Minecraft Creations: The Brick Mansion Chapter 2, I succumb to my own grand design

Well time for another update, though unfortunately there’s really not much going on in the way of adventuring, %100 construction is more relevant guess, I actually decided that I wasn’t going to build my house inside the walls which I’d so carefully designed, no I decided to go the full  metal architect and make a fairly large hill to the north of that area that I’d walled off, into a giant house itself. Now as you would probably guess a project like this would be much harder and more time consuming with mods then without, so I basically went all out but sometimes even things like instant mining weren’t enough, I sometimes ended up having to blow through rock with dynamite just to clear some space.

But anyway I started by making a wall around the edge of the hill which ended up being pretty damn big as you can see, I was trying to make it basically the shape of the hill which is what I do a lot of the time. The way I build is quite odd, unless I have a particular shape or style for a house I usually end up using the lay of the land itself to style the house, I’ve done this since I first started making houses, I think it just makes for an interesting creation. I’ve always made most of my treehouses by building several large wooden platforms in trees then connecting them together and adding more if I need to, of course all this takes a lot of trial and error. I’ve destroyed and re-built a lot of things because I needed to re-design or the size was just slightly off by one block (which makes all of the difference of course) It does often make things hard though as I’ll describe later.

The initial outer wall around the hill

I quickly demolished part of the wall I’d built to fit the front part of the house in and made the rest of the wall around the natural hill incline, having a look at the whole area from above looked pretty daunting I was going to make that whole are one giant house? but I knew this time I wasn’t holding back and besides, people have done way bigger shit then that before.I’ve seen some of the things my friends have made, and their pretty intense compared to most of the things I have done, though I like to think their more creative than the usual idea of “let’s make one big giant creation with huge square open rooms and then pretty much just leave them empty because this is Minecraft and we don’t really need much space apart from storage and furnaces”. As the Minecraft Furniture website shows there is a crapload of stuff you can make that either enhances the decorations that already exist in Minecraft or attempt to recreate real-life objects inc seating, bookshelf and storage, decoration and even electronics and bathroom ideas.

Yes this whole thing is going to be one house, well mansion really, if it ever gets finished...

I decided to straighten out the walls of the natural pits and gulleys that the hill had and make them into actual walled rooms, as these areas were to be the lower, underground level, I then lined the edges with pine wood as a guideline to where the rooms would be. I decided at this point I was going to need the walls of the house to be a bit higher as I was going to be building the house upwards I would need more space guidelines. I made temporary wood floor (well floors of the level above) on the top of the new rooms I’d created which most had turned out okay  though I sort of made this circular room which would inevitably end up being too small I bet for what I decided to put in there. I also made a sort of ‘atrium’ that connects the other rooms that I’m going to leave mostly natural and grow some trees and plants in there.

Higher walls and wooden rooves/floors

The lower atrium

I had sculpted out a fairly big room and was wondering what to put there, I decided to go on to the Minecraft Furniture server to get some ideas so after looking around at some interesting things such as a pool & bbq area and also a tennis court I had my idea. No it wasn’t an indoor tennis court (though it probably would have been the right size) I decided to make an indoor soccer, yes soccer pitch cause I felt I had enough room, well I almost did, one of the corners ended up being too close to a wall which unfortunately had the pond on the other side so I had to make an overhead walkway to get around it. I finished it off with a grandstand and seating around the edges and it ended up looking quite good, though I might have to replace that stone floor once I get all the flooring worked out.

Minecraft Furniture Server research

Iron-fenced Tennis Court

The current indoor soccer pitch with wooden posts and fences as goals

I was looking around and trying to think what I needed next, then I noticed I still had the dungeon room that I had cleared before with the mossy cobblestone around, so I decided being underground this would be a great place for an alchemy lab, so I went to work on it. I made the main alchemy table in the middle a sort of ‘S’ shape made of stone bricks and made a light fixture at the top using lightstone and decided to put the chests for supplies and cauldrons of water on the surrounding tables. I originally decided to ditch the mossy cobble and go plain cobble but then switched back to mossy as it was needed at least somewhere in the house and I couldn’t think of where else I’d use it, also it brings a bit of alchemy-related colour to the room (as if the green carpet didn’t do that already). I also then realised that whoever was using the alchemy room was going to need water for their cauldrons so I created some unending water pools around the walls. From the screenshot it looks alright, though I think I went a bit overboard on the cauldrons and water but I spose I had enough chests there. One thing I did forget though is a goddamn workbench. but anyway

Alchemy room first build

Second build

I realised at this point that in order to make building the house and mapping out the rooms easier was that I’d need to work out what I was going to put in each room or what type of room I was going to need for each floor, primarily because if I didn’t know what I needed in the house how would I know how big/small/what shape to make the rooms or how many rooms I needed? What I was going to need to do is create some kind of floorplan. Though I probably wouldn’t even need that just a list of what I would like on each floor and if I don’t have enough room then make room.

Should be something like this:

Lower Level (Basement)

Indoor Soccer Pitch

Alchemy Lab

Indoor Spa/pool

Nether Room

Forge/storage

Lower Atrium

Middle Level (Entrance)

Entrance Hall with seating and tables

Dining/Ballroom

Kitchen

Upper Atrium

Club with Bar

Crafting Room

Storage

Top Floor

Home Cinema

Master Bedroom

Guest Bedrooms

Sitting Room

Library

Bowling Alley

Attic
Sun Room

I think that’s a good start, I can’t really think of any other rooms I have used, as I haven’t really made anything big enough to warrant filling more rooms, I think the biggest “house” style creation has been the tree mansion but that only had about 7 rooms while the Grey Tower wasn't really a house so much as a well, tower of awesomeness. It’s going to need a lot more work I’ll just have to see how it goes.

So after hearing the news about the 1.3 Patch with all the new features being added inc things like properly coloured wooden stairs, I decided I would quit the Minecraft to wait for the latest changes to make building choices easier, which sounded like a sage idea with major patches.

Time to lay down the (diamond) tools for now.

JD

What a lovely sunset, OptiFine does help

Needs more house

Minecraft Creations: The Brick Mansion Chapter 1, Frontier Ho!

Well as I mentioned in my previous post, I had decided that I had had enough of multiplayer and wanted to do a sort of role playing back-to-basics adventure in singleplayer with little or no mods. I love starting from scratch in every game it just makes things more simple and fun, and getting back to basics with Minecraft is no different. I was pondering on going back to my old Domo-kun skin that I got from The Skindex which is a great place for Minecraft Skin inspiration I might add) and slightly edited by me. It was a skin I had for quite a while with first having a Gordon Freeman skin then changing to the Domo-kun skin which I kept for a long time possibly because it was humorous yet created the image that I wasn’t human I was some sort of mythical creature similar to the actual Domo-kun which is the mascot of Japan’s NHK television station. After that I decided to just be myself, I created a skin that roughly looked like me, well as much as you can with Minecraft, I even made a few different skins to match what I was wearing at the time. I’m currently deciding which skin to use but at the moment I’ll stick with my human skin, I suppose it makes more sense since the basic Minecraft player is human anyway.

That's me! believe it or not, I do look kind of silly though when I use the high-res texture packs

What i'm wearing here is similar to what I'm actually wearing at home in real life

I never really had any story in mind, just the usual one about you waking up in a strange world with rapidly changing environments (see biomes for that) and having find a place to live etc as you usually would, similar to the storyline in Nerd Cubed. I had a vision of making a huge house and property with farms and supplies to sustain myself through blood sweat and tears in survival multiplayer but I must admit it’s kind of hard sometimes especially without the use of mods to make things much faster, but of course that’s why I’m doing this in the first place though to be honest I think I’m going to have to have a strong will to make what I want to make without mods as I’m guessing it’s going to take quite a long time with all the resource gathering and such. I decided to do a slight variation on my usual Minecraft adventures post title and have this one called the “Minecraft Adventures of JD” mainly because the adventures have largely been multiplayer adventures and this time it’s singleplayer so I thought I’d make the distinction.

So anyway, here’s how it’s going so far…

I woke (yes I woke up that's how all Minecraft stories start) up in a Taiga biome, and decided to just have a walk and see what was around, I had decided that I wanted to set up my home in a grassy biome as I was kind of sick of trees and tree houses as you have probably guessed and this time wanted to make a proper brick house, I still might keep a few features from my previous brick house though, especially the lava feature. After searching around for a while I found a decent sized natural cave in the middle of a grassy biome with a forest in the centre and set about doing a bit of mining and woodcutting. I was thinking of using either birch or pine wood as the decorative other element to my new brick house, but depending on the colour difference between the logs and the wood I’m not sure, I’m definitely not going treehouse style and making the entire thing out of wood this time though, just the corners and around the windows and possibly some of the floor and well the whole roof, but that’s all! XD. The mining went ok I got a lot of coal and iron as usual as well as some gold, but unfortunately after running around searching various caves was unable to find much diamond. 

The hole I found

And the mine

 I then went searching for a better spot as I needed a bigger place for my grandiose house. So I walked and walked going through a huge desert (unfortunately I wasn’t riding on a horse with no name) and eventually came across an NPC village, which was pretty cool as I’ve never really come across one before, at least not when the villagers were actually in them. There was a large grassy biome nearby that seemed to suit my intentions and plus it was relatively close to the NPC village in which I could have at least some form of human interaction not like before where you basically seemed to be the only human around in a land filled with animals and monsters.

Almost fell into this damn thing

The NPC village on the edge of the desert and the plains

I got there and decided to dig out a cave in the side of a hill as a temporary residence and set up, I always seem to make the mistake of making a square cave then arranging all my chests, workbenches and furnaces all around the edges and end up having nowhere to make a bedroom or expand but I managed to work around it. I did a bit of looking around then found another natural cave and had quite an adventure, I hardly found any diamond but did manage to find an abandoned mine which always seem to have the cave spider spawners which are some scary sons of bitches I can tell you, they seem to be much faster and more aggressive than regular spiders and are a hell of a pain to deal with especially when there are other monsters around, oh and also monsters don't just blindly shamble towards you and fall in the lava pit yuor standing in front of anymore they actually walk around meaning that most of the time you have to kill them yourself. I just got as much iron as coal as I could then got the feck outta there the fast way, which basically consists of digging straight up and filling in stone and dirt blocks under you as you go.

The grassy valley in which I chose to set up, part of a plains biome

Entrance to my hidey hole (I have to use iron doors now that zombies can break them)

My temporary abode

 

Cave Spiders!

I started creating a wall roughly using the natural embankment edges as a guide, I soon realised that it may not have been such a good idea as when you make a wall at the bottom of a hill you have to make it pretty damn high otherwise the enemies can just jump onto to it from the ledge, but I guess if you made it on the top of the hill you wouldn’t be able to see much over it from the ground anyway and when I make the fences they shouldn’t be able to get over.

The beginning of the wall

After mapping out the wall I mined out a large room to the side of my living hole for some more cobble I started on the wall, after doing about 2 levels all round I used my Rei’s Minimap mod to illuminate the area inside the wall  to make building at night a bit easier, it’s pretty cool the way to can see a top down view of the dynamic lighting to make sure no spots are missed and to be honest it looks pretty great when all lit up, monsters still spawn in there occasionally, but unless you turn the ground into a sea of fire it’s unavoidable.

Everyday I'm minerin'

Luminicious, makes it both easier to see and keeps monsters at reasonable levels

Knowing full well that I was going to need some more diamond to make this whole process easier, and thus I decided to start Branch mining, I’d never done this before though on the first “branch” I managed to find a diamond cluster, which was quite exciting though after that nothing happened for quite a while and mining like this isn’t the most fun thing to do in Minecraft I can assure you, it’s almost like playing the pokies which I have done a few times with limited enthusiasm.

                           X = Tunnel "Trunk" 
                           B = Branch
                           S = Staircase
                           Y = Outpost (for supplies etc.)
                           
                           
          B       B                 B       B
          B       B                 B       B
          B       B                 B       B
          B       B                 B       B
          B       B                 B       B
          B       B                 B       B
          B       B       YYY       B       B
X X X X X X X X X X X X X YYY X X X X X X X X X X X X
          B       B       YYY       B       B
          B       B        S        B       B
          B       B        S        B       B
          B       B        S        B       B
          B       B        S        B       B
          B       B        S        B       B

Branch Mining Diagram, simple and (supposedly) effective

So I decided to just take the diamonds I had and keep building, and build I did as I mentioned before I had to make the wall higher in some parts and even dig away at the hills that were too close to the edge. Once I had finished, I made a wooden walkway with stairs (because of the changing levels) around the top of the inner wall and then started lining the top of the wall with fences to give it that extra bit of height, as fences are 1.5 blocks high for monsters and players. I then picked certain points to put both ladders up to the walkway and create iron doors for exit and entry, the doors were controlled by pressure plates on the inside and buttons on the outside which monsters can’t (or just don’t) press. This was not by any means a player proof wall (which is actually impossible to do without server commands) but it would keep out at least most of the monsters and provide a nice little enclosure for my house.

The finished outer (guard) wall, I made a small wheat and reed farm as well as fencing off the chasm

Unfortunately while doing this though I found I was going to need quite a large amount of wood that was  and I also was sick of going back and forth from my main storage house in order to get more supplies, this coupled with the amount of items I was going to need and the long process of trying to find diamonds led to me eventually succumbing to using mods again, it’s not that I didn’t still want to have the authentic Minecraft experience, I still wanted to it was just that doing things the classic way you have to really draw the line between what you want to build and what you have the patience to gather all the resources for to be able to build. It all comes back to the point made by Zero Punctuation’s Minecraft review is what you get out of Minecraft depends on what you put into it, so if you want to put in the hours and find enough gold to make a golden statue of yourself or whoever else, you’ll love it all the more because you put in the hard yards to get the resources to make it,  though I spose you can still be proud of what you’ve done even if you’ve used mods to give yourself items, I mean you still have to think up and create the damn thing don’t you. I suppose I just like being creative in the Survival environment, I know I can get all of the resources the real way if I wanted to, it’s just that when I’m try to build something I don’t want to slow myself down with the actual collecting of the resources again. And there’s the other fact of using more resources, what if I wanted a room with a floor made of golden blocks? It’d take weeks to get that much gold and I’m not even going to mention doing it with diamond blocks.

I wouldn't think this guy farmed all those resources himself (From Minecraft Gallery)

So basically that’s what I’ve decided, I’ll try to play the game as straight as possible while still having fun, I’ll I still have health and hunger on and will try and limit my flying to just taking pictures, with my existing resources I’m not really sure what I’m going to do, I don’t know whether do use them as I go or keep them there just for show, but I’ll work something out.I still have to do all the achievements as well, I’ve never actually been to the end as yet and It will be exciting to finally finish Minecraft properly.

JD

My power has returned