VGHVI Minecraft: August 22, 2019
In the August Minecraft session, I decided that I was in the mood to build a lighthouse. Which raises the question of where; there’s a big area of water near the city, of course, but I’ve been spending more of time time a little ways away from that recently, in my new mountain residence. And there’s actually a body of water behind that, so I thought I’d put the lighthouse there.
Assuming, of course, that I can find a reasonable location, so the first area of business was to find a place to put it.
Looking out over the water behind the mountain.
There’s a pair of islands here, maybe I can do something with that?
Here’s the view back towards the mountain from about where those two islands are. Nice little inlet there, I should do something with that, probably using that black hole in the wall as a starter?
Just making sure that it really is an inlet, instead of an enclosed lake; and, in fact, there is a nice little mouth.
Here’s a closeup on the islands. And they’re joined together underwater; so maybe I can build on top of the area between the two of them, leaving the existing islands relatively untouched?
Taking a look underwater just to see what’s down there.
So that’s the plan: I’ll build a base between those two islands, with a tower coming out of that. So the next step is to figure out the basic dimensions; and, once I’ve done that, I guess I’ll need some way to get to the top of the tower, a ladder or stairs or something. So I wanted to get that basic structure in place.
Here’s my first take at the base; but it was a little pointy, and also a little small.
This is better: more balanced with the existing islands, and more room to build on.
Now I’m trying to get the outline of the walls figured out; I think I decided that this version was a little short on one side?
A dolphin came to inspect the ongoing work.
I decided to try stairs circling around the sides, with a landing each time it hits a corner.
Here’s a top-down view, though most of the landings are missing.
Here’s a view from farther away; certainly needs to be taller, but it’s a start.
That seems like a plausible start? The one question I have is about the landings: they really need some sort of railing for safety purposes, but I also want there to be significant empty space in the middle. And the answer of “put a fence on the second square away from the wall” doesn’t quite work with how the stairs turn, unfortunately. So I experimented with how to get that to work.
Here’s one option for a railing, to try to more or less match the color. But it does take up a lot of space.
This puts a regular fence on the top, that makes each floor feel airier.
Turns out that Minecraft lets me use fence as a base for more fence, so maybe I should do that?
Here’s the way that last version looks from the bottom; you do have good line of sight all the way to the top.
It still works once I’ve added more floors.
Let’s try to figure out what the correct height is.
Here’s the view towards the mountain from that height, it looks plausible?
And here’s what it looks like from the land, sitting on the little patio that’s out there.
So that’s the body of the tower. Next I need to put something at the top to make an actual lighthouse. And then I’ll think about decorations; certainly it needs windows, but probably I’ll want some other highlights beyond that?
Unfortunately, that’s it for pictures: Pat had to leave before I got pictures of what he’s doing, Miranda lost the coordinates of the structure they’d been working on (and it was almost entirely buried, so it is not going to be easy to find again!), and I didn’t get around to taking pictures of Dan’s underground chamber.
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