Monday, August 18, 2014

Castle & Command Blocks

It's been a good, productive week. I've spent it working on the castle, and getting a simple teleportation hub set up. I upgraded to snapshot 14w32d.

Castle Youssarian
I spent a couple hours looking up the floor plans of real castles. I've never made one in Minecraft before, so this would be a first for me. I found several designs that inspired me, and have come up with my own. I learned something kinda cool: a lot of people, when they make castles in Minecraft, all they build are the walls. But there are more parts of a castle than that. There's the part inside it called the keep, where people sleep, eat, and live. I started work on that first.

Here are the three thrones of Castle Youssarian. Leftmost is for the eldest prince, middle is the king, and rightmost is the queen.


I didn't take screenshots of the time spent laying out the outline for the first floor because it's boring. But here's a picture I got along the way:


A little further along:


The walls are pretty high on this floor, because of the king's throne. Upper floors won't be as tall, probably. I haven't started on the floor but I think it'll be acacia planks, with some design added for variety.

Floor Plans
I don't have anything drawn out, but I could at least give you a list of the rooms. I had to compromise between realism and artistic rendition, and I think a good halfway point was found. There are two buildings which are more than one story tall, the keep and the chapel.
  • First floor: Great Hall, lesser hall, kitchen, brewery, foyer, armory and crafting room.
  • Second floor: King's study, Premier's study, library, lounge.
  • Third floor: King and Queen's chamber with private bathroom, Premier's chamber with private bathroom, three bedrooms (for the prince and princesses), public bathroom.
(A Premier is basically a Prime Minister, the person who handles the tedious affairs of running a kingdom for the King.)

The chapel is where religious services are held. I've named it the Chapel of Isidore, for Saint Isidore of Seville. The Catholic Church considers him the patron saint of the Internet, computers, and computer programmers, so I think it's fitting.
  • First floor: sanctuary, priest's study, public bathroom.
  • Second floor: priest's bedroom with private bathroom.
I will also have farms, stables, a well, and maybe a couple other buildings around the keep. The worst part will likely be building the wall around it. This could almost turn into a proper megabuild.

Command Blocks
When I started this map I decided I would make a teleportation hub. It would have command blocks which teleport me to points of interest. The reason for this hub is the fact that I hate walking around long distances. It's just a waste of time. My real life schedule is fairly cramped between work, Minecraft, and other hobbies. On any given day I can squeeze maybe an hour of game time, and walking around a ton is a waste.

I went to 500, 500 to place the central block of the temporary teleport hub, and found it was inconveniently located on the side of a hill. Oh well. Only a few spots are important right now, and it was quick to put together.


Did you know that you can't edit command blocks in Survival mode? I found that out trying to use these things. Luckily I set this map up so I can use /gamemode. Each command block in this hub takes me to a specific area, and that area has a command block to return me here. I'll go into Creative mode to find the coordinates, program the command block, and place a stone pressure plate next to it. 

This isn't what I'll keep it as. Perhaps in the next couple weeks I shall build a better, more expandable one at y = 150. Here's a simple design I made for it: