Our April VGHVI Minecraft session was on April 28. Eric Swain decided to work on the towers that had been started last time: he finished the sky bridges, and also created a rectangle of glass that was floating unsupported in the air above the temple. Some pictures:

Finishing off the skybridge: because of a graphics glitch due to the height, I couldn't see Eric, so the glass was appearing out of nowhere!

The glass platform hanging above the temple

Looking down at the temple at night

The moon rising above one of the towers

The sun setting past another tower

A strange, perilous diagonal skybridge

I decided to experiment with power rails: they’re not as powerful as the boosters I’d been using, but they’re a good deal more straightforward and less prone to chaos created by cows. Miranda helped, and we ended up looping the rails around to the other side of the temple, so now they make an almost complete circle.

My first powered rail

Rails crossing a waterfall

The new end of the line

After that, we decided to build a train station near the other end of the line (right where the tracks had gone plunging into the lava, though we blocked that off).

Building a railroad station

On top of the railroad station

The cows really like that booster

More progress on the railroad station

Finally, Pat and Jonathan decided to build an underwater tunnel. They did that by building a wood core surrounded by glass, and then burning out the wood, which worked really well.

Burning out the underwater tunnel

A view of the burning tunnel from the surface of the water

The fire is dying down and the tunnel is appearing

Extending rails into the tunnel

The entrance to the tunnel

We do this every month, so feel free to come join us on May 26!

We’re planning to do VGHVI Minecraft sessions on the last Thursday of every month, which means that we had one on March 31st.

I spent most of my time experimenting with minecart boosts: I removed the circular boosts we’d had earlier (since they can apparently cause lag in multiplayer), and put in some boosts that looked like this:

One of the new boosters I added

They worked great: two of them provided enough power for a cart to traverse all of the existing track, including going up some hills. So I decided to keep going; rather than extend in the same direction, though, I thought I’d start looping back, maybe ending up at the temple from a different direction? I made a left turn, which led me into a mountain: it was a lot longer than I expected, but I tunneled through all of that, and fortunately no boosts were necessary in the middle.

The tunnel through the mountain

After that, I added another boost and then turned left, hoping I was close to the temple. That took me through some treetops:

Tracks across snowy treetops

Eventually, after adding another boost, I stopped; I’ll probably continue eventually, but as is the tracks are more than long enough for an entertaining ride. Here’s me giving Roger a push to make it to the first booster:

Giving Roger a push

Looking around, there are some familiar bits near the end of the tracks: here’s a view of the super tree at night, and of one of the new towers that I’ll talk about more in a sec.

The super tree at night

One of the new towers

A postscript on the train tracks: later in the evening, Jonathan helpfully popped out of nowhere, offering to give me a push. And, as one might expect from previous months, this offer turned out to not come without strings: the other end of the tracks had received a slight alteration.

A bend in the tracks, leading down to lava

Pretty awesome.

Leo built a nether portal, placing it right next to the statue that Nelson had created a few months ago.

A nether portal

Unfortunately, it didn’t do anything! (A pity, I’ve never been to the nether in person.) Talking it over, I remembered that I hadn’t turned on the nether in the server options; fortunately, somebody said that he’d heard that it didn’t work well and suggested I should make a backup, because when I turned it on and restarted, it was a complete failure: there was no world at all (not even the non-nether world from before), just us standing on bedrock. Oops. So I reverted to the snapshot I’d made, and we continued.

Back to those columns: several people decided to build some columns going all the way up to the top of the sky, with glass bridges between them. There was one tower picture earlier, here are a few more.

Looking up at a tower and skybridges

The entrance at the base of one of the towers

Up on one of the skybridges

Looking down at the temple complex from a skybridge

The plan was to have four pillars, surrounding the temple from a distance. I’m not sure whether we completed all of it this week, but you can see much of the scope of what was planned in that last picture. Here’s a picture of Pat working on one of them, and a view from the ground next to the temple.

Tower construction in progress

A view of some of the towers from the temple

Miranda built a house next to the temple: here’s an outside view and a view of the crops that she planted on its roof.

House next to the temple

Crops on top of the temple house

And Garenas built a bathhouse over closer to the spawn point: here are some pictures of that.

One of the bathhouse rooms

Columns (lockers?) inside the bathouse

One of the baths

The builder of the bathhouse

The entrance to the bathhouse

Lots of fun, and I continue to be amazed at the different projects we come up with (and carry out!) each month. If we follow our schedule, the next VGHVI Minecraft session will be on April 28th; subscribe to the VGHVI blog if you want to know for sure.

We had another one of our more-or-less monthly VGHVI Minecraft sessions last week; here are the pictures.

Roger and Miranda continued their work on the temple from last time. Miranda had some ideas for how to finish off the roof, and it looked great. Here are some views from inside:

Finishing off the roof of the temple

And now the roof of the temple is done

The sheep approve

And here’s the outside of the temple roof:

The outside of the temple at night

A top view of the temple roof

Miranda also built a fire pit near the temple:

Fire pit outside the temple

Don't fall in!

I’d been curious about how mine carts work, so I did some track building, with Jonathan and David Sahlin doing much of the work. Definitely an educational experience, it pointed at some ways in which my naive ideas for track building on my main world won’t work, and I clearly need to look into boosters. (Incidentally, for people who were complaining about lag: apparently circular boosters can cause lag in multiplayer servers, so that might have been what was going on. I’ll replace them with something else the next time we play.)

Near the start of the minecart tracks

Looking back along the minecart tracks

Looking back along the second segment of minecart tracks

The sheep approve of the boosters, too

The tracks end near the temple

Minecarts litter the ground

At some point, Jonathan commented that it had been a few sessions since he’d done something evil; the next thing I knew, he was giving himself lots of fire, and we had a lot fewer trees growing nearby than had been the case.

Trees on fire

A closeup view of one of the many conflagrations

The arsonist in action

He then gave himself a bunch of arrows, and started work on a huge tower, looming over (threatening?) the temple. I’m still not sure what he intended do do there, and eventually he demolished it, but I got some pictures in the mean time.

Jonathan starting work on the tower

The top of the tower, in process of deconstruction

Towards the end of the session, Miranda and Roger built a dirt house near the temple. I also took a picture of a pool at some point around here; I’m not sure of the context, but I like it, so I’ll throw it in.

Outside of dirt house

Inside of dirt house

Pool

Another first-time participant was Pat Holleman. He helped with a lot of this, but then he went off and built some sort of super tree structure. (I forget the term he used: basically, you use wood blocks to build a huge trunk, and then plant trees high up along it.) Here are some pictures:

Super tree from a distance

Inside the trunk of the super tree

One of the platforms on the outside of the super tree

A great time; we do this about once a month (though with the GDC interruption, the next session might not be until the first half of April), anybody is welcome to join us!

I’d been in a Rock Band drought during the job search, but that’s changed this week: I got in a bit of pro keys practice over the weekend, I had a very pleasant Monday evening playing Rock Band with some soon-to-be former coworkers, and this week’s VGHVI game was a playthrough of The Clash’s album London Calling.

And wow, what an album, and what a way to experience it. The VGHVI gaming sessions have been going on for over two years now, and Jonathan, Roger, and I have been there for almost every one. This is our eleventh time playing Rock Band together (we go by the band name Μῆνιν Ἄειδε), I really enjoy playing with the two of them, and it’s a very good way to experience albums in particular.

Somewhat reluctantly, I played the drums this time, but it turned out to be a great choice. I could go through the whole album on Hard, most of the time it was challenging but not stressful, and there were definitely moments when I was proud of myself. Really, I should embrace the notion of playing drums on VGHVI Rock Band nights: I wish I were better at drums, and it’s a low-pressure way to experiment (especially because other people are there to provide extra star power and to save me if necessary).

Which isn’t to say that I’m not looking forward to playing the album on other instruments! Liesl and I will probably go through it this weekend, which will give me a chance to try it on guitar, and I imagine I’ll find time to do it on bass eventually, too. Singing, who knows; and the few “keyboard” parts that I tried the other day turned out to be not very interesting horn parts.

I mostly play Minecraft alone, but once every month or so, the VGHVI folks get together to work on a communal server. We did that last Thursday, here are some pictures.

In our previous session, we’d focused on one cave near our spawn point. The digging there culminated in hollowing out a massive cavern to start a tree farm.

Green shoots deep underground

There’s lots of room to grow, it’s quite tall and wide.

A long way up!

A Long Way Across!

Hello trees down there! (From about halfway up.)

This time, though, people’s attentions were elsewhere. Nelson left us a snowman near the entrance to the old cavern:

Thanks for the present!

Several of us (especially Jonathan) went and explored another cave nearby, with a quite large natural cave system.

The entrance to the new cave

Water in a huge cavern in the new cave

Deeper down, there was both lava and water

Jonathan explored very deep indeed

But we didn’t spend all of our time underground: Roger decided to build a temple, and Miranda and I helped him.

Roger has started clearing out space for the temple

Roger and Miranda have made a lot of progress

Now all the pillar bases are in place

Gold pillars on the inside of the temple

White pillars on the outside of the temple

A bloody altar in front

A view from a higher angle

Looking at the temple from the ice

Lots of fun, I’m looking forward to how the temple will turn out and what project we’ll start next. Feel free to join us, follow the VGHVI blog or twitter feed to learn about future gaming sessions.