A New House and a New Project

Last week I decided to try and go three days without doing anything related to Minecraft, and succeeded. Since then I haven't really touched the Elohim and barely did anything with the Minecraft world. Instead I've been going on my preferred SMP server a lot (hydrocitygaming.no-ip.org). During the time I was away from Minecraft the server got completely reset! I was totally lost at first and eventually made another hole in the wall as my base.

Eventually it became clear I was much too close to spawn and it was time for a proper house. Thus I set out and walked for a while. I found a nice elevated place to settle down and made myself a house with a fence, in order to keep most mobs and unwanted neighbors away.

This is my humble residence:

The modest inside area, with a painting for some decoration:

In order to enter the property there is a door interrupting the fencing. Complete with a passive-aggressive warning not to enter unless welcomed:

Underneath the property is the beginning of a tree farm. I've never actually made an underground one so things like how tall and big the space needs to be is unknown to me. However the trees appearing thus far seen sufficient.

What I didn't realize at first was the beauty of the area around me. I found quite a bit of sugar cane which I harvested. Yet as I took the time to observe and explore, I noticed there was only one neighbor near me and he was located at least nine chunks away from me as I couldn't see anything unless I walked in that direction.

Here is the north view, which is the direction the front of my house faces:

If that weren't impressive enough, I went to look at the mountain over there and noticed a tunnel. Almost immediately I also saw some cobblestone and figured someone had been there previously. However upon further inspection, I discovered:

That's right, a surface dungeon, although at first it lacked the torches and this opening was only a single block wide. I went inside and to my confusion saw it was a pig spawner but nothing was being spawned. Suddenly, two zombies appeared out of nowhere and I teleported home. Returning to the site a minute later I saw no mobs at all and proceeded to place the torches and loot the chests. One of the items I captured was cocoa beans! Yay! I don't know how to make a cookie yet...

Here is the western side of my house. See that lava lake? I destroyed some dirt blocks over it after taking the picture. I may grab a scoop of lava and use it as a disposal site for the massive amount of saplings I get from the trees around me. (Please excuse the expletive. The person was kind enough to censor himself.)

Southwest has a nice little lake, one of two in my area. There were reeds around that but they were harvested.

I can't even remember where this last picture was taken. It faces the general direction of spawn, though. Nice snow biome (it's a pretty large biome. Again, please excuse the vulgarity, this person didn't censor himself):

Now, I was struck by inspiration recently to start up another project which would not be as humongous as Elohim or the Minecraft World. My idea is to make an apartment complex which would be out of the way of normal player movements and accessible by the server's Stargate system. I don't have a name for it yet
although there is someone offering land and assistance for me to build on so it may be named after him.

The apartment complex/hotel would have a fee to live in and would feature three different grades of room: Basic, Advanced and Premium. Basic would be a 5x5 wooden room with a workbench, furnace, double chest and bed. I don't have much plans for Advanced yet but Premium would be pretty nice and probably cost diamonds to purchase. The Premium rooms would be elevated and have balconies. I imagine there being ten of them on two floors, each room constituting a fifth of a floor (excluding the hallways). These would have three rooms: the lounge which has flowers and other aesthetics; the workroom which has a workbench, furnaces, and double chests; and the bedroom which has a nice bed. These would have maximum security.

A feature I would possibly add is item insurance. A worker would record the items you have and some percentage or amount would be insured. If a griefer or vandal did something to the building or ransacked your chests, the stuff would be paid back to you. In addition to the rooms would be lounges, an archery range, multi-level spleef room, combat arena with sniping platforms, etc., farms for trees, reeds, cacti and wheat, and other things.

I like to make projects alone however it would probably be beneficial for me to recruit others to help, especially in the area of aesthetics. They would likely receive some sort of pay, be it in resources or the currency used for the server (it has an RPG theme to it).

"Cheating"

One of the main holy wars that seems to divide the Minecraft fanbase is the issue of cheating. What I mean is, some think that you're the scum of the Earth undeserving of any respect whatsoever if you use MCEdit or any sort of mod that lets you spawn stuff. Others don't really care what you do, as long as the end result is awesome looking. Although my terms will never become popular, I will refer to them as the Purists and the Liberals.

By these definitions, I am a soft Liberal.

When you purchase Beta, you get a copy of Mojang Specification's handiwork. It is ideal on the side of Notch that you do only what the game was intended for: that you dig up everything while optionally fighting mobs and then manually build stuff. This is the ideology of an extreme Purist. To an extent, my personal code of ethics causes me to follow this. I will not spawn items or blocks, but instead dig them up and craft them personally.

However, when you buy the game and have a copy of it on your hard drive or preferred form of storage, this becomes your copy, and you are allowed to do whatever you please with it. Mojang can't monitor your actions and shut down the game if you were to start "cheating". Minecraft is a sandbox game, which means that there are multiple ways to do what you want. With the advent of mods and clever techniques the ways to do these things increase. This includes spawning blocks/items and using mods that help you teleport, fly, etc. And people will exploit these newfound methods in order to achieve their goals. If you are alright with doing this, then you hold a Liberal ideology.

I am a Purist in terms of my own gameplay, but when it comes to how others do things, I am a Liberal. Essentially, you follow your own code of ethics and I will follow mine. If they disagree, big deal. It's only a game. Yet many people do not follow this perspective. Extreme Purists will rage when they catch wind of someone using inventory editors or mods that let them see through blocks. By the Purist's standards, they should never be "cheating" by shortcutting the game. To them, it takes value out of what is constructed.

To me, the argument is nonsense. The only ones who should dictate our gameplay is Mojang and our own consciences. If Notch wants us to stop cheating then he will code the game to prevent us. He has stated he does not like when people mod his game, but he doesn't condemn it either as can be seen by him consistently allowing people to make mods. If Notch OKs it and our own minds permit it, why should we be stopped?