Nethergrass

Say hello to my Nether house.  Using Creative Mode in 1.8.1, I've been playing around with altering the Nether.  I'm basically just biding my time until 1.9 is released.

I threw down some saplings and hit them with bone meal, and then hit the grass with bone meal to give it some life.  Normally, grass won't grow in the Nether, but with Creative Mode, I could just place it.

This is the first little oasis I built.  I was playing around with making this little cutout behind my house look as much like the normal world as possible.  Because of the atmosphere of the Nether, it's pretty much impossible to match it exactly, but I sure have been trying.

And here's the inside.  It's pretty open.  I can't put down a bed or I might be tempted to use it out of habit, with explosive results.  In Creative Mode, it wouldn't kill me or even harm me, but it sure would destroy my work.

I think I heard a knock.  Somebody must be at the door.  I wonder who it could be at this hour.

Nevermind.  No one's there.  This is a view from one of the towers out front.  See that path sticking out directly in the center of the image?  The one lined with glowstone?  Keep it in mind for the next pictures.

Here's my glowstone/stone brick path that will eventually connect all of the different things I want to build in the Nether.  Here you can see it spiraling down around a single shaft of water.  I've made quite a bit of progress and some changes since I took that screenshot.

 See?  All water.  No lava.  I used ice blocks to get water into the Nether.

And here's a nice little glass tunnel.

Some more views of my floating path and the waterfalls that surround it.

Here's my alternate portal, which connects to the same portal in the normal world.  When I first came into the Nether on this map, I got lost, so I just built this portal to get back to the surface.  It turns out I was so close to my original location that it connected me to the same portal in the normal world.

And here's a nice archway surrounding my floating path.

 So there's that.  It's a work in progress, so I'll try to keep it updated.  If you're wondering what texture pack I'm using, it's one of my own design, but it's based mostly off of the Cube, Inc. texture pack available here (direct download) or here (MinecraftForum thread).  I'm still working to get it compatible with 1.8 (a few textures aren't showing up properly).  I've designed a lot of stuff myself, and I've cannibalized other texture packs for a few textures I liked (especially Pixeludi, which isn't 1.8-compatible).  Before I release the pack anywhere, I'll contact the owners of the packs I cannibalized and see if they're okay with me using parts of their packs.  I'll post here if I get the okay!

Survival Island 2

To continue showing off my Survival Island version, I'll keep on with the library I referenced in my last post.  I'm planning to get rid of it and build instead a replica of the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library (probably where my old house stood, but we'll get to that later).  Why do I have a library on a deserted island?  Well, specifically because it's a testament to the fact that I'm not just surviving, but thriving.  I have infinite resources to build bookcases and wooden structures, and since one of the initial challenges was to build 10 bookcases, I thought I'd expand on that and build 100 bookcases.  I don't know how many are actually in my current library, but it's less than 100.  When I finish building TSCPL, though, I'm not so sure.  Well, here we go, and then I'll keep on going with screenshots.

This is a shot looking straight up at the library.  Notice the lack of glowstone.  This was an earlier picture, but the glowstone on the pole is the only thing I added since these pictures were taken.

Once you reach the top of the pole, you enter through one of four trapdoors in the center of those poles straight ahead.  Then you're in the checkout and registration area.

This is another view of registration, and we're about to go up that staircase.

Upon ascending the staircase, you're greeted with rows of books, arranged in a diagonal fashion to give them both a unique look and more shelf space (more books are showing).

Here's a look back over the staircase at one of the picture-window reading areas.

And a look at one of the couches, complete with glowstone lighting for easy reading.

So that's it for the library.  Again, I built it specifically to be useless, to show just how well I was doing on the island.  Below I'll keep going with some other screen shots from elsewhere on the island.

Here's the fire trap that makes quick work of the animals on my island.  This is a newer screen shot.  I have two fountains there:  lava and water.  The lava fountain was one of the challenges, and I made the water fountain to go with it.  The fire trap is my own reconfiguration of the fire trap I got from a YouTube video I watched.  I couldn't find the original video I watched, which had the player walking through fields of netherrack ablaze and picking up tons of items, but the video below is fairly similar.

This is an older screen shot.

Here's the video that's similar to the one I watched.  When I reconfigured it, I put the blocks of netherrack in the ground and surrounded them with cobblestone to help buffer the flames.

This is just one of the large chests I've filled up with cooked porkchops as a result of this fire trap.  I used to have the chests in a mound under the library, but, as you can see above, I moved them to be in the ground, and I even made an underground transfer system so I could access my porkchops if I got low on health down in the dungeons.  I think I have about 30 chests like this.

Moving on, here's my old house.  It's no longer standing, and instead, there's just an empty foundation and a hold in the ground.  As I said above, it's waiting for me to build TSCPL.

Another view.  Notice how the reeds are just standing there.  Later, I'll show you the automatic reed farm I built in place of the reeds.

This was the view as you walked into the house.  Like my fireplace?  It was one of the challenges.

Another view of the living room, with the kitchen on the far side.

Here's the upstairs entertainment room.

Another view of the entertainment room.  My three dogs are chilling by the big-screen TV.

 The bedroom.

Back out in the entertainment room.  And here's my character, Big Boss from Metal Gear Solid 3, chilling in front of the TV.  The ladder to the attic is on the right.

Here's what my attic storage looked like.

So, back out front, viewing the house at night.  The cactus farm is there on the left, and I'll get to that in a later post.

That little light is connected to the cactus farm to let me know when there's cactus ready to be picked up.

In the next post, I'll show off the fully automated cactus farm and my mansion, which I built to replace the house you just saw.  It'll be cool.  There was a teaser up in one of the fire trap pictures, but you'll see much more next time.

Survival Island

I downloaded the Survival Island scenario from here after I watched the Yogscast play it here (check out their whole channel here).  I used version 1.1 because it seemed like it was the most challenging, and it definitely had the most to do.  I completed most of the challenges (though I royally botched a key one right at the beginning), and after a while, I wanted to start over.  I had the original game save, so I started over, and now this island has been my most successful map to date.  It gives me nearly unlimited resources of most of the stuff I need, and it's been the most exciting for me.  Here's a quick overview of the island.  I'll divide this up into two or three posts.

This is a view of the whole island from a boat.

Here's my storehouse, recently remodeled.

As you can see, everything but the entrance and the very top layer is under the water.

Here's a view looking down into the storehouse.

And here's a view looking at the back of the storehouse.

I built a library on top of this enormous pole, and I recently lit up the pole with this stuff called glowstone, which is only found in the Nether.

It looks like that's all I'm going to share tonight.  I wanted to get more up, but I'm too tired.  I at least wanted to get something up, so I'll keep adding more pictures and improving on previous posts.

Zork

I thought I'd start this blog off with a quick review of my very first world, which I called Zork.  I made it with a random seed, and I used it to learn all I could about Minecraft before moving on to a new world and trying different seeds.  Here are a few pictures:

This is a nice little overview of one part of Zork.

Here's a look at the statue I created just to use up some cobblestone and dirt.  The pool house is to the right.

This is the inside of my first base of operations.

This is another look at my first base of operations.

I gave it a nice glass foyer to see when all of the creepers were out and about.

I gave myself a neat fountain out front.

These are the steps down to one of my diamond mines.

One of my diamond mines.

Another view of the diamond mine.

I'll post the tutorial I followed for diamond mining later.

I undertook a big project to see how well and quickly I could build something.  I started on this hotel, but I had nothing planned out, and I built as I went along, so it took a long time to get anywhere.  This is as far as I got before moving on to a new world.

The front of the hotel.

My hotel lobby.  It's too dark, so mobs will spawn on higher difficulties.  The ceiling around the glowstone is pure obsidian, farmed into place using the redstone trick, which I'll also post about later.

A view up the atrium over the entrance.

This is the hallway of the second floor, and the center of the floor is just a gathering room of some sort.

This is the third-floor restaurant, complete with glowstone lights above each table.

Another view of the restaurant.  This marks the top of the atrium, which only spans the first three floors.

The fourth-floor staircase coming up from the restaurant.

This is a nice big picture window.  I was proud of the carpeting here.

A look down the fourth-floor hallway.  Red carpet all the way.

One of the VIP suites on the fourth floor.

This VIP suite is bigger, and has a couch and a floor-to-ceiling picture window.

This is a look from the side of the hotel into the registration lobby.

The entrance at night.

This was my storehouse while working on the hotel.  I moved all of my supplies from my original base to this base.  I have everything stored here, though not as efficiently as I could have stored it.  I figured out a much better, more efficient storage method later, which I implemented in my Survival Island scenario.

This was the first building I made:  the pool house.  There's no lifeguard on duty, so swim at your own risk.

Here's the pool house in all its glory.

So there you have it.  I spent a lot of time working on that world, and I learned a lot about Minecraft from it.  Next, I'll post about the tutorials I tried out that helped me get ahead, and that I tried out, starting with diamond mining and obsidian farming.  That's it for now!