Beginning Deck 4

With the finishing touches of the docking port an decontamination room for deck 3, I finished that one. Next up is deck 4. My main challenge with this is to make it at least the width and height of the previous deck. I laid down the outlines for the crew quarters on the left side and the total length brings it to about 20 blocks short. What hasn't been added to that are the grasers which have their bottom halves on this deck. Also include the upper half of the impulse engine/fusion reactors, which should add around ten blocks. Length should not be a problem. My other concern is width. Again, the placement of grasers (and the hydrogen collector, aka "Bussard ramscoop") will sort of dictate a minimum width. I shouldn't have a problem with that, though.

This is also the deck where the warp coils appear. I wonder how long those should be. My original plan did not call for very many but given the size of the ship already, it doesn't seem like a small group of coils could envelop an entire ship into a pocket of warped space and propel it forward. I may need to increase the count of those.

In related news, I've already briefly considered a successor project to this, probably done in Beta: the Ruah class fighter carrier. It's like Battlestar Galactica meets Nimitz-class aircraft carrier meets my imagination. I want to throw in like TNT cannons and lava arrow dispensers. Maybe even redstone-wired TNT blocks for a self-destruct mechanism? It would possibly also be kind of more comfortable a place to live in for the thousands of people on it. The Ruah would be more like a flagship that the builders put a lot of money into.

Another Project?

I've become quite comfortable at my new home server. The map itself is over 130 MB in size, which makes for quite the huge world. Sporadically placed throughout it are castles and generally excellent home bases other players have made... as well as a mini-Alcatraz just a hundred or so meters from my home, which is really nothing more than a hole in the side of a mountain with a staircase to my now extensive branch mine.

I want to do something spectacular on that server. And by that I mean, build a city. This city will be very ingeniously planned out and developed. One of the features I plan to include are city walls which are very tall and self-repairing, using water and lava streams that form cobblestone when they meet. Getting the water will be very easy. The difficult part will be procuring a large enough number of buckets and of course lava springs. Then again, there is a lava lake nearby (enclosed by a house, unfortunately) but others have clearly found more lava sources because I see them used for griefing purposes in at least two locations.

The city will have plenty of rural homes of various designs as well as a fancy central area. The core will be a magnificently large church and near it, a star observatory - along with markets and so on. The motto of the city will be "Ex Deus astrum" which means "From God, the stars." This is a play on the mottos "Ex astris scientia" which is the motto of Starfleet Academy meaning "From the stars, knowledge."

Speaking of cities, I'm satisfied with the beginning success I had with Nippon Hamlet. My next project is to build a prototype city which has things like a power plant, shipyard/dock, market of various goods, and so on. I picked an area which I thought could become the capital area of Yusaria and decided the fastest way to get rid of the dense forest in the area was to burn it. I took a flint and steel and set it aflame. The fire spread fast and the forest went up in flames. It was simply amazing to see what was happening. I checked Minutor to see the dense forest and a little while after the burn had begun, I ran Minutor again and saw there was a huge area of plains where forest had once been, extending from north to south coasts. The location is quite nice, with mountains to the east and hills to the west.

On the Minutor display I could see there were two waves of fire still spreading in opposite directions toward the east. I looked at the proximity of the trees and actually thought the entire continent, over a kilometer long and about 300 meters wide at the starting point, was going to be deforested. But a minute later the last tree was burned down, causing a nice empty field to work in and lots of wood still left.

Of Servers and Starships

When I last mentioned the Elohim, I believe I was discussing making the model for the third deck of the ship. Originally it was going to be a wide deck:

But I discovered that the top two decks would not fit on it. In addition I had no room laid out for the computer core. So my solution was to rotate the officers' quarters so that the deck would be much longer than wider:

That looked much better. I added the officers' lounge at the rear after I took this picture. Then I began calculating where to put decks 1-2. Originally I wanted to have them centered on top of the deck but due to turbolift shaft placement, I had to offset it by a few blocks so that it would go into the hallway and not an officer's bedroom. I added some roofing for deck 3 and made a rough outline of deck 2 on top of the model. I made an error and miscalculated the size of deck 2 when checking to see if it'll all fit but it's minor enough that I can correct it and not have it hanging off the side:

Observe how the ship now has a sort of nose at the front. I wanted to add the ship's name in all capitals using 5x3 size characters but the total amount of space needed for the name was more than the nose's width so now it's there, just behind the nose. In the next post hopefully I'll have that in a screenshot. I also want to make a post about this project on the Minecraft forum since it's clear I have some level of dedication to this going on.

 In non-Classic news, I have found a SMP server which I can call my home away from home in Minecraft. It's an RPG server and my role there is theologian/astronomer (which basically sounds like an astrologer but there's a big difference). I currently live in a little hole in the side of a mountain. Iron is proving itself to be quite difficult to procure. It has room for 10 people and has about 15 regulars from what I count.

Enterprise Has Seen Some Better Days [Pics]

I'm sure many people know that there was a model of the Enterprise-A (which was seen in Star Trek IV-VI) made in Alpha. This is different from the Enterprise-D which was made in Classic. Although definitely not a real-size replica, it still stands at some 70 meters tall by 100 meters long and 40 meters wide at the saucer. It has nine decks, and it takes some experience to get used to understand the layout. Well I'm sure it took a long time to build and was quite fun to complete. You know what else was quite fun, and much quicker?

Destroying it.

Using SSP commands and copious amounts of TNT I set out to destroy the ship to my heart's delight. Ironically, the warp core (according to the movies) should have been the most explosive part. But because the Minecraft model uses lava and obsidian for it, that's the most durable component. Let's view some pics, starting from the back of the ship. I took several images that seemed to be the most interesting and destructive.

This is the port warp nacelle, blown to shards:

The outside of the rear half of the Enterprise, not looking too good.

Formerly the warp core, now a lavafall:

These were the impulse engines...

The saucer section as viewed from above:

Another shot of the saucer. This view is directly below it and meant to reveal more detail of the damage:

As the title implies, the Enterprise has certainly seen better days. Even a couple Klingon birds of prey didn't do as much damage as a bored nerd with a lot of TNT:

I'd like to give shout outs to Mozzie who brought the Enterprise into Minecraft. You can see Mozzie's thread here: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=52011 Thanks for letting me play on (and destroy) your ship!

Nippon and Dungeon

Today and yesterday I spent some time conquering dungeons! Granted I only went after two but the second one, found earlier, had a green record! I really should consider crafting a jukebox to hear the music that plays.

But the main news is Nippon Hamlet. Since last time I've added a house or two and a storehouse. I also included a dock and may do a defense tower, although with it being a small hamlet that seems unnecessary. Thus the settlement is nearly done, except that it needs lots more farmland. I have a hoe so all that's really left is to till the dirt, plant seeds, and profit off of it.

As mentioned in a previous post, I want to have something along the lines of electrical wires for in the World. Since currently no towns or villages exist that would feed power to the hamlet, I can't to that with Nippon.

In other news, I've tried out a new mod: the colony mod. It creates various NPCs who do work for you. At the moment I only have a lumberjack chopping down trees and planting saplings in a confined area. This will be useful for me because this is requiring much more wood than I anticipated. I was previously planting large amounts of trees in front of my tiny base then harvesting those, but the AI will simplify my endeavors. I repeatedly feel the need to say "Thank you" to the character but then remember... I'm the only sentient entity on this game.

Here is the seed for the Minecraft World: 1157488901799875748

Now some pictures of Nippon Hamlet! The description of each image immediately precedes it.

The hamlet as seen from the south:

Southern Nippon is quite hilly/mountainous:

The Mayor's residence. The name, Fushira Naruto, is meant to sound Japanese and is a tip of the hat to the manga/anime Naruto:

This bridge is located at the closest points between Nippon and mainland. I've since found it easier to use a boat to get from base to Nippon:

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.