Minecraftian

Been playing way too much Minecraft lately. Sigh.

For Jeremy and Eric.

To continue...brace yourself, this is a longish one.

I've reached a point where I am bored with towers and glass. Plus, the map height has increased, which makes towers a dogdamn obscenely difficult thing to make as I am of the mantra of going big or going home. My previous efforts at the game made a tower of glass to the top of the sky, which was lower in beta. In full version I made a massive glass pyramid to the top of the sky with a floating castle inside of it that contained a portal to the Nether.

Then I formatted my computer and fucking didn't save my save files. So yeah. I immediately logged on to start anew, but lacked motivation and inspiration. I had a half formed idea to build my gaming group's tower as they developed it, and I still may do that, but I got bored after one floor, heh. If they do build a fortress and a town and fields, I can replicate all of that in Minecraft. I can even train, corral, and breed pigs if they do that. Could be nifty.

One of the reasons I love Minecraft so much is because it is Legos with (some) physics. Stuff ignites on fire, lava destroys everything, railroad tracks can't go uphill (unless they're powered), you drown underwater, and gravel can suffocate you if too much falls on you. You can also set up pressure plates and wiring to make traps with TNT, or use pistons to hide secret doors. It is a game full of nifty stuff to do, limited only by your creativity and level of commitment (right now I am watching a video series of a British dude building a giant flying turtle with a city inside of its shell and jet engines instead of legs).

Mainly, I build towers and dig holes. At least I used to.

I've been on a seven day vacation for work for no better reason than because I can. I have assloads of pto and it only cost me two days of it to get my little vacation. Mainly I've been focusing on growing a beard and playing Minecraft.

Actually, I'll be straight with you, we're all friends here after all. In the past seven months I've gotten divorced from the lady I've been seeing for about a decade if not more, been struggling to afford a large apartment on one income, coping with living alone for the first time ever, my crazy ex came at me with a knife, and she tricked my into knocking her up (though I freely admit I am only slightly less responsible for that situation than she is, nonetheless: fucking crazy bitches). Frankly, I've been stressed, and resolving that last situation there was about as stressful and difficult as the rest of it combined. Plus work can be stressful, what with all the shootings, cpr, and dying kids I seem to come across on a monthly fucking basis. I feel I needed a fucking vacation of doing nothing.

So I did it. I grew my beard and rediscovered my love of Minecraft. I interspersed it with bike rides, seeing Prometheus, hanging out with some friends, EVE, and some DnD. More on some of that in another post.

I got bored one night and just started watching some Minecraft videos. People are doing some crazy ass shit with that game, ranging from giant and disturbingly detailed dick sculptures, to the fucking starship Enterprise. I felt like a pathetic member of the community with my glass towers and holes in the ground. After zoning out on videos for an hour, I was filled with the same energy that suffuses me when I sit down to create a campaign world or a story. I booted up Minecraft as a gleaming bright eyed avatar of creativity.

Then I built a tower. Because that is what this motherfucker does.

First I deleted the world where I had made a halfhearted attempt at creating my gaming group's tower. Then I loaded up about ten more worlds till I found something with a beginning area I had a good feel for. Then I built a tower. Not something simple though, a big fat tower of cut stone, which is annoying. You have to mine stone, which converts into cobblestone when mined, smelt it back into stone, combine the stone in a crafting box, and then you get your nice blocks of stone. It has stairs and railings and lights, there is even a little patio. Then I surrounded the motherfucker in a moat of lava and burning Nether blocks. While doing this I made a strip mine for finding coal and ores, a tree farm so I could use lumber as a renewable resource to power my smelters instead of coal (which is not renewable, though it is found everywhere), and set up a powered railroad to cart mined stone from a quarry I dug back to the base of my tower for smelting. Then I watched a bunch more YouTube videos of Minecraft and decided I would finish the tower later, probably when I figure out a good way to use pistons, wiring, and switches to make it so I can flip a switch and have lava pour down the sides of my stone tower. At heart, I am basically a twelve year old that likes tits, whiskey, and fire.

Deciding to try something new, I set off across the ocean, building a powered railroad across the water as I went to make it easy to travel back and forth from my bases. When I reached a foreign shore I liked the look of, I burned down a section of the forest and began constructing a wooden dwelling. I don't really work with wood a lot, I mostly make fortresses and towers of stone. The last time I used wood as my medium was when I made Jeremy's DnD character D'alton's ancestral home. There was an accident with some flint and steel and it burned down, I saved the library and the basement. This accident made me very leery of using wood for construction as Minecraft has super good fire physics.

So, I have this  three room dwelling constructed. The sitting room has a couch, lamp, and tv. The kitchen has a stove, cabinets, a table, and a refrigerator that dispenses cooked steak when opened. The third room is a bedroom with dressers, a closet, a bed, tv, bookcases, and a chest.

Right now I have a secret door set up somewhere in the place leading to my secret underground powered railroad, which will inevitably lead to a secret underground tower/fortress where I'll probably have a bunch of potion making and enchantment stuff. Maybe I'll send the railroad out into the ocean and make a glass dome over it, that would look kind of neat I think. Difficult to make though.

In the interests of honesty, I have installed a mod that allows me unlimited access to resources. I've put in my time, built mountains of glass made from sand I dug up and smelted, I've strip mined to the bedrock of the map and collected my ores. I just want to worry about building stuff in this world. I'm cheating and I am ok with it.

I was talking to Tony the other night and kind of got interested in the idea of a multiplayer server. Something small and affordable to play Minecraft with my friends on. Something where you can just wander around wondering what the fuck is going on in people's heads and what the fuck are they trying to build. I think it would be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it is just Tony and I that are really interested in Minecraft and he is already on the Tested multiplayer server.

Dogdamn do I love this game.

The actual dwelling. The exterior of the kitchen, which is the bigger pod on the left, is rather plain, might need to add something to accent it and break up the boredom of the columns of wood.

The sitting room. The door to the house is just beyond the right border of the screen.

The kitchen, the refrigerator I spoke of is just beyond the left side of the screen. Whoops.

The bedroom, obviously. I may add a painting to the tv on the right side just to indicate what it actually is. Right now it looks like wood and some dark squares.

Transoceanic railway!

Smart Update Complete! Also, my fenced in nursery. Each tree is four blocks from the ones around it.

My tower, with moat of burny death.

Also just as an FYI, each block in Minecraft is supposedly one meter, so three feet or so.