Weekend Update

A few things out of the way first. I've got a full up week full of episodes done thanks to the new house construction. Kind of a sidetrack inside "Man vs River", but very necessary and very fun. I first made the house in a random world I have generated, using wood and dirt. This was to make sure it worked, and didn't "dominate" the landscape as I have been worrying about.

The future of Minecraft is murky. I think that is one of the big draws to it. The future is every bit as open ended as the gameplay, allowing people to take the small glimpses of something great, and formulate their own Minecraft in their own minds.

My personal Minecraft view is something that includes extensive Biome work. I know Notch has said that Biomes follow a set of rules, but I call bunk on that because snow is showing up right next to tropical rainforests currently. But I'm fine with that for now. I have this vision of each biome taking up much larger amounts of space, and being very diverse. He has started adding seperate trees for the biomes, and I want seperate animals. A gorilla in the rainforests, a lion on the savannah, polar bears in the snow.

Further, and this is stretching it, I want at least 2 water biomes. Fresh water and oceanic.

I'd like to see what they call "rogue-like" dungeons instead of what we have now, which is random 10x10 room squares dotted about. I'd like to find doors that lead to long tunnels with treasure rooms, traps, and boss fights.

All of these "hopes" are based on things that are in game now. I think, as usual, I take things a little more serious than some people, and I think the same goes for Notch and Minecraft. I want fish in the water, we get very weird squids. I want different environments, we get snowy deserts.

The most dangerous thing to Minecraft is getting done. As in being a finished project. Because everyone has their own vision for it, and the majority will not see those hopes reflected in that product. I guess it is good Notch did what he did with the pricing, I see Minecraft making all its money in beta, and maybe even being forgotten at release.

S4 E4 A New Home part 1

The beach where the river will eventually meet the ocean is pretty far from the tower. The progress of the river is getting to where it is becoming less time efficient to work on the river so far from a stable home. I've always hated making temporary homes. If you remember to when I started the river, I lived for a long while in a tree house. I still have that tree house up, I debated on burning it down, but it is a reminder to me not to build quick, crappy shelter because I might get stuck in it for a week or more.



This is where the mouth of the River will be. The arrows show where the river will flow and eventually continue around the bin and toward the drowned quarry(that's what I'm calling that elbow that is mostly done in stone). To the left of the picture notice the trees and a sign.



The sign says Bearded Trees. I came up here a few days ago because I'm always re-evaluating my river course. The new change in the tree code means that there are some more "tropical" trees near water, sometimes the leaves grow directly to the ground. I thought they looked bearded and they seemed a neat landmark.

This is where my new home would be. I wanted to see how it would look in the landscape. This will not be an end all be all house, more of a cabin rental. I do not want to make a huge house here, so I tried out an outline.



I like it. I think I can do something nice with the area here, and it will not dominate the landscape. Now, despite what I said before... I made a temporary shelter. But I did it for a reason, and it is not going to last very long. I wanted to find out where I was to put my porch.



If you want to set it for a nice view of the sunset like this, you gotta be around at sunset. I'm feeling good about this home, I think I will enjoy it.

S4 E3 Man vs River: The MADNESS

Season 4 Man vs River

Episode 3: The MADNESS

I knew something was up when the chicken kept following me.

I went to the edge of my "back yard" to look at how my trees were doing. Now, I thought I could work with what I saw, but the chicken, he thought differently.



So I had to.



Actually, Minecraft can bring about something that isn't true OCD, but something like it. I wasn't happy. It took a while for those trees to grow, and I didn't like their position. I underestimated the length of the trees, and how much I would have to add to the cliff to hide them for what I wanted to do. So I made adjustments.



I dug much deeper downward, and a bit further into the side of the cliff.



Now I just had to wait for them to grow and see if round 2 was any better. While I was contemplating in the water, a creeper jumped out at me. For the next few days I stalked the creepers at daylight, collecting their valuable explosive innards.



Then I went back to the river once again. It was time to make my last push. I was now ready to start descending the mountains. The hard part, the deepest digging, was now over. With the help of TNT it would prove easier than the first half of the river.



TNT was set, and the path was chosen beyond the arch.



This looks like a mess, but believe me, 3 charges of TNT made things SO much easier. TNT eats through dirt like its nothing, and it breaks stone pretty well too. It felt like it took no time to get the arch area cleared.



Past the arch area took a little while longer, but it was so fast that I decided to make some dramatic naturalization in this area. A sloping cliff on the left, an overhanging rock formation on the right, as if the water eroded away the softer dirt beneath it. It looks neat in game.



This leg of the river went so smoothly, easier than the others, its revitalized me since the rest after this is easier. I'm getting farther away from my tower though... it is almost time to leave the Tower area and make a new home nearer the ocean.

here's a nice Before and After picture with very similar view points, I'm sure you can match up the upper features to see just how much work went into this area.



I think a new home will be the next episode! Thanks for reading and as always, comments get me posting more episodes more quickly.

Weekend Grab Bag

Look.

I know most of you are from the Minecraft forums, and I know my blog is nothing amazing on the "omg that's awesome" end of things. I'm not a builder really, I'm an adventurer. There are lots of places to get your builder kicks, and I'm sure you've seen plenty of neat creations.

I know a couple of you are from my facebook and have no idea there are people that aren't like me in Minecraft. You might read my blog because you are bored or because you are my friend, but there really is some amazing building going on in this game.

So this weekend I am adding images from Crafthub and Worth1000 of amazing buildings from Minecraft. I do not know how many of these are "pure" as in, no cheats, but even if there were cheats involved, there is some amazing architecture in here.



This is a log cabin from the "aesthetically pleasing log cabins" post on the Minecraft forums. What I like about this one is the landscaping that goes along with the cabin. The waterfall is a very nice touch. The cabin is absolutely massive, and inside there are lots of nice additions.



Shockingly this is not based on a real Japanese castle. It looks like it could be though. This is absolutely huge. It is not to scale, but that's a must if you want this kind of detail. The mountain rock that it is built on, and the massive walls surrounding it are amazing. There are many texture packs that make this kind of stuff easy, but this guy used the default textures, so he made the "look" all by hand.



This is what they call the Legendary Map, and for good reason. I have not seen any more impressive a city in game yet. You can now download this and walk around in it if you desire. The scope and scale of this is absolutely mystifying.



A classic bit of art recreated in Minecraft. An M.C. Escher staple, the stairs poster adorns many a college room dorm. Is this really an optical illusion inside minecraft? Not really, but this is an impressive recreation none-the-less


So there. Now you know how dull I am. I spend months carving a river through a mountain. I make a tower barely large enough to walk in lol. I do want to build more, but I feel like if I do a magnum opus in BETA, I'll be burned out by the time the game is released. Or I'm afraid if I create a big landscape, I'll ruin the feel of my map, which I have found I like much more than any other random generated map I've had generated since.

Either way, I do need to build a new home soon, I'm getting further away from my tower as I'm digging my river.

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.

Season 4 Man vs River: Episode 1

Season 4 Man vs River

Episode One : The other side

Ok, I'm out of the caves and into the light. This river has got to be done, its my one project in this Minecraft world that I have to get done.

You've seen what I did before on one side of the opening of the river. This is a before and after showing the side right after I blasted the river through, and now how it looks now with my tower.



What I haven't been showing is the other side, what I see outside my doorstep.



Not very nice looking, right? Well I'm gonna fix that. I start very simply by following the contour of the land around it to make a nice gradient.



But I get impatient and realize I've been killing a lot of creepers lately, and all my gunpowder(now called sulphur) is piling up near my tower. So I grab it and set about my scheme.



I dig into the mountain.



I expertly set my explosives near sources of fire... ok that looks bad but its not bad in minecraft.



The explosives blow large holes into the hill, making it much easier to just clear the land. I fully intended to continue re-planting dirt along the edge to make a nice hill, but then I liked the look of the exposed rocks. Remember in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring where the 2 Argos are? The big statues they pass near the end? Right beside the statues is a quarry where the artisans obviously got their material for the statues.

So I thought it would be cool to have an old exposed quarry near my tower to be sort of "the source" of the building material for it.



Comments

I want to start adding that I would appreciate comments. I still get 30-50 views a day even when I'm less active. I would really be encouraged by people leaving comments.

Update

There has been less and less posts here as of late. You can kind of blame that on new games I acquired at Christmas and also on some old fashioned Baldur's Gate.

But also on my dread that this world I've put a lot of time into is quickly becoming obsolete.

The new update came today and with it some new stuff that will have to be generated far away from my spawn point. Things like sandstone and lapis only spawn in newly generated areas. I really really like the world I have right now, but that's mainly because it is not alien to me any longer. I know my land marks, I know my world, I can generally get "lost" and still find my way home.

So the dread that I will have to give it up soon is spreading.

So maybe I should think of an end game. I think i'll finish my river and make my home.