One law for the rich and another for the poor

Time for another multiplayer server/towny style house. But first I should probably define what a towny home, or server house means to me.

On old multiplayer servers I had played on, most player bases and housing were confined to small plots. Either created by the town leader or mayor, or enforced by the bukkit plugin towny. These plots were tiny. Often only 15x15 blocks in size. One server I had played on even limited it to 10x10. Houses were small, extremely compact, and more often than not simple cobble cube shacks. It had a shanty town atmosphere to it. Server towns even faced problems with crime and vandalism. It was like some sort of odd socioeconomic study.

Because of how bland and terrible the vast majority of these houses were, I always find a bit of pleasure in constructing them and giving them some interesting and unique qualities.

With a fair bit of wool on hand I decided to incorporate it into a new house. The little one block windows are something I don't normally do, but that's why I went with it. The oddball behavior of stair blocks continues to be the bane of roof construction for me.

Every house has a living room. This one being no different. I also finally remembered that there are paintings in this game.

A small patio. I'd like to give some of these homes some outside private space.

I tried to play around with the positioning of the bench/furnace/chest combo a little here. However I just couldn't help but place a central work table in the middle of the workshop.

All is grist that comes to the mill

Seems a disproportionate amount of my time as of late has been spent mining. Although seemingly unexcitable, it's influencing how the town is developing.

As of this time I've hit a bit of a diamond dry spell. My personal preference is to float at least thirty or forty diamonds in my on hand stock. I find this is a comfortable cushion when preoccupied with a large project or I'm otherwise distracted from mining. However when recently rebuilding my diamond reserves I've been finding that I'm essentially breaking even on my mining trips. Only mining enough diamonds to replace my expenditure in picks. The upside to this spate of mining is that I have an abundance of materials on hand and won't have to make frequent trips to retrieve more.

It also appears I'm flanked on at least three sides by lava fields. Meaning that to clear it out I'm going to be building with a fair bit of obsidian in the near future. It should make for some interesting builds.

With that going on. I've taken a short break to put together another towny style house.

The idea behind this one was to have an open concept workshop on the first level and a livable space on the second.

Where to place the standard crafting bench, chest, and furnace presented a minor challenge at first. Eventually I had settled on closing off the back wall and placing the chest and furnace there. Then to fill out the space a little I stuck the crafting bench in the middle of the floorspace. A ladder provides access to the second floor.

The second floor provides a simple bed and a Minecraft style poker table. Of course I had to include some signature skylights to complete the build.

Necessity is the mother of invention

Everyone loves to show off the big elaborate projects. Personally I've always been more impressed with small builds that are unique and have some character to them.

Two basic concepts went into this one. First was to have the roofline start at the ground level. Second was that the roof would only have one slope.

The interior contains all the trappings you would normally find in a server house. Crafting table, chest, furnace, and a little decoration in the form of a simple desk and chair.

Patience is a virtue

I'd like to think of obsidian as a high status block. It's brutal mining time of fifteen seconds in alpha make it an absolute waste of time to try and mine in large amounts. Gathering enough of it in survival to build a large structure was seen as an impressive feat in old multiplayer servers. Enough so that players could be paid fairly well in diamonds for stacks of it. But I would like to go about it a little differently.

If the issue with obsidian is the mining time, then I'll just cut out the mining time. How? By bucketing the lava and transporting it to the building site to then cast. The limitations of this method are the 36 inventory slots and travel time. However I feel that those limitations are much less mind numbingly boring than mining the stuff.

One way to cut down a little bit on travel time to the construction site is to construct a warehouse that will act as a distribution center.

Like most warehouse buildings, this one is fairly simple in it's design. My only thoughts going into it were to construct the facade out of obsidian and allow passers by to easily see inside.

The first floor is mostly for decoration. There's an open hearth furnace to the left that felt fitting. The workshop in the center is based on my standard workshop setup. The smoothstone slabs make it look a little more industrial. The furnaces to the right are purely decoration.

The second floor is purely for storage. I can't imagine ever storing that much lava. Let alone crafting enough buckets to fill them.

Everything comes to those who wait

As of the current version of Minecraft (alpha v1.0.4) the game contains minecarts and rail track. Unfortunately both are completely worthless as there is no way to give the carts acceleration and overcome the basic limitations of gravity.

There is a silver lining to this blunder of game design. There was a glitch in the game that occurred when a cart came into contact with another cart that was placed parallel to the main line. The carts would lock together and accelerate quickly and provide the speed necessary to do useful things, such as going uphill.

Here are the results of my test line demonstrating a basic booster cart setup.

As you can see the glitch isn't present in my current version. I'll have to attempt it again at a later update.

Good fences make good neighbours

Thought I'd do a little exploring and ended up discovering a dungeon with a zombie spawner in it.

It's quite close to town. I should set up a mob grinder in the near future to gather feathers in order to produce a steady supply of arrows.

An Englishman's home is his castle

Next door to our little cobble shack is this slightly more attractive number.

The second floor was completely unplanned. However I felt the addition fit in during building. The sand line between the first and second floor help add some character as well.

The living room contains the standard filler furniture.

The back workshop. The two furnaces show the annoying way in which Minecraft automatically adjusts placed blocks.

This is the upstairs sitting room. I've tried to spruce it up a little with some plants. The ceiling is low enough that the tree sapling will never grow.

East, west, home is best

With some basic infrastructure completed. Plus a cache of materials available. I now have the opportunity to start expanding the town.

This homely little cobble house is modeled after the first house I had built in Minecraft. Some of it's features are characteristic of a lot of my builds. Such as double wall construction and skylights.

The interior contains the basic necessities; a crafting bench, chest, and furnace. The rest is filled out with basic furniture.

If you have never seen the bottom of the tree, you cannot know how tall it stands

To help ensure a quicker and easier harvest of wood supplies it's generally a good idea to set up some sort of tree farm. There's no real standard layout that everyone follows. I've decided to go with a setup I had seen on some old servers I had played on.

The building itself is essentially a greenhouse in it's design; rounded off at the roof and at the top of the base windows to avoid Minecraft box syndrome.

The two doors and the walkway leading up to them are a consequence of the central wall of chests. It's a minor example of how building in a spontaneous manner can lead to results outside of the norm.

 

The tree plots themselves are 6 X 7 in size. Touches are at each corner, and two are placed in the middle to ensure adequate lighting.

The tree farm is worked by chopping the plot. Replanting and moving on to the next one. By the time you work your way around the farm the first plot will be ready for harvest again. This allows you to harvest until you question what you're doing with your life.

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones

Onwards to what is by far the most adrenaline pumping experience minecraft has to offer; that is of course landscaping.

This is the minor work I've completed so far. It's enough to plop down a few buildings. I'm trying to sort of keep to the contours of the terrain the best I can. I don't want a large flat, boring town.

Put your best foot forward

I've seen other Minecraft players make reference to how they spend their first night in a hole in the ground, or a dirt shack. Often in hiding and just waiting it out until the sun rises again and the monster threat is gone. What I don't normally hear is what they do afterward with these temporary shelters.

My own refuge for the night is almost always just a hole in the wall. After I've spent the day collecting wood supplies, I'll tunnel my way into the side of a cliff and begin work on what I call my workshop. This square room 11X11 in size is where I do the majority of my crafting. It's design is almost always the same. A crafting bench in the center surrounded by planks to form my work table. Three blocks of floor space around it. Lastly chests line the walls containing my supplies.

From my workshop, I'll expand outward to form my industrial complex. I'll sink a mineshaft during that first night. Later attach a forge room to smelt my minerals and stone. Then branch out and create a warehouse to store my material overstock.

A little different from the Minecraft standard of a large house or complex containing everything needed. But that's how I roll.

A change is as good as a rest

After enjoying some of the newer features in Minecraft for several years now. It's easy to forget what the experience was like back during the old alpha days. I'll list a few of the differences that stand out for me.

Probably the biggest shock that awaited me was seeing just how bright and green the landscape is.

After being used to the muted, and often ugly gradients of the modern Minecraft biomes. It's nice to play in such a bright and colourful world. I'm sure I'll miss it when I update in the future.

At this stage in the game the only animals are sheep and pigs. They'll spawn in any lighted area. Grass, dirt, sand, or stone. More than once I've been startled deep in my mine by a sheep as I turned a corner.

Food doesn't stack. This is before the hunger bar, so I can understand why our ability to instantly heal with food would be limited. However it's a pain in the arse to store food. I recall when first playing the game several years ago hoping for a compromise. The idea being that food could be stacked, but could only be eaten when a single piece was held in the hotbar.

Tall grass isn't part of the game yet. It's absence was a bit of a head scratcher until I remembered the old method of gathering seeds. Seeds for wheat are acquired by turning grass tiles into tilled soil with the hoe.

Shift clicking isn't in the game as of yet. I miss it dearly.

When placing three stone blocks horizontally on the crafting grid. The output is a stone pressure plate. Not what I had expected. That was when I realized that cobblestone makes stone slabs. This is before cobblestone slabs were introduced.

Lastly my dislike of redstone ore has resurfaced. It's mining time is higher than other ores. It's there to simply act as an annoying speed bump when trying to mine.

Starting in alpha

Like many, I've fallen into a bit of a trap in my Minecraft gameplay experience. I'll install some interesting looking mods. I'll play the map for a little while, and then when the inevitable Minecraft update comes in it's continuous development cycle. I'll find that I need, or just want to start over. Either because a mod has stopped updating, or some block IDs had changed (easier to manage these days with most mods config files), or I just can't be bothered. It's a cycle I'd like to break.

So I'm going to set up a bit of a challenge for myself with some simple rules.

No cheats.

Mostly pertains to inventory editors.

No mods.

The game will a completely vanilla experience. Goodbye my beloved minimap.

No texture packs.

I'm stuck with making my buildings look as attractive as possible with the “retro” dev placeholder sprites that come default in Minecraft. A somewhat tall order I might add. I may make an exception for the newer gravel texture and revert it to the old version when the time comes. I've never warmed up to the new texture.

Every building must be useable.

Not a very specific rule. A monument isn't exactly useable. But the purpose of this rule is to prevent shell buildings. Often other Minecraft players will show off their work. Displaying an intricate exterior while leaving the inside bare. The building has no use.

This blog is just to document my experience and give my impressions of the changes that come as I slowly progress through the updates.