VGHVI Minecraft: September 29, 2011

Oct 10 2011

Our last VGHVI Minecraft session was our first session since the 1.8 release, and in fact the first time I’d played Minecraft since 1.8 came out. And it was really amazing flying around, getting a different perspective on everything that we’d built; the only downside was that the screen capture key sequence involves hitting shift, which meant that I started falling every time I took a picture.

We all started flying above the temple

Looking down at the underwater train tunnel

Looking down at the shipwreck

The roof of the apartment building

Train running along the cliff

A hearth under glass

As you might guess from those last few pictures, it was raining a lot! Flying above, I saw structures I’d never seen before; that last is an example.

While fiddling with the server settings, I realized that I’d never entered the nether: we’d constructed a portal half a year back, but at that point nether didn’t work properly in multiplayer. That had since been fixed, though, so I entered it and flew around a bit.

Entering the nether

A lake of lava

Looking down at the portal

Next, I decided to travel to new areas, in hopes of finding a mine. So I flew east, across the ocean:

Lines in water - a chunk boundary where the algorithm changed?

Light under the ocean

An underwater lavafall

Eventually, I found a mine, and spent quite a while flying around in it.

Lava in the mine

The lighting in 1.8 seems to be noticeably more yellowish

Minecart tracks

Chest behind lava

Looking down into a pit

Flying through a chasm

Added torches to ravine walls

Hello, Mr. Zombie!

Lots of spiderwebs

Hello, Mr. Spider! (Or Ms. Spider, I suppose.)

I see you brought some friends with you


Bedrock and lava

A lit cave in the distance

The contents of one of the chests

After this, Patrick showed us a project that he’d been working on for the last couple months. The pictures don’t do it justice: you fall down through a long passage and are left in a huge, dark cavern with glowstone torches. He was going for a sort of Japanese teahouse effect.

Teahouse entrance behind train tracks

Inside the teahouse

Looking up at the teahouse roof

After that, I flew around a bit more, looking again at our older structures:

Mega-tree and acropolis at night

Mega-tree from above

Skull mountain and amphitheater

Then I flew to another new area, experimenting with taking pictures through the haze. (If you fly up high enough, the haze becomes overwhelming, it turns out.)

Sunrise through the haze

Sunrise over green ridge

Mountain in the haze

Protuberance on the mountain

Looking down from way up

Strange shapes in the ocean

Miranda decided to build a house in the nether, so I ended up visiting it:

The portal in the normal world

Entrance to the nether house

The architect is flying around

The upstairs room

The library

Another library picture

The music room

3 responses so far

  1. Late comment is late but your shipwreck looks like a butterfly. It made me do a double-take, that’s for sure.

    Also those lines of water represent where pre-1.8 generation ends and 1.8 terrain begins. It’s a bug, to be sure, but also an interesting way to know when you are in old or new territory.

  2. Huh, I’d never thought of the shipwreck that way!

  3. Silly Dadoo! Obsidian and lava, NOT bedrock and lava! 🙂