Houses – ARBTServer

June 3, 2018January 9, 2021

Starting all over

screenshot from the game Minecraft, depicting forested terrain with a house and a tower in the distance.

Typical Andee syndrome – I have so many things going on and projects in the fire that often things get neglected. Like my games for one thing. I’ve barely had time to deal with real life let alone play games!

A friend of mine was raving about the Minecraft Update Aquatic this week (it’s been out for at least three weeks now, shows you how out of the loop I’ve been) and so I decided to check it out, and oh my, is it pretty. This got me back into wanting to build things and tinker around with the new stuff I hadn’t really played around with, and I got to thinking about the main ARBTServer map and how I’ve exposed so much of it in the last few years that I’d have to hike quite a ways through the Nether to find any new ground to generate new stuff on. That and we have only occasional outside traffic these days… So I made the difficult decision to archive it. That map, which I’ll probably forever think of as the Main Map, I’m renaming V.2. The old survival map will be version 3, and the newly rebooted map, which is now live, is v.4.

Speaking of which, yes, the server’s back up, and I’ve completely rebooted the map. I played around with Mineatlas for a little while after deciding I wanted to start fresh, looking at other seeds to try, and after awhile I was just like… you know what… same seed. Just start from scratch. What with all the new stuff since the last time I’ve generated a new map with this seed I figured there’d be a few slight differences in the terrain, and there are, but it still looks familiar, if not quite the same. I’ve already put in a new Spawn House, and there’s a beacon tower already at World Center (0,0) that will eventually become the center of a new rail system, because you can take the woman out of the subway but you can’t take the subway out of the woman apparently.

I’ll miss the old map, but the beauty of archives is that there isn’t anything preventing me from bringing it back one day.

In other game news, I am not sure when I’ll be back to Twitch or just regular game playing, as again… too many irons in the fire. Hopefully sometime soon.

July 19, 2015October 5, 2017

Three Small Builds

I’ve been doing small quickie projects in my world just to pass time and fill up space. (Also procrastinating from finishing other stuff.) Finished up three smallish things.

The Cabin in the Woods

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.

I apparently have a thing for roses and potatoes. XD

The attic came out claustrophobic because I mathed wrong.

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

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….

Spiderboat, Spiderboat, does whatever a Spiderboat does... — Spiderboat, Spiderboat, does whatever a Spiderboat does…

Looking 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

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”

The really fun part about the balloon though is the inside.

Is that... dirt up there? huh? — Is that… dirt up there? huh?

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.

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*

July 9, 2015October 5, 2017

Server time!

Monday night your intrepid heroine and host of the server came home with a horrid stomachache, so I canceled server time for that night. To make up for it I ran Wednesday night instead.

It was a fairly low key evening with a bit less lag and voidspawning than usual and people mostly worked on their own stuff. DoublePositive, anticipating 0.12, built a nether portal behind spawn and finished up stuff in Spawner Land.

Also in the spirit of preparing for 0.12, 576875 went out to the Troll village and started shoring it up against Things to Come. Hachi finished his water temple and made it super creepy by filling the fort part of it with spiders.

Dyaaagh Minecraft spiders will never not creep me out. And I like spiders in real life! Anyway I hope Hachi posts about it at some point, there was a whole backstory and mythology that went with this build. Maybe when he finishes the companion structures he’s planning.

We were also joined by Batman3054 from Worst Server Ever, who set up shop near DoublePositive’s. And Swarmhut did something adorable besides flit around dressed in a bee suit.

There was also a fair bit of players getting bored with stuff between building and trying to reel each other in with fishing lines. I don’t know why hooking other players works (bug? feature?) but it does mean that if you go AFK (which I did a fair bit last night owing to some real life things demanding my attention) you could come back to find yourself sowmwhere completely different, or, what happened most often to me, up a tree with weird structures built around me, lol. Not so sure I like being fished as it always seems to happen when I’m in the chat window and can’t really see whats going on, but it’s a thing, and the gang is trying to brainstorm possible games to make up around it.

At the end of the evening Hachi took off due east from spawn and stumbled into a huge desert waste bordered by jungle and savannah, and across the sandstone village pictured above seated at the edge of it. (We looked. No stronghold, but hey, mineshaft!) Guess I know where I’m running some road this week. Interestingly enough this was a part of the map that I had explored briefly before when I first started playing in it a year ago. Well, “explored” is a generous word, got completely lost is more like it. This was in the very beginning when the world was still Survival, I didn’t know the cobblestone trick yet and hadn’t put together a compass. So I started marking my trail with torches on blocks and swam when I came to the edge. I got lucky and ended up very close to spawn on the other side. I’d meant to go back sometime, but never got around to it until last week when I blundered into the jungle biome on the desert’s other side.

Hachi continued flying far out past where I explored and the new terrain generating made for interesting errors on the rest of our parts – namely have terrain disappear out from under out feet. Note to self, the game does not like it when players get too separated.

Meanwhile in other news, I’m in the middle of three build posts (sigh) and I really must make some posts about my adventures on Worst Server Ever and musings about possible hosting solutions for the game. I’m also working on an out of game but still Minecraft related project for the Wee Beast’s birthday. There are not enough hours in my day, I swear.

ARBT out!

June 25, 2015October 5, 2017

Not one, not two, not four, but THREE evening runs!

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.

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... — 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.

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. — 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. — 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.

Thanks, y’all. 🙂

April 20, 2015October 5, 2017

Taking the Scenic Route

Most of this weekend’s build work included laying a ~1115 block segment of road running from a brick house* I’d mostly finished a few weeks ago (just had to add the roof) to the mostly unexplored northwestern shoreline. This was slightly more of a pain in the neck than usual (literally at some points throughout Sunday even) because after last Monday’s server session I’d left my game set on survival for Reasons.** After having my game mostly creative for the past little while, I’d kinda forgotten how arduous building a Large Thing in Survival mode is, even if you’re using Plug to cheat a little with regard to tools and inventory. Arduous, but somehow satisfying.

Anyway, I did finish the road (and the house, which I’m calling Rose House, not Brick… hoooooooooouse***), and since Survival mode did slow me up a little it meant I had time to stop and appreciate the scenery along the way.

I was experimenting with a different roof shape on this house. Very unsure if like.

We’re getting ready for boats, hence the dock in the back. Also if you look carefully through the water you can see the double basement.

Off in the distance... — Off in the distance…

I really love having my view distance hacked to 255 blocks. it doesn’t seem to slow up my gameplay much, aside from an uptick in chunk errors. Still, a view like that… worth it.

Tiptoe... through the tulips... with me... — Tiptoe… through the tulips… with me…

I have a horrific compulsion to take pictures at sunset. Minecraft sunsets are just so PRETTY now.

I decided it would be really cool to have the road end emerging through this cave. I wanted to take a before picture first through.

Also can I just say I love that Plug gives you access to coordinates? It makes road planning way easier.

But this road ends emerging triumphantly through a cave!

The other thing I like to do is if I found something super pretty, I like to stand in one spot and take a lot of pictures. This is the first time I’ve spliced those time-lapsed screenshots into one picture though, and I like how it came out. Might print and frame it even.

So yeah, now we have come… to the ENNNNNND OF THE ROOOOOOOOAD.****

Meanwhile in B plot land, 576875 showed up for a bit on Sunday afternoon to work on the farm they’re building across from Spawn House so players don’t have to go ranging far and wide for food. It’s coming along nicely. As of last night it did not have a roof, 5 put that in tonight.

By the way, holy cats, it’s actually really hard and frustrating trying to lead livestock into a confined area. I’d only done it with sheep before, and they’re dumb enough to follow you relentlessly anywhere so long as you’re holding wheat. Cows, pigs and chickens aren’t nearly so cooperative.

They will however get RIGHT up in your grill though.

While fishing the above pictured cow out of the river and trying to lead it back to the farm, I stumbled across a house built by mathguy04 a few sessions back.

One of the reasons I’m really enjoying having guest players is that they bring some fresh ideas and building styles into my world. For example 5’s farm system of placing down a square of water for the crops, placing a slab one block over it, and then having a floating glowstone block above that as a crop light. I also really liked how mathguy framed the giant bay window of his house entirely with doubled slabs, which gives it a neat look. So yeah, live and learn. Reminds me, his house is missing a bed, I may go back and leave one and a houseplant for him as a housewarming present.

Hopefully I’ll have more news from the open server front soon. I’m open all week but haven’t been advertising it much. Hopefully I’ll get a few more folks in later in the week or over the weekend. Also I’m so behind on the build posts front. I’ll tackle that project this week I think.

* she’s mighty mighty… letting it all hang out ayyyy she’s a brick… HOOOOOOOOOUUUUSE… sorry, couldn’t help myself.

** Reasons being I wanted to hack in iron doors for the prison build, which is coming along. Hopefully done this week.

**** …for exactly this reason.

**** Its apparently just that kind of post. 😛

March 18, 2015October 5, 2017

And so it began. (Spawn House)

So going back exactly 8 months ago to late evening, July 18, 2014. The new update to Minecraft had just dropped for iOS and I was terribly excited. Since I’ve never been a PC player (and have no real interest in starting), this was going to be my first time experiencing infinite worlds, Enderman, biomes, wolves and several other things Kidzilla and Beastie liked to tell me about during their visits.

I updated MCPE on my phone, created a new infinite world, and pushed the button…

…and the image in the header appeared before me. Immediately I noticed how different everything looked from my last world. Grass everywhere. A deep river type thing stretching lazily in front of me to who even knows where. A dense copse of trees ahead, some of which looked very different from what I’d previously seen. If I squinted I could even see a mushroom off to the right. They’d been nearly nonexistent in my previous game. Best of all was looking ahead to that tree line and knowing behind it stretched a huge world waiting to be explored. (Interestingly though, I haven’t made too much of a foray westward as yet. Most of my explorations since have been to the North).

It being Survival mode though, I wanted to make a shelter before sundown. Like you do. So I made a 90 turn and started exploring the nearby landscape for a place to dig in and roost.

Spawn House has gotten a bit more… developed since.

That’s the same spot, roughly the same angle too. My, how the neighborhood has changed.

That's not a chimney! I hope... — That’s not a chimney! I hope…

Lets go inside. Up the hill and around a bit:

Inside the Spawn House.What looks like a fireplace is actually the ladder up to the tower. — Inside!

What looks like a chimney off the left actually has a ladder going all the way up to the top of the tower. We’ll get up there in a sec.

Second floor. I should probably furnish it at some point. — Second floor.

I should probably furnish up here at some point. Anyway now to go up a very long ladder…

It got way more fun being up here once I tinkered with my options.txt file. The view from up here as a result is pretty amazing.

Northwest Roads and... stuff! We'll visit sometime. — Northwest Roads and… stuff! We’ll visit sometime.

Looking to the Northeast. Haven't seen much that way. — Looking to the Northeast. Haven’t seen much that way.

Southwest view. Haven't explored much in that direction. — Southwest view. Haven’t explored much in that direction.

Looking northeast from the tower. Why there is a burnt our field of flaming netherrack covered in lava is for another post. — Back ooking northeast from the tower after the sun has set.

I’ll probably have explain why there is a burnt out field of flaming netherrack covered in lava in another post. Anyway, enough ogling the scenery, lets look around in the basement(s)!

I guess this is the ground level? it's the first room I carved out in the house. — I guess this is the ground level?

This is the first room I carved out in the house. Because punching rocks.

Fun fact – I’ve set those dark oak stairs on fire a couple times by mistake. I didn’t know then that even if there’s a solid barrier of cobblestone containing lava, it can still set surrounding wood on fire. Oops. Actually I’ve burned down the entire spawn house at least once during construction that way, which is why that chimney isn’t actually a chimney.

Got a lava pit you don’t know what to do with? build a window and make it part of the decor!

Wait there's more down? — Wait there’s more down?

I don’t even know what the kids did down here, the level is kinda trashed, hence the sign apologizing for the mess. I think they were trying to set up super secure beds or something.

If I’m mining out a space under a house in Survival I tend to leave behind these cobblestone warrens of platforms and stairs.

Despite many warnings not to do so, this was the point where I got tired of carefully mining out levels and just went on ore hunts by mining down in checkerboard patterns. I only died a few times…

You can just see the platform through the doorway, but we’ll go out there another day.

So there you are, my first house in this world. Go big and go home, right?

World: Main
Location: spawn point (272 65 11) and Spawn House (220 69 6)
Mode: Survival
Build completed: ~July 2014