In my last blog I showed you pictures of my empty museum, and since then I've added a few statues. You can see a green Mario (watch the video for the explanation), and a Megaman that is 95% done. Since that video was recorded I've finished Megaman, and added 2 more statues. I won't say WHAT they are, but you'll see them in the future via ZackScottGames or on this blog. The part about the museum starts at the 7:18 mark.
I really haven't been doing too much building lately. I've been doing a lot of adventuring in unexplored lands. The main reason I started was in search of red flowers for dye making. Scottland has been picked clean in the more populated areas, and so I had to venture off the beaten path to find some. While collecting roses, I got far enough out where I started finding a lot of clay (something else there is little of in Scottland). Not long after I found a few deposits of clay, Ashley offered to buy up clay from people to build her new house (shown unfinished in the video above). So for awhile at least clay = diamonds in Scottland. This motivated me to adventure even more & even farther out, but it became a hassle to keep digging holes to stay in. So I decided to make "outposts" or "stations" I could travel to, and safely spend nights in.
These stations needed to be easy to construct, and easy to take down if someone decided to build in said area. At first I thought about making them obsidian, so I wouldn't have to repair creeper damage. But that's hard to take down, and it's a pain to mine obsidian. So then I decided on a 5x5 cobblestone room. No doors, no windows. I replaced 1 block on 3 of the walls with dirt. So if something was outside I could remove the dirt & shoot out. The doorway, which is also just filled in with dirt, is always facing a large body of water. This makes it less likely a creeper will be hanging around outside your door. The walls are only 3 blocks high, and it has a netherrack roof, which is completely on fire. To make it just a little safer I lined the walls facing land with cactus. It isn't a pretty building, and it's small, but so far I've heard dozens of spiders & creepers die & I've been completely safe. Inside I have a bed, and 3 items buried in the ground (chest, workbench & furnace).
My goal is to be able to travel 10,000 ?feet? (don't know what those numbers represent) in any direction. So far I've just traveled about 6,000 in 1 direction. I've made 8 of these stations so far, and it makes finding roses & clay really easy (not to mention other things).
Ashley has been connecting people to the rail system she installed in Super Tunnel. It's a huge project & she's put a lot of work into it. I think in total I've donated 80-90 blocks of iron & maybe 8 stacks of wood. I don't know how she gets enough iron, but she's used more of my iron now than I have. :p She recently dug out to my place (I helped, but she did the majority of it), and I am now connected to Super Tunnel.
You're probably wondering why you haven't seen any improvements to my house or new buildings in Zack's videos. Sure I changed the cobblestone house into a yellow & blue wool house, but it's really the same house. So what have I been working on? Well I mentioned a few ideas I had in previous posts, and one of those was to make statues of videogame characters. I mentioned I might build a few statues around the mountain, and you could see a couple experiments from "Berzerk" in one of Zack's videos.
What I don't think I've mentioned is that I decided to build a giant museum to display videogame pixel art in. I've been digging out a HUGE underground room, and I'm getting fairly close to finishing it. I still need to make the ceiling about 15 blocks higher before I start building the artwork though.
When I'm done there will be images built into the floor & ceiling. There will be as many statues as I can fit into the room as well. In the pictures I have below you can see I went with a glass rail to keep people from falling to their death. It doesn't look all that great, but it allows people to see almost directly below them...which is important since the object is to view the art. There will be 5 viewing areas: the main floor & 4 viewing platforms that wrap around the museum.
I also recently completed a rough draft of a wall that goes all the way around (what I consider) my property. It's a large chunk of land...very large. The wall actually goes around my entire mountain & both yards. It's currently just 4 blocks high of cobblestone & only 1 block thick. I did add torches to every block along the top, and yellow flowers in front of every block on the outside of the wall. :p
Later I plan to make the wall 3 blocks thick & hollow so people can walk through it to get to my home if they get caught outside in the dark. I also plan to make it stone, and not cobblestone. The torches will be replaced by netherrack in the center. I would have take more screen grabs, but it started getting dark, and I didn't want to wait for daylight again.
PS: Just to be clear, this wall isn't meant to keep people out of my area. I just think it'll look cool when it's done, and it'll let people know that I have plans for everything inside. Once you have a home, you need elbow room to expand, and I do have a lot of plans for things within my walls. It would suck to have someone start building there before I got to it. (you can only work on so many things at once) Even with the wall people are obviously welcome to visit my area. I've put one door up near Cal's, and plan on putting others up as well so people don't have to go around my wall.
Recently I've been getting requests to make Minecraft videos on my channel. My response hasn't been no, but instead I've said probably not. I've never made gaming videos before, and I don't have a great desire to start. But I will leave the door open, cause you never know... Since I'm not making Minecraft videos at the moment, I thought I'd answer one of the more popular questions I've been asked. "Have you found/made _______?" Seems a few people want to know what's in my item boxes. I took some screen captures the other day, so hopefully that will answer all those types of questions. (I have gained more wool, wood, and made some changes to the house & yard since these images were taken.)
These first images are boxes I keep in the small house above ground. These are things I often need quick access to, and emergency supplies.
Now on to Store Room A:
Now we'll move on to Store Room B. (Not shown: 1 more full box of dirt, 7 more boxes full of cobblestone, 2 more boxes full of gravel & 1 more full box of sand.)
This last image is the box I keep down in my farm.
Too Many Wolves We recently had issues with mobs not spawning like they're supposed to. Zack mentions in the video that the animals have spawned, but not the monsters. That's not totally correct, even though you see animals in the video. There were times when I went hours without seeing any animals. Anyways...while I was logged off, a few of the guys were going to sneak over & kill my wolves to see if that solved the problem. It wasn't the problem & I they didn't really kill any of my wolves. I did end up killing 6 of my own wolves after they left, just to test their theory. The problem wasn't really solved completely until the new update, but I don't know if Zack made any changes around that time...so really I don't know what the heck the problem was.
It's a real shame nobody could figure out what characters were in my yard. If you were fans of the Atari 2600 growing up, you should know that those characters are from the game Berzerk! Those wool statues were just me testing out ideas, and will not stay there. My house has been remodeled, and my yard looks a little different since this video was made...especially my backyard. (will show in future posts)
Form This Way As I have with the last couple posts, I thought it would be a good idea to end with a song.
Ok, so last time I showed you the start of what would be my underground farm. Since that last post I finished digging out the room, finished the lighting (which I ripped off from Zack), brought grass downstairs (that took about 1 full day irl), and added my crops.
I have 2 places to grow trees, and I built a catwalk around them both so that I could reach the higher branches easily. I currently only harvest 3 other goods: cactus (for making dye), wheat (for food) & sugarcane (I'm not really using it for anything yet). I keep this area fenced off so animals won't stomp all over my crops. I keep some supplies in a back corner of the farm, and you can see how my lighting is messed up in the corner. I do plan on fixing this somehow, but it's low on the priority list right now. I guess the last thing I should show you is the grass stairs. They go from the surface almost down to bedrock. It didn't take too long to dig (pippyholt helped with that & he helped dig out the farm), but the grass took about 20 hours to reach the floor of the farm. So far everyone has been really nice on the server (Mac still seems to hate me & I don't really know why...nor care much). Spent some time working with Philip as I mentioned already, and he has been helpful. He always wants to Skype as we play, and that's usually not something I like to do. Sometimes the kids are sleeping & I need to be quiet, sometimes I'm listening to music for my blog & sometimes I like to just dig in silence on my own (and let the OCD go to work :p). Skype is nice once in awhile, just to change things up though.
Until I get a better mic, you probably won't hear me on . The 2nd time I tried to get on Skype with Zack there was so much static it was distracting. I have no idea why the audio was bad the 2nd time when it seemed to be alright he 1st time...but oh well.
Now that the farm is done (for the most part), I would like to start making some wool statues. I've been collecting as much wool & dyes as possible, but I still need more. I've probably got enough dye for now, but I know I'm still short in the wool department. Until I get more wool, I might start on another project. I've got a handful in mind, but not sure which to go with first. (dog fighting, giant maze, indoor pool, road around my mountain, etc...)
PS: I now have 13 wolves, and they are kind of annoying. I still haven't done much new in singleplayer. I started a mine directly under my cave, but that's about it.
Crowded Adventure This is the video of the first group adventure I went on. I don't speak much, mostly because once inside the cave I keep getting lost (I have a terrible sense of direction irl as well). Before this adventure even started I killed Mac. It wasn't caught on video, but AshleyScottGames has video of Mac & Rozz talking about it. I was basically waiting around spawn, when she came over & hit me. So of course I chased her down & killed her. Never hit the king...
Crowded Adventure...After Zack Left Ashley was recording this as well, and this video picks up where the other left off.
TNT Last time I posted a Minecraft music video, and thought I'd end this post the same way. This is a parody of Taio Cruz's Dynamite...crafted using note blocks.
I mentioned I was invited to play on Zack Scott's server in my last post. Because of this I haven't made much progress in single player. Haven't really added much to my home, but I did find 2 dungeons. Unfortunately being the noob that I am, I didn't know how to stop them from spawning & died in my attempts to kick mob ass. I marked where they were, so I do plan on going back to light it up & get the rewards in the future.
I built a little cave in multiplayer, and at first I thought it was far enough out of the way to build on. Found out shortly after that Tallman's house wasn't far from my location. He was cool with me being there, but if I wanted to do a lot of landscaping & building I needed to find a new location.
I searched for awhile & finally found a place I liked. I found a big mountain that was hollowed out a lot. You could actually walk right under it & come out the other side. It gave a spooky backdrop, and it was close to the water. Tallman's house was still the closest to mine, but this location would keep me out of his way.
The mountain did have more than it's share of problems. The biggest of which is that it's dark...even during the day under the mountain & in it's shadow there were mobs. What made it worse is that there were TONS of trees that also darkened the area. The trees were annoying for another reason as well. They were extremely thick, and most of them on the small side. It makes getting around very difficult, especially on hills & mountains.
So after I built a small cabin, my first priority was lighting the mountain up & clearing out trees. The general rule I went by when logging was, if the tree has 2 blocks or less before the leaves start...the bitch is coming down. Some trees that were just in bad locations I also chopped down. Since you get a lot of saplings each time you chop a tree down I'm not worried about over doing it. I can always plant more trees in better locations. Navigating the area has become A LOT easier since I went Paul Bunyan. With the mobs now at bay for the most part I leveled off the land my house was sitting on, and cleared the view to the ocean. Eventually I added steps, and flowers...lots of yellow flowers. I haven't done much to the mountain itself, I did clear out a lot of gravel underneath, filled in holes, made boarders for 2 waterfalls that were already there, and other little things like that. For the most part I like the mountain as is, and just want to keep it natural looking without a lot of building onto it. Because it's so dark underneath, I added a lava flow to give more natural lighting & give me a good source of lava if I need it. Most of the work to the house I've done at night when there are multiple players on the server. I live far away from the main areas, and aside from my front & back yard the mountain isn't lit up well. So I can't do much outside like some other players can. I added glass windows, a yellow shag floor & an unlimited supply of water to the house. Most work has been below the house underground.
I picked a spot between 2 of my item boxes & dug straight down to bedrock. One of the things I plan to do is build an underwater glass room with a lava floor. Not sure how I'm going to do this yet, but I dug down as far as I could & have a small tunnel going under the water to where I want to build. For now this project is on hold. The item boxes in my house were getting full, and I needed storage space. So using the hole I already made, I built a storage room directly under my house. I don't plan on having stairs at this point, but we'll see. When the storage room was complete I started work on 2 rooms a couple blocks higher than my bedrock tunnel. The rooms are about 20x30 blocks, and I plan on having one be a farm. I want to grow all my plants down there, and eventually have animals spawn there. Getting grass down there will be a bitch, but it's next on the to do list when the room is finished. The second room was going to be a pool room. I was going to make a water slide, diving platform & different stuff like that. However...the new Minecraft update included wolves. You can tame these wolves to be pets, and they will attack anything that you attack or anything that attacks you. This gave me the idea to build a dog fighting arena. Assuming Zack doesn't let Michael Vick on the server, I hope to eventually fight my wolves against others from Scottland. #FuckYouPETA So far I've tamed 11 wolves, and they get in the way a lot. So I made a kennel next to my house...with 11 wolves it's already pretty much packed, and I might expand it some. Having a pack of 11 wolves ready to rip apart mobs that attack me does make it easier to work at night. Getting them all back in the kennel though...not easy. For the most part that's all the progress I've made. I did do a lot of work on a cliff behind my mountain. It looked neat, but really unstable. I ended up adding at least 500 blocks of dirt & stone to it to make it look more natural. Was not a small task since most of the work was done underneath the cliff & was really high up. The only other plans I have that will be visible above ground are some videogame statues. I'm thinking about doing some pixel art around the mountain. For instance a giant yellow Pac-Man chasing a blue ghost? A Space Invader dropping down from the side of the mountain? Stuff like that. I'm also considering making a road that goes around the island...
The first evidence of me being on the server was posted in this --> ZackScottGames video. Zack stopped by my place before I had a chance to do much to it, but you can actually see my house in the video below.
In Search Of Diamonds Chris Cogott saw some of my tweets about Minecraft & linked me to this music video by Eric Fullerton (@nailhead). I play this song on repeat...often...
PS: I want to mention that I had to make that beach. None of that sand was there, and I even dug out the dirt in the water, and put sand in it's place.
