12/29/2011

This posting once again encompasses two weeks worth of events on the server.  Because of the time involved in maintaining the server and posting updates, I will likely continue this two-week cycle for the foreseeable future.  In addition to it being easier on my end, a number of playing can only log on every few weeks, so I can highlight larger changes.  You might want to grab a cup of coffee.

Shedding Some Weight:
As I previously mentioned, the server map size has grown substantially in recent times.  This is almost exclusively due to Snow Hunting.  While it may have been fun and adventuresome to explore out to Z=10,000, the server was getting a bit chunky because of it.  I decided it might be time for the server to shed a few pounds.  While the map I have included this week has been cropped, much of the area to the West has been deleted (everything past the Mushroom Biome Z=3,500).  This process halved the space required to save the server.  Since I retain weekly backups of the server, if you would like to download a copy of the current server, let me know and I can Dropbox them to you.

If you want to read my witty remarks on this week's map, please refer to the following link:
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg109/CyclicReasoning/Minecraft/map_d122911copy.jpg

Constructive Deconstruction:
I want to take a minute to mention a few unique changes that occurred in this update.  Up until this point, most of the work on the server has involved erecting large structures; however, a number of projects were deconstructed in this update.  Before, there were occasional remodeling and revision projects, but no fewer than four separate deconstructions took place in this update:

1. Matt's Tree Farm was torn down so that his pumpkin farm could be expanded
2. Matt's Ego Trip was replaced
3. Matt's Lava Moat was drained
4. Marians Slums were constructed and then promptly removed.

While these projects appear to be very minor in nature, they're a marked change for the server.  Players are revising their works, not just constructing new projects.  Perhaps this is most noticeable to me because it affected my land the most, but I would not be surprised to see a greater emphasis on revising projects like the Metro Rail System in the near future.

SSSSSS (also, expanded pumpkin farm)

Monumentalism:
Daniel and Dave should henceforth be referred to as the Diabolical Dyad.  In the first weekend of this update Dave had harvested enough melons to proceed with his Evil Plans(TM).  Having kept his plans a secret for over a month, Dave sowed the seeds of his plan; a giant Creeper Melon now resides directly in front of Mike's sandy sanitarium.  This hostile takeover sparked what I believe to be the theme of this week's update: monuments.

Daniel was clearly inspired by Dave's Creeper (and perhaps there was some small encouragement from a certain admin).  After approximating that he would need 3,500 blocks of obsidian, Daniel spent the next few days in his dungeons mining obsidian.  For those wondering, to mine that much obsidian takes 35,000 seconds, or ~600 minutes, or ~ 10 hours.  That approximation is ignoring any additional time it takes to locate lava pockets, fend off monsters, light the surrounding area, and place water to create the obsidian.  While I had the best intentions of helping Daniel, I can take no credit in this massive project.  When the dust settled, a Giant Enderman was seen taking hold of Pierre's "Airship"  What has been deemed "Daniel's Ego Trip" replaced what was previously Matt's Ego Trip.  When asked why he chose Obsidian rather than Black Wool, Daniel responded "Because wool is too flammable"

Nice plane you have there...

Better hope he's not still holding that plane when it turns day...

While two statues may have sufficed for one server, two other statues also made their debut.
First, Tim cobbled together the beginnings of what I presume is the set for Legends of the Hidden Temple.  While Tim assured me that it was actually the start of the Argonath,we'll have to wait for the completed construction for the final verdict.

Second, Dave did not take Daniel's enderman retort laying down; he hatched plans for a nest of ideas.  Feeling cooped up in Moria, Dave traveled once more to the hub of civilization.  An altar to the worship of the great Chicken was constructed amidst the lake.  Not to leave a feather out of place, the living statue was then stuffed full of chickens (a chicken within a chicken?  Inclucksion!).

Is that I blue barracuda I spy? Oh, phew, just a silver snake...

This lake is the cluckiest place on earth!

I solemnly swear I am up to no good.

Speaking of Chickens...:
Oh god, the chickens. The reason why a chicken statue was erected should be immediately evident if you have logged on at all in the past two weeks. Everywhere you go there are hundreds of chickens just waiting to cluck at you. More than once have I logged on to be swarmed by them in my own house. My poor plants and gardens have suffered terrible losses due to their incessant trampling. Oh god, chickens. What started out as Mike's little chicken coop has expanded to an all out attack by Mike and Dave. While Mike and Dave differ on their breeding methods, they each have substantial quantities of kept coops.

What could be behind these doors. for PETA no to like?

Aww, it's just a bunch of cute little chickens.

PETA prefers this method, but it still disapproves.

We heard you [dis]like mudkips?

Slumdog For A Millisecond There:
In an effort to combat the HOA, a shanty town was constructed in front of Marian's Mansion.  The slums were constructed as a statement piece against the oppressive rules that Marian, as leader of the HOA, has set into place.  Rumor has is that the construction of Mordor was actually Pierre's misunderstanding of the HOA saying "Build more doors."

Due to the hostile nature of this projects, Marian wasted no time in dismantling the "anonymous" artist's works.  In fact, it is believed that the HOA dismantled the projects before they could even be completed. One can only assume that this is the first of many escalating confrontations between these two entities.

Some [wo]men just want to watch these works burn.

WELFARE BUILDING: NOW WITH OPTIONAL DOOR!

Steeming pile of crap, or just trying to gravel?

Daniel's Lovely Lava Lair:
As if creating a giant enderman was not enough work for Daniel, he also remodeled his home (and by remodeled I mean "lava ALL the things!") his house is now characterized by even more lava than Mount Doom. Hopefully he won't get the brilliant idea to create a lag-spiked mess of a fire-ring too. Speaking of a certain fire ring, has anyone else been reaaaally tempted to douse Mordor's fire?

This place is the lava pits!

Hey look, it's a lava corridor.

FarmVilla:
Chickens are not the only animals that Dave has decided to raise on his little island. His pastures are currently filled with many a sheeps and chickens. It is my educated guess that the sheep came first, and then the eggs (and by that I mean Mike probably egged said pastures). It is currently unknown as to what Dave's plans are for the wool he is gathering, but my guess is that it's not just for knitting.

Aside from Dave's pastures, I also noticed that he has retooled his melon farm. Rather than harvesting hundreds of melons, he is creating an automated sugar and pumpkin farm.

I may have "accidentally" harvested some of his sugar.

No black sheep here.

Good thing snowmen can't crawl.

John's Jail:
I went to check on John's progress this week, and found that it's surprisingly difficult to enter his domain. Were it not for the passage from his underwater dome, I'm not sure if I could have avoided pillaring in. It turns out that John's added a seamless gate to his fortress; when he logs off he shuts the gate to keep unwanted guests out. Unfortunately, this did not seem to dissuade the chicken invasion. When I finally made my way inside I was greeted by the familiar sound of clucking. Perhaps more disturbing than that, it seems that John has turned to the forces of evil; his poor snowman resides in a prison of iron bars! What would PETA say about that?


Kenny's Grate Gate:
Kenny was away for most of the time this update covers, but while he was online he worked on securing his territory. When Marian planted her house Kenny went down to having only one direction available for expansion; the Mob Grinder was later placed so that even that direction was cut off from him. To make the best of his situation, Kenny has decided to fortify what little position he has left. Furthermore, he completed his waterway, and built a gate to keep everything but chickens out. As a result, chickens have started migrating to what they assume to be a refuge built specifically for them. Cluck cluck.

Interior wall view.  Also, unsurprisingly, more chickens.

Water you waiting for? Lower the gate!

Gate's down, come on in!

Matt's Monsters:
Most of my work consisted of expanding my pumpkin farm (400+ redstone does not mine itself). However, when I wasn't working on the pumpkin farm, I could be seen working on filling in the second module of the Mob Grinder. The grinder itself was expanded so that it would no longer clog when too many monsters jumped in. Additionally, the grinder can now handle spiders. As a result of the work on the grinder, I collected a small fortune of gunpowder. After crafting 40 blocks of TNT I knew exactly what to do with it: quarry anyone? The amount of damage you can do with only 40 TNT is more than slightly terrifying. Just putting two blocks next to each other can dig out about a 7x7x7 hole. Yep, that's ~350 blocks gone in a very short amount of time. SSSSSSSS, boom.

40 TNT used.  Those holes go about 30 spaces deep.

Top of the quarry, undamaged by TNT.

Word of advise: don't forget to check your slime farms.

A Peer Amid Mike's Pyramid:
When Mike was not busy collecting thousands of eggs to use against other people, he was busying himself with fences. Due to his extensive cave exploration, he had entirely too many stacks of fences, and decided to put them to a good use. And what better use is there than to build an inverted pyramid filled with water? To get into his base, one must use the water elevator he has conveniently provided.

Apparently still a work in progress.  MORE fences?

Hey look! It's a funnel tunnel.

Outside view of Mike's mountain.

A New Challenger Appears:
Peter, aka ErrantAI, has newly joined our server. Peter found the server through Pierre, his ex-office mate. While the two of them swear that it was by random chance, Peter seems to have settled in close proximity to Mordor. I would not be surprised if Peter "happened" to help Mordor expand its territory in the near future. This is especially true since Pete landed no further than 50 blocks from Tim's original hovel. The one snag in this theory might be that Pete appears to be downright paranoid about lighting. Almost every inch of his base is covered in torches.

Between mount doom and the torches, it must never go dark.

Pete is much more artistic than me.

Swheat farm!

Speaking of Tim...:
Last, but not least, we come to Tim. Many of Tim's projects focus on expanding his territory and exploring caves. When he was not busy building his statue, he's been tunneling through the ocean reaching toward new grounds. While tracking this tunnel I stumbled across more than one outpost he has constructed on islets. The furthest reaching of these outposts is also the most impressive. Tim has been putting his clay to good use by constructing a brick building. While the innards are still pending, the outside is a sleek yet simple design. Also, he gets points from me for creating a proper foundation which his bricks lay on top of.

Simple, yet quaint. 

I had not noticed this before, but it's definitely imposing.

Aqua Tunnel.

12/12/2011

In an effort to catch up on the backlog of information I have for the blog, I will be combining the past two weeks of updates.  This is partially because I don't quite remember the distinction between the two for most information.  It is difficult to even attempt to fairly represent everyone's work, so this week I've thrown that idea out the window, and have picked my 'top hits' of interest.  This week's theme? Matt, Murder, and Mordor!


Extensive Exploration:
In a brilliant move inspired by the search for snow, I went exploring out to the West.  Determined to find snow and/or mushroom biomes, I charged through roughly 12,000 squares of space.  While I was midly successful finding the mushrooms (roughly Z=3,500), I was unable to find anything other than ocean beyond that point.  However, while my explorations proved ineffective, John was able to find a Snow Biome not nearly as far out as I was exploring.  Kudos to you, John!  Side note: I should have thought better about exploring; the save files went from being 40mb to 350mb for the server.  That's going to start hurting when backing up.

Light Map:
Making its return this week is the Light Map.  I have cropped down the light map simply because our 'real' map is so silly (due to misadventure on my part, looking for snow).  My current intent is to include the light map about once a month in these updates, simply because it's not a one step process like the other map is.

In an effort to get maps with higher resolution, I have uploaded these maps to Photobucket.  The maps original URLs (with 2000x1400 resolution) can be found at: http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg109/CyclicReasoning/Minecraft/light_map-1.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg109/CyclicReasoning/Minecraft/minecraft_map.jpg


No New Challengers Appear!:
The past two posts have brought new players onto the server.  The two weekends this post covers did not see any new members joining the server.  Most players focused instead on their individual projects and mining rather than extensive expansions.  I am not aware of any entirely new bases that were developed in this time frame.

Mob Grinding:

Alas poor grinder, for ye be dead.

No minecraft game is complete without a mob grinder.  Grinders come in many shapes, sizes, and forms.  People have come up with many different approaches to building these grinders.  In my single-player game I built a crude drowning grinder near a skeleton spawner; this provided me with ever-valuable arrows.  Water flowed into glass panes which sucked the skeltons underwater where they would be drowned.  This method was very effective, but limited.

Kenny and I moved his prototyping grinder from on top of his house onto an empty patch of land nearby.  We designed the server grinder using the same drowning method I employed in my single player game. However, no matter how we manipulated the workings, the enemies refused to behave in a predictable enough manner for this to work; the grinder would get jammed and enemies would avoid the cliff face.  After working on a drowning grinder for a few hours, we abandoned the drowning mechanism in favor of a more humane lava trap method.  To my pleasant surprise, the lava trap causes minimal item loss.  However, while I have fixed most of the jamming problems, the grinder still fills up too much occasionally, and it does not currently handle spider killing.

Creepers beware! Spiders, just wait until I figure out things!

Kill it with fire!

The 'base' 5-level mob spawner + grinder.

Why yes, those ARE pumpkins now that you mention it...

Most of the work on the base of the mob spawner was done two weeks back. As a result, Kenny and I have had a fair amount of time to sink into its creation. We did the original spawner mock-up using dirt we borrowed from Marian, but have since replaced that with Stone Brick. This change in texture in the mob spawner/grind was mandated by the HOA. However, I do not respond well with veiled threats, so I responded in a technically HOA-allowable move by building a feeder-tower next door OUT OF PUMPKINS. Unfortunately, not even I have nearly enough pumpkins to complete the structure, so it may take a while to complete this feeder station. Most of my time spent this past week was done working on this project.



Plane Jane:

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's.. oh, yeah it's actually a plane.

Call me a left-wing conspiracy theorist, but something is fishy about Pierre's sky-base/plane. Perhaps I am just being paranoid, but it looms too close to my pumpkin base for comfort. Is this a sign of peace sent from Mordor on a diplomatic mission, or is this the advance force for an impending invasion? Hailing frequencies are being monitored, have been no lines of communication yet. Until that communication can be established, I will assume that the following statements are true.

1. Pierre's Airship is named Lady Luck
2. He has included hidden bomb compartments
3. His plans include domination, destruction, and famine
4. The real reason he build it was so we could call Pierre's Airship the "Pierreship"

Sometimes being an admin means playing... differently...

"And on this side of the plane we see... everything; we're all going to die!

Choot choot.  Rails are fun when they are actually efficient.

Daniel's Den:
Because Daniel works most, if not all, weekends, he was not online much these past two weeks. As a results of his non-work, I leave you with a pretty picture of me on top of a railroad that goes in front of his base. Isn't that pretty?

Nether Warts.  An Alchemist's wet dream. Wait. Eww.

Dave's Dungeons (Hell):
Dave decided against outdoing his previous works this time around, and focused on working within the Nether instead. This makes pictures both exciting to take, and also more than slightly dangerous (see: Picture of all my drop loots). While wandering the Nether (or scouring, more likely), Dave managed to find a Nether Fortress. I had never seen one before, and I highly recommend the trip for anyone else who has not; they're very impressive.  We've now found both types of Fortresses on our server now. Kudos! Now, if I could just figure out what to do with 100,000 Nether Bricks...

I collected this loot 2 [rl] days after I died.  Thank you, SMP!

This picture is downright ghastping! (ok, maybe that pun was ghastping at straws...)

This is the aftermath of Pierre's Lava Occupation.

Lava it or Leave it!:

With the #Occupy protests settling down, things on the server are starting to return to normal. A number of the monuments that were constructed during this frenzied time remain intact, while others have begun to disappear over time. Most noticeably, the lava fountain that became John's Skybase has reverted to a Cobblestone dome. Whether this was an act of further sabotage, or whether it was intentional remains to be seen. In either case, the gardens should be considered extremely dangerous until lighting can be improved.

Finally! This line is a fully operational battle station.

All Aboard!:
The better part of the first weekend this update encompasses I was working furiously on the Red Line Aqua Tunnel. After having spent many hours refining my techniques, noticeable progress was
made in passing the three quarters mark. With the further help of the community, the Red Line has finally been completed in all of its glory! The transcontinental rail clocks in at a flying 2.5 minutes; arguably faster than hopping through the Nether.







Mike's Mysterious Ministry of Magic:
In an in-office interview with Mike, he refused to divulge the exact meaning of the prototype that has popped up on top of his "Chicken Coop" At first, I assumed this contraption to be a clever egg-harvester; I assumed the chickens would lay eggs, and those would fall through to the bottom floor for collection. This was fervently denied, so that leaves me with only one option: it must be the home base for the occult.

Suspicious Prototype is suspicious...

A nice capture of the space between Mike and Dave.

Pierre's Possessive Pyromania:
It has been a while since I have cataloged Mordor's building projects. I decided to check out exactly what those crazy orcs have been doing since Minecraft's official release. I could tell I was approaching Mount Doom when all of the grass started to disappear. While there are still a few patches of sod strewn about, they are few and far between. The Excavation Tower has begun to earn its name. Ironically, while Pierre claims that the ring of fire was to "Keep the enemies out", I had no problem finding a skeleton waiting right outside his front door waiting to gank somebody. When I finally mustered the courage to peek inside, I was greeted with familiar "#Occupy" signs tucked away.

Mordor: No grass for you! Is that a skeleton?

#OccupyALLtheThings!

I wandered around Pierre's tower searching for additions and renovations, but I could only find one small alteration. A library module has been attached to the cobblestone tower near the top. It appears that everywhere I go I am greeted by these wretchedly drab half-finished book rooms. Word[s] of advice to everyone: if you're going to build a library, please make it a nice one. Since that was the only major change to Mordor (that the sod removal), I decided to move on to greener pastures.

Libraries: all the craze.

I glanced down and saw this view.

Little Egypt:
Perhaps I was mistaken when I said "greener pastures" Next on my list was Troy's settlement. I was greeted by an aesthetically pleasing village which has grown since the last time I visited. Most noticeable, a number of existing buildings have second stories attached to them now, and many serve proper functions.

While I wandered around, I stumbled into one of Troy's mines, and was greeted by an elaborate redstone machine. I am a sucker for redstone, so I immediately threw the switch and watched it work. Troy's contraption powered a minecart, pushing it from one end of a tunnel to the other, and stopping on a block where it can be recalled by the single flick of that same switch. Impressive circuitry, although I could not help but feel that I was only looking at the first stage of a more elaborate design.

Troy's Little Egypt gets bigger every day.

Push Lever, Receive cart.

Merry Solstice!
While my exploring can be considered a complete and utter disaster, John deftly located the server's first snow biome. The first order of business for said biome was to create a snowman, as is pictured below. My favorite part is the pumpkin head. What do you think?

Merry Holidays! Joyous solstice!

It is unlikely that I will update the blog again before Christmas, so let me take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas/Holiday/Solstice!