New Earth Map!!

I've often mentioned the Earth map and how they made an updated version of it. Today after work I went to the library and spent 50 minutes downloading the zipped file, which was some 455 megabytes big. I came home, put it on my computer, and ran it.

The trees were just as unnatural looking as the first time, but then again they were generated by the script used by the creators. I did some tree chopping and, after teleporting to my home city's spot on the map, planted a birch and pine sapling each. I hacked those in since they don't exist anywhere else on the map. Perhaps I shall populate the map with them.

What really got my attention was when I went underground to find the caves. They were just... dazzling. I won't give too much away hopefully. They aren't like the normal caves found in Minecraft. Instead they are broader, taller, and more cylindrical. Simply huge. I felt awestruck when I went into it.

Now I wonder what I'm going to do. I have the main normal Minecraft world, but now I have this behemoth of a map. Maybe I'll make little villages and cities on it. It's just dang cool.

aVo

If you knew me in real life, or read enough of this blog, you would think I'm the sort that prefers not to cause trouble with others and likes it when everyone is getting along. And you would be right. It's probably ironic, then that I'm a fan of Team Avolition.

For the few of you that don't know who Team Avolition is, here's a brief explanation: they're a group of griefers who do the work with great skill and creativity. I don't usually support griefing because it instigates trouble and often ruins the work of others. Yet with aVo I can't help but enjoy their work. They are notorious for having struck Reddit and MCBans servers. Often, mentioning their names can put you in hot water with server moderators and admins because of the amount of damage they have done. They record the mayhem they cause and put it on YouTube.

I think what makes Team Avolition, or aVo, more entertaining than other griefers I've seen on YouTube is how they approach griefing. They do a lot more than just walking up to a house and destroying it although that's a large part of their activity. They are very creative about it. They have leveled buildings to nothing, placed lava all over a stadium, tricked people into building structures on top of their own buildings (which were already basically demolished by aVo) and many other things. aVo has an array of tools which help them sneak, move faster, and even move around independent of their avatar's bodies. Mindless destroyers they are not. Heck, they once managed to ban the creator of MCBans from his own server! I find their ingenious methods very interesting and of course the way the people respond to them. The commentator/recorder, Storm_surge, has a phrase he uses often: "I think he might be mad." I think he is usually correct.

Team Avolition deserves ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream.

Youssarian, Story Writer

As you may or may not know, I'm a writer. I've authored two novels and several short stories although I've never published them. There have been times when I've wanted to write fan fiction for Minecraft, however I've never taken the time to develop a story and write it out.

A couple days ago someone on the forum was recruiting people for a machinima - a story played inside a video game like Yogscast or Red v. Blue from Halo - and I hesitantly agreed to try providing some ideas for a storyline. The person, who is 17, sent me a personal message explaining the backstory of the machinima. I took a little while and added detail and some creative additions to it and he loved it. We've exchanged a few ideas so far.

My writing has been inspired by the manga "Naruto" because of its surprisingly intricate plot. We have the backstory figured out as well as a little bit of what will happen early in the series. I have to scale my ideas to the fact that the machinima will only run for a couple seasons. With time we will get our ideas sorted and finalized. I won't be seen in any of the episodes for various reasons. But I'm alright with that; getting the chance to use my creative abilities for something and then seeing what the result will be is sufficient for me. I just hope that the series will actually be put into production and have some audience. It's good experience for me so if anyone ever needs a writer I could use this as a sort of resume. If the series does go into production then I'll talk more about it, but for now I'll reserve my words so I don't spoil it for anyone. But if it launches, then expect me to talk more about it. ;)

Good Looking Houses and Tree Spirit

Whoa, nearly three weeks since my last post! Sorry about that, I've been going through a lull in motivation to continue on with Minecraft. The plan with the fighter carrier has stalled already because I don't have the attention span to go on with that except perhaps in sporadic bursts of energy or boredom.

As you have doubtlessly seen, my ability to make good looking buildings is fairly limited. I have a strong practical bent so I emphasize function over form. Which means that I tend to make rather bland, rectangular buildings. I found a thread pertaining to making good looking houses by Minecraft forum member emily_2010 which acquired my attention. She began with what essentially looks like my typical starter house, like the one I currently use in the MinecraftWorldDemo map. From there she shows a progression and useful tips to make a better looking house.

I read her advice and found a nice plain on the MinecraftWorldDemo map (which I need to rename! I've abandoned the project to make a world of nations) and began by making a 10x10 square of planks in the ground. Then I worked on making a porch, kitchen, and attic. I utilized planks as the main construction material but there are two pine logs on either side of the porch with fences that act as pillars for the porch roof. The top of the house is slanted and uses cobblestone steps to give it a better look. I think I went a little too crazy with glass for the walls of the attic but it's nice nonetheless.

My design skills have certainly had a boost because of this. I'm also reading a thread that shows steps on making a nice house and it has a few good ideas I could try implementing in future builds. I think I'll try doing more houses that are pleasant looking.

The Earth map hasn't seen much use recently, while MinecraftWorldDemo has suddenly become my main one again. I've done quite an extensive amount of deep mining. As simple and repetitive as it may be, it feels good to be playing Minecraft the legit way again. The cruddy shack I use as my main base is getting overfilled with items so I want to one day make a new base which has both function and extended emphasis on form.

While browsing the Minecraft forum I repeatedly saw the title for a thread called the Tree Spirit Challenge. I thought it was another Pass It On, a forum game where a list of people download a themed map, add changes then reupload the new map for someone else to edit. I thought the Tree Spirit thread was just another one of those but after seeing it for the twentieth time I figured I'd check it out. It's definitely not a Pass It On. It's a challenge map where you choose a tree to become the grandfather tree and using only its logs and those of its offspring, build roots and expand the tree's presence. You must always be adjacent to the heart log, a root, or a leaf of a root except in brief moments to collect dropped items. After all, you have become a tree spirit, who nurtures the tree.

I made a world for it and picked a birch tree. I like those trees, they stand out very well. A couple minutes into the game a chicken knocks me off my heart log! I get back on and try continue playing but give up and delete the map. I try again but also give up and delete. I try a third time, using the same seed as my first one ("tree spirit", to no surprise) and I'm doing a lot better. I planted some saplings but they were taking waaaay too long to grow so I grew impatient and hacked in a stack of bone meal. Twice I should have suffocated by leaves forming in my spot, but I used noclip and freed myself. Even if I would have died I would have been able to collect all my stuff anyway. I think I'm going to bulk up on my birch logs and form nicely distanced tree cities connected by long roots to the heart log. I've even come up with Norse-sounding names for them: Adrosil, Gardrosil and Marosil. The names are inspired by Yggdrasil, a massive tree from Norse mythology.

Fun fact: I started up a world called "Notch's Demise." I wanted to test an aspect of the Single Player Commands mod. I have two wolves which only recognize me and respond to me if I have the Notch skin on. I wondered, if I have Notch's skin and die, do I drop anything?  I always thought he dropped Golden Apples. I killed myself four times on this map and each time I dropped a Red Apple!  This confirms that Notch drops a Red Apple when he is killed! Now I wonder if he can somehow detect that I assumed his form and died multiple times. That would be interesting!

Fighter Carrier Details

OK I'm seriously considering adding a fighter carrier to the list of things I want to do in Minecraft. Here's some official sounding details.

The Shadow of Israphel class fighter carrier is an experimental type of aircraft designed to bring the striking power of a fighter battalion to the front lines, areas which normally could not be reached by fighters due to their distance from static ground stations. It is designed to be capable of traveling long distances without refueling. It holds a complement of 40 Skeleton class fighters which shoot arrows from their forward launcher and 15 Creeper class bombers that drop TNT charges from their aft chamber. It has a crew of over 300, mostly fighter pilots. Although designed for long range it is also meant to be minimalistic due to the cost and maintenance requirements of its balloons thus it doesn't have much more amenities as other, smaller types of aircraft and occasionally needs time to restock food and water. Fortunately, given the abundance of edible animals this is only a minor downtime.

Although the fighter craft on the ship are well armed, the ship itself is equipped with only a few types of weaponry which are effective only in short range. Given the large size of the carrier and the massive balloons used to keep it afloat, landing the ship is no small feat and has required new methods and techniques be devised to get the ship up and down. The fighter carrier also introduces a new type of power reactor, one which uses the unique properties of lava to give a consistent flow of power. There are two reactor cores on the ship. One is always generating power for ship usage or charging the backup batteries. The other is either providing energy to the propulsion system, inflating/deflating balloons, or providing more power. In times of need both can be diverted to energy, to propulsion, or other needs.

Even the richest of nations would require billions of dollars of money to fund and operate these craft. Yet Yusaria, with the assistance of most nations of the Christus Kingdom, have agreed to construct one ship, the Shadow of Israphel and see how it operates. If found satisfactory there is enough support to construct two more with 20-year commissions: Xephos and Honeydew.

Rave Room Go Boom

One of the project I've been working on is a rave room made of black wool with flashing redstone lights and circuits. I designed it to be big enough that I could gleefully jump around dancing to whatever music I was playing. The problem is, if you get enough redstone running in one area then lag sets in. Now, the base of the rave room was pretty big and there was lots of redstone at the bottom. And it was lagging something fierce. It was also fairly big. I had redstone torches along the walls and if I walked more than 16 blocks away from them they would stop flickering until I came back in range.

The lag was making my eyes tired and causing just a faint hint of nausea. Despite how much redstone wires and torches I removed to make the place smaller and less laggy I still could not fix it. So I decided to scrap the idea altogether and began destroying the structure. I use the SSP Commands mod so I have it set so blocks are destroyed with one hit but that was taking a long time to do.

Then I remembered a block I noticed in my inventory... TNT. I finally found a good use for it! I began laying it down in a 4x4 pattern on the glass floor and when enough was placed, I tried to set off the initial block. I flew back to escape the explosions. Nothing. Then I recalled my instant mine meant the TNT block I hit was destroyed, not set off! I turned off the instant mine and placed another block. I hit it again.

Now the place began to crumble. I had the render set to tiny (and was still lagging) so I didn't see the first blasts but when I fixed the render I saw that there was a crater in the ground caused by blocks falling through the space once occupied by the rave room. Where there was some leftover wool floating I eliminated with a couple more pieces of TNT and it was basically done.

I looked at the coordinates of the former rave room and went on Google Earth to see what area that would be on the real Earth. The equivalent location is roughly 33.7 N by 97.77 W, just northwest of Montague, TX. The town is about 3 miles from the site of detonation but its location on the Earth map has been blown up by the TNT. Sorry, Montague. :(

Notch's Monster Army

I just realized that the various hostile mobs of the Minecraft world all actually fit a pretty specific role that would be found in a real-world military.

• Zombies: they are the infantry units. They walk up to you and do close combat battle. Alone they are easy to take down but in groups they pose a challenge.
• Skeletons: these make for good artillery units. As archers they are ranged attackers however they also do well in close range battle. The only way you can really deal with them is get close up and hit them while strafing and striking between arrow launches.
• Spiders: special operations and assassins. Compared to the other mobs they are quite powerful. Their dark color means that in darkness the only thing that you can see are their eyes. Spiders are the fastest mobs which makes them hard to outrun. They are only one block high meaning that they can fit where the other hostile mobs cannot. They can also climb walls and jump pretty high. It's possible they will one day be able to shoot webs to slow down the player. They will climb on your roof and wait for you to come out. If there is a group of them, you can expect to be in lots of trouble.
• Creepers: suicide bombers. They are stealthy and more intelligent than the others. However I find their usefulness to be quite limited. Creepers are only good for one usage so it needs to be a lucky shot. Their utility is doubled when they are charged by lightning. In groups they will set up ambush formations.
• Ghasts: aerial assault units. A large group of them all firing at you can do some major pummeling and their ability to fly gives them the advantage of greater area coverage.
• Zombie Pigman: a better type of infantry. They have a mob mentality so they will all come at you at once, arguably making them more potent than zombies.
• Wolves: support forces. They are most effective when tamed as their HP and attack strength both increase. In a totally AI army of mobs they would be of no use unless you attack them first. However one or two of these as sidekicks of a user would be good.
• Spider Jockey:  I almost want to dub these as cavalry. I find Spiders and Skeletons to be the two most dangerous mobs to meet up with in the Overworld and Notch decided to combine their powers. There are two main weaknesses: the jump of the spider is limited, and if the spider climbs a wall too close to the ceiling the skeleton will suffocate. Otherwise these are a powerful mob. 

So if I assembled an army of mobs I would want zombies and zombie pigman squads in the front rows with skeletons supporting them. Spider jockies would be behind them and used for quick, deadly assaults. Spiders would be used to get at harder to reach or more valuable targets while Creeper groups would be delegated to ambushes. I would have Ghast squads raining down fire from the sky.