Our May 2013 VGHVI Minecraft session had rather more going on than normal, with three large construction projects (and two literary projects!) going on at once.

First, Miranda finished off the library that we’d started work on last time, starting with the floor:

Starting work on the library floor

Most of the floor is completed

Breaking through to the outside

A view of the completed floor from the outside

Once the floor was done, she added bookshelves:

Bookshelves are in place

Miranda, the bookshelves, and a sunrise

Finally, she added a central seating area, along with some final touches.

Central seating

The door, windows, and artworks

While she was doing this, I poked around the outside and noticed a fairly large cavern underneath the house. So I tried building stairs down to the cavern; if I’m remembering correctly, the stairs actually exited in a different cavern? (A much much larger one, which Jonathan had started exploring years back?) I’ll take another look this month.

A cavern under the house

Stairs down to the cavern

The bottom of the stairs

While Miranda worked on the library, Roger was continuing the work on his church:

A side view of the front edge of the church

Filling out the foundation

Partway through filling out the foundation, Roger ran into a glitch which meant that, for a while, he had gold but not stone; he took advantage of that.

The gold front

Gold pillars and floor

The view from above

Dan, meanwhile, was busy extending a tower he’d worked on a few months back, in both directions:

That is a very tall tower

But after completing that he moved on to building a platform in the middle of an inlet:

Building a platform

Pillar with decoration

The view of the bay from above

I poked around the bay a bit, and noticed a cave on the left; it forked, and the left side was standard but pleasant, while the right side was a little more interesting:

A spooky cave on the left side of the bay

Zombies in the cave

Zombies approaching the platform

Dan was unfazed by this, and instead spent his time building fishtanks around the platform. He did, however, memorialize the zombies’ presence in prose.

The zombies watch Dan build a fishtank

Filling the tank with water

A record of a glorious victory

More fishtanks

If I’m remembering correctly, Miranda was actually the first person who suggested adding books; she (naturally enough) put one in the library. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure book, with many more branches to come:

There’s a storage area next to the library seating

GOLD! I need gold!

The February VGHVI Minecraft session was a small one: Miranda and I were the only people building, though one or two other people dropped in to chat. As is my wont, I started by flying around taking pictures; this time, a window in the ground caught my eye:

What’s that window doing on the bottom of that pit?

That window actually showed a view into the very first mine complex that we built in this world, albeit in a later room; I didn’t take any pictures of that room, but I did wander into the library across from it, and ran into a surprise:

Oh, hello there!

I see you peeking around the corner

Sorry, I didn’t mean to interfere with your browsing

After that, I flew around a bit; on a cliff wall near the temple complex, I ran into some more cows:

Cliff-dwelling cows

And that alcove between them caught my eye:

Alcove in cliff wall

So I decided to start digging, for the first time in ages, and Miranda decided to join me:

Miranda and I start digging

We started with a corridor going into the cliff and then going out to the left, where the cliff ends (just beyond the left cow): we put in a sitting room there, with a nicely furnished couch and bookshelves. And a big window, looking out on the temple complex.

The view out over the temple area

A lamp next to the couch

A door on the other side of the window

Bookshelves in the back of the room

That door on the outside leads to a natural set of stairs up to a roof area, so I went out there to explore a bit:

The window from the outside

The view from the roof, showing the towers

Wandering around up there a bit, I decided that we could build a set of internal stairs leading up to the roof as well, so we did that next. (With our traditional roles of me laying out the basic geometry and Miranda making it habitable.)

Working on the stairs

The view from the roof at night

The view of the temple complex through the window at night

The finished sitting room, including carpet

We left a good-sized chunk of space between the sitting room and the stairs; we decided to turn that into a workroom.

Carving out the workroom

Installing some furniture

More furniture and decorations next to one of the doors

Putting in a gate and flooring

That made a good start on the house; time to give it a name.

Cows. They’re remarkable cows.

But there’s still a lot to do! There’s a fair amount of space within the cliff on the level that we’re on, we just have to decide how to use it; there’s also room for at least one story above us, possibly for two of them. I’m sure we’ll get back to that this month.

Pictures from the November VGHVI Minecraft session:

Roger started on a new building project. It’s a church, it seems to be mostly floating in midair, and it’s going to be a big one! So far, there’s only an outline in place.

Sketching out a floating outline of the church

The steps to the church, in driving snow

The floor plan starts to become apparent

Miranda, of course, was the other person working on a building project; she was fleshing out the building that I’d been calling the Wood Temple, but which turns out to be a more secular sort of hall. She finished off the interiors this month.

Working on the interior decor

Books here!

Putting finishing touches on the library

Looking into the armory

Looking into the library

Looking into the supply room

Inside the building/farming supply room

Inside the armory

Pictures from the October Minecraft session:

I mostly wandered around. I started off with a few pictures of the center of town:

I don’t think this picture was on the side of the tower the last time I looked?

The edge of the city at sunset.

And then, when wandering over to see what Miranda was doing, I noticed lava flowing down the side of a mountain, and decided to strike out to the west. (Or at least what I think of as west, before sunrise/sunset got moved 90 degrees.)

Lava flowing down a mountain. Or at least a hill.

The snow on this tree makes it look like a face

Misty forest at sunrise

Valley between cliffs

Mushroom island

The only person I saw doing any building was Miranda, who was finishing off the wood temple she started last month. It’s done now, and looks rather lovely:

Starting the evening’s work on the temple

Looking into the birch room of the temple

Inside the birch room

The birch room from above

Looking into the jungle wood room

Inside the jungle wood room

A reminder of what last month’s pine room looked like

The central room

Finishing off the temple roof

The temple roof at night

Pictures from the September 2012 VGHVI Minecraft session. Which was a mellow one – Miranda was the only person doing any building, and she showed up late, so mostly we just chatted. But here’s what she was working on: she started a wood temple complex, near the earlier fire temple.

Outside the wood temple

Miranda and Roger examine the inside of the temple

More of the temple complex

Tearing up the floor in preparation for finishing it

The finished hallway floor

The finished floor of the room

Miranda doing one last inspection

A nighttime view from the roof

Some pictures from the August 2012 VGHVI Minecraft session. First, Jonathan and animals:

Jonathan thinking about his next move

His loyal dog watching him.

Surrounded by animals on the ice

Miranda built a midair mine:

Miranda’s midair mine house

Top view of the midair mine

Miranda and Jonathan both experimented with redstone, though I’m not sure either of their creations survived:

Miranda experimenting with redstone

Looking through a passage at the temple

Cats examine Jonathan’s project

Side view of Miranda’s project

And finally Jonathan decided to build a house for his cats, and Miranda followed suit:

Jonathan building a house for his cats

A cat checks out the house

Miranda starts work on another house

Cats examining the blue house

Inside the blue house

Pictures added to both houses

Decorated front of the blue house

A cat, the blue house, and the pool

Partway through June, we tried out a Minecraft mod pack called Tekkit as our VGHVI game. (Patrick Holleman was kind enough to host.) I just wandered around taking pictures of the new blocks; here they are.

The first thing I saw was strange orange pipes; they turned out to be the top of some sort of automatic mining device.

These are the tops of automated mining devices

Looking down into a mine

Looking back into the mine once I have my draw distance fixed

Sunset above the mine

The bottom of one of the mine pits

Then I went into the nearby castle:

Castle entrance

An indoor farm

Some strange colorful pipes, I think for sorting

Our genial host

Pipe system on the roof

More roof ducts

Some pipe machinery in the basement

The output of those pipes

There's a lot more stuff in the item list

After wandering that castle, I traveled to another hall; I think that one was Pat’s, but I’m not completely sure.

Approaching our destination

Inside the hall

Looking down from the roof

Walking through rubber trees

A strange apparatus

Computer monitor

Outside view of hall

Traveling back through the snow

An interesting tour, and I liked the way Tekkit was packaged; very convenient. There’s clearly a lot of stuff there; I didn’t have the energy to really dig into it (frankly, I’m still scared of getting sucked back into Minecraft, and it could be a lot worse with Tekkit), but it wouldn’t surprise me if Miranda has already started playing Tekkit on her own. Many thanks to Pat for showing us around!

Not many pictures this month: people either weren’t doing much building or weren’t telling me about it. First, a couple of shots of older scenes:

A deep cave with a waterfall going down into it

Looking down from the mossy tower

Dogs inside a house

Speaking of animals, Jonathan was spawning cats and kittens, here are some pictures:

Cat by a tree

Jonathan with cats

Cat and kitten in snow

Miranda and I decided to return to the cave that we dug out in the very first VGHVI Minecraft session back a year and a half ago. First, a picture from the door to the cave:

Moon through cave entrance

I dug out an alcove on one side, with a magic library in it:

Working on a library

Putting an alcove in the back

And Miranda built a somewhat more elaborate set of rooms on the other side:

Rooms with hearth

Sleeping alcove

You can tell that we both like libraries

I took way too many pictures this month, so I’m just going to dump them in here with minimal commentary. First, a bunch of wandering around pictures:

Tower from below in the haze

Top of tower in the haze

Glitch in water

Water at the top of a mine

Flying over the desert

Cliff face with arch

Underwater hills

Underwater lines and structures

I saw my first jungle:

Jungle oasis

The border of the jungle

The interior of the jungle

Looking down from the treetops

Looking up from the jungle floor

I wanted to be able to find my way back there, so I thought of making a map; the map didn’t update after the initial picture, though, maybe it doesn’t work when flying or something?

Trying to map

Sunset behind a snowy mountain

Sunset in valley

Glow of a house at sunset

Cows on a cliff

Chunk loading abstraction

Cave in cliff wall

Snow and sand

Squids and a duck. Uh, chicken.

Miranda is having to take state tests at school, and is none too pleased about that, so she decided to create a piece of art expressing her feelings.

Anti-testing art

Instructions for proper use

Snowballs work too

The artist examines her art

Dan was working on some sort of tower, here are some pictures of the work in progress:

Dan working on a tower

Outside the tower

Looking up at the center

Tower door

Roger was building pyramids; it was dark, and unfortunately I only got one picture:

Roger building a pyramid

And Pat was working on a sandstone palace, it looks like it will be huge when it’s done.

Pat building a sandstone palace

Palace door

Palace from above

Palace wall

Building the palace floor

Working on the palace tower

Tower and moon

Tower window

Inside the tower

I spent the last twenty minutes or so watching Miranda build a fire temple:

One wall of the fire temple

Purple flames

Looking up at the roof

Looking through the gate

Oblique view

View from above

Starting work on the floor

Laying out the glowstone

Underwater view of glowstone

Let's add some lava

The finished floor

It burns!

Enclosing the temple sides

Administrative note: the May VGHVI Minecraft session will be on May 24, not May 31.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures in the March VGHVI Minecraft session, but here’s what I’ve got. First, the obligatory tourism shots:

Some sort of nether creature greeting me

Island and ice palace

Super tree and floating castle

Train station

There were a few more chunk errors than normal, one of which I thought was very entertaining:

Chunk error

Flying squid

Island cut in half

The main construction project was Pat extending a tower he’d built previously to take advantage of the new height limit:

Starting to extend the tower

Skeleton of the extension is in place

Working on the top of the extension

Lava viewed from below

The tower lit up at night

Working on the bird

Bird mostly finished

Spread wings

The final bird

Looking down into the mist

Tower in the rain