World Holes, Orgre Holes, & Library News!

 
An unusual thing happened when I loaded up my main world - two strange world holes. Or at least two very large holes. In retrospect - maybe it was the work of an ogre given there was a bottom to these holes. Thankfully they are away from the house on the beach, although they took come cacti away. Due to this unnatural event, which I thought was a world hole, I did change gamemode to fill the holes. I thought it was only right as it was something out of my hands and would take infinite amounts of sand to fill. Something else did happen with ogres though, and it wasn't good!

 

 

Before the carnage:

 

I was inside my house and I could hear the sounds of an ogre near by, but as I ran around - desperate to find and stop it it was absolutely nowhere to be found! Later at the rear of my mountain home (Home embedded in a mountain) I found the damage, a huge gaping hole where my back entrance to my home used to be (Just a door left); and the viewing area/room was completely destroyed too!

As I went to get some materials for a quick patch up job i found another huge hole on the landing that led down to storage.. Alot of the grey wool walls were smashed, the ceiling, some glass, and being next to the dining room - on the other side of the wall, he had been in there too.. As I looked up I found where he had spawned, apparently there was a big hole above the ceiling of said landing and that's where he was, not sure what happened with the back entrance. I went into the dining room and he had smashed a dividing wall from said room to the future kitchen.

After the patch up:

 

Back entrance after the patch up:

 

Some pictures I didn't take I was too dismayed and couldn't bring myself to take them. There is good new though! Remember I was going to change the art gallery to the library? Well I think I've finally committed to starting it! Last time I showed you it I had gutted the existing walls and put coloured wool where the glass would be:

 

 

The other day I gathered the wood I needed, 3 different types + dark logs for this job, and began work! At first putting all the glass in then slowly getting rid of the cobble at last and changing it to an old fashioned old library!:

 

I've made a good start! I should also mention that a good while back I did customize the paintings for this painterly texture pack. I kept a few of the Monet paintings but replaced most with ones of Turner - my favorite painter. Anywho, expect updates now on this project!

As of this post, the back entrance has been restored to it's former glory, the landing down to storage and the dining room have all been fixed. The viewing room (With the water window), is currently being restored slowly.

 

Return To Alpha #6 Coming Soon!

So I finally recorded some more of my Return To Alpha Series after a long gap, and I recorded a long two hour session so that should make for two further episodes. I was meant to record on Saturday but I forgot and then in the evening I was falling asleep as I watched the film Looper. It's not a statement about the film though, I did enjoy it - thought it was good. not amazing but a good film and I really really like the premise of the story. I didn't fall asleep for long though so I didn't miss too much.

So yeah, I recorded very early in the morning on Sunday and will be editing episode #6 tonight and hopefully will get it up for the next day - Monday, Tuesday latest. In the meantime, here's a recap with the last episode, Episode #5:

Return to Alpha is a series where I explore the old Alpha days again, building a home and how different things were way back when. This is not because I hate newer versions, as I always play in 1.4.7 and enjoy the updates; but more of a retrospective series. I use hindsight using influences on how my building style has changed, taking knowledge I have gained over the past 2 years playing Minecraft, doing things with more skill and understanding that I diddn't have back in Alpha 2 years ago.

The HUGE 2 Month Gap Post!

Apologies for not posting in the last two months, hopefully this one will thrust me back into the swing of things! Unfortunately I had a lot going on in real-life in December, and I only had 1 draft ready to post in January; too much real-life stuff going on. So although I've only been playing very off/on here's what I've been up to!



In December I was on my creative version of world#2, and I was thinking about moving my Nether portal. (Not the first time I've had this idea.) Since the Snow Golem farm fail down by my mob area, I had been thinking about using the room for a different area. So on this tester world, I built  a lead up to the Nether portal in the next room, which is a long walk-way of nether -brick surrounded by flaming netherrack. A long walkway up to some netherbrick stairs and the portal is just round the corner, it's a much better area. and I think I come out somewhere different  in the nether, not far from where it was but slightly different.

When I went through, I was not expecting this:

 

Since when did bats spawn in the Nether?! My original theory was they spawned in the cave and went through, but as it was rebuilt there wouldn't have been time for that many to go through.. (Unless it was in the time up to that?) They definitely were not there last time I went to the Nether!! POST UPDATE: Since I made the draft for this post i have decided to place it in another location, even further so I get a bit of a different spawn in the Nether.

Phase #1 of the underwater tunnel was almost completed before the new year. The initial glass tunnel is all done, all I have to do now is a bit of decorating and laying down the rest of the rails. Phase #2 has begun which sees the tunnel continue underground from the church all the way round to Mount DOOOOoooom(!) and beyond.

This is not THE big news though.

I have now decided I need to up my game and have installed Mo'creatures for constant use in all worlds.

One good thing is I can turn Enderman down to 0 frequency, they may be easy to kill but they have always p***ed me off with their block stealing. In it's place though, there will be things like the undead horse mobs, ogres, werewolves, wraiths and plenty more to make up for it. It does mean I also have to be a lot more careful in my worlds now! No matter what hard level I play on! I've already had to do a couple of repairs. The last thing I want is an ogre smashing up my place, I might legit cry if that happened. I'll probably have to wait for 1.5 before I can update again, but so be it. I'll look forward to that as I will be resetting my Nether - again, (4th time?) so I can get the new Nether with the Nether Quartz - which I love! Already on my creative copy of this world I have transformed my bathroom into a marble haven!

Speaking of the marble/Nether Quartz, I also experimented in the creative copy with the new blocks related to this new ore and the daylight sensors to create a light that comes on when it turns night time. I created two versions, the standard version:

The second version is little a "Little Man", I call it the Ayatollah:

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Surprisingly I have picked this world back up recently as well. Not a great deal has changed on the inside, but I do now have a minuscule carrot farm after obtaining one from a zombie. On the outside however, I have create a multi-storey animal farm with sheep, pigs, chickens and at the top, cows.

Today, now that I use Mo' creatures I did have the bunnies in place of where the sheep were, but after the initial few, I had nowhere to put them. This is why they ended up in with the sheep. Trouble was there were little window slots and they kept escaping so I had to border them up until I could replace them with glass! Then, every time I put one back, two more would escape! Every time I went to put one or two in, a few would come towards the gate, in the process I was so concerned for the rabbits; (All named after Watership Down characters) that all the sheep escaped! In the end I let them all run free because it was too much hassle getting them to stayin there. So that's why there are fewer sheep in there. Also a wolf spawned in there before all that and ate some before I killed him.

There's probably load more news, but I wanted to get something up; something posted today. Hopefully more news soon.

World#2 Update: Taverns and Diamonds

I thought I better make one last post for November before we hit December - can't believe were at December already.

Not much has been done lately, especially not on the underwater glass tunnel since the last update. I did complete, well almost complete the tavern however, and I would say it's at about 90% done now, just some finishing touches. So here is the original tavern:

Also, this is what the rebuild looked like last time I blogged about it:

 

Since then I have done alot more work, and as mentioned it's about 90% done. For the longest time I really couldn't decide what style to do the walls in. part of me wanted to make it in ultra-modern with snow or white walls (You can just see them in the above picture), and part of me thought medievil; however, the thought of using cobblestone again repelled me. Instead I decided to go traditional and make it out of wood, but using as many of the different woods as possible. So we have - oak log timber frame, jungle plank walls, spruce wood floors and spruce wood stairs for the roof:

It now dwarfs over the swimming pool compared to the previous tavern!

I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out so far, especially the inside of the roof. there's still some work to do however like finishing the bar down stairs, the toilets behind the partition wall upstairs, and some more detailing. My favourite bit is the traditional (mimicking real-life) triangular roof trussels on the inside of the roof, again made of timbers.

The only other thing I've really done is reverted the potato/carrot farm back into a mushroom farm (With a dividing wall making two rooms, lighted for red, dark area for brown) and changed the back mushroom farm into the potato/carrot farm, so it follows on rather than precedes it. The original plan was to leave the potato/carrot farm where it was and make it automated, but there wasn't enough space. It didn't work out so I made these changes, at least I don't have to go splashing about after the crops no more however:

I also went branch mining yesterday, in hope to find some diamonds (Again!) and found a total of 16! Most of them where in the left branch, only a couple in the right one, but enough for a diamond - pick, axe and spade. (Already have a diamond sword, though it is almost at half-usage.) I still have nine in the chest. I could fulfill a fantasy and make a diamond block or, try and find more and get all diamond armor again - it's been far too long since I had that. Made a change to the cave to the right of the mob area as well (At the very base of the mountain near lava pools):

I'm guessing they de-spawn now though unless in a snow-biome?

Nice idea though, originally they were in a made snow-factory, behind the mountain, behind the wheat farm. They upped and disappeared one day though. Hmmm, maybe I should may this into another kind of mob area now though? Now that I have covered up the lava and gone to so much trouble..

Any ideas?

Obsessive Cave Home [Creative]

So lately over the past few days I've been obsessing over this cave home that I've created on my creative world. The idea came about from a gaming YouTuber I watch, he had a guest on his world/server who started making a home in a cave and I thought it was a really good idea. It inspired me enough to try it myself!

I've had an underground home before, If you're familiar with this blog, you'll know that on my first Alpha world I had an underground home but int was in a "drop-down" cave. What I mean by that is a hole in the ground that goes straight down as opposed to a regular with a cave mouth. Therefore the home was split into different levels, wherever there was a flat bit on the way down. The great thing with a cave home and caves is that they run on and on with gradual descent down. (Although with some steep drops) This would mean the home in a cave would have room running on from room. I opted to use Misa's Realistic Texture Pack, the same that I'm using for my Stronghold home. (StrongHolm II.)

The first picture was originally going to be the front entrance, but I've swapped it as a back one and made the 2nd picture the new plush entrance. (Or at least it will be!) The new entrance only came about because in the darkness of the cave I thought I saw a higher ledge so I started putting stairs down, when I did finally put a torch down I saw there was no ledge just a flat wall. I carried on though to see where the stairs would come out if I kept placing them, completely forgot I started near water so that was a surprise when I hit the lake above. As you can see I just went for it however. I'm not sure how I want the final entrance to look, but I want it to blend into the environment outside as much as possible.

A look from the inside, as you go down the stairs from the entrance you are greeted with this:

I've kept the natural waterfall there, just fenced it off so it doesn't flood the place and created a small pit for the water to fall into, already there but not deep enough. Though it's hard to see in picture#1, behind that created wall with glass facade, are stairs going up (To the rear entrance) and stairs down. The stairs down just lead to a ravine, but it's not extensive, more like a "Half-ravine". In picture #1 there's a wall veering of to my left where I'm stood at the bottom of the stairs, around here I've got a little balcony that looks over said ravine.

Going up those stairs behind the facade wall we continue round to the back entrance:

As the last picture was the mouth of the cave, I wanted a wall material that carried on from the outside Earth and grass, a natural material. When I saw the colour for clay I simply had to have it for the walls. As well as this the floors are jungle plank floors and in this texture pack it goes, really, really nicely with the walls. The last picture is a kind of cloakroom. With the minimal lighting as well It starts to change as the sun goes down looking warm and cosy at night:

Up the stairs we get the very beginning of the cave and the back entrance:

I'm not sure what's going to be through that wooden door, maybe a small mushroom farm or closet space? In all I've tried to blend the inside in with the outside as much as possible so it looks natural and doesn't stand out too much from the outside:

Loft:

Some updated pics of current work:

The lobby down from the entrance is now a wash of blues to go with the water theme, both where the entrance is down into the water, and the natural waterfall. Two types of blue wool used and lapis lazuli floor. The winowed bit on the stairs wall is actually ice. In the corridors we have a mix of sandstone walls contrasted with Soul Sand feature walls all the way through with End stone floors and birch steps.

(Runs onto bedroom area)

Since this picture I have actually raised the floor up two blocks as I didn't like that huge blanks bit of green wall down to the floor. 

I'm still not sure about this area yet and it may change completely and not even be the bedroom. Part of me thinks of having this whole area as a grand bedroom and knocking out that small enclosed space, or doing that but using it for a completely different room altogether - maybe living area?

Then farm areas:

Chickens:

Both the cow and chicken farms have sky-lights in the cave ceiling that go all the way to the surface and let in loads of light during the day.

Overall, I really like this cave idea. Over the last few days I've just been obsessing about it spending hours and hours doing stuff and not realising how much time has passed. I might do a survival one fore sure as I really like the idea. Still lots to do though.