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

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

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

The initial outer wall around the hill

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

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

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

Higher walls and wooden rooves/floors

The lower atrium

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

Minecraft Furniture Server research

Iron-fenced Tennis Court

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

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

Alchemy room first build

Second build

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

Should be something like this:

Lower Level (Basement)

Indoor Soccer Pitch

Alchemy Lab

Indoor Spa/pool

Nether Room

Forge/storage

Lower Atrium

Middle Level (Entrance)

Entrance Hall with seating and tables

Dining/Ballroom

Kitchen

Upper Atrium

Club with Bar

Crafting Room

Storage

Top Floor

Home Cinema

Master Bedroom

Guest Bedrooms

Sitting Room

Library

Bowling Alley

Attic
Sun Room

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

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

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

JD

What a lovely sunset, OptiFine does help

Needs more house