August 22nd, 2012

Lots of progress with redstone projects was made these last few weeks. I had left the last update with the desire to finish the lighting system in my base, and now I have. Additionally, I used what remained of my redstone supply to add a master reset button onto my End farm, to prevent pistons from detaching their snow blocks and blocking spawns.

At the push of a button, all of the pistons will pulse in the spawner, so they will all get their blocks back and I don't have to keep going up there to replace the detached snow blocks. The wiring for this was relatively simple, as there are only four blocks between layers, so the simple redstone torch and block vertical wiring worked. I had some trouble with the water, but eventually got it to stay the way I wanted to (and stop updating and washing away part of my redstone).

Back to the lighting system. I wanted to have it attached to a day/night sensor, just to make it needlessly complicated and more attractive-looking. I used the version created by JL2579 and it works flawlessly. I ended up having 8 light sensors total, so the lighting system is very responsive.

For a more in-depth guide on how to build this, I would highly recommend watching the video that I linked above, as there are still some hidden elements to this thing that I never edited to show in the picture.

Now that I am out of redstone, it's time to transition into more building, and that will be starting with the Nether. I plan on making a Nether hub of sorts, like how the Minecrack server works. I will have plenty of locations in the future for this thing to go to, but I am still very much in the designing stages of it. Luckily, I have things to keep me busy with in the mean time.

Can you guess why I need this much obsidian?

I'll leave you with this picture to puzzle the purpose out of, and additionally a warning about how few updates there will be for awhile. Guild Wars 2 comes out Friday night at around midnight my time, and I will be very distracted with that game for awhile (I've only been waiting for it for 5 years). On top of that, school is starting up again very soon, so there will be very few updates for a month or two. I'll still release my world on time though.

That's all I've got. Signing out!

Public World Download - August 12th, 2012

The changes that have gone on this month is almost exclusively aesthetic, but it makes a huge difference. The mob tower looks completely different now and its lighting system is now functional (the lever is by the storage room entrance). The minecart track got redone as well. Villagers are now being stored in the base for trading use (with a massive sugar cane field being used as the main trading material). The entrance arch finally gets re-decorated with the addition of horizontal wood logs. Finally, the addition of ice allows me to change out the pattern on the first tier, while laying ice underneath it all. The base is closer and closer to being finished every day now. Hope you guys enjoy it.

Download the survival world here.

That's all for now. Signing out!

August 10th, 2012

Minecraft 1.3 is here at last! I'm sure everyone has had ample opportunities to experiment with the full release now that it is out, including myself. I did a lot of update work around my base just to work in the features of 1.3. That said, for as amazing as the features are in this update, I'm kind of upset that all of the negatives of multiplayer had to be attached to this as well. Chunk errors, more lighting bugs, glitchy textures, laggy mobs, and weird suffocation issues have been plaguing me quite often since this update happened. There are some things I can get used to, but some things I wished didn't have to be included with the price tag. That said, this is how the game works, and we'll just have to learn to deal with it.

For my last project before 1.3 was released, I decided to start tackling the re-finish on the minecart track. I was riding it one day and I got blown up by a creeper. I went back and checked the lighting, and sure enough, I made a mistake and mobs could spawn in the tunnel. Instead of just fixing the lighting, I decided to entirely redesign both parts of the tunnel, and here is the result.

Descending from my base

The actual tunnel

Removing all of the stone around the tunnel chewed through three of my enchanted diamond pickaxes, but I think the end result is definitely worth it. This project brought me all the way into 1.3, with only a few stairs left to place once the update happened. Initially, I didn't understand how placing stairs and half slabs worked in 1.3, but I quickly figured it out once I finished off the collection point for my mob grinder.

An outside view

An inside view

I love sandstone stairs. I'm so glad they are finally in the game. Probably enough said on that subject.

This hill has been through a lot of abuse since I started working on it with TNT. I put a temporary village (with infinite breeding cell) and a netherwart farm on top of here for a period of time. I now have a chest full of netherwart (the beginnings of a potions room), and the village gave me one of every villager type (and even a few iron golems). Both of those are now gone though, and I could finally cover the top of the hill in grass. I'm not sure exactly what I want done with this hill yet (whether I'll add a real village on top of it, or if I will just cover it in trees), but there is still some work for the future.

Speaking of villagers, this is where they ended up. The librarian is especially handy for trading paper for emeralds, and I now have about a half stack of emerald blocks because of him. The priest will also be useful, offering glowstone and redstone if I need them. Other than that, I can't really see myself trading much, and I'll use the emeralds for decoration, or for the upcoming beacons in 1.4. This isn't the final location for the villagers either, but more on that in a later update.

You might have spotted the arch in the background, which has also received a makeover using the horizontal logs. I like this much more than the sandstone and stone, but I'm still not happy about the texture on the front of the arch. I might add a line of horizontal logs in the front, just to add some diversity.

Trading paper requires extensive amounts of sugar cane, but I'm now covered on that front. This sugar cane field gives me an entire inventory full of paper when I harvest it, which I can do every 20 minutes or so. Emeralds are so easy to get because of this.

And finally, we have the second best thing about 1.3: ice! I've made two ice trays now, and they are keeping me well supplied with ice, even if I'm usually not in the area to let them freeze. That is good, because I need close to a double chest full in order to finish off the floor for the top tier of my base (ice under half slabs).

That's all I've got for now. Signing out!