Cave Base Expanding

Yeah... it's been a while since I wrote anything here. In the mean time, the cave base (I suppose that's what I'm calling it) has expanded. I'm drawing inspiration and design from Etho, more than I think I'd like but ah well. Tearing stuff out and rebuilding is part of the game.

Let's start with the central hub. Here's a newer picture of it:

You'll notice that a couple parts have changed in shape. The southwest side, which this picture aims toward, has had a couple additions:

The thing on the right is an infinite water source station. The pool in the grass floor has been closed up since I don't need it anymore. There's another water station which we will see shortly.

I also added a small chest room. The sandstone border gives it a look like it was cut out the side of the wall, which I rather like.

I think I might relocate the workbenches and furnaces. I would rather those be stone dividers.

A look inside the resources chest. This comes from examining the caves as well as plenty of strip mining, using the branch-1,000 method.

Overhead, you will notice that I've started building a bridge. The logs on either side are in different places because I'm trying to decide which looks better. What do you think? The bridge connects to the central hub's upper level, which I haven't touched yet.

As we move west, where most of the construction outside the central hub has been, you'll notice several new additions.

You can see these areas are pretty well lit, right? But where are the torches? Easy - there aren't any! Like the one I am imitating I'm seeking to not use torches. Instead I have been using jack o'lanterns. The upper picture takes advantage of how light will pass through a piston. Each one of those pistons has a jack o'lantern underneath it. The piston arm texture blends in quite nicely with the plank texture.

In the lower picture, which is the secondary hub, the center of the platform wouldn't be sufficiently lit with the piston trick so instead I have the glowing pumpkins a level higher with a pressure plate on top of them. Does the trick for me.

Walking north you encounter the beginnings of what I call the stone road. Things built along here are made with stone brick. Not very interesting yet.

There are two parts so far: the pumpkin farm and the other water station. The pumpkin farm is well lit, using lava streams along the sides.

The iron bars simply help me not fall in the water when collecting pumpkins, and also reduces the chances of drops going into the water. I tested the look with glass panes and it didn't look nearly as nice. I plan on replacing the left side with melons once I find seeds. And once I get sticky pistons this will become automated.

And the water station:

This is going to be another long-term thing if I stick to it. Unlike the ravine project this is not nearly as monotonous. I have plenty of things I want to do in it. Some things:

• Get a mob farm nearby which would be quite tall and provide a good source of mob drops. I've been playing mostly on Peaceful because, well, I'm a wuss.
• I know there is a dungeon just underneath a nearby beach. I wish to conquer that on Easy mode or harder then convert it to an XP farm. 
• Lava core in the middle of the central hub. Not only would it provide torchless lighting, it's look good.
• Looking at Starshadesjack's map, I wouldn't mind setting up an above-ground structure that would be the topside expansion of my home.
• Spiral piston elevator to the surface, as well as a water drop back down. These would go nicely with the house idea.
• A refill room. This would be a small room lined with dispensers. In case I die while exploring or whatnot, I could walk into this room and step on a pressure plate. It would activate redstone and each dispenser would shoot out something. Right now I'm thinking a set of iron armor, iron sword, iron pickaxe, and iron shovel. Perhaps a piece of cooked meat too.

You may be wondering, what about the Ultimate City? I haven't forgotten that project. I might return to it soon. That's not something I intend on giving up. I guess I just got bored with it. In about two months I may be able to play SMP and if so I will definitely be seeking out a server where I can do the project, perhaps starting over with it. If I can do that, I will certainly be needing a team. Some positions which will be open include assistant project manager, redstone specialist, design specialist, foreman, and workers.

In the project's thread on the Minecraft forum, I am getting a lot of comments about how visually unappealing it is. I get it. I can't help it. I just don't have much skill with design. But if you all are so good with design, why don't you sign up as a design specialist? ;)

New Maps for Download

I have updated the maps and they are now available for download. They are located along the right side of the page, as always. The Ultimate City now has the latest buildings. Main 1.0.0 now features the cave base, which is where you spawn. Freebuild Nonlegit is my newest map to upload. You kinda start out at the edge of all I've done. Just follow the buildings and you'll encounter the rest of the stuff I've made. Included are the USS Persistence and some other ships I've made in my free time, as well as the Castle of Inquiery. If you have Single Player Commands, type in /listwaypoints to see all the possible spots you can travel. Also note that since I play with mods, some of the stuff on there may not work.

Convenient links for your convenience:
Main 1.0.0: http://www.mediafire.com/?i9v277qbu3qeen0
Ultimate City: http://www.mediafire.com/?45pcuc3758muk20
Freebuild Nonlegit: http://www.mediafire.com/?qc7ddcj4v0ee38q

Feeling Rather Grassy

It's been about a week since I last posted. I've been working on my underground base. Actually, it's mostly been me sitting there waiting for grass to spread. That's what my game has been doing up until probably last night. I would leave my game running in the background and do other things.

I'm quite happy with how the base is progressing. The central hub, before and after:

As you can see, the temporary farm has been removed in favor of a more permanent one to the right. There's also a temp infinite water pool.

This is the path that the grass came down from it seriously took several IRL days to get it from the surface, which was rather high due to the biome, to the deep cave.

The incompleted wheat farm is straightforward enough. I intend on making it auto-harvesting using water. Also shown is the path toward the farm.

The left path goes to the secondary hub. Since it's more than just a couple blocks lower, I went ahead and made it a full-fledged staircase similar in style to what Etho does, minus the fences.

As you could possibly tell, I seem to be wanting to get the structure of the place laid out before I start making specific rooms. Its' quite enjoyable plotting out the potential structure. One of my goals is to make a ring-shaped hall around the central hub which connects the various paths emanating from it. The secondary hub will be part of the ring.

Topside, I have a tree farm.

The terrain is nothing short of wonderful, at least in the hills. As it turns out, the cave is situated across River and Jungle biomes. With the way I have Optifine's graphics set up, I can see the biome borders by grass color.

Here we have a natural sort of corridor in the mountains. It reminds me of the wonder 1.7.3 terrain generation. Ah.

Part of the valley that lies over the cave.

I am following a special Minecraft rule I call "conservative crafting." When exploring, I seek to minimize how much of the naturally placed blocks I destroy. In other words, if there's a wall I need to get over, instead of digging through it or building stairs out of it, I'll place dirt or gravel blocks to get over it. When I want to shut off a natural stream of water or lava, I will simply seal off the source block. I'm also waiting until the surrounding caves are well lit before going off Peaceful mode, so I can feel secure while I build.

I would also like to give a shout-out to StarshadesJack on the Minecraft forum, who is likewise doing an Etho-inspired base. Our particular styles and techniques are differing greatly, as StarshadesJack has a lot more structures on the surface. Check out his thread StarshadeJack's Ethotarian Base.

At some point in the not too distant future, I will likely be moving this and most of my other blogs. My personal website is in great need of usage and since this is pretty active, why not move it there? The future URL will be http://shawntc.x10hosting.com/blogs/minecraft.

Underground Survival Base

Etho and Extreme Hills biomes. Two things I really enjoy about Minecraft.

Honestly, can you not like majestic terrain like this? It's become the new home for me in my Survival map. My home base has long served me and will continue to do so if I ever return to it. But it's time for a new adventure, and this time I'm going underground. This scenic view is what lies about 50 or more meters above my head.

Since I enjoy Etho and the hills, I figured I would combine them both into my game play! I left everything I owned back at my base and moved to the edge of my map. Using Minutor I located a spot where there were plenty of intersecting caves, to provide a place to live and build. I intend to build with the cave system's shape. Right now I'm sticking to Peaceful, although I want to move to higher difficulties as I become acclimated to the setting.

Before I even made it underground, it was quite the adventure. Food was scarce (as always). I chopped down a tree and chased after some sheep. When I got back to the starting point (on a high spot), I noticed this triple rarity!

That fed me for the first while. There was an entrance that led to a ravine. It was full of Creepers - go figure. I get the feeling these are going to be a long-lasting enemy of mine in this new adventure. This pair watched me as I tried to block them off and kill them.

Funny story. Eventually they lost interest and walked away. Then I fell off of the cobble staircase I was making and I pillared up as fast as I could. In the mean time, they both suddenly came rushing toward me. Peaceful mode for the win!

You've seen the screenshot for the new base. I got to work making the basics to survive.

Tons of iron and coal were present, of course. What surprises me is the amount of gold that I found. Has there been an increase in how common it is? I don't remember it being so easy to get.

From here I got working on the central hub. Emulating our favorite Canadian LP'er, it's going to have a grass floor. I added planks around the circumference for good looks. In addition, there's a path underneath it leading to another potential hub. Just recently I discovered there are three paths going to the same place! One is very convenient and will become my main method of reaching it. But I wanted to make this path neat looking so added a flight of stairs.

And the still unexpanded second hub:

There's definitely still a lot to do. I need to run some grass down here, for sure. I also need to move that little thing of wheat out of the way and establish a proper wheat farm. So much to do, I'm dizzy with anticipation!

Survival: A New Home

You see a random cave here. I see the future central hub of my new underground Survival mode base. The chamber is roughly spherical and the bottom is around level 20. I can already tell that this hub will have a lower level, an upper level balcony, and a central pillar. Etho, eat your Canadian heart out.

Stay tuned for more.

Ranch Completed [Ultimate City Post 10]

And the ranch is done! Outside and inside views:

As you can see, I have sort of fixed the lighting issue. The planks and bricks go fairly well with the glowstone.

On the west and east walls of the ranch building are the automated wheat stations. Since straining over it with the wheat farm, I've come to memorize just a little bit of the design. I also attempted to make the border of the station look good. The sign says "Wheat Station 1" and Wheat Station 2 is directly opposite of it.

I think in a future round of development, when the city's redstone network is set up, there could be another switch which goes down a wire to the control center that turns on a redstone torch saying that it's out of bonemeal or seeds.

Here's a look at the outside section of the stations:

I like how the top and bottom of the station are essentially reverse in design of the rest of the building. Adds variety. In the second picture, the bottom three layers are probably going to be underground. That one plank block which isn't aligned looks weird. If it's a bother, I can move that to line up with the others.

There's no chests in this building. I thought I might add a fancy piston door closet thing, but that was proving too complex and I wanted to get this done. Ah well, there's always next round.

And in case you are wondering, I'm thinking that there are going to be three rounds to creating the city.

• First round is what's going on now. Creating the buildings and attempting a good design. According to feedback, the design could be better. :D
• Second round is bringing together the redstone network. The entire city will be connected through a redstone network which is centralized at the Control Center. Because I haven't figured out all the network components, the Control Center hasn't been designed. This is also the round for the underground water system.
• Third round is probably what everybody wants: the new design phase. Making the stuff look good.

So what's next? Perhaps the automatic breeder. I will have to check this out on YouTube since I've never done anything like it to any extent.

Traditional Ranch [Ultimate City Post 9]

And after a little delay, we are back! Today's work was still somewhat lethargic, but progress has been made. For the first 8 posts we were primarily dealing with the farm district of the Ultimate City. With the high levels of automation, it's probably no surprise most of the stuff there looked pretty much the same. It appears that a lot of the plant mechanics are similar.

Today, work began on the ranch district. I don't believe I can get quite as much automation in this district since we are dealing with mobs. Like the tree farm, it will require plenty of manual involvement. I also wanted to go ahead and start a new theme with this district. I was concerned that if I used flammable materials to build with, the city would be susceptible to large fires. Then I realized that the residential districts are going to be full of wooden structures.

The ranch building is modeled similar to the tree farm: four main squares with three-block-wide paths.

Each field is 15x15 and holds a specific mob. For now they will be as follow: back left, Mooshroom; back right, chicken; front left, cow; front right, pig.

I populated the fields using the eggs available via Creative mode and got to work with the paths. I decided to outline each field with planks. I was a little uncertain with the paths. At first I tried sandstone, but wasn't content with how it looked (too bright). I swapped for stone, but the contrast wasn't very good looking. I wanted something a bit less contrasting. However, I came to an odd decision.

That's right. Nether brick. It's a little surprising I didn't discover this from watching so much of Etho's videos. But Nether brick and wooden planks make for a beautiful combination. The contrast is quite pleasant, and their textures complement each other well. I am definitely making this one of my preferred pairings for designs. Next I got working on the walls. I don't need this to be a very tall building. Five blocks tall should suffice. The frame you see is made of pine logs (apparently the official name for these is spruce, although I've often referred to them as pine or redwood). Their sides are similarly colored to the Nether brick, while their tops are nice with the planks.

Next I played with using more Nether brick. I had the roof in place but later removed it. Didn't want it there just yet. If you can't tell, I have the front wall made of Nether brick. Don't know if I want to keep it that way. I also added some lighting to the pens.

May be hard to see the details. I'm not being a good photographer today. Each pen has a glowstone in the middle, with a torch on each corner. The sign by the fence gate indicate what type of animal belongs in it. The middle intersection also has a glowstone block. I need to figure out the lighting for this building.

And the front door. I'm really liking how this building is turning out.

I won't update the download links just yet. I intend on doing that once every few buildings are completed. It seems kinda unnecessary and indeed unprofessional to make an update when I have half a building done.

Also, I played with MCEdit a couple days ago. My Main 1.0.0 and Freebuild Nonlegit 1.0.0 maps have a lot of unused chunks. These are places I've visited once, but since then I've had no need for them. I went ahead and trimmed those extraneous chunks off. Both maps are significantly smaller in size. What's nice is that with the new Minecraft update introducing a new ore, I can visit these plots of land (which aren't very far away) and get those ores.