Thursday, 25 August 2011

Minecraft Adventures: Tribalfield rebirth, Zocrowe Island and the Giant Tree



Well as much as I was trying to avoid it, NorC has inevitably sparked the life into Tribalfield Minecraft Server once again. I thought I had built it all, done my goodbye blog post and dusted off WoW after a 4 month hiatus for a good sinister strike up the rear again but not too long after I see from my fountain of information that is facebook a post that says quote "Server has been compelely reset... all players have been given 2500 Gold to get started." Which I couldn't decide whether it filled me with happiness or dread.  Regardless the server was gleefully revived via (you guessed it) a server reset and free gold which was all that was needed as I said before in my previous post the main problem was all the conflicting claims, which I think is destined to happen again unfortunately. Even so players flocked back to Tribalfield plus a few more and pardon my french but there was shit poppin up all over da place yo, claims buildings, you name it and of course the occaisional griefing etc as you would, which is partly kept under control by the lockable chests.

Pretty soon my good friend Kakashi had set up a tribe called LoL "Land of Loners" which I agreed to join, we had made a small base and i managed to gather alot of clay to build a brick lighthouse, but unfortunately the server had to be reset again and we subsequently lost all this (I also had not taken any screenshots). But then it came back up and pretty soon I was a part of the "Zocrowe Island" claim with my good friends Bailey and Lupidoo and after getting the idea from Bailey's 'tree trunk' house we decided to make something I had been meaning to do properly for a while: build a proper "Great Tree"


The Giant Tree

This was a joint project with BaileydeBortoli, Lupidoo and various others with most of the work going to Bailey and Lupi. We decided to make Bailey's island in the middle of his claim bigger and construct a massive tree around his original house. I had tried this project before using my own way of growing trees on top of each spreading outwards till i got to the height limit, but as you can see from the pictures I now know that this isn't giant tree per se it's more a 'giant bush' made of dozens of trees sprouting close to each other, course the main thing was a lack of a trunk. I'd explored a certain server (which I now can't find anymore) and found an example which inspired the design. I made most of the trunk area but well done to Lupi for putting in the effort with the top and branches, I do think that the trunk still was a bit wide but nonetheless it was a great feat indeed.








Big thanks too all who took part and looked great for a while, but inevitably things like these are targets of certain mischevious individuals resulting in the tree's untimely demise

Photo courtesy of Ariel Zohar
So that was that, we decided to cut down the tree for resources, but we'll always remeber it as this memorial at the centre of Zocrowe town hall proudly displays.



The Island of Zocrowe

Having been made by BaileydeBortoli as a simple island has grown into quite a large town and community of (mostly) friendly helpful people which I am proud to call my home though I am not that active in the community as of yet. With thanks to BaileydeBortoli, Lupidoo, WretchedGiraffe, kakashi, creeper, cashman, Jorobinson, Frewer, Angrathar, dadmitchl, Mib44, Zmaster, Naffy, optionall and midnitebocow for making such a great community.





Other Tribalfield happenings....

As well as building in and around Zocrowe I did a bit of exploring, so these are some other things I've seen around.....

Bailey organised to get the hill on the southwest of Zocrowe removed (which actually happened to be creeper217's house) and this was the result.





I just happened to stumble upon the old Skyreach on my travels and also found the original site of my Grey Tower which reminded me that this wasn't a completely newly created map, just the same one from before just reset.

The untouched Skyreach Plateau

The original site of my Grey Tower

And last but not least, the budding town of Raynevale, which is being created by the apparently reformed 'Temple of the Cactus Union'

Courtesy of Austin Cram



Well that'll be all for now folks, Sorry I haven't been on as often as I liked as I said beofore just trying to catch up on some WoW. I hope to see you again more often soon, will probably stop my WoW subscription next time it runs out in order to get some more minecrafting in. be back soon with my new creations!

And also a big thanks to all those who voted for me as the next admin!

JD


I fell into a burning tree of lava, I went down down down and the flames went er farther....

Saturday, 6 August 2011

Duke Nukem Forever, I finished it, I had fun, so sue me


Unless the title as you completely wahzingoed yes I did finish DUke Nukem Forever and I had quite a bit of laughs along the way, wther it's his stupid one liners, or the ridiculous riches and in-game popularity that Duke has after previously saving the world 12 years ago Duke Nukem Forever for me had humerous bits and peices everywhere. The overall game isn't really that long and because of this 3D Realms has been able to squeeze in a lot of content including a few different ways to play the game for example there are levels where you are shrunk to a tiny size, use a remote control monster truck and also a full size one, as well as underwater and helicopter parts. Another thing I enjoyed was the way the camera swung around during parts where Duke was wrestling with a flying alien or being surged out of a damn by a raging torrent.

The single greatest title for an Autobiography ever.
Arrgh I am so small and ze rats are so big!, oh wait their normal size

Yes there are the usual half-naked women etc and certain parts of the game are dedicated to just that, there is also a "story line" but it's just your usual "Aliens invade the earth (again), Duke comes in and beats the crap out of everything" The game does really capture the feeling of being Duke and is definately a good throwback to the old days of standing and blasting cowboy style instead of all this cover based shooting business we have today. Some people may complain about only being able to carry two guns and also there are no iron sights but the reason for that comes down to sticking with the original Duke 3D and I don't mind it at all, plus who wants iron sights in a game like this?

In conclusion Duke Nukem  Forever is crazy, over the top and just plain fun.





I have a modesty meter...

Monday, 1 August 2011

Minecraft Adventures: MikeLand and the Rubix House

Hello all, firstly I'd like to say how glad (and sad) I am that we've regained our interest in the Tribalfield server, I'm sad because I was just trying to get into WoW again after a long break playing Minecraft but i'm glad that I now have a friendly server to play on and don't have to resort to server hopping to find a good one.

One server I did find it be rather fun was the seemingly dangerous and destructive MikeLand Survival Server which I had a brief run on ( I do believe Warpage and Kieran are still playing on there) It's the only server I've been on where I've seen "Hey let's go out griefing" in chat. There is two more versions on MikeLand which are: Factions (which I had a play on beforehand) and Creative. This server was a potential beehive for destruction as Warpage and I found that anywhere near spawn if u logged out one day and came back the next your house would be griefed. Fortunately MikeLand has the LWC mod running which basically means that other players cannot destory any chests, doors and furnaces that you place.

What this resulted in was players making entire houses out of furnaces I'd never understood why there were so many stacked together around the server until Warpage explained to me why he wanted all my cobble. There were people trading diamonds for stacks of cobble for christ's sake, it was possibly the most amusing quirk i'd come across since the whole book selling thing we had going on Tribalfield in the past. Warpage is still there and his house is still standing and the interior is all intact as he reports so it must work I guess which must frustrate the hell out of potential griefers who I did see pouring lava over someones tower of furnaces in some kind of fruitless attempt to "heat" them out? I wouldn't know.

Here are some shots of the server:

Spawn area: that tower in the centre was the spawn point, if u got too close to the edge it catapulted you off

House made of furnaces

WarpageHD's House (it goes down further)

Rubix House, Multiplayer and Singleplayer

While I was adventuring/dodging pvpers and griefers in the hostile environment that was MikeLand I was meandering over the idea to make a house entirely of coloured wool, just out of precaution I walked more then 2000 blocks away from spawn (which inevitably wasn't far enough) while also shearing any sheep and collecting any flowers or cactuses I found like some kind of crazed farmer/botanist. I eventually found a good spot and set to work, and with the help of some Lapis Lzuli from Warpage, came out ok. I named it the "Rubix house" in relation to an actual rubix cube except the house itself isn't exactly square







Inevitably due to the nature of the server I came back one day and found this unfortunate scene.




With that behind me I set out in my singleplayer world to make a proper Rubix House which was actually square. I can be safe in the knowlege that this time it will be there for a much longer time.








One last thing, while roaming servers I found a particular treehouse which someone had made, and immediately it showed to me what a proper treehouse should be, I didn't get any shots of the interior but I can assure you it was a sight indeed.



So with the Tribalfield crew back looks like there will be many more creations to come from the good ol' lads (and ladies)

Till next time

JD


His house is made for burning

Thursday, 28 July 2011

Minecraft Creations: The Grey Tower, Singleplayer version (Final)

Hi everyone, well the singleplayer version of my Grey Tower is complete, has been for a while now actually just been getting around to posting the shots. There was a few changes in the design as said in my previous post, the most prominent being the size of the tower, the old one went from level 47 to 125 making it 78 block high, this one goes all the way from level 6 to level 128 making it 122 blocks high! As you can see in some of the pictures, I used the mod singleplayercommands to make self-centered explosions to blast a hole in the mountain right down to level 6 though this didn't exactly work out as well as I'd hoped cause afterwards I found that I'd built the tower too much to one side (oh well).

This time I decided to just put 4 waterfalls of lava round each side instead of filling the whole outside with it, the other reason being that some time after i'd taken the shots I created a minecart track around the outside of the fortress because I had actually blown right through and exposed one of my underground mine shafts. With the tower being alot taller (and wider to some degree) I had to almost the amount of rooms inside so apart from the usual rooms I had before, I decided to have an 'elements' theme to the rest of them.

Here's a shot of the singleplayer tower and tower made in multiplayer together


Some more outside shots of the Tower






The Rooms

The Loby (and no I didn't misspell that)

Crafting Room

My Room :D (yes that is a tree growing inside)
The Sky (or lookout) floor

The Library

The Water floor (yes those are squids)

The Earth floor

The Stone floor (I had no idea what to do with this floor so it's kinda lame it was supposed to be the Fire floor but i decided to merge that with the bottom floor)

The Hell floor

I'm not sure whether it was the interior or exterior that took me the longest but it was one hell of an improvement over the original, seeyas next time with some new multiplayer creations.

JD


That's nuthin, mines 122 tall.... bitch