A year or so ago I put together a model of the 1701-A Enterprise in Minecraft. Fun though that was, it was a very static model and the scale was too squished to fit everything in properly. Since then I have been getting into a mod for Minecraft called Tekkit. In short, it makes it possible to achieve things such as; - Ship-wide electrical systems. - Working transporters. - Working shields. - Working replicators. - Pumps, pipes, and all sorts of fun stuff. This has lead to the slightly crazy idea of making a new Enterprise model with a fully functional ship-wide electrical grid + associated gubbins. Now, it is generally accepted that the Minecraft blocks are 1m cubes. I however am beginning to doubt this scale, because with a 305 block long Enterprise there's barely room to even stand up in the Bridge module and you can only fit 5 or 6 decks in the saucer section. So, I've instead gone for a scale that allows me to fit all the wires, pipes, etc into the design - 500 blocks long. Here's how it looks; Including the Bridge, a scale of 500 blocks allows enough room for 8 full decks with valuable space for lighting circuits. The turboshafts also properly align with the bumps (currently holes) on the top of the bridge dome now; Internal bridge scale; Corridors, with lighting circuits hidden behind ceiling panels; I'm currently working on Main Engineering, or the Intermix Room... not sure what to refer to it as actually Question for any super tech geeks here... where would you expect the power for ship lighting to come from? I currently have it cabled up to the rear end of the horizontal intermix core, behind where the nacelles connect to it.
That's a heck of a lot of detail-work! Impressive! I wouldn't mind seeing some larger-sized pictures of that. Keep up the good work!
Just a small update, I've been working behind the scenes on some of the ship's infrastructure. It's always bothered me that you have to climb up and down the Turboshafts via ladders on account on Minecraft not having moving blocks, but with the latest version of Minecraft you have "Command Blocks" that can teleport players to destinations of your choosing. So... with a little help from the ComputerCraft addon, I've been able to put together something that feels like a working Turbolift. Here's what the inside of the Turbolift Car looks like at the moment (I haven't bothered to detail it yet): What we have there is a Computer, a Monitor, and hiding behind a panel underneath is a Command Block. The monitor displays your current location, and if you click the computer next to it you get a menu pop up: All you need to do is enter the deck number of your choice, and the computer will send you there: Behind the scenes, the code looks like this: Every Turbolift Car has an XYZ coordinates, so all the computer is doing is passing a teleport command to its attached Command Block and sending you there. I plan on using a more advanced program for the ship's teleporters, allowing you to target a player by name and teleport them on/off the ship. Or, set a target location for the teleport pads and have them send whoever is stood on them to that location after X number of seconds (so you can set the location and run over to the pads). I also plan on using a huge 4x2 block Monitor for the Bridge Main Viewscreen, and have a wireless computer network on the ship so you can control each deck's systems from the bridge itself.
Here's what I have in mind for the Impulse Engineering room. The guts of the Impulse Engines will likely take up most of the empty space, with the spherical reactor sitting on top of the vertical intermix...thing. There's also a diagonal jeffries tube leading off from this room which follows the spine of the dorsal fin all the way down into the main engineering room. Or you could take the lift... depending on how dramatic the situation is :P Externally, the spherical reactor pokes through the hull and forms the blue dome on top of the Impulse Engines: I've also been touching up the external paintwork today, and I added some windows: The windows are actually just lights at the moment due to their location being at floor level, but I have enough room to move the dorsal decks down a bit internally so they can line up properly and be usable glass windows. That will also allow me to add the saucer seperation hardware, which will mostly consist of TNT I do seem to have run into a snag though... I can't seem to find a way to have the turbolift reach the lower deck on the rim of the saucer. I can easily have a corridore open into the lower section of the Impulse Engineering room... but that feels a bit of an unlikely arrangement.... hmm...
Very nice. I tried this a while back but was on a public server. Actually ended up with unsolicited volunteer help and had the saucer about complete - but then grievers wrecked it. Glad you've got this someplace safe.
Just a quickie, here's some external detailing on the Bridge dome The colours are a bit weird due to the default Minecraft textures, but sometime in the future I'll re-do those so they look more authentic.
I actually like that layered exterior look on the saucer--it gives it a star-destroyer type look--making it bigger.
The RedPower addon allows you to chop blocks into smaller pieces and use them for detailing. The red stripe is actually a red wool block cut up into strips. What I may actually do once the build is finished is go back and smooth off as many of the blocky edges as possible, but the half blocks do tend to have weird lighting issues. I'll post some more pics later, I have nearly finished the nacelles externally, and I've started on the Hangar/Cargo Bay. I've decided to go with The Motion Picture style hangar as opposed to the later version... but I'm having a few issues fitting it inside the hull.
Here's an almost finished nacelle. Still needs tweaking, but I'm pretty happy with it The Hangar/Cargo Bay is still very much work in progress, but it's starting to take shape now. It's a bit too tall at the moment, so I'm going to squish it down a bit. Also I'm still having trouble fitting in the port/starboard corridors which lead off from the cargo area. Not sure where they are supposed to lead.. that's the outer hull :S Really starting to feel like a Thermian now
That's coming along extremely well! Those side corridors in the hangar bay were suppose to curve in following the hull but the version that made it to film didn't have that. Probert does have an illustration on his site where he corrected that curvature though
I've taken a break from detail recently to focus on final scale. This has largely come about because I've had issues fitting various on-screen sets into the dimensions of the outer hull. From what I've read on this forum that seems to be a common problem I also have some issues with Minecraft's block size. Each block is supposed to be 1 metre cubed, but if I scale my model to the canon dimension of 305 metres long it looks like this... For a start you only get 6 usable decks in the saucer. Granted the 1m thick floors are a contributing factor, but it's still way too squished... (The red blobs are person-sized) It just doesn't work, the Bridge is ridiculously small... So, rather than focusing on the canon dimensions I will instead focus on fitting in the appropriate amount of decks. As such, and in order to fit two full height decks in the rim of the saucer, the model needs to be 478 blocks long... The general Bridge dimensions also look a lot more reasonable at this scale... The challenge now though is fitting in all the cabling for the lighting and other bits and pieces. Thankfully, the Redpower addon does allow you to run power cables through 'frames', and I reckon it will work out ok... What I like about using the Redpower frames to construct the decks is the little bit of authenticity it brings to the build. Anyone attempting to build this beast for real would undoubtedly have to start with a big metal frame... and that's exactly what I'm doing
Nice work! It's been a while since I played around with Minecraft... those frames blocks are new to me. --Alex