My new design calls for a placed with revamped style and organization. I don't have it clearly visualized in my head, although I do have many specifics picked out. The exterior walls and roof will be made out of smoothstone, which is nonflammable. Just about everything indoors - floors, walls, and ceilings - will be made of wool, which should make the place brighter. The front end of my main work room will have a semicircle shape for at least it front half. There are to be at least twelve rooms, including four farms. Mines will be located underneath my house.
There is a program out there on the Minecraft forum that would allow me to make models of what I want to build. But I don't know what it is! There is a screenshot of it in action. It shows a grid that I can place blocks on with some options on the left. One of them shows how many blocks would be needed if the structure were hollow or filled. People are suggesting programs such as MCEdit or Binvox, and those are similar to what I'm thinking of, but not quite it. I downloaded MCEdit to see how well I can work with it and I'm a little clumsy with it still. If I can't find that program, and MCEdit doesn't learn to get along with me, then I'll just make mock-ups in game.
In other news, I finally conformed to the latest trend: mods! After hearing so much about people making and downloading mods, I figured I'd try one. I had read about the Aether, a sort of anti-Nether, and it appealed to me. I went the smart route and began by installing Risugami's mod loader. When I finished that I started up Minecraft to ensure all was well. Oh no! Black screen of death. This happened over the next three starts. Then I realized the noob mistake I made. I didn't delete META-INF, which apparently contains information regarding the game files. Once I deleted that, all was well. The Aether turned out to be a suggestion, not a mod (for which someone in the thread has chided me) but I have installed several others. None of them alter gameplay significantly. The oh-so-popular Mo' Creatures mod now partially exists on my computer. I've been watching streams of people playing, mostly QubeTubers (http://www.livestream.com/minecraftgirledition) and they have things like ogres, werewolves and wraiths.
Yeah... no. I don't have the disposition for those. I downloaded bunnies, birds, horses and other wildlife, not everything.
Also I have a mod that enables me to set waypoints and has a minimap in the upper right corner. I need this, really, because my sense of game direction is terrible. I recently got lost for the THIRD TIME in the Caves of Eternity (a massive cave system under my home island). Waypoints and knowing what direction I'm coming from should help me in the future. When it comes to caves and the wonderful things that show up in them, I try to preserve them as best as I can. The only things I'll do underground are harvest resources, lay torches, and build cobble bridges to get around. Otherwise, waterfalls and lava pools aren't touched.
The final mod is awesome. It technically allows unlimited amounts of maps, but its lack of a scrolling feature means I can really fit no more than 10 worlds on the Singleplayer screen. It also lets me give the saves custom names, so I can remember what they are without having to go in them. So far I have: Calculator, Main Save, UndergroundCity, USS Enterprise A, and World5. World5, if it gives me enough land, may end up being the one I do my multinational project on.
Shout out to my two followers who seem to have popped up in the last 24 hours. I didn't expect any! Thanks guys, I'll try to be entertaining. :D
