VGHVI Minecraft, December 2020

Jan 10 2021 Published by under Uncategorized

The December Minecraft session was our last regular one; I decided that I would build some nether train tracks (nether to compress distances) between the main area and Pat’s floating city, because his city was far enough away that I didn’t really know how to get to it otherwise.

We then ran into a wrinkle where Pat wasn’t online and I didn’t have the coordinates written down; I ended up spending up most of an hour understanding the binary format used for player saved data files, so that I could figure out what the last coordinates were of his avatar. (If you end up in this situation in the future, the first thing to know is that it’s gzipped…) Which was kind of fun! And, fortunately, it left me just enough time to build the tracks, things really are a lot shorter in the nether.

One last view of the main city.

Yay, I teleported to the right place!

There’s an island in the water below the city, so I ended up putting the portal there.

This creature was new to me, it must have been added since the last time I wandered around in the nether.

Here’s the end of the train tracks at the portal connected to the floating city.

And here’s the other end of the tracks, connected to the train station by the portal near the spawn point.

Three train lines running in parallel; the middle one is the new one, the other two are two separate lines leading to the forest city.

A closer view of two of the train tracks.

One more view of the floating city, at sunset.

 

Ariel added some stained glass windows to their castle.

Contemplating in the greenhouse.

Side one of stained glass windows.

Side two of stained glass windows.

Side three of stained glass windows.

Side four of stained glass windows.

I like this little pond here, would be fun to do something with it.

 

So, with that, we’re pausing the Minecraft sessions; I’m not deleting anything, I imagine we’ll come back occasionally, once or twice a year, but who knows. I’ll see if I can generate a map of the current state of things, it’s been a while since I’ve done that.

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VGHVI Minecraft, October / November 2020

Dec 06 2020 Published by under Uncategorized

We did have an October Minecraft session, but attendance was small and we didn’t do much building, so I didn’t put up much for it; here’s a combined post for October and November.

 

First, a few October pictures:

I was thinking I’d do something with the room behind the dock. But I stared at it for a while, and I just couldn’t convince myself that I’d like it more after cleaning it up or expanding it or something. So I wandered around for a bit, but I ended up with a grand total of one picture of that:

A view from above of the colored stairs near the mountain.

Ariel did a bit of work in their castle, adding some stuff to a couple of rooms:

A fire pit with some boxes of supplies.

A room with a row of furnaces at the back and assorted other equipment.

Some armor at the end of this section.

But, in general, not a lot; and I can’t remember if Dan wasn’t there at all or if he was talking but had to do something else instead of building?

 

I didn’t do any more building in November, but I took a more normal set of pictures. First, some pictures traveling back from Ariel’s castle to the mountain:

Some colored abstractions that Dan had built years ago.

I have no memory of where these boxes on / next to this island came from.

The joys of glitches. (I think this one is from a change in the terrain generation algorithm.)

Some spots of light in the dark while flying over the train tracks towards the mountain.

A cave visible through a gash in the base in the mountain.

A tree growing in a corner of a mountain.

A view out from the mountain at dusk.

 

Then I was feeling nostalgic so I wandered around the city where we were building during the first several years:

Inside the golden temple.

Looking through a window into the library in that complex I dug out of a mountain next to the city.

The stables in the top level of that mountain complex.

Fortunately, the horses still have plenty of hay to eat.

Inappropriate Cows.

 

Ariel just put in some stained glass windows.

Stained glass windows on the castle.

Dan built a bunch of squiggles, though:

I think this cube with a plane cutting through it is new, but I’m not 100% sure?

A brown squiggle.

Some purple squiggles.

A better view of the lower purple squiggles, plus some less squiggly art.

Pretty sure that the yellow and green art are new.

Some grey shapes.

Muddy green this time.

Some smaller, brighter shapes above the water.

A view of the red thing in the context of the shoreline; I like how it echoes the grassy bit in the water, which I assume came from the terrain algorithm instead of from Dan?

Then Dan decided to start blowing things up instead of making abstract shapes.

Some explosion remnants further down in the pit.

 

I think we’re starting to run out of energy for Minecraft. And, looking through my records, our first session on this server was December 9, 2010. So we’ve been doing this for a decade, which is something worth celebrating; we’ll do one more session in December, but I think we’ll take an indefinite pause after that.

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VGHVI Minecraft: September 24, 2020

Sep 27 2020 Published by under Uncategorized

Not many pictures this time: nobody did significant building. So just a few shots of me thinking about what to do next.

 

A picture of the lighthouse behind my mountain at night.

A view from the lighthouse towards the mountain: you can see lights from the cave with the dock and from the building on top of the mountain.

If you move in closer, you can see the building on top better, and also the castle with flowers that Dan built on the next mountain over.

Here I’m looking out from the entrance of that cave with the dock. (Though at an angle so you can’t see the dock the lighthouse.)

Here’s the back wall of the cave. Maybe that wall is the seed of something interesting, if I leveled it out and extended it? I have had good experiences with large spaces inside mountains before…

I don’t want to destroy what’s there in the cave, though: I like the grass and water at the bottom of the cave. So, if I do something, I’d want to preserve and heighten that.

Here’s a view from the back corner.

 

I think next month I’ll try to extend that cave some? Maybe even adding in more grass and/or water (a waterfall from the ceiling? vines somewhere?), I’m not sure…

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VGHVI Minecraft: August 27, 2020

Sep 07 2020 Published by under Uncategorized

Very few pictures this time: it was just Dan and me, I still haven’t gotten back to building, and I spent most of my time talking instead of wandering. But Dan did some building, at least.

That block in the middle with the flower on it is just floating in midair.

Dan continued working on abstract sculptures, in color instead of black this time.

A closeup of the blue sculpture.

The red one.

The purple one.

And green.

Another view of all of them, this time in the snow.

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VGHVI Minecraft: July 30, 2020

Aug 16 2020 Published by under Uncategorized

We skipped the June Minecraft session, but here are the pictures for July:

 

I was wandering around the main part of the city, and I noticed a path that I’d kind of forgotten.

A path near the city.

Here’s a side view as it goes up some stairs next to the train tracks.

Now it’s heading down some stairs in the direction of that large colored glass tower.

A level stretch, a little closer to the tower.

And here’s one end of the path, near that roller coaster ride thing.

 

And a couple of pictures of where the fire temple got swallowed by the rift, and some other random pictures:

The entrance almost looks normal if you don’t pay attention to what’s behind it.

From a side view, it’s clear that things went wrong.

Some other random older structures that are in the same general area as the new castle Ariel is working on.

Floating buildings glowing at dawn. Or maybe dusk.

 

I’m still not really building myself these days, but Dan and Ariel are continuing to work away. Dan’s continuing his geometric explorations, but with branching structures instead of just lines / planes:

A new branching sculpture.

It’s got a smaller neighbor next to it.

If you look at the background, you can see a line, a plane, and a cube with some branches coming out of the top.

And here’s a closer view of the new one.

 

And Ariel is continuing to flesh out their castle:

Adding in some armor racks. (And a view of the super tree through the window, I’d forgotten it was close enough to be visible.)

Some rooms that are still under construction, though one of them has a bunch of furnaces.

The hallway outside the greenhouse, I assume those are stairs down at the back.

Is this the basement? Though the roof makes me think it might be an attic area? I can’t remember…

A room with a huge bookshelf and a quite large skull painting.

The other direction has a large chest and a view of the side of a hill.

The outside of the building.

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VGHVI Minecraft, May 28, 2020

Jun 20 2020 Published by under Uncategorized

I didn’t do any building last month, and didn’t even take many pictures, we were mostly talking a bunch. A few random pictures from flying around:

Some of Dan’s older structures that I’d forgotten about.

I’d forgotten that one of the library buildings had this pretty roof on it.

That horizontal slab looks more threatening to me each time I see it, now it reminds me of a Star Destroyer. And then there’s the vertical wall next to it; not sure if I read it as threatening or defensive or just there…

I think I took this picture because of what looks like a cloud of gnats or something on the horizon. (It’s probably smoke?)

Roger has added a window at one end of the cathedral.

I had some visitors!

That really does not look very safe.

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VGHVI Minecraft, April 30, 2020

May 10 2020 Published by under Uncategorized

Pictures from April:

 

I’d been working on a cave with natural stairs last time; I’d cleaned up the stairs, so the question is what to do next.

First, I looked around some:

Here are the stairs.

There’s a neat garden up the stairs with a sunken tree.

Looking back from above the stairs, so you can see the other buildings in the area.

There’s a little nook on the right side of the entrance.

I don’t have the before pictures, but I had to push out the wall on the left side in this picture by a few blocks so it matched the right side.

There’s quite a bit more cave on the other side.

 

So that’s me taking the lay of the land. (And bumping out one of the walls a bit.) But I wanted to do something with the stairs: maybe add in colors or something? I experimented with a few different blocks:

How about blue steps?

Or maybe red steps and blue on the sides?

Darker sides look better.

Or I could add in some gold to make it flashier.

While I’m in the area, let’s put in some furniture in that nook.

I didn’t like the gold, so I went back to the darker sides.

Honestly, I’m not super in love with that; I might get rid of the red and go back to something plainer. Or maybe it would look fine if I put more exciting stuff on the ground inside?

 

Roger was with us for Minecraft for the first time in a while, chipping away again on his cathedral.

Here’s what the cathedral looks like.

Adding some wood on the top.

Here’s the view at the other end.

A picture from further out.

Starting to make the top level wider.

Some random picture I took in the area; I think it’s maybe near that weird cliff with lava in it? At any rate, a view of sunset through a hole going through a mountain.

 

Meanwhile, Dan was continuing his more abstract shapes.

A cube and a line. Which raises the question: shouldn’t there be a square? Like, we’re skipping straight from one dimension to three dimensions? (Hmm, maybe also a single block somewhere to be the zero-dimension case.)

A closeup of the cube.

A view up the pillar.

The cube has sprouted; I guess it wasn’t supposed to be a geometrical abstraction after all…

 

And Ariel was continuing to work on their palace.

Approaching the palace; I now know where it is well enough to be able to fly there instead of just teleport.

A view from a higher angle.

More structure on the lower floor.

Starting to work on some spiral stairs.

Now the stairs go all the way up.

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VGHVI Minecraft, February 27, 2020

Mar 14 2020 Published by under Uncategorized

I didn’t take so many pictures in February: partly because I’m still not sure what to build next and partly because I got caught up in conversation.

 

A few pictures from wandering around:

A cliff with a small cave in it, and an island off in the haze.

A valley with some animals.

Another one-block water discontinuity, this time including ice.

A randomly generated staircase.

That last one has stuck with me; maybe I’ll try to find it again and see if I can do something with the cave around it to cause the staircase to fit into a larger context? Hopefully I know more or less where it is…

 

No pictures from Dan or Ariel, but Pat was working on a bowling alley:

The lanes of the bowling alley.

There’s a space on the other side of the lanes.

Here’s what it looks like from the outside.

Looking closer at the windows.

Here’s what it looks like behind the lanes.

Now there are some pins in place.

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VGHVI Minecraft, January 30, 2020

Feb 15 2020 Published by under Uncategorized

Very few pictures this time: I didn’t do any building myself and I didn’t take a ton of pictures of other people’s work.

 

First, some travel shots making my way back to the current area where I’m working.

A nice waterfall coming out of the side of an overhang. (With lava as accent, and a sheep enjoying the scene.)

My path happened to take me past the building that Ariel is working on these days.

A row of bookshelves sitting there in the snow and rain…

Then, some pictures of the place where I’m currently working. Or at least where I had been working, I’m honestly not sure what I’ll do next.

Dan’s scaffolding with trees has one bit of scaffolding extending up out of it.

I like the lit up flowers at night in front of the mountain complex.

A view down the valley.

Viewed from the side, the trees on the scaffold look more like smoke…

 

Ariel was adding a greenhouse to that building:

A view of the greenhouse from higher up.

Pretty blue flowers inside the greenhouse.

Here’s what it looks like from ground level.

 

And Pat started on the skeleton of a new building, but hadn’t gotten very far.

The new building only has its outer walls so far.

A view of the floating garden near / under the previous building he had been working on.

Here’s another angle on the new building.

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VGHVI Minecraft, December 19, 2019

Jan 05 2020 Published by under Uncategorized

Pictures from the December Minecraft session:

First, some wandering photos.

Here’s the cave I’ve been working near; wasn’t really inspired by looking at the inside, though, so I decided to just wander around.

A sunset over the mountain with the castle Dan built.

The view down the valley.

A nice view of trees and mountain passes.

Is that a structure somebody built or an algorithm change glitch?

Turned out to be caused by an algorithm change, just a particularly bizarre one: I don’t really understand why this one chunk strip would be different?

It actually got a little weirder after that. (So maybe that original strip was more than a chunk wide?)

If I’m remembering correctly, this was actually a hole in the wall of one of those weird blocks, and it was actually beneath the ocean level; but for some reason the water didn’t flood in the opening?

I ran into a quite deep chasm at some point during this.

On the way back, I saw this on the horizon; if I’m remembering correctly, it’s something Dan built maybe half a decade ago?

At the top, there are flows of water and lava.

Here’s a picture going down the middle.

 

That’s a picture of what Dan had been doing years ago; here’s what he was doing more recently:

The pumpkin fire and the tree scaffold in the mist.

The trees at the top of the scaffold have grown out now.

There’s now an orange pyramid in the water next to the train tracks.

Here’s a closer view of the pyramid.

And here’s what it looks like at ground level.

 

Ariel didn’t do lot of building this month, just starting to add a second level onto their current structure:

Starting work on a second level.

And here’s the view from the bottom, with interior walls starting to get sketched out.

 

Finally, Pat built out the inside of the big building he’d been working on.

Pat in a large room with a large bed.

Looking down the hallway on the second floor.

One of the rooms on the second floor, I guess a bathroom?

A cute little bedroom.

The other end of that bedroom.

A larger room on the ground floor.

A better view of the hearth in that room.

Looking out the window next to the fireplace.

Another view of the master bedroom, with bookshelves.

A somewhat more formal room.

Armor in this one.

A closeup on the decorations on the wall.

The outside view of the chimney leading to that fireplace.

A bigger picture view.

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