You did WHAT With The Water?!

So the other day on the front page of minecraftforum.net, there was a spotlight on this mod - the Minecraft Water Shader.


Now I have never heard of this mod to make water realistic, but as soon as I saw the video, I had to try it out! It's like that nice water in the Minecraft rip-off Fortresscraft. It's photo realistic and reflective and very very nice! It was incompatible with mod loader, but I believe there is a version now that is compatible with that. It didn't affect me because I don't use loads of mods anyway. My first words after installing it on my main world were - "THIS IS F***ING A-MAZING!!" I looked into my swimming pool and I was there for a good minute because I was so mesmerized! Here are the screen-shots I took:

Since these pictures I finally fixed the current underneath the dock after I got home from work today with a mixture of buckets and placing wood blocks. Fixed it at least! Not easy to place water when the current keeps bobbing you up and down, especially underneath the dock! This new mod which I will never NOT use(!) makes me want to build a home in the middle of lake now! Or build a town with a water theme.

Speaking of which, as 1.8 may now be even further delayed, I need a little temporary something - so I may well create a little town. I used to have a world for my own independant server, but couldn't get enough people to play. (Plain vanilla server though, no Bukkit/worldmods etc.) So what I have done, is move that world into my saves folder, and I may build a town  with this world. I need a theme however, and all I have on this world (As well as nothing in my inventory at first,  apparently.) is the original build on there, which was just this small information center:

I may well tear this down completely to start again. I may use a water theme, to show off the new water shader mod, but I need to get in my head what I want it to look like first, only then can I really start. I shall be looking for inspiration on Google images after this blog post. Not much else has gone in my main world, apart from setting the rest of the entire Nether tunnel bridge alight. On world 3 I added some piston fence gates in the 2 high fencing and am replacing torches inside the house with Glowstone embedded in the walls. No much else really.

More to follow hopefully.

Thoughts After Pax

So I've been following the PAX stuff that happened over the weekend, watching as many videos as I possibly could, and thought I'd do something a little different today and give my thoughts on some of the upcoming 1.8 stuff.


When 1.8 first was announced I couldn't wait to see how the new lighting would look, and still can't wait to see how it makes my main world, the Alpha one, look. Now I'm really looking forward to the bow, I think it's an excellent improvement on what was already there, making them much, much better. On the whole I don't think there's anything I really don't like. I do have some concerns with hunger, not the idea, but the way it works, but I won't be able to give it full consideration until I actually try it. I like the abandoned mines and rivers, I was thinking if I find a ravine should I build a home/something on one? I hope you can pick up those cobwebs in the mines or create them legit now. I'm really neither here or there on the NPC villages, especially if 1.8 is going to be updated in two parts with the actual NPC's being added to the villages in part two. I guess I'll have to wait and see what the NPC's actually do. I'd only ransack a town if it was too close to where i wanted to build, generally I would be friends with them.


If they do add poisonous spiders, it will make trips to caves alot more fun. (As well as ravines, strongholds and abandoned mines of course!) We don't know yet whether Enderman only spawn above ground... Some people are really overreacting with Enderman, first just to them and now the often seen "fortifying my house ready for Endermen" threads. I'm not worrying about it, as far as we know they can't enter your homes and they can't remove placed blocks, so I'm not worried or freaking out about meeting one. I'll deal with it however I deal with it at that moment.


That's all I can really think off at the moment, there may be a part II, maybe  not. We'll see.

Small update, small changes..

Just a little update of what I've been up to over the last 4 - 5 days+.


The main thing I should mention, the biggest thing is a change to the megabuild project. I'm not doing an ancient sand town any more, decided to just build a great big house - still using Invedit. I've kept the fort-style walls however. So now, it's gone from this:

To this:

It's very bland at the moment, but that will change. There's actually a mistake also. The middle of the front is meant to be forward of the side rooms not "in" as shown, will change that. Probably add multiple windows as well to the front rather than just one. I'm happy with my hallway - the last picture, but I've still the floor to do. Also found a nice way to do lighting on the walls as seen on the left of the last picture. I'll still do updates but only from time to time on this project.

Main World

One main thing I've done, is a switch in the bedroom. Where the bedroom extension is/was, is now the new bathroom and vice versa the old bathroom now the extension. The reason for this is because I wanted a working shower, which meant using Redstone and pistons, and the original bathroom which originally was an extension itself out of the side of the mountain was far too small. Also here is the new bathroom:

It's missing the urinal, but I might change the wooden doors to the VIP room into iron doors, but I will have to change the look of them in the painterly pack. (The last ultimate, final version for this world?!) Might have it where the mini corridor is between said VIP room and door to bathroom. Been laying around with the front entrance again, from this:

To this:

I like it, but, I'm really not sure about the roof. The way it's done is very slightly Japanese-ish. I really wanted to make the door open with the doorbell. It meant changing the double stairs to a single staircase and therefore making the double doors singular as well. I had to move both over to the left by one. The one good thing however is that the doorbell is now on the inside of the brick wall to your right, easier to reach than before - having to lean over.. It works though, doorbell chimes, door opens. I'll do the bay window roof when/if I can ever decide on a decent roof.

I also went and nerfed more Glowstone this morning because I had an idea about doing extra lighting around the high pool walls:

As you can see I also changed the steps going up to the main path. This is because there were two snow blocks (From the dining room ceiling) showing up between the steps. I tried just putting steps over them but it ruined the flow of the steps, making them over extend at the bottom. Cobble steps look ugly and wooden steps wouldn't be right, so I built these twisty steps up. From another angle:

Also changed the half-way house into a wooden home (because I like wooden homes/log cabins/huts:

End of the road (Until 1.8)

Not long until 1.8 now, and I haven't got much to post. I've also been preparing for the ninth anniversary of my Transformers Message Board, so that has taken a lot of my time too. (In between Portal2 and Magika!)


I finished the Nether tunnel bridge, I just need to light the rest of it which will take a LOT of flint and steel. I have the Iron, loads of it, But I'm out on flint. So that's two/three end-of-August objectives practically done.

Also, when I filled-in my water elevator in, I said I could fit another room there, but wasn't sure what. After digging out the room, I left it empty for a while, boarded up with cobblestone. Today however, I went to improve my mushroom farm when I got an idea, moving it from just down the stairs from the portal room up to this room, much more space. At the moment I'm growing grass in there to see if they grow quicker on grassy land than on stone (in the old one.)

I also have been cave exploring, died - lost all my diamond tools, used my last six remaining diamonds, died again. The last time it was in a cave at some location from my "pines" waypoint. I was highly annoyed the last time because I had goodies from a dungeon and had just found another - a skeleton dungeon. WHHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYY!!! WHY didn't I set a new waypoint there like I said I was going to do ten minutes before! I always do this! I end up wandering "just a little further". Even as I was on the corner of the skelly dungeon about to storm it, I knew I should set the way-point, but I didn't. I've spent hours trying to find that cave again, but can't find it for the life of me. In the end I went to the new mines, just behind the walls of my storage area. Got all my diamond tools back and have 10 diamonds spare as of this time. I have also been trying to find as much as Gold as possible to finally get this done:

Still need a LOT of gold, around 17 blocks, over two stacks of gold.

I can't see there being many more posts until 1.8 now, there's not much more I can feel I can do.

MAZEception!

So yesterday I went on Minecraft, not sure what I was really going to do in my main world, but I ended up doing alot of work on the maze! With my tree farm so near, it wasn't a chore to get all the wood and leaves. I've still got a small corner to finish, but it was really, really fun to make! Especially, not just making traps, IE dead ends, but traps within a trap. The only thing I can't figure is lighting, It might give away the dead ends and I can't put torches on the leaves blocks. Might do something with Glowstone, but not sure yet. Here's how it looks now:

It also has some nice log seating in the center.

I forgot to mention that in my mass re-urbanization, I made a doorbell for my front doors. I still suck with Redstone, but I followed a video bit by bit by pausing, and it works. It also inadvertently opens the right side of my front door! I tried to wire it up so it opened both doors but couldn't. This led to me changing the double front doors to a single front door. After playing around with what looked good around the front door - glass, brick, brick behind glass, alot of it just didn't look right. Settled on this:

It meant changing the two-width path to a single width. I also went to my "pines" way-point and went to find a new cave, nice modern chunk found Lapis, and enough diamond for a diamond - sword, pick-axe and spade, but not enough for an axe. This morning I made certain doors inside double for the doggies to wander around the house with me, certain areas are off limits though - down to the lava pools, the storage area and library.

New Resolution Gallery

A Gallery of my main world at a bigger resolution, thanks to my new monitor: