WindMills

Point at a block, run one command, and that block plus everything attached to it turns a full 360° over however many seconds you like.

It is not a preset model or a fixed set of shapes. You build the thing out of whatever blocks you want, and the plugin picks up the whole connected structure and turns it. Sails, water wheels, ferris wheels, carousels, propellers, rotating signs, spinning statues, if you can build it, it can spin.

How it works A block sitting in the world can only ever be axis-aligned on the grid, so a real block genuinely cannot be turned 37°. Windmill lifts the captured blocks out of the world and re-renders them as BlockDisplay entities, which can hold an arbitrary rotation.

Two things follow from that, and you should know both before installing:

A spinning windmill has no collision. You walk through the sails. This is a property of display entities, not a bug, and it cannot be worked around without a resource pack.

The real blocks are removed from the world while it spins. They are stored in the plugin's data file and put back exactly where they came from by /windmill remove.

The angle is derived from the wall clock rather than counted up tick by tick, so lag, chunk unloads and restarts never make a windmill drift out of time. It comes back round to exactly where it should be.

Vertical or horizontal Every windmill spins on an axle, and the axle can be laid two ways:

Vertical spin — the axle is horizontal, the blades sweep a wall. A windmill, a water wheel, a ferris wheel.

Horizontal spin — the axle stands upright, the blades sweep the ground. A helicopter rotor, a carousel, a turntable.

Aiming a vertical wheel is done relative to you, not in world axes. You never type X, Y or Z:

/windmill face turn the wheel to face you /windmill face north square it to a compass point /windmill turn left 45 swing it round on the spot /windmill reverse spin the other way /windmill face up stand the axle upright /windmill face down same disc, turning the other way

Menu /windmill create on its own opens a menu, so nobody has to memorise the command set.

The first page asks the only question most people have: (vertical or horizontal) and the second holds everything else: speed, aim, direction, pause, and remove. Shift-click multiplies the step on any adjustment. Removal asks for a shift-click to confirm, since it puts the blocks back and cannot be undone.

Spelling out arguments (/windmill create 8 north) skips the menu, so command blocks and scripts are unaffected. /windmill gui reopens it later.

Commands Alias: /wm. The id is optional everywhere — leave it off and it uses the nearest windmill.

Command What it does /windmill create Capture what you are looking at, then open the menu /windmill create [seconds] [direction] Same, without the menu /windmill gui [id] Reopen the menu /windmill scan Outline what would be captured, touching nothing /windmill face [id] [direction] Aim it — north/south/east/west/up/down /windmill turn [id] <left|right> [degrees] Swing it round; 15° a nudge /windmill reverse [id] Spin the other way /windmill speed [id] Time for one full turn /windmill pause [id] · /windmill resume [id] Freeze it where it is /windmill list Every windmill, where it is, how it spins /windmill remove [id] Put the real blocks back /windmill removeall Remove every windmill /windmill reload Reload config and data /windmill scan is worth knowing about. It outlines the blocks that would be captured in particles without touching anything, so you can check the structure is not quietly welded to the ground before you turn it into a windmill.

Permissions Nodes windmill.command op Run /windmill at all, plus scan and list windmill.create op Create windmills windmill.edit op The menu, and changing how a windmill spins windmill.remove op Remove one windmill windmill.admin op removeall and reload windmill.* op Everything Each specific node implies windmill.command, so a single grant is enough — you do not have to hand out two nodes to let a builder build.

windmill.admin is deliberately separate. removeall wipes every windmill on the server, and that should not ride along with the ability to make one.

The menu re-checks permissions on every click rather than only when it opens, so revoking someone mid-session actually stops them.

Configuration default-period-seconds: 6.0 # seconds for one full turn when none is given default-facing: north # console-created windmills; players get "facing me"

update-interval-ticks: 2 # how often rotation is pushed to clients activation-range: 96 # skip windmills nobody is near (0 disables)

max-blocks: 512 # safety rails on the "attached blocks" fill max-radius: 32 diagonal-attach: false # true = edge/corner contact counts, for diagonal sails

view-range: 4.0 # display view distance multiplier full-brightness: false # for windmills sitting in their own shadow max-blocks and max-radius matter. "Attached" is a flood fill, so a windmill touching the ground would otherwise swallow the map — creation is refused when either limit is hit, rather than eating your world.

activation-range is the one to tune on a big server. Windmills nobody is near stop sending updates entirely, and because the angle comes from the clock they are still in exactly the right place when someone walks back up.

Requirements Paper 1.21.x (or a Paper fork — Purpur, Pufferfish) Java 21 No dependencies

Client versions: display entities do not exist in clients older than 1.19.4. On a ViaVersion network, older clients can still connect, but they will not see a windmill — and because the real blocks are lifted out of the world while it spins, they will see an empty gap rather than a stationary structure. If a meaningful share of your players are on 1.8, keep windmills away from anywhere they need to walk.

Installation Drop Windmill.jar in plugins/ Restart Build something, look at it, run /windmill create Windmills are saved in plugins/Windmill/windmills.yml and survive restarts, resuming at the angle they were at.

Before uninstalling, run /windmill removeall. That file is the only record of the captured structures, deleting the plugin while windmills are still up leaves holes where the builds were.