spawn – ARBTServer

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 30, 2015October 5, 2017

Open server, 6/29/2015

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! — you’ll pay full price for your seat BUT YOU’LL ONLY NEED THE EEEEEEEEEEDGE!

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... — 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 has been working on… well, I still haven’t figured out what this is supposed to be. I just know that it is awesome.

To the south, Double Positive worked on several mob grinders of various sizes/mobs farms. Hence “SPAWNER LAND” written large friendly quartz letters.

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!

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