Us PC gamers are enormously lucky people. Our world is full of countless free mods and tools developed by people the world over who, very often, simply do these things for fun. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Minecraft community, where hundreds of people are constantly developing applications, creating mods and working out the finer points of their texture packs, all of which they’ll share with us for nothing. Take Unmined, for example, which is an excellent mapping tool.
Umined creates and shades top-down maps which, as you can see, put Minecraft’s own in-game maps to shame. It can also map out caves and underground complexes, depending upon which elevation you want it to render. If you want to share your maps with friends, you can then export the images as .png files. They’ll end up looking something like this:
Unmined, which is dead easy to use, can be downloaded from its official site here. If you fancy jumping on the Minecraft forums and sharing you appreciation for this tool, this thread (from where I snatched these ready-to-use pictures) is where you want to head.