Effective compass use to calculate position

[Zhil]

With F3 gone, I'm surprised not more people have jumped on this topic. I've been using my compass after HC spawn to determine my position.

There are two systems in Minecraft to aid you in measuring position. The first is the block grid. Using the block grid and a marker (sun, moon, textures), you can calculate which direction is absolute North.

The second is spawn direction. Take your compass, look dead South and look at your compass. If the center of the compass represents spawn, the red line will represent the line between you and spawn. It's not very accurate, but now you know roughly where you are, just not how close to spawn.

Every time you HC spawn and make a base, make a note somewhere of this angle and you might be able to find it later. There's a few ways of calculating rough distance to spawn using math, but I'm still trying to figure out a simple and useful way to do it.

The fun part is that it's inaccurate, so it's not like it's cheating. It's actually a skill you can probably get better at. If anyone has found an easy to explain way to measure distance to spawn using a compass, I'm all ears.

[ExpHP]

I actually did this in one of my let's play videos, and the math turns out to be quite simple, and fairly accurate, too.


For those who prefer walls of text over inane rambling and stuttering:

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I faced the direction of spawn and strafed until I found the two points where the tip of the compass needle moves (as those are the points where the "true" tip has a well defined location; between two pixels). These points were 183 blocks apart.


Depicted above are two similar right triangles. On the left are measurements from the compass needle after an arbitrary zoom. On the right, my spawn is at top, and the length I measured (184) is the bottom line. End result: Distance from spawn = 400.

I later found the actual distance to be around 450, so I undershot by 11%. I largely attribute this to the forward tilt of the compass icon.

[Six]

Back before BTW existed I used to play my own game in Minecraft. I would generate a new world, use an application someone made to move my player position randomly out 10km away, then make it my goal to make it back to spawn by building a safe path through the Nether. The first step of this was always to walk around a bit till finding a nice place for a base, then building a compass to triangulate my position. The method for this is as follows:

• Place down a marker under your feet (M1a).
• Walk in a line following the compass needle as close as possible for a good 20 or 30 blocks.
• Place a second marker (M1b) at this new position, and count how many blocks it is from the first marker (x1, y1).
• Go back to the first marker and head 100 blocks in the direction most perpendicular to the compass needle (heading in a cardinal direction).
• Repeat the first 3 steps again, to get a second set of numbers (M2a, M2b, x2, y2).

These points are illustrated below, but not to scale:

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Depending on how far out from spawn you are you may need to extend the 100 block gap, but so long as x1 / y1 is reasonably different to x2 / y2 you should be good. Then you just need to do some math to it.

I think that part can be left as an exercise to the reader. You've got all the information you need to work out where you are, and I wouldn't want to make things too easy on you.

[Zhil]

Both those ways require moving about 100 to 300 blocks around. I've got similar ways to do it. I'm looking for something a little more compact.

I'm sure I'll figure something out eventually :)