Tree Farm Touch-Up [Ultimate City Post 2]

Over the past couple of days I did a lot of work on the cactus farm, and I think I'm done with it for now. But I had not completed the basics of the tree farm. I recently finished it up. I replaced all the logs with their respective sapling type, and now the trees are starting to grow.

The gravel hadn't been added in until recently. The building is floating which is why I delayed with it. But I added a layer of dirt underneath the building so the gravel would stay in place.

As I walked around using bone meal to grow the trees, I discovered the roof was too low for the pine trees to grow, no matter how much bone meal was applied. To remedy this I raised the roof one level and tried again. Now they will grow, however the saplings still remain stubborn. They seem to need more growing space than the others. This fix also changed the outer appearance of the building, giving the top edge a little more shape.

I haven't added the water system yet, and may not do that until after the first round of the city has been built. I'm going to calculate the assumed number of Testificates I will have inhabit the village, and build their houses probably last. Then in the second round of construction, I'm probably going to move all the buildings to the ground and begin working on the unified water/lava system. Here's a pic of the tree farm with most of the saplings grown.

Tree Farm [Ultimate City Post 1]

Part of the ethos behind the Ultimate City is exuberance. Doing things on a large scale. The first thing I've been working on is the tree farm. Wood is a very important resource in this game.

This is the beginnings of the tree farm, facing north. The building itself actually faces to the south as per the city's outline rough draft. Each quadrant is going to have 100 saplings of its particular tree type. Right now I have logs where the saplings go so trees don't block the paths. From the upper left corner going clockwise we have redwood, jungle, birch, and oak logs. Given the speed at which trees will doubtlessly regrow in this system, the supply of wood will be basically inexhaustible.

Here's a detailed view of what each sapling are will look like. There is the sapling and then on its north side, a piece of glowstone to provide it and the immediate area light. This way the trees will grow and there won't be any areas dark enough for mobs to spawn.

Each quadrant will have a pair of double chests by it. These will hold any logs not yet sent to the storage warehouse, saplings, and bone meal. I suppose I could add a double chest to this and have one dedicated to each of those three items.

The dirt will have a ring of stone slabs around it, and there is also a ring of smoothstone by the walls. The space that is currently empty between the stone slab rings will be a gravel path. The inner cross between the dirt quadrants is a three-block wide gravel path, while the outer ring is two blocks wide.

I went ahead and picked up a texture pack, the Faithful Pack. It's an HD texture pack, 32x32, and it looks really nice. It might have a marginal affect on my frame rate, however. So I may not use it all the time.

I don't have any windows or doors added yet, however as it stands the place might just become a high stone brick block. I'd really appreciate ideas for designs that don't look so bland. Perhaps vary the blocks used, change the shape, etc.

Besides the obvious additions of needing doors and windows, there are a couple things I'd like to implement. I may return to the tree farm after working on other buildings and include these.

• Fire extinguisher system. Inside the tree farm's ceiling will be water source blocks separated from each other, held up by the extended arm of a piston. Each cluster of pistons will be wired to a single redstone torch, which sits on top of a wool block. In case of a fire, the bottom of the wool will eventually catch fire and the wool block disappears. When that happens, the power to the pistons will be lost and water will flow down, extinguishing the flames. The clusters could be wired to one or more switches, which when activated will power the pistons once more and cut off the water. 
• Lava pit: by the chests will be lava pits. Let's face it, we don't need the thousands of saplings the tree farm could potentially produce over its lifetime. Just toss them in the pit.
• Workbenches: for making sticks and tools.
• Water system: I would like the Ultimate City to have an underground water system that acts both as a sewer system to a single lava pit, but also a way of channeling items and blocks around. Near the middle of the City will be a control building and it would be neat if I could, with the hit of a single button, activate every farm and trap in the city, and have everything flow directly to where I stand.

Fire extinguishing system idea:

 When the torch in the middle is broken because the wool under it burns away, the water flows.

Rough Draft and Occasional Livestream

I threw together a rough draft for the city's layout. This is subject to change at any moment's notice.

I'm a good artist, aren't I? The residential districts haven't been internally arranged yet. They depend on the final size of the city and how much population that would require. The lower left district will probably have more of the larger houses, while the upper right one will likely be populated with more of the smaller ones. A lot of the stuff written on this layout is written in a cryptic shorthand code only I comprehend. :D

Also, I've finally given in to desire and now have a live stream channel, which basically means you can watch me play Minecraft live via the Internet whenever I so choose to broadcast it (which may not be often). The url is http://www.livestream.com/youssarian

As always, feedback is greatly appreciated.

The Ultimate City: Planning Stage

So I think it's time to get going with my ultimate goal for playing Minecraft single player: creating the Ultimate City. I've mentioned it briefly before. Basically, the Ultimate City is a self-sustaining settlement that uses redstone, pistons, lava, water, and other game mechanics to make things semi-automatic to fully automatic. Ideally, this city would be able to provide all the needed items and block for making large-scale projects on a single player or multiplayer world. On SMP this would also have short range and long range weapons embedded in tall walls that repair themselves rapidly using lava/water interaction. It would make for a formidable fortress in the case of war.

Something else I am doing is populating it with villagers. It's sort of an RPG thing. Each building will have a certain amount of villagers assigned to work in it. That will be needed later on.

Internally, I think I am going to divide the city into districts dedicated to a specific aspect of Minecraft.

Farming district: This deals with the growing and harvesting of all plants.

• Tree farm: this will be a large building divided into four sections, one for each type of tree. You can't really automate chopping down and replanting trees, so there will be much manual labor involved in this. Double chests store excess saplings, and there is a lava pit to get rid of extras. Each tree type would have 100 saplings planted for it. Bone meal would be available.
• Wheat farm: Using water this would harvest fully grown wheat. There is still the matter of needing to manually plant them. There is also a very rapid wheat farming method that utilizes a BUD (block update) switch. If that still works in 1.2.3, then I will include one or two stations for that.
• Reed farm: This will be a relatively simple redstone-piston system. I think I will make it so it creates about a stack of reeds per harvest, maybe more.
• Watermelon and pumpkin farms: Same building, but separate systems. Another one easily done using redstone and pistons.
• Mushroom farm: This would be a tad more difficult for me, but still can be done. Perhaps I will include huge mushrooms into this somehow.
• Cactus farm: Again, redstone, pistons and water streams are all you need for this.

Ranching district: Immediately adjacent to the farming district, this deals with the livestock.

• Chicken, cows, mooshrooms, pigs, and sheep will have a 16x16 pen dedicated to it.
• I've read it's possible to make a squid farm where you hold a body of water in the air with fences. The squid will fall through it and die given sufficient height.
• A 16x16 pen for each color of sheep.
• There's also the ability to breed animals by holding them in minecarts. Their offspring will fall below them.

Crafting district: Here is where items and blocks are stored, smelted, and utilized.

• Warehouse: An extensive building full of chests holding each type of block and item in bulk. There are some blocks and items that cannot be crafted. These will be held in even greater quantities.
• Blacksmith: A building filled with furnaces and fuel. It's possible I may separate it into sections devoted to smelting specific things.
• Mob trap: A simple drop trap with several platforms. I want to see if I can make this a toggleable mob trap/experience farm.
• Brewery
• Enchantment building

Business district: This has the business-related buildings.

• Bank: Storing whatever I use as currency (probably Millenaire's currency).
• Archery
• Victory Monument: At the middle of the city is a statue which symbolizes my dominion over the game. Large and impressive!
• Control building: All the redstone in the city can be controlled from this central location. Underground water currents may also be diverted so that everything comes to the building.
• Park
• Nether portal building
• End portal building
• Church
• Library

On top of that, there will be one or two suburban districts. The buildings will be based upon what the real NPC villages look like. Here's a screenshot of the seven types I've developed so far:

 Other notable features about the City:

• An underground minecart system as a sort of subway.
• TNT cannons, perhaps dual turret, built into the defensive walls.
• Dispensers that use a redstone loop to keep going until you turn it off with a switch.
• The city walls will be self-repairing. The more economically feasible method will require tons of pistons but the classic method is the interaction of lava and water. The walls will also include an internal Minecart system for quick travel.
• Cobblestone generators here and there, perhaps at regularly located intervals.

The portal may lead to a minecart leading to an Ultimate Nether Base. Since water can't be brought to the Nether, there will be less in it but it can be self-sustaining to a degree. It will also have an XP farm using Blaze spawners and Nether wart farms.

The End portal may lead to an Ultimate End Base. This is placed 144 blocks from the main island and has a massive Enderman drop farm, as well as many things that are found in the overworld City.

Huge post. Lots of planning. I will probably do this in Creative but not on a flat world map. The one thing that I can't automate is mining. There will be a mine under the city, and it will have at least two choke points for defense. Perhaps lava/gravel screens that are controlled with a lever. 

Fun with Flat World

Last night I went to check out what a flat map would look like. I loaded one up and flew around. Almost immediately I saw a village, which I went to. It's kind of impressive.

As you probably know, Slimes spawn everywhere on these flat maps. They're built so that you're just a few blocks above bedrock, making for tons of building room. The Slimes were invading the village! One large Slime insisted on pressing against the pole of a blacksmith, and one of the villagers seemed oddly fascinated by it.

A little Slime made its way into one of the houses lacking a door. It evidently wanted to find some place it could peacefully look out at the world.

Oh give me a home, where gelatinous cubes roam, and miniature Testificates play...

The village itself is impressive. Two watch towers, two libraries, and several houses.

In case you are curious.

Man I love the Pirate English!

1.2.3

About a week ago I attempted to update to 1.2.3. That's right, as per my habit I skipped 1.1, which was a relatively major update. Things went wrong for some reason. The Minecraft JAR file worked fine in vanilla form, but even if I installed ModLoader it completely failed. Even after I reverted to 1.0, it still would not work. I had to end up clearing my .minecraft folder of all mod-created content and completely reinstall 1.0 and the mods I had in it. It worked fine.

During that time I had a hypothesis: this was due to incompatibility between the files and folders for 1.2.3 mods and the 1.0 material you would think they'd overwrite. Today I decided to test that. All the files and folders that appeared in my .minecraft folder that were put there by mods, I renamed to include the phrase "100" at the end. That way the 1.2.3 mods wouldn't try to use them, and should it fail anyway it would be easier to revert to 1.0.0.

The mods installed almost completely perfectly. But when I added Millenaire, the vary last one, the game would black screen every time I loaded a world. I started over but added Millenaire almost immediately after ModLoader. It went perfectly! I now have a functioning 1.2.3 Minecraft. I have adjusted the World Info spot on the right side of the page.

After flying around and experimenting with Iron Golems and a couple mods, I went into my Main world, which was upgraded to the Anvil format for 1.2.3. Look what I found in my tree farm!

 My reaction was akin to this:

I've had a bit of a lull in my Minecraft activity otherwise. I have an idea for what I want to do with one of the ravine rooms. Make it beach themed! Or perhaps I could to that with the lake room itself. Taking a breather and doing other things is helping me refresh and with the new content 1.2.3 brings (especially those long awaited lamps) the possibilities get bigger. No really, the height limit has been doubled.

Donate Button! And Business Talk

I am trying something new. Recently I got a PayPal account and decided to experiment with it. There is now a Donate button on this site. If you like what you're seeing on here and would like to support me in a more tangible way, consider making a contribution. It would be very helpful and motivational. To think, people would give money to see what I do. When you make the donation, you can also suggest something for me to do. Perhaps you'd like me to construct a building in your honor, try a map, and so on. The only things I can't do currently are make videos, stream, get on Mumble/Vent/etc. servers, or join Minecraft servers.

While your donations would help me with real life things (such as paying for college - goodness knows how expensive that gets) they would also go to things related to this blog, should enough money be given. For example, I wouldn't mind doing a gift code giveaway every month or so. Even though right now I am limited, there's the possibility I could host or co-host a server in the future. The possibilities are endless.

Even if you don't wish to donate, I really do enjoy hearing from you guys. I always read comments and do my best to reply. If you have a suggestion for me, feel free to post it. I'm trying to be more interactive. Perhaps you have noticed the poll in the upper right corner of the page. Since my creative juices are running a tad low at the moment, hearing from you guys helps motivate me.

Last point of business. Along the right you will notice a list called "Other Minecraft Blogs." This is a list of other Minecraft-oriented blogs who I link to, in exchange for them linking to my site. It's called a link exchange. If you have a site and would like to do such a thing, contact me. I'd be interested in making that link.