Odds 'n Ends

I haven't done too much since the New Year's build. Here's an update on the past week or so.

During some free time I remodeled the Persistence. It mostly was replacing one type of block with another.

• Planks became stone.
• Logs became Netherbrick.
• Fences became Netherbrick fences.
• Torches became glowstone.
• Stone roofing that previously existed became stone brick.
• Along the sides, top and bottom of the balloons I added a strip of Netherbrick with occasional glowstone to give it the appearance of having framework holding it in place.

Doesn't look too bad to me.

I've also considered making a sort of graveyard in memory of previous deaths that will inevitably come. Here's what I have thus far:

Both of these were made on my Creative, non-legit map where anything goes. If I like it I will remake it on my Main map, legitly. Speaking of my survival map, I have a little bit to report there. I have done quite a bit of cave and mineshaft exploring, resulting in the accumulation of more resources. I'm drowned in iron at this point, yet I'm still wearing my original set of leather armor. It's still mostly healthy.

I've set up pumpkin and melon farms. At first the had dismal outputs but have since then began churning out crops at a better pace. It's kinda silly and unfortunate how melons are basically re-textured pumpkins for the most part, but it does simplify growing them.

I modified my waste disposal system in my house. Originally it was just a lava pit in the basement. When I saw dirt blocks adjacent to my chest would occasionally set on fire, I added a row of stone half-slabs to prevent that as well as make it impossible for me to walk into the pit.

The water and sign you see are part of the disposal system. Signs won't burn in the presence of lava and stop the flow of water. If you drop items into a water stream, it will float in the direction of said stream. So after about ten minutes of positioning and digging the tunnel for the water, I had a disposal system that spans all three level of the base. On the upper floor it appears as a source block in the corner, on the lower floor it is a waterfall, and in the basement it is as you see above. There's no danger to me. The bed the water makes between the lower floor and basement isn't tall enough for me to get sucked through. Indeed this could possibly double as a crude water elevator.

Something that has been pressing on me is the relative shortage of logs I have. Thus I set up a tree farm on the swampland immediately north, adding a dirt bridge to make movement easier. I also chopped down pine trees in a forest to the west. Now I have something like 13 stacks of wood, and wish to focus on getting more birch wood.

But the biggest project on here, somewhere around 1,200 blocks at least, is a mob trap. It's designed to have mobs spawn in darkness then fall through a hole via water currents. The trap is 28 blocks in the air so they die once they reach the bottom. I could probably outfit this to have water channels which float drops to my base, or at least near it. Additionally I could add a platform just high enough they can be killed with a fist or stone sword. Using water currents and an iron bar for safety, I could have an XP farm!

Definitely not the prettiest construct, but oh well...

Now, my list of things I want to do in the future have increased by two:

• Inspired by Leangreen76's Minecraft, I would like to build a glass ceiling over a ravine, add floors with rails, and perhaps establish some kind of little settlement inside it. That would be pretty neat.
• Build some kind of building or perhaps a hanging house on the cliffs somewhere in a mountain biome. I don't know how people think the new terrain is ugly. I rather enjoy the expanded biomes and especially the mountains. Those rolling hills are beautiful!

I look at the maps that Minutor and Cartograph G generate and I see the world is starting to fill up, at least in my immediate vicinity. In probably a year and a half I've played Minecraft, never have I made anything this permanent and expansive. Partially it's because I have definite goals I'm looking toward such as the Ultimate City and defeating the Enderdragon.

Finally, if you would like a couple suggestions for live stream sites that frequently have Minecraft, check out QubeTubers and Precipice Games. I tend to be around those places a lot, so there's a chance you'll encounter me.

Airship Carriers!

Imagine you are on a server. It's night and you're returning to the village that you and your clanmates are using as a base of operations. Mobs are everywhere, trying to kill you. But now that's you're back at base, you think you are safe.

One of the members of an enemy clan declares on chat, "LET FIRE RAIN DOWN!" A moment later the game starts to lag badly. Overhead you start to see something materialize. Whatever it is, it's huge. There are massive cylinders of wool and a flat plank body. When it completes itself, you see this.

Instinctively you run to the nearest house, unsure that it will offer any protection from what is to come.

What you are looking at is the USS Persistence. Back in June, I made this blog post about making old-style airship carriers with balloons instead of engines. The one picture on it has drawn more views to this Web site than anything else. For the longest time, people have come here looking for more details about this but have found nothing. Now, hopefully, they will discover what they are seeking, and then some.

I call it the Persistence-class airship carrier (even though it's really a bunch of boats) because this site has been operating for over a year, as well as the time and learning needed to create this ship. Not only did I create my first truly huge object (as it is over 1,600 blocks in size), but I experimented with WorldEdit so this masterpiece could be constructed within a reasonable amount of time.

This flagship, the USS Persistence, is 45 meters long, 20 meters wide, and 19 meters tall. It is composed of 1,674 blocks. Here I am going to give you glory shots of the ship, while also giving you a guide for constructing your own Persistence (or whatever you want to call it.)

The flight deck is 14 wide by 39 long. It is mostly made of wood except the 6th and 9th row, which are made of log.

Next, starting at where you plan the back (the aft or stern in naval terms), place a fence post every other block along both edges. Some of them will be removed to form the tower but for now we don't need to worry about that.

Next, starting at the front of the ship (the fore or bow), place a redstone torch once every four meters. Each torch should have 3 empty spaces between them. Place these torches on the outside of the log lines (which are the outline of the landing strip).

Now we will begin with the island, the tower on the flight deck that is used to control flight. This base is 11 blocks long by 5 blocks wide. The front of it starts 21 blocks in, and the rightmost 2 blocks hang off the deck.

Now add the planks needed to fill up that hole in the floor. Then we go ahead and start building off of that.

At the top of the control tower is the RADAR and radio antenna. On the stone roofing, the fourth block in, is where the log pole is. Then add the planks. The fence post antenna is 3 tall and the wings are both 4 wide.

The balloons are quite massive, but easy to make. They run the entire length of the ship and have identical, symmetrical patterns. If you don't want to fill in the balloons, be sure to place torches inside them or else mobs will spawn.

At each corner of the flight deck (or as close as you can to the corner), place a normal torch. Also place a torch every 11 blocks along the sides of the deck starting from the front. Then, starting 3 blocks from the right of the flight deck (assuming you are facing toward the front of the ship) and 3 blocks from the front, place a fence post once every 4 blocks until you encounter the control tower. That should be a total of 5 fences placed.

The last major feature is another part that I'm not really sure is. Place a fence post on the part of balloon immediately next to the 8th fence post on the right side of the ship, then follow this pattern. It's symmetrical, so the way the posts go inward will be mirrored at the other side - that is, the posts will go outward. The first layer of wood is 13 blocks wide and build directly into the balloon, meaning you will be destroying wool blocks and putting wood in their place. The second layer is 11 blocks and hangs in the air.

Place torches on and in the tower as you feel would be best looking. I personally have them centered on both decks and on the radio tower, as well as a couple on the inside. If you'd like, also add a ladder so you can travel up and down the floors in the island.

My last touch was a dedication plaque stating the ship name and date of construction.

And you're basically done. Sadly, this is too large for the Zeppelin mod to fly, however it still looks good and with WorldEdit, you could move it around less elegantly.

Happy new year, and may 2012 be a year of epic constructions and adventure for you!

Note: this is not the Shadow of Israphel class of carriers I was talking about. I once tried that, and even with MCEdit it was a nightmare. Such carriers would likely be several times larger than the Persistence. But maybe I could paste that to my to-do list. Also, this is not my original work. I found this idea and mentioned it on here. Then, with it being so popular, made it myself. If I can ever contact the original builder of this, I would be more than happy to credit him (or her)!

New Years' Surprise!

Hello readers. I thank you for taking the time to read my blog. On December 23, 2010, the first post was made so this blog is already over a year old. Since then, Minecraft and myself have improved greatly.

As a treat for all of you, on January 1st I am going to unveil a large project I spent some time working on. It is literally the largest project I've ever had, standing somewhere around 1,006 blocks in size. It is related to something I've posted on here before, but never actually did. This idea I mentioned several months ago had one image attached to it, one image that has attracted the majority of my readers. Up until now they've searched for this but not found it. This surprise will be what they are looking for, and possibly more. This will be both a celebration of over a year of adventures, as well as ushering in the year 2012.

Tale of Kingdoms

One of the mods that I have is Tale of Kingdoms. It sort of turns Minecraft into an RPG. I keep a separate minecraft.jar file specifically for it, because it defaces the terrain in ways I would prefer it didn't unless I actually wanted to play it. Yesterday, Christmas, felt like a ToK kind of day. So during the time I wasn't doing anything else, I was playing it.

I'm still sort of a wimp when it comes to monsters. The gate of the starting castle has a forest, and that's where I do most of my combat. By day I would wander around chopping wood and collecting resources, sometimes cautiously entering caverns and lighting them up. I'm still not comfortable going inside a large, dark tunnel teeming with mobs. By night I would pick off the mobs that walked close enough that I could safely snipe them or cut them up.

Here's a picture of my camp inside the castle gate. I've added a single chest since then.

For the large part of combat, I've had a wolf companion with me. I'm not quite as careful as others probably are when it comes to looking out for their dogs. While I certainly do aim to not hit the animal, if it gets in the way I'm not going to dodge, especially when I'm in a fight. My first canine companion died in a fight with a spider. Whether or not it was an accidental strike with my stone sword or a hit from the spider, I don't know.

Yes, I incorrectly wrote the year as 2012. We're almost there anyway, so it doesn't matter.

But right as I established that sign, located not too far from the gate, another wolf walked over, and was promptly tamed. Meet Dog 2.

In the Tale of Kingdoms world, I want to set up a small house, farm, and perhaps a couple other niceties for myself. There is a rather flat plain not far from the castle which would make a good spot to set up camp. It would be temporary because as soon as I had enough reputation to become king, I would leave the spot and establish a city in the game.

(Maybe I should install Millenaire, since the maker of ToK has made the two mods compatible and complementary.)

Here's my progress toward kingship:

Getting Serious

For a while now I've been goofing around. Learning some new things but not really being productive. Today I decided to break that pattern and start progressing toward my Minecraft goals. First up, establishing farms.

My wheat farm was completed a couple days ago. One water block is all that's needed to make all this farmland viable.

Being by a swamp biome, there are reeds everywhere! I decided to set up a simple farm, where I plant a long line of them on the coastline my house faces towards. It only takes a day for reeds to fully grow, so this will be easy to harvest and have tons of wheat, sugar cane, paper, and eventually books and bookshelves.

In the upper left corner of the previous image you see a desert. That is the location of my new cactus farm. Cacti need not water or specific light levels to grow. Just plop it on sand (or, from what the wiki says, even clay) and they grow-albeit a much slower rate.

Last but not least, my first stab at breeding animals. As it stands, I find cows to be some of the more useful animals. They drop beef which can be cooked or eaten, as well as leather for armor. This simple pen is 10x10 on the inside and located a little distance from my house, in order to make things less cramped. I took a row of wheat from my farm and went into the desert/grass area above. Only two of the cows there were wooed by me, but that's all I needed. Passing through a river, I enclosed them in the pen and gave them wheat. After a moment they saw each other and... poof! Babby cow!

Storare Room and Automatic Seed/Flower Harvester

I have been doing a lot of mining under my base over the past couple days. There have been huge amounts of iron that I'm continually smelting in a furnace near the entrance to the mineshafts. Thanks to Millenaire, I have an incentive to keep the huge supply of cobblestone that accrued. When I'm filled up I just teleport or run to the village and trade it for money.

In that same legit world, I also began making an underground storage room like my 1.7.3 map did. The two double chests in my base were getting very full and very disorganized. Below ground, where I began hallowing out the area for my storage room, there was mostly dirt and I decided to keep the theme by making the walls out of dirt. The problem was, there were small caves on either side of me:

My solution was simply to place dirt where these problem spots existed. Eventually I got a nicely organized set of chests, signs, and workbenches established. I moved the vast majority of the junk upstairs to these things. I didn't realize just how many iron ingots I had until this was done!

Of course, one block had to be different. Somehow, I had an actual grass block form.

Not to mention the neighborhood spiders, poking their noses where they ought not.

Now, I have a creative world that is non-legit. One of the things I'm wanting to do, as practice toward the automated city, is make a system that uses water currents to harvest seeds and flowers. It utilizes a piston, redstone, and bone meal. Here's an overhead glory shot:

On the bottom right you see a dispenser atop a wood block which has a button. When you press that button, the dispenser will shoot bone meal to you. When you right-click a grass block with bone meal it will generate wild grass and flowers. On the bottom left you see a button connected to restone wiring. That will activate the piston, causing it to retract its arm. When that happens, water will briefly flow from the source block above the arm. The water, confined by the Netherrack fence (which could easily be any other type of block, even pressure plates), will flow and cause all the wild grass and flowers to break. This will drop flowers and seeds. Then, once the signal from the button dies, the piston arm will extend and cut off the supply of water. This leaves the loot in the area to be collected.

I wanted to use another couple water streams so that items will flow right toward me instead of requiring me to walk around and collect. Unfortunately, water mechanics are strange and the harvesting water will not flood the entire area. Here's the wiring:

This is only a model and could be optimized greatly. The wire wraps around and the signal is inverted at the plank and redstone. The repeater was originally meant to extend the signal but, given the inverter, is not actually required. That wire charges the wood it runs into, turning off the torch on top of it. That torch actually activates another torch, which is hiding behind the wood above it. This activated torch powers the piston, keeping the arm extended.  When you turn on the circuit, everything reverses: the first half is on, the inverter turns the normally powered section off, and the pair of torches reverse states. With the top torch off, nothing is powering the piston and it retracts, letting water out. Because a button is used, the signal lasts just a few moments before reverting to normal. Here's a picture of the harvester in action. Don't mind the pumpkins on sticks - those are part of an ad hoc archery range.

If I ever include this in my legit map, I want to utilize water currents so that the seeds and flowers flow into a collection point somewhere in my house. Manual usage of bone meal will always be necessary, of course; but with pistons and restone, harvesting could be much simpler.