Rewriting History

The Minecraft World project that I abandoned a long time ago was out of a desire to make a world full of nations. Due to the limited size of landmasses in a naturally generated Minecraft map, it wasn't possible to really make large nations. When I downloaded the first Earth map I had hoped I could try it on there. Unfortunately, there were no cave systems and ores were randomly distributed on all levels. That made the possibility of reaching my goal basically impossible.

This new Earth map, which on my computer is called Earth Final, has expansive caves and properly distributed ores. It's also huge so I can now attempt to make this world full of nations. Which is what I started today.

First I wanted to pick a good place to begin. Recalling high school history class I noted that there were four main areas where human civilization really took off:

• Mesopotamia, in the Fertile Crescent. This area cuts through modern-day Iraq and Iran. Two main rivers flow through this place: the Tigris and Euphrates.
• China, on the opposite side of the Asian continent. These people were notable for being highly intelligent and making all sorts of new discoveries.
• Indus Valley, located in India. Their archaeological remain show they had indoor plumbing and planned city structures - things that would not again be seen for thousands of years! They rather mysteriously disappeared.
• Egypt - they were famous for their hieroglyphics and Pharaohs.

I figured I would mimic real history and start in the Fertile Crescent. However, when I got there I found it was basically sand with two grass patches with a lake in each one. So I looked around the area and found a spot located in the equivalent of southern Turkey. I went there in-game and what I found was a relatively flat area, 30 by 37 meters of usable, grassy space. To the west was another flat area which was separated by a block-high divider, a bay to the south, and tall mountains to the north and east. The tallest one towers over the flatland by 21 meters. At first I thought the area was no good but then I realized: this spot actually has the capacity to be very secure.

I am sort of doing role-play with this map and I figured that, if I built a defense wall along the tops of the mountains, enemies would have a hard time trying to sneak up. The advantage of height is a larger line-of-sight. Practically speaking, it would make it harder for aggressive mobs to attack.

The spot was chosen as where I would reconstruct humanity. I found coal and built a simple house. I also tried to choose a name for the village. Since I take the word of Genesis literally, I believe that Noah's ancestors repopulated the Earth after the Flood which destroyed it. I located a picture showing the names of his ancestors and where they went and discovered that the man who settled this part of Turkey was named Tubal. So I named the establishment Tubal.

Tubal will be a village: three homes, a large farm, and a storehouse for the results of the farm. It will also be defended from bad creatures by defensive walling. I have specific plans for what constitutes a village, city, and state. This is gonna be interesting.

New Earth Map!!

I've often mentioned the Earth map and how they made an updated version of it. Today after work I went to the library and spent 50 minutes downloading the zipped file, which was some 455 megabytes big. I came home, put it on my computer, and ran it.

The trees were just as unnatural looking as the first time, but then again they were generated by the script used by the creators. I did some tree chopping and, after teleporting to my home city's spot on the map, planted a birch and pine sapling each. I hacked those in since they don't exist anywhere else on the map. Perhaps I shall populate the map with them.

What really got my attention was when I went underground to find the caves. They were just... dazzling. I won't give too much away hopefully. They aren't like the normal caves found in Minecraft. Instead they are broader, taller, and more cylindrical. Simply huge. I felt awestruck when I went into it.

Now I wonder what I'm going to do. I have the main normal Minecraft world, but now I have this behemoth of a map. Maybe I'll make little villages and cities on it. It's just dang cool.