Starry night, overlooking the initial spawn point
Dawn breaking
Looking east, at the one lone, indestructible cactus. I did dig up a smaller cactus near it, tried to replant a cube, it didn't work, the cube disappeared. I have one cube left - I'm wondering whether to risk trying to plant it. (Turns out that the spawn area of 32x32 is inviolable.)
Looking down from my home, Pie in the Sky
Southeast. There's a creeper on the top of that hill, near the middle.
South, looking at the compass pointer I made. You can also see the creeper more clearly on the horizon, on the left.
This was my first attempt at the compass marker. Oops. I tend to get East and West confused, which then leads to no good.
Southwest. Yes, there's a cube soil floating in the sky there, and it's not my fault - world spawned that way. One enchanting element of Minecraft is figuring out the physics used: it's mostly like Earth's, but not quite.
Directly west, towards the glass bridge
I could probably get rid of the handrails and just walk straight, but that would be unnerving.
Someday: refraction! Ray tracing a voxel database is a natural.
My abode's shadow below.
West-northwest, and a view of Ghoul Knoll. Which is hard to say, like "rural juror", so maybe this name won't stick.
Northwest.
North
(This lake needs a name.) We'll also need to avoid eroding this beach as we need sand for glass. Just north of this lake, you can almost see it, is a large sandy area - I recommend taking sand from there if you need it.
I call this T. Rex Mountain, since it looks like one, with that little arm sticking out.
This is a chrono-dimensional rift, i.e., some bug in the multiplayer. I haven't dared to try to mine it yet. Morgan says it's a shadowing glitch - sure, right.
There's lots going on under the surface. This is in the hill to the west of my dwelling. I dug out all around this gold deposit, not digging it out (no iron pick at the time). Gold's currently pretty useless except for making golden apples, so I'm leaving it be.
Down about 70-80 levels. I dare you to dig the Redstone out of this location.
"Pretentious Homage to Plato, No.1", by moi. Up above is my Pie in the Sky dwelling.
The view from the hill west of Pie in the Sky.
Looking back east at Pie in the Sky.
This is a few hours later. Since I last looked, Morgan's built a Skyway to the Future (r) south of Pie.
Across this skyway are two impressive buildings. Note they're carved from rock, very little cobblestone added.
From atop Morgan's tower. The light pollution in the neighborhood is starting to get bad. Luckily from this height the skies are pretty clear. Really, though, we need to get about 20 levels higher to get above the clouds. Someday...
Sunset from the bottom of Morgan's tower. Cool, there's like a hole in the mountain, you can see the sun coming through!
From the top of Morgan's tower, looking east. Foggy day. Well, really, I just had the fog setting on ('F' key).
Here's without the fog. When fog is off, the limits of what you can see looks like water, which is deceiving.
Looking south from Morgan's tower. I'll have to go visit that waterfall sometime soon, and there's a natural cave or two there.
Creepers are after you - run, Quaxalot, run! Actually, right now the monsters don't directly hit you, but creepers definitely blow up. One took a chunk out of my mine entrance near Pie. These were after Quax because he stayed logged in after playing.
T. Rex hill, close up
Pleasant bridge in front of T.Rex Hill
Hint to newbies: this is the east side of T.Rex Hill, just north of the community chest. See that black stuff in the middle? Coal!
Turning around, there are some impressively large trees here.
Atop T.Rex Mountain, a lovely scene below. To the left is Morgan's Hobbit Hole, to the right is Eric's Pie in the Sky.
Morgan's demense
Where it all began - the first structure. Not too long from now it will have a historical marker.
At the spawn point, it's a Socialist paradise! Soon we'll have this world strip-mined and the workers shall eat golden apples every day!
A last view east from Pie in the Sky.
Life goes on, and exploration's all the rage on (real) day 2, September 25, 2010. A 15 minute walk (a day/night cycle is 20 minutes) north of the spawn Morgan finds the Great North Sea.
Further exploration reveals it's a large lake. Morgan puts a lighthouse up for future travelers.
Quaxalot explores downwards. He finds the bottom of the world. Me, I thought it would be either all lava or adminium (undiggable stuff), but he finds a few stones and digs a hole, and there's sky!
Working with the Powers that Be (the admin, Morgan), Quax takes the plunge, dropping into space. His words, "I could see the sun (later, the moon and stars) and below them a featureless blue ocean." You take lots of damage and are stuck.
Quax added warning signs and a fence. Still, kids sneak in and die all alone in space - there's so little we can do to protect today's reckless youth.
The dawn of Day 3. Looks like the T.Rex is now carrying a short sword. I tried a new look, the free Realistic 2 pack. Interesting. The downside is some serious Moires, but it's a pleasant change.
Just to give a taste, here's what a chest's contents now look like with SMP Realistic2. I peeked at Quaxalot's chest - wow, he really does have diamonds! Some of that stuff I now don't recognize. Game needs tooltips so bad (problem is language localization, I guess, but I *know* people would just make language packs).
Whoa, someone created a megamall advertising sign! Actually, it's Quaxalot's compass tower: whatever letters you see is the direction you're looking, e.g. SouthEast.
Morgan's been more domestic, making a greenhouse addition.
I decide to explore to the west, looking back east one last time before setting off.
Northwest a bit from our home, a lovely lava flow. Bring the kids, toast some marshmallows.
During the day, it's just as dramatic, with nearby trees on fire! And yes, that's ham I have there in slot 9. A pig fell from a cliff and left two pieces of pork.
A view back east towards home from Exclamation Hill. At a certain distance it all becomes blue, but is not really water.
And a view down the cliff-face of Exclamation Hill. (Boy, is that chat comment prescient... http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/28/working-computer-mad.html)
This is why I call it Exclamation Hill. I didn't put this here, it's natural (oh, wups, no - see comments).
A view east back to Exclamation Hill. I've also started to put down way markers, a nice use for gravel. We'll see if it helps me from getting lost...
This is my newfangled lighthouse marker, supercheap to make and hopefuly distinctive and visible from a distant (torch on top, of course). Basically, build a 3x3 base dirt tower and then carve away with the shovel.
Here it is at night. Maybe I should add more torches. Morgan had a nice idea for his northern expedition - just lay down torches every X blocks. I did this less than I should have.
If you explore and run into a mountain in a dead-end area, one idea is to just tunnel through. Downside is that you may not come out for a long time (if you start in a bit low).
Exploring a cave, hey look, it's some glowing green pool! Getting closer, d'oh, it's just some grass on the other side. "Eric the Excitable".
A lovely piece of terrain, with interesting things beyond, plus some tasty-looking caves. I call this place Hole Cliff.
Now *this* is exciting. Going through the "Big Hole" (previous slide) and exploring a cave on the other side, I heard the zombie noise. Sure enough, a whole committee of them! And a treasure chest in the far left!
And here's a fabled mob generator, where the zombies came from. I destroyed it (takes a bit). Also notice the cool mossy rocks underneath. No use currently, but decorative: I made a tiny bridge over Morgan's canal experiment by the Community Chest - go check it out.
I put the phat loot from the chest in my inventory: 9 strings, 4 pig saddles, 2 redstone, 3 gunpowder. I put a pig saddle in the Community Chest - enjoy, someone! Oh, the zombies almost did jostle me to death, as they were using Brownian motion to push me near a lava pool.
From Aaron: "I found a beautiful underground cave w/ waterfalls, lava, etc. It didn't photograph very well, though. I found enough diamond to make a very spiffy axe, plenty of red stone and was able to make quite a bit of obsidian. I built this tower above the spot I broke out from, and then flooded the cavern... All I know is that it's due north..."
Someone's been playing with matches near Morgan's house.
Further northeast, a serious forest fire!
Quite impressive, in fact! Didn't seem to be spreading further.
From Quaxalot: " I found a room with some zombies standing in a stream, guarding a chest (it had some iron ingots, a bucket, string, and other knick-knacks). There was also a weird cube sitting on the ground."
From Quaxalot: "I drained the water and took a picture of the cube. I chopped it up with my pick, and it disappeared, but nothing was left behind." (It's a zombie generator, good to destroy - Eric)
From Quaxalot: "An underground stream. Water makes some funny choices - I'd expect this water to be spreading out, but this was a stable state for it."
From Quaxalot: "A nice picture from a very deep cave. Redstone and iron ore in the foreground, water and lava side-by-side in the background." I asked how the water and fire met. "The water and fire in this spot are at different levels - the fire is a little bit lower, and it's deeper (I don't know how deep, though I just thought of a way to find out that might work)."
The long sky bridge from Morgan's to Eric's...soon, with mine-car service.
Aaron's underwater lair, the above-water part. I definitely plan to visit.
Exploring beneath Hole Cliff, there's a huge huge series of tunnels. Somewhat dangerous area, and here's my first view of the lava there. This is the future home of Uncle Bob's World O' Fun.
Extensive lava lake, before I built some bridges.
And what's that I see in the distance, while mining iron? Could it be? Yes! Diamonds. The first I've seen. They say you'll always remember your first time; usually you don't get to take a picture.
One of the major attractions of Uncle Bob's World O' Fun will be the skeleton jamboree. Watch them spawn, attempt to shoot arrows at you, and hit each other.
Freaky: with the SMP Realistic2 texture pack, the sun has this weird round shape. (I dropped using this texture pack: mossy rock looks the same as cobblestone, and compasses disappear!)
On the way back from my development work of Uncle Bob's World O' Fun (UBWOF), nearing home, there's suddenly this impressive structure to the south.
The Parthecube is indeed a lovely new addition.
Come back an hour or two later, there's now a stairway.
At dusk.
Nice at night, too.
Up close, at night.
The area outside Morgan's house, circa Sept. 28th, 2010.
Things have changed a bit, the T.Rex now has flames above his head, something's going on with the canal experiment by Morgan's house, and the 32x32 inviolable spawn area has been fenced off (thank heaven).
Pig infestation. Look out below for pork chops - this is my own little ham factory, I guess.
This is an amazing amount of just plain digging, go take the tour. Don't worry, you won't have to turn around and go back the way you came.
Aaron's lair, east of the spawn, is a pretty stunning place.
No way, and there's some sort of thing out to the island.
Now as soon as the rocketship engine block is available, Aaron will be ready to roll.
A fun little staircase, with a tiny bit of a puzzle.
Time to go, literally. What happens next, I can't say... Go visit!
From Morgan: "View from the Greatroom in Morgan's Manor"
Quaxalot writes on the back of his postcard: "My first mushrooms! One here, one on the level below, visible through the hole. We don't need them yet, because we're invulnerable, but someday mushroom soup will be a very welcome meal."
Quax writes: "One of my favorite things about exploring natural caverns is that you have to work out a safe and practical way to get around. This waterfall is a good example. I wanted to get down near the base, but all the sides are shear, and there could be water or lava behind any block. So you have to work out a careful but efficient plan. I ended up building a couple of cantilevered walkways, and then near the bottom built a bridge to the other side, over the water."
Quax writes: "Great! Water and lava in the same place. You'd think this would be perfect for making obsidian. At least, that's what I thought. But the physics of water and lava continue to mystify me."
Quax writes: "Here's water and lava butting into one another. I have a ton of theories, but I can't get them to do what I want, even with a bucket and a ton of blocks to steer the flows anywhere I want. I'm pretty sure there's obsidian in there under the shared face, and if I block off both flows I could go mine it. But if I unblock the flows I probably couldn't farm more obsidian, so I've left them alone for now so I can make obsidian here once I understand how fluids work."
Running into monsters still freaks me out, even though I'm invulnerable.
Especially when they bring their friends.
Today I invented the outdoor altimeter. It's a little dangerous and can use up your shovel, but it's worth it for those major projects. Fill up a slot with dirt (gravel or sand might be better, come to think of it, since these dig quicker). Make an elevator beneath you, as usual. Kiss the sky. Look at the slot. That's the altitude of the place you started at. Dig back down. So the altitude here is 26 meters. The walkway outside Morgan's house is at an altitude of 1 meter.
Map of Vokselia, evening of 9/30/2010, created by Quax.
Morgan completed the Toonerville Trolley. I have no idea how to make it go - have to figure that out next.
The altitude of the walkway in front of Morgan's place is at an altitude of 1 block. Here's the view from a 63 block tower, facing south, 9/30/10.
South West
West
East
South-east
South again, looking down the altimeter column.
Laying down block after bloody block of Sunset Boulevard.
Along Sunset Boulevard there's a nice place where it opens up to the sky, entirely natural. What's Sunset Boulevard? You'll see... Blight on the earth or awesome low-impact superhighway, you decide (and "fix" it however you want, I don't want it to be considered inviolable).
From Quax: "Children of all ages will be delighted by the Snake Lava Pool of Unusual Size and Shape, found only in the Isthmus of Blissness (opening soon). Bring the whole family! Warning: lava may be hot."
You know something's not quite right when you join and only a small portion of the world loads. I was too chicken to jump off (and I suspect I would have lost everything if I did).
Spawning in and having no terrain at all around you is not better.
Things only got better from there: the next time I spawned in, I appeared to be surrounded by stone, with no ability to dig out. Note the flashing hearts, which mean I'm taking damage.
Is this worse than logging in and being spawned inside solid rock? Hard to say...
Life just gets better and better. Turns out all this was some glitch in my account. The last thing I was doing was digging a tunnel, and the blocks I dug were reappearing. I used another account to login and dig out these blocks, which (I think) made my account usable again, mostly.
I spawned in using my son's account, and he was able to enter fine - this was his spawn point. Digging out the last few blocks of Sunset Boulevard seemed to unglitch me. However, it's like having a disease: is this attack of Cube Fever the very last? Is my life over? If not, how long will I be unconscious, how long will the fever-dream of no cubes, pigs in space (sometimes I spawned in and there are just pigs in the distance, that's all), or living on just a 32x32 patch last?
When you have no idea how long your life will go on, you want to finish what you can. I finished Sunset Strip, which gets to Dan's living area and ends (to preserve his area's natural beauty), then starts up again.
Another view of Sunset Strip, just after completion; soon the sod will grow in and the construction will blend in with the landscape. Unlike Sunset Boulevard, which is all cobblestone, Sunset Strip is made entirely of all-natural dirt. It goes through the treetops of a forest, occasionally through a tree. We expect numerous school groups to visit and learn more about our deciduous friends. In the gift shop they'll be able to buy wooden mementos to remember their visit to this pristine forest. Well, nearly pristine.
Another view just after construction. The road is at a constant level of 12 meters above sea level. In the distance you can see an evil mad scientist's lair. He appears to be unkillable, so we tolerate him, because we're caring people.
To address the controversy: we must apologize for the denial and cover-up about the fact that some of our less-disciplined workforce cut down trees in the making of the road. Sorry, and in their defense, shovel handles don't grow themselves. We have planted saplings that, within 30-40 years, will make things just as they were, really.
I was trying to change the lighting to make the sign readable, and things started to glitch. It says "Above is Sunset Strip, here is Wangan Freeway, altitude 1m". My two roads cross at this point, the north-south road is at 1 meter elevation (so water won't just flood it).
I wish I could say I was looking up at the sky, but no, I'm actually looking down. Same glitch as earlier, the area simply won't load. Trying to unglitch it with another account didn't work. Is the THE END?!?!?! (Actually, might be, for me - this /is/ an Alpha, after all, so it's pretty flaky.)
[brightness turned up.] Unglitched again, but somehow the zombies got out! I could see one on fire in the distance, saw another coming towards me, plugged the hole but he broke through (really, server missync, but very freaky). Agh!
Sure, he can't hurt me, but he can get in the way of my photo taking. Attention hog!
I quickly sidestep and get off the shot.
Then I lure him into a pit. Sucker. (Coming back later, he disappeared.)
Here are the zombies, trapped below (though they seem to be able to spawn in the hallway). If you want to visit, take the dirt elevator. I haven't looked around yet, there's too much jostling.
A jog down Sunset Boulevard, watching the sun go down. This road is approximately 810 meters long, and takes 3:10 to run (you run about 256 blocks a minute). The separate road Sunset Strip is about 160 meters long. By the way, I very much like the sign someone put at the end of the road. I was going to continue the road further, but that's a fine period at the end of the sentence.
Map as of the dawn of 10/1/10
Quax writes: "Water is strange. Where is this water coming from?"
Water is very strange. I've excavated around the water from the previous image. Why doesn't this water flow in all directions?
from Quax: "I've been having block appearance/disappearance glitching all day. Here, while walking around, the ground disappeared out from under me, and I suddenly fell into the Void. Luckily, the world eventually got loaded, and I was placed at ground level - otherwise I'd have been toast. The game has definitely been a lot flakier today than the last few days. This is a view of the world from below. The curly orange things that look like cheeze doodles are, I think, lava pools. You can also see the bedrock (Adminium) on much of the bottom of the world. I'm surprised it doesn't coat the whole bottom, but you can see it doesn't. This picture also gives us a nice view of the height of the world. I suspect the far-away "tops" of the icebergs are the surface of the world, so this is how far down you can dig. There's a lot of world underground!"
Quax continues: "The big white block is the sun. I'm particularly struck by the very flat vertical edges on everything, rather than the organic curves we're used to seeing on the surface. I suspect this is a rendering artifact due to the world being saved in box-shaped chunks, many of which are not resident in the client at this moment."
from Quax: "Another completely natural formation - a big flat-walled shaft that goes way, way down. The bottom holds a lava flow and a lake. I had a very strong emotion looking over the lip, like looking down an elevator shaft or over the observation platform of a skyscraper."
From Quax: "A completely natural formation. I'm close enough that I don't think the renderer is missing any blocks. The floating pieces and Road Runner-style rock formation are particularly nice."
From Morgan: "The Seaside Bungalo with a Secret..."
"... and the nearby underwater AquaWall. Is that the secret? Or is there a deeper secret inside?
A look down the stairway into the Twisty Passage Caverns (r) at UBWOF. I like how the grass has been growing down the stairs. Hmm, that gives me an idea... (the rules on grass growing are actually pretty involved, see the wiki).
Future tourist attraction at UBWOF, if all goes well.
UBWOF. Lava meeting water just doesn't get old for me.
From the other side of the waterfall.
From Morgan: "Here's Skyholm. It is in an epic natural cliff. There is no easy way to reach it... I built a sand ladder up and then destroyed it on the way down. If you steered very carefully, you might be able to jump off the cliff and get inside."
A view from Skyholm
From Morgan, a shot of a lovely natural arch
You may ask, "Are there chickens at UBWOF? My kids love chickens." The answer is a definitive "Yes!" What kind of monsters do you think we are, not having chickens at a family-friendly themed entertainment attraction?
Whoa, and that's the end of that, no deeper here for me. Shucks!
Still, I made it pretty far down. We shall not speak of my adventures trying to get up out of the shaft: the running out of dirt for the elevator, the falling, the screaming, the endless dig through the dirt elevator (should have used gravel or sand), and so on.
Still, the view from the top is lovely. And here it is, UBWOF East, looking towards the Twisty Passage Caverns entrance.
I was clearing brush, and saw something new: a shrub! It does not melt away in the sun, like most detached foliage.
I tried making shrubs on purpose - here are two. The trick is to have the foliage bordered by (at least?) 3 dirt. Also, to melt foliage away, you must make sure it's not attached to the ground. I haven't quite figured out the rules there, but if attached, no melt. I currently have 67 saplings, from hanging out around melting foliage (I could just cut it down and get saplings, but I like seeing what drops out instead). [Turns out, no, all that shrubs need to survive is one cube under them.]
When you spawn in and it looks like this, it means it's time to get back to real life. This and the reappearing block problem definitely mean "bad/slow server connection".
Last bits of UBWOF construction. Building the tower over the Shaft O' Culling at UBWOF: glass block, dirt block, on and on it goes. It was a bit unnerving to do this at night while the clouds moved through below.
Finishing this platform, I wanted the "giant wood torches" look. However, I had never used flint and steel before. So my first attempt to light the log resulted in self-immolation.
The finished platform, now open for business.
From Quaxalot, on an expedition some distance southeast of the spawn point around 10/2. All of these are untouched natural formations. "Aladdin's Lamp: The sun rises behind a lovely floating island."
Quax: "Squareway Arch: When it's sunny, you can climb to the top and enjoy the cloud-level views. Should it ever rain, you can come down and continue playing under the generous canopy."
Quax: "Starship Away: Was Minecraft originally settled by alien visitors from another planet? Some say it was, and formations like these seem to offer a tantalizing glimpse of the types of vehicles those visitors may have used. "
Quax: "Tapir Rock: Part of the Wild Animal Mountains, located not far from Eagle Mountain. The view from the tapir's head is panoramic."
Quax: "Snake Prominence: One of the most striking formations in the Animal Mountains, this prominence slithers left and right as it extends from the nearby mountain. There's a shoreline to the south, and you can see this formation easily from a boat even far away from land."
Quax: "Lion Rock: Lion Rock with duck. Another formation in the Animal Mountains, just south of Snake Prominence. He is a gentle monarch, and does not eat the ducks."
Quax: "Amphitheatre with waterfalls: A great natural formation with substantial room underneath for an amphitheatre. The lucky patrons get to sit between the waterfalls, and between acts enjoy a dip in the pool on the left."
Quax: "Glitchiness continues. You can see lava flows. I think the other structures are caves."
Quax: "More glitchiness. You can see the above-ground stuff isn't loading (it never did), and the underground lava and caverns are still visible.
Quax: "LavaSeed: From deep inside a cavern. This is the kind of seed I've been trying to create for lava or water. The textures on the seed are all animated and moving in the direction of the pool. The textures on the lava pool are still."
Quax: "Road's End: When I got back to Spawn, I traveled Sunset Boulevard to the western end. Often the chunks ahead of me took their time loading. The whole time, though, I was treated to this interesting display of regularly-spaced blocks hanging in the sky. They were part of the world, since when I turned and looked around, they stayed where they belonged in the scene, like all the other objects." Turns out, this is the "chunk not loaded" sign.
Back to Eric. Here are a few shots from along Sunset Boulevard. I do like how the boulevard happened to hit this feature just under the hole. This was pure luck, not skillful planning on my part.
Rushing off to meet up for the 8 pm Grand Opening tour of UBWOF, I noticed UFO shapes in the far distance. Getting closer, these would disappear - graphics bug, I guess (see Quax's similar photo a few back). It made me realize we could indeed do sky writing, if we choose. I urged us to not do so, at least not at high altitudes. Unsightly and visible for a long distance.
CrazyCake's spider trap. It's just south of Sunset Boulevard, watch for the billboards. You can lure spiders to their death: they can't go through 1 meter openings, you can, so you go through one and then stand across from the spider. They try to pursue and fall to their deaths. As a souvenir, you can go down and get the string they leave. This is about the only way to get a cloth block, given the lack of the mythical sheep-creatures.
On Sunset Boulevard, looking to the East. I wonder what those signs say on the other side? (This is one small feature I loved adding, even if no one else notices (subtext: I hope someone notices))
There's one rest stop along the Boulevard, about 2/3rds of the way west. I've been stocking it with food and travelers' supplies. Note the extremely rare (for multiplayer) leather; chickens occasionally drop leather. I have two pieces of leather, one is here, so it's the only convenience store in Voxelia that carries (pseudo)beef jerky.
At the west end of Sunset Boulevard Quax built a sign. Funny story: my son, when joining up with the UBWOF tour, decided to start digging up the sand and piling it up, not realizing it was a sign (in his defense, it's hard to tell on the ground). Quax was there, seeing his creation getting destroyed before his eyes, wondering what was going on and "was sad". My son couldn't figure out what all the ruckus was about. In the end, it was a few seconds work for all of us to repair the sign.
From another angle, on the way to UBWOF. Quaxalot took this picture, on his self-guided test-run tour of UBWOF. Very helpful: he pointed out flawed signs, confusing bits, etc. Note the UFOs in the background.
Quaxalot tourist photo of UBWOF's "Tower", part of his test run. From another angle (NE) I called this "Hole Cliff", but that's just an illusion from afar - no real hole. So "The Tower" it is!
Quax photo: the Tower at night.
A view from UBWOF proper, looking west towards Culling Hill.
I left UBWOF through the northern passage and hiked home, to see if anything had changed along the way. Someone's built a not-so-secret lair on the top - no sign, so anyone know who's it is? [Aha, I believe it's Vince's, aka aancsiid, a work in progress.]
Back home, not a lot that's different, which is nice. This is on 10/3. Compare it to this shot (with a different texture pack) http://picasaweb.google.com/eric.haines/MinecraftMultiplayer#5522180979193463394 5 days earlier, it looks about the same.
Going north to pick up a little sand, the pit designated as the place to get it has been entirely strip-mined out! Somebody's up to something... That post shows the original level.
I wanted to see how the sod was coming in along Sunset Strip. Some places were filling in quickly - we'll see how it goes here. Date: 10/3. // Checking later on 10/4, the grass had indeed all grown in.
There's a nice new (and convenient for me) entrance on the west side of the hill of the Parthecube. I learnt something from this entrance: you can put signs on walls! If I had but known that earlier, UBWOF would have been a little bit less cluttered with signs on blocks.
The new path up to the Parthecube from the south. CrazyCakes also joined Sunset Boulevard with Sunset Strip with a tasteful street.
CrazyCake's brick and wood farmhouse. I guess he found a lot of clay by the lake, lucky guy. I've found exactly zero.
CrazyCake's farm, taken from a shady spot by a hill. Lovely area.
South of CrazyCake's farm (south of the Parthecube) is a beautiful lake. You can just make out his house on the right side.
The map as of 10/3. It's grown a lot in 3 days since the one on http://picasaweb.google.com/eric.haines/MinecraftMultiplayer#5522758614398890898.
Meeting up at the Grand Opening for UBWOF.
Finally everyone was ready to roll, so the UBWOF tour began. Like a Chinese tour group, everyone was wearing the same clothing so we wouldn't get separated from each other.
Most tourists first view of UBWOF as they come over the hills, looking north-west.
Uncle Bob's World of Fun, looking north from the entrance path.
My first topiary experiment, viewed from Culling Hill. Not surprisingly, you're looking West. I laid out 10 saplings on the same level at regular intervals at the same time. The lower-right tree went a bit wild, as its branches ran into the hillside, causing it to grow further.
I made the Shaft O' Culling by digging from above. I was going to join it up with an existing tunnel in the Twisty Passage Caverns. However, I got turned around by 180 underground (long story) and so my Shaft tunnel found skeletons instead of my joining tunnel.
Here's the rule for visiting the caves: if you see two torches next to each other, the one with dirt under it is in the direction of the exit. I of course should have taken a picture of one of these,,,
You got that right: underneath that chicken is Adminium. We're at the bottom of the world. UBWOF has chickens everywhere (except where prohibited).
CrazyCake started the craze, and soon all the cool kids were doing it: self-immolation.
Near the entry tunnel from the Shaft O' Culling. Nearby, fusty, miner extraordinaire (see Anatomy of a Mountain, later on), took up on the rule that the only blocks you can dig at UBWOF are coal. Taking out some coal, he immediately uncovered diamonds, which I hope will form the basis for another tourist attraction soon.
Looking on the Lake O' FireWater in UBWOF, some people got more fire than water. I /told/ them to stick with the tour guide.
My younger son, the lil' scamp, you can't take him anywhere without him getting into trouble.
Quax found it tricky to leave UBWOF on his test-run, so I added a path.
Group shot, at the end of the tour. Combineelite (my son) lagged out, and Fusty took off for parts unknown.
Another shot, with non-overlapping names and this time Vincent is looking at the camera. Morgan couldn't make the tour: he was putting his kids to bed, then as sysop was planting secret stashes around the world for us to come across. The treasures include such things as Still Water, something that is obtainable in single-player but not in multi, for some reason. Planting hidden treasures seemed like the most interesting solution; we all agreed that just handing out sysop privileges would ruin the game for us, as any accomplishments would be tainted ("did you work for this, or just sysop'ed it?").
After the UBWOF tour, we chilled at CrazyCake's brick crib. No tunes for his jukebox, though - he's hoping to find a creeper lair and work some way to get skeletons to kill one with arrows (yes, that's how you get records). He does have a skeleton trap underneath the Parthecube (sorry, pictures didn't come out - the skeletons were not coming out that night).
The entry to the rocketship area is now planted with a handsome wall of reeds.
Easiest entry to The Anatomy of a Mountain is through Morgan's Bungalow on the south edge of the lake. On the way down, admire the view of the rocket ship through his aquatic viewing area. There's also a one-way entry to Anatomy via the rocket ship.
This is beyond amazing: Anatomy of a Mountain by fustyWumpus. He's carving away everything below his rocketship area. What you see suspended are the veins of ore remaining. Fusty notes, "In full disclosure, I accidentally harvested 2 cubes and 1 other because it was in the way. Otherwise it's all as found."
Another shot from Anatomy of a Mountain. FustyWumpus has been working on dramatic lighting (note how you see no torches), and it's breath-taking.
From the ground level of Anatomy. Visitors are encouraged to dig away any stone found (he's removed all traces of visible dirt).
The same shot brightened up, so you can see the ore more. We're at the bottom with Adminium all about. There's a small diamond deposit left of the middle. Fusty's hope is that someone will dig and find a source of lava that he could then redirect. So dig on, visitors, and maybe you'll get your name on a plaque!
I spent some time digging out a few stone from the floor - it's OCD addictive. When I spawned into Anatomy the next day, behold, two new features had been added: water and lava. I'm just happy the glass-encased lava didn't happen to flow over my log-out spot; logging in would have been... interesting.
A view from the entrance of Anatomy, showing the new lava and water features. Go visit! Expect to get lost in the Adminium, and use this photo to find the entrance again.
From Morgan: "oops" [This is the 216th photo, 6x6x6; cubic numbers have a special meaning in Voxelia, at least to me.]
From Morgan: "This is the closest one to the spawn point--it is within about a 2 min. walk."
We had a second tour of UBWOF the next night. Already things had changed! The new Sunset Boulevard road extension built by CrazyCake goes right through UBWOF now, which is very convenient.
"Pretentious Homage to 'Godel Escher Bach'" - fun to make. Turns out you can't actually do this sort of sculpture with just any letters.
Climbing Culling Hill. Quax learnt the "sidle, then jump forward" move. The tour is on YouTube in three parts, starting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqpl-OI6Iq8
Aye, 'tis a tall tower.
"The Tower" from the top.
At the top of the world.
Indeed. Walking off from where the sign itself is, just barely stepping off the edge, is your best bet.
It's become a tradition: the purifying lava bath upon entering the caverns
The skeletons were all riled up with two of us there: 5 appeared, and they were putting the smackdown on each other.
Hey, both trees finally grew in UBWOF. I did clear a few blocks above the one that wasn't growing, but I don't think that mattered. You need 4 blocks clear above a tree for it to be able to grow, plus light. After that, luck.
Here's a way marker, (usually) pointing the way back out - the dirt cube points the way to go.
Quaxalot at the end of the second UBWOF tour. His head didn't get flattened, he's looking up.
The view he was taking in: sculpture, observation tower, moon.
Quax and I built the HyperFurnace Mark II near the Westward Ho hiking trail.
I like the round shadow under the character: good trick, getting such a shadow off of boxes.
Flexing his arm, he-man pose. Actually, I was lagging out, not getting updates. Oddly, my position changes still get recorded and everything looks fine to others, but I don't see them update.
I believe CrazyCake made this, a sculpture honoring the game Loderunner, which is sort of a spiritual grandfather to Minecraft.
Going along the highway, hmmm, that's new, there was a desert there once...
Whoa! Fire up the moral outrage! (Well, of course I did help myself to the iron ore exposed - I'm not stupid) Crazy suggested maybe building a layer just below the topmost level and covering it with sand. Works for me - it's just like the real-life procedure where timber companies clear cut an area but leave a "beauty strip" of trees near the roads.
The Grand Work, aka Regloh's Glass Dome, aka "The Sand Sucker".
From max altitude. Gee, they could have gone higher, what wimps ;->. Radius is 49 meters (cube center to cube center), so for surface area 2*pi*r^2 gives about 15,086 glass cubes needed. Probably less, since most cubes (at an angle) will cover a surface area of more than a square meter.
This all used to be sand, now it's gravel. Really? The Dome needs sand so bad these 20 cubes will make the difference? So much for planting cacti for fun.
... and so the legend of Eric Cactusseed was born. Sing along now, "Oh he spread his cacti / across the lands. / Children on beaches / hurt their hands. // He spread his seed / with zest and verve. / No, not that way, / he's not a perv."
10/4. Not much has changed except, oh, say, that lava stream coming out of Morgan's tower.
Oops, indeed. Love the look.
Hmmm, the pavement's smoking. That can't be good... Guess I know which way the lava river is flowing.
One advantage of spawning in super-slow is that you can look over the edge. A cheap "Anatomy of a mountain" view. This one is for a chunk southwest of the dead zone.
Another cross section, east of Morgan's Manor.
Also east of Morgan's manor.
And one last one, east of Morgan's. No more, I promise.
Hey, there are some interesting things in the Community Chest! Winner takes all - mine mine mine. Actually, I don't have a use for the water and lava sources (I assume that's what they are), so am happy to listen to proposals for what you want to do with them. Or maybe I'll just put them back. Or something. Actually, I'll consider a trade: 64 blocks of obsidian and 5 lava and 22 water blocks are yours! First come first served.
I visited regloh (37 is his last name) after finishing the Wangan North Freeway to his dome. Here he is, hard at work.
Dome construction continues. Regloh himself is getting sick of it, from what I saw in chat, so we'll see how things progress. I kinda like the unfinished thing, it's like Sagrada Familia in that it could take forever to really get completed.
So *that's* where the desert went, a gift from CrazyCakes to regloh.
The strip-mining in http://picasaweb.google.com/eric.haines/MinecraftMultiplayer#5524549263567897810 has all been covered up and there's now a meadow. Thanks, Crazy! I suspect if we dig in this area we find a really big boxy cave.
View from the Loderunner sculpture, which is pretty fun to climb around.
The same view with the Brown and Bloom texture pack, patched. See http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=46173 - seems to work so far...
The texture pack does moire and shimmer a lot on brick. Luckily, brick is rare.
CrazyCake's home with the texture pack - nice! Compare this to http://picasaweb.google.com/eric.haines/MinecraftMultiplayer#5524176276126336946
Moon's round with Brown and Bloom - freaky. 10/6.
quoren's abandoned house, west of town, north of the hiking trail.
My fine map of the Westward Ho hiking trail. Hey, it helps me from getting lost, so good enough.
The west end of Sunset Boulevard. CrazyCake extended this road past UBWOF an impressive 1080 meters or so. It takes about 7:30 minutes to get to the Parthecube from here. The funny bit is we think of this as very far, but think about it: it's about two kilometers total. Those impressive mountains are at most 64 meters tall. That said, things *feel* larger than the 1 meter per block scale.
CrazyCake was remodeling his Parthecube when I wandered by. Indeed the new texture pack looks cool, though it's sometimes hard to differentiate stuff in your inventory.
An obsidian experiment: drop a bucket of lava in a lake and it makes obsidian, which smokes. But, it seems to be unharvestable in multiplayer.
The foundry at the dome, furnaces churning out glass blocks.
regloh's plans, it turns out, are all done on MS Paint. He draws circles of various diameters and uses them as a guide. "Next circle 88" (on a nearby sign) tells him the diameter of the next circle he'll need to make.
Dawn at the dome is gorgeous.
The Wangan Freeway, a north-south road, is mostly underground, coming out only near sea level. There are a few shaft entrances, marked with torches. To help find the road from ground level, I planted trees every 10 meters - if you see a line of trees all in a row, you're over the freeway.
Dawn at the Three Hills Nature Preserve, my next stop.
The spiral at Three Hills.
I had to wait much of the day for the clouds to move through to get a good picture of this tree.
Which is aptly named the Tree at the Top of the World.
Quaxalot's lighthouse.
Quax's underwater observatorium at night.
The observarium during the day. Useful fact: dawn is on the hour, 20 minutes after the hour, and 40 minutes after the hour, in real-time.
Can you guess what it is?
Correct, it's Inky.
So, today's puzzle, and it has two parts. 1. What am I building? and 2. Where am I building it? You can use whatever means you have at hand to solve it. The race is on! To the winner goes, um, something really good but I don't know what. How about I'll plant a hedge for the winner? I figured out more about tree leaves, then checked the wiki - it's possible, though tricky. Anyway, this is the building site at the start. There are chickens, which is always a good omen, so let the building begin!
The first ring halfway through construction.
So it begins...
This image might help. The next phase is done. Hint: if I had rotated just a bit more left, some of you would know exactly where this location is.
Coming along nicely, at dusk or dawn, you decide.
My first use of two water source blocks. Worked fine - whew.
Later, pigs showed up, undoubtedly another good omen. And no creepers, so far, which is awesome.
Now we're cranking. About halfway done.
Vertigo. If I could die, I would have been *so* tense doing this work. That's it for now - best of luck solving the two puzzles (if need be, visiting a mirror Voxelia is a fine way to figure it out). Tomorrow I'll put the new satellite maps up, which should make this puzzle much easier.
On 10/8 I decided to set off from NE of the Isthmus of Blissness and see whether the water connected to the Great North Sea. Along the way there was some dramatic terrain; here looking back west, up the coast a bit.
The usual dramatic overhangs, but I also appreciate the little mounds of rock and the beaches.
Going east at points, I'd see nothing but sea. Continuing on a bit, though, usually islands or land would appear.
It was lovely coming upon this lavafall at night.
And nearby, another, with a different color. These two flows mark about the farthest east our land goes. There's more land just across the way, and one passage was literally one water cube wide (I widened it to three), but there is a passage through by boat.
In the north-east I kept noticing strange straight lines of sand underwater; here are two.
More lines.
A very interesting phenomenon was that, whenever I landed at unexplored terrain, the trees would start to drop seedlings. This happened in a number of places, and I gathered quite a few. I think discovering new areas causes this to happen.
I got to the Great North Sea at last. There was a whole fortress-looking complex on one island, no doubt to defend against swarthy sea-dogs. From Quax: "That light-colored grey stuff just left of the center of the image is clay! Clay I tells ya, clay!"
Looking in the other direction from the same point. The sand, interesting, extends out beyond the beach *over* the water. Quite magical, since we cannot place sand in this way and the touch of a shovel would destroy it.
I believe this is Morgan's first lighthouse. Home!
Another large lighthouse in the same area.
From Morgan's dock.
Lovely at night, listening to the water lap at the shore and seeing this light in the distance.
Back to work. Sarconix kindly added to the Freeway, extending it north and adding a nice entrance, much better than any of my "four torches and a sign" affairs.
His house connects to the entrance, and has a million-dollar view of the Glass Dome.
Which deserves firing up the Brown and Bloom texture pack, so you can see through the glass better.
I needed stone for the Museum of Stuff, so I pushed the Wangan Freeway all the way to the north (well, almost - it ends at a lovely beach with two ponds) and south. As luck would have it, one freeway entrance hooked up with caves underneath this waterfall. This is Fusty's waterslide experiment to the south.
Just south of there, I found some iron ore deposits sitting in the sun. These are interesting in that they appear above sea level. I had assumed you wouldn't find iron above that level, for some reason.
Finally, the modest end of the Wangan Freeway, with a block at the end so if you're autorunning you won't run off the end. I encourage adding exit tunnels and any structures you'd like at the end (lighthouse, etc.). Perhaps this is where I end my days, given the recent freeze-ups in reality (see http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1013&t=22637).
Falling asleep at the south end of Wangan, I awake to find myself with no possessions, in the dead zone, like a new-born babe. I quickly grab a pick and a bow from Pie in the Sky and confront some strange new wildlife.
Things have changed a bit since I was home last. You can also see the result of my encounter with the strange brown beast, as well as a pig. I win!
I come to the realization that things have become dangerous, and quickly build a door and wall at Pie for the coming of nighttime.
Coming out the next day, I find yet another curious animal, never seen in Voxelia before.
I hear a moan in a cave to the south of Pie, and there's a zombie and he looks like he'll do more than just jostle me. He falls in a pit and I take him out with my sword. Weapons indeed work on creatures in this strange new world! [Long and short, I took our world save file and tried it out in single-player.]
What is this strange red stuff coming out of my hand?! Note the damage bar. But, nothing a little grilled pork can't take care of.
Morgan mentioned he put out the fires and fixed the lava flow, etc. His secret ingredient is sand. I did make and try out some minecarts, powering up the cart with coal made it move right along.
Looking back north along the southern part of the Wangan Freeway, I noticed Morgan's Skyholm there.
I tried the waterslide out, sword in hand. This is clearly the safest way to slide downhill. I don't like the way that brown animal is looking at me.
Traveling west over some very mountainous terrain by the slide, I noticed this little workshop. I wonder whose it is. I actually had to work to get down into the valley, as I could no longer simply drop down. Also, my tools seem to not repair when I drop them on the ground and pick them up.
Going north from the workshop, small hints of life: torches and a sign.
Aha, it's quaren's place.
On up the steps there...
... to a lovely view.
Having determined there was no one else in this odd world, I helped myself to some tidbits from quaren's chest. I also crafted some fine pants, formed of the "chicken leather" I found on the large brown animals, which I believe are what the ancients called "cows".
A view of the waterfall from the outside. It was a welcome respite, but time to move on north and see what's there.
From a distance I noticed this structure, which for the life of me reminds me of an Imperial AT-AT Walker, whatever that is. It must be this fever dream I'm having...
Maybe it's a temple to the elder gods, perhaps to ward away server crashes.
The view from this mountaintop is magnificent, and quite high up. There is a lot of dramatic terrain south of town.
Another shot while rambling around; note the lavafall in the distance.
Going north, I come upon these mysterious structures, inviting me to explore further. Quaren has a nice waypoint system which I think I'll adopt, dropping a distinctive block of sand every so often. Better in the daytime that torches (and I'll probably add a torch on each block, for nighttime travel).
A handsome natural plaza awaits.
Aha, it's pmin's settlement. Patrick: in this fever dream I found some iron ore in a cave to the NW of this location - check it out and see if my dream was true.
Further north, and a distinctive landmark just north of SB - Loderunner. I'm back to civilization.
I decide to head west, using Crazy's autorun hotkey script (7+ minutes of running). I get to the end, make some boats and head out. The water appears to mostly just keep going west, not turning north (yet), so I don't think we're on an island. It was a bucolic scene, seeing the cows and sheep frolic in the water.
Suddenly, I awoke with a jolt! I guess even dreams can have crashes.
With the server's move to London (thanks, Patrick), a new day dawns. And, Quax figures out the location of my new "Museum of the Stuff" project and visits. It's not quite done yet, really only 2/3rd done. Quax writes: "I feel much safer now. As long as nobody attacks us with salt." Which is cryptic to moi, so I'm not sure what he thinks it is... Anyway, he's definitely the winner for location - where do you want your prize shrubbery placed, Quax?
Quax writes me: "Whle tootling around the Great Protector Snail, [aha, he thinks it's a snail... so, he's just half a winner] I found another stash of clay. This is north of the snail, looking back at it to the south (you can see the lighthouse on the right side of the frame). Looking underwater, I think I saw more. Typically clay comes in pretty big veins, so if you mine this one and the other, you should have quite a stockpile. Though you can see in the picture that I have my pick at the ready, I left it for you (plus, you should use a shovel on clay - it's much faster)."
My fever dream continued. In the Parthecube I found a large number of paintings, things that don't appear in the normal world of Vokselia. Here I put one up, and, behold, could actually see it.
All was peaceful when I had dreamt before, but arriving again in the world I encountered a creeper, and then a zombie from behind. I revived and found the sad remains. [In reality, I had put single player on peaceful, but restarting the game later, the options reset to "Normal"!]
I awoke back in the true Voxelia [though in reality moved to London]. After a dip in the little pools near the southern tip, I moved back north to finish my Great Work. Or, at least, Pretty Good Work.
Getting there. The clump at the top is the teapot lid's knob.
Finishing the teapot handle. In my first attempt I reversed the plans and the piece in the middle kept getting further away from this pillar - oops.
You can see we're fairly high up, with the clouds so close; altitude is around 46 meters. Here I'm just about to place the last four cubes, at dusk. I thought that would finish the building - little did I know...
I made a small hole in the roof, in a place no one could see it, so that I could send a pillar up to the roof for visitors. Dropping down, two seconds later I dropped down another few meters! Glitch? No, creeper! I had to rebuild the floor (and it *was* glitching a bit at that point - noooooo!).
The hole in the roof, before the column to it is built.
A different view - I like the sun flare. It turns out that you can also enter the teapot by swimming directly up the water flow! A fun challenge (and you'll start to "drown" near the top).
Approaching the main entrance, a modest affair.
A delicate gravel shaft extends from bottom to top. This is photo 343, i.e. 7x7x7. Is this a good omen?
This museum is something of a temple, in truth: the light focuses on the crafting table, source of all complex creations, with a furnace close by.
OK, the creepers really don't want this museum here. Another explodes near the entrance, leaving a gaping hole. Did I build on top of a creeper spawn point?
Pre-dawn at Morgan's dock.
And how it appears as the day brightens and the mists burn off.
There's a better view from the other side, as you can see the lid's knob. To take the tour, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvsl-qDk2Ag&feature=related for the first part.
People ask, "So, Eric, when you take the trip to Crazytown, which loco express do you use?" I couldn't have built (or should say, wouldn't have tried to build) the teapot without Patrick Min's viewvox program.
He's beefed up his viewer to allow you to see each horizontal slice, optionally with the layers above it and below. Find it here: http://www.patrickmin.com/minecraft/
A moonrise shot from Sarconix.
Sarconix has begun a project to the north of Pie, here's a postcard from him. I had no idea what it was, though others guessed it. You'll see...
From fusty: "I was digging sand from well below a flat beach, and then this whole area collapsed in front of me like I'd popped a bubble..." [which indeed he had: sometimes you get sand hanging over air, something that we can't make.]
All sorts of tourists came to visit the teapot.
That last visitor must have been upset that the museum is closed on Mondays, as they blew up (literally). This is the fifth creeper hole in the teapot; we finally realized that "monsters=true" setting on the new server does spawn monsters at night. It's now off.
Sarconix donates a block of obsidian to the Museum of the Stuff (MotS), in preparation for the grand opening.
The back wall of MotS, with a bookshelf, record player, and many mechanisms.
A view from the back of the museum towards the wall of constructed blocks. Yes, that's a block formed from 9 diamonds on the right end, the only one of its kind in Voxelia.
A lonely Wangan Freeway entrance, viewed from Sarconix's home north of the Glass Dome.
The foods collection. Later, Quax donated a red and a brown mushroom, so I'll be making mushroom stew for the collection. I also found bread in a nearby spider dungeon, so don't have to continue to try to raise wheat.
Sarconix's construction. Even visiting it, I had no idea what it was.
Stairs up in Sarconix's construction.
CrazyCake is developing the LodeRunner area.
I particularly like how he's widened the road. Pmin has also put up a sign.
Pmin's swimming area.
For laughs, I wanted to see how many blocks I could clear by standing in one place and whacking in front of me. This is some of them. Oh, diamond pick, I love you so.
A view from Pie, to the north. It's clear now what Sarconix has been up to.
Sarconix, Quax, and I decided to take a little cruise on Lake Wumpus.
Where did the rocket ship go? What's that in the distance? Things have changed since the last time I was here.
OMG, wonderful! We did lose Quax, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIwpCmQ-GVo, but a small price to pay.
It's even cooler at night.
Below the waterline is also pretty great.
A little genetic engineering has also been going on.
Enchanting at night.
Hearing the water and quietly cruising around at night is just great. Here's Quax's lighthouse.
Quax's Mine 5, "Ode to Pyramidization"
A postcard from pmin00, from a view I hadn't seen before. Things have already changed: I cut down the huge tree on the top of the hill (I hadn't realized it was so large until I started chopping - oops), and there's a garden of cacti and reeds at the base of the hill now.
An area of hanging sanding east of Quax's pyramidization mine entrance. I didn't touch it.
The next project: build a canal to connect the two large seas. Canal analysis is simple: take a body of water, draw the bounding box. That's as far as that body can possibly expand. If bounding boxes overlap, then you can join those two bodies of water. White areas are what needs digging.
From Quax: "A postcard from a mine I dug near the Isthmus. As we've seen, we can't build hanging sand, and we can't make it by digging out from under, but it can be created by the program. Here's a natural cavern that I found underneath a sandy bank; a major body of water isn't too far away." Max notes: "In my single player experience, if you destroy one block of floating sand they will "wake up" and fall down. Not a good idea if the ceiling is made out of sand."
The Painterly texture pack. Note how the clouds vary in opacity. Find it at http://painterlypack.net/ - the fun thing about it is that you can customize by specifying all sorts of options.
The Painterly Pack does something that Quax would agree with: makes the chickens into ducks.
I love coming across little things like this, a bridge to nowhere north of Wumpus Lake.
We worked through the night to clear the canal area. See the uncorking at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r4BMTUIAM
Canal entrance to the South Sea, looking south. Inky is on the left. Hmmm, it's like those blocks have a pattern - I wonder what it means? Well, actually, I know; it's a puzzle for you all.
The pillars at the canal entrance to the North Sea. The one seems similar to the South Sea pillar, yet different...
The canal is open. Here we're at the Great North Sea's entrance to the canal area.
A nice little arch made by Quax, before entering the canal tunnel.
A little lighthouse in the South Sea, west of the canal entrance. Though humble, it is clearly visible from space.
10/14 and the dome is almost complete!
With a generous contribution from the Quax Group ("A Growing Concern"), we were able to fill out the MotS tool collection. For his contribution he earned the mug *and* the tote bag.
Painterly texture pack version of tools, which I frankly dislike (though the gold ones are pretty amusing, being made from ingots).
Painterly texture pack foods. Mmmm, bacon.
Painterly arms and armor. Yes, the gold leggings are more like a codpiece.
There's a new avenue north, more scenic than the Wangan. L'Effie Avenue ends at the teapot - nice.
Looking south from the top of the teapot. The new avenue stretches off into the distance.
Turning around, the view north, over the lid handle.
The ET, just before the grand opening tonight (10/14) at 9 pm. [Our 400th postcard! 20x20 is semi-significant in cube world.]
Downtown, using a mapping program.
Ultra HD's water has an interesting look to it, Aegean or something. Or maybe Ty-D-Bol - no, not quite. I quickly gave up on this texture pack, as it shimmers like crazy - Minecraft doesn't use mipmaps at all, I guess to save a little memory?
The Ultimate High-Def texture pack. A view of the sand-sucking operation going on at Wumpus Lake. I do like how "Ultra HD" means 128x128 textures.
Well, was it? WAS IT?! Oh, the Cubemanity! Actually, no, I was just having fun replacing leaves with iron ore. I think this is the "Realistic texture pack", which is OK but a little confusing at times, and a bit shimmery.
It's a nightmare hell world. Actually, it's a view from Pie towards L'Effie Tower, with stuff still loading and using the Quandary October texture pack, which makes *everything* brown. The artist must live in an arid climate, my grass is green in Ithaca at this time of year.
Roads are multiplying. This one's courtesy of Sarconix.
Building some darn tall thing. You'll run across it eventually.
Something odd in the distance there...
Oh, yeah, that's it. This photo was taken before I added more crazy stuff.
Truly a road to nowhere.
What's this weirdness? Only one way to find out - go there. Well, two ways, someone could tell you. OK, three ways, you could look at any satellite map made after 10/16 (which was really the whole idea).
There's a nice lavafall near the Road to Nowhere.
The deep-down tree farm at the lowermost point on the Road to Nowhere. Note the lava light source straight ahead. I'll take another picture once the sod is in. I don't recommend tree farms, you do get a fair bit of glitchiness with invisible cubes, as the multiplayer bug list mentions.
I love finding caverns down deep, around about level -50 from sea level. Caverns expose so much surface area it's easy to find good stuff. In the caverns near the tree farm I found 3 deposits of diamonds, 12 diamonds harvested in all.
Night's falling during my exploration of the Northwest. Saplings were dropping like mad, and I felt compelled to catch them all during this one-time event. Here are five in view as darkness falls.
Mining obsidian near the tree farm cave, where a waterfall hit a lava pool. Looks like CrazyCake is right, lava springs do get used up, they don't grow (unlike water springs). Even three lava bordering an empty space don't create one. How sad! Lava does replenish when you take a bucketful out, but that bucketful is "false", doesn't really exist.
North of the Road to Nowhere there's a lovely area with two waterfalls.
A sign of life at the top of a hill: a block with torches on it. Let's go check it out.
Not much up here, but I do like the view SE, showing the at-this-time uncompleted Road to Nowhere.
I explored to the northwest of the Road to Nowhere's western end. The sea there does not appear to join up with the Great North Sea. One interesting thing I learned from planting a reed incorrectly: you can both empty out a cube of water and walk through that cube. More experimentation is called for!
I do like Quandary's rendering of clay - reddish-pinkish, vs. a blue that looks like stone.
Traveling by boat at night is possible, but you miss the sights. While waiting for dawn here I wrote a tiny perl program to generate a random-walk sculpture. It's 4 1 2 4 4 3 2 3 2 3 4 3 3 1 1 4 2 2 2 1 3 1 3 4 4 3 2 4 1 2 1 2 3 4 2 4 4 1 1 3 1 4 3 1, though I probably didn't walk it quite right. 1 means build a cube to the left, under your feet, 2 means straight ahead, 3 is to the right, 4 means jump and build under you. Really, I was trying to use up my dirt so I'd have a place to put the boat I wanted to build. Not a fascinating sculpture, but a nice change from the OCD regular and symmetrical stuff I usually build.
During my trip to the north reaches of the Great North Sea, I ran across this. I never really think of spelunking around under the sea, but there's indeed a lot happening there.
Another bandwidth-limited view. What was cool was this looked like some underground village, some odd structures. However, not so cool was falling into this area and getting deeply stuck in gravel over my head and not being able to dig out, taking continuous damage. Reconnecting solved it. By the way, if you do get utterly stuck, "/home" in chat will take you to the spawn point, inventory intact (though possibly crashing the program). I haven't had to do it yet.
After the long journey of exploration it's very welcome to see signs of civilization such as this lighthouse.
Nine of the solid blocks (coal and diamond missing, of course). Obsidian's very dark, it's on the far right.
The nine derived/crafted blocks
Looks like the tools collection is complete. This is the Quandary June texture pack, which I like a lot. The color of grass is more normal, and he didn't muck up the rest of the items by trying to make them more real (and less understandable). About my only complaint is that the yellow flowers look terrible vs. the original ones.
Arms and armor collection is almost done - just a diamond sword and breastplate to go. My 12 harvested diamonds all went to making those leggings and that helmet.
From Sarconix: "My wife has been asking me to build her a house in Voxelia. She wanted an adobe house, like you might find in New Mexico. So I set to work building a modest dwelling on a hill with views of both L'Effie Tower and the Dome. I built it around a large tree on the hill, with sand walls and wood floor and ceiling. I was putting in the fireplace… and somehow the fire spread without warning! It started on the floor and quickly spread to the ceiling, and to the one-of-a-kind tree (see the image below for the carnage). After a few frantic minutes, the place was gutted."
"… but I rebuilt. I put back the floor and ceiling, planted a new (but smaller) tree, and carefully assembled the fireplace. Here is the finished result, 'Holly's Adobe Abode.'"
The ex-obsidian area, where I snagged about 14 blocks. Lava, water, bloodstone, and... reeds. I thought it was a nice touch. Is there any good trick for grabbing obsidian or other blocks that are next to lava and likely to fall in?
The sod's come in nicely for the Tree Farm at the Heart of the World. We recommend you buy only lava-lit wood, with dirt placed atop adminium.
The map as of 10/19. There's stuff to the far north (the teapot and some lighthouses) and west (UBWOF). The 3 major roads have each hit the coastlines. The red marks are where fusty has been crashing (the fz.b, fz.a stack crash), I get them in about the same place. This is just a section of the whole map. The Northwest does not appear to be closed in by water (the Northeast is, just barely) - we're not on an island. From here on in I will be avoiding spoilers, publishing photos a week delayed from either when it's announced, put on the map, or seen in a satellite map. A good part of the fun is running across new stuff, which is why I've taken to making little projects around the map (faster, too - the grand projects take a darn long time!).
The lazy river. What's cool is that this is from a natural water source - you can see it just south of Pie.
For school groups, I put in a little exhibit showing how reeds keep the water back, but only if the water is still. It turns out ladders and signs have the same effect. You can actually make air bubbles underwater using these, so avoiding the drowning effect (which is distracting in SMP).
Cactusseed on the road, to his next Herculean task... By the way, this thing's a climbing challenge. It's possible to do without drowning (without just swimming straight up), though swimming up short waterfalls is necessary.
A view from the base.
Even better at night.
Just a few of the chests in fustyWumpus' base of operations.
Yes, all those chests are full.
Some dang thing floating in the air NE of Lake Wumpus. It aint' natural, I tell ye. I'll have to see if I can find it again and look it over during the daytime - shouldn't be hard to find.
My second topiary experiment turned out fine. This of course made me feel I'm an expert and could take on a tougher challenge.
Now this is just plain interesting: looking at Eric Cactusseed's inventory, he has 109 signs (and recall that signs don't stack). His special power [i.e. bug] is that he has unlimited signs. Perhaps this power will end sometime soon? I suspect at some point I had -1 signs, and that by continually using signs I've wrapped around from -128 to 127 on down. Maybe getting back to 1 will also fix my inventory bug (checking inventory crashes the game for this character).
Cactusseed's next task: watching the trees grow. Hours and hours of it. And when a tree has grown, then trimming back the unneeded bushes and planting another tree.
What makes topiary a task of "two steps forward, one step back" is that sometimes the trees grow too much and the wood will knock out parts of your foliage. Also, don't prune at night! Here I've tried building some "limiters" over the saplings to stop them from growing so much. But, these seem a bit too low, as the trees are not growing at all. I think probably 7 blocks high is optimal - we'll see...
A zoom on a part of a Google Map version of our world. Regloh, there are still some dirtballs to clean off the dome. Note the diamond and gold blocks at the summit.
Sunset on the completed dome.
Regloh has an incredible stock of obsidian, of which he kindly donated some for an art project of mine on the Westward Ho trail.
I finally explored the empty map chunk to the north east. Not even sure where this was, but it looked cool.
The diamond deposit in UBWOF, a picture I had been meaning to take.
The beginning of the Westward Ho hiking trail, just west of Pie. To begin, a climbing challenge.
The Loderunner recreation area, created by CrazyCake.
Memorial to an URL? Tell me more...
In Crazy's Loderunner recreation area. Actually, arrows might have become rare - last I checked, monsters on this server are all glitched and twitchy.
New trail markers on the Westward Ho hiking trail. I think these are nice and visible at day or night.
"Honestly, officer, I have no idea what happened here. This flint and steel? It's a friend's."
Just for my records: the W in World O' Fun.
The O in World O' Fun.
My new naturalistic tree farm. I put glass cubes 6 meters above the top of each tree. Now the trees don't grow higher than this, making them very simple to harvest: chop chop, look up and chop until there's nothing left to chop. The glass cube is just out of reach, and lets the sunlight in for the next sapling. This works great, as it's the giant trees that are a PITA to cut down and fully clear.
Due to Patrick's mapping of all signs in Vokselia, I noticed I was like 30 meters away from one of Morgan's hidden treasure chests. I couldn't resist: what could be inside? Water and lava sources? An apple? Chicken leather?!
And it's what? Gold armor? The Museum of the Stuff already has a grail, I'll leave the set here for the next guy.
I guess there's some game called Cave Story and some people love it and someone made a texture pack for it and oh lordy get them off of me they're crawling all over stop them stop them now!
Morgan commented in an old picture here http://picasaweb.google.com/eric.haines/MinecraftMultiplayer?feat=comment_notification#5526577813364572098 that I was near a treasure cache. So I trundled up there again and didn't find a thing. So I left, got all the way to Wumpus Lake, and realized I should check the clues from long ago. Oh, it says "one under an abandoned temple ruin atop a hill". And so I went all the way back, dug, hmmm - sand under a hilll, that's unusual, and boom - found it. By a fairly amazing coincidence, I opened up the wall just across from the sign, which was particularly exciting.
Inside the treasure chest, chicken leather! Oh, and a mob spawner and some lava.
The tree farm during the day, next to the 8-furnaces-no-waiting smelting complex. I stand on the crafting table in the middle, converting 11 logs to 44 planks, using a modified version of Crazy's autohotkey script. 43 planks is the ideal number for smelting 64 blocks.
pmin inspired me to set chickens on fire, it's not my fault. I wanted to see if I'd get any chicken-leather - no such luck, the three or four chickens sacrificed didn't leave anything.
Yet another texture pack, actually the last I plan to try. It's Dokus' RPG pack. This view doesn't look bad, and I like the leaded windows for that Olde Englishe Looke.
More with the windows.
The color palette here doesn't do it for me.
The crescent moon at night is a nice touch.
Quax made satellite maps (after some begging from me) and my experiment worked. "Voxelia" you can make out while playing, a misspelling of "Vokselia", due to the shadows cast. However, "rules", made from carved tree leaves, is very difficult to pick out while looking at it from above during play.
A postcard from Quax, who writes: "The Big Dig should be ready soon. Here are two pictures taken through the skylight."
I think he actually went for it and did what I was tempted to do, but for me turned into a part of the Road to Nowhere: carve through to the bottom and show a cross section of a mountain or similar. I guess I'll know when I visit.
Being deprived this weekend of multiplayer, as I'm away from town, I decided to at least do a little single-player tourism of our world. That is, I downloaded a backup and walked around in single-player. OK, to start with, this is super-weird. Here's the spawn point, but things have changed. Is this for real? Has Morgan's original house entirely disappeared? I'm now curious to visit in multiplayer and see...
Some things do appear to exist. This building's been there awhile, a clever use of pavers. L'Effie is in the background.
From inside.
I decided to visit the Adobe Abode, which is quite lovely inside. Traveling west, I ran across another "is this really real?" moment: going north on L'Effie Avenue, it just plain ended and restarted some number of blocks later. It's as if the game had detected some weirdness with a 16x16 patch and reset it, wiping out all creations there.
OK, there's some serious something going on here. I suspect Sarconix.
I saw an interesting irregularity on the satellite map so went to check it out. Quite the column of stone, very symmetrical but also natural.
On the map its top looks like a giant X - how cool is that? I definitely plan to build a secret mountaintop lair here for the evil X the Unknown ("no one knows his value, not even whether he's real or complex!" "he cannot be overconstrained!" and other obscure math references).
After seeing the glitches, I decided to look around town a bit more - whoa, some serious weirdness here. Above is Pie in the Sky, and it looks kinda like it did before I developed it. There's some half-developed tram line, too. But the Parthecube (not visible here) is fully there.
OK, now I'm sure I'm seeing illusions (I hope): the skeletal remains of Pie in the Sky, with just a chest and a furnace left to it. This is freakin' me out, man, I gotta leave. I knew I shouldn't have made that mushroom stew, those red mushrooms are not good for ya.
The Road to Nowhere art park, standing atop a sculpture.
And this is the sculpture, "Pretentious Homage to a Random Walk, No. 2". Made by randomly choosing among turn left and build, turn right and build, build straight, build up. There's also a corresponding tunnel below, at the base. This was probably the hardest thing I've built, because it's SO random and yet I had to pay attention to each step. Full concentration, no order to concentrate on.
The Horrific Maze, mostly of glass. It's just two levels and I kept away from long jumps, so it's not that hard to solve - I didn't want to be cruel.
Another view of the maze.
And at night.
One last shot, with the Quandary June texture pack, giving the glass a more pleasant look.
Patrick has been busy to the southwest.
I mean, quite busy.
I forgot to write down what game character this is. You'll just have to visit.
From way up high, near the AT-AT temple where I found the treasure.
Another view.
A nice hollowed-out area from up top. The AT-AT temple is at the very top, to the left.
fustyWumpus writes: "Here's a few scenic shots I took last night." Voxelians should have no problems knowing what they're seeing.
Morgan writes: "Construction begins on the city in the cavern...." I missed the chat on this, but evidently he used his server powers and granted everyone some TNT, for mass clearing of areas.
This new project of mine is growing nicely.
It's getting quite high and fairly noticeable, so I better finish it before people find it.
pmin writes: "From the pit near Willy you can take the "underground highway" (*cough*) (really just me digging a long way north, no junctions or anything) to a pond a bit west of Effie tower."
The entrance to Sarconix's Sentinel Castle. Lots to look at, with great little details throughout.
One of my favorite views of the castle, day or night. The integration with the surrounding terrain is delightful.
To the west, Eric Cactusseed has been experimenting...
The HyperFurnace 3 was not an unqualified success. It appears Cactusseed was trying to develop a furnace that would create sand out of energy, in hopes of creating more places for cacti. Additional funding will not be sought. Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifyVmpHJAvU
From the fires, Eric Cactusseed is reborn. So begins another chapter of Voxelia, at least for this character. Wait until you see what the guy taking his picture looks like... [In reality, I had Patrick clean out this character's save, as Cactusseed had lost his sign-placing ability but his inventory was still utterly wedged. I also visited the Skindex at http://www.minecraftskins.com/ and gave a cactus skin a face, then took a picture using the Painterly Scary texture pack. I'm sealing this album - at 512 photos it's at a magical number, 8x8x8, a cube cubed. A new album will start after the Halloween update.]
