A New World (No, Really!)

Yesterday, I went a whole 24 hours without playing Minecraft. I felt several urges to play during the day but I wouldn't have done anything worthwhile so I resisted.

Today, I'm sort of making up for it. I opened up a new world which I may be able to use for that world I want to construct. After a couple hours of exploring, I've discovered a truly amazing place. It is currently over 151 kilometers squared in size and around half the size of my main world. My favorite part of it is the land. I literally spawned on a section of a continent that looks like the outline of Russia, Mongolia, China, Japan and the Koreas. This piece of land is a kilometer long and part of at least seven major regions constituting this continent. It it also a part of the longest mass of continual land I've ever generated. I haven't even found all of the coastline and already it's over 2.4 squared km in length. I will probably keep going. I stopped just now because the game glitched and became jumpy and faster than it should. Which isn't too bad for me except the map generator also started making errors in generating biome borders. Actually, there are plenty of errors already - holes in the ground, extensive gravel beaches, etc. but I like these. They add a sort of flavor to the map, imperfect yet just right for the sort of RPG atmosphere I'm building for the map.

Also, some more information on one of the "nations" to be in the map: The Christus Kingdom. It is not per se a nation in itself but rather a confederation of several countries working together for a common good. It's sort of like the German Empire of the late 1800s, where the many small and not so small German states came together. In this Kingdom, each constituent nation retains sovereignty over itself and willingly submits to the Kingdom's authority. It was founded by King Shaddobi and now is ruled by his son, King Hanarzi. It is centered in the nation Yusaria, which is also the largest and most influential nation in the Kingdom.

Model Work

Not much to report for the past couple of days. A visitor to this blog directed me to the software I was wanting and it sort of works as I expected. The 3D model display it has is one of the things I wanted to use. However, how well I can view the structure is rather limited, so I have to place my building in just the right place that the angle and zoom is just right.

Until I've mastered that, I've worked on it in-game. The outer structure is smoothstone and the inside is wool. I realized a day or so ago that the inside of my house is going to be highly flammable, being made of wool and wood mostly. Therefore I need to include an extinguishing system. I already have an idea how to do this. I would like to have a cobblestone generator that spans several floors. It would be composed of a stream of water and a stream of lava falling parallel to each other. This setup would be surrounded by smoothstone and perhaps glass. I could tap into the waterfall and create some channels along the roof that are closed off by a wool block. If one wool is set on fire, chances are it'll spread. When the wool blocking the water is gone, the water will fall and (hopefully) spread, or at the very least stop the fire from spreading.

One problem, though: I'm very short on building material. I didn't realize how much stone and wool this project would require! So for the time being, the project is really on hold until I get all that I need. Watch out sheep, I'm coming to punch you.

Some Sorta New Stuff

I need a new homebase. The one I currently have was originally just wide enough for me to comfortably fit myself along with two chests and a workbench. Now it has four floors, a massive pillar on top and a room which has a lava pit, for getting rid of excess dirt, cobblestone, and others. Although it serves me well, and has an excellent location (right by the cliff of a plateau of sorts) it is neither aesthetically pleasing nor will it really be able to handle much more expansion. And it's almost all cobblestone, with just a few glass windows.

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