Minecraft Adventures: Oceanic-Craft, Aquaglow, Lan Competitions and other shenanigans

I’ve come to a realization that apart from the select most popular few Minecraft servers don’t last for very long, Australian servers anyway. I’ve been on quite a few now and it seems like an endless cycle of them being started then closed down after a while then either the community moving to another or someone else starts a new server then they find that managing a Minecraft server is hard work then they stop and give it to someone else or just stop. It’s the reason I wouldn’t bother starting one as it’s a hell of a lot of work, especially dealing with random people who aren’t your friends.

I’ve noticed this happening more as Minecraft gets older and it’s the same with me really, I really just can’t keep myself that interested anymore, as I’ve done the same survival thing a lot, and it’s getting a bit old, but I think it’s because I end up doing the same thing all of the time and I need to branch out and trying different things, achievements, alchemy, weapons enchants exploring more, getting to the end, if only I could get motivated. What motivates me most now is LAN competitions, as it gives me that drive to create and show off what I’ve done and be recognised and applauded but don’t we all want that I spose?

But I digress, I have nonetheless managed to participate in and create things under several different circumstances inc just casually hopping on servers, LAN competitions and just experimentation of my own so I will detail what has happened in the interim of my last Minecraft Adventures which was quite a while ago, back in 2013! Man I have some catching up to do.

Lanslide V9 Minecraft Comp

So we’ll start with the Lanslide V9 Minecraft Comp which had been changed to an obstacle course comp. As you could probably guess I was pretty peeved about this as the Minecraft Build Comp was my forte and was pretty much the only thing at the LAN that I had a chance at winning so to take that away I really had nothing left. But I learned to deal with it as it was out of my hands and it was kind of true that it was usually between just two of us who were really competitive and the same people winning all the time and TBH it gives me time to relax a little as building in Minecraft from 11am till 5pm (sometimes more) got me pretty sweaty. So anyway with the Lanslide V9 Comp I only got a few shots of the pre-challenge, I unfortunately didn’t get any of the main course inside the castle which was a shame cause it was pretty damn epic with huge caverns and mazes and even an interactive tunnel questionnaire at the end. Needless to say I didn’t come first in this comp but it was fun nonetheless (and a lot less stressful).

The Castle where the main course was held.

Oceanic Craft

So awhile after having left Vancraft I was searching for another Australian server to join and came across Oceanic-Craft, which surprise-surprise is now defunct though it was an ok server while it lasted despite some of the admins being uptight pricks. I made a good friend in a guy named Silent_Puppy (now Shiny_Puppy, reminds me a bit of Snoop Dogg and Lion haha) and I soon joined his Megacity though I lived in the nearby forest, which you may have seen in my Minecraft Creations post on my Spruce Forest Tower which I created while I was there.

An earlier spawn point, I had pretty much chopped down every tree around it lol

Silent_Puppy's Megacity

Megacity in all it's glory

A view of my hole from the top of the sign

My forest hole, you can see the world border in the background.

I liked this place, it was one of my better underground holes.

Nightchoppin'

Bunny!

Megacity at Sunset

I made a house for another player who needed one as I was good at making basic houses and they liked it very much. I also participated in a few server games including a Maze (Which I won :D) and an obstacle course (Which I didn’t L)

Oceanic craft supports gay marriage lol

I won the maze comp!

But not the obstacle course

A house I made for another player.

After I had finished my tower I needed a break and when I got back Megacity had unfortunately been griefed and the tenants had moved away, Thankfully my tower was still standing as it was in a separate claim, ha HA! After that I decided to grab some resources from the ruined Megacity (especially the sign) in order to use for my new home, I did some more exploring on the server looking at various other people’s creations that had been abandoned (i.e no claim) and grabbed some materials for that too.

The new spawn (they replaced the trees haha)

Inside the spawn

Getting resources from the sign

The now griefed Megacity :(

And they expanded it too.

Unfortunately because a few of the admins as I mentioned before were very particular about this I ended up being banned for ‘griefing’ much to my protest as the land wasn’t even claimed. Silent_Puppy had left by this time but it didn’t matter anyway as the server soon got shut down, probably cause there was no-one playing cause some of the admins were cocks, just sayin’ hah

Aquaglow

Luckily for me my buddy Shiny_Puppy from the Oceanic Craft server had made a server of his own and I quickly joined and then quickly became a member of the new “Soul City” which was maintained by Kanga if I remember correctly. The city was pretty damn impressive with Giant trees and many layered parks, a church and a manner of many layered houses. After much though I decided on an interesting take on a past idea of mine. The idea was is that I’d name my claim “JD’s Funny Farm” or something like that  and have a normal looking farm with animals and crops on the top but on the bottom I’d have an underground house with glass skylights similar to my previous one except that there will be water above the skylights so it looks like a perfectly normal farm. I would then create a well in the middle so I could disappear into it down to my house. So I went on my merry way of creating the farm but unfortunately before I could finish the map needed to be reset so I lost basically all that I had done though this was usually the way with Mutliplayer and I don’t really think  I’m going to other making anything significant on one anymore. I ended up remaking the house in creative mode though I will have a post up about that later.

New hidey hole, went the full 256x256 Realistic by Cyberghoste this time

Towers! that one looks like the Empire state

Zeppelin!

I think this was the obstacle course arena, could be seen from the ground lol

Some custom blocks here

Soul City from the Zeppelin

The first attempt at my Overfarm, was a bit smaller then the real one heh

When I came back after the reset I did a bit of exploring on the server then decided to settle on a Mushroom island for a change with the idea of making some sort of “Magic Mushroom Palace” I struggled a bit with farming as bamboo for example doesn’t grow on mycelium so you have to make it separate. The other problem was I would have wanted to make the main body of the house out of Mushrooms with the interior being normal wood and carpet, but you can’t cut down mushrooms and collect the resources like you do for trees they just break apart.I won this "Hunting Rifle" that was a modded weapon on the server, it was basically a piece of iron horse armor that could "shoot" and was ridiculously powerful and to top it off it also had night vision and unlimited "ammo" crazy lol

To the seas!

A lovely sunset on my Mushroom island

One of the new Ocean Monuments was near my island, I jumped in quickly to have a look then was scared off by the guardians lol

The "Hunting Rifle with Night Vision on

And Night vision off, this was my home base btw

So I spent a while working out what resource I should use for the house and decided on Acacia Wood. I had been sheltering from the rain underneath a mushroom so I decided to make my house on top of the mushroom. Wasn’t exactly as good as I wanted it to be it was kind of just a plain loft house really but it was enough I guess.

My finished house.

Building a farm free of mycelium

Wheat farm.

Shortly after I had stopped playing for a bit I saw that Shiny_Puppy had stepped down as server owner and the guy who was admin of Oceanic-craft took over. Then most recently I saw the server had shut down completely, dang well shit happens I’d just like to thank Silent/Shiny for making my time there enjoyable. I actually did try to create a world in Singleplayer that was entirely Mushroom biome but unfortunately it didn't have red mushrooms just white so I'd like have to make a normal map and zoom around to try and find a mushroom biome though I suppose it's doable.

Baby Mooshrooms!

After that I left to play some more Star Wars the Old Republic but did manage to mess around with some Amplified word which was fun, damn they are amazing but would be a nightmare to play on.

The amplified world, awesome to look at, crazy to play on it

So that was basically a quick sum up of what happened in that period, I will create a post regarding my Overfarm soon. I’m currently making an entry for the  Digital Blasphemy Sandbox Challenge 2015 where I’m creating Desert Snow which is a lot of fun to do. I’m thinking of doing another singleplayer adventure (not making some huge thing this time) with lots of mods like Mo’creatures and Biomes O’Plenty and maybe even a shaders mod to make it more interesting. I’m also determined to get Forge working this time as I’ve never been able to do it but I want to in order to get a MapMod working as the old Rei’s Minimap is no longer working. I think what I’ll have to do is just pick an update or version level (preferably 1.8) and get everything I can for that to make the whole adventure super awesome. Meanwhile I’ve got Star Wars Dark Forces, GTA5 and Mercenaries to get through.

Never stop building!

JD

No place is forever

Battlefield 4 - Expansions and other Shenanigans

I suppose you may all be wondering why I’m doing a post about Battlefield 4 now that Hardline has come out but I have a few things to talk about as it’s been a quite some time since I did my initial review of the game back in April last year. I’m sad to say I haven’t played the game for awhile for a couple of reasons of having too much to play currently (don’t we all) and being a bit over the game though that is only at the time of writing, I’ve played with friends quite a few times over the months and tried out different classes and weapons and whatnot not to mentions the various expansions that have come out. Similar to Battlefield 3 there has been five total DLC expansions for Battlefield 4 and If I’m not mistaken that’s the magic number as not too long after the 5^th one Final Stand was released that’s when they started advertising for Battlefield Hardline. 

So I’ll basically go through the expansions as they’ve come out starting with China Rising:

China Rising

My friends and I probably liked this expansion the best it brought in some remarkable maps from mainland China which are Dragon Pass,  Guilin Peaks, Altai Range  and Silk Road, Guilin Peaks is a beautiful looking infantry orientated-map that is set in a mountainous tropical forest, it was great fun zooming around on ATVs and the new (to BF4) dirtbikes, I also very much enjoyed doing my engineer-repairman-in-chopper thing or piloting the chopper myself on this map. Dragon Pass was stated to be a re-imagined version of Dragon Valley which I sort of recognized but damn that sun glare!. This expansion also introduced the Air Superiority game mode.

Air superiority on Guilin Peaks, this one was a small map so it was with chopper rather then jets. You can see the Zeppelin which acts as a capture point.

Second Assault

This one was the obligatory “bring back old maps” expansion similar to Back to Karkand for BF3 though this time there was only one BF2 map in the list and it had to be freakin Gulf of Oman I’d had enough of that map in BF2 as it was on the demo even, it’s now been in BF2, 3 and 4 and now there’s a goddamn hurricane/sandstorm. Caspian Border was good with its new “Autumn” settings and changed terrain and so was Operation Firestorm with its new browner sandstorm ‘levelution’ event.  But did they really need to bring back Operation Métro I mean REALLY? There’s already an infantry-only map with Operation Locker but they had to bring that goddamn one back, even though they did make some improvements I spose.

This is a short clip but it's a good view of the new operation Firestorm, I also like it cause I happen to have the "Tie Fighter attack" music going in the background.

Firestorm on the ground

Naval Strike
Naval strike was you can probably guess was an expansion based on large-ocean-with-island maps, this expansion introduced 2 person hovercrafts which could go over land and sea and were very useful and a lot of fun and old cannons which were powerful but very hard to aim and had a huge reload time. The maps in this expansion were vehicle heavy with lots of helicopters, jets and boats zooming around which made it pretty hard for infantry to get around, most of the time using the transport chopper was suicide as you were a almost like a giant slow moving target for everyone. I did enjoy this one though as the new Carrier Assault mode was pretty fun, it resembled the Titan gamemode from Battlefield 2142 that I never got to play though it wasn’t quite as epic you just needed to capture several missile launchers to damage the enemy carrier though you then  never shot yourself into a huge flying craft you just got onto a boat or spawned near the carrier but it was good nonetheless.

Naval strike on Wavebreaker with pretty much everyone in boats and Jet Ski's

Dragons Teeth

Dragon’s Teeth was an update that focused on several war-torn cities in Asia that were locked down by the Chinese PLA, none of which I liked too much though I got a bit sick of Pearl Market as it was one of the most played for some reason. This expansion introduced a new Battle Pickup with the RAWR (LoL!) and new Ballistic Shield fir the Support class and some new powerful guns including the DEagle 44 handgun and the Bulldog assault rifle.

Footage of the RAR being used in Pearl Market (I haven't been able to use it yet.

Final stand

Final stand is apparently the pivotal point between the War of 2020 and the new Cold War that was featured in Battlefield 2142 these maps are all set in Russia with most set in Siberia between Russia and the United States. It tells of how The US have received intel from the Chinese that Russia has been secretly developing new technology and have sent the USMC to put a stop to it (as you do). Most of the maps are snowy and winter landscaped with the occasional blizzard. This expansion brought in lots of crazy gadgets formerly from battlefield 2142 inc the very useful Target Detector and some of which being Battle Pickups which players need to find on the map to use (i.e. they couldn’t be equipped by a particular class) These include a Railgun, a Compound Bow which has quite a complicated unlocking procedure and some kind of remote-controlled flying minigun which totally freaked me out when I first saw it. And speaking of things that freaked me out there was also a Hovertank which was ridiculously fast (for a tank) and made a lot of noise and sprayed snow everywhere and made me almost shit my pants when I first encountered it. There’s also Snowmobiles and Pod launchers which are a lot of fun. I found I liked the Hanger 21 map the most where you could see a prototype Titan being built.

The Hanger 21 splash screen, you can see the prototype Titan

So anyway what about me? Well I’ve played quite in the year that’s passed, mostly with my two friends Lachlan and Matt and also “Hardcore” Alex (as he prefers that game mode). I played pretty much all of the maps on all of the expansions and can still say China Rising was probably my favourite with the game modes I played most of them inc Conquest, Rush, Team Deathmatch, Squad Deathmatch, Obliteration,  Carrier Assault, Chain Link, Gun Master and Air Superiority only once. Obliteration was a type of ‘carry the bomb to the enemy base’ type of thing which was pretty fun, it’s like a game of rugby except with guns. It’s extremely hectic running along when you have the bomb dodging bullets, missiles and everything under the sun though you can still use fast vehicles to transport yourself or your bomb carrier to the target. I never got to play Air Superiority properly as I am rubbish with jets and when I did try a server there was only one person in there. I must remind myself to try it again now that I have a joystick. 

The tutorial for carrier assault (it was kind of confusing to start off)

I think I’ve tried out every class now relatively, I go Assault still most of the time but really chose what was needed in my squad more, most of the time I was Assault unless I was riding in a chopper or another vehicle then I went Engineer but it was really the only time I went engineer as it was probably the most used class. I’ve found I’ve actually done quite a few repairs as I’m in Division 1 in the World for most repairs I’ve also gotten a few kills with the SRAW (love saying that name). I went Support sparingly, only using it when needed in my squad needed it, I used the PKP Pecheneg quite a bit as it’s my top weapon, other than that I just used C4 or ammo box for points though you get a fair few suppression points using LMGs. I’ve started using the Magnum for most of my classes, I found it pretty funny that you can put things like scopes and a flashlight attachment on as it looks ludicrous, I do want to try out the DEagle 44 if I can unlock it.

My ridiculous scoped Magnum

A bit later into playing I wanted to experiment with the Recon class a bit more, I again tried to be a Sniper the way I did in BF2 but it just doesn’t work, I dunno what it is but maybe it’d be being able to be spotted by anyone and showing up on the radar when you fire your weapon maybe which made it very hard to hide. And also because of the huge amount of detail in the levels (trees etc) you could hardly see very far unless the map was almost bare desert like the Silk Road map. So I gave up on this and started using Designated Marksman Rifle’s (DMR’s), these were like the M1 Carbine and SKS Simonov from Vietcong single-shot semi-long range weapons and I went pretty damn well with these, still running and gunning like the other classes but using the stealth set and basically being more stealthy. One of the best things about the Recon was the cool toys you could use including:

SOFLAM – A laser designator that targets vehicles that you can set up and it functions on its own as well as remotely which is useful but damn that things is a bullet magnet and is fragile as all hell.

T-UGS – A sensor that you can set up on the ground that senses enemies around it and reports them on the map, this was very useful in infantry style maps or when hiding.

Radio Beacon –This acted like a spawn point for your squad members once set up, it worked the best when set up near a flag, you could be killed and lose the flag but keep coming back much to enemies chagrin, this was a lot of fun to use and help my squad.

Target Detector  - I loved this thing, what it did was when you aimed down the sights or through a scope it automatically spotted any enemy soldiers you saw. Since I was already a big spotter (I got lots of spotting points) this was awesome as I didn’t even have to decide whether to spot or shoot. I liked it some much that it got annoying when I changed classes and had to go back to not using it.

Recon Toys!

Now that the four expansions have been released you could probably say that the period for Battlefield 4 is now over but this is technically different, Hardline is focused on cops and robbers not military combat though there will still be people playing BF4 until the next one of course as I’m sure we definitely haven’t seen the end of large-scale military combat in the Battlefield series. So that about sums it up really I played, I experienced and now I’d doing other things to get my FPS fix (mainly Sniper Elite 3) but I’ll be back sometime y’all.

JD

I do some Helicopter repairing and organise my loadout on Wave Breaker

Time for my magic blowtorch!