OMG y’all I am SO behind on posting LOL. So a quick recap on what is New, Improved and Different on the ARBTserver:
We had a new face from WSE visit on Monday: welcome Kyster!
There is now a road extension from the Pyramid, through the huge desert biome and ending at the village Hachi discovered a few runs back.
The ARBTServer monument has been extended, with two more spaces added for statues. May shove it out two more spaces just so ARBT lines up in the middle evenly again, haven’t decided.
I’ve finished reskinning the hot air balloon. It is now a riotous rainbow. And the inside jungle has been growing nicely.
While scouting coastline for a Mystery Build, I stumbled across Village #4 southwest of spawn. More roadbuilding in my future, no doubt.
I have also started a Mystery Build a ways from Spawn. Lets just say last weeks’ trip to Martha’s Vineyard left me rather… inspired.
Speaking of which, the downside of the Nether coming in the next update is no more nether reactor. 🙁 I’m going to have to find a few spots for random netherrack spires just for the hell of it before it disappears entirely.
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!
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.
Note: Written before update 1.1.0 when the direction of the sunrise/set was fixed. North here is now west.
I ran twice this week on both Monday and Tuesday nights. There have been some in-world developments. Mt. Servermore is now done (now with four faces and seekrit bat cave!), as is the Granite line of the subway – well. “Done.” It runs to Wacker Tower and stops there pending expansion. Also during Monday’s game DoublePositive (the artist formerly known as Mathguy04) first showed me and 576875 how to build mostly waterless boat launchers (two exist high in the sky above spawn) and built a steak/leather grinder near spawn house, which is weirdly fascinating. And hey, free leather and meat, right? 576875 also has built a community mineshaft around the corner from Spawn, so people should feel free to dig around in there during survival games.
The area around Spawn is about as full as I’d like it to be (more so, but nvm), so I made an official rule calling for a moratorium on building any new structures within 64 blocks of spawn in any direction. I want people to build stuff! JUST NOT NEAR SPAWN, OKAY. It’s a big world, spread out. 🙂 I made some minor updates to the rule list; please check them out before playing.
Other world news: Now that I’m hosting in Survival more often, I’m trying to keep various chests around stocked with various supplies. I’ve also taken a liking to fishing (unsurprising, I loved fishing in World of Warcraft too) and the lake base that 576875 built a while back is fantastic for it aside from occasional attacks from baby zombies. I’m also digging out the Brick line, which will terminate not far from Mt. Servermore when it’s done. (again, “done” until westward expansion.)
Just for a change of pace, I went down to the southern terminus of the Netherrack line, where there is absolutely nothing aside from a “budder” house Beastie built at some point, took a hard left onto an adjacent landmass, and switched the game into survival. Aside from the flights to and from the main continent, I’ve been playing pure survival at max difficulty in this area. I’d been stuck in Creative mode for so long that I’d forgotten what a challenge resource management and staying alive is, especially as my little island home seems to be absolutely plagued with creepers. >_< It’s a nice break from everything else though.
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 >6 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.
Monday night server time was had tonight! I only had two guests tonight: 576875 and Team Heath Bar, but a good time was had arrowing mobs, adopting wee cows (one of whom THB has dubbed Mr. Moo) and 5 has started a farm at the Spawn House so folk coming in don’t have to scrounge around for food, initially. I’m starting to quite look foward to my weekly visitors. 🙂
In belated OMG! News, turns out the rumors swirling about the MCPE 0.11.0 beta were legit, and y’all lucky folks with Android devices do indeed get to beta test it. Some of the pictures released are massively exciting. While I’m envious of my Android compadres as a non-jailbroken iOS user, I am still excited because beta test now = update SOON.
So what am I excited for in MCPE 0.11.0? Lots.
Boats! Cause swimming/flying across oceans is a pain.
Skins! Steve I love you, but you and i need to see different people and as a black lady gamer I’m tired of playing as a goateed white guy. Sorry not sorry. I made a new skin that’s all ready to go even.
“new” mobs! Bats, Squids, fish and cave spiders may be old news to all y’all PC Minecraft players but they will be entirely new to me. Doesn’t seem to be ocelots yet, so I’ma have to be patient for a while longer before I can have a creeper scaring kitty cat in game.
Dyeable doggie collars! Cause being about to tell which dogs are who would be nice, lol.
Gamemode Switch! For real, not just hacking the level.dat! that’d be real nice because creative mode with no flying and still getting hurt? Not fun. Might as well be playing in survival with Plug on spamming the give command. 😛
I am cautiously excited about the option to make old worlds infinite. I don’t know if I’d be up for going back to either the Hunt world or the Dreamscape world and expanding them that way. Honestly, if I could find some way of dropping both worlds and their accompanying projects somewhere in my current infinite map I’d do that instead, seeing as I’ve sunk so much time into the current map. I am glad to finally be able to rename my main world though – not that I’ve thought up a good enough name for it yet.
So yeah – SOON.
There doesn’t seem to be a WBC up on Reddit this week, as the sticky post has been hijacked by the MCPE 0.11.0 bug reports posts. Which is good, in a way – In among the other stuff I want/need to do this week, I need to seriously sit down and actually finish the prison dungeon build I’ve been working on for awhile, and then start sketching up the next couple of builds I’ve had percolating in the meantime, not to mention do some exploring in uncharted territory. Still on the lookout for a PC mapping tool that will work with the MCPE leveldb. And I need to make posts about my other builds too. So much to do, so little time!
