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 thatand 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 thinkI’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.
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 theDigital 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.
I suppose you may all be wondering why I’m doing a post
about Battlefield 4 now that Hardline has come out but
I have a few things to talk about as it’s been a quite some time since I did my
initial review
of the game back in April last year. I’m sad to say I haven’t played the game
for awhile for a couple of reasons of having too much to play currently (don’t
we all) and being a bit over the game though that is only at the time of
writing, I’ve played with friends quite a few times over the months and tried
out different classes and weapons and whatnot not to mentions the various
expansions that have come out. Similar to Battlefield 3 there
has been five total DLC expansions for Battlefield 4 and If I’m not mistaken
that’s the magic number as not too long after the 5th one Final Stand
was released that’s when they started advertising for Battlefield Hardline.
So I’ll basically go through the expansions as they’ve come
out starting with China Rising:
My friends and I probably liked this expansion the best it
brought in some remarkable maps from mainland China which are Dragon
Pass,Guilin
Peaks, Altai RangeandSilk
Road, Guilin Peaks is a beautiful looking infantry orientated-map that is
set in a mountainous tropical forest, it was great fun zooming around on ATVs
and the new (to BF4) dirtbikes,
I also very much enjoyed doing my engineer-repairman-in-chopper thing or
piloting the chopper myself on this map. Dragon Pass was stated to be a
re-imagined version of Dragon Valley which I sort of recognized but damn
that sun glare!.This expansion also
introduced the Air Superiority game mode.
Air superiority on Guilin Peaks, this one was a small map so it was with chopper rather then jets. You can see the Zeppelin which acts as a capture point.
This is a short clip but it's a good view of the new operation Firestorm, I also like it cause I happen to have the "Tie Fighter attack" music going in the background.
Firestorm on the ground
Naval
Strike Naval strike was you can probably guess was an expansion based on
large-ocean-with-island maps, this expansion introduced 2 person hovercrafts which could go
over land and sea and were very useful and a lot of fun and old cannons which were
powerful but very hard to aim and had a huge reload time. The maps in this
expansion were vehicle heavy with lots of helicopters, jets and boats zooming
around which made it pretty hard for infantry to get around, most of the time
using the transport chopper was suicide as you were a almost like a giant slow
moving target for everyone. I did enjoy this one though as the new Carrier Assault
mode was pretty fun, it resembled the Titan gamemode from Battlefield 2142 that I never
got to play though it wasn’t quite as epic you just needed to capture several
missile launchers to damage the enemy carrier though you thennever shot yourself into a huge flying craft
you just got onto a boat or spawned near the carrier but it was good
nonetheless.
Naval strike on Wavebreaker with pretty much everyone in boats and Jet Ski's
Dragon’s Teeth was an update that focused on several
war-torn cities in Asia that were locked down by the Chinese PLA, none of which
I liked too much though I got a bit sick of Pearl
Market as it was one of the most played for some reason. This expansion
introduced a new Battle
Pickup with the RAWR (LoL!) and new Ballistic Shield fir the Support class and some
new powerful guns including the DEagle
44 handgun and the Bulldog assault rifle.
Footage of the RAR being used in Pearl Market (I haven't been able to use it yet.
Final stand is apparently the pivotal point between the War of
2020 and the new Cold
War that was featured in Battlefield 2142 these maps are all set in Russia
with most set in Siberia between Russia and the United States. It tells of how
The US have received intel from the Chinese that Russia has been secretly
developing new technology and have sent the USMC to put a stop to it (as you
do). Most of the maps are snowy and winter landscaped with the occasional
blizzard. This expansion brought in lots of crazy gadgets formerly from
battlefield 2142 inc the very useful Target Detector
and some of which being Battle Pickups which
players need to find on the map to use (i.e. they couldn’t be equipped by a
particular class) These include a Railgun, a Compound Bow which has
quite a complicated unlocking procedure and some kind of remote-controlled
flying minigun which totally freaked me out when I first saw it. And
speaking of things that freaked me out there was also a Hovertank which was
ridiculously fast (for a tank) and made a lot of noise and sprayed snow
everywhere and made me almost shit my pants when I first encountered it.
There’s also Snowmobiles
and Pod
launchers which are a lot of fun. I found I liked the Hanger 21 map the most
where you could see a prototype Titan being built.
The Hanger 21 splash screen, you can see the prototype Titan
So anyway what about me? Well I’ve played quite in the year
that’s passed, mostly with my two friends Lachlan and Matt and also “Hardcore”
Alex (as he prefers that game mode). I played pretty much all of the maps on
all of the expansions and can still say China Rising was probably my favourite
with the game modes I played most of them inc Conquest, Rush, Team
Deathmatch, Squad Deathmatch, Obliteration,Carrier
Assault, Chain Link, Gun Master and Air
Superiority only once. Obliteration
was a type of ‘carry the bomb to the enemy base’ type of thing which was pretty
fun, it’s like a game of rugby except with guns. It’s extremely hectic running
along when you have the bomb dodging bullets, missiles and everything under the
sun though you can still use fast vehicles to transport yourself or your bomb
carrier to the target. I never got to play Air Superiority properly as I am
rubbish with jets and when I did try a server there was only one person in
there. I must remind myself to try it again now that I have a joystick.
The tutorial for carrier assault (it was kind of confusing to start off)
I think I’ve tried out every class now relatively, I go Assault
still most of the time but really chose what was needed in my squad more, most
of the time I was Assault unless I was riding in a chopper or another vehicle
then I went Engineer but it was really the only time I went engineer as
it was probably the most used class. I’ve found I’ve actually done quite a few
repairs as I’m in Division 1 in the World for most repairs I’ve also gotten a
few kills with the SRAW
(love saying that name). I went Support sparingly, only using it when needed in
my squad needed it, I used the PKP Pecheneg quite a
bit as it’s my top weapon, other than that I just used C4 or ammo box for
points though you get a fair few suppression points using LMGs. I’ve started
using the Magnum for
most of my classes, I found it pretty funny that you can put things like scopes
and a flashlight attachment on as it looks ludicrous, I do want to try out the DEagle
44 if I can unlock it.
My ridiculous scoped Magnum
A bit later into playing I wanted to experiment with the Recon class a bit more, I
again tried to be a Sniper the way I did in BF2 but it just doesn’t work, I
dunno what it is but maybe it’d be being able to be spotted by anyone and
showing up on the radar when you fire your weapon maybe which made it very hard
to hide. And also because of the huge amount of detail in the levels (trees
etc) you could hardly see very far unless the map was almost bare desert like
the Silk Road map. So I gave up on this and started using Designated Marksman
Rifle’s (DMR’s), these were like the M1 Carbine and SKS Simonov from Vietcong
single-shot semi-long range weapons and I went pretty damn well with these,
still running and gunning like the other classes but using the stealth set and
basically being more stealthy. One of the best things about the Recon was the
cool toys you could use including:
SOFLAM
– A laser designator that targets vehicles that you can set up and it functions
on its own as well as remotely which is useful but damn that things is a bullet
magnet and is fragile as all hell.
T-UGS
– A sensor that you can set up on the ground that senses enemies around it and
reports them on the map, this was very useful in infantry style maps or when
hiding.
Radio
Beacon –This acted like a spawn point for your squad members once set up,
it worked the best when set up near a flag, you could be killed and lose the
flag but keep coming back much to enemies chagrin, this was a lot of fun to use
and help my squad.
Target Detector- I loved this thing, what it did was when
you aimed down the sights or through a scope it automatically spotted any enemy
soldiers you saw. Since I was already a big spotter (I got lots of spotting
points) this was awesome as I didn’t even have to decide whether to spot or
shoot. I liked it some much that it got annoying when I changed classes and had
to go back to not using it.
Recon Toys!
Now that the four expansions have been released you could
probably say that the period for Battlefield 4 is now over but this is
technically different, Hardline is focused on cops and robbers not military
combat though there will still be people playing BF4 until the next one of
course as I’m sure we definitely haven’t seen the end of large-scale military
combat in the Battlefield series. So that about sums it up really I played, I
experienced and now I’d doing other things to get my FPS fix (mainly Sniper
Elite 3) but I’ll be back sometime y’all.
JD
I do some Helicopter repairing and organise my loadout on Wave Breaker