Arnis & Rust: The Perfect Fusion of Reality and Minecraft

By whizzerlow Gaming News
11 February 2025 no comments

For Minecraft fans, there’s a new exciting option with the Arnis project, which combines real-world maps with the possibilities of Minecraft!

Minecraft is the legendary sandbox creation game by Mojang Studios, a Swedish development studio that has forever changed the gaming landscape with this game. Offering a simple approach yet capable of unleasing the imagination of the community.

With a game world made of voxels or “blocks,” it offers numerous modes thanks to its compatibility with Mods. The Creative mode is definitely among the most used for big projects, often with academic results. Even over 14 years since its official launch it still has an active community.

Minecraft and Arnis: an ambitious open-source project in Rust

Arnis is the ambitious project of young developer Louis Erbkamm (louis-e), a project that has been in development for some time. But with the start of 2025 and a renewed version, it has seen a surge of interest. Interest driven by the project’s goal, which is to recreate detailed maps of the world in Minecraft.

An Open Source project originally created in Python, it was converted to Rust in August 2024. It makes extensive use of OpenStreetMap data to create detailed real-world maps within Minecraft. An interesting approach that many users are currently experimenting with.

Minecraft: What Arnis offers and How to Use It

Arnis offers a tool that allows you to recreate areas of the world using OpenStreetMap data. More precisely, by following these steps:

• Geographic Data Retrieval: Retrieving geospatial data from the Overpass API
• Data Conversion: Converting the input data into Minecraft coordinates
• Prioritizing Certain Elements: Categorziing elements by priority to avoid conflicts
• World Generation: Generating world by coverting nodes and tags into appropriate elements in block form
• Terrain Generation: Creation of the appropriate terrain scale for the buildings created
• Saving the Created World: All created chunks will be saved in the Minecraft region file data.

To use Arnis, simply go to the official GitHub page of the project. Download the latest release (or compile your version). Select the geographic area you want to recreate and click on “Start Generation.” Don’t forget to enable the terrain based on your Minecraft version, with version 1.21.4 being the most compatible.

Official GitHub Page of Arnis / louis-e

Minecraft Arnis: The Latest News

As an Open Source project, Arnis is community driven, allowing users to control the source code, with a list of known bugs and ongoing fixes. The latest v2.20 version, named Alpine, introduces terrain elevation, along with many optimizations and fixes.

Arnis is certainly an extremely ambitious project and defintiely fun. As users will be able to recreate world areas, from top tourist cities to their own home district, with a tool that’s constantly evolving, promising compatibility with other Minecraft versions as well.

whizzerlow

A video game enthusiast ever since I first got my hands on a Game Boy. Over the years, I've played many different games across various genres, discovering hidden gems and niche titles along the way. I'm also passionate about technology, always up-to-date with the latest news and insight in the PC and Console market. Ready to share and bring you the latest news !