Saturday, February 12, 2011

Projects Progressing

The original save file I was putting models in has become no more. I deleted it because after every time I saved it in World of Minecraft, it would become corrupted. For now I'm using the in-browser applet. Instead I'm doing it mostly by memory. I've made rough floorplans on paper for decks 1-4 and 20-21. I may simply merge 4 and 5 into a single deck because they are composed mostly of multilevel rooms like matter storage tanks, impulse reactors and weaponry. I also decided to remove one crew quarters for the sake of symmetry. Originally I would have 65 quarters: 20 are officer quarters and placed on deck 3, while the remaining 45 were crew quarters on deck 4. However, there's not really an easy way to symmetrically divide that up. Remove one room and you're down to 44 rooms. That can easily be split into four groups of 11, which is what will be done here. Between groups of 11 there will be a small walkway for quicker access.

In a new save file, which I'm going to keep away from WoM except for purely viewing purposes, I've made a model of the top two decks. I personally don't think it's very pretty, but hey, it's just an early model. The floors are made of gray wool while the hull and walls are smoothstone. I've yet to integrate the computer cores anywhere into the plans and I also realized that certain parts are larger than I had anticipated. There won't be any self-destruct systems present in this model.

Deck 1: the elliptical-shaped command center and the more rectangular main briefing room.
Deck 2: briefing room, CO's office, XO's office, yeoman's office, two guest quarters. The total size is 20 wide by 41 long. I've decided to keep the guest quarters empty for the time being.

Part of my dream with the Elohim is not only will it be built, but it'll undergo changes and variations as outsiders suggest modifications. There'll be a "fleet" of them spread across several servers, and not each needs to be named Elohim. I don't really mind what they call them as long as the names aren't silly. So for instance I would be hesitant to accept a ship name of Jim Bob's Toenail however if they want to call it something from TV/video games like Enterprise, Pillar of Autumn, etc., name it after the server admin, or whatever, it's cool with me. Each one of them could sport some modification like an extra few warp coils or enlarged shuttlebay.

In some non-Elohim news, I returned to a couple of my Beta worlds. I briefly spent some time in my Main Save, adding some wool to the interior of the model for the new house I wanted to build. I had desire to do something with redstone but couldn't come up with what I wanted to do. So I moved to the save which will eventually be the Minecraft World. After goofing around for a few minutes I attempted to generate some missing chunks south of my spawn point that were making a gap in what seemed to be a massive landmass. It was a long distance and I wanted to get down there fast so I began using the /fly command.

Wondering if it were possible to increase my moving speed I went through the command list and noticed something called /setspeed. I tried getting in-game help but it wouldn't work so I went online and found I could use that command to move around faster. I set my speed to 10 and started moving. I raced across the sky so fast that chunks would not load fast enough. I landed safely in my desired area and started walking at normal speed. It got too slow for me so I doubled, then later tripled my speed. My main concern was that I'd move so fast it would trip up the terrain generator and give me land that's already weirder than what I have. I fleshed out what needed to be made and enjoyed how I was halving and eventually cutting by a third the time needed to explore.

Beginning my return trip, I set myself to fly at 10x normal speed and went going. Even at level 90, which you'd think is mostly air, there were many hills and mountains that made me go higher. Zipping along at such a high speed and elevation made the game slow so I took a risk about halfway and set the fog to max and kept going. I didn't want to risk losing health by driving myself into a mountain so I used the minimap to plot my course, staying over as much water as I could while approaching my spawn. I got there with no problem and slowly spiraled my way down to a good falling distance, my speed reset to normal.

Then when I disabled flying, I fell to my death! I calculated my height properly - the drop would have not hurt at all. The game simply did not approve of what I was doing and killed me. Yet I was already at my spawn point so it was just a short walk around the scene of my demise to collect my stuff and return home.