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Unofficial Official Minecraft Thread

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  • HelsaHelsa
    Mabinogi Rep: 23,380
    Posts: 5,763
    Member
    edited March 10, 2021
    Someone asked me to post screenies of my Witch Factory. The factory was made before they changed water mechanics a few versions ago, but it still mostly works! I built it in survival and that took about two months but most of that was preparing the site. Once the site was ready the actual building only took a couple nights.

    Exterior Views
    There's a town nearby, that I've built a nether portal in, which I use to get to the Witch Factory. This is the first view you get as you walk there. You can see already: the bulky part on the left that contains the spawning chamber and related machinery for it; the tower used to drop-kill mobs; and the extended part on the right which is an item sorter.
    TC8hJ6k.jpg
    This is a plan view of the site. I had to flood 128 blocks away, from the four corners of the spawning area, in order to improve spawning efficiency. There were two abandoned mine shafts that I had to fill in as well.
    pJPC0vs.jpg
    Front Left View. You'll see ladders everywhere. I'm big on access. You can see that I've also made a dock.
    mgVDrxg.jpg
    Front Right View. Yet more ladders.
    B7nn1pp.jpg
    Back Right View. Another ladder.
    xJnBFMa.jpg
    Back Left View. Using the concept, "form follows function", in other words your building only needs to be as big as it needs to be, I find gives Minecraft industrial buildings a more "authentic" look.
    cNj4QiD.jpg
    The view from the front at ground level-ish.
    tfFnMsw.jpg

    Interior Views
    The sorting chamber. You can see the hopper feeding into a dispenser. The dispenser fires into a hollow space that has another hopper on the bottom. This keeps the system from backing up, requiring maintenance. Once the chest and hopper are full, the hollow space just keeps excepting items which eventually fade.
    0KkA1bJ.jpg
    Another view of the sorting chamber. You can see the hopper conveyor and the sorting redstone circuits, and, in the background, LADDER!
    9cJ21Gv.jpg
    This is the main control panel. There's a switch to turn spawning on. It does so by turning lights off. There's a switch to turn the equipment on. This opens up the water sluses to convey the mobs, as well as the pulsing circuits for the dispensers and the mob flusher. The middle switch opens the iron doors into the spawning chamber.
    hKHYf3x.jpg
    This is the spawning chamber. Witch huts are just big enough to allow two spawning floors. Note the switchable lights at floor level.
    ccT72qU.jpg
    Here you can see the circuitry carrying the signal to one side of the spawning chamber's switchable lights.
    PYF9q1k.jpg
    Inside the spawning chamber, the mobs are conveyed into this channel. At the end of the channel you can see the steps that help direct the flow of water.
    0rOK7k1.jpg
    This is where the mobs are conveyed to: a water elevator. You can see that this is an old-style one; no magma floor. It won't lift zombies any more but it still lifts everything else.
    JI4Dzat.jpg
    At the back of the spawning chamber you can see the sticky piston that removes the block to let the water flow down onto this distributor. Water falling to the left flushes the upper floor. Water falling to the right flushes the lower floor. The half slabs are used in darker areas to prevent unwanted mob spawning.
    BMJXCLt.jpg
    Here you can see the water source block and another piston that opens another sluse that runs the constant stream that conveys the mobs to the water elevator. The redstone circuitry generates the pulses that periodically flush the spawning chamber. You make two circuits that have a pulse go around them. You have the circuits be out of phase and run a line off of each. The lines feed into a 2-input NOR gate. Using negative logic the sluse only opens when both circuits are in the off portion of their cycle. In Minecraft, negative logic is cheaper and more space efficient that positive logic.
    gWGgeXe.jpg
    This is the top of the water elevator. One of the last views that mobs will ever have. You can see water suspended on the ceiling; that's for spiders.
    PnmtqSj.jpg
    This is the view from the far end. The spiders are forced forward. You can see that they then go up and into a drowning chamber.
    thXeZz2.jpg
    This is the fate of the rest of the mobs, and where the spider drops go.
    mdylnvq.jpg
    This is the view from the killing floor. You can see everything drops on top of hoppers which feed into a hopper train, spanning the sorting chamber.
    s5hZZSJ.jpg
    Back in the sorting chamber, you can see the drops I'm most interested in.
    TvTVmUu.jpg
    This is the fourth and final chest, labeled "miscellaneous". It takes all items that aren't filtered out. Since spider eyes are there but webbing isn't, I must've harvested webbing recently.
    4EO6j4L.jpg

    You can see that, on this level, Minecraft is actually quite a profoundly evil game! It's fun though.
    WolfsingerSherri
  • SherriSherri
    Mabinogi Rep: 18,615
    Posts: 2,817
    Member
    edited April 4, 2021
    so uh.. i have good news and bad news.. good news is i got pictures of a Minecraft project i've been working on! bad news is uhhh i'm not good at taking minecraft pictures and i'm even worse at ordering them in a post sooo yeah hf reading this horribly drawn out post :D (also the lighting is weird in some pics because i yeet myself with splash night vision potions, sorry! i turned off particles tho)
    first we have the map of it so far!
    fqdZZ31.png
    yeah
    not the most impressive but i'm still working on it. it's the latest snapshot because im experimenting with the new blocks and it turns out i wanted to make a whole town with it's own 'lore' too.
    so long ago there were four tribes, each residing north, south, east and west. they never were on the best terms but the North tribe leader managed to unite the tribes and thus the town of Fourpoint was born. there is still rivalry and tension though, that long grey thing towards the North is a decaying wall that was put up between the North and West and nobody bothered to break it so it just kinda broke down?
    H9Wwvyt.png
    the four areas are going to be very different than each other because of the culture each tribe had, like the south is going to be a deserty place where the richer people live, the north is going to be where the poorer folks live and then the east/west are mostly middle class. i know it's not exactly a bestseller book story, its just something i was kinda vibin with when i made up the town.

    here's some pics of the north..not much is done besides one house though.. that weird looking tower thing?
    it's apparently a well :D (dont believe the lies)
    R0PWCd6.png

    pics of the south,
    rHGXLJD.png
    dSck2ny.png
    W2LswKk.png
    bBEcPgN.png
    BGZ1S0U.png
    yeah, laugh at my horrible bridge. :D but gosh darn it was fun to build.

    the 'east' is literally just a school so far. i've never built a school in my life though so... yeah.
    BX0cGX8.png
    r8wRpGY.png
    quIkEyo.png
    idk what that is
    KXnF51d.png
    i guess like a closet or somethin
    kxbqyMN.png
    3xo5shy.png
    library :D
    IwHj87N.png
    and the west. it's the most done so far but i still have a LOT to work on, like how theres like only 2 houses, a marketplace, an office and some kind of diner.. and it looks more like it's on the east than the west so i'll have to branch out more.. if that makes any sense?
    (like literally the west is in view from the school which is in the 'east'... i might as well just say it's in the west and then work on the REAL east.. .. yeah i think i will--)
    w87dQD6.png
    DTp9Kv6.png
    6m5TUan.png
    also yeah, the land is pretty messed up in this area.. to be fair, the whole seed has been wacky for me, lots of underwater caves randomly spread about and the town (also my spawn area) is surrounded by desert..
    so yeah, not much now that i'm looking at it but i'm hoping to add more as i go on! i also wanna get to that 'well' eventually, thats gonna be super duper fun :>
    WolfsingerHelsa
  • HelsaHelsa
    Mabinogi Rep: 23,380
    Posts: 5,763
    Member
    edited April 5, 2021
    Sherri wrote: »
    so uh.. i have good news and bad news.. good news is i got pictures of a Minecraft project i've been working on! bad news is uhhh i'm not good at taking minecraft pictures and i'm even worse at ordering them in a post sooo yeah hf reading this horribly drawn out post :D (also the lighting is weird in some pics because i yeet myself with splash night vision potions, sorry! i turned off particles tho)

    No one should ever let things like that hold them back and it's good to see you haven't.
    Sherri wrote: »
    first we have the map of it so far!
    fqdZZ31.png
    yeah
    not the most impressive but i'm still working on it. it's the latest snapshot because im experimenting with the new blocks and it turns out i wanted to make a whole town with it's own 'lore' too.

    I can't wait to see the final version. Will you build the town out towards the sea for a sea-side?
    Sherri wrote: »
    so long ago there were four tribes, each residing north, south, east and west. they never were on the best terms but the North tribe leader managed to unite the tribes and thus the town of Fourpoint was born. there is still rivalry and tension though, that long grey thing towards the North is a decaying wall that was put up between the North and West and nobody bothered to break it so it just kinda broke down?
    H9Wwvyt.png

    I can't tell from the image, did you use cracked stone and mossy stone?
    Sherri wrote: »
    the four areas are going to be very different than each other because of the culture each tribe had, like the south is going to be a deserty place where the richer people live, the north is going to be where the poorer folks live and then the east/west are mostly middle class. i know it's not exactly a bestseller book story, its just something i was kinda vibin with when i made up the town.

    here's some pics of the north..not much is done besides one house though.. that weird looking tower thing?
    it's apparently a well :D (dont believe the lies)

    R0PWCd6.png

    Is that big building apartments? You know ancient Rome had apartment buildings, I think, as high as 16 floors. The poorer you were the higher the floor you lived on (no elevators)
    Sherri wrote: »
    pics of the south,
    rHGXLJD.png
    dSck2ny.png
    W2LswKk.png
    bBEcPgN.png
    BGZ1S0U.png
    yeah, laugh at my horrible bridge. :D but gosh darn it was fun to build.

    You're getting better at bridges; good for you! I really like building in sandstone. It's got a great aesthetic, it's easy to make, and due to it's light colour darker areas seem more lit.

    If I may make a suggestion, don't make the roads out of sandstone; you can't see them. Keep the road material consistant throughout your town, it kinda brings it all together regardless of biomes and biome changes.
    Sherri wrote: »
    the 'east' is literally just a school so far. i've never built a school in my life though so... yeah.

    BX0cGX8.png
    r8wRpGY.png
    quIkEyo.png
    idk what that is

    The ones on the left are not flush with the wall, so I'm gonna guess they're lockers.
    KXnF51d.png
    i guess like a closet or somethin

    Gymnasium change room?
    kxbqyMN.png
    3xo5shy.png
    library :D
    IwHj87N.png

    I grew up in western North America, so much of which was built after the war. I've noticed in the east that there are sooooo many more red brick buildings. The school really looks like an American High School. Personally, I'm not used to seeing so much red brick. This is not meant as a criticism though I hope you understand.

    EDIT: Oh! I just noticed you used umop ap!sdn stairs to make the counter! What a great idea!
    Sherri wrote: »
    and the west. it's the most done so far but i still have a LOT to work on, like how theres like only 2 houses, a marketplace, an office and some kind of diner.. and it looks more like it's on the east than the west so i'll have to branch out more.. if that makes any sense?

    (like literally the west is in view from the school which is in the 'east'... i might as well just say it's in the west and then work on the REAL east.. .. yeah i think i will--)
    w87dQD6.png
    DTp9Kv6.png
    6m5TUan.png
    also yeah, the land is pretty messed up in this area.. to be fair, the whole seed has been wacky for me, lots of underwater caves randomly spread about and the town (also my spawn area) is surrounded by desert..
    so yeah, not much now that i'm looking at it but i'm hoping to add more as i go on! i also wanna get to that 'well' eventually, thats gonna be super duper fun :>

    Guess what I like best? That you put a fence around the ravine. That would TOTALLY happen; it makes sense! You'll see some game generated Testificate towns with ravines going through them and Testificate children will happily form and train and commit mass suicide by running into them; I pull my hair out every time I see that. When I first saw the outdoor market, I thought maybe it was supposed to be, like, a used car sales lot. :) When I looked closer though I saw they are outdoor commercial stalls. The house across the street though, because of the way you made the roof, should be a Quickie Mart! :)
    I'm glad you're using 3-block wide roads; they look so much more realistic than single block. Another advantage is because the roads have some width you can run them in more directions.

    So for roads at 45° you lay down 5 blocks in a row then lay groups of 5 blocks next to them offset by one block. This gives a seeming width similar to orthogonal roads.

    For roads between 45° and a cardinal direction, you lay down 7 blocks then lay down the next 7 offset by two blocks. This gives a seeming width similar to orthogonal roads.

    This gives you 16 directions to play with rather than just 4. Thanks for the screenies. Glad to see you're having fun and I hope to see more soon!
    Sherri
  • SherriSherri
    Mabinogi Rep: 18,615
    Posts: 2,817
    Member
    edited April 5, 2021
    i'm super glad you like it so far! i might make the west expand to the oceanside and maybe a bit of the north too
    as for the wall, i used a mixture of cracked and mossy to really give it that super-old look :>
    in fact the whole north is going to be that 'run down' style, some parts of the lore i forgot to add: the current government body for the north has no idea what its doing so it's invested into roads and only roads, so they look nice but everywhere else looks like a dump

    as for the desert road, i've been on and off on what to really make it out of but i settled on sandstone because it looked nice blended in but i think i might just change it over to

    what you said about the school is really interesting though, i never thought about it but since you brought it up it makes sense :O i'm from Ohio so maybe thats why i made it brick, lots of buildings in my city are older and use bricks
    heck, theres some roads nearby that are made of bricks! :p

    that ravine.. i was going to just cover it up but i thought it would be more fun if i just put up fences and claim 'there was a great cataclysm 1000's of years ago, blah blah' and the west being extremely stubborn, they just build around it anyway xD
    honestly making up the story for the place is the most fun for me! :D
    yeah, the building across is supposedly the office but i might just change it into a small shop or grocery store! :D plus the more i look at it the more i wanna change the type of roof it has.. all wood is kinda boring

    i'll see if i can get anything else built but i gotta think of how i'm gonna make the east.. i was thinking a mix of cobblestone, kind of a nod to my first minecraft world where i made a town entirely out of cobblestone (it was horrible).. actually i might just make a huge map somewhere, mapping out worlds is fun (also i really need to see how big this blasted desert is)

    OH, OH! another fun fact! the river with the bridge over it! it was a lot smaller and extended only past the bridge and i extended it to run around the house in the west area! i'll get a screenshot and edit this, i just gotta get it rq :D

    pics added!! :>
    9oIICQZ.png
    yhbxY5B.png
    d24CTf6.png
    PmJikG2.png
    XMvpF91.png
    t95zqjZ.png
    Gwa6PB2.png

    AF86HTD.png
    Helsa
  • HelsaHelsa
    Mabinogi Rep: 23,380
    Posts: 5,763
    Member
    edited April 5, 2021
    Sherri wrote: »
    i'm super glad you like it so far! i might make the west expand to the oceanside and maybe a bit of the north too
    as for the wall, i used a mixture of cracked and mossy to really give it that super-old look :>
    in fact the whole north is going to be that 'run down' style, some parts of the lore i forgot to add: the current government body for the north has no idea what its doing so it's invested into roads and only roads, so they look nice but everywhere else looks like a dump

    For the east, why not make the buildings first as though they're brand new then age them to make them look worn down?
    Sherri wrote: »
    as for the desert road, i've been on and off on what to really make it out of but i settled on sandstone because it looked nice blended in but i think i might just change it over to

    what you said about the school is really interesting though, i never thought about it but since you brought it up it makes sense :O i'm from Ohio so maybe thats why i made it brick, lots of buildings in my city are older and use bricks
    heck, theres some roads nearby that are made of bricks! :p

    I remember one year my family drove through Boston and I saw this big old building that looked like a factory made out of red brick. My god it just looked like a place where hope goes to die. You gotta understand in western North America all the old run down neighborhoods are made out of red brick, so for us there is no charm to it; it just screams "hold your purse tighter!"
    Sherri wrote: »
    that ravine.. i was going to just cover it up but i thought it would be more fun if i just put up fences and claim 'there was a great cataclysm 1000's of years ago, blah blah' and the west being extremely stubborn, they just build around it anyway xD
    honestly making up the story for the place is the most fun for me! :D
    yeah, the building across is supposedly the office but i might just change it into a small shop or grocery store! :D

    That was a good idea. It's more realistic I think to not change the landscape too much. For example it's tempting to flatten mountains to build there. Although the mountains in Minecraft are ridiculously high sloped I do try to just reduce them to gentle hills leaving something of them there so the landscape is more rolling. I feel it looks more realistic when you do that.
    Sherri wrote: »
    i wanna change the type of roof it has.. all wood is kinda boring

    Try acacia or dark oak, or even some of the new "wood" from the nether. Failing that, red sandstone is nice.
    Sherri wrote: »
    i'll see if i can get anything else built but i gotta think of how i'm gonna make the east.. i was thinking a mix of cobblestone, kind of a nod to my first minecraft world where i made a town entirely out of cobblestone (it was horrible).. actually i might just make a huge map somewhere, mapping out worlds is fun (also i really need to see how big this blasted desert is)

    Cobblestone slabs for roads looks okay though. But yeah building in stone is really only good for walls, castles, and infrastructure. It can work in medieval buildings as long is they are made of mixed material, not just stone derivatives.
    Sherri wrote: »
    OH, OH! another fun fact! the river with the bridge over it! it was a lot smaller and extended only past the bridge and i extended it to run around the house in the west area! i'll get a screenshot and edit this, i just gotta get it rq :D

    I saw a testificate town to the east, are you gonna kidnap folks from there? Also to the west of the lava pool directly south of that pond, all in the desert, looks like it might be a buried desert temple.
    Sherri wrote: »
    pics added!! :>
    9oIICQZ.png
    yhbxY5B.png
    d24CTf6.png
    PmJikG2.png
    XMvpF91.png
    t95zqjZ.png
    Gwa6PB2.png

    AF86HTD.png

    Sorry, I'm not sure what I'm looking at here; it just looks like wild country next to the town.
  • HelsaHelsa
    Mabinogi Rep: 23,380
    Posts: 5,763
    Member
    My Sea Lantern Factory

    Exterior shots.
    It is located just off-shore from a village in a desert biome. You couldn't ask for better luck, since it is not in the middle of an ocean and sand is perfect for removing water. You can see the main spawning chamber. On top of that is the water source blocks room. You can see the access lift which also carries the red-stone signal to open the water source block sluices. In front? You guessed it; item sorter chamber.
    QNkjRKc.jpg

    Aerial view from the north-west. You can see a dock, with shallows, so you don't lose your boat (this map was made when items would sink). Unsurprisingly, I've placed an access ladder up on the roof.
    KVkVMms.jpg

    View from the north-east. Another access ladder. You can see a doorway giving access to the roof of the sorting chamber.
    1wlDoaA.jpg

    View from the south-east. Not much to see of the building but you can see the town and a bit of the biome it's in. You can see that I've stripped away all the sand, down to sea level, and done some open-pit mining as well.
    idOpE3M.jpg

    View from the south-west.
    qaSFEF1.jpg

    Interior shots
    Here is the control panel, inside the sorting chamber at the base of the access lift. You can see the ladder going up to the roof and down to all the subterranean equipment. The upper switch turns spawning on by sending a signal up towards the roof. You can see how this is done by alternating blocks with red-stone torches. The lower switch is what runs all the machinery. you can see the feed off of it to run the equipment in the sorting chamber but also a signal is sent down to all the equipment below ground.

    There's a bug in this set-up since the spawning and flushing mechanism are combined. In a future version I will separate these functions, with an extra switch, so that the spawning chamber can continue to flush once spawning has stopped.
    6ggg6w6.jpg

    This is the water source block room, on the roof. It contains sixteen water source blocks. You can see the red-stone leads to them all. The colours, low ceiling, and light sources remind me of a 1960's computer room!
    rSfEAru.jpg

    This is just below the floor of the water source block room. You can see the sticky piston that removes the prismarine block to open the sluice. You can also see how the flowing water will be spread. You can see some ladders giving access.
    33AMyQC.jpg

    Here you can see the water distributor. The upper part distributes the water to the east and west and the lower part to the north and south. They're hard to see but along the wall on the left you can see some access-ways.
    E07YJmq.jpg

    This is where the spawning occurs. From the water distributors above to these north/south beams completely fills with water allowing the spawning of guardians. You can see the signs, placed on the sides of the beams preventing water from flowing through. This leaves the floor open for guardians to fall through.
    0245qQJ.jpg

    This is the floor they land on. You can see it is higher in the corners and lowest in the middle. Water flowing from the corners flushes the guardians to the middle of the room.

    The factory had to be built in stages. You can see that so much of it is built from the very material it produces. The ocean monument itself was canabalised to make a basic one. Since, at the time, the only lighting available was torches, which are uprooted by water, the original version of the factory had no roof. That with the glass beams allowed light to shine onto this floor which minimised spawning of regular land hostile mobs, until I could install the sea lanterns.
    yJfVtIc.jpg

    This is the hole the guardians are compelled to. You can see two blocks lower that there are signs holding up this pool of water. The idea is that once spawning, and flushing stops, the pool attracts the guardians which eventually fall through. You can see, way down, some hoppers awaiting their ultimate fate.
    Iqs3J6K.jpg

    Here is the killing floor and the door giving access to it. Before I had collected enough iron to make hoppers, for the earlier versions of the factory, I would have to stand on the killing floor and basically shower in raining guardian guts to collect their drops; bleah!
    hVfsYFF.jpg

    This is the pulsing circuit running the dispenser that flushes the killing-floor hoppers. You can see the lead coming from the switch in the control panel.
    op4v9jY.jpg

    Here is said dispenser and the lead to it.
    PdYLiTg.jpg

    Here it is again and the channel it dispenses into. The block of prismarine below it is a sluice gate holding back a water source block that enables the channel.
    M032yX0.jpg

    Here is the sticky piston running the sluice and the lead to it.
    3rFDUK7.jpg

    The channel leads to this glass elevator.
    N1qIFdR.jpg

    This is the pulsing circuit for the glass elevator. You can see the sticky piston on the left. It retracts allowing the circuit to close.
    anxXssK.jpg

    This is the top of the glass elevator. Items appear above the hoppers then get sucked into them. They lead to the hopper train on the right, which is the backbone of the item sorter. You can see the leads from the pulsing circuit running the dispensers for it. It's the same design as in the witch farm. The dispensers dispense into an enclosed block of air with a hopper floor. Once the storage chests, and attached hoppers are full, the enclosed block of air keeps accepting items without backing up the hopper train and sorter and causing the whole works to be gummed-up.
    bMuLvEC.jpg

    The first two filters are for raw fish (now called Raw Cod, I think) and ink sacks.
    fzaLdaL.jpg

    The next two are for prismarine crystals and prismarine shards.
    WknL2gu.jpg

    Finally, the miscellaneous chest at the end which catches anything the filter ignores. Note the ladder!
    m2HLbsO.jpg
    Sherri
  • SherriSherri
    Mabinogi Rep: 18,615
    Posts: 2,817
    Member
    edited April 27, 2021
    dang.. thats some big brain stuff... some things i didnt really understand but i dont know a thing about redstone so that probably doesn't help lol
    it really does look like a factory though, with circuits and tubes.. its just missing conveyor belts (though i guess water could just do that)

    also for the last post, i was talking about the river and how i expanded it :D

    also i have an epic post count now
    Helsa
  • HelsaHelsa
    Mabinogi Rep: 23,380
    Posts: 5,763
    Member
    Sherri wrote: »
    dang.. thats some big brain stuff... some things i didnt really understand but i dont know a thing about redstone so that probably doesn't help lol
    it really does look like a factory though, with circuits and tubes.. its just missing conveyor belts (though i guess water could just do that)
    Don't let it intimidate you. I have a "notepad" world which is just a flat world in creative, where I design stuff and set up experiements. That's how I figured out water mechanics, by just watching it flow. Basic redstone isn't very hard, the more complicated things, like circuits that use comparators I just snagged from the Minecraft wiki; for example, the item sorter circuit. Still if you ever have a "I'd like to be able to do <Blah>" let me know and I can think about it for you.
    Sherri wrote: »
    also for the last post, i was talking about the river and how i expanded it :D
    OH gotcha! Well, since I didn't even notice, I'd say that proves you did a bang-up job of making it look natural. :)
    Sherri wrote: »
    also i have an epic post count now
    We both do! Oh sure, were not "Gremsonsama" territory yet but we're getting there. :)
    Sherri
  • SherriSherri
    Mabinogi Rep: 18,615
    Posts: 2,817
    Member
    edited May 29, 2021
    Back at it again with a small update, I'll admit I have not been playing Minecraft much recently and my time has been consumed by Terraria.. Also I've had a small technical difficulty with the game, apparently the extended world height is disabled past 21w17a so I had to switch back over to that..
    but anyway, this is what I've done before my huge break;
    So here's the map, you can see quite a few differences from my last post..
    5pwuIcS.png

    I added more roads, this is the Northern district.. planning on adding housing eventually..
    WSxFoI5.png
    EtZ8WJ9.png

    I've also added a whopping TWO more houses to the East. WEST D:!!
    None are fully furnished yet but I'll get there sooner or later.
    6h2H5As.png

    I think my next project will be extending that sorry excuse for a river in the North by that road... I hate water terraforming... zzz
    Helsa
  • HelsaHelsa
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    Sherri wrote: »
    Back at it again with a small update, I'll admit I have not been playing Minecraft much recently and my time has been consumed by Terraria.. Also I've had a small technical difficulty with the game, apparently the extended world height is disabled past 21w17a so I had to switch back over to that..
    but anyway, this is what I've done before my huge break;

    Yeah, never update your world to a snapshot unless you make a back-up copy. That way if you end up having regrets then you haven't lost everything.
    Sherri wrote: »
    So here's the map, you can see quite a few differences from my last post..
    5pwuIcS.png

    The first thing I noticed was you changed the roads in the desert. I like it; you can see them much more clearly now!
    Sherri wrote: »
    I added more roads, this is the Northern district.. planning on adding housing eventually..
    WSxFoI5.png

    This looks like it will be a new neighborhood and much closer to the ocean. I can't wait to see how you make the city meet the ocean!
    Sherri wrote: »
    EtZ8WJ9.png

    are you gonna keep that pond or fill it in?
    Sherri wrote: »
    I've also added a whopping TWO more houses to the East.
    None are fully furnished yet but I'll get there sooner or later.
    6h2H5As.png

    Looking forward to seeing the interiors! :)
    Sherri wrote: »
    I think my next project will be extending that sorry excuse for a river in the North by that road... I hate water terraforming... zzz

    Maybe instead of making the river wider you dig away the slopes under the water so that the river cross section is flat rather than like a 'V'. Put in stone brick walls, underwater, so that it looks like the inhabitants did it deliberately. Then you don't have to worry about making it look natural. What do you think?
  • SherriSherri
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    I'll definitely keep the pond, it has some lore around it too :D .. the poor wash their clothes in it
    also the stone brick wall sounds nice! I might add that to the south to add the whole 'rich' feeling...
    aaand i just noticed i messed up last post LOL *i added houses to the WEST :) mb!
    Helsa
  • HelsaHelsa
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    The Nether

    Preamble
    For every block that you move in the Nether you move eight in the Overworld. In Minecraft if you press F3 you get game telemetry overlaying the screen. Your position is shown with coordinates named: x,y,z. For some reason, Minecraft switches coordinates y and z from how they are traditionally used and so x and z are the coordinates noting North/South and East/West while y is elevation. Because of the eight times multiplier means of mapping between the two realms, you can site two corresponding portals in both realms and they will connect to each other. This way you don't have to rely on where the game may locate the coresponding portal and have to accept your fate should you "build" the other portal by stepping through. In fact, you can deactivate a portal on one end of a connexion and resite it and it will reconnect provided you locate it to maintain the mapping. The mapping allows for a modest bit of "play" with the x and z coordinates whereas the y coordinate has no restrictions. Say you build a portal, in the Nether, at X, Y, Z. If you build a portal, in the Overworld, at 8X, aY, 8Z, then they will connect. Conversely, if you build a portal, in the Overworld, at X, Y, Z and then build a portal, in the Nether, at X/8, aY, Z/8, then these will also connect. If you place several portals very close together though, you likely will get undesired results; keep your portals separated by some distance.

    This is the standard building I use to house a three by two nether portal. In typical "me" fashion, you see ladders allowing access to everywhere. You see that both doorways open into a yard which is fenced off; more on that later.
    12aMdCS.jpg

    The portal chamber itself is accessed through a double iron door. The doors are activated with switches rather than buttons. This allows the doors to remain open while I pass through them on horseback. In order to close them again I have different doors activated from opposite sides. Since nether portals spawn Zombie Pigmen (now called Piglins, if I'm not mistaken) the iron doors keep them from wandering out and making mischief.
    uFoUEAr.jpg

    This is the room accessed via the oak door. It is one metre lower than the portal room. From this room you attack, with impunity, any Zombie Pigmen that may spawn. The stone wall ensures that the gap, through which we attack is too small for Zombie Pigmen children to get through. In the portal room you see a bed, which we will talk about later, a chest, that you can use to offload any items that you don't want to bring into the nether, or to temporarily offload booty gathered from nether while you go back to get more. Note the two slabs that allow one to walk into the portal without jumping; we'll have more on them later, as well. You see, in the lower room, a ladder going down into a basement.
    Bwc40si.jpg

    The basement has redstone machinery in it, activated with this switch. The machinery is hidden so I'm just showing this switch.
    H9PqPaA.jpg

    When you throw the switch this happens; note the slabs that allowed ease of access to the portal. By raising them up you avoid the possibility of knocking an agroed Zombie Pigman back into the Nether. Were that to happen, then they would stay, just on the other side of the portal, and remain angry until you stepped through, no matter how long you took.
    1EXqeyb.jpg

    This is the portal room. You see the clock on the wall. While in the Nether you lose track of time, since clocks don't work there. The idea is that when you step back through the portal, into the Overworld, you know what time it is. If it's night, there is a bed that you can use, rather than having to brave the night to find one. If, when you return, there is a Zombie Pigman to greet you, should, when exiting the building, the Zombie Pigman also exit then they are trapped in the yard.
    Nw8po4H.jpg

    Here you see a standard smallest size portal: a three by two. Note that the corners need not by made of obsidian. When we step through we see . . . .
    Vt5b1cR.jpg

    A space opening up into a tunnel moving right and left. I wanted the nether tunnel network to be bright with mild, if boring, colours.
    lzVeoOi.jpg

    Looking to the left, down the tunnel, we see the rings of lights are spaced every 5 blocks. Every second ring is finished with white blocks with a sign. You can see that the tunnel is spacious enough to allow riding on horseback. You can also see that the main floor consists of half slabs and sea lanterns, which mobs cannot spawn on. This helps to keep the tunnels safe. The "ledges" to the sides, presently, do allow spawning, but this is meant to be addressed in the future by placing minecart tracks, which inhibit spawning.
    SGKXH70.jpg

    When we look to the right, we see tunnel under construction. You can see how the netherack is mined away to accept the cladding that the tunnel is made from. You can see bedrock on the floor as I site my tunnels just above bedrock. In the tunnel, note the green blocks; more on them later.
    V1ZWq8u.jpg

    Right at the portal that we entered through there is this sign. You can see that the signs are used to denote distance, like with interstates in the real world. Distance is measured in hectometres (hm) or hundreds of metres. In the ancient world, they measured distances, for journeys, in stadia which was something on the order of how big a stadium is. In Minecraft it seems to make more sense to recon such distance in hundred-metre units rather than thousand-metre units. You can see that this sign is saying that it is located ten metres to the west of the north/south Prime Meridian of the Nether. This also means that the white blocks act as a kind of milestone placed every ten metres.
    vwU48Pb.jpg

    As we move along we come to an intersection. The branch to the left heads to a portal which opens in the town next to the Sea Lantern Factory. You can see that the main tunnel branches again, to the right, in about ten metres.
    0zkdQEp.jpg

    Proceeding partially down the branch tunnel we see a distance marker indicating: fifty metres south. I use the convention that signs are only placed on one side of the tunnel. If the sign is on your right then you are heading in the direction named on the sign, else you are heading in the opposite direction. Earlier, since we proceeded with the signs labeled "west" on our right, we were heading west.
    gtXjAW1.jpg

    Here we are at the second intersection. Notice that the green block corresponds to a sign denoting a distance of 1.0 hm. Green blocks, therefore, act as a mile stone denoting every one hundred metres.
    4trerjM.jpg

    Taking the branch on the right, we head north for a bit to see that it terminates in a spiral staircase that leads to the surface and into the Nether, proper.
    1eidJKa.jpg

    Heading back to the intersection and proceeding down the main tunnel, we see that the westerly direction terminates in a left turn, to the south, at two hundred and fifty metres.
    gCW8LX8.jpg

    Heading south, to one hundred and ten metres, we come across another intersection heading west, to the right. This leads to a portal that opens in the town near the witch farm.
    uLVjmYy.jpg

    Continuing south, down the main tunnel we see that the tunnel terminates in a right turn to the west at one kilometre. You see that a kilometre is not marked with anything any more special than any other multiple of one hundred.
    SS5q6HR.jpg

    The tunnel continues west until it terminates in a left turn to the south at five hundred eighty metres.
    QbWXNmK.jpg

    Looking down this new section we see that it proceeds about ten more metres south before terminating in a portal. Piecing together what we've seen, so far, we can see that we entered the Nether at: 0.5 hm south, 0.1 hm west. This portal is at: 10.1 hm south, 5.8 hm west. Since these tunnels are all orthogonal, the distance we actually traveled is given by the Manhattan distance which is: (10.1-0.5)+(5.8-0.1) = 15.3 hm. The Pythagorean, or true distance, is: ((10.1-0.5)^2+(5.8-0.1)^2)^(1/2) = 11.2 hm.
    ySgpczL.jpg

    We step through this portal into a portal room. We see through the windows that it is night, in the Overworld, and, by the clock, that it is shortly before sunrise.
    AMCeEmd.jpg

    Stepping outside we see that this portal is located on a mushroom island. Since hostile mobs do not spawn on mushroom islands, it is safe not to use the bed. We see that this building is the familiar design but a mirror version of the one we saw earlier. We are looking to the east and can see the sky, on the horizon, is already turning red. Since our true distance travel in the Nether was 11.2 hm, using the Nether/Overworld scaling factor of 8, we can calculate that the two portal houses, in the Overworld, are 89.3 hm, or 8.93 km or 5.55 miles, apart.
    x2XDR2q.jpg
    Sherri
  • SherriSherri
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    thats a lot of numbers :D i see pun potential with a hectometre though! a heck-tometre! cuz its in Hell? i apologize that was a horrid joke
    anyway, this reminds me of the time i tried to make a nether portal away from a friends so i could go back and forth between our bases... it felt like i was trying to do the math for a space rocket, it took waaaaay too long for me to figure out :x
    i also really like the look of the tunnel! it reminds me of those huge tunnels that are built through mountains, was this the look you were going for?
    oooh and im surprised there was no ice on the floor, i usually see people put ice down and travel with a boat!
    personally i avoid the nether at all costs because i have this strange mortal terror of going anywhere near the oceans of lava.. but im also afraid of the void in the end so i think its just a fear of heights tbh
    i also really like the buildings you put the portals in, i usually just smack one down somewhere away from my base so i dont hear the annoying noises it makes and i only go in if i need glowstone for building, which i try to avoid needing at all times lol
    i never usually fight anything besides whats at the fortresses and i havent really been inside the nether after the whole update so i still have to check it out :') im kinda too scared to though..
    the bed/clock idea is really smart! i usually carry a clock on me all the time and i only know the time until i step outside of the nether and then i make a mad dash back to my house if its night time

    sorry for the wall of text btw :D i really like nether tunnels a lot but im usually too scared to build one myself (and im too dumb for it)
    Helsa
  • HelsaHelsa
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    Sherri wrote: »
    thats a lot of numbers :D i see pun potential with a hectometre though! a heck-tometre! cuz its in Hell? i apologize that was a horrid joke
    anyway, this reminds me of the time i tried to make a nether portal away from a friends so i could go back and forth between our bases... it felt like i was trying to do the math for a space rocket, it took waaaaay too long for me to figure out :x

    Don't let it intimidate you; it really isn't that hard. For siting portals, that distance stuff doesn't matter. All that matters are the coordinates labeled X and Z and making sure that the Overworld ones are eight times bigger. Multiplying and dividing by eight is the only math you need to do.
    Sherri wrote: »
    i also really like the look of the tunnel! it reminds me of those huge tunnels that are built through mountains, was this the look you were going for?

    Usually, my designs are pragmatic first and aesthetic second, if I bother with it at all. I use a form-follows-function approach as I feel that it makes things look more "authentic". So, the look just happens organically. Here, I just wanted to make circular cross-section tunnels and I chose colours that would make a nice break from all that "red" in the Nether. The primary building material, ultimately, being cobblestone, after being fired in an oven, was just a matter of economics since stone is one of the cheapest materials in Minecraft. That the resultant tunnels look like something from Science Fiction a la THX-1138, though, is not lost on me! XD
    Sherri wrote: »
    oooh and im surprised there was no ice on the floor, i usually see people put ice down and travel with a boat!

    I hadn't thought of that, thanks for the idea, but packed ice allows hostile mobs to spawn on it, so, I'll need to think about that. The primary design requirement of the tunnels is that they be safe; speed is secondary.
    Sherri wrote: »
    personally i avoid the nether at all costs because i have this strange mortal terror of going anywhere near the oceans of lava.. but im also afraid of the void in the end so i think its just a fear of heights tbh

    Make sure you are wearing a pair of Feather Falling enchanted boots when in the Nether. Items can have a couple enchants so a full set of gear with fire resistance is good. The old Nether was actually much safer than folks realise. Whereas in the Overworld you avoid caves since they are dangerous places, it's the opposite in the Nether: caves are safe places. Avoid the open surface as much as you can and you'll be all right. BTW, try paving over a lava lake with, say, cobblestone. Do it in creative if you want. Then, in survival try fighting Ghasts from the surface of this paved over lake. You will notice two remarkable things: (1) Ghasts are actually not very aggressive and (2) Ghasts are terrible shots.
    Sherri wrote: »
    i also really like the buildings you put the portals in, i usually just smack one down somewhere away from my base so i dont hear the annoying noises it makes and i only go in if i need glowstone for building, which i try to avoid needing at all times lol

    Oh, my dear there's a couple things we need to talk about here. :) First-off don't be using glowstone to make permanent lighting, unless it's an aesthetic thing. Sea lanterns are way better for that, hence the Sea Lantern factory. You use glowstone for switchable lights and potions. Harvesting glowstone, in the Nether, is hazardous business but it's not the only source of it. Yes, you can trade for it, but trading is something you do only when you're desperate or if you can afford it. The other source is Witch Farms. Always, always, always build a Witch Farm, they are the most useful factory you can build. You get glowstone AND redstone among other things.

    About the buildings themselves. I build them for two reasons: (1) so I'm safe when I emerge from the Nether, (2) to contain any Zombie Pigmen that may be created. Since Zombie Pigmen are involved then the building needs a second room from which to safely kill the Zombie Pigmen. So, again, pragmatism first.

    Or, what I really meant to say; "Thanks for the compliment!" :)
    Sherri wrote: »
    i never usually fight anything besides whats at the fortresses and i havent really been inside the nether after the whole update so i still have to check it out :') im kinda too scared to though..

    Yeah, the new Nether appears to be a lot more dangerous now; even the oceans aren't safe anymore. Before I would first step into the Nether carrying cobblestone, in case the portal was created in the middle of the air over a lava lake. I'd use the cobblestone to enclose the portal with a room in front of it. I'd cut a 3 by 4 hole in the floor and dump sand down, which I could tunnel through putting down ladders. Eventually, you hit the floor of the lake and then you dig through the Netherack. I'd make a new portal just over the bedrock layer, but not light it. I'd go back up and break the portal in the air, effectively trapping myself in the Nether. Then I'd go back down, light the new portal and it would connect with the Overworld one. What's changed now is that now, when I first enter the Nether, I gulp an invisibility potion first, whereas before I never bothered.
    Sherri wrote: »
    the bed/clock idea is really smart! i usually carry a clock on me all the time and i only know the time until i step outside of the nether and then i make a mad dash back to my house if its night time

    Don't be embarrassed, that design of mine was a result of learning things "the hard way"! XD
    Sherri wrote: »
    sorry for the wall of text btw :D i really like nether tunnels a lot but im usually too scared to build one myself (and im too dumb for it)

    Oh, stop putting yourself down. I've been playing Minecraft since 2010. These things just require experience; that's all. For now, go ahead and copy my design. I have that one screenie that shows the raw tunnel before the cladding goes in. Over time, you can tweak it to suit your own requirements.

    Sherri
  • SherriSherri
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    edited June 7, 2021
    i've been playing since Nov. 2012 lol
    the official Mojang website used to tell you when you first bought a game but they removed that for some reason? i still remembered my join month/year somehow :p 1.4.5 babyyy (well.. 1.4.something)
    i could go on a.. rant? wall of text? here about how much fun i had just playing the demo way back when we used to be able to play minecraft on our browsers, back when the demo seed was fixed to 'North Carolina' (or just -343522682) and we had only 3 days to play and we had to reset the world LOL but my post might get too long for that :'D
    but yeah, i definitely will take inspiration from your tunnel if i ever build a nether tunnel :D
    also i haven't really used glowstone to build anything in a long time surprisingly (at least in survival), my most used lighting method is to place fences and then place torches on top of them to make a sort of uhh.. standing torch (i thought they had a fancier name but ig not lol)

    also i have another update!!! :D
    i've begun constructing a pathway to the East! :> (sorry for the rain btw)
    gxW7TbW.png
    gnwvTAE.png
    JiGVjN8.png
    you can probably see how it's rather sloppily made and has twists and turns to avoid the dumbest things, like a tree or pond of water..

    AP9J283.png
    745fafx.png

    it's (going to be) a running gag that the East lacks common sense ..

    D4M1Uu2.png
    bJ4PWZR.png

    yeah
    BHIsVAc.png
    EXtWXnj.png

    i've also been working on my map a bit!
    i'm reaaaally going to need a proper map room soon, this building is way too small...
    but what really stands out is that theres an ocean near the South!
    nyN5YGF.png
    can someone say RICH BEACH HOUSES?? :OOO
    they're gonna be super fun to build, i've never built stuff like that before!

    i've also noticed something rather odd when i was working on it....
    hZSnTnr.png
    is that.. a chicken and an egg?
    jgjcvyU.png
    o3D1nIA.png
    it sure is, how cute! sometimes world gen holds some great surprises :D

    kind of smaller than my first update post but i think it's a lot bigger than my last :D
    i'll be honest, i've lost my motivation for a while but lately i've been having random waves of inspiration.. tbh it's probably because i'm getting into pixel art in my spare time and that must of jump started my brain :>

    also can't wait for Caves & Cliffs Pt. 1, first thing i'm doing is digging down to that new dark biome with the new giant blind dude and pretending i'm in a horror game because im too scared to play actual horror games :D (well, if it's released in this part of the update?)
    Helsa
  • HelsaHelsa
    Mabinogi Rep: 23,380
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    Sherri wrote: »
    i've been playing since Nov. 2012 lol
    the official Mojang website used to tell you when you first bought a game but they removed that for some reason? i still remembered my join month/year somehow :p 1.4.5 babyyy (well.. 1.4.something)

    Maybe that all changed when Microsoft bought them? I actually use my little brother's account. It was one of the "first-round" of accounts, I forget now, but there's supposed to be something special about them. He changed the skin on "Steve" to one that's like Mabinogi. So, you start out running around in your tighty-whiteys! XD Whenever he'd join on-line minecraft servers folks be like "Dude! What is WRONG with you?"
    Sherri wrote: »
    i could go on a.. rant? wall of text? here about how much fun i had just playing the demo way back when we used to be able to play minecraft on our browsers, back when the demo seed was fixed to 'North Carolina' (or just -343522682) and we had only 3 days to play and we had to reset the world LOL but my post might get too long for that :'D

    I first heard of Minecraft when I was visiting my Grandma. I was looking for let's plays, on YouTube, of the old Duke Nukem game. I found one by this guy named Seananners. At the start of the video he said something like "I'd normally be playing Minecraft but I felt like playing Duke Nukem". So, after the vid was done I went back to get the name again and looked at his vids; I was instantly hooked. Then I totally, lucked out because that very weekend was the famous "Free weekend". This was just before the Nether was introduced. I showed it to my little brother and he was hooked. He power-whined to my mom and she bought him an account.
    Sherri wrote: »
    but yeah, i definitely will take inspiration from your tunnel if i ever build a nether tunnel :D

    Remember you can use the design in the Overworld to go through mountains or under a strait. Remember to make them half circles though.
    Sherri wrote: »
    also i haven't really used glowstone to build anything in a long time surprisingly (at least in survival), my most used lighting method is to place fences and then place torches on top of them to make a sort of uhh.. standing torch (i thought they had a fancier name but ig not lol)

    Torches are great because they're sooooo cheap, since you can make them with charcoal and not just coal, but water washes them away. I haven't tried these new lantern thingies yet, the kind from snowy villages. They're made with torches and iron bars. Perhaps water doesn't wash them away. Who knows, maybe you can place them underwater! There is also jack-o-lanterns. That's just a torch and a pumpkin. Those can be placed in water.

    Sherri wrote: »
    also i have another update!!! :D

    i've begun constructing a pathway to the East! :> (sorry for the rain btw)
    gxW7TbW.png
    gnwvTAE.png
    JiGVjN8.png
    you can probably see how it's rather sloppily made and has twists and turns to avoid the dumbest things, like a tree or pond of water..
    AP9J283.png
    745fafx.png

    it's (going to be) a running gag that the East lacks common sense ..
    D4M1Uu2.png
    bJ4PWZR.png

    yeah
    BHIsVAc.png
    EXtWXnj.png


    It's fun building roads through the country-side and then riding a horse down them. Since you are already building roads that are three blocks wide they don't have to strictly go east/west and north/south. You need to have diagonal roads. I'm sure you've already seen a few places where you might otherwise want to have them. Of course diagonal roads have those rough "saw-tooth" like sides. This is why, at first, I resisted using them. But I gave it a try and in short order you forget all about their jaggedness. Here is the convention I use:

    Helsa's road's:
    XXdQZFB.jpg


    Sherri wrote: »
    i've also been working on my map a bit!

    i'm reaaaally going to need a proper map room soon, this building is way too small...
    but what really stands out is that theres an ocean near the South!
    nyN5YGF.png
    can someone say RICH BEACH HOUSES?? :OOO
    they're gonna be super fun to build, i've never built stuff like that before!

    To the south, in the rich neighborhood, you could build a marina with yachts and stuff. Make it colourful and lively. To the North East, in the poor neighborhood, you could build a port. Make it gritty, dingy, and dirty (with lots of red brick <winky-woo>) full of warehouses and mills.
    Sherri wrote: »
    i've also noticed something rather odd when i was working on it....
    hZSnTnr.png
    is that.. a chicken and an egg?
    jgjcvyU.png
    o3D1nIA.png
    it sure is, how cute! sometimes world gen holds some great surprises :D

    If you build a port here, these two islands could have a fort built on them. Remember forts protecting ports point out to sea.
    Sherri wrote: »
    kind of smaller than my first update post but i think it's a lot bigger than my last :D
    i'll be honest, i've lost my motivation for a while but lately i've been having random waves of inspiration.. tbh it's probably because i'm getting into pixel art in my spare time and that must of jump started my brain :>

    It's like any other game; sometimes you need to take time off. For example there's this other game I play on-and-off, it's called Mabinogi; ever heard of it?
    Sherri wrote: »
    also can't wait for Caves & Cliffs Pt. 1, first thing i'm doing is digging down to that new dark biome with the new giant blind dude and pretending i'm in a horror game because im too scared to play actual horror games :D (well, if it's released in this part of the update?)

    The Good News: I think it is scheduled to come out today as a matter of fact.
    The Bad News: I think the Warden is in pt. 2.
    Sherri
  • SherriSherri
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    edited July 4, 2021
    i haven't played minecraft in a while so i instead bring everyone ancient 7 year old photos :p i remember being proud of fixing up this village and tbh, looking at it makes me wanna try and make a similar looking town..
    yeesh, i wish i took more pics of this..
    V9gRoKc.png
    D4GvPoC.png
    Helsa
  • HelsaHelsa
    Mabinogi Rep: 23,380
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    Sherri wrote: »
    i haven't played minecraft in a while so i instead bring everyone ancient 7 year old photos :p i remember being proud of fixing up this village and tbh, looking at it makes me wanna try and make a similar looking town..
    yeesh, i wish i took more pics of this..
    V9gRoKc.png
    D4GvPoC.png

    What a charming little village! I think what makes it so is not just it's setting but that it's all smooshed together. For most of human history we didn't have cars, so before cars we lived all smooshed together. If you decide to revisit this project, the fact that now there are different colours of wood available, I think could be an interesting application here.

    There's a YouTube channel called Grian. They don't know redstone to save their life but they're pretty good at aesthetics. Here's a video of theirs that might inspire you to punch up the stonework in this village.

  • HelsaHelsa
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    edited July 8, 2021
    It seems we have a character limit of around 20,000 characters so this message is split in two. Don't worry most of that count is image url characters.

    Preamble
    What I call a Villager Breeding Arcology is an artificial village built at least 64 meters above sea level. The central point of a village needs to be at least 64 squares away from the central point of another in order for the game to consider them as separate villages. That separation can be mostly or entirely, straight up. What I will be presenting here were all created before the 'Village and Pillage' update and so use the old style village breeding mechanics but the basic principles can be carried forward to the present day. They are:

    1. you create artificial villages in order to create Iron Golems and Villagers. You create Iron Golems so that you can terminate them for their drops; the drop of interest being Iron Ingots. You create villagers for two reasons:
    a. to increase village population, and
    b. to create villagers with favourable trading opportunities.

    2. what is physically within a village and how much of it there is, determines the maximum population a village can have before further villager breeding stops. Before the 'Village and Pillage' update the mechanic was based on how many doors separated 'inside' from 'outside' within the village. The Arcologies presented here will be based on this archaic mechanic. I'm not entirely familiar with the extant mechanic other than it involves beds, workstations, and a central town bell.

    3. the maximum population of Golems, in a village, is directly proportional to the village's population of villagers.

    A villager breeding arcology is paired with at least one other village, typically 64 or more metres lower than it. The breeding arcology has a 'drain', at the centre of it, where villagers and golems are removed from the arcology. In the case of the golems, they fall into a grinder. In the case of the villagers, they fall into a chute that delivers them to the lower village. This allows the lower village, via a constant influx of 'immigrants', to exceed the maximum breeding population of the village and so exceed it's typical golem population. Since the arcology is constantly losing population of villagers and golems, it is constantly making new ones.

    I will present the two arcologies that I've built; starting with my latest one and finishing with my first one. Both were made in survival mode and took one to two weeks to make.

    My Latest Arcology
    This is my latest breeding arcology. You can see that it's made out of Netherbrick. It should not be hard to imagine that, after seeing all my nether tunnels, I would have a lot of netherack laying around. At sea level, in the middle of the four legs, you see a platform. This will be the base of a "fifth leg", that will actually be a chute that entities, draining from the arcology, fall down. I'll be digging down into the ground and housing all the relevant facilities below ground, below the bottom of the ocean. Note the distance between the top of the arch and the top lip of the arcology. This design has a spawning chamber inside it which has a lot of auxiliary facilities associated with it. They take a lot of room.
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    You can see that, for one of the legs, I have cut a doorway into it which leads to a ladder. This clumsy ingress is temporary while the entire facility is under construction. It will be replaced with a subterranean tunnel from the shore.
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    Taking the ladder up we come to the floor that houses the spawning chamber control room. The chest holds items for curing Zombie Villagers, protective gear, a bow, and arrows. There are two iron doors giving access to a raised platform surrounding the spawning chamber's spawning floor. The control room has two switches to operate the spawning chamber itself.
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    The lower switch turns spawning on by turning the floor lights off. In Minecraft the player is given a 24-block "radius of grace" in which no hostile entities can spawn. As such you can see why the spawning chamber needs to be so big. The second switch is to flush the chamber of hostile entities.
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    Here is a view of the spawning chamber from the surrounding platform. You can see the platform has an overhang to keep spiders off the platform. The platform itself has permanent lighting to keep entities from ever spawning on it. In the far corner you can see an iron door. The red thing is the middle is the drain chute. Note the holes in the ceiling; more on them later.
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    Here's another view from the platform. You can see the protective overhang and platform lighting better. Off in the corner, you can see the control room and, on the spawning floor, another iron door.
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    Back in the control room we turn spawning on. You can see the floor is now plunged into darkness and is overrun with baddies.
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    Here's a view of the spawning chamber, from the platform, while spawning is turned on. Ordinarily, we do NOT occupy the platform while spawning is on going, but I wanted to take this screenshot.
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    Back in the control room, we turn spawning off. We see that we have a nice batch of monsters down there.
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    This is the floor immediately below the spawning chamber's spawning floor. This floor distributes the signal, from the control room, to each of the floor lights. You'll note that, in nearly every kind of facility I make, the floor-to-ceiling distance is almost never 3 or more blocks. This is to keep Endermen from spawning.
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    Here's a view of the spawning floor with monsters present and spawning off. Under these conditions we do make use of the platform. Now we can see all the monsters clearly. If one were to be a Zombie Villager then we would shoot all the archers first, then the creapers, then everything else, leaving just the Zombie Villager. We would then entice the Zombie Villager over to the floor nearest our position and proceed to cure them. This batch has no Zombie Villagers. So, rather than going through the trouble of killing them all manually, so we can make a new batch, we will flush the chamber.
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    You can see that the chamber flushing mechanism does a properly thorough job of doing so. The lava comes out of the holes we noted earlier. Note the number of descending lava columns.
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    A few floors up, this is the lava source block chamber. You can see that the lava pots are opened from the side by pistons. This keeps the ceiling height lower. Note that the number of lava pots is less than the number of descending columns that we saw earlier.
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    Between the lava source block floor and the spawning chamber we have another floor that acts as a lava distributor. A lava column descends from the ceiling and flows to become three or four columns into the spawning chamber.
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    Here you can see lava being distributed.
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    Here's a view from the spawning chamber floor. you can see the control room, one floor up, and this iron door, activated with a push button so that it will auto-close. From this side, this door is an emergency exit. Note that the button is mounted on a lighter coloured block in order to be more visible
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    This is the view from the other side of the door. It is operated with a lever. From this side, the door is for maintenance access. Note the access way on the left. The access way on the right in the extreme foreground leads to the main access ladder.
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    Here is the other iron door in the opposite corner of the spawning chamber. It is operated with a lever in order to keep the door open.
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    This is the doorway we compel our newly created villager to go through. We push them into that stream.
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    The steam leads to this water elevator. The access door on the right is at the end of the access way we saw earlier.
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    The water elevator delivers the villager to here. This is a raised platform so that once the village falls off it they cannot return. The villagers are housed on the lower floor. The villagers are kept from the upper floor but it still continues to count towards the villager population limit.
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    Here's another view of the top of the water elevator. Through the two open doors you can see into the main courtyard where you see some wheat and an iron golem.
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    Via the main access ladder, we get to this floor and begin here. You can see a bed and a crafting table. The purpose of the bed is to prevent zombie sieges while we are present. The crafting table is used to make bread to induce the villagers to breed until they make a farmer which then begins auto-breeding. Note the glass wall on the right.
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    That glass wall makes a small chamber which is accessed with an iron door via a push button so that the door auto-closes. To the right you can see the main access ladder.
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    Stepping through the door it leads to a ladder down. Here we are looking up at the door from the other side.
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    When we level our gaze we see this. They look kinda surly but they're harmless.
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    If we take the main access ladder all the way to the top, we see that it terminates in a shack on the roof. In typically me fashion, there's a ladder giving access even to the roof of the shack.
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    From the roof of the shack looking back down to the shore, on the ground, here is the view. That activity down there is a spider farm powered by a spider-spawner dungeon. The other grey areas are blatant laissez-faire capitalistic strip mining ventures. I've said it before that this is actually a profoundly evil game; I wasn't joking!
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    Looking inward, from the roof of the shack we have a better view of the courtyard. You can see that it's a ring of wheat surrounding a central area made of netherbrick. You can see that one villager has a hat. They're an a$$h0le that thinks they're better than everyone else!
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    The centre of the courtyard contains the drain. At the moment it is closed. You can see some pistons so that means that the drain has a control room.
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    Here is the drain control room; it has two controls. One switch opens and closes the drain. The other affects the speed of the drain by affecting it's efficiency.
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    This is what the drain looks like when it's open with slow draining set. You can see that the red netherbrick floor has retracted and the stairs go all the way down to the lip.
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    Here we have faster draining set. What this means is that the lowest set of stairs are retracted so that any entities that end up on the red floor can only remain or fall; they cannot go back up the stairs. Entities don't mind taking a short, non-damaging fall, which is how they end up there in the first place, but they do take longer to jump to their deaths. Thank goodness they do do so eventually though. With this setting their choices are limited hence the faster draining. Note that 'Full-of-Themself' has fallen victim; serves them right!
    39203dI.jpg
  • HelsaHelsa
    Mabinogi Rep: 23,380
    Posts: 5,763
    Member
    edited July 8, 2021
    ... and the second part.

    My First Arcology
    A quick overview of what is in common with the latest one.
    This is my first arcology. While it is more primitive, it is complete; you can see the fifth leg there, for example. Primarily, what I'll be showing is what happens after entities fall through the drain. In the meantime notice that the distance from the top of the arch to the top lip is much smaller in this version. This is because this arcology does not have a spawning chamber.
    Yl2u1MA.jpg
    The reason there is no spawning chamber is that on the shore, underground, is a zombie-spawner dungeon. This is the ground-level entrance to it. It is a spiral set of stairs under a glass roof to send light all the way down the central column.
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    Coming down the stairs we come to a spawning switch, that uses the same principle.
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    Here is the control room. You see a flushing switch, which also releases lava, a chest to hold supplies, and a bed. More on that later.
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    Looking into the spawning chamber, we see it uses overhead lighting rather than floor lighting; a much more primitive approach. You also see a clock. This facility is inside a ground-level city, so you need to know when sundown is in order to use the bed and avoid a zombie siege.
    spGc1aS.jpg
    Here's the view from inside the spawning chamber on the peripheral platform. Note that it has no lip, since only zombies spawn, and how the overhead lighting obscures universal clear shooting. As I said, this design is more primitive. Note the familiar two iron doors in the far corner.
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    You can see the door on the right is accessed with a push-button mounted on a surface such that you can see it clearly. This is the emergence escape-way.
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    Here you can see that the emergency escape-way leads to stairs leading up to the platform.
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    The other door is where we compel the newly created villager to. Note that to the left we see a block of cobblestone that the piston retracts to let lava flow.
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    This is the steam the villager is pushed into.
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    Going into spectator mode, we see the stream terminates at a water elevator. The water elevator goes up, through one of the legs of the arcology.
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    Here is the top of the water elevator where water flows to compel the villager off a platform and into the arcology village proper. Apparently, the villagers have organized a welcoming committee.
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    As a complete facility, access is via a building on shore. Like the zombie dungeon entrance, this leads to a spiral staircase with a glass roof.
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    Here the stairs continue down to a glass elevator, which we will look at later, and the stairs also open on to an access-way to the arcology.
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    Here is the access-way. It's lit with torches. I told you it's more primitive.
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    Back in spectator mode, we see the access-way terminates in a spiral staircase going up another of the arcology legs.
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    The stairs lead up to the entrance to the drain control room. This room is pretty much the same as the one already presented, so we'll skip it, and continue up the stairs.
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    Here is the terminus of the spiral staircase. This time it is on the level that houses the villagers.
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    Here is an aerial view of the courtyard. You can see in the far left, our service entrance. In the far right the top of the villager delivery water elevator. The cacti are in inaccessible areas. So if anything spawns there, it is killed. This facility is only two metres shorter, on each side, as the one we've already viewed, but contains an extra level of doors. I forget why I went with one less level for the newer one.
    Q5RlDRk.jpg

    The drain and associated facilities
    After falling through the drain, here is where golems and villagers part ways. While both fall into the well, seen in the extreme foreground, the golems fall all the way through into the grinder while the villagers are decelerated and swim back up to be driven down this stream. You can see an iron door a little way down the stream.
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    Here's a view of that door open. you can see that it leads to a staircase down. This is an access-way to the grinder, but it mainly serves as an emergency exit. More on that later.
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    Going into spectator mode, we see the steam, on the lower left, leads to a short water elevator, then to another stream, that turns a corner and leads to a second water elevator, that delivers the villagers to the ground-level town. More on that later.
    JWPHi0o.jpg
    If we take that emergency exit, into the golem grinder, this is the view from the bottom of the ladder. We see a dispenser that discharges into a stream. We see a lead, to the dispenser, coming across the floor from a room on the right.
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    That room on the right contains a pulsing circuit. This circuit is always on; it cannot be shut off. Also, the room is lit by a torch; so, like I said, more primitive.
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    Back in spectator mode, we have a better view of the golem grinder. You can see that the golems are deposited onto four stone pressure plates. Their activation causes a piston to extend a block of cobblestone into the golems head and it starts taking damage. When the golem expires, it's weight is released from the pressure plate and the block retracts, allowing more golems in. The pressure plates are mounted directly on top of hoppers. The hoppers are able to suck the drops in, through the pressure plates.
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    The hoppers deposit the drops into the dispenser, which dispenses them into this stream, which is accessed via this gate.
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    In spectator mode, we see the golem grind at the top middle of the picture. The stream comes down and turns into a new room in the bottom right. This is a glass elevator.
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    The glass elevator is accessed from our first spiral staircase from the ground-level town into the arcology. here is our first view of the room from those stairs. We see the base of the glass shaft comprising the glass elevator and we see two pistons that are presently receiving power and are extended.
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    We take the spiral staircase down one more floor to the machine floor.
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    Here on the machine floor we see, in the background, the pulsing circuit, which is always on. In the foreground we see the pistons that, at the moment, are not receiving power and are retracted.
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    The glass elevator delivers the drops, from the golem grinder, to here. The drops end up in a stream which compels them into a hopper which deposits them into the chest. You can see that this building is right next to the arcology main ground entrance.
    kqwyUkZ.jpg
    So those are my arcologies. I hope you enjoyed the pictures . . .

    Hey! Wait a minute! What about the villagers? What happens to them?

    Uh boy. Um. They end up here. You can see the top of the water elevator and the stream that compels them towards the street.

    Wait! What's that switch over there?

    The switch on the right is set to let testificates (villagers) into the ground level town proper.

    But why would we not want to let them in?

    When the golem grinder is in operation, the villagers will just keep coming. As long as they remain safe, the ground level population will keep rising and the game will end up lagging. When we throw the switch, the egress to the street is blocked.

    Wait a second! Aren't the villagers still inside the building which is still inside the city, so the population will continue to grow? Won't it?

    Well . . .
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    No; the lava blade takes care of that. I told ya man. When I said that this is a profoundly evil game; I meant it! This is also why you need the emergency exit into the golem grinder; remember that door?
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    Here's the view of the ground level town from the roof of the arcology. The magenta oval on the right shows the zombie dungeon entrance and the villager egress portal. The magenta oval on the left shows the arcology entrance and where the golem grinder drops are deposited to.
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    Sherri