Every wipe cycle I take the time to paste in one or two builds to liven up the landscape a bit. (Considering the island is usually empty, the landscape needs a lot of livening.) The first one is always the First Church of Obi-Wan, named for the giant picture of a bearded, Jesus-esque Ewan MacGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi hanging inside.
I built this originally for a private session of hunger games/hide and seek for my friends on the server; I built the church, put myself into God mode, and for every skull of another player they would bring me as “tribute” I would reward them with a gun. More skulls presented generally got better guns. Needless to say the game got brutal very quickly and the chest I was standing behind to receive tribute filled up VERY quickly with skulls.
I liked the church build so much that when I started leaving the server open I first would rebuild it in world immediately after wipes, and then once I discovered the Copy/Paste mod, just started pasting it in. It is built with strategically placed teddy bears and other comfort generating furniture, as the idea is for it to be a sanctuary where players can rest and heal up, though since there’s nothing preventing other players from popping in and sniping whatever sitting ducks are currently inside, and also since the helicopter can see inside via the grates in the cieling, there is only so much safety to be found inside. Use at your own risk.
I’ve made some improvements over the past few months, the latest being adding a side porch for workbenches and a large furnace in the back.
Ground floor interior.
Side view of the Church, showing the new outdoor workbench space.
Since /r/WorstServerEver started up a new map last month I’ve been hanging out over there whenever I’m not running game. It’s actually a really nice, laid back Survival server where people hang out, chill, build stuff and complain about chunk lag (which, being a pocketmine server, is kinda expected). I like the regulars there quite a bit, and there’s been a lot of cross-pollination between players there and players here, as DoublePositive, Batman5024 (? don’t know if I got the number right) FatalDeath, Hachi, and Umbrella_Hermit play there as well.
Well. First thing one tends to do is find oneself a bit of unclaimed land and make a base. Except the area around “spawncano” is pretty densely developed/populated so I decided despite the chunk lag to walk pretty far out along one of the overpasses until it ended in a hill, then I walked down some of Skribe’s dirt paths until THEY ended, fell into a ravine (thankfully not a deep one) climbed out, walked some more, and found a hill at the border of a jungle biome and a desert to dig out a home for myself. I think I managed rather adequately.
ARBT’S base!My not so secret far far away base!Inside room.
I’m not anywhere near done – I want to punch through the hill I’m colonizing eventually and build a log cabin style house above the main room, in similar style to Spawnhouse on my world, which got built almost exactly the same way. I also plan to continue with the layers of cobblestone basements, which hearken back to similar dig-out-and-redecorate-in-cobblestone style mines I tend to make on almost every server I have.
Level B1
It actually doesn’t quite look like this anymore – I decided to expand each of the basement outwards after I took these pictures.
Anyway this is all very nice but it was near impossible FINDING it every time the server rebooted – there was a lot of wandering around, getting lost, and trying to figure out which acacia tree at the border of an unloaded chunk was the one I had to pass. So eventually I got annoyed with it and decided you know what… I’m going to dig a tunnel back to spawn area so that I can just run that way to my base. So I took some coordinates, changed my job to “miner” and got busy digging, and once I’d dug a path all the way through, I lined it in cobble, torches and gravel, because y’all know me and uniform tunnels.
So starting with this tiny cobble building on the shore of the swamp a ways behind Hachi’s house (you know the place)*, here is my weird and wonderful path home.
Entrance.Just inside.It’s a long way down.At the bottom looking backThis server has a lot of ravines….Hi Batman!A crafting corner.bridge of glassStaircase down into the ravineanother view of the ravine stairs
I’ve been doing small quickie projects in my world just to pass time and fill up space. (Also procrastinating from finishing other stuff.)Â Finished up three smallish things.
The Cabin in the Woods
Welcome! We have potatoes.
There’s this log cabin style house in Orange, MA on Rte. 202 (its here, if anyone wants to look at it in Google Street View) that we pass a lot on the way to Rt. 2. Every single time we did I kept thinking “oh… I should try making a log cabin in Minecraft” and then promptly forgetting about it. And then I didn’t forget.
view from the woods
I apparently have a thing for roses and potatoes. XD
Rustic insideThe attic came out claustrophobic because I mathed wrong.Comfy looking basement though.
This was sort of a test run for what I plan to be the house atop my base on WSE, and I’m kinda glad I did it here first because I’m not quite happy with the way this came out. I think next time I attempt something like this a) wider on all sides so I end up with more of an attic, b) make the sides an even number of blocks so the roof peaks better. But for what it is, it’s kind of adorable. I think I will definitely be making more of this style house with different woods in the future.
The Haunted Ruin
Spoooooky.
Located on a small island not far from The Four Guardians is a ruin of… a small castle? a cathedral? a watchtower? People exchange theories about it in whispers, discussing the horrors that can be found within its cracked, mossy walls. Legends about about the source of the flame that still burns at the top of the crumbling but mostly intact tower that still at one end and never seems to go out. Perhaps it is demonic in nature. No one really knows….
Facing the islandSpiderboat, Spiderboat, does whatever a Spiderboat does…Peeking down the stairs.The cellar, still mostly intactInside the ruin and the eerie towerLooking down from one of the crumbly pillars
Okay reality time – I started building a castle/cathedral thing on this island and kinda lost steam midway through. I’d put a bit of work into it, though and didn’t want to lose it completely, and then I got the idea of “ruining” it. So I built a 4×4 TNT bomb at one corner, set it off, then rebuilt some of the destruction with mossy cobblestone, mossy brick and cracked brick, strewed some cobwebs about, and then tossed in a few monster spawners. Voila, haunted ruin!
Significantly less creepy during the day.
Rainbow Balloon
Floating…
I adore hot air balloons. There’s something rather intensely romantic about them. Honestly I am a fan of a lot of floating air transport like balloons, blimps and zeppelins. The latter are quite relevant to my steam- and decopunk interests.
I was initially thinking of making a zeppelin, but decided I wasn’t up to math-ing out an ellipsoid, but I could probably manage a sphere. I didn’t quite, but came close enough I think.
I’m not quite done with the exterior of this – I’m still replacing most of the white stained clay I initially used with wool in the rainbow stripey pattern you see in the picture.I do love how the flame source and the gondola came out, especially as I’d been mulling over what to make it out of and then realized if I used jungle wood, I could use cocoa pods as “ballast”
Cocoa ballast and a passenger!
The really fun part about the balloon though is the inside.
Is that… dirt up there? huh?Whaaaaaat
When I was building out the shape I was using dirt to pad out the clay so I had something against which to lay the next layer of it. Since I was kinda to lazy to remove it, it ended up being this bizarrely neat looking spherical interior.
from the crossbeams
I think when the grass finishes spreading, I’ll come back, plant some jungle trees, grow vines from the top of of the balloon and make it into a seekrit cocoa farm. 🙂
So yeah, I’ve been busy, but I’ve been keeping my hand in doing littler stuff. Someday I’ll finish up the bigger stuff I’m working on. Someday. *sigh*
A few years ago I went to see The Fall. It’s a gorgeous hot mess of a movie, if anyone’s interested. It’s a Tarsem movie, they’re all gorgeous and weird, and kind of hot messes, lol. Anyway, in among all the gorgeous weirdness, was one particular scene shot on an eye-boggling location.
What in the name of MC Escher…?
I dismissed it as a special effect – there couldn’t be an actual place that looked like that. I completely forgot about it until the same location (or, as I found out later, a set based on it) popped up in The Dark Knight Rises several years later.
Behind Christian Bale and his angst…
What.
I did a bit of googling and OMG. Yes. This place actually exists. It’s an ancient stepwell in India called Chand Baori, and it looks every bit as awesome as the movies make them look.
Whoa. That is a lot of stairs.Stairs & stairs & stairs…
Awesome right?
So of course I’m looking at this huge thing and thinking “Hey… wouldn’t look cool if I built it in minecraft?”
Yes. Yes, it would.
This was a bear of a build – digging out the space from the middle outwards took forever even with scads of TNT, and then you would be surprised how long it takes to precisely line up all those stairs. And then doing the fortification at the top. It’s no real wonder I ran out of steam and didn’t do the temple in the middle. Still it looks awesome – goodness knows everyone who visits it for the first time is all !!! when they visit it. My favorite reaction is still Palcto’s “Is this a Death Arena???” (He still calls it that when he visits. XD)
Another view from the corner
I have my view distance set to 350 blocks, which is over the max amount for my phone as determined by the game, but it makes for such good pictures. You can see across the swamp to Wacker Tower in that one.
From the top
It looks super awesome from the top. Just the TEXTURE of it.
Approaching from the swamp.Corner fortification.A looooong corridor down one side of the fort.
Now comes with chicken!
A view from the side.A view from lower down
So about that bit of water filling the lower stairs of this build. Since I wasn’t building the temple, I thought it’d be cool to make the bit of water at the bottom more interesting…
The chicken is not the interesting part.
So as you can see it goes down several more levels under the water. But what’s in the very center?
Lets swim down and see.Hey – where are we?
I’m always creating stuff with the idea that I’m going to turn this world into a more public server someday. So I designed the lower level as a hidden apartment complex. I think Wee Beast does have a base down here, but the rest is empty. In fact, I may not actually be finished digging some of the units out lol. Someday.
By the way – I do design a lot of these builds on graph paper. Here’s a rough sketch of the apartment level floor plans:
Keeps the hands busy while you’re on the phone.
also gives me chance to use netherbrick, which is one of my favorite textures in the game – I just dont get much practical use out of it.
A peek inside one of the units.A corner reading nook
Bookshelves are another big Thing I like To Use A Lot.
Tiny corner veggie gardenWhere does this corridor go?Steps up and out
This way ends up at a stairwell on the west side of the structure.
It’s a long climb.
But if you keep going down the hallway instead of climbing out…
Well first you pass this.
I’m a big fan of preserving natural terrain or caves or other generated weirdness in and around my builds, or at least faking that I did so more or less convincingly. There was a waterfall here, but it was only a single stream and flooded the area I needed to put floor, so I dug it a pit to drain into and widen it a little.
Keep walking though, and eventually you come to…
a subway station!
This was actually the first station I had to add to the Netherrack line after it was built, which partially explains why this station was on the other side of the tracks from the rest of them. (Also easier to connect the rest of the structure.)
Sand Baori actually sits on the Granite line as well, via an unconnected subway station on the north side.
Entrance dug under the north wallplatform level
I… might have a subway station formula I adhere to… >_>
Anyway, that’s the build!I leave you with an animated version of today’s cover photo:
sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the days… (click to animate)
A few more pictures from my very first server run can be found at this post.
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 kinda fell off the face of the earth in terms of updating various blogs and journals. Sometimes real life (and chronic illness, unfortunately) catches up with me. I want to post on Monday’s server run (it was quiet due to problems with new settings in the updated Plug PE) and take pics of the various things 576875 and Swarmhut have been building. I’ll get around to those posts at some point, but here’s the big exciting news – aside from retail spaces and the food court 576875 is building on the mezzanine, Grand Central is finished!
It’s going to be a very very VERY long time until I work with any kind of sandstone again, lol. Several weeks of a big build using nothing but and I am thoroughly sick of looking at it. Still, I’m really proud of this build, it came out awesome and even though I have a few problems with the final build (mostly aesthetic stuff)… yeah.
But enough blather. PICTURES. There are many.
The Terminal from the road.Looking northwest.a view from the top.
So in preparation for boats, I dug some small canals around the station so that it wouldn’t entirely block off the river surrounding it on three sides. I honestly should have built one straight across on the north side. Might still.
Looking at the station from the North.Northeast CornerPeeking in from the North windows.South entrance.window illumination outside
I took lots of pictures inside the Grand Concourse. Mostly from similar angles, oops.
Dim and empty.Sunrise.View from the floor.Information needed?I sort of made Orion and then put more “stars” around him.Looking south.MoonriseLooking East from the roof.I like the pattern of light here.One of the corner antechambers.
I’m not sure what to do with these rooms in the corners. Maybe additional reading/waiting space?
I haven’t managed to do much in terms of retail space (the real Grand Central is packed with shops), but there are at least four spaces under the grand staircases that I’ve managed to do things with.
some delicious cake for sale.No one seems to be here.A book for your journey perhaps?Flower shop.
A quick peek downstairs to see what 576875 has been up to.
Staircase down.Food court in progress.
Looks good so far!
Finally my favorite thing – stand on the roof of whatever I’ve built, batman style, and enjoy the view around it.
The road rambles on in the distance.The road stretching east.The river and flatlands to the northeast
So yeah, there you have it. And now I have a tiny chunk of home in my minecraft world. 🙂 I suppose I ought to get cracking on expanding the subway in its various directions, lol. Soon.
World: Main Location: -1665 65 -3 Creation Mode: Creative Build completed: Post date
Note: Written before update 1.1.0 when the direction of the sunrise/set was fixed. North here is now west.
Made a fair amount of progress in the past few days on GCT. It’s starting to actually resemble its inspiration now…
Chunk error.
…well okay, when there aren’t huge holes in the floor/wall. Also there is apparently a HUGE cave system under the south tracks. Going to have to investigate that later.
track level from the corner.
Track level is done, lit, and has a ceiling. One of the challenges of this build was how to keep the various levels lit without having a mess of torches, something that proved challenging as GCT has >6Â block high ceilings. This became much easier once I realized that light passes through stairs and I could hide glowstone behind “moldings.”
Mezzanine floor
Time to do the next story! I’ve since finished up the mezzanine level.
The center column of the mezzanine level.Mezzanine staircases going both up and down.Mezzanine lights
It’s currently a big empty room bracketed by the two staircases on either side. I may put in some vendor booths and cafe tables later. The real station has a fancy food court and a branch of the NYC transit museum on this level.
I’m still working on the main level but so far it looks awesome.
View from East Staircase.Info BoothTicket office.The West Grand Staircase.
The grand staircases were annoying to design and build, and I ended up trying three different things before settling on this, and then I had to build it from scratch an extra time since I had a game crash and none of the work I’d done that afternoon saved. D’oh!
Honestly I should have known the game was a little screwy – I cam up to work on one of the starcases to find that all of the stairs I’d put down had oriented themselves facing north.
Thats a weird looking glitch.
I didn’t get a picture but some of the stairs I’d placed upside down in places had also turned themselves around. It was a little creepy looking I won’t lie. But then the game crashed and I had to start over, but the nice thing about having to build a thing twice is that you’ve already worked out the kinks so it goes a lot faster the second time around.
Peeking down the stairs.
This is just the top of the staircases down to Mezzanine level.
So, yeah, it’s coming along. Maybe a little slower than I’d like, but I’d been busy this week with other stuff.
I realized earlier that I hadn’t made my post-open-server post this week, so I’ll just take this moment to thank The_Swarm_Hut, Mathguy40, 576875, and Brandonthekid-don’t-remember-your-reddit-handle-lol for coming. 5’s underwater surprise seems to be coming along, while The_Swarm_Hut built a bunch of neat stuff by spawn. I’ll probably make a separate post about this tomorrow, but I’ma need folks to start ranging a bit away from spawn for building stuff – the area by Spawn House is filling up quite a bit. 🙂 But yeah, it was a good open server night, and being able to play with friendly company was nice after a long and unfortunately crappy day beforehand. I will be running tomorrow night at 6, hope to see folks there.
Note: Written before update 1.1.0 when the direction of the sunrise/set was fixed. North here is now west.
One of my MCPE builds on Fisher Price® My First Creative Worldâ„¢ was a giant zombie. It was a challenge figuring out what color blocks to use, and working around the fact that unlike skins, blocks have the same texture on all four sides. But the statue got built with the necessary fudging of detail and it lurked on one side of several incarnations of my scavenger hunt world, at least until in some of them, Wee Beastie TNT’ed them to the ground. ‘Cause, you know, Giant Zombie.
Fast forward to my infinite world, and a pretty patch of shoreline and a small island out from the mainland, and I thought, what the heck, I’ll rebuild the Giant Zombie. And then I thought, nah. I’ll build FOUR of them. Get all Lord of the Ringsy. So I squared off and expanded the island and built these four colossal gentlemen quietly menacing onlookers in each direction. Though it’s really hard to menace anything with hordes of chickens sprouting out of your feet.
Yes, they are connected.A door inside!Its a long way up…Shoulder level!balconies and doors connect the four.A view out of an arm.Interior of Head #1Interior of Head #2Interior of Head #3Interior of Head #4There were stairs going down too.A vast white room…Wait, more down?down down downFour Guardians subway station
This was actually the first subway station I built on the north/south line. (When I add more, it’s gonna be called the Netherrack line.) It’s a little smaller than subsequent stations, since I was still figuring things out, and the only one with stairs on the platform instead of in a space behind the wall. The rest of the stations got more standardized over time, but this one gets to be quirky because it was first.
Not pictured – I should have gotten a picture of the island from the sky during a creative run, because the water around these guys? FILLED with chickens. There is a circle of flapping white specks around the island. Yes, there’s a spawner somewhere. Occasionally they get down into the subway and hop a minecart. Chickens in minecarts are way funnier than they ought to be.
And thusly ends the tale of the four.
UPDATE (6/28/15): About that aforementioned picture:
So. Many. Chickens.
Also these guys have since acquired names. They are Icky, Stinky, Yucky and Clyde. Don’t ask me which one’s which.
All right, Crazy Busy-making Stuff is over with for a moment, so time to catch up on posts about my MCPE builds!
I finished the circus a hair too late for the Reddit WBC it was created for, but it still came out cool and I’m pretty happy with it. It gave me something to do with the dead flat mountain space on the main subway line between the Crystal Palace and the Castle. I’d briefly considered starting a giant train station build there but I think that’s ultimately going to go north of the castle.
Anyway. Pictures!
What? A circus? Awesome, lets go.Up through the mountains!
Carving stairways and roads through mountains is kind of a pain, but at least the views are nice from up here?
I see the Big Top!Tickets, Please!
It’s always a little tricky designing spaces for villagers to stand in (lunch counters, ticket booths, any sort of service type place) and not have them wander off. you end up getting rather good at overhangs.
Ticket obtained! Lets go in!That’s one way to make a tightrope. Or should I say tightfence?2 out of 3 rings visible.See Mr. Hmm’s performing dogs! In ring #3 – Hmmph’s Wild exotic mooshrooms!Farmer Hmp’s Rainbow Sheep! Here for one day only!…is that a sheep on the tightrope!?The Purple Sheep of Pachysandra Island!
Which of course means I now have to create a Pachysandra Island somewhere and fill it with purple sheep…
Would you like to buy a flower?
I apparently have a thing for flower shops. Be nice when you can actially buy things with emeralds…
HMM. one hot dog please!No idea what’s going on here, but maybe we should move along.Popcorn, getcher fresh popcorn!Wait – a Freak Show? Ooo.Quick, the ticket guy isn’t looking… *sneaka sneaka*
Don’t do this in real life, kids.
Behold, the terrifying and explosive Creepers!Observe the horror inducing Skeletons and Zombies!Tremble at the sight of the Zombie Pigmen! Straight from The Nether!Marvel at the Mildly Annoying Silverfish!
And that’s the end of it. I might put more tents in at some point and there was a cave system underneath that I hadn’t had a chance to map out yet, and the grounds are overrun with loose sheep with colors not found in nature and chickens.
World: Main Location: -745 78 -34 Creation Mode: Creative Build completed: post date
I mentioned I liked browsing Brutalism tumblrs and other images for inspiration for Minecraft builds. One day I happened across a pictures of the Blue Cross Blue Shield building in Chicago, IL.
Apparently Hertz has been around a while.
The building still stands, although it’s been given a bit of a facelift and the more generic moniker of “55 West Wacker.” (It nevertheless has made several “Chicago’s ugliest buildings” lists, which seems a little unfair – I’ve seen way uglier examples of Brutalism.) It also now has very tall neighbors on all sides but the front, rendering all those pretty windows useless and making the building itself look a little squat by comparison. Nevertheless something about this building held my attention. Maybe it was all those pretty windows.
Oh hey look, I figured out how to make WordPress galleries work, go me.
View from the road.
Sunset
Every floor has different colored carpet, or a different (often purposefully hideous) checked pattern
Side corner view, showing the pools.
Door to the lobby.
Lobby
Third floor. The rest of them are pretty identical.
Looking down the stairs.
The one bed at this build.
The Basement!
There was a natural cave here when I started building the tower. It was mostly walled off by the pools but I carved out this stairwell down to it so I could continue to mine for materials.
View of the southwest roads.
The southeast roads. You can see the sheep farm I built to supply all the carpet. Also 3 houses.
Another view of the sheep farm.
Looking off across the swamp to Baori.
The road north, looping back on itself.
Another look at Baori from the top level (which isn’t the roof!)
This building was my last big MCPE build in cheat-less Survival and as such it was a pain in the butt. It’s the reason why there are five nether reactor tower corpses across the samd biome (for all the glowstone and quartz) and spruce trees in an oak biome. And the poor rainbow sheep in the farm. Even with the Shear button I still accidentally punched all of them at least once getting carpet. And I still haven’t cleaned up all the supply trunks from in front either – figured their content’s’ll be useful for when I get bored and switch back into Survival. Still, oddly enough, for all the time and frustration in building it, it’s probably second only to Seuss Library in my list of favorite builds so far.
World: Main Location: -120, 71,-427) Build Mode: Survival Build completed: Early October, 2014
