First Hamlet Established!

So, I had free time. Instead of trying to do something productive, I instead went ahead and, prepared with little more than a lot of wood, sought out my first building site. If you go to the world map (http://shawntc.x10hosting.com/world-5.png) and look just east of prospective Yusaria, you will notice that there's an inland circled because it looks strikingly similar to Japan. That was where I went. I cleared off all the trees with some flint and steel, leveled out the north end a bit and built the mayor's small, puny house. Then I made a wee little farm. A small step in a big project. I named it Nippon Hamlet ("Nippon" is one of the names the Japanese use for their country). Here, I even made some kind of role-play background information:

Nippon Hamlet, located on the eastern border of Yusaria, is located on Nippon Island, and is the only Yusarian hamlet that exists only on an island. There are five households including the Mayor's home, with a total population of 32. Although they are informally referred to as Nipponnites, the inhabitants were born and raised on mainland Yusaria. The small economy of Nippon revolves around fishing and farming and most of what they have is imported from nearby hamlets and villages. The Mayor is Fushiara Naruto (which, of course, references the anime/manga Naruto).


The island of Nippon is 147 meters (482.28 feet, which is a little longer than an American football field with the end zones) by 61 meters (200.13 feet)  at its widest. The northern half is relatively flat. It tapers until the middle which has a bulge, then stays relatively thin. The southern half is elevated and hilly with a peninsula that extends to the west and nearly touches mainland Yusaria. That is the location of the small Nippon Bridge. In the middle of the island there is a natural opening to an underground tunnel complex that is not heavily used because they lead to a dungeon.


Nippon is rather precariously located. It lies between mainland Yusaria to the west and the nation of Inuizhmo (a comination of "Inuit" and "Eskimo"), making the relatively unarmed hamlet prone to attack. The nearby mainland is tall and hilly which makes protecting it difficult. Fortunately, the relatively small population and the presence of a dungeon makes the hamlet an uninteresting target.

Update... No Really, an Update!

To be honest, I've seen Notch's track record for meeting deadlines that he's placed for himself, and I've noticed that lately he hasn't been very good at it. Thus whenever there's talk for an update I don't pay much attention to it. On the Minecraft forum there's always some group of people who are whining that there is no update when he said there would be one. Then once he does make the update, one third of the forum is silent, another third rejoices, and another third whines that new features have ruined the game... by the way, if you don't like a certain aspect of the game, then TURN IT OFF or DON'T USE IT. Let others who like it use said feature(s) in peace. Anyway, I'm in the neutral group. I don't whine when there is no update, and I don't whine about what updates add. I'm too busy doing stuff to really care. I take advantage of what I have with me and if something new comes along I'll integrate it.

Beta 1.3 is a fine update for me. It does offer new half-blocks and the redstone repeater, but it also adds unlimited worlds, the ability to choose your own seed (the code which the game uses to generate worlds), and nicer graphics. I prefer this over the previous update which brought in colored wool, charcoal, lapiz lazuli and other stuff. This new update was sort of a utility update. It lets the player have more power over the game. I like trying out random seeds to see what stuff comes up. I'm still needing to read up on what the various states of the redstone repeater do, but it's good to know that the older repeater system will be simplified and hopefully cheaper. Seeds and the new save format also have a technical aspect to them, something that's right up my alley.

As part of the new stuff I decided to try out texture packs. There is a Tron-styled one called Rezcraft that I like, but it has inherent problems which makes it hard to handle. I also use the pack used for the Enterprise-A model.

Due to real life hassles, Elohim and Minecraft World have both been on hold. I intend on resuming both of them at some point in the future once I have more free time. I still believe Elohim is going to be seriously big. In a brief blast of inspiration I have decided to make some mock-ups for the World. Although I won't strictly go by it in the end result, there is a thread on the MC forum (http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=89031) of a person who has a project to make a realistic Medieval kingdom. My World will hardly be medieval or realistic but this is a good base for me to start with and modify to suit my individual visions. I've looked at a couple villages made in both Classic and Alpha/Beta on YouTube and it looks pretty cool. In order to make the demo as close to what it'll eventually look like, I copied the files of the World into a new save folder, so I was able to keep what I had mined and chopped.

Down Time

Not much to report recently. With Minecraft World repaired, I've taken a break from Elohim to get more resources for future expansion in the World. I've begun the third "node" (my term for a major branch) and in that same node mined two veins of 7 diamond. I've also accumulated plenty of iron, so much that I have somewhere around 200 of them. 153 of them have been lumped together in 17 iron blocks.

Concerning Elohim, I did some modeling for decks three and four. The third deck will be maybe 100 blocks long and maybe wide enough to fit the ship name on the outer hull. Deck four, on the other hand, it going to simply be enormous, unless I rotate the crew quarters. This would possibly widen the deck a little while greatly reducing its length. Still, it's packed with rooms and features including a few missile launchers, matter storage tank, and part of the sublight impulse engines. I can't work on it right now, because minecraft.net is down again.