Minecraft Piston Mod | Pistons, Traps and Lava Bridges

An exciting new mod, the Minecraft piston mod adds moving, working pistons to the game. They're not Steampunk pretty (yet) but they work. How do they work? Well pretty much as one might expect them to. They lift and push using the power of steam, or in the case of Minecraft, redstone. Especially useful is the fact that pistons operate on both the horizontal and vertical planes. They can also act as launchers. If you place a block like sand above the piston, it will be hurled into the air when the piston is activated. Fun and games for all the family!

The piston mod makes it possible to create bridges, and potentially even mob traps. When combined with lava, this is an especially dangerous device, though it should be acknowledged that it is possibly more dangerous to the creator during construction than to anything else at any other time. Imagine a series of these connected to one another. When triggered, perhaps by a pressure plate they suddenly push burning lava up through what previously looked like nothing more than a peaceful green field or refined corridor. Possible defensive applications in PvP are worth considering, though it is doubtful that this mod will work in SMP, where it could be very useful indeed.

This is an important mod for many reasons. For a long time, people have been looking for action blocks, and aside from levers and buttons there haven't really been any. Imagine the additional possibilities if other moving blocks, like pulleys and gears were integrated into the game. Moving platforms, elevators and automated cities would be within our blocky little grasps.

There are a multitude of possible applications for a mechanical addition like this, one such example is a lava bridge, built to demonstrate the excellence of the mod. That's right, flaming blocks of sand launched into the air leaving behind only molten lava. How's that for a home protection system you can believe in?

Installation is simple, if you're already using Mod Loader v5, you can simply drop the .class files into your Minecraft .jar. If you're not using Mod Loader v5, install it. If you're sticking to Mod Loader v4 out of an anachronistic sense of loyalty, then you have a decision to make. Upgrade and unlock the power of pistons, or cling to an increasingly distant past?

Download Minecraft Pistons

Glitch Notes:

I have been testing this mod and I note that if you place a vertical piston, then put a glass block on top of it and attempt to activate it, it will transform the vertical piston into a horizontal piston and push through solid blocks.