Explorations in SMP

Feels like it's been a while since I posted here, when it's been only a week. In that time I've begun activity on a real-life friend's private server. My first few in-game nights there involved wandering around the spawn building like I've never played before, nearly starving to death - until a zombie did me in. The next time I got online I had bought a USB mouse to make things easier. Playing on a touchpad is nigh impossible.

Building the House

Wanting to stake out on my own, I headed north. Had no clue where I was, just knew I was going north. Along the way, a fellow Minecrafter had a wheat farm in the desert which I made us of. Being the neighborly sport I am, I made sure to replant.

Comfortably away from spawn, I settled down in a swamp. Using planks from the surrounding trees I assembled a tiny little shack, which was later expanded with a water source station like what I have in the cave base and an iron door. That's right, there's a server out there containing a pitiful wooden shack and an iron door operate by buttons.

Underground I went, to begin mining. I panicked when I saw there was a cave (the server is on Normal mode) so I had the owner of the wheat farm do the caving for me. By the way, I can now say I'm much less afraid of meeting mobs in the dark underworld. And what do you know, not even fifty blocks from my mine was a zombie dungeon! A creeper blew away the spawner.

When I next returned to the server, which was today, I was more ready and able to play effectively. I have downloaded Modloader, Rei's Minimap, and Optifine, which make for a smoother game experience. As it turns out, I'm only about 350 meters north of spawn residing on a nicely-sized swamp island. I've dubbed it the Northern Swamplands. The island is almost completely lit, making night a safe time for construction.

One of the things I wish to do is build a starship, which I've named the USS Gethsemane, that has storage, farms, and so on which the public can access and use. It would (hopefully) look fancy, but also be practical. Right now, though, I need a house. My design skills are being put to the test.

The Grand Residence of Youssarian is intended to look good and also have the needed farms and storage for an effective Minecrafter. I have planned the lower floor to have a circular main room with three wings and a ladder going upstairs to a bedroom and lounge.

A couple shots of early construction. The first picture specifically shows the island in the upper right corner, while the second presents a completed outline of the first floor's entrance and atrium.

Haha, the house might actually be a bit too big for the island!

I'm somewhat conflicted about the design, however. The ceiling of the atrium (which will later be modified to fit the bedroom and lounge) is supposed to have a gradual upward slope toward the back, where the stone brick emblem is. I want it to be visible when you're standing in the middle of the room. I feel the slope is too extreme. That little shack with the exposed furnace is where I'm living for now.

You'll also notice that there is a lot of planks being used. I intend to add some variety - more sandstone, Nether brick, logs, and anything else that might be suggested or thought up. Secondly, the entrance to the house has a starkly different appearance from the rest of the building right now. I feel that I'm using way too many block types for it.

I will have to play around with designs and whatnot as opportunity comes.

The Ultimate City

It's been a few months since I've worked on the Ultimate City. It's a pretty huge project, and I'm not good with those. Heck, even my SMP house is a strain on my abilities. The starship is going to be groundbreaking for me.

Now that I have multiplayer access in increasing amounts, I'm considering making it a group project. I would need someone to host a server for it - a server which has reliable uptime and mature admins - and a bunch of skilled (or bored) people who can help. As much as I want to jump into getting this project going, I need to restrain myself for a couple more weeks. Once my ability to get onto SMP is easier and more reliable, and if I really wish to commit to the project, I will probably make a topic on the Minecraft forum.

New Skin

Hullo, I'm the Doctor.

Just kidding! Got myself my first skin. This is just a temporary one before I can find a good skin creator to create something I have in mind. Until then I'm using this. It's the Eleventh Doctor, the main character of the show Doctor Who starting with its fifth season. I originally went with a Star Trek science officer skin, but found this preferable. This skin has a more formal appearance, which I like.

So if you ever run across someone named Youssarian on a server, that's probably me.

LP Episode 3: Excessive Use of "Everyone"

There seems to be a theme to this episode, and it's a particular word. Try to guess what it is.

LP Episode 2: Laying the Path

I'm enjoying doing the videos. Honestly, I find it much more convenient then typing, lol.

LP Episode 1: Introduction, or, For Want of a Pickaxe

I went ahead and made a YouTube video. Trying to expand this site's horizons. Let me know what you think.

Underground Sugar Cane Farm

To get all the bookshelves for my enchanting table, I've been growing the reeds along the coast near the top of the elevator. I wanted to do something with the stone brick road in order to keep my energy flowing with the underground base. I decided to make a nice little sugar cane farm down there.

Originally there was going to be a mob trap next to the water source, but that was looking much less common. That spot became the location for the reed farm.

Using a very nice Efficiency IV diamond pickaxe and TNT, I made this nice space:

Putting in the dirt, water, and glass:

There's no redstone with this. I was considering making it a piston-operated autoharvester, but looking at what I have now, it's much nicer looking. The end result is quite simple but I like it.

The jack o'lanterns do feel a little haphazardly placed but ah well, they do the job. I could easily move the stuff around. The entrance to the farm also looks identical to the pumpkin room, which I will want to change.

I went to the nearby abandoned mineshaft to grab some cobwebs for string, which will go to making bows. The mineshaft intersects a ravine, resulting in floating supports, cobwebs, and a floating cave spider spawner!

Still not much of the above ground base has been designed, but for the up/down section, I do have at least this much made:

I'm attempting to think of what kind of blocks I will use in its design. I'm currently thinking planks, logs, sandstone, and Nether brick. This may also be the permanent location of my Nether portal.

Zombie Experience Farm

I accidentally stumbled upon the dungeon that I knew was nearby. It's a rather compact zombie dungeon.

With the piston elevator complete I could go on to something new, which was to conquer this dungeon and convert it into an XP grinder. Using Minutor I attempted to plot a path from my base to the dungeon but couldn't quite figure it out. So instead I went to where the dungeon was and followed the caves to my home. The path is fairly straightforward.

First it's up the grass stairs which for some reason has remained until now.

Then through the tunnel to a gravel patch, then a patch of dirt.

Finally, and quite fittingly, I have to go up a steep path to get to the dungeon itself.

I put my armor on, with its low levels of enchantment, and prepared to race through the path. It was expected I would face at least a couple hostile mobs along the way. To make a long story short, however, there was absolutely no resistance, even though it was night time. There were only a couple zombies in the dungeon and I was hit a whole one time. How anti-climatic.

Here is the dungeon after being conquered, and how it looked after I cleared out the cobblestone in preparation to convert it.

There was a very fancy tutorial on YouTube that I looked up as my guide. It showed me how to set up the trap quite nicely. Here is a link to the tutorial. This is the only picture I took during the setup:

The room is symmetrical around the spawner, which is surrounded by the dirt and cobblestone. I have the walls of the room made of cobble since it seems most fitting. On the two corners closes to the left are small platforms the water emanates from, leading the zombies down that lowered level and into a mob elevator, then the drop. The appearance from the outside:

Yeah, that's pretty ugly. I intend on making it look nice. After all, it will be part of my ground-level base. That's where the zombies swim up and plummet down.

Figuring out how far to make them fall has been a crapshoot for me. I'm at a certain level now where they still take two hits to die, but if I lower the block by one they're guaranteed to always die. I'm going to try a half slab and see what that does. Otherwise, the trap works wonderfully.

I'm racking up the levels pretty nicely. I'm securely underground so I simply put the game on Hard, which I think maxes out the spawn rate (I could very well be wrong) and let it run in the background 10-15 minutes while I do other things. My computer seems able to handle over 100 zombies but once it gets to 150 or so, it slows down. Earlier this morning I completely forgot I was letting them accumulate and when I next looked, there were about 250 zombies in front of me. I could barely move. Perhaps I should implement a timer?

I'm being slowly overwhelmed with the iron helmets I'm getting from this thing. The shovels and swords tend to disappear quickly, as I use them to hit zombies. But the experience being gained is very nice and, with me building the books around my enchanting table, I've been able to get higher levels of enchantment. I now have a bow with Flame I and Power V.

What's next? Probably the built-in mob trap I was speaking of doing overhead. The issue with that is, what if I want to build upward? Digging into that very often would ultimately make it a waste of time.

Also, here are some unfortunate animals that have found themselves in unfortunate situations. How unfortunate.