Minecraft

[Robert Maxwell]

Finally got my castle footprint dug out. I don't even want to think about how long this took.

One level below the bottom of that is where you start to see bedrock and I wanted a nice, smooth bottom so I didn't bother digging any deeper.

Still deciding what I'm going to build in there, although the bottom area is going to have a glass pool built in it.

 

[Canadave]

^ How many picks did you go through during the course of digging that?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I don't remember exactly how many but they would've numbered in the hundreds. I used stone pickaxes since those work out to be most efficient for this purpose. I would've easily run out of iron or even diamond despite their higher durability.

It's a 50x50 pit, so each level is 2500 blocks.

 

[Cutter John]

Cool! It looks like one of those geographical cross-sections I used to see in science class.

Seems a shame to cover it all up. Why not build a ton of rooms and balconies lining the walls, and connect them all with stairs? Then personally I'd just put a big lava lake at the bottom and cover it with glass.

And sounds like you're like me when it comes to tools. Iron and diamond are just too precious to waste on picks, when stone is everywhere and only requires an extra whack or two.

 

[Canadave]

^ I like using iron and diamond picks because of the speed advantage. I find mining and quarrying to be pretty tedious, so I'd rather get it done as quickly as possible so that I can get back to whatever else I was working on. Plus you have to replace stone picks way too often for my tastes.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, but an iron pick only does about twice as many blocks as a stone one, and iron is far, far less common than stone. I simply would not have had enough iron to dig out that whole area. I had to dig out roughly 145,000 blocks. An iron pick can mine about 250 blocks, so that's 580 iron picks or 1740 iron bars (over 27 stacks.) Digging out that whole area netted me about half that much iron. I figure it would've taken me about as much time to find enough iron as it did for me to dig it out with stone.

And doing it with diamond would've required me to cheat.

 

[Canadave]

^ Point taken. I don't tend to dig unnecessarily massive pits a lot, though.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The fact that it's unnecessary is the whole point, though.

 

[Cutter John]

I guess it all depends on how productive your mining locations are. If you're finding lots of iron, go ahead and make picks. My first one was pretty sparce, so even with an iron pick I couldn't replace the iron fast enough to justify it. And I needed the material for armor. Easier to just create an armload of cheap stone picks as needed. Doing a lot better on my second shaft. Rail lines nearly done, and I've got about 30 pieces of iron lying around.

 

[Cutter John]

So has anyone tried out the new seed system? I'm trying out one called 'gargamel'. It brings back a lot of the wild, rugged landscape that was toned down in the Beta. Since the forests are also really thick, I'm going to try building a house up in the trees this time. Will let everyone know how it goes.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I have not messed with the seeds, to be honest.

I did, however, get my pool built: http://gorzek.com/minecraft/images/index.php?start=89

The only things I have left to do with it are to clean up the blocks I put inside it (so I'd only have to lay one layer of water, then break the blocks so it would flow down) and put torches underneath for light. If I thought I could find enough Lightstone I'd light it with that. Ah well.

You guys can look at the rest of my Minecraft pictures at that link, too. I'm going to start keeping them all there, and set up an automated script to upload my current world once a day.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, kind of burned out on my single-player world, to be honest. I'm still waiting for my server to be updated.

That's one heck of a pool, Robert. Is there a diving board somewhere? Oh wait, I see it. You should build several at different heights.

 

[Canadave]

I'm getting the impression that you don't believe in working on a small scale, Robert.

Nice pool, though.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, kind of burned out on my single-player world, to be honest. I'm still waiting for my server to be updated.

That's one heck of a pool, Robert. Is there a diving board somewhere? Oh wait, I see it. You should build several at different heights.

I should've done that but I already started building a ceiling over it (a few blocks above the diving board level) so I can start working on the next level of my castle. Ah well, maybe in the future.

I'm getting the impression that you don't believe in working on a small scale, Robert.

Nice pool, though.

Well, I hadn't taken a crack at building anything really big yet. There was that 100x100 castle I was working on previously but I gave up on that as a little too ambitious. This footprint is 50x50 and I actually got the pool built in a pretty reasonable amount of time (a couple hours.) I think it took more time to smelt the sand into glass than it took to actually build the pool. Placing the water was also pretty easy once I got the knack of putting it in the right places so it would level out.

 

[Cutter John]

I know what you guys mean. Building a 30 x 30 pyramid is about as ambitious as I'm likely to go.

And yeah, gotta admit I'm starting to lose intrest too. Even the awesome scenery of Gargamel is starting to wear off. Aren't we about due for a friggin update?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

It's been, what, 3 weeks since 1.3 came out? If they start going with monthly updates I guess that's fine, though I wish they would try to add some more gameplay mechanics. The beds are cool. Wasn't there supposed to be an "adventure mode"? And I would love it if you could customize the world generation and have things like ruins and dungeons and such generated to your parameters. The current dungeons are a neat concept but pretty half-assed and way too rare.

I'd like to occasionally stumble into a cave and find that it's actually a vast, populated dungeon system.

 

[Canadave]

I go in fits and spurts with the game, I find. Haven't played it much for a week or two, right now, but I'll likely end up coming back to it before too long...

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I'm still working on getting a server set up with some (real life) friends. Gotta find enough to make it worthwhile (5-6) and then get a beefy enough server for it.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I'd like to occasionally stumble into a cave and find that it's actually a vast, populated dungeon system.

Yeah, I'd like to be able to adventure and encounter some NPCs who have built things of their own, but that's probably asking too much Actually, sounds exactly like Multiplayer doesn't it? I was thinking more along the lines as different cultures you'd find that all have unique ways to build things according to culture and environment.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I'd like to occasionally stumble into a cave and find that it's actually a vast, populated dungeon system.

Yeah, I'd like to be able to adventure and encounter some NPCs who have built things of their own, but that's probably asking too much Actually, sounds exactly like Multiplayer doesn't it? I was thinking more along the lines as different cultures you'd find that all have unique ways to build things according to culture and environment.

There is actually a mod that does this: Builders. Kind of afraid to use it on a "real" world, though. It creates human mobs that build entirely on their own, constructing various pre-programmed structures.