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