August is drawing to a close and comes with several new faces from WSE, a blip with the website domain, and many amazing builds being built or just getting started on. Today I would like to highlight, a cottage near spawn. The cottage was built by BatMan3054 and the farm was built by Swarmhut.
I like the use of bricks as part of the path material, because it really pops against the green of the surrounding grass. I admire how the windows of the building are irregular and somewhat mismatch. The windows of the house make it feel quirky.
The inside of the cottage
Stepping outside to the garden area features your basic crop setup and a outdoor shed. I like the use of the dark oak and the quartz as the retaining wall holding back the hill.
The best part of the build in my opinion is the roof. The roof looks worn down and has a very natural slope to it.
Well that’s it for this FBoM, until then keep on building.
Update: Due to some miscommunication, I incorrectly identified Rudie as the builder. If the builder would get in contact with me, I will update it to the correct person who built this.
So things have been a little slow around ARBTland, mostly because I haven’t been online much in the past few weeks. (Stupid real life.) That said, over the past couple of weeks there have been a few changes of note.
First of all we got another visitor from WSE – Rudie! Always glad for the cross pollination between the two servers.
In terms of build news, the monument behind spawn keeps on expanding as new people come in. Rate we’re going that things going to extend into the sea. In addition to adding Rudie, FatalDeath and Billybob decided to silly up their statues by giving them tongues.
FatalDeath has been working on a wizard tower, and Rudie has also been building a very fairy-appropriate home in a large artificially created stump.
I’ve been busy too. Started working on a new skyscraper not far from Wacker Tower, loosely based on a building from SimCity BuildIt, which I’ve been also playing some on the side.
Lastly 5 has been working on a secret project under the Rainbow Balloon. Did I post pictures of that since I refinished it?
One thing I’ve been irked by since a few game updates ago – when they changed all the lighting, the ocean lost its translucency. It’s now REALLY hard to see underwater, which is a pain if you’re building something really deep under, and impossible if you’re trying to take pictures of said something, so the best I can do is sorta present a vague blob under the water taken from the surface.
In server improvement news, I’ve been waffling on transferring the game to an external server for a bit, weighing pros and cons of each platform. I’ve all but decided that I want to move the game to Pocketmine, as I have some experience with running it and it offers the most flexibility and customizability right now. But on the downside, it’s lagtastic, and mobs don’t work yet, which is a bummer; I like having random creatures roaming the world. It gives what can often be a lonely game a little bit of life. I supppose I could treat the missing mobs as a temporary problem, as the goal of PM will be to eventually replicate the full experience of the game, and its main programmer now works for Minecraft proper. The other major problem is that transferring/ MCPE worlds to PM is still an ordeal thanks to the leveldb storage format being a pain in the butt to work with/translate. I and others have put so much time and love and work into this world, so its pretty important that we continue to be able to play with it.
As July is coming to a close, with it comes exciting news from Minecon, a redesign of the subreddit and many of fun server runs. FBoM is in its 2nd month and is here to highlight Hachi’s base. The first thing I like about this build is the bottom floor with the checkered pattern used on the bottom floor.
The bottom floor
The diorite fountains are a nice touch, because they contrast well with the blue stained clay.
A closer view of the fountain
Going up the large staircase we enter the main room that houses the bedroom, a living room and a small bathroom. A nice detail that is present is the small canopy above the master bed.
Going up to the top floor opens up into a rooftop balcony great for watching the sun rise/set.
If you want to check out Hachi’s base for yourself, it is located near spawn, behide the farm. You will need to go past my base to locate it.
With the news of 0.12, zombies are becoming a greater threat to the servers population of villagers. I have always wanted to fix a village up, so with this I decided to start with the Troll Village. When I arrived to the village, I was greeted by the troll and a villager spawner that I could not break. The first task I started on was fixing up the roads. I replaced the gravel paths with the new grass path block.
I left the original wooden paths alone, because I wanted to keep some of the original parts of the village intact.
With one of the larger villager homes, I decided to decorate a little bit. The rest of the time I spent lighting the surrounding area and building a little hut for myself. Next run I plan to build a wall around the village. Got any designs for a wall I should take a look at? Let me know in the comments down below
Just putting this here for Reasons. Sing the title along to it, okay? 😀
I was telling Wee Beastie about the time I backed up the server and then said all server rules were off the table and how the area around spawn devolved into mess and murder. He of course thought this sounded like fun and asked if we could do that before he goes back to his mom’s. Sure, why not, right?
Turns out Sunday afternoon isn’t the best time for an open run, as aside from a brief appearance from Swarmhut at the very beginning, only 576875 showed up and stayed for the entirety of what very quickly became known as “MURDERTOWN.” Which mostly devolved into Beastie and I “murdering each other IN THE FACE” and 5 sniping the winner to death from afar. 5 was not privy to 8 year old side commentary such as “COME AT ME BRO, I’VE GOT A HOE!” which may have resulted in me dying in-game a couple of times because I was dying laughing IRL.
Wee Beastie then found a lava pool just to the north of spawn and, well, he did what he does best:
No more bridge or rule board.This barn is on FIYAAAAAAAAAAAAAARBurn baby burn… spawnhouse infernoGoodbye Spawn.
Yeah about that – here’s the thing about lava-bombing your spawn point – if you get murdered afterward? YOU SPAWN IN FIRE. OW.
So yeah another day where I’m very very glad I can restore from backup because while it’s fun to destroy things? *twitch*
Mad props to 5 for being patient with the small one and his need to murder everything. In the face. XD
Back to your murder free scheduled programming tomorrow!
Note: Written before update 1.1.0 when the direction of the sunrise/set was fixed. North here is now west.
A fairly low key evening was had tonight, with a concentration on finishing up builds people had started earlier.
5 and Swarm finished the minigame arena they’ve been working on.
you’ll pay full price for your seat BUT YOU’LL ONLY NEED THE EEEEEEEEEEDGE!Step right up and take a shot.
There is spleef, archery, King of the hill, fishing and parkour to compete in. May the best person win!
One of these things is not like the others…
Henry10030 meanwhile finished up his base and topped it off with a giant statue of themselves. Obviously so we don’t forget what they look like, lol.
Hachi’s (question mark?)
Hachi has been working on… well, I still haven’t figured out what this is supposed to be. I just know that it is awesome.
and it looks like a clock from the top!
To the south, Double Positive worked on several mob grinders of various sizes/mobs farms. Hence “SPAWNER LAND” written large friendly quartz letters.
A day view of Spawaner Land.
We are still plagued with connection issues around 7:30 pm evey server run. I’ve tried prioritizing udp requests, periodically dumping the phone cache , closing all background app, etc and nothing really seems to help. Fortunately it seems to only be a thing in the earlier parts of the evening. More incentive to make this a Proper Server, though I did have a conversation with Hachi today weighing the pros an cons of running an Android mobile emulator (more stable, working mobs, not glitchy gameplay / max 5 players, lag) vs pocketmine (more people on at once, better computer resource management, no lag, php programmable / mobs and game behavior glitchy as all get out). All of that are problems for Future ARBT to tackle at some later point; Present ARBT needs to log off and get some sleep!
Note: Written before update 1.1.0 when the direction of the sunrise/set was fixed. North here is now west.
I am pleased and relieved to report that the 2 additional lines of the subway (Granite and Brick) are done. Obviously if there is world expansion to the east or west, the lines will also extend accordingly, but this is as good as they’re going to get for a while. I love when I get these tunnels finished, but boy howdy is building them tedious. If anyone knows of an Android mod that’ll let me dig out 5×5 squares, let me know. >_<
Being a lover of random miscellaneous information, I spent a little time after completion riding the lines and timing roughly how long it takes to ride them end to end. (All times are traveling south from Grand Central Terminal.)
Swarmhut and 5 at Crystal Palace (back when Swarm didn’t have a face, lol)
Netherrack Line
Grand Central → Wilshire Castle
1:09
Wilshire Castle → Crystal Palace
1:33
Crystal Palace → Sand Baori
0:33
Sand Baori → Spawn
0:51
Spawn → 4 Guardians
0:52
4 Guardians → Southern Continent
1:29
Total
6:27
Granite Line
Grand Central → Wilshire Castle
1:13
Wilshire Castle → Crystal Palace
1:35
Crystal Palace → Sand Baori
0:46
Sand Baori → Wacker Tower
0:44
Total
4:18
Brick Line
Grand Central → Wilshire Castle
1:13
Wilshire Castle → Crystal Palace
1:35
Crystal Palace → Mt. Servermore
0:46
Total
3:34
I look forward to working on something above ground for a while. I seem to remember I still have a zombie pigman prison I haven’t quite finished…
A little over a month a ago I suggested a Mt.Rushmore style pixel art construction. As of today Mt.Servermore is finally complete. At first I was hesitant of my skills as a builder doing pixel art. But with some practice, I felt a bit more confident going into this project. If you are not well familiar with who is on Mt.Servermore they are from left to right: ARBT, 576875, Swarmhut, and ARBT’S Oldest Kid (who has yet to make an appearance on the server). The viewing platform is a great place to view Mt.Servermore and is accessible via a side pathway.
the viewing area
To find Mt.Servermore keep going down the main road from spawn and take the last left road. Huge thanks to ARBT for terraforming the hill into a proper mountain (with a secret bat cave).
It has been a busy few days on the server between Saturday night and the usual Monday run. After a long busy Saturday I decided after I came home that I was going to put my feet up and play MCPE and I might as well do it with extra company, so I put the call out on the subreddit and even put a little announcement in /r/MCPE since it was a special irregular run. Had so many folk show up and hang and start building things that I decided I’d run Sunday night too. And of course, Monday night, because Monday Night. All three nights were great, despite periodic connection problems and spontaneous game crashes… people had a good time tho.
We have two new players late of Worst Sever Ever – Hachi and FatalDeath (or VitalLife depending on their level of humorous nihilism) We’ve also seen quite a bit of Henry10030 and DoublePositive, and of course 576875 and Swarm. At one point during Monday’s Survival/anything goes run (between game crashes) I managed to get the group pic in the last post. You know what I’m going to post it again because it was awesome.
<3
We hit a server milestone on Monday! A good portion of that night’s game was at full five player + host capacity. That was certainly a thing! Never had that many on at once before.
the server… is full… [/strongbad]The 4 Guardians accidentally acquired names in an offhand comment to Hachi. They are now Icky, Stinky, Yucky and Clyde. As to which one is which… does it really matter? lol.
New Things built:
Swarmhut added an advertisement board during Monday’s run, having a forgotten I was intending to wipe and restore after the game. (Oops.) I liked the idea so much I put it back in after I restored the game, and also started to revamp the Pillar of Rules at spawn. I think it’s going to be more of a Fence of Rules eventually.
but was Kilroy here?
Hachi built an awesome house near Mt. Severmore!
Remains awesome despite me forgetting to turn off the GUI.
I love the white umbrella/canopy above it – reminds me of something out of the Super Mario Mushroom Kingdom.
Meanwhile FatalDeath is working on a colossus standing across the road near spawn. So far they’ve gotten the skeleton completed but that by itself looks cool:
Fatal’s Colossal Skeleton.
Meanwhile, Swarmhut and 576875 are working on a minigame tournament space. Parkour! Fishing! Spleef! Chills! Thrills! You’ll pay for a whole seat but you’ll only need the edge!
um, picture when they get further along.
Some of us wanted to go down to the basement of 5’s fishing house after the group picture to clobber zombies. There was a disorganized effort to reset spawns by sleeping, during which I tossed a bed out on one of the patios to sleep outside.
It’s really hard to sleep with a creepy dog staring at you.
After zombie clobbering fun was had, the last two hours of Monday’s game we decided it was all rules off. The free-for-all that resulted was epic, and the area around spawn just became this mess of creeper craters and forts:
Thank goodness for backups and restores. 😉 Even my PvP-disliking self got in on the fun in the last 45 minutes, which is where I found out that I’m a much better long range shot than short range shot. Which is to say both are terrible but I hit things/people more often at ridiculously long distances.
Things are certainly livening up on my little server, that’s for sure. There’s something a little humbling about reading a “hey, anyone know any good servers?” and seeing my name come up in recommendations immediately after Worst Server Ever. That’s a certainly a compliment! Couldn’t do this without my gang – there’s still some debate on whether they’re the ARBFans or the ARBiTors of Justice – They’re really the reason my little one-woman world has become such an awesome place to hang out and play.
Hello my name is 576875 and I am a regular to ARBT Server. You can call me 5 for short. I am going to start Featured Build of the Month (FBoM) series. Where I show off new and exciting builds on the server. Today I am going to feature a Witch Hut set up in a swamp.I assume this was built by ARBT. What I like about this build is that it adds a small detail, to an ordinary swamp biome. Additionally, I like the use of the oak leaves as the roof of the hut. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the interior. I will try to remember for next month’s FBoM. Until then, keep on building folks.
I’m glad actual witches have not been added to MCPE (yet).
