Big Boom

On my friend's private server, I've been building what I've dubbed the roundhouse. But there was a house I lived in before that, and it was kind of ugly-looking. I didn't care much for it, since it was composed mainly of sandstone and planks.

The server owner said that he wanted to blow up the house once I had moved all my possessions out of it. This actually happened about a little over a month ago. I wanted to see the place get sacked myself.

First thing I did was collect all the empty chests from the storage room and move them to the work-in-progress basement of the round house. Then I emptied the storage.

I don't remember if the owner was on the server when I cleared the stuff out, but eventually I informed him it was ready to be demolished. What happened next can only be described as "majestic carnage" as he went for about ten or so minutes TNT'ing the place to oblivion. Here are pictures I took of the demolition.

Using plugins, the area was eventually flattened and turned into a level plan of grass. It'll either become grazing area, or perhaps neighboring players will build on the land.

Of Towers and Tunnels

What is up everyone! Since the last time I posted, I have gotten further ahead with the villager tower. Let's jump right into the action.

First of all, I got the top floor built. With it being done, the skeleton for the tower is complete.

The first thing I did from there was begin clearing out the bottom level. This will have eight wedge-shaped rooms that could be used as shops or something, and the main road of the village will pass through it.

An unfortunate pig was encased in the dirt. I excavated the little creature, hopefully it learns its lesson.

A sequence of images showing the bottom floor be hollowed out and have the outlines of the road and rooms be put in place.

I'll need to get pictures posted of the rooms for the upper two levels. I also did exterior work, putting in some logs to make it look like there were support beams.

This Iron Golem always seems to reappear inside this fence if it's not broken open...

One of the things I envision myself ultimately doing in this map is having tools with high level enchants that I repair using diamonds and an anvil. In order to do that, however, I need lots of iron and lots of diamond. That's not something that you can just walk around and get (well alright maybe you can, but it takes a real long time). To get those, you need to mine. A lot. So I took a break from building and went back to my makeshift cave home. I found that Endermen had stopped by and played with some blocks...

When I first started up this map, the best animal for me to breed for later food was chickens. The creatures haven't been able to get outside so they've been wandering around in the cave. Unfortunately, now they're getting into the mines. I'll need to fish them out one day.

During the time I was mining I picked up several experience levels. These went into enchants and I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

Minecraft 1.5 is out, and I'm pretty happy about it. I'm looking forward to hoppers in particular, because they are going to feed my laziness quite well. There is something I have in mind, an automatic smelting-sorting system. Here's the scenario: I come back after a long trip of mining and in my inventory is coal, iron ore, gold ore, diamonds, emeralds, flint, cobble, and other things. I want all these to go to their respective chests, with the ores getting smelted. Upon entering my home I dump everything into a master hopper. Using things like water, dispensers, droppers and chests, whatever needs to get smelted will be funneled through furnaces. These furnaces automatically smelt what is in them, feeding on the present coal supply. A comparator alerts me when coal reserves are running low. One the smelting is done, the output is sent to a chest. That last step can be turned off with a lever, in case I want to manually take out the ores and receive the XP.

I hope to be playing 1.5 in the next day or two. ModLoader is updated to 1.5, so now I'm waiting for OptiFine. It looks pretty close to being done, which makes me happy.

Tower Coming Together

I've dropped one of my college classes because it was a huge time sink and I was going to fail. That's sad, but it means more free time. For things like Minecraft! The villager tower is coming together very nicely.

I still have to build the fourth level, and then I will begin working on details and rooms.

I was delighted to find this had spawned in the village:

That Iron Golem is a sign that things are going well. I've yet to see any baby villagers, but all in due time. Poor thing was carrying a rose around, but I don't remember anyone taking it.

Glitchy villager.

Remember that emerald I got for no apparent reason? One of the villagers here was selling melon slices for one emerald. This turned out to be an excellent way of jump starting my melon farming.

I am thinking of starting a pass-it-on map, with a spin: each person who gets the map has it for a week so they can do more and I don't have to spend as much time managing it. There will also be three kingdoms of sorts that the player could choose to build up - a desert kingdom, a plains kingdom, and perhaps a snow biome. Who would be interested?

Village Project Begun

As promised, I have started work on Polis Youssarianis! I already had an idea for the main building worked out in Creative, now was time to get the actual building created.

A nice shot of the hilly area of the Polis:

Floating torches... there is something glitchy about this village.

Also made my first trade, using wheat harvested from the village itself. I'm not really sure why I did this, except perhaps for posterity's sake.

But this isn't what you wanted to see! We're here for the village project. I give you the 32-block diameter foundation to the central tower, stationed just outside the northeastern part of the polis.

A view of it from the inside, to be shoveled away to a flat interior.

And a half-baked attempt to get the villagers to start breeding. Apparently in 1.4.7 (the version I'm using - I don't bother with snapshots) this would register as valid doors to get the villagers to reproduce.

Sorry, I'm pretty busy lately. This is just about all I've managed so far.

Enchanting Table

Single Player

I've been working in Creative mode to design the rooms of the village tower I will be building at Polis Youssarianis. At four floors high, I think it's pretty impressive, and its design resembles what you might expect to be built in an NPC village. What's cool is that the bottom floor has eight wedge-shaped rooms that could be thought of as shops. Jack o'lanterns will be used for lighting for the street intersection under the tower.

In addition I am thinking of adding an underground part that has more of a slums feel to it. There would be several "apartments" for the villagers, a reception room leading to an overseer's office, and a small hospital. Once the number of villagers is big enough, there can be a system of minecarts that take the villagers to another area, one which is much simpler in design and composition. This sequestered area is exclusively for breeding more villagers. It's not exactly someplace you would go on vacation, because despite being protected from zombies, there isn't much to look at. For added fun, I could set up two sets of rails - one to the village, and one to the breeding area.

I did have some encounters with villagers recently. I needed bookshelves for an enchanting table I crafted. It was off to Biblos Village to collect their books. Picked them dry.

After chopping the shelves from both libraries I was still a shelf short, so I stopped by Polis Youssarianis and grabbed one from their library. Then it was back home to get things set up. Since there wasn't much room for the bookshelves and enchanting table, I put them on the ceiling of my storage room.

Unfortunately, I don't think this setup is allowing the table to sense the bookshelves, because I can't get more than a level 8 enchant. Perhaps I will need to add an enchanting room. Nonetheless, I had something like 32 levels, more than enough for me to enchant my armor and sword.

The armor has three types of protection and feather falling. I also let the game run as I did homework to get a good supply of potatoes going. I'll be eating mostly potatoes and either chicken or beef.

For a while I forgot I went into Peaceful, and was surprised that no mobs were around. Once I figured out what was going on, I returned to Normal mode (haven't faced lag death in a while) and the monsters started spawning like usual. A couple interesting things happened, like a leather armored zombie:

It spawned inside my cave base, which leads me to believe there's some area in there not sufficiently lit up. There was also this trapped Creeper, who experienced slow suffocation by gravel.

Friend's Private Server

I'll have to post the pics another time, but the server owner TNT'd my old house to smithereens. I had moved all my possessions out of the place and watched as he went into Creative mode and blew the place up. It was marvelous. Now the land's been leveled out and is free for future use. I've also began accepting donations of cobble and sand from people so I can more quickly get resources for the Nether hub.

Digging out tons of dirt is really boring.