Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Minecraft!

It's getting a big Halloween update including the highly anticipated biomes and a rather nasty dimension you can use for fast (and likely dangerous) travel.

So anyway, I'm doing a bit of brainstorming for what I'll build, starting from scratch. Since multiplayer survival's going to be getting some bug fixes, and I may be able to invite other players to my map, I'm thinking about some standard features as well as unique ones.

1. Forts with biome-themed megastructures. I'm going a bit OCD on hexagons and the number 6. The hexagon remains my favorite shape, and it's fun to think of ways to play with this sort of thing.
---Desert: Giant hourglass with obsidian caps, like I've repeatedly failed to build in Dwarf Fortress. Unlike DF, I can fill this one with sand and make it look like it's in the middle of falling. The center of the top chamber will have a mini-oasis. The bases will be hexagonal, and the rooms inside will be 36 meters (blocks) from opposite corners.
---Tundra or Taiga: Something involving a giant six-pointed snowflake, possibly made of ice. It may be tricky to find a way to light it without melting any of the ice.
---Forest: ?
---Swamp: ?
---Ocean: Giant truncated tetrahedron (hexagonal face pointed up) floating in the air. I'm thinking of access by waterfall: Boats will float up waterfalls, and there'll be one in the down-pointing triangular face. The other three triangular faces may act as entry points for a minecart station on the top floor.
---Savanna/Grasslands: ?

I'll probably spend a long time getting all the resources together for just the desert fort and hourglass, but if I do get to the point that I can get other players on my map, I may give some of you creative control over the megastructures and the nearby support forts. Just remember: Do something with hexagons and/or the number six.

2. Cabins: Distributed cabins, including one at the spawn point (assuming my priority desert site isn't right there.) They're meant to be waypoints in case night falls while traveling from one place to another, or if the sun sets sooner than I expected. They'll have some nice decorations, chests with basic supplies, and generally be a nice quiet place to spend the night. They'll also be connected to nearby mines and serve as a base for mine workers.
---Standard features:
A. Cobblestone or brick chimney with a furnace (fireplace) inside for smelting.
B. Chests with basic equipment a lost/respawned player might need.
C. Cozy atmosphere (Decorations, windows with a good view)

3. Lighthouses: For navigation aid. Each will have an identifying rune made from lava behind glass. For easy memorization, make it look like a twist on a standard character.

4. For my desert fort, I was thinking of making it a big stone hexagon, maybe with glass extensions at the points. Inside, there'd be a ring of 12 hexagonal rooms with a large "lab" in the center for me to tinker with redstone, minecarts, and whatever else Notch might be adding. As for the purpose of the various rooms, well, I haven't decided on all of them. Some would be workshops for different materials, but others would be there to look good, like a library, swimming pool, dining room with makeshift table and chairs, sitting room in a glass point to watch the sunset, and so on. Floating above this fort, of course, would be the hourglass I described.

8 comments:

MWchase said...

For the snow, you might try getting lanterns or the ever-burning hell-blocks, and encasing them in glass.

(That strikes me as an amusing way to make damn sure the light stays on: harvest a lot of those blocks, build, set up glass for most of it, light from the one exposed bit, and cover the rest. Bam! Glowing base.)

I've got my own ideas about what I want to do, but I feel like they don't fit your theme, so I'll do them on my own. (They're essentially based on extending my skin, which wears a suit and a tie. Yes, for punching trees.)

Bronze Dog said...

Heh. I'm not sure if glass can block torch/lantern heat, but it's worth experimenting with.

I'm rather curious about that "Australium" as PC Gamer called it after the TF2 stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a component of lanterns. Either way, I'll probably find some of my own uses for it. Might make for an alternative lighthouse material if the stuff stays glowy after you mine it.

A while back, I read an amusing blog series about a guy's game, one game day at a time. He discovered the texture pack he used made leather armor into a tux.

Bronze Dog said...

[Many DM copypastas deleted over the weeks.]

DM, if you want us to pay attention to you, try speaking like a human being, not a slogan-spouting spambot.

You might actually want to try finding some post where you can be on-topic instead of just blindly posting in the most recent topic.

All you're doing now is advertising how much of a childish game you think this is. Try taking something seriously for once.

Of course you won't: Whenever you responded to any sort of direct challenge of mine, it was always an announcement of cowardice. You faced PZ, not with adult argument, but the schoolyard prank of pulling a fire alarm. What can I possibly expect of an overgrown child who thinks everything (most likely including his god) is his plaything?

Don said...

I really figured he'd puss out and go under the radar for a while after his visage was featured at Pharyngula. I guess I was wrong.

Anonymous said...

Last post October, so I see the entire blog died without me, haha, how pathetic.

Bronze Dog said...

An internet expression I rarely use:

ROFL!

You actually think you contributed ANYTHING to this blog's material, aside from a few jokes?

You think my blog revolves around you?

I do have a life outside this blog, you know. Do you seriously think that I'm Bronze Dog 24/7?

You're a pathetic copypasta troll with delusions of grandeur. You can't even present anything to separate yourself from all the other woos skeptics like me and my readers have been dealing with for years.

Try being original. Gabriel the white supremacist tried that fallacy long before you did, and it was just as pathetic then as it is now.

Oh, and just so you know, Nostradamus never applied for any of the paranormal challenges, never reached an agreed-on protocol, and last I checked, no one has ever been able to use his quatrains to predict events BEFORE they happen, only torture the words to describe events that have already happened. Nostradamus never predicted anything, it's all about his arrogant followers POST-dicting events.

Without an experimental protocol designed to eliminate other explanations, how can we eliminate the great human capacity for self-deception?

Of course, this is the part where, in between the lines, where a typical religious troll will stutter and stammer about how omniscient and infallible he is, and how god is his personal slave, limited by his imagination but he'd try to cover up that enthymeme with insincere attempts to sound humble. That's what "faith" means.

Face it. We're humans. We can make mistakes, and science is the best tool we can use to prevent and correct those mistakes. You've got nothing better to offer.

Anonymous said...

Bronze, you are nothing but a loser, it was dead here for over two months before I posted something.

Dude, get a life, seriously, I was the only one keeping this place alive with intelligent comments no one dared to say because "Atheism is "true" and Dawkins does not agree, therefore cant be true, end of debate", eh?

Bronze Dog said...

Riiiiight. You've never read anything I've ever written, have you? This is a gaming post. I've also written on this blog about alternative medicine, conspiracy theories, the philosophy of science, and other topics. Atheism isn't the only thing there is.

You'll also notice that the one post I put up was about someone else. You didn't contribute to that post at all aside from "a comment has been posted on your blog" to get me back to thinking about blogging.

Dude, my life does not revolve around you. But you can't imagine anything else, right? You're drunk on faith, the idea that the universe and the gods exist to serve you.

As for Dawkins, get a new fetish. I think he's a cool guy, but I'm not obsessed with him, and even think he's done the occasional boneheaded move. He's not the pope of atheism. There is no pope of atheism. If you knew anything about me, you'd know I reject the concept of authority when it comes to science.

Oh, and just so you know: I reject the god hypothesis because it doesn't explain or predict anything. If you can't beat random chance for predictive power, how the hell can you expect to beat modern scientific theories?