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VGHVI Minecraft: January 25, 2018

Feb 10 2018 Published by David Carlton under Uncategorized

For the first Minecraft session of 2018, I worked on the train station that I’d started in December.

Here’s where I’d left off; I’m going to build a train station over where I have the tracks, and then probably fill in the indentation above with two more floors of buildings.

Here’s a higher angle; the walls look like they should go where the grass currently is, just past the stone.

One more row of stone. (Not that anybody will be able to see it once I’ve built the walls…)

The right side wall, with a larger door that will connect to the rest of the complex.

The left side wall, with a smaller, outside door.

The view between the walls, where the tracks will extend.

Putting a front facade in place.

The side view after adding the facade.

That gave me the basic outline for the train station. I was planning to extend the sloped part of the roof most of the way back, stopping where I reached the depth of the non-indented part of the mountain walls. And I didn’t have it slope all the way to the middle of the roof, because I wanted to do something a little different in the middle, working in glass somehow.

Looking at those doors, though, the light wood above them didn’t seem quite right. So I decided to look at the doors on the building on top of the mountain, for comparison.

One of the doors on the top of the mountain; I like this red brick as an accent.

The other door up top.

Red brick looks better here.

But lighting is important, otherwise the brick won’t have the proper glow.

The current state of the structure.

After fixing that, I started work on the roof.

Extending the roof out from the facade.

A close up view of the roof.

The view on the inside, leaving room for something else in the middle.

The front is pretty plain, hopefully it’ll look better once I’ve aded something else in the middle?

Here it is with glass at the top.

This idea I had of glass at the top didn’t magically fix anything; the front, in particular, looked pretty boring. So I decided to spend some time trying to improve that.

First I tried banners; I didn’t really like either the shape of the banners or the shade of the red ones, though.

Next was pairing the red brick from above the doors with some of the grey wool that I’d also used as an accent up top; but that grey stripe didn’t work for me.

Removing the grey stripe wasn’t any better, though: balance was missing.

This is starting to get somewhere: use the grey as an accent, and have a bit more space above the red?

Two strips of grey works well, too. But do I really only want one row of glass?

Filling in the gaps between the grey with glass.

That seemed at least potentially workable, so I went to cap it off to see how it would work as part of a complete roof.

Capping off the glass with a stone top.

The view from the inside; I like how the glass band works along the sides.

A bit of light always helps, though.

That seemed good enough; now to put in the finishing touches. First, filling in the gap in the mountain wall so I’d have a place for the second story.

Building up the mountain exterior straight up from where I’d ended the roof.

Here’s the inside view; pretty narrow, my guess is that I’ll want to dig into the mountain some?

Adding a little more definition to the entrance.

So that’s the train station; I’m not completely in love with it, but I think it’s okay? The next steps, in whatever order, are:

Installing the train tracks to connect the station with the main city.
Putting rooms above the train station in the side of the mountain.
Creating some buildings that connect the train station to the exit of the passage through the mountain.

Next I went to check on other people. Pat didn’t have anything that he wanted to show, but Dan and Miranda had both made some progress.

Roger’s cathedral is along the planned path for the train tracks back from my mountain to the main city; sadly, I don’t think it will ever get finished…

Dan’s art gallery area.

His area is actually pretty close to the city; now that I know where it is, I can just travel there instead of teleporting.

This flower thing is new; it’s built on top of where he was excavating with TNT last month.

A top down view of the flower.

The stem goes down quite far; he’d excavated a lot!

The base of the flower.

Looking up from the base.

A closer look at the terrain nearby.

Zooming back out a bit.

And Miranda had built a lovely little floating island:

Miranda with her parrots.

A floating island with a bottom of colored glass.

A top-down view of the floating building.

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VGHVI Minecraft: December 21, 2017

Jan 14 2018 Published by David Carlton under Uncategorized

The November Minecraft session didn’t work out because of computer problems; here are pictures for the December session.

At the end of October, I’d finished the path down the mountain that I’d been working on. The end of that path is at a passage through the mountain; I had a vague idea that there would be some sort of commercial space around there and/or the exit, with a train station somewhere near the outside exit of the passage. So I wandered around for a while trying to figure out the details: what did I expect the passage to look like, and where exactly would the train go?

Here’s the view approaching the mountain; the passage exit is the hole that’s behind a tree in the middle.

Here’s the lowest ledge on the path down the valley in the middle of the mountain, above the final descent into the passage through the mountain. It’s more plain than I’d like, but I decided not to decorate it right now.

Here’s the inside end of the passage, leading to the path.

Here’s the view further down, this is pretty much the whole length of the passage.

The view to the outside from the end of the passage.

Trying to figure out where the train station should go; I’m thinking I’ll put it on one of the three areas where the stone is visible.

Kind of thinking this is the right place.

I eventually decided I thought that the leftmost of the spaces with visible stone was best: it’s a little far away from the entrance, but that will give me an excuse to build a path and/or building connecting the two. Also, there’s quite a bit of space in the mountain above it, and the hollow there doesn’t look all that great; so I can use the train station to fill in the bottom half and I can build something else above the station for the top half.

Before working on that, though, I wanted to clean out the passage: I didn’t necessarily know what I wanted to build in there, but it didn’t feel like part of a livable complex.

Here’s the outside end; a little narrow, also not sure what I think about the change in level.

Here’s the view from the outside; too steep a climb.

Starting to attack the raised entrance by leveling the floor out.

Now it’s wider with more regular walls.

This niche is still a little messy, not sure what I want to do with that.

Here’s the in the other direction, from the stairs.

Still too tall; I need to figure out what I’ll do about that.

The problem with leveling out the floor is that the water is at floor level; adding a fence to create a boundary.

Another angle on that scene.

After that was a little under control, I decided to work on the train station. Specifically, I wanted to get the floor plan in place: that would fix the stone gap in the ground, and that would tell me where the walls go.

Here’s a random picture of the sky that I took around the point.

I want to put a train station in here; two tracks? Three tracks? How much space between them?

Let’s go with three tracks; one side is wrong, though, and the switches are too clumped.

This looks better.

That’s what I did; Miranda was mostly gathering a flock of parrots.

Giving orders to her parrot followers.

Flying along with the parrots.

Playing music for her parrots.

Dan built some more buildings near a gallery he’d built a few months back:

Floating structures with horizontal bands of color.

Here’s the view over the structures to the art gallery.

The view in the other direction.

Then Dan decided that the next step was going to involve digging down instead of up. Which takes a while, so he decided to help things along with TNT.

Setting up the TNT.

It’s about to go off.

Boom.

The view after the dust settles.

Preparing to go down another layer.

Looking at the bottom after the next explosion.

Too much water, let’s dam it off.

After the dam is in place.

Finally, pictures from Pat. First, the last building he finished:

Tables, chairs, and windows.

The view at the back of the room.

Bookshelves and armor.

The garden behind the building.

The view from above.

And then some work on platforms that turn into little gardens:

Working on a new platform.

A pool with a tree, chairs, and flowers.

A garden with chairs behind a building.

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VGHVI Minecraft: October 26, 2017

Nov 24 2017 Published by David Carlton under Uncategorized

At the start of the October Minecraft session I took pictures of what Miranda and Pat had been working on in September, because I ran out of time for pictures that month.

Miranda had built a cute little house in the middle of a forest:

The door to the house, with a helpful purple sign

Inside the house

Closer view of the work / sitting area

The sleeping nook

Some storage

Without that purple arrow it actually really would be hard to see

And Pat was finishing off his Roman villa:

The courtyard of the villa

One of the side halls

The dining room, with a window on the outside

The other side of the dining room faces the courtyard

A purple bedroom

A red bedroom

Another hallway

After that, I went back to my construction project. I’d built a path partway down the wall, and I knew I wanted it to end up at the cave at the bottom, but I hadn’t yet figured out the details: should I try to go straight down, should I build a walkway around the side, or what? Here are some pictures of the situation:

The top of the wall, where I’d already built the path

The middle section, with a tree and the top of the waterfall

The bottom: this whole wall is pretty tall!

After wandering around a bit, I realized that there was actually space for a natural path between the waterfall and the tree; that worked much better than trying to hug the wall on the other side of the tree. So I could continue my existing path to a stone landing, then go down next to the waterfall, and then I’d reach a second landing, this one of grass. That wouldn’t get me all the way down to the cave, but it seemed like a good next step.

A potential path next to the top half of the waterfall

The bottom view of that path

Extending the stairs down to the landing, and clearing it out

Safety is important

People are going to want to rest, let’s add in some furniture?

A table with a flower

Here’s what the waterfall looks like after the stone landing has had its initial finishing

The landing at the bottom is definitely going to need some work

Putting in the stairs

Evening out the landing

Both landings could still use some work; the grass one in particular is too plain, I think I leveled it out too much. The basic structure looks right, though, so I needed to figure out next how to get from the grass landing all the way to the bottom of the cave. And, actually, it turns out that I could use the same trick: there’s room for another path down on the other side of the water.

Here’s where the second path will go

Looking down into the cave after building the stairs

The place where the stairs meet the pool is a little rough, I’ll want to improve that

Looks nicer after I filled in that indentation with grass

I’m really happy how that path worked out: now there’s a path all the way from the building on top of the cliff down to the cave at the bottom, it makes sense in context, and I left the scenery almost entirely alone while doing that.

I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do next; I might work on the grass landing a bit, I might work on the cave interior, or I might jump straight to building a train station to connect it to the spawn point? Dunno.

While I was doing that, of course, Miranda and Pat were at work. Here’s what Miranda was building:

A big glass window on a wall

I guess there’s a villager inside??

Looking through a window next to a tree

Inside the building

I have no idea if this is the same area or somewhere different that I just thought looked scenic

To be honest, I can’t remember how those pictures fit together: are they all the same area, are they two areas, or three areas?

And Pat had added another building onto his floating city:

Looking through the brown middle floor of the new building to the Roman villa

There’s a grass roof on top

The bottom floor is a featureless grey

Here’s a corner view

Inside the bottom floor

A bed on the other side of the floor

A closer view of the basin

There’s a swimming pool outside

Water flows down through a hole in the pool

The other side of the building

A bottom view

Sunset

Shadows of the buildings on the water

That waterfall was the first thing connecting the floating islands to the ground, so Miranda decided she’d try to swim up it:

Partway up the climb

Breaking through the cloud layer

The end is in sight!

She made it! Or did she?

It turned out, though, that the hole there wasn’t big enough to swim through! Whoops; though that’s probably better from the point of view of the safety of the people using the pool…

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VGHVI Minecraft: September 28, 2017

Oct 21 2017 Published by David Carlton under Uncategorized

In the September Minecraft session I got too distracted figuring out what to do next on my building to take pictures of what other people were doing; sorry about that! But at any rate here’s pictures of what I was looking at; at the end of August my question was what to do with the chasm that my building was over. So I started out spending lots of time looking at that.

The door over the chasm in question

The view across the chasm

Further down the wall of the chasm – it’s pretty tall!

There’s water at the bottom

And a cave behind the water

I hadn’t actually realized how interesting that part of the mountain was: the top part of the chasm is just stone, but when I got to the bottom, there was a rather lovely tree, waterfall, and cave. So that made me think that the bottom of the chasm was a strong center of its own, and whatever I did had to acknowledge that.

But first: explore the cave.

There’s light at the other end of the cave, it’s actually a tunnel

The view when I exit the tunnel

The mountain near the exit

So that’s not just a cave, there’s something really interesting going on there. I think that, ultimately, I probably want to build out the interior of the tunnel, with small buildings of some sort near there, and then have more buildings by the exit? Probably a train station, too: the tunnel exit is on the side of the mountain towards the spawn point, and it’s not that far away from the spawn point, so if I built a train between the two, it would help bring the world together.

Which just makes the problem bigger, it doesn’t actually answer the question of what to do with that exit over the top of the chasm. I wandered around a while thinking about that:

The building at moonrise

The sun is going down on the other side

If you wander further down the chasm, the top slopes down and there’s a notch

This is the water off the end of the green area behind the building

There’s a cave here too! (But it’s not as interesting.)

I can’t remember where this water is

Looking around near the tunnel exit, this is probably the best place for a train station

The water inside the tunnel

A few torches so you can see the inside of the tunnel better

Returning to the doorway

After all that wandering around, I basically had two options. One is go straight down the chasm from the doorway; the other is to go along the edge on the right side of that last picture, until you get to a gradual slope. I might actually ultimately end up doing both of those; for now, I’m going to concentrate on the former, but I am also going to establish the area on the right as worthy of its own, in a nod towards the latter.

Putting a railing in towards the front of the mountain

A higher up view, so you can see the viewing area I’ve created

Starting to build a path down, but regular stairs are a little steep

Half blocks work better, though these ones are the wrong color

Let’s go with this

Done with one row

Almost done with a second row

Going back to the top, adding railing on the inside

Here’s the third row

I’m actually not sure what to do next

After three rows of steps, I was starting to reach trees. And I’m honestly not sure what to do next: I can build a fourth and fifth row, which should get me to the bottom, but I’m not sure it will gracefully merge into the bottom area with the tunnel entrance. Or I can start crawling around the back of the chasm; that will let me avoid the need to solve that problem directly, and will instead give me a point of entrance in a second place in the bottom of the chasm? I’m tentatively thinking the latter sounds better, because it seems easier and gives me a hint in how to turn the bottom of the chasm into a space of its own, but I’ll need to look harder at the details next time, I seem to recall something about the shape of the walls made that not entirely straightforward either.

While thinking about that, I decided to add a few more safety features to the path:

Let’s add a railing in front of the door, so people don’t step out and immediately plummet to their doom

Here’s the other side of that new railing

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VGHVI Minecraft: August 31, 2017

Sep 04 2017 Published by David Carlton under Uncategorized

In the August Minecraft session, the next question was what to do with the surroundings of the building I’d been working on.

Approaching the mountain

Getting closer up

At the back of the building, looking towards it

There was a green area behind that I was thinking of a sort of garden; I had a vague idea that I might fence it in? But when I started wandering around, that didn’t work: it was too large, and it was also hilly enough that a fence didn’t feel like a natural boundary. So I looked around, trying to figure out what I could do.

Around one side of the building, I saw an area that just didn’t look good; when I cleaned it up a bit, though, it actually did turn into a nice coherent area. So I started out emphasizing that, which ended up turning it into a patio.

Uneven territory right next to one side window

There’s a pretty sharp edge right past that tree

Creating a fenced-in patio

Here’s the view past the tree

And here’s the view off the side next to the building

The view of the whole thing

Looking at it from inside the house

That was pretty successful: I’d started with something that looked actively bad (as opposed to the main part of the forest back there, which was fine on its own), cleaned it up, and turned it into a nice little area of focus. So maybe I could repeat that idea elsewhere? The next question, then, was how to connect it to the door out the back of the building: just being adjacent via a window seemed a little funny.

Looking along the back of the building towards the patio (which is around the corner)

Maybe a wood path would work?

Here’s what the end of the wood path would look like

Stepping stones are a better fit

The stepping stone version at the patio

Later I came back and made the border more uniform

At this point, I had a bit of a design language: I’d try to find spaces that particularly stood out (and I’d clean up spaces that look ugly), I’d use fences to enclose them as appropriate, and I’d have stone paths between them, with spaces between the stones reflecting that this is a loose federation of spaces rather than a tight and dense neighborhood. And I actually had another immediate place to put this into action: the area right outside the door was a bit of mess, so I cleaned it up too.

These lumps and holes don’t look good

We’ll start by leveling it out more

Next, fence it in

Looking straight out the back; and we don’t need fences everywhere, the dirt on the side is a good boundary once it’s been made a bit less lumpy

Wandering a bit further afield, I found a relatively empty flat area that was overlooking the chasm in the middle: it had a nice view, but needed a bit of punctuation. This time I decided it didn’t need a fence, but maybe a fountain in the middle would look good?

Here’s a potentially interesting spot with a good view

Starting to construct fountain walls, but this doesn’t really look right

I like it better built into the ground

Here’s the end of the path to the fountain; and stone stairs seemed like the best way to handle the change in level

Finally, I started going further back looking for one more spot to emphasize; I found one area with a steep drop over a nice view under a tree.

Looking back towards the house partway down the hill

I think we can do something with this view under this tree

Fencing it in and trimming away some dirt

Here’s the path leading back there; you can also see the branch off the left to the fountain

Let’s add in a wood floor

And a table and chair, to make it easier to enjoy the view

That was enough for the back of the building; my next question was what I should do with the door over the chasm. I’ll work on that in September!

What should I do with this doorway?

That’s what I was doing; Pat was finishing off the latest addition to his city, in the mean time.

A purple carpet

More purple upstairs

A tree and flowers in the middle of the courtyard

The vestibule behind the entrance

The street right outside

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VGHVI Minecraft: July 27, 2017

Aug 19 2017 Published by David Carlton under Uncategorized

In the July Minecraft session, I wanted to continue working on the building from June. I had one floor of an L-shaped building, unfurnished except for a placeholder carpet; so the current questions were how I wanted to furnish it, and how to add a second story.

In one half of the room, I put a dining table

I don’t really see a good place for some stairs, though

The view up top

I didn’t see any place where stairs would really fit. So I decided to go with a sort of military theme, with a sort of watchpost on top instead of a full second floor, and with an idea that maybe a ladder would make more sense in that situation? (Because, of course, it’s really easy to carry armor and weapons up a ladder?)

Notches around the roof edge; conveniently, all the sides were of an odd length

Trying to figure out if I want the corner notches to match the corner pillars or the other notches; dark was clearly better

Placing an arch, at sunset

I extended that into an entire covered area; it looks a little odd with only pillars at the corners, though

The balance is better with a pillar in the middle

Here’s what it looks like from the roof

Adding a second one for the other half of the roof

Here’s what it looks like from farther away

So now the building is pretty much in place; I needed to add more military decorations up top, and fill out the other half of the downstairs.

Here’s some armor

Anvils and a chest for supplies / repairs

A first stab at the other half upstairs

Putting in a ladder

The top of the ladder

Making a research area downstairs

Here’s the view towards the table

A compressed red carpet under the chest

Adding in a record player

A stack of records next to it

A broader view of downstairs

The magic table fit better downstairs than upstairs, so let’s put a furnace upstairs instead

There’s some snow nearby on the mountains, so let’s add some on the building, too

Some more snow

Snow on the rooftops

The building with snow

That was a good stopping point for the building; the questions for next time are what to do with the garden on the back, and what about the chasm in the middle.

Here’s the garden and the house

There’s water behind the garden

Here’s the view of the house over the chasm

A nighttime view

Setting sun

Further away at night

Next I went to visit Dan; he’d built a modern art museum

The museum

Blue and green works

Green and white

A closer view of the white statue

Blue and purple

A top view of the blue statue

A view from higher up

Trees nearby

A view from a little farther away

There’s a tower further away; you can barely see the museum

Pat was adding another building to his floating city, a sort of sandstone and clay building with a large courtyard.

Inside the courtyard

A higher up view

A room around the edge

Looking into the middle of the courtyard

Looking up at the roof

The current state of the entire city

And Miranda was taking another swing at the Howl’s Moving Castle-inspired building. (It’s on a pretty small island, so it’s a little abstract.)

A mushroom island nearby

The back of the castle

The front of the castle. (Still in progress)

A side view

Looking at octopi through some reeds

Looking at the castle from the mushroom island

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VGHVI Minecraft: June 29, 2017

Jul 19 2017 Published by David Carlton under Uncategorized

For the June Minecraft session, I started off working on the house I’d begun in May. I was happy with the location, but I didn’t know how the back and side walls would work, and I hadn’t finished off details at all.

I’d ended May experimenting with adding colored columns; so I started off June finishing the columns. And then I moved on to the back and side walls, in ways that gave me access to the garden in the back and the chasm in the middle.

I settled on a darker grey for the color of the columns

Here’s the back wall and the back door, with smaller windows next to it

For the side door, a wider opening fit better

A view out the back at the trees

A different angle at the back, with more sky visible

With the walls and doors in place, I wanted to tackle the ceiling and floors next.

I had two ideas of possible wood colors for the ceiling

Looking at it on the inside, I like both colors, but I think the light color looks a little better; also, the ceiling is a little low?

Maybe move the ceiling up and leave in the dark as a support beam?

That fits together a lot better

It looks a little funny on the outside, especially since I’m tentatively thinking that I’ll add a second story: I’m not sure a light band fits on the outside

Let’s have the support beams go through to the wall but leave the floor inside the building

Light up the room a bit

Let’s use the same light wood for the floor

Here’s the other side of the room

Now the room felt good as a room. The doors seemed a bit plain, though, so I wanted to mark them off more:

Here’s my first experiment: I liked the red, but something didn’t seem quite right

The second experiment was worse

Ugh, this one didn’t work at all

Good color and texture

Here it is on the other door

Looks good from the outside, too

And it looks good through the trees

Here’s some placeholder carpet on the floor, though I’ll replace it with furniture next month

A random view down the middle; one future question is how I’ll build that up

Here’s a waterfall in the middle

A view from the distance; I do think the mountain looks better with the building on top than it did without it

I was pretty happy with that session’s work: I’d gone from sketched out walls to a first floor that fit well. But there’s still a lot to do:

Add in furniture
Add at least one more floor
Think about the garden
Think about the chasm in the middle of the mountain
Maybe put in some rails to connect it to the main city

So I’ll probably be working on this for most of the rest of 2017.

Miranda was starting construction on an island, making a building with a Howl’s Moving Castle / Baba Yaga vibe.

A full view of the current state of building

A mushroom cow sitting under the building

A whole mushroom cow family

A box

There’s something inside the box!

And then I went to check on Pat.

He’d started his next building, but hadn’t gotten very far

The finished attic from his previous building

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VGHVI Minecraft: May 25, 2017

Jun 18 2017 Published by David Carlton under Uncategorized

Pictures from the May Minecraft session:

First, the obligatory wandering around and glitch pictures:

The sky at sunrise

Lots of octopi waiting for the water to fill in

A pig is taking a swim

A loading glitch at the side of a mountain

Another loading glitch

I don’t think this is a loading glitch, I think this is a result of algorithm changes between when the segments were generated

A hole in the snow

Nighttime view of the roller coaster tower

Nighttime view of the megatree

A glass door in a hillside

Mountains in the distance across a field

An evening view next to a lava pool in that field

I decided that I wanted to start building something; I didn’t want to build completely from scratch, though, I wanted to find something in the environment that a structure would fit naturally into. And eventually I found a mountain with an oddly flat top, I thought a fort might fit well on top.

Thinking of putting a building on top of this

A rock/water/lava combo when exploring the ravine under the mountain

A top view that gives an entirely misleading notion of the height

You can see the height difference (including the hole in the middle) much better from this angle

Starting to place the outside wall

Looking through one of the windows at sunset

One version of window placement at an inside corner

Another version of window placement

The view to the outside, not sure which direction this is in

The view down the middle

Another outside view; I think this is towards the back?

The outside wall is in place

Looks way too bland from the outside, though

Seeing what it would look like with stone bricks instead

Experimenting with something different in the corner

I still need to figure out what to do with the corner, and then do the same to the rest of the wall. More of a problem is that I actually don’t know yet what I want to do with the walls in the other two directions: I don’t know how to handle the wall next to the central hole, or even whether I want there, and also how I want to handle the transition from the stone area of the top to the grass / tree area of the top. So I’ll try to figure that out next time. (And I hope I can find the location again! Maybe I should build a train there from the spawn point?)

Finally, some pictures from Pat’s latest addition to his floating city: