MOAR Chickens, MOAR cows please!

So last night came 1.9 pre release version 2, and with it came breeding. I turned my two sheep into three, and three pigs into five, and then something very strange happened...


I was out looking for a pair of chickens and a pair of cows, to take back to the farm pens, when a pig started following me! I instantly thought it was one of mine from the pen, but wasn't sure if bred animals even spawned near you? So I led it all the way back to the pig pen, only to find none were missing and my five pigs were still there. This was a brand new pig following me! Now I have six pigs. It wasn't until this morning, by accident, I found that if you have wheat in your hand - a pig/cow/chicken in the wild will instantly follow you. I am currently trying to find a cow and chicken to lead back to the pens. I had a chicken but by the time I found him night was falling, and he fell prey to two creepers - much like myself.


The quest continues!


I was also watching some of the videos for 1.9 pre-release part 2 on Youtube, made by various video game commentators I'm subscribed too.  Not only is the panning camera back with F8, but now, if you tap F5 twice, it goes from thrird person mode to being able to see your face in this mode - at last! So here is a picture of my by the entrance of my home:

I'm not sure about the bottles for the future potions that will be enabled, it will depend on what you can do with them, I'll reserve judgement until the actual potions arrive. it would be good if you could actually "place" bottles, especially for decorative purposes or pubs/taverns.

I need to go get more sand and more snow again. I'm not sure what happened to my snow Golem. He was trapped in the reception floor but died somehow. There were some skeletons outside the hotel but accidentally hit each other and started fighting.  Can't see how they could kill the snow Golem as he's sealed in behind walls and glass, unless he glitched and went through the door! or they shot through the door? Who knows. I built the scaffolding for the fifth and sixth floor.

Might also have to extend the reception somewhat so there's a back entrance to the future pool.

Snow Golem Slave labour

Work on the hotel is progressing rapidly, after deciding I want it to be quite modern, I opted for a clean white look with the glass. This meant wool, which could be a fire hazard, or snow blocks. I opted for the latter, and with that in mind I began securing the future reception on the bottom floor, so no creepers, spiders, zombies or skeletons could get in. After travelling to get a tonne of sand I'd need for the glass, I also went to a snow biome (Via the nether), to collect so. When I got back, I made a Snow Golem in the bottom floor, so it was trapped and would constantly make me snow.

I might extend the 5 floors to 7 now, although, I just realised with the above pictures - this isn't five floors, it's four + reception on the ground floor! When the walls were finished for the bottom flow, I decided to mix things up a little. If it was snow blocks all the way to the top, that'd be pretty boring, so I decided to have a contrasting floor with sand. Then the next would be snow, then sand again, all the way up.

Apart from the window in the front and the 3 - 4 windows round the back (In the corridor), the basic walls for floor #1 are done.

The rooms are quite spacious really, depending on where the stairs are. When the ceilings are added, they will utilize Glowstone, so there won't be any torches. I've also been thinking about what furniture each room should have, and deemed maybe each room should have:

• A bed
• A small en-suite kitchen
• 1 Sofa

Storage will be where and panel walls are naturally, the ones that hide the stairways up. At the moment I desperately need to go get some more coal to smelt things and I will have to go to the sand biome again as well. Those 5 - 6 stacks of sand (At least) are almost used up already, admittedly some on glass, but mostly on just the first sand-wall floor.

Lastly, I took this screen shot because it was so pretty. My house, in the side of a mountain, silhouetted by the sunrise.

Staying with Main World (For Now)

I'm not sure if I'm going to be doing the fort now, the land in 1.8/1.9 doesn't motivate me to build at all. That said. with the 1.9 pre-release (And up coming 2nd pre-release coming soon), I really like the next version of swamps with 1.9. They weren't really swamp enough in 1.8, but in 1.9 the distinctly green water and grey-purple like grass (And vines) makes them much. much more appealing! Hopefully they'll develop more so the swamp dissolves more into the surrounding terrain as the borders of a swamp are very obvious as it stands. If it is evened out like the edge of this biome it'd be great!:

Hopefully it will over time.

So in the mean time I have decided to stick my my main world, world2 - the old Alpha world, for now at least. Rather than keep improving things, of which I am running out of things to do, I am developing the surrounding area. I've just added a double height fence pen just behind and down from the other farm pens. This will be for chickens eventually, the cows can either share with the pics or sheep, probably the former. This is being done in advance for breeding when it comes. The main thing though, is a hotel.

On one of the earliest Minecraft servers I joined, I started to help build a hotel with a friend, but the server got neglected by it;'s owners and disbanded. So on my world I'm building my own hotel! I was going to have 10 floors but might just start with 5 and see how it goes from there. I'll be able to build this one to how I like it with my design styles and tastes. So I guess I need an old picture here to show you where it will be built. If you look at this picture, and look where the wishing well is:

Above it on the right side of the mountains above the well, are some trees, including one very big tree, which is where I'm building it - on the right side of the mountain on the corner. I've been working on it this morning using dirt for scaffolding as I have no SinglePlayerCommands:

I might have to see about changing having the cacti there, but we'll see. I might also build a second swimming pool, no changing rooms this time, so the hotel has it's own pool. Instead of deepness of the pool being 5, 10 and 20 blocks deep, this time it'll probably be 5, 10 and 15. I've left a 5 block gap around the base of the hotel for landscaping and a nice surrounding decorative area. I want there to be plenty of glass, give it a modern feel. Each flat may have an en-suite kitchen.

These are my plans for now, I might look on Minutor, look at the surrounding area and see what else I might build. This is what the map looks like:

Back to work on that hotel..

Stagnation + 1.9

I keep putting off this post, it's been... days since I've been meaning to post it.


I've been struggling and struggling to find a new 1.8 world for a "base". I found one place, but the area of just woods didn't really do anything for me. The land around has to be "special" for me to build anything - a base, a house, anything, for me to want to build. I am enjoying adventuring too. So far though I have gone through six 1.8 worlds. I did find this one area for possibly starting a new "Home in the side of a mountain II":

at the top of the stream/waterfall:

 Don't know if I'll keep it though. I just can't find an area that really makes me want to start building. I'm off doing a lot of adventuring, and that's fine, but can only last so long. So Far, I've found some interesting things:

(the first four pics are the same area, on another world)

And in another world:

That's almost a perfect circle! In Minecraft, where everything is square and blocky!

I had just got SPC for 1.8.1 and the next day I get home from work and BALLS - i.9 pre-release is out!

The Nether on creative:

That alone almost makes me want to go live in the Nether! I'd have to live on a diet of Mushroom soup, but whatcha gonna do?!

In my last main world, world2, I went to the snow biome and tried the snow golems, once, where the snow just lay on the hills:

Became covered in snow!:

I do like Snow Golems. The NPC's in the villages are just... weird. I trapped one in glass panes, but eventually felt bad and let him go. I wonder if the one NPC that had a different (straight) jacket in white, was some sort of scientist?! As of right now they seem pretty derpy and can't open doors for themselves. They have got there arms in a straight jacket though, so that might explain things..

So yeah, I am struggling for motivation to build, updates are gonna be slow. :-/

Stupid Electricity!

Straight to the point, my electric went out. I lost my 1.8 world. It's my own stupid fault as well, because it's a new round, I hadn't got round to backing it up yet. Guess I'm going to have to find a new world and start over *sad face*


I will back up after every time I play from now on. No laziness!


As this will be a short post with little updates, I thought I'd do something a little different and show my 2-plot home in the town of Valhalla on Multiplayer. I've been with this server for a little while now, and as the old part of the town was knocked down, I decided to move after all and rebuilt my home, albeit different to before. Yesterday and Saturday night I made a number of changes - adding a cobble overhang (Town has a viking theme), moving the entrance to the basement and adding a kitchen to the empty 2 part of the open space living room. (The 2nd plot). I also changed the door on plot 2 to a window wall, added gates and changed the windows to panes. I think I might be the first in the town to make that change.

World 2

Did a few little things this morning on my ex-main world, finally added bricks to the outside of the hedging and added so iron railings to them and round about the exterior as well. The iron gates were double height at first, but it hid too mush of the bushes.

Particularly on ledges by outside stairs to stop me falling over the edge, in the top of the cobble doorways to the fort entrance and private garden. Speaking of which, on those cobble walls outside I added little indentations using the new new stone brick, which are look slightly a discolored  version of the cobblestone. The idea being that it gives an impression they may have been once "window holes or doors there" but has obviously been replaced with a newer material giving it a look of the walls may have had a "history" in a past time! See if you can spot them!: (Not that it's exactly hard!)

This only came about because I saw a Minecraft thread about "How to do build castles/castle walls" and it gave me an idea to do "Indentations" in the wall. My walls however are only 1 block width so I couldn't do it, after may fails of trying to add "detail" - that's when I got this idea of adding the slightly fainter stone block as if the walls were really old and there was something there once/it was an old fort in the past.

So now I look for a new "1.8" world. Pity, I really liked that spot. :-/

PROGRESS

Not much to post, but I thought I'd share some screen-shots of the progress of my "Base", as it will be. The day before yesterday it looked something like this:

Cut to today and it looks like these, in a series of pictures whilst I worked:

As you can see, I've still got a lot of flattening out to do, but already it's 9 - 10 blocks high. I'm not sure if this is going to be the main building, or just an outer wall yet. I think if it's the latter however, the base would be pretty small, which makes me want to build another wall around it. That wall will be the three block thick wall which will eventually have obsidian in the center to strengthen it. (Which will take a long time as it's legit!) There are also more torches around the perimeter inside, every four spaces.

I also went travelling again, so - it's time for the random wondrous landscape pic of the blog time!:

I love that flat bit sticking out just of center towards the right. It'd be cool to build something there, right on the edge!

I died a few times on my travels, lost what food I had (main reason for dying afterwards), and some sand and wool I had gathered. Came across an NPC village, not too far away from me, just across the ocean. It is however, a really small one and I had to excavate to get inside one building where the land is uneven and the gravel paths had fallen down.

I've only just got back from there, died on the way from lack of food to fill up my hunger bar. Got lost on the way back and found two side by side ravines! Not very good ones though. So at least I got back to spawn, even if it was once again without anything..

Back to building the base...