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

Minecraft Adventures: Mikeland Factions Spawn, another winner

Hello again just a quick post on the newest design of the Mikeland Factions spawn.For whatever reason you didn't know Mikeland Factions is a Minecraft server I visit from time to time, sometimes to play other times to just have a look at what's been made, most prominently the spawn area which is remade from time to time after certain patches, similar to other SMP servers.

The first time I featured one of their spawn areas it was a giant roman/medieval coliseum style walls and architecture with a bit of Chinese thrown in. This time they've done the "simple large structure" design and made one hell of a neat looking tree.It reminds me of our attempt to make something similar and I think we did a pretty good job. This of course is rather a pro job as they have obviously made the tree to look like an actual tree not a Minecraft tree and it seems to work quite well.

These were taken with the basic Minecraft texture pack.

Here's a couple of shots with my LB Photorealism texture pack

I took some shots of the area around the base and found some interesting sights apparently now there's someway to put play models in the world that move by themselves, it's really weird, kind of like a Herobrine thing.. There were models of Notch and Mike Sheen himself too, and no I don't know what that guy in the cage had done or why you should not let him out.

This is the gate to the Nether, work in progress apparently

 I really should have taken some pics of the previous ones though they may not have been that spectacular. I didn't get around to playing on the server again as I just couldn't talk smooth enough to get into a faction this time, I think it just gets harder each time I come back, and I really wouldn't blame people. The amount of  betraying and backstabbing that goes on is horrendous, especially on servers where PvP is allowed.You sort of need to play for a bit by yourself then with others until they trust you enough to take you in and I really couldn't be bothered doing that again not when I have my so awesome "unmodded" singleplayer experience..

JD

The Past and Times of Yore: GTA4, The Lost and the Damned, blacktop rollin'

Also Known As: Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned, Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City
Also on: PS3, X360
Genre: Compilation
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: Rockstar North

I may have mentioned this ”expansion” in a previous post but only very briefly, The Lost and the Damned does deserve more recognition then just a few lines in a post mainly about the other one. I had never really bothered purchasing any of the previous GTA ‘Episode’ i.e. the previous Liberty City stories or the Vice City stories but because they were given such high praises by both my friends and the critics and also because GTA4 has been one of my favourite games ever, so I had to comply. GTA4 had a lot of intertwining storylines in fact it could have made 2 or 3 more ‘spinoff’ games based on just that game world alone as they are a great way of getting more play out of a game rather than just doing the main storyline again and again.

Johnny Klebitz and his custom "Hexer" bike which is new to GTA I might add as well as a whole heap more

Anyway, the Lost and the Damned is the story behind a Motorcycle gang who featured in GTA4, the protagonist is Johnny, a veteran member of the gang and it’s Vice President the story basically tells of the returning of Billy, the reckless and volatile club president and the violence and chaos that ensues both inside the club and with the clubs main rivals: The Angels of Death. You may remember Johnny from such GTA4 missions as ‘Blow your Cover’ and ‘Museum Piece’ and yes you do go through those missions again from Johnny’s point of view. I must admit though, the times you briefly see Johnny in those scenes he seems quite a bit different from what he is in the instance it’s almost like Johnny was just another crazy friend-of-a-friend that Niko meets but now he’s the protagonist and therefore one of the only calm and collected characters in the game. Apart from the members of the lost motorcycle club there is a few new faces but most of the characters that Johnny interacts with outside the club are characters that you have seen before.

From left to right some of "The Lost MC" members: Terry, Angus, Brian, Jimmy and Johnny

You start in the Alderney Island this time around largely based around the Lost Clubhouse situated there. The main difference that The Lost and the Damned (TLAD) has to GTA4 is that throughout most of the game you will be riding a motorcycle. This is possibly the main reason I enjoy this game as I loved the motorcycles you had in GTA4 and this one gives the same and much more, motorcycles give a different feel than cars and apparently you could even notice that when you drove cars with Johnny that he didn’t handle them as well as Niko did and vice-versa with the bikes. Almost every mission involved bikes in some way including gang wars while riding with your crew and motorcycle thefts for profit even the racing missions where you have a baseball bat and could knock other opponents off their bikes (which was immense fun I can assure you). One of the problems though is that sometimes the slightest thing on the road, for example a piece of wood can have odd results, sometimes you just run over it but other times it launches you 5m in the air in a full on frontflip often resulting in you crashing and losing the race, but I guess it’s all the more spectacular. The episodes games are obviously fairly short (only a third of the missions available in GTA4) but there’s still a decent amount of fun to be had, there’s the usual line of side missions and random encounters throughout the story, Congressman Thomas Stubbs who you didn’t see in the previous game makes an appearance and provides some comic relief from the otherwise dark and gritty storyline.

Being on a motorcycle and riding with others on motorcycles, I just can't get enough

Checkpoints are a new feature in the game which allow you to continue a mission from different points rather than starting again. This time around you can call on your biker buddies Terry and Clay to come help you on certain missions in which the way they help you changes each time, sometimes giving you in instructions for tactics or to set up ambushes (who would have thought?) also your ‘The Lost’ gang members will gain experience and be better at fighting. You can also use your fellow gang members for delivery of guns and bikes if you may happen to lose your motorcycle in some way and god forbid you don’t want to be seen driving a car. As well as the new motorcycles (and some cars) that were included in the game there are a few new types of guns including a very useful automatic pistol, a very powerful but short range sawed off shotgun, an even more powerful rapid fire assault shotgun a grenade launcher, pipe bombs and pool cues (of course).There is thankfully new music around this time to give a more biker feel to things, I especially love listening to “You’re going to Hell” by Alice Cooper. 

The Sawn-off Shotgun, very powerful, as long as you're only two metres away or less

As I said before I loved riding bikes in GTA4 and that’s what makes this one so good for me, it’s nothing complicated just good old gang wars, in fact it’s probably even less action packed then GTA4, not to mention TBOGT which is a veritable orgy of explosions. There’s something to be said about cruising down the highway on your chopper with the sunset in the background and music on your, er stereo, it’s something I really want to do if I ever have enough money for it. The Lost and the Damned is essential if you’ve played and liked Grand Theft Auto 4 as it’s the same city just a different story and cast and if you happen to like Motorcycles it’s even better.

JD

I can apparently backflip a motorcycle without trying, or meaning to in the first place

Minecraft Adventures: Ozgamerparty and the Tribalfield reunion

Some say that if people have lost interest in something they enjoyed it doesn’t take much to get them interested again, you just basically have to show them. It’s like the way you see someone playing this old game that you used to play and having heaps of fun, it makes you want to go home and play it too, or it could just be the lure of a fresh start in a new playing field from an old friend, in our case the old friend was Norc, the new playing field was Ozgamerparty and the fresh start was (yet another) brand new map.

In the aftermath of the last big tirade on the server we all just basically left ourselves to our own devices. I did stuff, some of it Minecraft stuff though I always did want to go back, and after hearing that our previous Lord and Master NoRC had announced his new gaming community Ozgamerparty complete with fully loaded Minecraft server was all it took for us to jump at the chance I was only a month into playing SWTOR before I stopped to start building again, and build we did. Most people from the old tribalfield were back on, factions were back, pretty much nothing had changed apart from the changes to Minecraft itself,a nd there had been a lot which I went into detail with in my last minecrafty post. I went in wanting to be part of a faction community and help build stuff that it needed and that’s exactly what I did.

An early shot of the Inquisition village

Another shot (photo by Kieran_Cahill)

I logged on and did everything I needed to on the forums and pretty soon I was back with my usual partners in crime, Kieran_Cahill and WarpageHD and before long we had built a nice gazebo for the centre of our claim. I of course started doing what I usually do when I see a whole lot of chests filled with random crap, yes I go and organize the shit out of it,  before long I had dug out an area underneath the gazebo and laid out chests and signs to organize the resources as well as some workbenches and torches cause you need that stuff don’t you. We then started to set up farms and houses and I created a mushrooms farm (which sort of worked) and after being harangued by monsters we decided to make a fence and doors around the Gazebo.  We christened the town "Inquisition" I also suggested that our faction be named TCF (The Chosen Few)  we also even had a secret base going in the desert.

TCF storage room

Alchemy Room

Around this time Angrathar and Lupidoo briefly joined our faction as Joro and Norc were still working out the faction system they had to reset all claims and you could probably guess what happened after that featuring what I remember a raiding party consisting of Mr_Cyanide, Mr_Azurite and Peanut who successfully managed to claim over our entire base and storage area and raid the chests. Once we alerted Joro and Norc about this certain thing started happening, namely TNT started falling from the sky, then the server getting appropriately reset, Most of which I have included in the video below. Most of them ended up leaving anyway with us taken the opportunity to raid Cyanide's lair.

Yerp that's TNT

A video of the TNT raining chaos that ended the debacle plus a few strong words from NorC

Nuff' said

After all that was taken care of soon we had created a pretty neat looking storage room with a carpet/wood floor brick walls and wooden roof, which included an enchanting table with sticky piston powered bookshelves, furnace wall and an alchemy room. We constructed stone paths around the town area and I decided to start making my Jungle TreeHouse which was made out of jungle logs and leaves, I soon found that jungle trees were the fastest way of getting wood, as they are very tall, 4 blocks thick and are surrounded by vines which you can use to climb to the top. You can actually still see a bald patch in the nearby jungle where I went crazy with the shears. I had a lot of fun making the brown carpet for my room as I had to raid about 7 or 8 dungeons before I had enough cocoa beans to make enough brown dye. Of course this was before I was told that you could dye a living sheeps wool and then get them to breed so instead of going around raiding so many freakin dungeons I could have just dyed two sheep brown then got them to breed and they would have made a brown lamb and I could have just done that over and over again in our sheep pen, remind me to do that too when I run out of lapis lzuli.

Later image of Inquisition

Pretty soon we had the arrival of the infamous Jason1211 who we included in our faction being the friendly people we are, he then basically did a whole bunch of crap including somehow getting items from creative mode and moving them into Survival making a new claim within our claim and making this gigantic pillar shaped base in the sky to store his mass amount of goodies. Some time after this resulted in Norc warping us up to the complex and giving us superpowers so we could burn the items and demolish the whole thing making one hell of an interesting waterfall. And thus ended the terror of Jason, he basically said that everything he makes just gets destroyed and he’s leaving for good. In some ways I think we miss him as annoying sometimes as he was he was most often entertaining. I mean I don’t pvp myself but even Warpage, Kieran and Cyanide’s little skirmishes together had a certain charm to it as long as there’s no base defecation involved.

Jason's Tower exterior on the OZgamerparty real-time map

Me and Kakashi inside the tower

oops, must have been water underneath there

Here's a video of us riding the waterfall all the way down after we've destroyed pretty much all the tower. Music is: Ohio Players - Love Rollercoaster and Barrington Levi - Here I Come (yes it is a kind of odd selection)

Below are some photos and video of the event created by Joro, it was basically just us armed with whatever we were given fighting off hordes of spawned zombies and giants, not to mention all the monsters that had spawned there already, pretty soon we had bows and arrows and we’re taking on a group of Ghasts which got quite intense indeed. The finale was a battle with a spawned Nether Dragon who we noticed actually destroyed things where it flew as it demolished half the Jungle before we eventually killed it.

The dudes!

Giants!

Ghasts!

Enderdragon! (photo by Kieran_Cahill)

Here's a video of the encounter

Amongst the other things which got built were Warpage’s “Creeper Head” house complete with a sticky piston powered collapsing mouth entrance and also Lupidoo had built a house, which was full of traps as he was trap crazy for awhile, I couldn’t walk anywhere without running into (or onto) a working or not working supposed trap of his, I thought he was supposed to be a Panda who lived in the Jungle? Anyway he also made us a faction flag which I swear is already the flag for some country.

For TCF!

Me and Lupi experimenting with some Redstone work, song is 'Internet Friends' by Knife Party

In regards to what was happening around us, Mystic Duck’s town of DPRS was in fairly full form to the east of us in which we created a large underground railway to connect the two towns in which Lupidoo and I dug out the stairway and I made the station on the top but apart from that we were fairly oblivious to others around us apart from random people who pop out of our nether portal cause of some flaw with nether portals that pushes you out the nearest one in the overworld. Other things that happened included Keiran created a pretty huge office building which I decided I’ve be responsible for decorating two floors of, and I reckon it turned out pretty well, one floor was the reception, the other was a club I called “The Creeper Club” (yes I’ll admit I didn’t put too much thought into the name) I got most of my design from the Minecraft Furniture site and server which is a great resource in which I found designs for things including, couches, pool tables, a piano and of course the bar design.

The Democratic Republic of Sandwich

The Lobby

The 'Creeper Club'

The bottom two levels of the building

Round about this time Bioware had announced that there would be a free week of SWTOR available for returning players, and since I had cancelled my account for Minecraftin  purposes this was the ideal time to play. I came back a couple of times to find that not much had happened apart from Kieran making one freakin huge express railway which went all the way to our not so secret base in the desert (well one of the deserts) I had been away for a while but decided to come back at one point, and the whole faction base seemed fine, then the next night I come back in and everything Is royally f’ed up griefed looted and whatnot.

Inquisition after the reckoning, it's been pretty much cleaned out now though the larger buildings are still standing

Kieran's Minecraft Interstate (photo by Kieran_Cahill)

Now I’m beyond caring about this kind of stuff bit it is a bit of a shame, I don’t really know what I’d rather, for them too not touch anything at all except loot the chests or for them to grief everything we’ve made and leave our stuff. Well life goes on I suppose I’ve recently taken up with Lupidoo and his VIPA Theme park making faction which quite fun as they had a maze, an obstacle course and a rollercoaster going. But due to the arrival of the third installment of Diablo we’ve got other things on our minds now not to mention I just can't get away from SWTOR.

Lupidoo's VIPA Amusement Park

It’s a lot of fun to play and build with people but it is hard if for example you’re like me and don’t appreciate raiding and griefing, I’m just wondering why I bother making anything significant in multiplayer at all, sometimes I do think of going on Fusionblox again, as I’ve been back there numerous times in order to fix connection issues and have found that my tree mansion was pretty much intact and untouched for about a month before the survival map got reset in order to makes use of the new updated features. I’ve never really thought of us as a raiding/griefing server but I guess we are, it just strikes me as odd how claimed land can still get affected but I’m not going to get into all that.

I am thinking to myself of actually doing an experiment where I create a new singleplayer map and just play the game, and play it without mods like singleplayercommands and toomanyitems especially since Minecraft now has an ending (well sortof) . I probably felt this way the most after watching the gameplay for the XBOX360 Edition of Minecraft which I noticed features such as in game tutorials inc helpful windows that come up telling you about the particular item you have selected.

Minecraft Xbox Gameplay Review by BobLob

The PC version could really do with this too, as whenever I play multiplayer now it seems that some people are just pro at it and are either pooping out diamonds already or have built a giant redstone powered base that can give you any item you can  think of, I reckon it’s best when you start off with nothing, but of course you always get to the point where you have a good base and a stable food and resource income, so what next?

I will get round to doing that sooner or later, singleplayer in itself is a sanctuary for friendly builders and creators like me who just happen to like doing it in survival mode and I always like going back to basics. I’ll be on the Ozgamerparty server for the time being, though I’d hate to say it but Minecraft after all this time seems to have run it’s end for me, it’s this harrowing experience when you could do anything but end up just jumping around and exploring which is fun I guess but needs more meaning, and that’s always been the problem of Minecraft, the tutorials and information from the xbox version would help but I guess you just have to create your own fun in the end. But the Minecraft adventures don’t end there of course.

JD

I'd rather be lonely than live in fear