For the February Minecraft session, I knew I wanted to continue the improvements I’d made in December. I’d built some rooms in the back of my cave; the question, then, was how to extend those into a complex.

Looking at the room in the back

While wandering around, I noticed what looked like the sky poking through over on one side; I didn’t believe that that was really the sky, I thought it was probably a glitch, but when looking at that, I realized that there was not only a cave passage there in the wall that I hadn’t realized, but that passage connected to the outside.

Is this a glitch or an actual hole?

So that got me thinking about expanding laterally from the room in the back; I decided that I would build a balcony around three sides of the central cavern. The question then was exactly how that would work; I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use the existing railing and cut into the walls a bit, or if I wanted to extend out into the center. The former would cause questions about my stairs, the latter might make the balcony cast too much of a shadow beneath it.

Planning how the balcony will extend from the back room

What am I going to do with these stairs?

I think this lava is from the cave passage that I discovered, but I could be wrong; actually, thinking about it more, maybe I discovered another cave passage behind that back room, when I dug into the walls?

I eventually decided that cutting away the wall, moving the stair back, and having the stair mostly exit into the balcony instead of the back room was the right approach. And, if I’m remembering correctly, when I was moving the stair, I dug into another cave behind that room, maybe that’s where the above picture is from? At any rate, once I did that, I got the balcony working nicely on the three non-water sides of the cave.

The completed balcony on all three sides

Here’s a view from the water towards the back

That glitch is still there: it’s a persistent rendering glitch rather than a loading glitch

And the stairs ended up working okay going out into the balcony, with the help of cutting out one corner.

The reworked stair exit

The reworking caused some steps to be visible in the ceiling

Another view of the back, where you can see the stairs a little better

I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do next; I might add a fourth side to the balcony, but I’m not convinced I can find a way to do that that will work well with the water. Maybe I’ll explore the newly discovered passage more and turn it into another official entrance into the cave, maybe I’ll build more rooms.

Pat, meanwhile, was finishing off a lighthouse he’d built, and he added a ship:

Ship and lighthouse

Steps to the lighthouse

An entrance gateway

A better view of the ship

And then he started building something more abstract in an ice forest, it’s a rather beautiful tunnel going down into a big space that he excavated with the help of some TNT. I don’t think he’s done with it, but here’s the current status:

A view from the top

The upper half of the tunnel down

The transition in the middle

The chamber at the bottom, going down to bedrock

The glass tunnel from the outside

In our December Minecraft session, I got back to building out my cave. There were some natural rooms in the back that weren’t really connected to other parts of the cave; I decided to tackle those.

First, I looked at the top room. If I’m remembering correctly, it connected on the inside to the room on the right of the cave; I decided to also connect it to the outside, by building some long stairs up and to the outside. That turned out to lead to an outside room where I had put some workbenches.

Stairs leading up and out on the right side

There’s a lower room in the back as well, though. I decided to connect it first to the upper room, and then to the first room that I had finished on the left side:

A view of the two rooms in the back of the cave

A new door leading to stairs to the bottom back room

Here’s the top of those stairs

Then I squared out that room, added railings and a floor, and put real stairs in the passage instead of blocks.

The room is enlarged and squared out a bit more

Adding a floor

I moved the stairs back, to have room for real stairs instead of blocks

Inside the stairs

While this was going on, Pat (I think, it might have been Dan?) built a path in the air extending out perpendicularly from Dan’s path. Partway along there, Miranda found a village, and decided to improve it.

Village in the rain

The side of one of the houses

The center of the village at night

One of the gardens, with a path next to it

Miranda worked on the paths and on making the heights sensible. And then there was one house that was actually completely inaccessible: if I’m remembering correctly, it had a door, but the door opened up into dirt? It ended up making sense to put a tunnel where the door was, with a path above it at the same level as other parts of the village.

More garden / path improvement

A house and garden

Inside one of the houses

Making the buried house accessible

People had been trapped in the house

The tunnel entrance outside

The village well

Pat, meanwhile, while building the path, found an area that he thought would work well for a lighthouse.

The finished state of the castle he built the prior month

A sandy peninsula

Working on the lighthouse

The base of the lighthouse

Inside the lighthouse

The lighthouse at dusk

Meanwhile, Dan spent time widening some of the tunnels in his path.

Widening out the tunnel

A tunnel through a forest

Hello, chicken

After doing this, I did a render of the whole world, you can see some of these features there.

In our November Minecraft session, I wanted to figure out what to do add next to the cave. I’d been tentatively thinking I’d add more rooms around the central area, maybe even some walkways, but I also wanted to see if there were nice room-shaped spaces below.

I ended up wandering around the whole time, though, not really coming to a conclusion. First, I looked at the main body of the cave:

The cave entrance

Looking down from the entrance

And then I wandered around a lot below the area I’d been working on in October. And, I will say: those are some good caves there. They don’t necessarily show up well in pictures, but they’re impressive when I’m wandering around, and also seeing the lava rivers so early made me realize just how deep the main cave went.

A lava river

Water and lava meet

A mineshaft in the distance

A second exit

That cross-shaped exit was already familiar to me: it’s on the other side of the river of the cave, about halfway between the cave and Pinetown. So yeah, the whole area is riddled with caves; I certainly didn’t end up exploring the whole thing.

None of that suggested an obvious place to build, so I went up to the main cave to see if there were other room possibilities that I missed. And I did notice some rooms high up on the back wall, maybe I can do something with those? I’m really not sure…

Two alcoves on the back wall

A view of the lower alcove where you can see it in comparison to the first room

The view from the lower alcove

The view from the higher alcove.

After that, I wandered over to see what Pat was doing: he was building on top of an overhang a few hills away. (There really is a lot of neat terrain in this area!)

A castle on an overhang

Working on a gazebo in the middle

Inside the tower

A view from the other side at sunset

In the October Minecraft session, I continued building out the cave that I’d been working on in September. I’d been vaguely thinking that I would build a room on the other side of the water from my earlier room, but there really wasn’t a good space there for a room; while figuring that out, I decided to at least build a passage from the right side of the water (if you’re facing up the waterfall to the entrance) to the left side.

The left side was somewhat lower; I decided the best way to connect the two was to dig a passage through the rock behind the waterfall.

The entrance to the back hallway

Inside the back hallway, with stairs down to the far side

Needs a door

Here’s the exit on the other side

I still wanted a room, though; I’d been digging through a fair amount of stone, so I wondered if I could fit a room in there, with a glass front that you could use to look out through the waterfall.

Starting to dig out a room behind the waterfall

First version of the glass wall

That was too cramped, let’s go three blocks deep

Add a bit of a fence to demarcate the entrance in the back

At this point I had to deal with Minecraft fluid dynamics. I tried various locations for the cutoff, and I was frustrated by the fact that, as far as I can tell, adding a block and then remove it can permanently alter the water flow. So, while I don’t think the front of the room stuck out more than had been there before, the water didn’t flow as gracefully as I remembered it.

Here’s a view again from the earlier room

Here’s a view from a higher angle, so you can see the glass

Once I had the outlines fixed, I added some more decor.

Adding some furniture

The view towards the rear

The bottom of the stairs needs a door, too

With that finished, I needed to figure out how to use the space at the bottom of the stairs. The part next to the water was pretty narrow, so while it made a nice viewing area, it wasn’t going to turn into a room. But when I turned around and faced the back wall, I realized that there were a series of passages there that I could turn into a wide, graceful set of stairs that ended up curling back to the water, beneath the new viewing area.

The water viewing area by the bottom exit from the passage behind the water

In the other direction, there’s a place for a passage to start curling around to the left

The stairs continue to curve

The bottom of the stairs

At the bottom of the stairs was a lovely little pond. If I’m remembering correctly, the dirt was already there, but I added the grass. And then if you follow the water along there, you’ll see where it starts connecting back to the end of the waterfall.

A pond at the bottom

Following the water back

Standing on the stairs, so you can see both the pond and the viewing area above

The view from the viewing passage up top, facing the stairs instead of the water

That’s what I spent my time on; Pat was also there, and he finished detailing his pyramid:

The finished pyramid

Then he followed me to my cave, stopping off at the fort (which I think we’re calling Pinetown?) to make sure villagers were doing okay and rescuing some golems from the water.

Rescuing golems

This lookout pig does not, however, need rescuing

After looking at my cave, he poked around a bit in the surrounding terrain, and found some places where he’s considering building next.

A dramatic floating island

A mountain rabbit

I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do next, but I think I’ll continue with the cave: I suspect that there are more spaces that are worth paying attention to, and for that matter some of the spaces that I mentioned above could probably use some refinement. I’m also going to look up and see if there’s scope to do something interesting there, with bridges crossing the space.

For the September Minecraft session, I decided to start work on a room inside the cave I’d been obsessed with for the last several months: there was an area not too far in off of the water that looked like a reasonable beginning of a room so I decided to pretty it up.

Here’s what the front looked like initially

And here’s what the back looked like

Here’s the view up the waterfall from the front of the room

I started by putting in a floor; then an alcove in the back seemed like a natural storage area, and finally I added some furniture. It’s still pretty basic, especially the front of the room, but it’s a start.

Adding in a floor

Armor and bookshelves in the back alcove

A couch and a painting

A side table next to the couch and a work area on the other side of the room

Then I decided to build some stairs up the waterfall, to connect the room to the entrance:

That protuberance up there is a little ugly

Starting work on the stairs

While I was in the middle of this, Pat told me he’d finished the glass structure that he’d been building in the ocean last month, so I flew over to see that:

Looking up from the bottom

A glowing floor

The view from high above

A closer in top view

Looking down from the top; the line is Dan’s path

Then I flew back to continue my work; I ran into a neat looking round passage on the way.

Round passage

Inside the passage

Finally, I finished the stairs, and looked around to see what to do next.

The top of the stairs; I gave up on zigzags here

The finished stairs

The entrance looks cleaner now

Here’s what the path looks like near the room

This is on the other side of the water; I think I’ll build there next time

Pictures from the August Minecraft session:

I wandered around my current favorite cave, trying to figure out if I could see a way to decorate the waterfall side.

Looking up the waterfall to the entrance

Peeking behind the waterfall

This bit next to the waterfall could turn into a room

Looking down from above

Then I flew back to the stockade, poking into a cave that’s between it and the above area.

Flying back to the stockade

There’s some water down in the cave

A room next to that water

The water flows down into darkness

The water splits in half

I’d never noticed that this house looks like a monkey’s head

After that, I went to check on what Miranda was building; she’d glassed in and lit up a piece of rocky shore.

A glassed-in bay

The bottom of that area

It’s wet out there

The view from above

Pat, meanwhile, had decided to build a huge glass structure in the middle of the water, close to Dan’s path:

Glass and sand in the ocean

Looking out at an island

There’s Dan’s path

It’s dark underwater here

Here’s the whole thing from way above

Finally, I followed Dan’s path back home. I decided to visit the original cave that we built way back in 2010; it’s kind of falling apart. Maybe I’ll try restoring it some next time…

This door has seen better days

Another unfortunate half door

In the July Minecraft session, I decided I wanted to keep on building in the circular cave I found. But, when I looked at it, I couldn’t think of ways to work on the main cave in ways that would help more than hurt it:

Looking at the entrance

Looking down into the cave

But then I noticed a small cave on the other side, with a pool in there, so I decided to fiddle with it.

The stone wall in front of the side cave; I carved a path into the stone going around it on the left

The pool inside the cave, I think this is probably the view from the path

I added a wooden fence on the edge of the water on the side of pool inside the cave; this is actually looking out across the water into the main plaza

A banner I hung in the back of the cave

I put some plants in the back, though I don’t think it turned out very well

Some more random decor

Then I decided to fly around a bit and see what other people were doing.

Snow on top of the area I’d been working in

Looking down at the stockade town Pat and Miranda had been working on in previous months

A forest with lava

Pat and Miranda had moved on to a nearby forest; one or both of them were building treehouses. (I can’t remember the details of who built what.)

That large trunk is an artificial tree, there’s also a path in the treetops behind it

A closer view of the treetop path

Inside the treetop room

Looking down into the large tree trunk

After poking around, I tried to go back, but I got pretty lost; but Pat mentioned that he’d found the path that Dan had been working on for probably a year now (though Dan is far beyond this point), so I went and found that and then followed it back to the city by the spawn point.

Some cows I met while I was lost

I found Dan’s path

A village by the side of the path

For the June Minecraft session, my dilemma was that I liked the village that Pat and Miranda had built, and I was interested in exploring near there (and maybe working more on a nearby cave), but it was really far from home. I’d been thinking that maybe I could build train tracks, but I wasn’t looking forward to that; fortunately, Pat had a better suggestion, namely build train tracks in the nether! (I hadn’t realized that one nether block was equivalent to sixteen regular blocks; good design decision, that.)

A villager contemplates the river

Building a nether portal

The portal is active

I spent a long time staring at this – not sure why it took so long to load

A building housing the nether portal

We decided to both build train tracks, so away we went. For some reason I didn’t take any pictures of the construction process, and actually the photo hotkey I was using ejected me from the train, so I didn’t take pictures riding it, either! But here’s some pictures of the two ends.

Runaway trains, from when I tried to take pictures en route

Both our tracks, at the start

Pat’s tracks at the other end

My tracks at the other end

The portal at the other end already existed: in fact, Miranda had built a building near there, that had since gotten partially destroyed. And there were actually two portals in the real world leading to the one nether portal; one was less well placed, so I destroyed it and relit the other.

Partially destroyed library

A duck is surprised by my appearance through the portal

Looking over to the city

The ruins of the wrong portal

Relighting the correct portal

For our May Minecraft session, we pretty much hung out in the same place where we’d been in April, where Pat and (towards the end) Miranda had been building a sort of stockade village.

I flew around for a bit, and ended up returning to a large, strangely round cave nearby:

Flying around in a rainy sunset

The entrance to the round cave

Looking down into the cave

Coordinates, for my future reference

I wanted to do something with the cave, but I wasn’t sure what: the entrance in particular was so big around round that I wasn’t sure what I could do that would make it look better instead of worse. I eventually decided that I didn’t like the area right outside the entrance, so I wanted to put some color there.

The first version that I actually took a picture of. I liked the black and blue border, but the gold was a bit much.

Green, maybe?

Or red?

How about purple?

Emerald, to match the texture of the blue?

Diamond?

Those were all too gaudy; maybe some gold ore?

Diamond ore?

The ores didn’t work. White?

I’m tired of doing these one at a time, let’s look at three options at once.

Black, but a darker black (and a different texture) than the outer ring.

I liked the black best of the options so far; maybe add a white dot in the middle?

Or a white triangle?

A gold triangle, maybe?

Or a gold dot?

What if I stick a torch on it?

Or leave the torch but ditch the gold dot?

I kind of liked the look of the torch, but it seemed a bit weird sitting there on the ground in the middle, so I went back to black.

Lots of work for a carpet. And I still don’t know what to do with the cave itself! Though I later returned to another part of the area surrounding the cave entrance, this time a ledge high up on the right:

Adding a railing and leveling out a ledge

Putting in a chest and workbench

Anyways, enough of that area. I went back to the stockade village (not very far away at all):

A nice wood / river between them, you can barely see the roofs of the village

What’s that small hole on the right river bank?

And then I saw a small hole; I went in to explore, and there was a massive cave inside! I didn’t take too many pictures, but it was one of those great Minecraft moments, where you never know what will happen when you enter a hole or go around a corner.

Lava visible through a cave tunnel

Emerald ore

Some mine shafts

Back outside

Anyways: the village. First, Pat and Miranda finished it off a bit more:

Finishing a house

Beds inside one of the houses

That room’s ceiling

A house by the river

A view from the top

Then, once they’d gotten the houses habitable, they started spawning villagers.

Spawning a villager

More villagers

The villagers examine the structures

Inside a house

The village at dawn, with lanterns added

Inside the main building

Villagers outside at day

They spawned a golem, too

The golem is in the water

One last view of the whole village

Pictures from the April Minecraft session. First, some wandering around; some of these were actually oddities Miranda noticed and showed me:

A random sunset picture

A water glitch

A strange strip of snow

A decently large floating island

Turns out that there were lots of animals on top of the floating island

Lava in a grotto

Miranda found a desert village, and decided to work on it:

The desert village

Another view

A ring of lights at night

Meanwhile, Patrick decided to extend the fort he’d built the previous month:

A bridge crossing the water, and walls on the other side

House number one

Working on house number two

I wandered around nearby, and found this strangely round large cave opening

Then I went back to Miranda’s village; there was one villager who was very persistent about walking in a circle.

A villager walking in a circle

He’s still at it

Other villagers have gathered to watch him

Here’s the whole village at daytime

A sudden desert/grass boundary nearby

Dan, as he has been for over a year now, is continuing to build a path in a line; he hit a mountain at about this point and started digging through it.

Dan digging through a mountain

And then Miranda decided to join forces with Patrick.

Patrick had built a third house

Miranda building a dock

Making one of the house entrances look nice