Saturday, March 24, 2012

Rough Draft and Occasional Livestream

I threw together a rough draft for the city's layout. This is subject to change at any moment's notice.


I'm a good artist, aren't I? The residential districts haven't been internally arranged yet. They depend on the final size of the city and how much population that would require. The lower left district will probably have more of the larger houses, while the upper right one will likely be populated with more of the smaller ones. A lot of the stuff written on this layout is written in a cryptic shorthand code only I comprehend. :D

Also, I've finally given in to desire and now have a live stream channel, which basically means you can watch me play Minecraft live via the Internet whenever I so choose to broadcast it (which may not be often). The url is http://www.livestream.com/youssarian

As always, feedback is greatly appreciated.

Friday, March 23, 2012

The Ultimate City: Planning Stage

So I think it's time to get going with my ultimate goal for playing Minecraft single player: creating the Ultimate City. I've mentioned it briefly before. Basically, the Ultimate City is a self-sustaining settlement that uses redstone, pistons, lava, water, and other game mechanics to make things semi-automatic to fully automatic. Ideally, this city would be able to provide all the needed items and block for making large-scale projects on a single player or multiplayer world. On SMP this would also have short range and long range weapons embedded in tall walls that repair themselves rapidly using lava/water interaction. It would make for a formidable fortress in the case of war.

Something else I am doing is populating it with villagers. It's sort of an RPG thing. Each building will have a certain amount of villagers assigned to work in it. That will be needed later on.

Internally, I think I am going to divide the city into districts dedicated to a specific aspect of Minecraft.

Farming district: This deals with the growing and harvesting of all plants.
  • Tree farm: this will be a large building divided into four sections, one for each type of tree. You can't really automate chopping down and replanting trees, so there will be much manual labor involved in this. Double chests store excess saplings, and there is a lava pit to get rid of extras. Each tree type would have 100 saplings planted for it. Bone meal would be available.
  • Wheat farm: Using water this would harvest fully grown wheat. There is still the matter of needing to manually plant them. There is also a very rapid wheat farming method that utilizes a BUD (block update) switch. If that still works in 1.2.3, then I will include one or two stations for that.
  • Reed farm: This will be a relatively simple redstone-piston system. I think I will make it so it creates about a stack of reeds per harvest, maybe more.
  • Watermelon and pumpkin farms: Same building, but separate systems. Another one easily done using redstone and pistons.
  • Mushroom farm: This would be a tad more difficult for me, but still can be done. Perhaps I will include huge mushrooms into this somehow.
  • Cactus farm: Again, redstone, pistons and water streams are all you need for this.
Ranching district: Immediately adjacent to the farming district, this deals with the livestock.
  • Chicken, cows, mooshrooms, pigs, and sheep will have a 16x16 pen dedicated to it.
  • I've read it's possible to make a squid farm where you hold a body of water in the air with fences. The squid will fall through it and die given sufficient height.
  • A 16x16 pen for each color of sheep.
  • There's also the ability to breed animals by holding them in minecarts. Their offspring will fall below them.
Crafting district: Here is where items and blocks are stored, smelted, and utilized.
  • Warehouse: An extensive building full of chests holding each type of block and item in bulk. There are some blocks and items that cannot be crafted. These will be held in even greater quantities.
  • Blacksmith: A building filled with furnaces and fuel. It's possible I may separate it into sections devoted to smelting specific things.
  • Mob trap: A simple drop trap with several platforms. I want to see if I can make this a toggleable mob trap/experience farm.
  • Brewery
  • Enchantment building
Business district: This has the business-related buildings.
  • Bank: Storing whatever I use as currency (probably Millenaire's currency).
  • Archery
  • Victory Monument: At the middle of the city is a statue which symbolizes my dominion over the game. Large and impressive!
  • Control building: All the redstone in the city can be controlled from this central location. Underground water currents may also be diverted so that everything comes to the building.
  • Park
  • Nether portal building
  • End portal building
  • Church
  • Library
On top of that, there will be one or two suburban districts. The buildings will be based upon what the real NPC villages look like. Here's a screenshot of the seven types I've developed so far:


 Other notable features about the City:
  • An underground minecart system as a sort of subway.
  • TNT cannons, perhaps dual turret, built into the defensive walls.
  • Dispensers that use a redstone loop to keep going until you turn it off with a switch.
  • The city walls will be self-repairing. The more economically feasible method will require tons of pistons but the classic method is the interaction of lava and water. The walls will also include an internal Minecart system for quick travel.
  • Cobblestone generators here and there, perhaps at regularly located intervals.
The portal may lead to a minecart leading to an Ultimate Nether Base. Since water can't be brought to the Nether, there will be less in it but it can be self-sustaining to a degree. It will also have an XP farm using Blaze spawners and Nether wart farms.

The End portal may lead to an Ultimate End Base. This is placed 144 blocks from the main island and has a massive Enderman drop farm, as well as many things that are found in the overworld City.

Huge post. Lots of planning. I will probably do this in Creative but not on a flat world map. The one thing that I can't automate is mining. There will be a mine under the city, and it will have at least two choke points for defense. Perhaps lava/gravel screens that are controlled with a lever. 

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Fun with Flat World

Last night I went to check out what a flat map would look like. I loaded one up and flew around. Almost immediately I saw a village, which I went to. It's kind of impressive.

As you probably know, Slimes spawn everywhere on these flat maps. They're built so that you're just a few blocks above bedrock, making for tons of building room. The Slimes were invading the village! One large Slime insisted on pressing against the pole of a blacksmith, and one of the villagers seemed oddly fascinated by it.


A little Slime made its way into one of the houses lacking a door. It evidently wanted to find some place it could peacefully look out at the world.


Oh give me a home, where gelatinous cubes roam, and miniature Testificates play...


The village itself is impressive. Two watch towers, two libraries, and several houses.


In case you are curious.


Man I love the Pirate English!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

1.2.3

About a week ago I attempted to update to 1.2.3. That's right, as per my habit I skipped 1.1, which was a relatively major update. Things went wrong for some reason. The Minecraft JAR file worked fine in vanilla form, but even if I installed ModLoader it completely failed. Even after I reverted to 1.0, it still would not work. I had to end up clearing my .minecraft folder of all mod-created content and completely reinstall 1.0 and the mods I had in it. It worked fine.

During that time I had a hypothesis: this was due to incompatibility between the files and folders for 1.2.3 mods and the 1.0 material you would think they'd overwrite. Today I decided to test that. All the files and folders that appeared in my .minecraft folder that were put there by mods, I renamed to include the phrase "100" at the end. That way the 1.2.3 mods wouldn't try to use them, and should it fail anyway it would be easier to revert to 1.0.0.

The mods installed almost completely perfectly. But when I added Millenaire, the vary last one, the game would black screen every time I loaded a world. I started over but added Millenaire almost immediately after ModLoader. It went perfectly! I now have a functioning 1.2.3 Minecraft. I have adjusted the World Info spot on the right side of the page.

After flying around and experimenting with Iron Golems and a couple mods, I went into my Main world, which was upgraded to the Anvil format for 1.2.3. Look what I found in my tree farm!


 My reaction was akin to this:
I've had a bit of a lull in my Minecraft activity otherwise. I have an idea for what I want to do with one of the ravine rooms. Make it beach themed! Or perhaps I could to that with the lake room itself. Taking a breather and doing other things is helping me refresh and with the new content 1.2.3 brings (especially those long awaited lamps) the possibilities get bigger. No really, the height limit has been doubled.