Busy Busy Busy

Over the last few days I managed to get a few hours of play in and managed to achieve a lot in the process:

• My first village is now all upgraded and all the buildings have been built, including a large abode for me.

 A confirmation of the completeness of the village build.

• Now that the village is built I decided to explore the map and managed to find another 3 villages. yes 3, a new norman village and two hindi villages. Make it even funnier I even found a suspicious pyramid which I will investigate later.

• I decided to build a railway from my original village to the new village and that was a few Minecraft days work. I have now setup base in the new village. See above with the loving sheep.
  
• As I was considered a part of the original village I am a friend of this new village which means I was able to gain reputation faster than normal. Apart from getting resources I managed to get some terraforming in (I will discuss this in another post sometime). I managed to rise through the ranks of the new Norman village enough to get them to build a house for me. A new base!!. I took the oroginal build they provided and added my own "flair" with veranda and newroof. I even added a BBQ area!!

• I started also helping the hindi villages as well. That is a lot of work as they send you on quests to a new part of the map (which I did to find find Sadhu). A lot of terraforming there to get the villages enough room to expand.

With Great Power comes Great Responsibility

I managed to get enough cobblestone to keep the village busy for a while upgrading all their houses. You can see the cobble starting to replace the wood.

Hey kid, get off that roof now!!

In return I was able to get a Village Wand. You have to be careful with it as it can generate a village with a single stroke. I walked out to what I thought was a great area and placed a gold block down to place the village. I chose a Hindi village and bang! A village appeared... except it was empty :(. I checked the log files and found that the area was too small for a village so no villagers were added. I had a deserted village.

I decided to make the best of it and mine the village resources and return the forest to as close as it was when I summoned it.

The village I spawned:

Removed all the building and kept the wood and bricks for future use.

Nature slowly is returning!!

Decided to retain the resources I reclaimed as they will be handy later (I hope).

Time to build a pier and harvest some food...

View of the house from the pier.

My home improvements

Decided to improve the home again just to add a bit of flair. My first project was a gravel path. Gravel is an underused block in the game. Some of the game forums suggest that paths and driveways are ideal with gravel and give you a feel of a country estate. I have gravel at my real house so mined some gravel and laid out a path.

My next project was an entertainment area. I built one of those in a former world and decided to add one. I will add a BBQ in the future to add a bit of fun to the house. I decided to be fancy with the floor and also add glowstone lighting.

My last project was a greenhouse. I build these not for hostile mobs but to keep out sheep, pigs, cows and chickens in the game. I decided to use the marble from one of the mods to line the outside. In real life it would look a bit nasty.

Ravines and The village

I decided to explore the caves under the house and also do a bit of bartering with the local village. They sent me on some more cider related quests and expanded the village quite a bit now. Have given them lots of cobble and wood to expand.

I explored the caves a bit and found that they are huge with expansions car below my humble house. I also changed my Texture Pack to the LB Photo Realistic 256x256 Pack so the screen shots will change. The caves connect to ravines as shown by the two screen shots below. All nice resources to mine.

While getting some sand for glass I found a dungeon!!!.. Luckily I am on Peaceful as no monsters to bother me. I also decided to mine it out for sandstone. It was so close to the surface.

What luck, while searching the ravines I also found an abandoned mine. This map is certainly NOT boring.

My next task is to tag all these locations and start a farm and other home improvements around the virtual house.

New Day in Saint Charles l'ocean

Now that I have my house I have decided to start to do a few things more. I visited the local Norman Village (Saint Charles L'ocean) and started trading with them selling them wood, glass and cobblestone. That started them off and they built a few farms and a tavern. I was sent on a quest to obtain cider for one of the villagers and was able to finally get some from the tavern owner after some haggling. The village:

Now that I have them started, I decided to next investigate some of the caves near the house and found them to  not only be good for resources but they are large with lots of windy sub-tunnels. That will keep me busy for days.

I also started to pump out the oil close to the house and place it in tanks. As you can see I have a lot of oil.

This is the oil platform and pipeline to the house.

In the future I will refine the oil into fuel for other machines.

I also decided to recycle the house I found near the spawn point and cart all the resources back to the house. That started me on a little investigation about the world I generated. I found out an important fact. I spawned on an island.. A large island but an island. That means at some stage I must venture across the water in search of other lands but that will not be a while yet. Here are some of the things I have found on the island.

I have a few nautilus swimming in a pond near the house.

A nice ravine walking distance from the house. Great for resources. I like the waterfall as well.

Some mountains on the coast.

A cool sea cave worth investigating.

The island has an active volcano.

A large volcano off the coast as well.

 

I will investigate even more over time. This is starting to get interesting..

House complete and Peaceful mode

I completed my house after a few minecraft days. It took a lot longer as I ended up spending most of my days slaying creepers. So I have decided to put it on Peaceful mode to concentrate on the village needs and also grab that oil nearby.

Here is my house:

The ground floor. Mainly for crafting...

The basement where I will process all the machinery (when I build them)...

The top floor with skylight

My new digs

I have found an ideal local location for my new house (co-ords -395, -38, 68) and here are a few of the local attributes of the area:

I have started to build a house (it is a combined design from my previous efforts) with cobble walls, lots of glass and a wooden roof.

There is a local forest full of wood and rubber trees:

It is by the sea and has a few sources of oil:

There is a desert biome not far for my sand requirements:

There is a ravine not far with lots of nice resources (and a suspected set of spawners):

There is a Norman village within walking distance to trade with:

 This is view from the unfinished roof. I am making the roof flat to put solar panels on the roof

The base floor which needs more light as it is a spawning ground at the moment. Need some glowstone soon.

My AMCO World - First Days

I generated a new Survival map (seed = 1016312629106626618) which spawned me in a wooded area. After getting some wood for weapons I stumbled on three bandits and managed to kill them off which meant I had their house as booty. Spent the first night there and picked up some goodies. Next morning trekked off in search of a suitable new area to build.

Decided to find somewhere near oil (via Buildcraft), near a ravine and near a village. Managed to find such a place and it was even by the ocean. Quickly built a mud shelter to spend the night by the ravine (not a great idea I found out as Spiders and Endermen love to spawn there). After surviving a second night I built a shack out of dirt to act as my temporary base as I spent the next few days in Minecraft flattening out the terrain and gathering some cobblestone. Decided to start building a two story mansion with views and veranda to shoot mobs from.

One thing I did though, was turn off weather. My experience in Minecraft so far is this, it rains far too much. I know the rain has an effect in the game (such as make things grow and also aids mobs a bit) but I found it depressing to have it rain a lot (in some games it was every two minecraft days!!).

I am off to get more cobblestone and build my mansion. Here is my shack and you can see my house taking shape (a lot of windows - which means a lot of sand).

Millenaire Mod Review

I have been taking a look at the great series of Youtube videos by GaylenOrylee which takes you through the Millenaire mod (if you want to watch it start from Episode 9 as that is when she starts narrating the episodes).

To summarize Millenaire is a mod that adds active villages to the game. Now, Minecraft 1.8.1 added villages but these remain passive. The Testificates in the village do not do much and really do not add to the game overall yet (I am sure Jeb has big plans for them). Millenaire really changes this.

It adds a number of civilizations (Mayans, Norman, Hindu) with fully fleshed out villagers that interact with you. You basically find a village on your world (after installing Millenaire) and then you can start trading with the village. Each village will have a shop or tower where a trade lives. On his/her board in the shop or tower the requirements for the expansion of the village. For example, they may need 100 cobblestone. Now they can get some of it themselves or you can sell it to then earning money that you can spend at the shop or other villages for things you may need that they sell.

You start out as a stranger and as you trade with them you can gain trust and reputation to the extent that they can make you part of the village and will give you a plot of land in the village and even build you a house (of varying shapes and sizes). To be a village elder you must complete quests for the village to gain reputation.

The villages are diverse with lumberjacks (they might not wear women's clothing and hang around in bars), blacksmiths, traders in goods, farmers, innkeepers, soldiers for defense (including for you) and other members. There are even traders that pop in once and in a while that you can buy exotic goods to buy.

You can also help the villages by getting them self sufficient and even get villages to trade across each other (with you as the middle man initially).

One thing to remember is not to kill any of the village members as you can be banned from the village or even killed by the soldiers if you ever show your face near the village again.

This mod is very diverse and I cannot do justice to it in this simple blog entry and I will attempt to document my progress with a Norman village near my house I found to give you an idea.

It is great mod and is popular with lots of modpack makers (AMCO and YogBox have it included).

Farewell custom mod pack hello AMCO and Yogbox

I have decided to temporarily abandon my custom pack for now while I embark on some new adventure playing with the AMCO and Yogbox mod packs (plus TMI, SPC and Optifine).

I will install both on different minecraft setups and play through an adventure on both over time. I have started with AMCO (though I did not install Mo`creatures) and built my first adventure world. My goals in this world are:

1) Establish a large house near a ravine, village and resources.
2) Start mining the ravine for materials. Including building a series of minecarts to deliver the materials to my house.
3) Trade and become a member of the local village and help them advance to the maximum setup. Also get them to build the largest house they have to offer.
4) Optionally, complete a quest from Millenaire.
5) Survive, endermen, creepers, zombines, skellies and slimes.
6) Build a refinery for any local resources in Buildcraft.
7) Others as I see fit.

I have made a start already and built a temp mud hut to sleep while I build my house. Killed quite a few spiders already and I suspect I have built my house on a cave with a spawner as more keep arriving (even in the day time).

I will investigate Yogbox as well but will concentrate on AMCO at the moment. Yogbox will have Mo-Creatures to play with (more things to kill me) and also has Thaumcraft to play with.

All fun.

Why I like Minecraft?

Gamers out there are probably wondering why the hell do I like Minecraft???

I like games that go beyond the linear path and allow you to be flexible rather than lock you into one style or one type of game. Minecraft may not be the most visually stunning game but looks are not everything. A game (and most gamers struggle to call this a game) that is engaging is far better than a visual great looking game. I like to use the movie analogy, some movies bank on their visual elements only to let story go to hell. While they make money they are not really than enthralling.

Now, does Minecraft have any story? Well the answer is no, but that is the beauty of it. You can make the game anything you want. You can build alone, build with friends, go on adventures, slay monsters and even battle dragons. The beauty of it is that you can play it like you want and how you feel on the day. One day you can be building your dream home, only to abandon it and go mining for materials the next.

To me that means I can experiment and not having any goal except the one I think about as I am playing or I think about 5 minutes before I start playing.

There are other aspects of the game I love:

• Building - I for one remember the days of Lego and Meccano (yes I am that old). You are given a box of blocks and your creation is only limited by your imagination. Some of the things people have invented in Minecraft just astonishes me. One of the first experiences I had with the game was listening to a group of young kids talking about how they built their creations (and showing each other their creations). I have heard stories of groups of people co-operating across the world on virtual building projects. Just look in Youtube at the Top 5 videos to see what I mean. Some of these creations are built by kids as young as 10.
• Play time - Most commercial games are rated by the number of hours you take to complete them. Once you have paid your $90 and completed the game you rarely go back to it. Minecraft has no real completion, only how long you can give up before you stop playing it. You can literally play for months and years on the same map. When you have had enough, just generate another randomly. Some of the worlds generated are also stunning.
• Extensions - One of my most favorite games (Doom, Total Annihilation etc) all had the ability to extend the game. Some games have DLC but Minecraft you can download a large selection of mods that completely change the game around. This would extend the life of it beyond its vanilla game. You are not forced to even play with any mods. The only issue is that mod installation is pretty technical buy Jeb has announced that they will making that standard in future releases.
• Community - I have watched the community the last year or so and they are such a diverse set of people of all ages and backgrounds it amazes me. You must remember this game has no tutorial and no help. The community has videos, web sites to help the new player. The developers are close to the community and that seems to make a big big difference. I cannot tell you the number of hours I have laughed listening to the Yogcast, Hat Films (Good Day!), CaptainSparklez, TotalBuscuit and others playing the game that it has added a lot of fun to playing it. There are lots of fun videos on Youtube to prove that.
• Technology - My last point is biased (as I work for the Big O) but I am glad that Mojang chose java to write the game in. It is cross platform and has encouraged a lot of new young java developers to get creating exciting mods. It just shows how you can extend the game by the vast range of mods for the game.

All and all I have been playing Minecraft for over 6 months now and I am not anywhere near stopping playing or getting bored. When I think I am I just generate a new world.. oops I better start on it.

I could not resist taking a screen shot of the sunset across some interesting mountains in my new Minecraft world (Seed=741982204). More to come

My personal Minecraft Modpack

I have decided to build my own modpack for my personal use. I have been using Yogbox and AMCO for a long time (I enjoy them both) but I decided to combine my own pack together for fun and experience. Progress has been good. Pack is very playable in most modes (Single player only at the moment).

Here is the pack so far (in Order):

ModLoader - Prereq for most mods
ModLoaderMP - Prereq for most mods
TooManyItems - I know but I turn it off
AudioMod - Modifies Sound
Forge - Prereq for some mods
GuiAPI - allows Mod to change GUI
SinglePlayer Commands - console
Treecapitator - Chops trees realistically
Spawner GUI - Prereq for mods
Squirrels - Spawns squirrels in trees
Clay Man - Allows a clay army to be built
Optifine - HD Texture support
Recipe Book - Displays all crafts
Somnia - Sleep realistically (no mob spawns)
GLSL Shader - Shader to make the world cinematic
Matmos - Atomsphere
ReiMinimap - MiniMap
BetterCaves - Realistic caves
Shelf - Allows a shelf to be built
ID Resolver - Resolves conflicts
ItemSpriteAPI (+Patch) - Fix Sprite limits
Mo'Creatures - Fills world with assorted animals
Millenaire - Adds active villages (Updated)
Equivalent Exchange - Powerful items
Buildcraft - Machines, Oil exploration
Ruins - Generates random structures
RedPower - Lights and power
MoreOres - More Ores to mine
CustomMobSpawner - Allows Mob Spawners to be altered
CraftGuide - Crafting Guide book
Tale Of Kingdoms - Quests and guilds

Potentials

Convienant Inventory - Better inventory
turbomodelthingy - Required for Planes/Trains
Trains - Build trains (off at the moment)
Planes - Build Planes and fly them (off at the moment)
More Creeps - Crazy mobs (off at the moment)
Inventory Tweaks (off at the moment as has bugs)

Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my new blog. I am a 40+ year old guy who likes playing Minecraft on a regular basis. I wanted to create this blog to document my progress and little projects I am attempting in Minecraft.

I hope this blog will inform and encourage as well as give a little bit of laughter to the readers of the blog. I will hopefully pull myself away from the game enough to blog about my experiences.

Off to play Minecraft it is...