Minecraft

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a_contemplative_life
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Minecraft

Post by a_contemplative_life » Mon Nov 26, 2012 4:10 pm

Has anyone played it?

http://minecraft.net/
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gkmoberg1
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Re: Minecraft

Post by gkmoberg1 » Mon Nov 26, 2012 5:09 pm

Not me. Looks like good fun! Yet I dunno anything about it. But for the donation of a mere $26.95(US) I could find out for you - contributions gladly accepted. :lol:

The t-shirts are a steal (not) at $19.99 to $23.99. For a t-shirt? That better include shipping & handling.

Maybe that's what we need, We, The Infected t-shirts and mugs. I want one. A black t-shirt that says "Infected."

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a_contemplative_life
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Re: Minecraft

Post by a_contemplative_life » Mon Nov 26, 2012 5:38 pm

My sons started playing this and I kind of got sucked into it over the Thanksgiving holiday. I quickly became preoccupied. If you enjoy buildings, public works, and history, like me, well...let's just say this could become an obsession.

You are given a world to start with that is basically unimproved--covered with mountains, valleys, trees, forests, deserts, etc. You make tools like shovels, axes, and picks to alter the landscape. Monsters come around to harass you, but I wasn't interested in that so much as the building, so I set the game to "peaceful" mode.

I figured I'd start with a medieval castle. I picked a tall mountain, leveled it off, laid out the ground plan, and got to work. Needless to say, this quickly became quite time-consuming. If you know how to use "Creative" mode, I would highly recommend using that, because in Survival mode I spent lots of time just finding rock, chopping down trees, and moving dirt around with stone tools. Kind of gave me that yeoman feel, but being more like god would have been much easier and less time-consuming.

Here is the castle. The white stuff is snow. It snows all of the time in this particular place.

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After the castle, I figured it should have a wall with guard towers, so I built those. The doors in this game are not very satisfactory in appearance options, but there are mod packs you can download to change the appearance of everything. So here are the battlements.

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a_contemplative_life
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Re: Minecraft

Post by a_contemplative_life » Mon Nov 26, 2012 5:40 pm

Next I decided to build a village outside the castle walls. It took a long time just to flatten out the ground, removing a hill and converting an open stream into a grotto to make some room. Here is the grotto...

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At the end of the grotto is a secret tunnel with an underwater entrance that leads into the castle. The castle actually sits on top of a vast chasm, so I had to construct the tunnel walls by hanging them on the ceiling of the chasm in two places. This was a major pain.

I laid out the roads with sand beds. It snows alot here, so usually you can't see where the roads are. I had to remodel two moutainsides to make room for a road that leads away from a stone bridge near the grotto (not shown here). Then I built all of the little houses.

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I turned my attention to the back side of the castle and decided to put in a terraced garden with a low fence and a pool.

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Re: Minecraft

Post by a_contemplative_life » Mon Nov 26, 2012 5:41 pm

Next I added some larger village buildings: a church, a courthouse, jail, a store, and an apartment house. I had a lot of fun laying out the floor plans for these. There aren't a lot of fine ornamentation options, so I used different types of wood to relieve the facades an make the buildings a little more attractive.

Church on the right, courthouse on the left. All these buildings have interior doors and fixtures, etc.

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The jail. I figured it would be partially underground to make it harder for prisoners to escape, so the windows are at ground level with steps down to a door on the left.

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A dry goods store and a general store sharing the same building.

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I figured some folks would need to rent rather than own, so I added an apartment house. It sits on a slope, so the back side is partially into the ground like a basement apartment.

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a_contemplative_life
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Re: Minecraft

Post by a_contemplative_life » Mon Nov 26, 2012 5:41 pm

I had leveled off a neighboring mountaintop to get the dirt and stone needed to fill in the valley. So I figured I would have a gentried class and someone would build a large home there. Then I decided to lay it out like a Roman villa, even though it is really too cold here for a home with an atrium and peristyle open to the sky. The stone options are limited, so I could not use terra cotta for the roof. I did raid a desert temple that came when the world was created for its sandstone to build this villa. It made me feel guilty, kinda like I was a medieval church, stripping marbale off the Coliseum :lol: ...

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Before building the villa, I consructed a winding stone stairway leading up the backside of the mountain to the top.

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I enjoyed planning and laying out the buildings and roads, probably more than anything else. You dig and build all of this, block by block! :D
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Makalli
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Re: Minecraft

Post by Makalli » Mon Nov 26, 2012 8:21 pm

a_contemplative_life wrote:Has anyone played it?
I've got the Xbox 360 version, it hasn't got as much as the PC, but it's pretty close. The real challenge is trying to think up things to build after a while.
Döden besökte mig i morse. Vi spelar schack tillsammans.

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Re: Minecraft

Post by gkmoberg1 » Mon Nov 26, 2012 9:39 pm

These pics are great. I can see myself happily spending several months creating all sort of things.

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Re: Minecraft

Post by intrige » Mon Nov 26, 2012 10:51 pm

I have played it, it's "the ting" among youth, almost everyone I know have either played mindcraft or does still, from my hometown. Ever wanted to make Blackeberg in Mindcraft? Good idea huh? In the meantime I found this on youtube:
Bulleri bulleri buck, hur många horn står upp

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Re: Minecraft

Post by a_contemplative_life » Tue Nov 27, 2012 5:22 am

Tonight I built a tavern, so my town is starting to take on a western flair. It's starting to remind me of that old 70's film - "Westworld." The one where Yul Brynner is a robotic cowboy run amok. I've got Medieval World, Western World, and Roman World... :lol:

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Here's the interior. Too bad I couldn't put a mirror over the bar in back, or do some tables. Stairs on left lead up to three bedrooms on second floor, so the cowboys can make a quick escape out the rear window when the Sheriff comes. :D

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Here's the back. Door on the right leads down to a cellar under the parlor to keep the beer cold, 8-) with a ladder and trap door leading up behind the bar.

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