Hodgepodge

Things have been rather slow lately. Not much desire to really play Minecraft. My laptop just can't handle any of the intensive stuff, which is a real pain.

I've begun a new project on the Hydrocity Gaming server, which I consider my home server. I call it the Palace Youssarian, and I'm going to apply the skills in redstone and design I've accumulated recently to make it at least a little nice. The main building materials for it will be stone brick and lapis lazuli, along with whatever else is appropriate. Since I can't access SMP at the moment I figured I'd spend a little time getting a rough idea of what the place might look like. Here's a shot of the wheat farm.

I don't think I'm going to have the ceiling remain so flat and tall. I might make it bend down so that the ceiling height remains 4 blocks everywhere. The redstone wiring is underneath the farm, which makes it a bit more compact. I want to do a little bit of rough draft work on Creative mode before taking it onto the survival server.

For my singleplayer world, I've scrapped the idea of having a complex rail system. I will use a design based off the MindCrack Nether hub, although modified.

• The Nether brick overheard corner thingy for each track's alcove will be upside-down Nether brick stairs facing outward. The stair at the corner where they meet will change to make it look nice.
• Behind the blocks that distinguish each rail (one user on the MindCrack server has redstone lamps, the other has wool, and so on) will be two blocks of empty space. That's so I can add things like water, redstone, or other things to customize them further.
• I will keep the sandstone half-slab flooring. This will stop mobs from spawning. The upper floor, which is all I will build for now, will feature an ichthys made of stone half-slabs. The roof will be Nether brick with a sandstone outline and probably some kind of pattern with redstone lamps.
• Lighting will be done with redstone lamps.
• This Nether hub is intended to be well-stocked. As such it will have all the kinds of farms you can put in the Nether. 
• I want to detail the outside of it in some fashion. Since it's currently encased in Netherrack I may not get that opportunity.
• Lastly, there will be a double door system to get outside, probably using pistons. Just in case I want to do some local moving around.

Nether Hub Minecart Idea

This is a bit of the idea I've had for my Nether hub (constructed in a Creative map):

I was going to do something like that, but I wasn't completely happy with it. Though inspired by the Mindcrack server's Nether hub, I wanted something more original. And earlier, I do believe I got an idea. When I was wayyy younger I watched a show called Thomas the Train Engine. The main character was a sentient steam-powered train and a bunch of his coal-fueled comrades. They all lived in a roundhouse, a circular building which would be spun to connect with train tracks coming out of it. Here's a real example:

My idea is thus this: In each cardinal direction there will be one main rail line. Each line will service up to four destinations. Using things like buttons, detector rails, redstone, T flip flops (which I've recently learned about in university) and whatnot, a system will be set up where pressing a button will have me go onto one of the four lines. Each one of the lines will be able to be uniquely designed. I might go even further and have all four main lines connect to a central launch point... so much redstone would go into that. I also need to think about how it would all look, but at least it wouldn't be a Mindcrack rip-off.

Portal Room, Completed

 With Hydrocity Gaming not working for me, and having zero desire to do schoolwork, I hopped into my single player world and continued progress with my portal room. The first order of business was to create the piston door. The entrance is set in one block from the hallway, so that the pressure plates to open it from the outside don't accidentally get stepped on.

Putting the redstone wiring in place required ripping up a lot of the existing blogs. The design itself was easy enough to implement, and any YouTube search for "2x2 piston door" or the like should tell you what you need to know. As per my personal rules, the redstone wires were put on wooden planks. In the picture below, it helps you see where the redstone stuff is. Perhaps the only thing I may not like about this setup is how pistons make noise. Zombie Pigmen sometimes come through portals and if I hear them set off the pistons by stepping on pressure plates, it could really freak me out.

I accidentally used glowstone for the door when I actually wanted glass. I replaced that, and the result gave it the kind of technological look I wanted. I actually did the design of the outside toward the end of the project. Instead of it being bland stone brick, I made some stone brick stairs and half slabs. On either side of the doorway is one normal stair and one upside-down stair. Above is a pair of half slabs, which explains why you can see the bottom half of the glowstone blocks.

The same door, looking from inside the room. Red carpet leads to it. I again employed stairs to break up what would otherwise be a nearly flat wall. It's nothing fancy, but I like it.

Next was the issue of creating a new portal. I've gone through a lot of hassle with this trying to set up a new portal pair prematurely. The portal in the Nether was linked to the portal at my first base. I destroyed the portal at the first base and returned home. I went through the portal of this base then came back. The game generated a new portal by my first base! Every trip to and from the two bases was about 200 blocks of walking and boating. At one point I even tried breaking the Nether-side portal using a wooden pickaxe, and later lava!

After going through several blunders, I finally had a half-decent plan. Going through the portals I arrived at the accidental portal at my first base and broke it. Then returning to my cave base I crafted a new diamond pickaxe and unloaded everything else except the pair of boats I had made for the trip from the destroyed portal to my cave. I then proceeded to break the portal.

The despawn timer doesn't run if a chunk is unloaded, so I figured I would have time to reacquire the diamond pickaxe if I really wanted to. There was only one way for me to get back to the overworld this time. I dropped the pickaxe into a safe spot away from the lava, then took a nice warm bath.

I respawned back at my cave base, as expected. From there, with another diamond pickaxe, I broke the portal I had been using there, and lit the one in my portal room. Now it was time to make sure this crazy plan was going to work.

It worked, but in the most unusual way. The game put me right inside the Netherrack! I'm literally encased in the stuff. Looking at the surrounding area via Minutor, there's no conveniently located openings within a stone's throw of me. That just means that my Nether base is going to be embedded in the Netherrack. Either that, or I'll have a lot of digging to do if I want to be able to see it. This new portal isn't terribly far from the old one, which means I'll have a good shot at reclaiming the pickaxe.

My next concern was whether the two portals had successfully linked. Going back through the portal I was happy to find I had indeed returned to my portal room! The plan worked!

Basically the last thing I wanted to do with the room before calling it completed was add what looked like spillage around the portal. To give the sense that the Nether was spilling into the overworld, I came up with a little design of Netherrack surrounding the portal. It's asymmetrical, and I like it.

I'm probably going to start working on the Nether base next. It's probably going to be styled after the MindCrack server's Nether hub, with rail lines leading through the Nether to various things. I will probably use it for strongholds, Blaze farms, Mooshroom biomes, villages, and other things.

Settling Down

So after something like a week of just derping around spawn on the Hydrocity Gaming server, I finally decided it was time for me to start actually playing on there. My intention was to not really build anywhere until the faction I applied for accepted me, but due to the recent Hurricane Sandy events hitting the eastern coast of America, those in charge of the faction couldn't quite make it on. Hopefully the faction will still be able to defend my base somehow.

I've modified the skin that Magazine2 from the Minecraft forums made me. I opted to get rid of the face mask and change up the some of the colors to better fit what I had in mind. I'm pleased with the result.

With it being an anarchy server, it's of the utmost importance that your base is hard to find; otherwise, griefing and stealing are virtually guaranteed to happen. A recommended way to reduce the changes of being robbed is to get away from spawn. Far from spawn. Such is the tactic I took, spending probably a half hour going in one direction. There was a certain distance I wanted to go before settling down on a landmass. I reached this limit, but not without having to relog many times due to chunks not loading - and the fire alarm for my dorm building going off. Most of the adventure was spent on boat, going through the endless oceans that seem to be trademark of Minecraft these days. I also spent most of the trip low on health. It's amazing I survived.

I did find something interesting along the way:

This was the first time I'd ever encountered a sand village. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that someone had already been there. The houses had blocks missing and there were a bunch of Villagers huddled together in a fenced area.

The trip's end found me in an extreme hills biome, my personal favorite.

Also nice was the swamp connecting directly to the hills. In 1.4.2, Slimes spawn in swamps at night. I can't say I really like this, because it gets rid of how special Slimes are as a mob. Starting off as rare underground monsters, now they're just going to build up in swamp areas. It does allow for better collection of slimeballs, which I suppose is a good trade-off.

I have two plans for what I want to do on this new server map. First, I want to make the underground ring-shaped base I had begun two maps ago, before the reset. I sort of messed up on that one, so hopefully it'll be better the second time around. Secondly, there is still the matter of the palace. I don't really like the design I have in mind right now. Has too much of an enclosed, cramped, box-like feel to it. I would like to try and make it larger, perhaps give it a more organic feel.

Portal Room, Part 1

For as long as I've lived in my cave base, the portal I'd use to get to the Nether was located in a little branch cave more than far enough to not hear its sounds. It would take me to a portal that was a short walk from my Nether fortress, in a nice open space. Upon returning to the overworld I would wind up at the portal of my previous home, which is a bit of a complication when I don't have any kind of teleport commands.

Thus I've begun the process of making a room for a new Nether portal, one that would probably send me somewhere different. It's going to be much more conveniently located, and far enough from anything else that I won't get those annoying portal sounds. You can't hear the noises if you are 16 or more blocks from the portal, which I factored into designing the room. I also went for a bit of creativity in the model I made.

The first step was clearing out a 16 by 20-something area, six blocks in height. In a recent enchantment I had scored another Silk Touch diamond pickaxe so I used that to empty the place. Here are a couple shots taken during the clearing out process.

With the space cleared, I began laying down the stone brick. Most of the room will be constructed with this, although I may try to add other details to break up what would otherwise be a bland looking room. It will have a Nether feel to it, with glowstone for lighting.

The entrance is going to be a 2x2 piston door, using glass. This will give it a sort of technical feel. The room itself is a sort of hallway, which then widens as you arrive at the portal. My first design called for a simple rectangular room but that just looked ugly. Shrinking the width of the front part of the room then angling outward was a nice touch.

The next step calls for making a sort of red carpet going from the entrance to the Nether portal. It will fill up the empty space seen in front of the portal. In order to do this, I'm going to need lots of sheep. Fortunately, there are tons not too far from my base, located on some cliffs and in a valley. I've dubbed it Sheep Valley.

Cobble Generator Room

I recently put up an episode of the let's play which showed me getting most of the work on a new cobblestone generator done.

As promised in the video, I got the rest of the room taken care of. Here are a couple shots of the inside:

The piston in the floor is on top of a jack o'lantern, which seems to sufficiently light up the room.

This is the entrance to the room. It's kind of plain looking and is identical to the reed farm right next to it. I was considering putting an iron door there.

My next SSP project: moving my portal into the stone brick road and building a Nether hub!

SMP Building Ideas

In about two more weeks the server map will be getting reset. When that happens, I will be setting north several thousands of blocks until I find a nice landmass. Once that happens, I'm probably going to live underground again. For some reason, it has a strong appeal to me.

Something I want to do, though, is build a sort of palace for myself. I have the script for a Creative episode ready to go, but I presently lack the opportunity to do it. The palace would have a sort of sea theme to it, using blocks that have bluish hues and blocks which would go well with those. It would be a sort of complex place. Some of the blocks I expect to be in its construction include lapis lazuli, blue wools, stone brick, stairs, half slabs, and a bunch of other things. Definitely one of the more interesting things I've ever built in Survival.

A few weeks ago I saw "The Avengers." Iron Man's suit gave me an idea. I want the palace to have a sort of  "AI" that runs it. Called Neptune, after the Roman god of the seas, it's a bunch of redstone that automates certain processes for me, such as harvesting farms, opening/closing doors, and other things. I would communicate with Neptune using buttons, switches, and so on. Throughout the palace there will be signs which are what Neptune says to me, with redstone lamps to indicate Neptune saying them.

Another idea taken from Iron Man is a kind of suit-up room. Located in the back of the palace, when I step into the room I'll walk on a pressure plate. Dispensers will send me a top-notch armor and tool set. I need to set it up so that when I return through the same way, it doesn't try to send me the equipment again. When it comes time for me to battle, I can simply rush through here, suit up, and engage in any battle as needed.

The palace itself will hopefully be a demonstration of the design skills I have learned over recent time. After long last my builds are moving away from being nasty rectangles and cubes made of maybe three blocks, and more like organically shaped constructs with pleasant block selections. Although yes, the exterior will probably be symmetrical for the most part, I'm going to make up for that by including curves and other variations in shape that keep straight lines to a minimum.

I want the building to have some defense mechanisms. Hydrocity Gaming, my home server, is an anarchy server. This means stealing and griefing are permissible. As such, I only want people I trust to get in the place. Also from the looks of it, enchantments and potions will be disabled on the server because PvP is horribly imbalanced on the server with them.