidden redstone wiring.

Fourth demo: torches
[Cut to redstone torch area, featuring several redstone torches on top and on the sides of a few blocks]

Narc: Now to get a little more advanced. Redstone torches are special in multiple ways. First of all, they're on when placed, and will turn off when powered by a redstone current. But they also produce redstone current when active (naturally). So how do you power a torch? You do that by powering the block it's attached to.

Narc (placing redstone dust forward from existing redstone torch, placing block in front of it, placing torch on block and showing that it turns off): The easiest way to do that is to direct a redstone wire at the block, like so. But you can also place the torch on the side of a block with dust on top of it (do so), like this.

[Pan/cut to freestanding redstone torch with glass placed in all positions powered by the torch]

Narc: Here we have a visual indicator of how far a redstone torch can power redstone dust. If the dust is in any of the blocks currently covered by glass -- and you can see there are many of them -- it will be powered by the torch. Of special note is that you can use the torch to activate redstone dust directly above it, or one block below it, making torches a cheap way to bring a redstone signal up or down through floors.

[cut to redstone tard pillar]

Narc: For instance, we can send a redstone signal up through what I term a redstone tard pillar -- watch what happens when I press the button here (press button). The signal travels up through the torches and ends up at the very top, turning the top torch on for a little bit, and then off again, just like the button did. This is the second part of the trick in making totally hidden redstone wiring.

[cut back to first demo setup, at the end of the 16-block redstone wire]

Narc: Now, remember how redstone power only travels through 15 blocks of dust? And remember how a redstone torch will react to a signal from redstone dust? We can put these together... (break extra dust, place block in its place, place torch attached to block) ...to extend the range of the signal (keep placing dust to 15 blocks further, then invert it again. Demonstrate signal reaching to the very end).

Narc: A single torch, activated by redstone wire, and outputting the opposite power state, is termed an "inverter" in redstone parlance. Two together are called a "repeater", because they will repeat the same redstone power state for a further fifteen blocks. Here's a really compact repeater design (while building): redstone dust goes into a block with a torch on top, whose power is output to the dust on the block next to it, which activates the torch on the side of that same block.

Narc: Here's a common mistake that can be a pain to figure out: when powering a torch from the top of the block it's attached to, the torch will power a block directly above it (place block in that position), which will power the redstone dust that's powering the torch itself. This will make the torch pulse rapidly -- more rapidly than Minecraft likes -- and will make the torch burn out. If you wait a while, it'll turn back on, pulse some more, and then burn out again, but the easiest way to fix this, after you remove the block (do remove block), is to remove and replace the torch (do so). It will now work as intended.

Final demo: redstone circuits
[CUT to flat terrain for final demo]

Narc: Now that we know so much about redstone, let's have some fun with it. Because torches introduce a slight delay, we can set up a redstone circuit that will trigger itself perpetually on and off -- this is called a clock -- using an uneven number of torches, like so (build 5-clock). As you see, I used two repeaters and one other torch to make a 5-torch clock, or a 5-clock, which is the minimum duration clock that will never burn out torches.

[Pan/Cut to a different location, with two small repeaters, one oriented N/S, one E/W]

Narc: Here's another interesting trick to be aware of: this is a taller but shorter version of the repeater, and it has a slightly buggy property -- when oriented North-South, the two torches cycle in a single torch tick, instead of two. Normally, it would behave like this -- watch the two top torches (press button) -- but when oriented North-South, it behaves like this (press button).

[Cut to 4-clock]

Narc: Thus, you can use a single-tick repeater like this to make a 4-clock, which will still not burn out -- though if you shorten it any more, it will start breaking.

[Cut to rapid pulser]

Narc: Now, if you remember a few minutes ago, we saw the common mistake of powering a torch from itself, making it burn out. The interesting property here is that if you do this with four torches, they will reset their burnout more or less in sequence, thus making what's called a rapid pulser in redstone parlance. One unfortunate property of the pulser, though, is that you cannot pass it through a torch, thus you can't invert or repeat it. If you try, you get this (demonstrate), which doesn't really work.

[Cut to a perch from where we can see both clocks and the pulser]

Narc: So, this has been a very information-packed tutorial, and we covered a lot of redstone basics, which should help you build pretty much anything, if you set your mind to it. Now go have fun!