Dungeons and Colonies Chapter 2

I continued the next day to prepare for her arrival.  A majestic ship with a few supplies from the homeland, and a cargo hold full of people ready to start a new life with me.  I set up a little platform out in the bay, and awaited the ship to weigh anchor in the deeper parts away from the bay and cliffs of Dover.  Finally, I saw her, sailing into view.  She is the magnificent "Gullwing".  Her name having nothing to do with a sudden obsession with a Mercedes Benz super expensive 200,000 dollar sports car the night before.  The ship is rather well made when it comes to ship designs I've seen in Minecraft.  Usually things are a bit too large so that they can accommodate detail, but I call oversized things in Minecraft "pixel art" instead of in game, usable things.  The Gullwing is an in game usable thing that looks beautiful. 

After a few hours, my first citizens show up.  They are, at first, beleaguered and shabby from the voyage from the mainland.  Eventually though they say hell and pick out their citizen chests where I have given them supplies and certificates pertaining to the success of the colony.  In no time I find my builder, a man from back home that is learned in the ways of engineering and carpentry.  The first thing he starts on is the Town Hall.  The gathering and governing property of the new colony, the Town Hall takes many resources and must be completed first.

I have yet to name my colony.  I have thought of naming it after the Cliffs I had lived in while preparing for their arrival, but I am not completely happy with it.  I like to name my places after something descriptive around it.  While I was pondering this, I realized that the cliff beside the bay, the dominating and interestingly shaped cliff looked like the horse head of a chess set!

So now I need to think of an Equestrian based name for my colony.  Meanwhile, my builder is hard at work.  After consulting me on their locations, the first 8 citizens now have their homes.  I gather resources and decorate the colony, trying to make it feel more like a town.  While he is building things, I am creating walkways, paths, and lighting for our citizens to use.

With roads, farms, and a lumberjack operation in the works, the colony looks to be getting off to a great start.

S.

S4 E2 Man vs River: Make it Pretty

Looking further down my river I see that I've blown a path through a giant mountain, leaving a rather rocky face on one side. It does remind me of the sandstone cliffs on the southern side of China where they collect the swallows nests.



The one thing that is missing is foliage. Those cliffs always have vegetation growing on them, so I want that too so that it completes the look. I start cutting into the mountain for places I can plant things.



The idea here is to plant trees and let them grow on the side of the mountains here. Then after they grow, I will bury the trunks and sculpt the side above them to make it look like plants, not trees, have grown out of cracks in the side.



I want to get a good spread, after all, if its too much I can always trim the leaves before placing dirty around them, I just gotta hope that the trees do not get super mutant big like the one beside my tower.



I will have to wait a few days to see how all that grows in. Meanwhile I have the rest of the river to fight. Using a special tool in the last episode, I want to use more of it to clear the river now.



To get that much TNT, it means every morning I have to put up my valuable tools, grab a sword, some arrows and a bow, and actively hunt the bane of my existence. This also means I sometimes end up in precarious situations....



These guys don't read my blog, they don't want my autograph. They want to blow me up. Luckily I'm getting good at dispatching them... even when I'm left with only a torch to knock them down cliffs to their deaths.

So I go to the mouth of the river, which I haven't worked on in months. Here's a good before shot, notice the step like formation at the top of the screen for reference. The holes are what I dug for the explosives.



And, taking note of the steps like I said before, you can see the aftermath here.



Thanks for reading! leave a comment if you like what you read, I know there are several of you out there, probably not this far along yet, but I appreciate comments, they keep me posting more than the statistics page ever could.

S3 Minecraft Styxx ep 6 Nobody is Home

Season 3 Styxx

Episode 6: Nobody is Home

I wanted to start this off with a little clarification on how the Cistern looks. I made a diagram showing that all the water rushed to the middle of the area, and fell down onto a second lower area. The waterfall is even basically in the correct position:



Anyway, a short turn away from the entrance of the Cistern, and I came to a large overhanging ledge. This ledge was distinguished by the lava spewing from one wall directly onto the ledge.



To look off away from the lava, you would only see a very large darkness, and to listen you would hear the absolute freaking out of monsters from every direction. I thought the game's sound was bugged. Anyway, I slowly made my way in the dark, I dropped down from the ledge and soon saw something new:



That's a mushroom. I do not know anything real useful about them, but now I know where one is. With the amount of water nearby I could certainly understand one being here. Speaking of which, the sound of rushing water never left my ears either.



This formation was just begging me to walk out on the edge there and look down.



I walked along the edge and placed torches where I could reach, then came back to look and see what they revealed. It was not much, just a bit of water in the darkness. The edge I was on was yet another ledge, so there was no simple way to use a ladder to get down there. Instead I circled around behind it.

The never ending noise of the creatures was very loud, louder as I searched for a way down. Suddenly I heard it. Multiple arrows, multiple "uuuhhhhhh" in a frenzy. Then I saw it. There was a small hole in the floor, and in it were lots and lots of zombies and skeletons. A stray arrow had hit a zombie, and they just went nuts at each other. It was zombies vs skeletons and I was able to watch without much fuss as they killed each other. It was a sort of crazy I had never seen before.



I killed the last surviving zombie, and I jumped in the hole. Sure enough, in the back of the little pit was an entrance out to the bottom of that ledge... the water turned out to be two rivers/waterfalls meeting together in the area.



The area around the waters was just full of random cliffs and random side caves. My direction sense was maxed. I came to a large opening and saw these amazing floating boulders in the distance.



The area behind me was not yet cleared, and so I chose not to go through to the Floating Stones as I call the new area. I reversed course and began exploring more this swiss cheese of a cave that was closer to the lava. Eventually in all the chaos a found a little reward. Just one block of each.



I looked around and saw what I thought was more lava, so I dug a clearer path. Then out the side of the lava I spotted a torch. I had seen this lava before. I made a path out of the side and realized I had gone in a circle and was now back on the lava ledge where I had started.



Now I could see where I had just been, as off the ledge the area was lit by all my torches I had used. It was truly a maze of an area.



I was about to call it a day and head back to the tower, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark spot on the lava ledge, about 20 feet up. I got up there and found a little cave leading off in the distance. For a moment I thought I had stumbled on yet another area I had been before. I thought I saw a torch in the distance.



Only it wasn't a torch. The sounds of the monsters had once again started up, and now I realized that I had my first "dungeon".

In Minecraft there are little areas of cobblestone, with chests inside this room. In the chests are random goodies, some of which can only be found in "dungeons". In the middle of these rooms is what I had thought was a torch, but was actually a monster spawner. A little cage of fire that spits out creatures. I prepared myself for a battle!



But was let down :( there were no creatures spewing forth from this cage, and so I was able to put torches around to neutralize it. I grabbed the gun powder and iron from the chests and was about to make my way out when I realized... the floor was green. The cobble stone had a different graphic, there was moss on it! So my real treasure indeed was some decorative building material.

S3 Minecraft: Styxx Ep 2

We left off last time in desperate retreat. I had seen one skeleton, but as I ran I realized there were two skeletons doing a tag team on me. I ran out and started my way up the mine when I realized that I had done something stupid... I could easily be knocked off. I turned to look for a safer ledge, and saw just how many arrows were coming for me.



I pulled out my pick and I created a quick hiding hole in the wall where there was already a short clearing. I then realized the skeletons are in just as much danger as I was... I pulled out my sword, and I knocked them down into the abyss where I never saw them again.



Now it was time for me to go into that abyss. It was not but a few meters down that I saw some more light.



I cautiously headed toward the light. The bottom of the mine was finally reached, and it branched into several areas. I wanted to explore the light I had seen. Lava coursed through the area, and then while looking at the lava I came across another sight



Red stone has a number of uses in Minecraft. The most complicated technlogies required it, and I knew that it was only found in the deepest of mines. This is the kind of stuff I was after, I slowly mined a walkway so I could possibly reach the stuff, I was worried it was too close to the lava.



Lava spits what looks like solid pieces of lava out and onto the ledges sometimes, and I do not know if it can harm me. Further more, it has a hiss similar to Creepers, so I am fully paranoid while walking near it. Eventually though, I have claimed my prizes.



I mined around, and it was very dangerous here. Lava destroys anything that falls in it, and I lost a few chunks of coal and one or two pieces of redstone dust to the firey liquid. While digging I thought I had uncovered some more iron... but at second look and I realized I had another first



GOLD! I have no clue what Gold is currently useful for, but I know its one of the most rare ores on the map. In the future I am sure it will have a great use, so I mined what I could. I got about 4 blocks of it before there was too much lava in the area to explore for more.

Next I walked down a pathway that was on the opposite side of the lava. It extended into a little hallway. As I approached, I heard the trickle of water. I cleared a few stone to make it easier to walk, and then was met with:



A room full of waterfalls! There were at least 3 waterfalls draining from the ceiling into a lake in the room. I could barely see the lake because the room was so very dark.



Almost immediatly I was hit with an unknown amount of arrows. I know with full iron armor, I was almost dead in a few seconds. I retreated, ate some food to fill my health, and hid... waiting for my attackers. In the following 5 minutes I killed no less than 3 zombies and 3 skeletons, and the arrows did not stop. It was crazy... I was worried about losing my new ores. So I did the only thing I could think of.



I blocked the room and resolved to return one day to the Lake of the Damned, more prepared and with less fear.

For now, I had some new goodies to take home.

The Map Mod Question

Minecraft is super easy to mod, and now with the in game texture switcher it is easier than ever. I find myself tempted to use some of these mods, especially the Doku derivitives, but every time I load them up into "Hollow World", as I named my world, it doesn't feel like "home" any longer. The world I am familiar with is suddenly alien again. So for "Hollow World", which contains The Bay, The River, and the upcoming Styxx, I am going to stay with standard.

That doesn't mean I'm anti-mod. I'm actually creating a 16x texture set for that contest that Notch announced. I have to say that making 16x textures look like anything more than a Jackson Pollock painting is pretty hard. Like, almost all the mods you see on the forum are at least 32x with many being 128x textures. I do not know of any that have stayed 16x in the modern Alpha version of the game. So I'll enter it into the contest but I don't know if I'll make it available to anyone else, its almost embarrassing to show to people that just do not understand what 16x16 is compared to even 32x32.

Notch did a great job with the original to tell you the truth, and nothing will humble you more than making what you think is a great and detailed 16x16 dirt file, only to load it in game and it look like really badly crap, repeated time and time again in the dirt hills standing before you.

Season 2 Ep: 2 "Minecraft: The River"

So today I was to set up and get ready to work on the River. I thought I would test the waters a bit, and learn how water worked in the world. At this time I did not even know if I would be able to make a river.



You can see Fort Lookout in the view, and that the bay turns into a sort of river and elbows off into the distance. You can also see that the river blocks up rather early in a very shallow spot, it looks perfect for my plans.



The blockage is short, so the plan is to simply cut right through the area. First I find my depth:



A creeper from the night before helped me out with that... while I was surveying, it ran down and exploded right beside me. No complaints I guess, I did not die, and now I have a start.



Next I cut a shape out in the way I wanted the river to go. I made sure not to make it too strait and to have some variation in its path so it did not look too man made. After cutting the shape, I start hollowing out the land.



Next I break the earth dam, and the water rushes in. It doesn't fill fully like real water, so I have to bring in water using a bucket to fill the corners, but in no time the river is connected with the pond and we have the makings of a waterway.

It has actually been several weeks since season 1. I did things like planted trees and flowers near Fort Lookout, I explored a bit more around the area. I am ready to move to a new area, so I think of where my river is likely to take me and I know how much work is going to keep me from Fort Lookout. I find two trees up in the hills and I make myself a tree house in their leaves and branches. I later add a simple chimney stove on the ground so that I can cook myself some food.

Season 2 Ep: 1 "Minecraft: The River"

When we left off, I had created a lookout tower to live in while I explored the world I found myself in. It was perched high upon the land and located in a bay of water. Monsters hardly ever ventured near the area, it was a nice safe haven. I began looking at my bay as a sort of highway, and it hit me; why shouldn't it be?

I did not understand the monumental task that I had layed out before myself.

If my plan was going to come to fruition, I had to find out how far I was from the ocean. I made some fresh leather armor, I cooked some ham for the trip, shined up my tools and made my trek at dawn.



My bay had a bend in the shape up near my gravel pit mine which gave it an illusion of being continuous. In reality it was about 3 ponds that were very close together, from up high it looked like it was a river that had just been dammed by some beavers. Exploring from the farthest pond, I came upon this site:



It looked like the mouth to hell had opened up to my left. Out from the mouth was a deep and winding valley, and in the background there was this gigantic looking mountain rising out of the earth.



I made my way over lots of hills for a closer look. I ended up calling this feature "Hook Mountain". Images of a little cottage on top of hook mountain entered my head, or perhaps a sort of Fort Lookout number 2. It was underneath lookout mountain though that cemented my resolve. The valley in between had lots of sand, like it was a dry river bed. It also seemed to be low enough to perhaps be sea level.



Speaking of sea level, there was a hint of water. I hoped through an archway and kept moving, it was not long before I had found what I was looking for: an Ocean.



Its beaches were vast and its water seemed to go on for a very long time, I made sure it was not just a small lake. While exploring I saw what looked to be a chimney.



I had not kept up with where I had gone, so I thought maybe I had found an earlier explored area where I had used blocks to get a better view, but no, it turned out that this was a natural formation. I had found what I call Chimney Falls.



Once I was there, it started to turn into night, so I had to dig myself a small shelter and wait out the darkness near the falls. In the morning I would head back home and prepare for the large task at hand.

I wanted to dig a river to the ocean.