At the end of last weekend, the final outlines of the train station were taking shape; the remaining tasks were to flesh out the west side (in particular, how the alcove would merge into the station roof lines), and to actually dig out the back (north end) of the station.

I decided to continue another line of windows around the edge of the roof of the alcove, and then put a layer of dirt with a skylight in the middle:

The side of the west alcove roof

Skylight on top of the west alcove

As I went to clean up the lines of the train station roof, though, it became clear that the alcove was a little larger than I thought, so I extended the skylight a bit.

Sunset over west alcove, with inappropriately small skylight

Enlarged skylight

The west side of the station roof

With that in place, it was time to start digging out the back of the train station!

Just beginning to hollow out the top

Looking down from my perch on top

When I came down from my digging that night, a duck had stopped by to check on things

One issue that I had to deal with at this point was that the stairs going up from the back of the fourth floor of my house now didn’t work: they ran straight into the glass roof of the station. For now, I removed the top of the stairs but left the door in place near the top (which, conveniently, was right at the back of the station), and I also made a left turn near that door to start hollowing out a potential viewing area in the top back of the station.

Stairs running into glass

Looking back as I dig down at door and alcove in wall

After that, it was dig, dig, dig.

A bit of the top is cleared out now

Hitting a patch of gravel part way down

Looking east as we dig down

Nighttime view from the bottom of the progress we've made digging

Another view from the door in the wall, much further down now

After I’d gone down further, the window pattern on the west side changed; that meant that I’d hit the top of the alcove, where the windows loop around the alcove instead of continuing to the north. So I started digging it out as well.

The end of the windows shows the alcove location

Starting to dig out the top of the alcove

Sunset through the alcove windows

A wider view, showing how the station is taking shape

As I reached the bottom of the train station, I ran into that cave on the east side; it turned out that its bottom was indeed lower than the station’s floor. I decided to mostly leave the cave in place, but to finish it off a bit and put in stairs.

Looking out through the cave on the east wall

The view into the station from the cave

The finished cave area

And, shortly after that, I was done digging out the station. Which is huge!

A sheep has come to inspect the final stages

The complete station, looking towards the front

The complete station, looking towards the back and west side

There was still that door and hole way up high in the back wall of the station. I ended up removing the door and putting a glassed-in viewing area that I could reach from my house.

Looking out from the viewing area

The viewing area's window from beneath

Here’s a tour of the completed outside, going counter-clockwise from the west alcove. I like how the house and train station work together.

The entrance to the train station alcove; you can also see the balconies on the house

The west side of the station

The south side of the station

The east side of the station

The east side of the house, and some of the station

The arch at the north side of the house

The main entrance to the house

The next step, I suppose is to lay tracks! And then I’ll build a (much much smaller!) train station at the other end of the tracks, and connect that to my second house.

My favorite part of last week’s VGHVI Minecraft session was that we (Pat, mostly) finally finished the underwater tunnel! It goes to a fairly large snowy island in the middle of the sea; maybe we’ll push on beyond that to greener climates?

The ocean tunnel through the snow

These bumps were originally intended to prevent water from flooding the tunnel if we accidentally broke a wall

The tunnel has reached land

Chicken-proofing the tracks through the tunnel

A strange stone bridge leading off of the island where the tunnel lands

Eric decided to build a fortress next to last month’s Skull Mountain project:

Looking down from the top of the fortress

A side view of the fortress, looking towards Skull Mountain

A better view of the skull

Looking up from inside the fortress

The walls of the fortress are tall!

Speaking of tall things, Jonathan used his TNT to produce a truly stunning pit under one of the corners of the train track loops:

Looking down from the middle of the pit

Looking up from that same location

Looking up from the bottom. (Though he blasted more after this)

I died right after taking this photo

Finally, Miranda (with help from Pat and, I believe, Jonathan) built an apartment building near the temple.

Starting work on the apartments

The bottom floor is mostly complete

Working on the upper floors

The entrance to the building

Inside one of the apartments

The view out of one of the windows

Ovens, a workbench, and a garbage disposal

The door to Jonathan's apartment

My apartment door

Pat's apartment door

Inside Pat's apartment

A lamp in Pat's apartment

And I returned to the cave from our first session in this world (from which I sadly don’t have any pictures). And it turns out that our tree farm has finally grown its first tree! (Still not much of a farm, though…)

A tree grows underground

Lava and bedrock

Finally, I got a request for an updated world picture, so here it is. (I used Tectonicus to create it.)

The (almost) full world map

The parts where we've built stuff

The area around the temple

The underwater tunnel

As always, we do this on the last Thursday of every month, please follow the VGHVI blog and come join us!

I’ve been slacking on my Minecraft blogging: not only do I owe you last week’s post (which this is), I owe a VGHVI post! My apologies, I’ll try to get caught up this weekend.

When I last mined, I was hollowing out a train station from my home mountain. I really liked the way the windows looked and its height and width; but it was far too stumpy. So I knew I needed to expand it, at least doubling but hopefully coming close to tripling its length. (And even that wouldn’t be correct proportions for a real train station, but at least it wouldn’t look ridiculous.)

I’d set the front of the train station (the south end) based on where the mountain started turning into sand; the back (the north end) was partly determined by a tower in the middle of the mountain, and partly by the shape of the mountain. In particular, the mountain got quite narrow on the east side, and bulged out in the west, and I didn’t want to completely homogenize that. Also, I wanted to leave room for my house in front, so I couldn’t go too far north.

After walking back and forth over and around the mountain, I decided that I could go a reasonable amount further north. I didn’t want to go so far as to bump into a window on the east side of my house (the glass enclosure from this post), and I also didn’t want to encroach on the rooftop garden (from that same post), but I could comfortably go further than the tower. And on the east side, I figured I’d just build walls past the side of the mountain; that actually makes my life easier because it creates space that I don’t have to dig out. On the west side, however, I wanted to leave the bump in place, so I decided to break the symmetry and turn that into an alcove.

Even that wasn’t going to make the station long enough, however. So I decided to extend forward (south) into the sand part of the mountain. Which was convenient, actually: I use a lot of windows in my train station, and if I’m going to enlarge it, then I’ll need a source of sand to smelt into more glass. So it was convenient to have an excuse to dig into the sand in the front.

With that plan in mind, I started firming out the details. First, I started building up the wall on the east side.

Mountain where I need to extend the east wall

Building out the east wall

There's a cave under the east wall, it turns out

The space between the new east wall and the old side of the mountain

The view of the east wall from the house

That forced me to fix exactly how far back I was going to go. Next, I worked on the front (the south part) of the train station, figuring out how far forward to go. I found a reasonable distance, extended my window lines, and started digging it out.

Looking down while digging out the front of the station

I continue to be a sucker for sunsets

Done digging out the front of the station

At this point, I’d finished digging out the front of the station, but I needed to figure out exactly what the front would look like, because I’d left a gaping hole:

I need some windows here

It took a little experimentation, but I ended up with a layout I was happy with. (It’s asymmetric because the front of the mountain is asymmetric.)

My first pass at a window layout

This layout is much more elegant

The view of the windows from inside

Next, I had to tackle the west side of the station. Here’s the view looking west before I started working on it, with the extension I wanted to preserve some of in the foreground.

The original view to the west

Eventually, I decided to wrap the lowermost windows in the station around an alcove on the west; the ground on the northwest part is rather lower, so I added an extra set of windows there.

Starting work on the west alcove

The alcove is taking shape

The north side of the alcove, with two sets of windows

With that, the outline of the station was mostly clear, though I had to work out the details of how the alcove on the west side would transition into the roof. Also, I have a lot of hollowing to do: I’d finished hollowing out the front, but there was quite a lot of digging remaining in the back. And I need to figure out what to do about the stairs coming up the west side of the mountain from the third floor and fourth floor of the house. But still, the end is in sight!

The view of the front of the station from where the tracks will be

At the end of last post, I’d figured out where my first stretch of track was going to be, and where my first two stations would be: a large one inside my home hill, and a small one near my new house. So now it was time to start work on one of those; I decided to tackle my home hill.

Miranda decided to help me design, so first we walked around the top of the hill a lot figuring out where things should go. Eventually, we noticed that the track location went in a line that connected a tower on top of the hill with a tree on top of the hill. That seemed to be too much of a coincidence to pass up, so we decided to go with that. After looking at pictures of train stations, we decided go go with a window at the top window of the roof, along with further windows down the sides.

A sunrise we saw while looking out the side of the hill

Leveling off the top of the roof

The skylight is in place

A view of the tracks from the roof

The tower, which we widened to match the skylight

After that, we had to figure out what to do with the sides. We decided to put windows and dirt in rows on the sides; also, the east side of the hill was quite a bit steeper than the west side, so we ended up building up the east side more. Once we had the windows in place, we went back up to the top and started hollowing out the inside.

Adding more windows on the west side of the hill

Extending the east side of the hill

Starting to hollow out the middle

Sunrise through the windows

Hollowing it out wasn’t too tedious at first, because it was narrower at the top and because it was dirt instead of stone. As we got further down, it started to drag on a bit; fortunately, however, the space started to look pretty amazing as it got taller, so the effort was worth it.

Space is starting to form inside

Lots of blocks bouncing around

It's getting taller

Now it's really tall

By this point, we were getting close to the track level, so it was time to figure out exactly how the sides would look where they met the ground. (Which was actually a few blocks above track level, because of the hill that we were on.) Eventually we decided to add vertical sides with double-height windows; they were in slightly different positions on the two sides, because of the different configurations of the land.

The windows on the east side

Looking through the station

And now we’re done hollowing out that part. And it looks great! Except that it’s clearly too short in comparison to its width: we’ll have to extend it further in to the hill, and possible also further out the sand dunes; I guess I’ll work on that next weekend. That will require some amount of fiddling with the shape of the hill, but now that I’ve gotten past my need to leave natural features exactly as they are, I think that will probably improve the look of the hill: in particular, the east side was way too steep before.

An inside view of the full height

The west side of the station

The east side of the station

And, of course, we have to furnish the station. Not least, laying at least one set of tracks! (There’s probably room in the station for around ten sets of tracks, it’s something like 26 squares wide.) I think I’ll put half-height blocks on the ground, to provide a raised bed above the tracks. Also, I’m not sure about the lighting: Miranda was lobbying for having minimal torches, but I’m not convinced that’s the way to go, so I may end up climbing way up the walls to add more torches. And we’ll want some sort of big window high up in the front of the station, once we figure out where the front of the station actually is.

A good day’s work, I’m glad to see this finally taking shape.

Watching the sun set through the station

First, an interlude: I was sick a week and a half ago; and, while I didn’t feel like doing any design, I was up for some mining. Some pictures of that:

Lava beneath the latest pool I'd found

Redstone and iron

Gold and lava

More redstone and iron

Yes, I got 223 bits of redstone dust from this mining expedition alone

My current total stash

I did find some time for more serious Minecraft work this weekend, however. And after finishing the first floor of my new house, the natural next step was to extend above it. My plan of record was to connect it to a train station on the other side of the hill that the house is against, and I decided that it made sense to work on that, since that would affect the design of the second floor. So I dug some stairs into the hill, planning to join up with the train station.

Stairs in back of the house

Looking down from the top of the stairs

Once I got up to the top of the stairs, though, it wasn’t at all obvious what I should do. I looked around in various directions, and eventually came to the conclusion that it would be a lot easier to design and build the station if I actually had train tracks entering it.

The view across the top to the stairs

The train station location

The train tracks are going to approach from this direction somehow

So I decided to get more serious about planning exactly where the tracks will go. But first, a couple of shots of the house:

This house really needs a roof!

The graphics glitch on the stairs is fixed, yay. (And I removed the wood logs above the door, though I may put them back.)

So I marched across the desert. And marched back. And back, and back, and back. I was pretty sure that I wanted a track going in a straight line from the hills, which meant that I had to decide: 1) What elevation should it travel at? 2) Where exactly should the line be?

Eventually, I found an elevation that I was happy with, at a location that went between the two hills in question. The next issue was: where exactly should the station part be in the home hill? The problem was that the end of the home hill was entirely made out of sand: and that’s not a stable building material to hollow out. Again, after pacing around a bit (and climbing up and down the hill), I came up with a tentative plan: I’d dig a (quite deep!) trench through the sand part, and then a tunnel through a part where there was sand on top and rock underneath. And when I finally came to where there was dirt on top, I’d hollow out the middle of the mountain, making a gloriously large station.

The trench approaching the home hill

Looking out from the trench

The tunnel where the tracks enter the hill

With that plan in place, I built the bed for the tracks. I built it out of cobblestone: in some places, I replaced sand with cobblestone to provide a firm building material, while in other places I ran the tracks through the air.

Looking down while building an elevated section of tracks

The end of the tracks at the station near my new house

A view of tracks from below, heading towards my home hill

Another view of tracks from below, this time going towards the station near the new house

A random sunset picture I took while figuring this out

Finally, I started hollowing out the train station inside of my home hill. I still haven’t figured out the details: I’ve figured out how far it will go (the first picture below is a tunnel at the edge, going perpendicular to my tracks, though I may eventually fill in that entrance on the side of the hill), but the details of the interior layout are still quite unsure. It’s not even obvious to me what space I have to work with: I want to use the existing shape of the hill as much as possible, but it’s hard to figure out how much space there is inside without digging until I hit the outside.

A tunnel going into the side of the station

Looking up at some of the space that I'm just starting to hollow out inside the hill

So I’ve got a lot of thinking ahead of me; in fact, it’s not clear to me whether I should work next on my home hill train station or the train station near my new house. (I now have enough context that I should be able to work on the latter, unlike at the start of this post.) And I’ve got an awful lot of digging ahead of me in the home hill! Fortunately, I recently moved my Minecraft folder to Dropbox, so I can dig away at the hill on the laptop downstairs while watching TV or otherwise occupying myself.

I wasn’t as good as I sometimes am in taking pictures during the May VGHVI Minecraft session, but here are a few:

Pat continued work on the underwater tunnel; we still have quite a ways to go to cross the ocean, and the part of the ocean where we were working now was rather deep. So he had to do a lot of diving; I helped some with the glass placement. It didn’t help that the ocean above it was frozen over; eventually he placed some burning netherrack to melt the ice, so we didn’t suffocate while diving.

Towards the start of the ocean tunnel

The current end of construction; the hills outside are the ocean floor

Burning netherrack to melt the ice

Eric had been working on a secret project in the last session, as it turned out, and he finished it this time: a Skull Mountain, complete with lava flowing down from the eyes.

Skull Mountain

The base of the mountain, complete with burning sheep

There was a rather nice cavern inside, with a pool at the bottom.

Inside the bottom of the skull

Inside the top of the skull

I’m still not sure exactly where the skull is in relation to the rest of our landmarks. I started wandering back, and came across a cavern with a huge waterfall that somebody had clearly explored before, but I ended up just teleporting myself back.

A huge waterfall in a cavern

Miranda and Roger had been working on the area near the temple: Roger had been carving out land (for an acropolis, if I’m remembering correctly), and Miranda put up some rather nice lamps there.

Lamps outside the temple

Miranda working on a lamp

Temple and lamps during the day

Somebody added a bed to the altar

Miranda also finished off the train station, adding a rather nice roof with skylight.

Inside the train station

The roof of the train station

A couple of weeks ago, I’d laid a foundation for a new house, and thought a bit about how I wanted it to look; now it’s time to build! Of the building materials that I had easy access to, I thought wooden planks would look best, so I decided to start with that as the basic material for the walls. And I made some glass as well, so I’d be able to put in windows.

But first: there was a circular area nearby forming a weak center, so I’d planted a sapling in the middle of it. Which has now grown into a tree, and it looks a lot better! Still not great, though: I wish the tree were bigger. So I might chop it down and see if the roll of the dice gives me a better tree next time.

A circular area providing a weak center

The circular area with a tree in the middle

Anyways, on to the house. Along the front, I clearly wanted windows symmetrically arranged on both sides of the door; it wasn’t clear to me how wide they should be. At first, I made them three wide, but then the outside edge was too thick; maybe four wide instead?

Three wide and four wide windows viewed from the outside

Three wide and four wide windows viewed from the inside

Viewed from the inside, though, the four wide really didn’t look right: it was hitting right against the corner. So then I had the happy thought that I might want to treat the corner specially on the outside, too: that would get rid of the wide space. So I tried putting a wood column and a stone column on the corner.

Wood column on the corner

Stone column on the corner

The wood looked better, so I went with that. Thinking about it, though, made me wonder: since the floor of the house is raised, the plank area on the bottom of the house looks uncomfortably thick. Should I replace it as well? I tried out wood and stone there, but neither looked right; dirt ended up working better, however.

Wood and stone on the bottom of the house

Dirt on the bottom of the house

Next, I decided to attack the front door area. I wanted to make some sort of porch there; but maybe an accent above the door first? I tried stone, glass, and wood; wood won.

Stone above the door

Glass above the door

Wood above the door

With that, the front was in place except for the porch; before working on that, I fleshed out the sides a bit.

The side facing the pool, with door

The side facing the sand

The front at night, with torches

A sheep trying to glitch through the door

A chicken trying to glitch through the door

Next, the front porch. Miranda had showed me a trick involving stacking fences that you could use to build a column, so I decided to use that. But what should I put on top? At first, I thought birch might be nice, but when I actually tried it out, it looked ghastly; half-height wooden slabs looked rather nice, however. Though, looking at it, I’m no longer convinced that I need that wood accent above the door; maybe I’ll replace that with planks later.

Birch porch roof

Wooden slab porch roof

After that, I turned to the patio / pool area. Here’s what the view out the side door looked like when I started: I decided to get rid of the grass and thin down the border of the pool.

Facing the unfinished pool

I decided that half-height wooden slabs would work well here: a change in level seemed suitable, and slabs would give it a finished look. Here’s a picture of it in progress, and a picture from inside the house.

Building the patio

Facing the patio and pool from the inside of the house

I also put a fence around the patio, and stairs leading down to the pool. (I still have smooth lighting turned off, so the stairs don’t look right.)

On the patio, looking at the pool

Looking up from the pool

And finally, a picture of the current state of the front of the house, with the patio on the side. It’s probably not the most beautiful house in the world (and I’m sure there are building material that I’d like more if I took the time to make them), but, as is doubtless clear from the above, it could have looked a lot worse!

The front of the house, with the patio on the side

I’m planning to build a second story on top; I’m tentatively planning to make the second story a bit smaller than the first story, to help smooth out the transition to the hill that I’m building against, but we’ll see what looks best in practice. (I like the way the fence around the patio provides a change in height, too, I’ll want to work with that.) Before getting too heavily involved in that, though, I think I’ll dig into the hill first. The plan is for this building to connect up with a train station on the other side of the hill; depending on how that works out, I may turn the inside into one large grand entrance hall instead of having a separate second floor.

I recently ran across a reference to a Minecraft mapping tool called Tectonicus. It sounded interesting, so I thought I’d give it a try.

Actually, to be honest, I was a little nervous about giving it a try: discovery is a huge part part of the fun in Minecraft, so maybe I’d be ruining that? As it turns out, I didn’t have to worry about that, though: the surface view of my map is remarkably bland. Here’s what the area around my spawn point looks like in my map, along with a zoomed in view of the house: both of them are very much missing the character of the world and its buildings.

My spawn point and surrounding areas

Zooming in near my house

Part of what is missing is, of course, the caves. Which you could see some of on the edge of the map that it generated: here’s a picture of one edge of the VGHVI map.

Caves on the side of the VGHVI map

That picture does a great job conveying the romance of Minecraft to me: huge networks waiting to be found underneath, complete with lava! So I poked around and discovered that Tectonicus has a view that only shows the caves. Here’s what it looks like on the same portion of my map as the first picture:

Caves near my spawn point

Which is interesting in its own way: you can see my branch mine, you can see some of the stairs I built (especially if you zoom in: the tool presents a great Google Maps interface), and you can see that there’s a huge clump of caverns there, some of which I’ve explored but some of which I almost certainly haven’t, and which seem to reach all the way down to where my second house will be.

Still, the excitement really isn’t there: I need to be able to look inside buildings and to view the scenery from different angles and perspectives. I guess what I really want is a flying mod of some sort; though how much I really want that is debatable, I like walking from place to place and I like discovering.

After playing around with my own map, I switched over to the VGHVI map. That turned out a good deal better: after the first session, we’ve been doing most of our building above ground. Here’s a view of all of our major structures: it turns out that my minecart tracks actually make a nice ring around that area. (And I’m glad to learn where the bathhouse is!) Below that is a more zoomed in view near the temple, including some of the ivory towers and the train station and underwater tunnel that we’re building.

The major structures in the VGHVI world

The area near the temple

And, finally, here’s a view of almost all of the VGHVI map. Which raises some interesting questions: what’s that strange bit off to the north? Who put a pool of lava on top of a mountain there? It looks like we’ll have to build our underwater tunnel quite a ways before it reaches land, but that will be a glorious accomplishment in its own way: that actually makes me rather excited about continuing it.

Almost all of the VGHVI map

After last time, I’d figured out where I wanted to build a house: now, it’s time to start building. But first, some pictures from last time. (I did a lousy job of taking pictures this time as well, unfortunately.)

In the first one, you can (barely) see the outlines of the area where I want to build. It’s the back right side of that picture: there are hills to the left of and behind that area, with a pool and some greenery in front, and more greenery off to the right. The second picture is taken from fairly close to the sand hill in the back, looking in the other direction towards the green area in the front.

I'm planning to build on the back right side of this picture

A closer view of green area, looking back

I walked around that area a lot, trying to figure out where a house should be. Eventually, I homed in on the hill to the left: it’s next to a green area, with a cute little pond close to it. And that wall is uncomfortably steep; maybe if I build a house there, it can provide an intermediate step between the two, increasing their relation? (Levels of Scale) Also, there’s a bit jutting out of the hill, which you can imagine is a ruined wall to a house.

Hillside with a spur jutting out of it

So I decided to build there; and, taking that jutting out bit as a cue, I actually decided to build right next to the hill. Which goes a little against my plan of having an outdoor house, but only a little: think of it instead as being a transitional phase between my earlier cave-dwelling habits and my new desire to be out in the open. Also, if I built away from the hill, then I’d want to build pretty far away, otherwise any windows would be looking straight at a bunch of rock, which is no fun. And, finally, I’m planning to build a train station just on the other side of that hill, and perhaps also connect to some caves on the other side as well: so actually the new house can be the other side of the train station, part of an entrance gateway into a town I’ll build!

With that in mind, I needed to clear out space for the foundation. I decided to work with the dominant ground level; but of course I had to clear out some irregularities coming out of the wall.

Clearing out space for the foundation

A tentative foundation is in place

Like I said above: I spent a lot of time walking around. Was the foundation the correct shape? If not, which side should be longer? Eventually I decided that the shape I had was more or less correct, and that I’d have the main entrance be on the long side, parallel to the side of the hill. (Or you can think of that as the main exit, if this ends up boring through the hill and connecting to a train station on the other side.) If you’re facing the hill, a pond is on the left; I’ll put a second exit there, perhaps leading to a fenced off area between the house and the pond? I’m not completely sure. At any rate, I put a porch with some steps in the front, though I ran into a strange graphics glitch while doing so.

Front steps, with strange graphics glitch

I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do next with the house—I don’t even know what building material I want to use for the walls! (Hopefully Miranda will give me some suggestions once she reads this.) So I spent more time pacing around the area, thinking about the rest of the surroundings instead. Look at that second picture at the top of the post: the foundation would be on its right side, did I like the rest of that area?

My answer was: not really. The mixture of sand and grass is inelegant; also, there’s a grassy circular depression further back that is a center but not a very strong one. Here’s a closer picture of that:

A circular area providing a weak center

So I replaced some of the sand with dirt (which should be colonized by grass soon): my guess is that I’ll eventually replace more of the sand, but I was sure that I didn’t want any sand on the lower level there. And I planted a single tree in the middle of the circular area: my hope is that, once the tree grows, that will turn the circular area into a Strong Center.

The lower sand has been replaced with dirt

I've planted a tree in the circular area

With that, the area near the house is starting to take shape. First, a view of the front of the house (with smooth lighting turned on, which cures the graphics glitch).

The front of the house

Then, over on the left, will be a patio and a pool.

The patio and pool will go over here

A closer view of the pool

And I’m fairly sure that I’ll put more buildings to the right, though I haven’t worked out the details.

More buildings will go back here

Finally, here’s the view out the front of the house. I imagine I’ll take out more of the sand, probably removing all the sand on the level right in front of the house.

The view out the front of the house

That seems like a plausible story. What about the areas further from the house? There are trees there now; do I want to leave the trees in place, do I want to build more houses, do I want to make a farm? I’m not sure; I wandered over and looked around a bit, and I didn’t find any answers, though I did find a couple of small caves.

I'm not sure how to use this area with trees

A tiny cave beneath the grass

Another nearby cave

I’m pretty excited about this: it’s nice to have a new project to work on, and I feel good about how it’s gone so far. I’m definitely looking forward to next weekend: I’ll want to build the house up, though I do need to decide first what to make the walls out of…

I’ve been meandering around the last month or two trying to figure out what my next Minecraft project should be, but now I think I have a pretty clear plan. I want to turn the back of my home mountain into a railroad station; I’ll build tracks out of that leading to another settlement, and I’ll use that settlement as an opportunity to build an outdoor house or houses, in a way that teaches me more about Christopher Alexander.

So, this weekend, off I went! But first, a gratuitous sheep picture:

Hello, sheep

After saying hello to the sheep, I went south from the back of my home mountain. Here’s where the entrance to the train station will be, and where the tracks would most naturally go:

Trains will come out of here ...

... and head in this direction

My memory was that, if I go south a bit, I’ll run into terrain that is more interesting than desert but not super fascinating. Which is actually perfect for me: I want the terrain to give me something to try to harmonize with, but also to have enough problems that the presence of my buildings will have a chance at helping it instead of hurting it. And, after not too far, this is what I came across: that area to the right looks at least somewhat promising.

The first interesting terrain past the desert

So I tentatively thought I might build over there. But, assuming the train tracks didn’t turn, I would end up going to the left of that land hill instead of the right: maybe that’s where the train station will go? I decided to explore that way a little more.

A little further on on the left side

Two caves in the side of the sand cliff

The upper cave is moderately deep

The lower water cave is small but pretty

And I liked what I saw. There are two caves, one of which is small and pretty and the other of which is rather deep. So I can imagine connecting the buildings I build on the other side of that hill to one or both of those caves, and having some interesting mining as a result. I decided to press on still further south, just to remind myself what was there:

Several sheep splashing in some ponds

Lots of trees further back

Whoa, that's a long way down

There was some nice stuff, but nothing crying out to have me build a settlement there. I did chop down a bunch of trees for building material, though. So then I turned back and looked at the other side of that sand hill, to see if it looked like a suitable building location.

A circular area providing a weak center

A slightly wider view of the surroundings

I didn’t take great pictures, unfortunately: in particular, I didn’t take any pictures looking south at that time, though I’ll put some up in that post. But, basically, there’s a cute pond (not in any of these pictures), a circular depression that is somewhat interesting but could use some strengthening, some sand leading to a sand mountain, and some trees off to the side. So there were features that I could work off of, but also features that I could see improving.

So: it’s a plan! Build a train station, run tracks south, have a second train station to the left of the hill, and build a few houses on the right side of the hill. I’ll start with the houses, though, the train tracks can wait. But, first, a stake in the ground:

The future location of my second train station