The Past and Times of Yore: Star Wars Dark Forces XL: Much more then a Doom clone

Release Date: June 1995
Genre: First Person Shooter
Publisher: Lucasarts
Developer: Lucasarts
Platform: DOS/Windows/Playstation Network
Players: 1
Classification: ESRB: Teen (T)

Awhile ago my friend Brok discovered the site www.gog.com Good old Games which sells many classic games in an updated DRM-free format that can run on modern systems. His main objective was to gain a working version of the X-Wing and TIE Fighter collectors editions and we found there was not only those but a whole host of classic Star Wars games of which we purchased quite a few in bulk during the sale inc X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and the entire Jedi Knight series. For those of you who don’t know, Star Wars Dark Forces is the first games of the Jedi Knight series of games which also include Dark Forces II, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy which you’ll know from a previous review. Once I had purchased them from GOG.com I decided to play them in order starting with Dark Forces.

Hmm this hallway looks familiar

 Star Wars Dark forces was released in 1995 the time where the “3D” First person shooter was king and that king was for the most part the king was the Doom series, indeed being very similar to Doom the game was often compared to Doom but reviewers always indicated that the game had many features that improved upon its competitors. Dark Forces featured the ability to look up and down, duck and jump and featured an additional resource battery power  to run various equipment powerups such as the headlamp and night vision goggles. To make these changes the developers had to create a whole new game engine simply titled Jedi, this allowed them to create multi-levelled maps which unlike Doom had rooms directly above or below each other that you could walk around, moving conveyor belts and some objects that were fully 3D such as smaller starships (though these were quite obvious when you saw them). It also had a much more engaging and involved storyline then Doom, adding various puzzles and strategy to the game as well as finding secrets and requiring keycards to advance. Atmospheric effects such as fog and haze and animated textures and shading were also added to great effect.

You can't quite see it but there is red haze

Installing GoG games are fairly easy as the package is just downloaded from the main site then extracted with a built in installer. This is just as well as it uses Dosbox to run and I’ve messed around with that thing before but never got it to work, but fortunately this did and I was able to start playing. There has been many comparisons to GoG and Steam though there’s one major difference that I found was summed up well by Jerry Holkins (Tycho) of Penny Arcade, he says that Steam is more like a jukebox that (supposedly) holds or your games but if it goes offline or has login issues then you can’t play them, whereas GoG is a vending machine that gives you full access to the product after you pay for it. I’m not exactly sure which one I like more, I do like letting steam take control of everything (installation/updates etc) and it’s great when you’re trying to make sure you have the same game version as other people especially with older games like Unreal Tournament 2004, Origin also helped with Battlefield 1942 (as well as Warcraft 3) as I can remember a fair few times where a group of us had problems getting the correct version in order to play together.

Kyle ship The Moldy Crow currently piloted by Jan

Though the control setup menu the game provided was easy to use, I found that I just couldn’t quite get the setup I liked, I could use the mouse but it just didn’t feel right as the controls were set up in sections and you didn’t have an options to change the alt fire to a mouse button (though I didn’t use this very much). This was probably due to the fact that I had been the Doom series with ZDoom which if you didn’t know allows you to play any of the original Doom series with much more features including much better graphics, and the ability to jump and use the mouse to look free including up and down. So being used to this of course it was kind of hard to play a whole game stuck in the same view, you did actually have the ability to look up and down though this was used with keys and  wasn’t the same as the free mouselook we’re used to today. I did play a few levels in this mode but due to the difficulty and annoyance of not having free look I decided to try to find a similar type of mod to ZDoom I came across DarkXL which is basically exactly what I was looking for and it worked very well as it gave the game much sharper graphics and better controls.

A shot-in-shot of the DarkXL and the original in the top right

Though I soon found that although it worked well for the first few levels there began to be many bugs inc no sound and crashing on certain levels, impossible puzzles and blocked doors, missing cinematics and the inability to use several late-game weapons, I found this out much too late as it was only on the last few levels that I realised that I should have been able to pick up certain weapons and enemies should have dropped certain weapons though this hadn’t affected me as I did just fine with that I had. I did eventually get through the game (and use the weapons for a short time) but only through using various cheats though it was a lesser experience as a lot was missing from the later parts of the game, some of which I had to go back to the Dosbox version to see. I recently found that on the XL Engine site itself the game was actually listed as being in its Alpha stage and 98% towards beta (if I had only waited a bit longer XD) so basically I might go back to it again, either modded or unmodded, but I experienced enough for this review nonetheless.

Pew pew! Forcing entry into the imperial detention centre to find Crix Madine

So with that out of the way on to the story. You play as Kyle Katarn who you may already know from the other games in the Jedi Knight series, the developers had actually wanted to use Luke Skywalker but due to gameplay and story constraints they created Kyle Katarn as a completely new character. His brief history of having previously defected from the Empire after he found they were responsible for killing his parents (with the help of Jan Ors) and was now working as a mercenary for the Rebel Alliance. The main story involves Kyle investigating the Dark Troopers which had been created by Imperial General Rom Mohc about the massive starship the Arc Hammer, so you basically go from level to level gathering intelligence with some rescues and escapes along the way. Of all the planets visited during the game I only recognised Nar Shaddaa and Coruscant with the rest including Danuta, Anoat, Fest, Cal-Seti and many others which I didn’t recognise. I found the story pretty damn engaging as it kept me going through all of the issues faced with the mod and it was great to hear about all the new star wars lore and the origin of the Jedi Knight series which I hadn’t known since playing Jedi Academy heaps of times.

Our hero Kyle Katarn, looking a bit older then he does in Jedi Academy

General Mohc, Darth Vader and the Republic Informant Crix Madine

 As I mentioned playing the game with the DarkXL mod made it much better (at the start at least) I could move freely with the WASD keys I could look freely with the mouse, I could crouch and jump and touch buttons all good, the graphics were much, much better as you could run the game with your native desktop resolution. Basically the game plays the same way as Doom with you running around shooting enemies and completing objectives though armor is represented by “shield” power, I spent the majority of the time not using cheats as compared to Doom as I found the difficulty not too bad. The guns in the game are good and I had fun shooting down piles of Stormtroopers, you start with a generic laser pistol before almost instantly getting hold of the Stormtroooper laser rifle which basically becomes your mainstay weapon throughout the whole game, the thing is that good, the ammo is plentiful (most imperial soldiers drop rounds) and it shoots damn fast. My other weapon of choice was the imperial repeater gun, this thing has even more pewpew and shoots very fast but has weaker shots and takes power cells which are harder to find, and my last weapon of choice was thermal detonators which are plentiful on certain levels, when thrown these detonate on impact (unless using secondary fire) and you are able to throw a ridiculous amount in a short period of time (like 3 a second!) so taking down bosses with these was no problem at all.


Me pew-pew-pewing with the Stormtrooper laser rifle on Tak base, an early mission

Other weapons included the Jet fusion cutter which was a powerful but slow firing laser bolt gun, the I.M mines which are basically claymores, the Mortar gun which speaks for itself, the Stouker concussion rifle which is a long range AOE blast that tore apart most standard enemies and the Assault Cannon which is used by Dark Troopers and shoots both Plasma and rockets. The last three I unfortunately didn’t use very much due to them not being implemented in the mod yet and me having to add them in using cheats.

Fighting General Mohc with the Assault Cannon

 I mostly plowed through the levels as I enjoy the fast pace of these style of games but I did notice the subtle differences from the Doom and Jedi engines that I mentioned before, specifically things like "room-over-room" multi-levelled stages which had much more lift and platforms then Doom and made traversing some levels very confusing when you had rooms right on top of each other, there was also many instances which required you to solve puzzles which included changing switches in a sequence to open doors and moving entire ships to change from one section to the other. The game had multiple objectives which were part of the storyline so it gave the game much more depth than just randomly killing (and occasionally obtaining keycards) to get to the end of the level. One thing I didn’t like was that you couldn’t save anywhere you wanted like in Doom, you had respawn points but if the game crashed for example you could load a save you just had to start all over again which was a bit annoying.

As some places were multi-levelled, the map was had  the ability to change which level you were looking at though it was still tricky. You also had the ability to view your weapons, inventory and objectives which was a great help.

I didn’t cheat throughout most of the game (the actual invincibility cheat could not be used with the DarkXL mod) but I topped myself up with health and ammo at times towards the end. In regards to pickups there was you basic health and shield pickups as well as your laser ammo, power cells for those weapons that took them were a bit more sparse the same with mortar shells and rockets, most of the time you were overloaded with the ammo that the enemies in the level dropped. Then there was the other items that used battery pickups such as your headlamp, infra-red goggles and the air mask, the latter of which I could not work out which button it was to use it lol as there was also extra lives and restart points for when you died. Though by far my favourite was the weapons supercharge which triples your rate of fire for a short period of time, heaps of fun to use and together with the rest of the pickups made the whole experience more fun and interactive.

Me fighting Dark Troopers and other enemies using a variety of weapons about the Executor, this also shows me using the weapons supercharge and smuggling myself on the Arc Hammer

As I mentioned before the graphics for the original game were (understandably) quite poor as they only went up to 640x480 but the DarkXL mod you could have your desktop resolution which made it great looking and much sharper, whether you had the mod or not the locations still looked great, there was plenty of areas that I recognised from the movies such as the white interiors of some ships from that first scene in episode 4 and everything had that distinct Star Wars flare. The new engine was able to create gameplay and graphical elements such as fully 3D objects, atmospheric effects such as fog and haze, animated textures and shading which was evident in the levels as there were lots of things moving around such as bridges moving and ships flying around outside and many kinds of moving 3D objects. The textures do lack that flair that Doom had with the all the demonic imagery and gore but as this was a Star Wars game the developers had to stick to the content and the game being as old as it was you couldn’t do too much with just textures. The game’s retro sounding star wars score soundtrack really stood out to me and it was great when you recognised a tune and really added to the atmosphere and the situational music helped too, the sound effects were equally great, all in stereo as well.

Some levels inc this ice level on Anteevy which features flowing water and moving assembly lines

Although my experience with Dark forces wasn’t fully functional I suppose you say, I enjoyed it anyway and much more so with the Dark XL mod and when the mod is fully finished I dare say I’ll play it again. It was great to see the beginning of the Jedi Knight series one of which I am going to continue playing to see out the series. As I’ve said before Star Wars Dark Forces is not just a Doom clone, it has a whole new engine and many elements that make it different if not better and I will maintain that stance throughout the years to come. It’s said that almost every gamer has played an ID Software shooter in some form but this is a game every Star Wars fan of all types should play.

JD

Score: 8/10

Things I liked:

• Overall storyline and missions designed very well.  

• Level design very dynamic, multi-level system new for the time

• Fun and effective weapons and powerups 

Things I didn’t like

• Control system obviously dated and not able to be configured enough.

• No save-anywhere feature, respawn system annoying when have to start again from game crash

• Level textures somewhat dull due to nature of Star Wars Universe

I fist a Kell Dragon and then shoot up Jabba's ship

Humble Jedi beginnings.

My Usual Spiel: Sniper Elite 3, slow motion bullet surgery

Release Date: June 27th 2014
Genre: Tactical Shooter, Stealth
Publisher: Rebellion, 505 Games
Developer: Rebellion, 505 Games
Platform: Windows, Playstation 3 & 4, Xbox 360 & One
Players: 1 and Multiplayer
Classification: PEGI 18

I had only heard of the name Sniper Elite before seeing my housemate playing Sniper Elite 3 with his friend. I had always liked shooter games that had a “class” system i.e. the Battlefield style soldier/sniper/engineer/medic etc and shunned any shooter that had any type of specialization which were most often based on the stealth/sniping side of combat but from watching them playing Sniper Elite 3, it actually looked pretty fun. I had only barely known about the Sniper Elite series and wasn’t familiar with it, but after some quick research I found that he original Sniper Elite came out in 2005 starring the same protagonist as the one in this current game. The original Sniper Elite saw the plight of Karl Fairburne, an American OSS secret agent disguised as a German Sniper inserted into the Battle of Berlin in 1945 at the end of World War II with the objective of obtaining German Nuclear Technology before the Soviet Union can get their hands on it. The second in the series Sniper Elite V2 is more of a 1.5 the a  true sequel though having a slightly different story it was mainly the graphical upgrade and improved sniper mechanics which now included the “kill-cam” which follows the bullet as we see in Sniper Elite 3.

The loud sounding icon (top middle) means that it's safe to shoot your rifle while the sound is being masked, very useful.

When I saw my housemate and his friend playing Co-op story mode it looked awesome, so the next time it was on Steam sale for about $20 I wasted no time in purchasing it. As you have probably heard this time around instead of the bombed out and broken city Berlin it was the harsh western desert in between the Mediterranean and the Sahara, you again play as OSS Agent and Sniper Karl Fairburne sent to Tobruk, Libya to assist the allied forces, it then leads him on a quest through several different locations in the desert including rocky desert passes, oasis, old castle ruins and airfields which give a sort of India Jones feel. I won’t reveal the full extent of the story but basically after losing Tobruk you remove yourself from the frontline and go covert to investigate the location of General Franz Vahlen (a protege of Hitler sent to oversee the campaign in North Africa) and the whereabouts of a British informant that has infiltrated Vahlen's staff who has gone dark. It’s a great story that is tense from the start and gets you wondering what will happen next or more important what your objectives are going to be) as they are not all listed at the start so you never know how long things are going to go on until something else happens most probably a tank bursting out of the wall which result in much sighing and “here we go again” late in the game, I swear sometimes I just wanted to finish the damn level but it was all in good fun just wondering what other shit was going to go down.

Cinematic's between levels were done with storyboard art.

Interestingly enough this time when I started up the story mode I didn’t play on easy, just the recommended level, I’m going to try this from now on, playing the game in normal to see how I go and I’ve got to say I went pretty well, I chose the default ‘Marksman’ setting which had simplified bullet ballistics and fairly unforgiving enemies. Right away the game was pretty damn fun, the first level gets you to grips with the sniping straight away as you get your first taste of the slow motion bullet time, with the bullet assist on you basically aim then click E to hold your breath and you zoom in more and a little red diamond appears to tell you where your bullet will actually land due to bullet drops, this is extremely useful and you watch as your bullet tears in slow motion right through the skull of the German artillery spotter then another goes through the gasoline tank of an artillery truck blowing them sky high the former being done in x-ray to see just where you hit. Most of the time you are being very stealthy throughout the missions, so the choice of equipment was paramount, you are able to upgrade your weapons and other accessories such as grenades, tripmines and your binoculars. My usual loadout included the “Welrod” silenced pistol, this thing was invaluable being the only silenced weapon in the game, the amount of times I headshot enemies from close range with this thing to keep quiet was huge, Basically if I couldn’t use my rifle I either snuck up and melee stealth killed them or used the welrod if they were too far away. I had a choice of semi-automatic machine guns which didn’t really matter except in rare circumstances where I was out of Welrod ammo or just needed to gun someone down at close range so most of the time I just took the best available, the same with the rifles though my favourite was the “Gewehr 43” a German rifle which was the weakest but had the least recoil and was better than the standard M1 Garand. I didn’t really care what else I took along but made sure I had plenty of grenades and medpacks.

My basic playstyle was being very stealthy and cautious and as I soon found going in “loud” with guns blazing did not work well at all, my friend and I once tried doing a single player mission together and quickly found that unless you meticulously worked together timing your movements and shots it was just too hard to keep things running smoothly. When starting missions you receive your initial objectives and are able to change your loadout in which you have multiple slots, which helps when you have multiple weapon setups for different situations. When I started I usually scanned the area with my binoculars looking for enemies, vehicles, objects etc anything that I could spot before moving out. Spotting enemies with your binoculars has distinct advantages like being able to see the spotted enemy through obstacles and hover over them to see their rank and alertness as officers are more cautious and can spot you quicker and from further away. One of the best things you could find was something that made noise but didn’t alert nearby enemies, for example on one of the first levels “Gaberoun” you start behind a guard you is trying to fix a faulty generator, you come across these at certain times and by sabotaging them they make periodical banging and popping sounds which can mask your shots. So finding one of these is great as all you need to do is time your shots for when the machine is making noise and you are able to fire your rifle without alerting anyone unless of course they find a body though you can move the bodies if needed. There are various types of noise-making things that you find on the mission and they are a great help because firing your rifle too much in the one spot will lead to enemies coming to investigate.

Spotting and tagging with binoculars is very helpful in both game modes, in singleplayer you can see their stats and alert state.

Most of the time I made it through ok, I used a combination of my rife and silenced pistol and often just sneaked past enemies to get through though in the later missions I saved a LOT, often before doing anything particularly risky and this helped immensely with trial and error. Some of the mission objectives are pretty spectacular, you have to blow up a lot of things and there a few tricks that make it very satisfying. Most of the main mission objectives require you to gather intel or assassinate a particular enemy, sometimes you get to find and release prisoners which is pretty cool, though in most of the later missions you can bet your bottom dollar  that a tank or armored vehicle of some kind is going to come crashing through a wall and start patrolling around. There are several ways to deal with tanks, you can shoot through a part of their armour to get to the fuel tank though this takes a few shots which armour piercing bullets help with, I either used this tactic or laid some mines and dynamite in its path then blew them up with a sniper shot both of which are immensely satisfying as trying to tank down a tank that can blow you up in a second is pretty damn scary but thrilling. When finishing a mission your points are tallied and you actually level up as your profile is tied to the multiplayer mode as well though you obviously gain a lot more points for killing players and winning matches then playing singleplayer, there is also many collectibles inc war diaries and collectible cards other things to find like sniper nests and long shots oh and lots and lots of achievements as usual. I only played through the singleplayer on marksman but that will be all as that’s enough I think for now after that it was on to the multiplayer mode.

Playing hide with the tank

Multiplayer is pretty much level with the singleplayer by my view, you may not have the slow motion bullet time (well the lengthier ones anyway) but you have the terrific thrill of hunting each other alone or in teams. You can even customise which model you want to use in the game, after a while I opted for a German elite as I liked using the Gewehr rifle, so I gave myself all other German weapons too including the MP40 and Luger pistol, I’ve also got some mines and grenades but don’t use them as much as I should. When I started playing Sniper Elite multiplayer I wasn’t sure what to expect although I had seen it being played before, I wondered whether it was going to be lots of hiding and waiting around to spot someone, or was it going to be people running around all over the place taking pot shots at each other. Thankfully there’s an even mix, 

Having multiple gear loadouts helps a lot

I’ll admit that it’s at its best when there are lots of players in a server as you have lots more target to keep you from getting bored. My favourite mode is probably team deathmatch as there is a lot of comradery when playing with teammates, to win you need to either reach the target score of “what is usually” 1500 or have the highest score when the time runs out. Other game modes included deathmatch which wasn’t so good because you lost the “team player” aspect of it when you were only out for yourself and I often found myself just running through building to building playing cat and mouse with machine guns especially on one particular city level where everyone seemed to be hiding and no-one came out. Another interesting mode that I thought was pretty cool was the ‘no-cross’ mode which as you probably guessed keeps the teams on either side of the map and you are not able to cross, in this mode some existing maps are edited by adding in either natural chasms or rivers or made barricades to keep you from accessing the other side. It also introduces new maps one of which being this giant chasm based on the last singleplayer level with you shooting across cliffs on the opposite side through concrete bunkers which was really cool.

Me and my friend AllergictoExplosions on Blue, against a team of level 50's and one 47, hmmmm

There aren't many night maps, maybe because it's a lot easier to hide.

My housemate and I found it best to spot first rather than shoot first as if you spotted an enemy and then a teammate shot them your team would get much more points than if you just shot them yourself without spotting. My usual playstyle was to find a good non-obvious spot to stay for a bit, yes stay for a bit, I’d call it camping but technically it’s not unless you happen to stay in the one place the entire round. Technically though camping in a Sniper game is different from camping in a game such as Battlefield 4 where sitting in the same spot for longer than even 10 minutes is considered camping but tbh if you’re a Sniper and you’re using a long range sniper rifle and scope it’s impossible NOT to camp, that’s what snipers do, they find a good vantage point and sit there, until someone spots you of course then you have to move. This was one of the few games where people didn’t really complain about cheating (though still lag) and everyone was mostly friendly and cooperative, sure makes a difference then playing a games like CS, playing in teams is great fun with the spotting and the teamwork it all works really well. There is little to no assists in multiplayer as you’d expect, there are many parameter when making a server, things like headshots only, one shot rifle kills, bullet drop, aim assist and even scope glint.

Short video of a multiplayer round I played, shows how spotting and scoring works basically.

I haven’t much to say about the graphics just that they were damn awesome, especially the lighting, during the night it’s very tense and espionage-esqe and during the afternoon goddamn that sun glare and shadows look amazing. There’s a huge amount of detail that goes into some of the things you see like for example the helmets have this realistic weathered beaten look and even the plants and palm trees look as detailed as they should be. I wasn’t running at full as I was getting pretty good fps (50-60) most of the time but things still looked awesome, the x-ray slow motion shots looked amazing and never got old, no matter where you hit them, the skull, the lungs the testicles it was all a pleasure to watch, the hard hitting and brutal sound effects accentuated this with the cracking of the skull or whatever else you had shot in their body. The sound effects were pretty awesome from the echoey explosion of your gun firing to the sound of a tank rolling around were all very well done, this was complimented by an excellent soundtrack of orchestral music coupled with tense battle and spy tracks and classic WW2 movie music which really added to the theme. I was glad there was at least some music when you were sneaking around but there seemed to also be triggered music that gets more intense if you happen to alert the guards or get into a battle in multiplayer.

The music in these opening scenes was terrific

Overall I enjoyed (and am enjoying) Sniper Elite 3, I never thought I’d get into a game based mostly on Sniping but it’s been pretty good and the multiplayer has too, I swear I could watch those slow motion x-ray testicles get shot through like ten times before it got old. It’s really the type of game I’d only play through once though. I must mention that there is an expansion called “Hunt the Grey Wolf” which is free to purchase as DLC and is basically an extra mission allowing you to kill Hitler in lots of different ways as I’ve seen in a video but I’ll leave that up to you if you’d like to purchase as the main game is enough for me. I can't really think of much I didn't like, apart from a few issues with multiplayer inc how it can be dull at times making you impatient and the small amount of australian servers but these can overlooked.

JD.

Score: 9/10

Things I liked:

• Slow motion x-ray sniper kills of course!

• Aim assistance

• Main focus being on stealth

• Tank battles! 

• Multiplayer Sniper comradery

•  Situational music, good mood setting

•  Ability of have multiple loadouts

Things I didn’t like 

• Multiplayer can get dull making you impatient, especially in deathmatch

• Few Australian servers, max amount of player usually 12

This is my rifle this is my gun.

Minecraft Creations: Underground house version 2, the Overfarm

Following my latest Minecraft adventures post I mentioned that I was creating an adaptation of my Underground house. I was living in a town and had a fairly large vacant lot to start building in so I thought instead of making a normal house I’d get a bit more elaborate, so I decided to make my patch of land look basically just like a normal farm and I would have a well that leads to an underground house, I would still have skylights but these would be underneath water so would supposedly not be visible (though in the finished product they actually were and I may rectify this.

The finished farm part of the overfarm.

 After starting the process in multiplayer and unfortunately losing my work to a map reset I decided to create it in creative mode as I usually do, I had trouble picking a spot as my original survival map that was now my creative showcase museum world thing didn’t have much clear land left around my original house so I decided to build over the river in the landmass that had my main mine entrance and the Blocktree house which interestingly enough I don’t think I’ve done a Minecraft Creations post about the creative remake, the same with my Hunter’s Hall and Birchwood house. 

The start of my original overfarm, it was a little cozier then.

I started off boring a 2x2 hole into the ground then went I thought I had gone down far enough I got busy with TNT and blew out a reasonable large space where I would make the centre area, this was much higher than last time obviously as this was 7 blocks high instead of 4. I made a hole for the water to fall into then put some water down the hole which allowed you to just jump into the water and  come out onto the floor underneath. I had decided before that the wood for the borders of the innermost area and my bedroom would be made out of dark oak (which is a reddish colour in the Cyberghostde's 256x HD Texture Pack that I’m using) the floor would be made of carpet and spruce wood and the roof would have acacia wood, most of the walls would be brick unless changed for that particular area. I made windows and wooded frames for the entrance area and turned it into a large room with three exits and put chests and crafting tables around as this would be my main crafting area. 

Semi-finished crafting area

 I then started blowing the hell out of the surrounding walls with TNT in order to create more space for rooms etc. 

kaboom!

 I made my bedroom first which was fairly small and simple, it was elevated one block above the main area and decorated with dark oak, orange carpet and a fireplace. 

Bedroom entrance

Hallway

My Bedroom

I then made the recreation area one block lower with a bar, speakers, pool tables and a giant fireplace. 

The rec room, with egg portraits, lots of egg portraits

I added a forge which was about three block’s lower complete with lava, water, anvils, furnaces and an armory. 

The forge and armory

I made an alchemy room with moss stone walls and some ridiculous lime green carpet and decided to make the library section entirely from spruce wood  a sort of spiral staircase with books in the edges and it went down 3 floors with the lowest level housing the enchanting table and being walled in Obsidian for a sinister feel. Sinister too as around the corner it led down a locked stairwell down to a variation of the “Crimson Hall” from my Brick Mansion, except this one was actually bigger and longer and took quite a while to mine out a hallway as I had broke into another cave system.

The Alchemy Room

The library with stairway down to the enchanting table

The obsidian level

Stairway to...

The Crimson Hall 2!

After randomly decorating the middle hallway with pictures etc I had a bit of space left over so I thought, well it’s a house I may as well do a toilet and I did. As with most of the furnishings in the house the toilet took the same style as the one in my brick mansion, made mostly of quartz with cauldron toilets.

Oh yeh, that right!

Complete with skull hand dryers.

Afterwards I cut out the holes for the skylights and added chimney’s for the fireplaces, I had to dig out quite a bit of the hillside in order to accommodate all the skylights for the rooms and the surrounding fence for the farm went quite high up. I planted almost everything I could think of including: wheat, sugar cane, pumpkins, watermelons, carrots and potatoes and tried to include an even amount of each.

Creating the farm

Due to the design of the skylights the farms looked pretty funky, you could actually see the glass underneath the water but I didn’t wait to set the glass and lower down as the extra water would put too much weight on it. I built the well and a covered storage area and it was pretty much done, it looked pretty cool how you could see into the house from the top and vice versa as you could see the sky and the moon from down below.

Inside the house

Looking down from the farm

A shot where I was still building the library roof looking up at the moon.

Most of the rooms I made following the same sort of design as my brick mansion, lastly I made a secret passageway through my wardrobe out of the house into the nearby cave which was the entrance to my main mine.

My secret wardrobe exit

So it ended up working pretty well, was one of the most intensive earth shaping and dredging projects that I’ve done since the brick mansion.

The finished outside and main inside area

So stay tuned there will be more LAN Comps, Brick Mansion updates, creative remakes and a whole new adventure coming up in the world of JD’s Minecraft.

JD

Walk/Flythrough of the Farm/House Farmhouse? nah lol, apologies for me stopping to put a lid on the toilets, I also forgot how to half fill the toilets the bowls kinda full lol need to ill a few beakers.

Home, home in the ground.

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