Oh gawd, 3rd level pretty much done, well it’s
almost there, I’m beginning to think what will I do after this damn thing’s
finished as the whole point of this endeavour and post topic was to finish all
of the achievements which meant getting to the end with limited use of mods and
no giving free resources to myself but that abruptly ended once I decided to
make this massive mutha of a house. The other thing I regret is destroying the
current resources I had when I decided to build the house, I should have just
left them somewhere and come back to them once I’d finished the damn thing
though I’d probably though I’d never go back to doing what I was doing before
but I reckon I will. Annoyingly I’ll have to give myself some supplies and try
to remember what I had in the past when I got to that stage but that’s just my
fault, I should be able to do most of the achievements without cheating though
some are quite hard and would take awhile (especially the End ones) so I may
have to lax a bit on those.
Top level of the house pretty much finished.
I actually have done the whole process of getting the
required resources (almost), travelling to the end and defeating the Dragon
while trying not to cheat with resources. I did this pretty much in a single go
I got to the point where I had all the Blaze
Powder I needed but I cbf trying to find 12 Endermen to get their Ender
Pearls so I gave myself those, I also didn’t play the end properly as I
just wanted to see what it was like and what happened so I just loaded the fack
up in highly enchanted diamond armour and weapons, turned flying on and fought
that Dragon which still took awhile having to destroy all the towers first, I
can’t image how long it would take doing it the right way though it seems it
would take a while though it appears from this
man’s series that it’s a lot easier and safer in numbers. The ending is
kind of weird though, I won’t spoil it but ohh the dialogue.
In other news patches 1.5 “The Redstone Update” and
subsequently patches 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 have arrived, I found this cool little short video explaining
most of the new features and yes I am too lazy to do it myself. Not being a
user of Redstone at all really the most prominent new feature for me was the
introduction of Quartz
which funnily enough I started using after Richard showed it to me when we
started our Underground
City and have used it thoroughly throughout my building process, and it
works wonders for bathrooms, pools and toilets where the only real option you
had was stone slabs or white wool. Embarrassingly until I viewed the info about
the update myself I never actually knew where it came from , gawd I have so
turned into a Creative mode “artiste”
Minecraft 1.5 Trailer by TheFarLands
A brief recap of what I had done in the
last post. I’d finished and roofed off the lobby and completed the middle
level complete with some balconies and the huge outdoor mine entrance and
Minecart system, and it was now time to work on the top level which may or may
not be the very top level as I may decide to include an attic or sun room I
suppose the better word for it may be.
In the interim I had made a nice little balcony for the
dining room/dancefloor and shortly after it started rainingso I realised that almost every area outside
was going to need some sort of weather protection so I extended the balcony
across the minecart tracks entry/exit and made sure the docking/packing
stations were covered too. I also added a trim to the front of the house which
made it look a lot better. This was possible due to wooden slabs being around
now which make decoration and building so much easier, I just wish that they’d
make wool slabs and stairs.
Ballroom balcony
Resource rails balcony and shelters
Front roof trim
So the first thing I had to do was create the floor/roof
which wasn’t too hard really just too quite a while coving the entire bulk part
of the house in a layer of spruce wood planks which is the official roof/floor
of the house and remembering leave a gap underneath as I then had to build and
design the roof for the second level. The second level roof wasn’t going to be
anything fancy like the lobby as it was just going to be flat though I did take
a bit of time deciding how high it was going to be.
Man that took a lot of time to cover
I built the roof over the
dining/ballroom and atrium in spruce wood planks then designed light that was
built into the roof using oak logs and lightstone, I also used some lightstone
to make wooden chandeliers similar to the stone ones in the lobby.
Dining/Ballroom Roof
I did the roof over the pool, sauna and spa in birch wood
with birch logs as a feature with lightstone, I also made some changes to this
area which involved replacing the birch plank floor with the new chiselled
quartz block. I actually used Quartz quite a bit
once I discovered it had been put in as of 1.5, I not only used it for the
floor of the general area I used blocks of quartz and quartz stairs as the
stairs for the pool and I also used roman-esqe pillar quartz blocks for the
edge of the spa as well as normal quartz blocks for the floor. I also had to
change the chimney for the sauna and right angle it out the wall as it was
originally protruding up through the space where I had designated for my
bedroom. I made the resource room roof just out of the same oak wood and made log and torch chandeliers as it didn't really need anything fancy.
Pool/Spa/Sauna room roof
The newly quartz'ed Spa
Chiseled quartz block floor
Adjusting the Sauna vent
Once I had all that done, I then remembered I had to make a
stairway (or two) up to the top level, I didn’t make them too complicated, just
spruce wood planks and stairs and fences, I’m using fences quite a bit actually
I kind of which they were in the same colour of the wood. The stairs took me a
couple of tries to get right as when I first made them going on an almost right
angle they both came up at the same place so I had to lengthen one with a flat
part. I even had a crisis where the fire from the forge entrance down below
caught onto the stairway and destroyed the stairs as well as a chunk of the
upstairs library corner, managed to fix it without any trouble though, I also
added some extra supports for one stairway. I found for some reason when I looked in the
direction of the Alchemy room it was draining my FPS like a bitch so I took out
all the item pictures of the alchemy potions and the brewing stands and it seemed
to work better but still lags a bit though, dunno what it could be, maybe the
mossy cobblestone? as it’s the only place I’ve used it.
East/West stairs
North/South stairs
Now that the lower floor had been done with a few minor
thing being cleared up and I had the stairwells entrance/exits made I now had
the difficult task of planning out the rooms, this is probably one of the
hardest things to do as you have to work out, what the F is each room going to
be for and what is going to be each room and how much room and how many rooms do
I need? This took quite a while but eventually I got the place planned out and
had a rough idea of what I was going to make.
North/South view of house plan
Birds eye view.
Viewing the house from the perspective of the Rei’s Minimap
the southwestern room will be split into two I made one room the entertainment/games/lifestyle
room complete with arcade machines including pinball, table soccer, airhockey
and a train set as well as a stereo system, a tv and a gym corner. I originally
had a secondary door to my room but then decided to take it out and haven’t
thought of anything else to put there other than a bookcase but I’ll think of
that at some other time. The other side of that room I decided would be a band
room so I built a stage with speakers and creative use of daylight sensors and
redstone torches. On the stage I made a piano, a drum set and some er
microphones as I don’t really know how to make Minecraft guitars but anyway
that was enough, but anyway, I made some surrounding couches and jazzed up the
dancefloor with blocks of iron and gold which happen to look pretty shiny with
the Faerielight Texture pack. I then decided to change the walls to a single
bright wool colour and add some lighting, I should still add a balcony area if
I can find the room to make doors outside as every good entertainment area
needs a way to get outside heh.
Entertainment/Gym room
Band room
Before I started on the library area I needed to work out
what colour carpet was going where so I laid the carpet out in the library and
various rooms to make sure I wasn’t doubling up anywhere (though eventually
this was inevitable) For the library I carved out a fairly large rectangle of
the floorspace and covered the wall with spruce logs and created a fairly large
clay and stone brick fireplace with a flue. After trying various abstract
methods of stacking the bookshelves (triangles and single block towers like I
usually do) I decided a more traditional way would be better so I changed the
bookshelves to be inside the wall which looked much better. Due to the size and
height of the fireplace the library ended up being tall enough for two levels
so I made some stairs and balconies with more rows of bookshelves all the way
around the edges of the room, on the bottom level of one side I created a row
of enchanting tables which went from having a full stack of bookshelves to
having none. After that I made some tables and chairs and some brown couches in
the middle of the room, I also made a display of the egg spawners on the wall
and portraits of some of the rarest items in the game (Blaze Rod, Eye of Ender and Nether star) as the
centrepiece for the fireplace.
The Library
With the two northern rooms I had the idea of making one the
home cinema but had no idea what the other one would be and after thinking for
a while I decided to make it into a sort of tabletop/games internet cafe with
computers, card gaming tables and a bar, I made the home cinema next mostly out
of red and black wool and made the screen out of white wool with sound block
speakers all around. I made two levels of couches for seat, popcorn and fairy
floss machines and a shelf for snacks.
Internet Cafe room
Home Cinema
With the living quarters I had originally mapped the area
into 8 rooms but decided i should make one them into a toilet, I used quartz
column blocks for the walls and chiselled quartz blocks for the floor.had to move the wall of the entertainment
area over a bit to make room for the 4 cubicles and I also made a urinal, the
toilets themselves where pretty ludicrous made of white wool, trapdoors and
cauldrons full with water, and the hand dryers are just dispensers that I
suppose are supposed to blast hot air onto your hands (and face) and yes this
toilet is unisex and come to think of it I have to find a way to put doors in there. It’s all a bit silly but but this is Minecraft isn’t it? If I
only included facilities for the items in Minecraft that you use I would have
never been able to fill the whole house.
Sink, urinal and hand/face dryers in the toilet
Top view of toilet
The rest of the rooms I decided that they needed a way to
get outside so I made a long balcony across one side of the house, with the
rooms having windows both to the inside and outside of the house, I tried to
make the rooms a bit more private with 1 block high windows but really I could
just pretend they had curtains, I made the inside and outside entrances to my
room out of jungle logs and lightstone to look slightly different to the rest.
I messed around with the balcony roof design a bit as at one point I had to
remake the whole roof as it was too low and I wanted to put in glass to let
some sunlight in but keep the rain off obviously.
Shots of the balcony
I sort of wish you could put
glass panes in horizontally as I can’t really put the wood slabs and
glass
blocks together so it looks kind of chunky and I still think it’s a bit
too low
but anyway I think that’s only because the roof bit over my room is
higher
because of the higher jungle log design. I used some brick for the base
of the ballroom balcony but didn't for this balcony as I thought it would
make it look too bricky with the whole wall of the house being brick and the balcony being larger and not straight..
My private balcony
I decorated the rooms with a different colour wool floor
with two of the rooms having spruce wood walls, 4 having oak wood walls and my bedroom
I decorated with a jungle theme of jungle logs and a green wool floor, I was
originally going to have a room made with birch but that became the toilet. I
had a hard time deciding what to put in each room but basically they all have
the following.
A Double bed
Storage chests
A Fireplace
Bookshelves
A Jukebox
Flower pots
A crafting table
At least one window
Two doors one to inside one out to the balcony.
Girly room
Nature room
Cozy room
There was a myriad of other things I made just to jazz up
the rooms a bit including closets, shelves, tables and chairs with designs from
the Minecraft Furniture server
and site but overall I think my guests would be fairly happy. With myown room I made a levelled area for my bed
with the usual amenities around. I put my chests and crafting tables around the
edges. I had a bit of trouble decorating the rest of the room as I wasn’t quite
sure what to put in there, I wanted a fireplace and a spa/pool though I think I
made them a bit too big, I managed to fit a chair in nicely though my computer
gaming station and the fully stacked Enchanting table took up a bit of room as
well so I had to make do with a 4x4 meeting table instead of a 6x6 but I
suppose I can change that in the future.
My room in all it's glory
The last bit I had to work on was the middle main hall and
the hallway between the rooms, I carpeted it in yellow wool as with the
Faerielight texture pack it comes out as looking a lot like real carpet
compared to the other colours, I didn’t cover it to the edge and left one block
of the edge to make it more rug-like and it worked really well, I decided that
the house was lacking a central TV so I made one with speakers and a couch in a
corner near the games cafe. I continued the carpet down the hallway of the
living quarters and decorated the whole area with paintings, shelves,
lightstone and pot plants though there’s a bit too many around, I think I did
need more natural plantation as there’s not much on the third level so I
designed one of the rooms to be a “Flora” style room and might make some more
natural potplants around or even a tree.
The main hall between the rooms.
Living quarters hallway.
So that was pretty much it, there are still a few things I
need to work on. Need to add some windows on the upper wall to pretty much
every room and maybe a balcony for the entertainment/band room side, but that
can wait till I’ve done the roof which looks like it’s going to have no less
than 7 chimneys, 8 if you count the light beacon coming out though I might
think about adding a fireplace to the lobby if I can find room, also might add
some more vegetation around though there would be a hundred things I could think of by just zooming around looking at it.
Stay tuned for what could be the finale of this made scheme if
I can possibly get all of the exterior designs done as well as the roof and surrounding
wall.
Around November 2011 (gawd has it been that long) I wrote a
review for Battlefield
3 and at that time I hadquite a bit
of pressure to write the review for people to see what I thought of it and it
resulted in me doing the review when I’d only been playing the game for about a
week so the review was mainly me crapping on about what I disliked about the
game rather than doing a proper review, though technically my reviews aren’t
exactly textbook as they have a lot of my opinion in there. Anyway as you may
or may not know Battlefield
4 has been announced so I thought it would be a good time to make a sort of
follow-up post to that review.
Battlefield 4: Official 17 Minutes "Fishing in Baku" Gameplay Reveal
When I wrote the review I complained about quite a few
things, namely
The install process
The Singleplayer
The merged Classes System
The Minimap
The lack of Commander mode
Lack of two-seater jet.
But now I’ve learned to either like, compromise or just get
over these things and just enjoy the game, It’s really the only First person
shooter that I play as I’m not into FPS anymore really and I’ve grown to like
it even though it’s really not as enjoyable as BF2 was. The install process was
really a one-off, now I just copy and paste the files from my last install.
I’ve been reading about the singleplayer for BF4 and its apparently supposed to
be somewhat better this time but I’m really not that excited cause I know it’s
just going to be the same face-paced crap of the original except possibly this
time you might be playing as the same person the whole way through. Though
reading about it does really make me want to play it again and I might make a
run through the BF3 singleplayer again soon, I grant that Battlefield 3 is much
too arcade style to be a “base, briefing and choose weapons before level” type
of game but it’d be nice if you know what I mean.
Here we go indeed, how'd I get here again?
I never liked the merged classes system but somehow I got
used to it, I mainly play as Assault (Medic) though I go Engineer or Support as I
recently decided to take it up and I’m glad I did cause using the Mortar is
pretty damn fun, I even forgot I unlocked it. Which is part of the problem with
the mixed classed, with Battlefield 2 you had 3 different armies with three
different types of starting guns for each class but they were all marginally
the same for each class i.e. Assault had standard issue machine guns like the
M16 and AK47, Medic has slightly smaller versions of those and the engineer
classes had shotguns and when you got enough points you unlocked the classes 1
special weapon (until Euro force expansion where there was two) and this was a
hell of a lot simpler to work out then all the guns you get with BF3, not to
mention all the extra ones you receive as part of purchasing this and achieving
that etc. It made me wonder what the hell gun I was supposed to use and if I
used a new one, I would have to unlock all of the upgrades for it and also
trying to decide which damn scope to use is hella annoying and I cbf really
changing each time.
Aaaaa too many options, well I suppose they are useful.
I also had a hard time not going certain classes as they
were so overused namely Engineer and of course Recon. The way I deal with it
now is I go what my squad needs, if there is no Medic I be a Medic which is
usually the case, or Support or Engineer, the only class I don’t go at all is
Recon, as It’s the hardest class to play well and there are so many damn people
going it. I remember I went Sniper in BF2 most of the time as it seemed a lot
easier back then, even in Bad Company 2 I racked up a lot of kills as Recon.
There’s just something about Battlefield 3 that made me avoid the recon,
there’s a few of reasons:
You’re often a lone wolf and unless you’re skilled,you don’t contribute much to the squad/team
especially in Rush mode.
Lots of people go Recon as it mixes Spec Ops and Sniper from
BF2 two of the most popular classes.
You spend a bit of time running around finding a place to
hide with a good vantage point.
You feel guilty.
Oh sitting on the radio tower, how original
Of course there will be plenty of players who disagree with
me on thisand I know that all I need to
do is just play the class more as I do miss hiding in the bushes and taking out
enemies from afar, but I reckon I have more fun running around as Medic or
Support and helping my squad, I’ve only recently discovered I can use the
Mortar with support, it’s hard to use but it’s pretty fun. Engineer is probably
the most used class out of all of them so I rarely go them unless I’m in the
helicopter repairing it.
Mortar, quite possibly the laziest way of fighting, works best on infantry maps to the ire of most of the community.
The Minimap was so easily fixable I don’t know why I
bothered complaining about it, all I had to do was bind the see all map key to
caps lock though then of course YOU ACCIDENTALLY TYPE IN CAPS SOMETIMES. The
lack of Commander mode I just accepted, though there has been more and more evidence
of commander mode being in Battlefield 4 so I guess I can just look forward to
that. And finally the two seater jet, I don’t seem to try to get in Helicopters
or jets as much as I used to, of course I only sat in the back seat with jets
maybe their more hotly contested now or maybe I just prefer to go on foot. I’m
definitelya bit overwhelmed by all the
upgrades, I often just go iron sites as I’m really at a loss of which scope to
use and can’t really be bothered changing it every map. It took me quite a
while to work out that there were also upgrades for vehicles too which I
realised that the all things that were missing from BF2 i.e. the TV missile on
helicopters and Missile for the APC’s (in Back to Karkand) not to mention
auxiliary machineguns for tanks which annoying you can’t just use the right
mouse button for you have to actually switch weapons.
There's even separate unlocks for the chopper gunner and pilot.
Though these changes have been bearable and I must admit
despite my grievances I have had fun playing. The next thing I must
mentionthough were the many expansions
that kept the game alive.
Back to
Karkand – Probably my favourite,
this one introduced 4 maps from Battlefield 2 complete with the same vehicles
and weapons.
A good example of the difference of the Strike at Karkand map in BF2 and BF3
Close
Quarters – This one introduced some small, building-based maps akin to
Counter-strike and even included the Gun Mastermode obviously based on CS’s Gungame
Armored
Kill – Similar to BF2’s Armored
Fury, Armored Kill brought massive maps, new artillery vehicles and tanks,
ATV’s, an AC-130 Gunship and a Tank Superiority mode which I really have to see
if I can play sometime.
Aftermath
– Which was based on an earthquake ravaged Tehran came with new maps, vehicles
and anew weapon, the Crossbow.
Endgame -
And last but not least the interestingly named Endgame which features fast and
frantic gameplay, dirtbikes, dropships and the ‘Capture the Flag’ and Air
Superiority game modes. Endgame also included 4 maps inspired.
Да!У меня естьамериканский флаг, о нет!Где мояголоваушла!
I’m glad capture the flag was put in as it takes me back to
the days of Vietcong and changes the gameplay quite a bit when you’re half
shooting each other half trying to grab the flag. Air Superiority is something
that was apparently from Battlefield 1943 and put in at the last minute, a map
designed specifically for planes only where you spawn right in them which is
used with the Endgame.
Air Superiority Mode: if you view the high res you can see one of the Zeppelins on the top left which act as capture points.
Battlefield 4 is scheduled for October this year so it’s
still a while away I might make another post on what’s happening, but in the
meantime I’m just going to keep playing, maybe as Recon some more but we’ll
see, I must try and fly some aircraft too even though I’m crap at it. I love
Battlefield and will play whatever comes out next though depending on how much
they change it.
Hi all, As explained in my previous Minecraft Creations post,I agreed to create a building (a house of
course as I always do) for my friend Richard’s Town/World of Ralgon, I was
designated a spot right on the edge of town and I decided to challenge myself
to do a house in a sort of L-shape. I quickly got the idea for it to be a sort
of a long hallway which reminded me of the Jarl’s Longhouses of Skyrim so I
decided to name it the Hunter’s Hall.
The hall inside Ralgon
I decided to create the house using Spruce wood and logs as
we were using Misa’s 64x64 realism texture pack and the spruce wood worked
remarkably well for a “Woodland Hunter’s Hall” style. I designed the house to
be a fairly long straight hallway with an entrance at the front which opens
into a larger room which juts off to the left, I made the corners and the lower
trim with spruce wood logs and put the planks in the middle. I made the ceiling
using spruce wood stairs as the levels effect is now much easier to pull off
with the stairs now joining at the edges. I also made the it quite high as I
wanted it to look like a hall more than a house though I then got an idea to do
a second level balcony.
Side andd rear exteriror of the hall
I carved out some windows on the lower level and made the doorway
which was a bit close to the building next to it but meh couldn’t really do
anything about it. I did the carpet in brown wool with stone slabs for the
alchemy and furnace/anvil areas and laid out all the items inc chests, a
workbench and furnaces along the walls. I did a 2 block high wall and fence on
top around a corner for my room and fit most of the usual stuff in there and
made the bit next to it the Alchemy corner.
Front door
Inside from front (NPC heads!)
My room entrance and Alchemy Corner
Ceiling view of my room
I built a ladder up to the top level and fenced off the
balcony, this was going to be a sort of library level with the enchanting
table, bookshelves and seat for reading, I did try to put windows up there but
unfortunately they would have been right up against the roof on the outside and
didn’t look very good.
Balcony and Enchanting space
After that I began decorating the walls with item
pictures, I was originally just going to do pictures of the weapons and armour
but then decided to do all the tools as well items from wood to diamond, I also
made a display of the armour sets in the blacksmithing corner and some npc
heads on the other side of the furnaces.
Tools and Weapon item portraits
Armor item portraits
I reckon it came out pretty well, I hope my contribution was
adequate for the town, It may not be as big or spectacular as some of Richard’s
creations but hey at least it’s well furnished.
JD
Quite a nice shot of the hall with the sunrise (I think) over Ralgon.
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