(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
I'm ready to start on my "Fallingwater". So I pop back to the Winter Tower. I want to have Mystcraft books for a link and I need one more page without Generate Platform. So, mixmixmix and -
Oh, so NOW I get infralinking. AFTER I've already put in a trophy for the Nether Link AND a trophy that isn't for a build. Well, whatever. I'll use it at the Fallingwater end so if I ever decide to change I can use it for a within-dimension link nexus.
I'm going to want a lot of Arcane Lamps to light up the spire without littering it with torches. I decide to use a whole stack of Amber, which will make sixteen. I have to go around the tower a bit to put together all the materials, and make 16 Redstone Comparators by accident because I'd forgotten the recipe (which calls for Daylight Sensors). I then discover I don't have enough Nether Quartz left for 16, so I settle for 8. So my scrambling for Amber has gone a bit overboard, although it's comparatively easy to get lots of Nether Quartz if that's the goal.
I collect some wool, check the farm, and start a batch of chickens. After I start, I check the pen and find there was *already* a batch there which I'd swear I'd not put there. I butcher them quickly as the chicks are popping out, losing a few chicks to the sword area of effect attack in the process.
After that I collect some dirt for layout purposes, board my boat, and head off. (The boat is already loaded with glass, which I'll probably use a lot of). I tried to duplicate the missing arrow bug in a test world so I could fix it but I failed - in the test world everything is fine. Maybe it's related to the name change? But, in any case, I'm operating by dead reckoning.
I seem to be doing OK at first but after a while I reach the cliffs of Episodes 44 and 45, which is quite a bit east of target.
As I boat west I check for my old fishing shack, superseded by Lazy River Landing both for fishing and emeralds. A little bit of Mangrove-dodging later and:
There's my destination. Flyingwater, perhaps? You can see the silverwood I intend to build near to. There's a bay that would be perfect for mooring the boat but it's entirely enclosed so I stop the boat outside.
The big overhang has to be lit to stop spawning so I use the first of my Lamps. Then I stop to consider my plans. As of yet, I have few details in mind. My rough idea is a fairly explicit homage to Fallingwater with a vertical blocky grey tower (of Andesite) and large yellow viewing balconies (of Komantite).
You can see, right behind the Silverwood. a hill on the hill. Part of the plan I've settled on is a viewing area on that, set as far *away* from Flyingwater itself as possible for a better view. Ideally, the build itself should also be a view from further to the right.
I wander about for a while, looking at various angles and considering various plans. The hill in question is actually almost hollow with a roughly spherical area with three exits, one to the left in that picture, towards the big waterfall, one just to the right of the silverwood and one facing to the right in that picture (north). I decide to build in that space itself for starters.
A waterfall right next to the Silverwood flows into the hollow so I block it off with dirt while I make plans.
I've not yet got a secure area so I pillar up to snooze. Really looks like a good choice of location, though!
This is the view of the opening to the north, the one to the right in the pic I was using for planning. It's not so clear here; I should have taken the picture from further up. I decide to convert that into a viewing window. I'll put a floor at that level, which conveniently is also the level of the two exits.
The floor is big and with some draft framing for the window uses up the four stacks of dirt I brought. Surprise, not enough dirt!
The opening toward the big waterfall I use for a viewing balcony. The flooring is Siltstone I'd brought from the Landing for decorative purpose. It turns out to be not much to look at, but that's OK because:
It's a delight to *be* on with the soothing sounds of flowing water, an upclose view of a complicated waterfall, and FlyingWater overhead. I am having a little trouble with safety issues with the messy glasswork - I'll have to come back to it later.
I put glass into the roughly rectagular frame of the viewing window. My plan is to make the frame of Andesite Smoothstone but right now it's just dirt as I haven't mined or roasted any Andesite yet. I'm moving away from my explicit homage to Fallingwater but trying to stick with the principle of a building that look like part of the landscape. The Andesite frame will look kind of like part of the hill - on the left there's already a natural straight section - but at the same time will be rectangular enough to look artificial. So looking kind of natural and kind of artificial, as Fallingwater does.
Here's the view from the window, from the inside on the still-dirt floor. The Halcyon days glass is a cluttery texture and that somewhat detracts from the view. In addition, it's one of the less impressive views from the location. But from THIS location even the lousy views are great!
The last entrance, next to the Silverwood, I plan as the front door. The symbolic path will pass next to the Greatwood tree and then the Silverwood and to this door. There's a smaller viewing window here as well.
Next episode: time to start collecting resources.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
You seem to be a little flustered this time around.
Also, I'm interested to see how you pull off stuff with glass panes. Frankly, I've all but given up on using them for anything but the most basic basic basic 2x2 windows because they act so weird.
Flustered? No, I didn't feel flustered at all. The building process here is very different from my usual one because I'm trying to fit into the landscape rather than impose a plan on it. Even my rough plan heading in - a tallish gray center building with balconies - got jettisoned once I was there. I generally do a lot of build something - check the look - rebuild as necessary - etc. but of course I'm doing that even more here.
I have no problems with large windows, non-rectangular windows, or even windows wrapping around corners. There are three basic rules: vertical windows only, solid glass sheets (actually sometimes you can put a hole in the middle), and completely enclosed with solid blocks (so no stairs, fences or glass blocks). Examples in this world are the view windows in the trade hall, the corner windows in the Winter Tower trade hall, and the stained glass in the trophy hall. Those corner windows even break the complete enclosure rule, but since it's only one block on a corner, it comes out OK.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
At this point I want to start using the target materials, not just dirt placeholders - partly to see what the final product will look like - and partly because I'm out of dirt.
Well, that bay needs an entrance - and the barrier's made of Andesite - hey, two birds with one stone!
I start carving, but pause to take this shot. People familiar with my mod might be thinking "hey, I thought Climate Control was supposed to suppress those derpy near-shore lakes". And, it does, although not perfectly. But this isn't a section of enclosed ocean. It's actually Flying Mountains, as demonstrated by the vibrantly green ferns on that little spot of gravel. Flying Mountains has, as I've mentioned, both above-ground and below-ground sections, for a number of reasons.
Initially I have a bit of a hard time getting the water to turn into source blocks, but I get it all going after a while, with a little help from my bucket.
When I think I'm ready, I bring over the boat. But, I discover the activated boat is larger than it looks and won't fit through. I enlarge the channel twice before I can finally get the boat through and even then it's very S L O W as apparent a 2 block depth isn't enough and I'll need to make it three.
But I can get the boat through (and I have a lot more Andesite than I'd figured). It's night, so I sleep out on the boat.
Aaahhh.
I make a furnace and toss in a stack to roast. Now I want some Komantite and this I'll quarry from a mine underneath the base. I continue my ladder shaft down to the 50's and then start tunnelling towards the Komantite I can see above-ground.
I hit at least three caves in a relatively small tunnel. I have negative interest in caving right now and don't clear them. Here's the blocking walls I used to cross one.
Eventually I reach Komantite and quarry a couple stacks.
I put some of that in to roast, but I'm running low on coal.
So it's out the front door to chop some wood from the Birch Hills along the coast. Birch is the most farmable tree so this worked out.
I start in, chopping away with my conventional Diamond Axe as I don't need the special feature of the Axe of the Stream on a Birch.
There have been a couple of cows about, and one is kind of following me. At one point I turn around to see:
The cow managed to kill itself on a slope with no damaging drops. I guess it suffocated itself. Minecraft animals are just amazingly stupid.
I replant the birches a little more spread out as the tree canopies were connecting, making harvesting a bit more complicated. I also manufacture two Highlands saplings: Beech (effectively a large branched Birch), from a birch seedling and a birch log, and Poplar (a tall cypress-shaped Birch) from a birch seedling and an oak log. I plant each to see how they look. Forests generally look better with a mix of trees, so I'll try to create one.
I clear a little bit of the path leading to the front door. The Flying Mountain is more overgrown that it seems because there are a lot of the small jungle-style bushes, enough to interfere with sight lines and getting around.
After putting a stack of wood in to roast, I start on the window frame. On viewing this, I decide symmetry is more important than maintaining existing terrain and trim the left side (which is actually natural) to only one wide.
Next I start on a sunroom/viewing room on top of the hill. I build another Andesite rectangular frame, set one in and two back from the window frame for relief. Unfortunately you still can't see the relief.
Meanwhile, I've roasted up some Komantite and use them for the "beams" over the entrance. Although I'm not doing an direct homage to the real Fallingwater, I am using the idea of a grey main building and Komantite extensions.
I decide to put something in between the upper and lower level to try to emphasize the difference. Modern design relies a lot on nice plants, so, I go harvest some of the lilacs from the forest and plant them there.
They look nice, but they don't break things up. Notice the roof - it's not irregular, it blends in with the spire of Flyingwater Mountain behind it.
Now I take off the top of the hill, where the viewing room will be. Thaumcraft staves with Excavation Foci are very convenient for digging dirt - they move dirt quite fast, and they don't break. The color text in the Thaumanomicon implies it's good for stone too but I find it's too slow.
I go to the main room, fill in a few spots in the floor where I'd run out of dirt, put the dirt away, and go upstairs to finish the walls. As soon as I go up I realize I've got the floor one block below what's left of the hill and that will interfere with view. So - I go back, get the dirt I'd just put away, and put a layer back onto the hill. Efficiency!
Now I want to put up walls to the east and west. I decide to just try flat Andesite smoothstone walls. Normally big flat walls are a no-no but I think on the outside it will be covered by part of the remaining hill on the east, by the entrance on the west, and on the inside I can decorate. It's also a modern-style build, so "big, flat, and boring" is more excusable.
The view from the west afterwards shows my plan was correct. I'm helped by the nice texture of the Andesite, which looks like the kind of fancy stone preferred for a midcentury modern building.
The exterior shape is nearing completion so I cross the lake to the north and go around the far shore, taking pictures as I go. On the whole I'm happy with the effect.
This is, I think, the best view. The build succeeds, I think, at looking like a human construction and yet also like a part of the landscape. That's the feel of Fallingwater I was trying to capture. The building shows many elements of the midcentury modern style - large flat planes combined in irregular shapes, quality materials, extensive use of plants and water features, lots of glass, and integration into the landscape. That's one of my principles when building - "Other people are often smart!" Many excellent architects spent their lives working out the midcentury modern style, and they worked it out pretty well. It's usually easier to build on other people's ideas and work than to reinvent the wheel. You'll see farther standing on the shoulders of giants.
Next episode: Some detailing work.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I want to be able to see Flyingwater at night so I fly up to place Arcane Lamps.
This is the view of Fallingwater from above. I had to put in a mostly glass roof because Flyingwater is so tall the roof blocked the view from most of the room.
Initially I place 3 Arcane Lamps but that turns out to be not enough. Flyingwater is big! I end up placing 6, which along with the 2 in the build has chewed up my entire supply.
The Beech sapling has finally grown. I was expecting a large multibranced Birch but I get:
Not actually a vanilla tree - it's a bit asymmetrical - but not big and pretty either. I don't know whether I've been unlucky or whether it won't get big in this biome. I chop, make another Beech sapling (the leaves are just Birch so they drop Birch saplings) and replant.
Next is the waterfall viewing balcony. I love to maximize my views, and I have a trick for that with fencing. I alternate stone walls and wood fences. The fences and walls don't connect, so you have a minimally obstructed view, but they're still close enough you can't go between them.
I use Komantite walls, of course. The view from the balcony is great, but from the ground the fences and walls floating in midair look a little weird. Earlier, though, when I'd had a fence underneath my fencing to stop that, I'd ended up stepping on the lower fence and going up a half-block, making the upper fence no longer effective for safety. So for now I just leave it.
I realize I don't have a sunset view area (gotta have a sunset view area!) so I convert the west entrance of the observation room to a balcony. Actually, it's still an entrance for me with my jump boots. It's a one person world so I guess I really don't have to worry about visitors.
The inside of the west wall also needs some work.
This picture is a bit old because I forgot to take a pic right before the change. The center is the exit; the left is the ladder down to the lower floors, and the right is just there for symmetry. I cover them up with doors for appearance:
Now I want to put a floor in the main room. I want to try a patterned floor and initially think about doing some kind of flowerish thing. Eventually I decide to trim it down to a single Komantite block for the carpels and 4 Andesite petals around it. Initially I'm also thinking about having it in a green floor but since I just did that for the mana bean farm I decide to use the Siltstone I'd brought (with a floor in mind, actually).
The pattern look workable, but as soon as I start I realize I need an equal exchange focus. When I knock out blocks they often fall to the floor beneath, but the floor beneath is too low to operate from. So it's back to the Winter Tower to make one to replace the one I still can't find.
That means I need to set up the Nether Connection. I have to pick a place to gate in to, and there's a very obvious one -
The view of Flyingwater from the observation room. Now that's a view to arrive to!
I put the Nether return book I'd brought on a lectern on a Bibliocraft table in the main area, and gate back to the Nether. In the Nether, I put the Flyingwater return book on a lectern there, and then on to the Winter Tower.
Back in the Winter Tower I have to go down to the mines to get some of the materials for the Equal Exchange focus. On the way down I hear chicken noises, which reminds me to butcher all the chickens. After I make the focus, I head off to start on the chickens, quickly reaching level 30 and *that* reminds me to do an enchant.
I enchant an Oureclase Sword. In addition to these abilities, it's supposed to grant Resistance 1 when I hit a mob with it (although I haven't tested that.) Even with that, though, it's just a collection item.
The chicken chucker (Episode 82) has a chronic annoyance I've never dealt with. All the chickens leave a lot of eggs about, plus I'm getting way more feathers than I can use, so I have a lot of inventory to clear as I'm butchering. If there were room, I could just stuff them into the egg dispensing system - but it's generally full. So I make another double chest and place it right behind the double chest in the control room, along with two more hopper so it feeds into the dispenser. So it won't fill up with eggs from the laying room, but stuff in will feed into the dispenser to be hatched (for eggs) or despawned (for feathers or trash).
Not a great pic; it's the chest in the back. With this done, I finish off the chickens. It is indeed quite a convenience.
I head up to use the Nexus to gate back through to Fallingwater but as I do I look through a window and am once again enchanted by the views that helped get me to build here in the first place. For a year and a half I've been tweaking my mod set and my own mod programming to get a pretty and interesting world and sometime I just crave enjoying it. So I head out the east door in the Tundra and spend the (Minecraft) afternoon just enjoying the views.
This is basically the view I gloried in all the way back in Episode 2 (!), only slightly changed with a bit of surface adjustments, and the bridge to make crossing the chasm easier (Episode 37). I cross the bridge to enjoy the views from there
Like this view of the Tall Pines biome (Highlands) just southwest of my base (which, in spite of it being so close, I never got around to visiting until Episode 47).
And this view of the back of the Winter Tower. Although the Winter tower is pretty symmetrical, the shape of the land makes it seem like it's facing west. There's also something of a face design on the west side (mentioned in episode 27). I'd known about the face design, but it's only just now that I've gotten the feel that the tower is an entity *looking* to the west. Like me, It must enjoy the Minecraft sunsets. Well, it's been a great help to me and I'm glad it gets a nice view.
Not all my plans come to fruition. Early on, I thought about doing an Ice Palace on the hill. But I never figured out a way to make it work with the Winter Tower so it never got built. Such plans as I had ended up influencing hte material selection for the Winter Tower. Maybe it never will be built - or maybe I'll have a stroke of inspiration or an insightful suggestion and it will.
It's getting late in the afternoon, so I head back, glance through the windows at the setting sun the Winter Tower is enjoying, and then gate through to Fallingwater.
Next episode - finishing Flyingwater - for now.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Somehow, I think the most interesting aspect of this, play-wise, is the whole "Nothing can give me any problems, except maybe drowning" side. The last time I saw someone fall in lava, and survive, was back when armor protected twice as good as it was supposed to, even from lava, and the person was in full diamond. Fully panic-ing (in the nether), yet taking no damage at all.
So when are you going to get an aqua affinity / respiration 3 helmet and not even have that worry anymore? (Or, you know, carrying a stack of jack-o-lanterns with you as your emergency lighting supply?)
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
I have in other worlds survived many falls into lava with only vanilla gear, sometimes even under skeleton fire or in the Nether. I wouldn't have survived under these extreme circumstances, of course. I actually have a Respiration helmet and I was using it in this episode but even with that on things move very quickly underwater. When you can't see it can be surprisingly tricky to place - I did have some jack'o'lanterns on me in the last thought-I-was-drowning episode and even though I was in a relatively benign ravine I had a hard time getting them placed.
A point-blank creeper explosion would still do the trick, and I had a situation not too long ago where a spider jumped me just as I was finishing off an Enderman and knocked me down to something like 7 hearts (meaning 2/3 or so damage since my Runic Armor pseudo-heart had been chewed up). A Wither skeleton + Blaze got me into a similar situation in the Nether Fortress.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I'm quite happy with you being invulnerable. It means I get to continue enjoying your builds
That ice bridge - I'd forgotten about that but now that I see it again, I think it might benefit from some prettying. What do you think about using one of the low, shrubby jungle-type trees (like the ones growing in front of Flying Water) just to the left of the bridge? It would help break up the white on white, leaving the bridge itself more defined. I'd probably do a slight bit of landscaping to shear the the top 4 or so layers of snow from the bulge to the left of the bridge as well. Unless there's nothing you actually need the snow for ...or the bridge xD You're right about it being a pretty area, though. Personally, I always thought that ice bridge would be a good approach to the suggested Ice Palace, essentially placing it (the palace) between the bridge and the Tall Pines biome. It would sit far enough away from your current tower to warrant concerns about the two "working", yet it would still be a visible backdrop, if built high enough. It would have to be quite big - palatial, even, but I don't doubt you could pull it off.
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Yes, I was thinking about putting the Ice Palace somewhere else in the area. My original motivation was to capture the view in the first outdoor pic; so I'd like to find a place with a similarly striking view. I was actually wondering if I could build something like a bridge between the two hills on the far right in the last pic; there have been times I'd have liked to have been able to walk across that. Having wandered about in the area, though, it's hard to find a competing view. The back of the mountain is much less striking and there are large areas of Cold Taiga and Ice Plains without much contrast. That view has a gorge and three different but harmonious biomes which makes it a really nice view.
The other possibility is to make something to look at, rather than from. Something built atop the Ice Spikes mountain could do that, apart from the issue that I'd currently have to walk outside to look. That, at least, could also serve a functional purpose, which as you know I usually like from my builds (Fallingwater being an exception). I have reasons to cross that mountain sometimes and it's kind of a pain to get around - steep slopes, dropoffs, and a disorienting effect from the spikes.
Yes, that bridge could use some prettying up. It could use an arch, and in retrospect I shouldn't have used snow. I was trying to make it blend in with the landscape and it works a bit too well. If you look closely in the first landscape pic there are little shrubs in the biome - I think Highlands places them and they are spruce shrubs.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
The view in the last pic is beautiful - and would be well encompassed by a palace of.... palatial scale I guess it could be hollow, with a central courtyard ...or central ravine, visible from the inward-facing windows.. this is making me want to build a palace now lol.
I actually really like the bridge the way it is, too. I just think that a single shrub right next to (perhaps either side of) the bridge's entrance would help to "frame" it. The materials seem perfect for the ice spikes biome. And the shape seems just right too. It's just the lack framing/decoration that stood out to me in those pics. You're quite right about the views, though. They're stunning.
Back at Fallingwater, I need a little more Andesite for my floor. The harbour entrance is still a bit small for my boat, and still mostly of Andesite, so, like before I swim out to enlarge it and collect some.
I'm wearing my Goggles instead of my water-breathing quicksilver helmet, so as I swim out:
Hunh, *Two* nodes I hadn't seen before. But, I've got enough nodes for now so I don't even bother to scan.
Once there I switch to my water-breathing helmet, because I'm operating three blocks underwater. It's pretty easy with the helmet. I use my excavation focus for the sand. You can see I've got plenty of mana already - I didn't even bother to recharge the staff, and it's still more than half full. Plus, it recharges on its own if it gets below 10%. Hence my loss of interest in nodes.
After I'm done, I go back inside and toss the Andesite in to roast.
Four clicks with the Equal Exchange focus and I've placed all my Siltstone. Boy, is that easier than manual placement and chasing falling blocks. There is one disadvantage with the Equal Exchange focus: there's a "change one block" click and a "change all surface blocks" click. On occasion I've done wrong one and placed an entire stack I didn't want to. But not today.
I place my little quasifloral pattern as the Andesite roasts up. It works pretty well, but there's a bit of a problem in that it blends into the wall a bit. Hopefully that will lessen as I work on the walls and ceiling. If not I'll put in a border of all-siltstone right on the edge.
Now I have to work on the walls and ceiling.
The ceiling has a nice swoop to it and I like the "natural" look but a complete natural cave is not looking right with the floor. I look at various angles and consider various plans, including going for a complete box. I eventually decide maybe the room should be at least 3 high everywhere (regardless of what else I do). I raise the ceiling in one section and it works, so I do that everywhere.
Having raised the ceiling along the walls, I consider the shape of the floor. I try changing a section from the irregular natural shape to a straight line and, again, it works, so I do that everywhere too.
Finally I tackle the ceiling. Here I start out by smoothing out some of the rough sections and switching all exposed dirt to Andesite, except right by the window. I work by eye, looking for symmetries, and after a bit I have a roughly paraboloid shape separating the topmost level (a 5 high area) from the middle level (4 blocks high). I then duplicate that same shape, with an offset, for the boundary between the 4 high and 3 high sections, with a bit of a bobble near the entrance door.
And here's the result. Putting a clear straight line between the floor and the now-flat walls does pretty much solve the problem of the floor blending into the wall. The ceiling swoop softens what would otherwise be a very stark shape. I normally try to make floor, ceiling, and walls of three different materials. I didn't do that here, but the contrast between flat wall and curved ceiling is enough to my eye.
I pop out to take a look from the northwest. I've looked at this angle several times before even though I haven't posted it. I always do lots of look checks when I'm building but because I'm trying to fit in with the existing landscape I'm doing far more than usual here. From this angle the artificial nature of the build itself is much more obvious than from others, but it still seems to fit the surroundings. I could view the spire of Flyingwater better if the build were set further back but you can see from this view that wasn't really possible - it's right up against a steep drop into the lake.
Looking at this reminds me of a bit of landscaping I'd been thinking about. The overhang on the left looks like it should have a waterfall coming off. So I fly up to drop a water source there.
I fly up and place one but it immediately splits into multiple streams and I just wanted a single stream. So I snatch it up, add some dirt to control the flow, and replace. Except now it's even *worse*, splitting into even more streams, and doing it in midair!
I drop down to take a look at it. From this height, even with a flying harness, I take some damage. Good to know it won't protect me from *anything*. But one look at my waterfall and it looks *awful* with that weird midair split. Why is it splitting?
I snatch off my source block and soon have my answer. The falling water take a LONG time to go away. My previous placement had hit the still-not-gone placement of the column before and split to go around. So, I have to sit and wait for all this glitchy water to go away.
I cliff-dive into the bay just for fun and then head over to view from the northeast.
This view - well, it just knocks me out. Like an old World of Darkness Toreador, I just stand, staring, entranced for several minutes. It's like a dream to have a base like this with the soaring mountain and pouring waterfalls and the storying trees. The traces of snow on the Extreme Hills in the background, the splashes of color right around the build proper, calling "come and be welcome" - well, it's a nice place.
That one little waterfall is a nice improvement viewed from the waterfall balcony as well. I linger here as well, soothed by the sounds of falling water.
With all this lingering, it's sunset and time to sleep - wait, I've got the sunset view balcony to check out!
Oooh, MUCH better as a view balcony than as an (enclosed) entrance.
Then inside to watch the stars come out next to the spire of Flyingwater.
When I said I was going to be finishing here I didn't mean I was finish finished. Obviously I've scarcely started on the interiors. But, I like play variety and I'm ready to do something besides building.
Next episode: off to the Forest village to look for Mystcraft pages.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Episode 134: Birchwood Building, Buying, and Bashing
I head off to the Forest village to buy some Mystcraft pages off the Mystcraft villager. Although it's working in test worlds, I still can't get the map arrow to work here so I have to navigate by eye like I would with a real map.
The rock mountains make approximate navigating fairly easy. I can get pretty close using them as a landmark. Right here is Andesite so they're acutally *both* Andesite and Soapstone. The shades are close enough you don't see the difference from afar.
Spotting the village once close is trickier. Honestly, if it weren't for this one tower I might have gone right past it.
I buy a couple pages and two notebooks and then retire to the Mystcraft library to review my purchases. I seem to have gotten very little of the Climate Control pages - only one "River Chasms" page.
I head out looking for the Mystcraft villager but I can't find him. I chop a bunch of trees to make looking easier and make and plant some Beech seedlings hoping I'll get some large Birches that way (the Beech sapling makes a Birch tree - somewhat confusing nomenclature.)
I'm concerned the Mystcraft village has fallen into a pit somewhere and become zombie food but eventually I find him and do a little more trading. He darts into the village smithy and I quickly block him in so he won't become zombie food now.
However, I've only gotten one more page and it's another River Chasms page. Concerned something has gone wrong like *only* River Chasms getting registered, I quit the game and review my mod programming and some Mystcraft source. Everything looks fine, so I decide to try a creative test world. On reviewing the code, I'm now sure the "rarity" is actually "commonality" and increasing the "rarity" makes them less rare.
I change the "rarity" of the Climate Control pages to 10,000x what they were before and start a test world. They do indeed become quite common, so apparently I was just having a combination of bad luck and getting swamped by the enormous number of Mystcraft pages.
I reset the rarity and on going back I have more luck and get five more CC pages spending the rest of the two stacks of emeralds I bought.
I start using the notebooks I've bought to sort the pages into categories. Currently I'm sorting into "biomes", "effects", "Climate Control", and "everything else". Here's my 7 CC pages, showing "Mild", which will control Cool and Warm climates together. As yet, even if it were programmed, I couldn't do anything, as I don't have the "Native Biome Controller" to use CC in the first place, plus I don't have any of my modifiers like "Less" or "No".
Now I start securing the village. Fencing is a bit annoying because of the slope. The village effectively goes from near the top of a hill down to a depression below. I can skip a bit of the village at the very bottom because there aren't any villagers but it's still a hassle.
While I'm working on the fencing and not quite done I see a horrifying sight. There's a baby zombie scampering onto the roof of the house where all the villagers besides the Mystcraft villager have gotten stuck. I dash over but he's already in the yard by the time I get there. I manage to smack him out of the yard before I hear any grunts from injured villages. Phew!
Usually zombies turn their attention to me after I smack them but he seems to be still hunting villagers. On the second smack he finally goes after me but he's easy prey by then. I get the Monster Hunter acheivement because the name change reset my achievements.
The town butcher now wants to buy pork. There are carrots in the town farms, three pigs stuck in the house with the villagers, *and* I haven't made a pig farm yet so building one now seems an obvious choice. I flatten out some land and build a pen right next to the yard of the house with the villagers in it. I use carrots and temporary fencing to get the pigs out and keep the villagers in. Annoyingly, the librarian manages to climb over a solid fence corner while this is going on - I have no idea how. The fence was the town fence as well as the yard fence so he's now wandering around in the woods.
I get the pigs out and breed my first piglet. Shortly after this the librarian comes over to take a look at the pigs so I quickly build a fence around him and then get him into the pig pen. Guess he's a zoologist.
And now, one of my Beech saplings on top of the hill has successfully grown into a large Highlands Birch. So it *does* work, sometimes. As a fringe benefit, this tree is now highly visible (taller than vanilla forest trees, and atop a hill) so it should be easy to find the village in the future.
I discover the top of the tower is a particularly pretty place to sleep. Sorry I didn't manage to get the messages suppressed. I think I'll call the town Birchwood now.
I plant a couple more Beech (large Birch) saplings and one Highlands Great Oak, just to see how it looks.
I look through my Mystcraft pages to see if I can make a stable age now. I have a passable number of pages, but as yet no Sun page, so any Age I made would be unacceptably dark (unless I used the Bright Lighting page I do have, but that makes the Age unstable, which I figure is an unacceptable risk for Hardcore.) So it's back to Lazy River Landing for some more emeralds.
I didn't bring Mystcraft linking books for a portal so I trek back to Fallingwater. Navigating back is easy because of the Rock Mountains nearby.
I obsidianize a pool of lava too close to the travel route.
Before I go home, I check out the area between the two Flying Mountains sections. I'm wondering how they got split, in case I want to modify Climate Control's biome manipulations. It turns out they are NOT split and there's a continuous strip of Flying Mountains biome. It's just that in the middle is a below-water section. I have no problem with CC making occasional coastal strips so I have no work to do on this. Whew!
I'm curious whether taking damage on a long fall is because of my Boots of the Traveller. To test, I take off the boots and take the long fall from the heights of Flyingwater down to the Greatwood tree. Smack. I take about one heart of damage. So it's the height, not the boots.
I chop a few Birches and plant some Beech seedlings and head back to the Nexus.
Next episode: back home
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Such as I've written so far works in 0.10 and 0.11 (plugins for each conforming to interfaces). Haven't looked at 0.12 yet as the journal is shackled to 1.7.2. Right now I'm more concerned with the difficulty of actually using the CC connection. As I've planned it you HAVE to have the BiomeNativeController page and pretty much at least the major modifier. But, it seems there are effectively something like 500 pages (there about 200 biomes in my game and they are well less than half the pages I'm getting) meaning people with bad luck might have to get thousands of pages to use CC2MC in-game in survival. Yipe!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I like that shot of the moon through the first stained-glass window. Very pretty.
The beard would be Notch.
Green is creeper, exactly.
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Episode 130: Falling for Fallingwater
I'm ready to start on my "Fallingwater". So I pop back to the Winter Tower. I want to have Mystcraft books for a link and I need one more page without Generate Platform. So, mixmixmix and -
Oh, so NOW I get infralinking. AFTER I've already put in a trophy for the Nether Link AND a trophy that isn't for a build. Well, whatever. I'll use it at the Fallingwater end so if I ever decide to change I can use it for a within-dimension link nexus.
I'm going to want a lot of Arcane Lamps to light up the spire without littering it with torches. I decide to use a whole stack of Amber, which will make sixteen. I have to go around the tower a bit to put together all the materials, and make 16 Redstone Comparators by accident because I'd forgotten the recipe (which calls for Daylight Sensors). I then discover I don't have enough Nether Quartz left for 16, so I settle for 8. So my scrambling for Amber has gone a bit overboard, although it's comparatively easy to get lots of Nether Quartz if that's the goal.
I collect some wool, check the farm, and start a batch of chickens. After I start, I check the pen and find there was *already* a batch there which I'd swear I'd not put there. I butcher them quickly as the chicks are popping out, losing a few chicks to the sword area of effect attack in the process.
After that I collect some dirt for layout purposes, board my boat, and head off. (The boat is already loaded with glass, which I'll probably use a lot of). I tried to duplicate the missing arrow bug in a test world so I could fix it but I failed - in the test world everything is fine. Maybe it's related to the name change? But, in any case, I'm operating by dead reckoning.
I seem to be doing OK at first but after a while I reach the cliffs of Episodes 44 and 45, which is quite a bit east of target.
As I boat west I check for my old fishing shack, superseded by Lazy River Landing both for fishing and emeralds. A little bit of Mangrove-dodging later and:
There's my destination. Flyingwater, perhaps? You can see the silverwood I intend to build near to. There's a bay that would be perfect for mooring the boat but it's entirely enclosed so I stop the boat outside.
The big overhang has to be lit to stop spawning so I use the first of my Lamps. Then I stop to consider my plans. As of yet, I have few details in mind. My rough idea is a fairly explicit homage to Fallingwater with a vertical blocky grey tower (of Andesite) and large yellow viewing balconies (of Komantite).
You can see, right behind the Silverwood. a hill on the hill. Part of the plan I've settled on is a viewing area on that, set as far *away* from Flyingwater itself as possible for a better view. Ideally, the build itself should also be a view from further to the right.
I wander about for a while, looking at various angles and considering various plans. The hill in question is actually almost hollow with a roughly spherical area with three exits, one to the left in that picture, towards the big waterfall, one just to the right of the silverwood and one facing to the right in that picture (north). I decide to build in that space itself for starters.
A waterfall right next to the Silverwood flows into the hollow so I block it off with dirt while I make plans.
I've not yet got a secure area so I pillar up to snooze. Really looks like a good choice of location, though!
This is the view of the opening to the north, the one to the right in the pic I was using for planning. It's not so clear here; I should have taken the picture from further up. I decide to convert that into a viewing window. I'll put a floor at that level, which conveniently is also the level of the two exits.
The floor is big and with some draft framing for the window uses up the four stacks of dirt I brought. Surprise, not enough dirt!
The opening toward the big waterfall I use for a viewing balcony. The flooring is Siltstone I'd brought from the Landing for decorative purpose. It turns out to be not much to look at, but that's OK because:
It's a delight to *be* on with the soothing sounds of flowing water, an upclose view of a complicated waterfall, and FlyingWater overhead. I am having a little trouble with safety issues with the messy glasswork - I'll have to come back to it later.
I put glass into the roughly rectagular frame of the viewing window. My plan is to make the frame of Andesite Smoothstone but right now it's just dirt as I haven't mined or roasted any Andesite yet. I'm moving away from my explicit homage to Fallingwater but trying to stick with the principle of a building that look like part of the landscape. The Andesite frame will look kind of like part of the hill - on the left there's already a natural straight section - but at the same time will be rectangular enough to look artificial. So looking kind of natural and kind of artificial, as Fallingwater does.
Here's the view from the window, from the inside on the still-dirt floor. The Halcyon days glass is a cluttery texture and that somewhat detracts from the view. In addition, it's one of the less impressive views from the location. But from THIS location even the lousy views are great!
The last entrance, next to the Silverwood, I plan as the front door. The symbolic path will pass next to the Greatwood tree and then the Silverwood and to this door. There's a smaller viewing window here as well.
Next episode: time to start collecting resources.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Dumb luck, that shot. Just happened to take it at the right time.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
You seem to be a little flustered this time around.
Also, I'm interested to see how you pull off stuff with glass panes. Frankly, I've all but given up on using them for anything but the most basic basic basic 2x2 windows because they act so weird.
Flustered? No, I didn't feel flustered at all. The building process here is very different from my usual one because I'm trying to fit into the landscape rather than impose a plan on it. Even my rough plan heading in - a tallish gray center building with balconies - got jettisoned once I was there. I generally do a lot of build something - check the look - rebuild as necessary - etc. but of course I'm doing that even more here.
I have no problems with large windows, non-rectangular windows, or even windows wrapping around corners. There are three basic rules: vertical windows only, solid glass sheets (actually sometimes you can put a hole in the middle), and completely enclosed with solid blocks (so no stairs, fences or glass blocks). Examples in this world are the view windows in the trade hall, the corner windows in the Winter Tower trade hall, and the stained glass in the trophy hall. Those corner windows even break the complete enclosure rule, but since it's only one block on a corner, it comes out OK.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Episode 131: Fashioning Fallingwater
Well, that bay needs an entrance - and the barrier's made of Andesite - hey, two birds with one stone!
I start carving, but pause to take this shot. People familiar with my mod might be thinking "hey, I thought Climate Control was supposed to suppress those derpy near-shore lakes". And, it does, although not perfectly. But this isn't a section of enclosed ocean. It's actually Flying Mountains, as demonstrated by the vibrantly green ferns on that little spot of gravel. Flying Mountains has, as I've mentioned, both above-ground and below-ground sections, for a number of reasons.
Initially I have a bit of a hard time getting the water to turn into source blocks, but I get it all going after a while, with a little help from my bucket.
When I think I'm ready, I bring over the boat. But, I discover the activated boat is larger than it looks and won't fit through. I enlarge the channel twice before I can finally get the boat through and even then it's very S L O W as apparent a 2 block depth isn't enough and I'll need to make it three.
But I can get the boat through (and I have a lot more Andesite than I'd figured). It's night, so I sleep out on the boat.
Aaahhh.
I make a furnace and toss in a stack to roast. Now I want some Komantite and this I'll quarry from a mine underneath the base. I continue my ladder shaft down to the 50's and then start tunnelling towards the Komantite I can see above-ground.
I hit at least three caves in a relatively small tunnel. I have negative interest in caving right now and don't clear them. Here's the blocking walls I used to cross one.
Eventually I reach Komantite and quarry a couple stacks.
I put some of that in to roast, but I'm running low on coal.
So it's out the front door to chop some wood from the Birch Hills along the coast. Birch is the most farmable tree so this worked out.
I start in, chopping away with my conventional Diamond Axe as I don't need the special feature of the Axe of the Stream on a Birch.
There have been a couple of cows about, and one is kind of following me. At one point I turn around to see:
The cow managed to kill itself on a slope with no damaging drops. I guess it suffocated itself. Minecraft animals are just amazingly stupid.
I replant the birches a little more spread out as the tree canopies were connecting, making harvesting a bit more complicated. I also manufacture two Highlands saplings: Beech (effectively a large branched Birch), from a birch seedling and a birch log, and Poplar (a tall cypress-shaped Birch) from a birch seedling and an oak log. I plant each to see how they look. Forests generally look better with a mix of trees, so I'll try to create one.
I clear a little bit of the path leading to the front door. The Flying Mountain is more overgrown that it seems because there are a lot of the small jungle-style bushes, enough to interfere with sight lines and getting around.
After putting a stack of wood in to roast, I start on the window frame. On viewing this, I decide symmetry is more important than maintaining existing terrain and trim the left side (which is actually natural) to only one wide.
Next I start on a sunroom/viewing room on top of the hill. I build another Andesite rectangular frame, set one in and two back from the window frame for relief. Unfortunately you still can't see the relief.
Meanwhile, I've roasted up some Komantite and use them for the "beams" over the entrance. Although I'm not doing an direct homage to the real Fallingwater, I am using the idea of a grey main building and Komantite extensions.
I decide to put something in between the upper and lower level to try to emphasize the difference. Modern design relies a lot on nice plants, so, I go harvest some of the lilacs from the forest and plant them there.
They look nice, but they don't break things up. Notice the roof - it's not irregular, it blends in with the spire of Flyingwater Mountain behind it.
Now I take off the top of the hill, where the viewing room will be. Thaumcraft staves with Excavation Foci are very convenient for digging dirt - they move dirt quite fast, and they don't break. The color text in the Thaumanomicon implies it's good for stone too but I find it's too slow.
I go to the main room, fill in a few spots in the floor where I'd run out of dirt, put the dirt away, and go upstairs to finish the walls. As soon as I go up I realize I've got the floor one block below what's left of the hill and that will interfere with view. So - I go back, get the dirt I'd just put away, and put a layer back onto the hill. Efficiency!
Now I want to put up walls to the east and west. I decide to just try flat Andesite smoothstone walls. Normally big flat walls are a no-no but I think on the outside it will be covered by part of the remaining hill on the east, by the entrance on the west, and on the inside I can decorate. It's also a modern-style build, so "big, flat, and boring" is more excusable.
The view from the west afterwards shows my plan was correct. I'm helped by the nice texture of the Andesite, which looks like the kind of fancy stone preferred for a midcentury modern building.
The exterior shape is nearing completion so I cross the lake to the north and go around the far shore, taking pictures as I go. On the whole I'm happy with the effect.
This is, I think, the best view. The build succeeds, I think, at looking like a human construction and yet also like a part of the landscape. That's the feel of Fallingwater I was trying to capture. The building shows many elements of the midcentury modern style - large flat planes combined in irregular shapes, quality materials, extensive use of plants and water features, lots of glass, and integration into the landscape. That's one of my principles when building - "Other people are often smart!" Many excellent architects spent their lives working out the midcentury modern style, and they worked it out pretty well. It's usually easier to build on other people's ideas and work than to reinvent the wheel. You'll see farther standing on the shoulders of giants.
Next episode: Some detailing work.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Reading this journal always makes me realize what a bad builder I actually am. XD
Began playing during Alpha 1.2.6.
This is the view of Fallingwater from above. I had to put in a mostly glass roof because Flyingwater is so tall the roof blocked the view from most of the room.
Initially I place 3 Arcane Lamps but that turns out to be not enough. Flyingwater is big! I end up placing 6, which along with the 2 in the build has chewed up my entire supply.
The Beech sapling has finally grown. I was expecting a large multibranced Birch but I get:
Not actually a vanilla tree - it's a bit asymmetrical - but not big and pretty either. I don't know whether I've been unlucky or whether it won't get big in this biome. I chop, make another Beech sapling (the leaves are just Birch so they drop Birch saplings) and replant.
Next is the waterfall viewing balcony. I love to maximize my views, and I have a trick for that with fencing. I alternate stone walls and wood fences. The fences and walls don't connect, so you have a minimally obstructed view, but they're still close enough you can't go between them.
I use Komantite walls, of course. The view from the balcony is great, but from the ground the fences and walls floating in midair look a little weird. Earlier, though, when I'd had a fence underneath my fencing to stop that, I'd ended up stepping on the lower fence and going up a half-block, making the upper fence no longer effective for safety. So for now I just leave it.
I realize I don't have a sunset view area (gotta have a sunset view area!) so I convert the west entrance of the observation room to a balcony. Actually, it's still an entrance for me with my jump boots. It's a one person world so I guess I really don't have to worry about visitors.
The inside of the west wall also needs some work.
This picture is a bit old because I forgot to take a pic right before the change. The center is the exit; the left is the ladder down to the lower floors, and the right is just there for symmetry. I cover them up with doors for appearance:
Now I want to put a floor in the main room. I want to try a patterned floor and initially think about doing some kind of flowerish thing. Eventually I decide to trim it down to a single Komantite block for the carpels and 4 Andesite petals around it. Initially I'm also thinking about having it in a green floor but since I just did that for the mana bean farm I decide to use the Siltstone I'd brought (with a floor in mind, actually).
The pattern look workable, but as soon as I start I realize I need an equal exchange focus. When I knock out blocks they often fall to the floor beneath, but the floor beneath is too low to operate from. So it's back to the Winter Tower to make one to replace the one I still can't find.
That means I need to set up the Nether Connection. I have to pick a place to gate in to, and there's a very obvious one -
The view of Flyingwater from the observation room. Now that's a view to arrive to!
I put the Nether return book I'd brought on a lectern on a Bibliocraft table in the main area, and gate back to the Nether. In the Nether, I put the Flyingwater return book on a lectern there, and then on to the Winter Tower.
Back in the Winter Tower I have to go down to the mines to get some of the materials for the Equal Exchange focus. On the way down I hear chicken noises, which reminds me to butcher all the chickens. After I make the focus, I head off to start on the chickens, quickly reaching level 30 and *that* reminds me to do an enchant.
I enchant an Oureclase Sword. In addition to these abilities, it's supposed to grant Resistance 1 when I hit a mob with it (although I haven't tested that.) Even with that, though, it's just a collection item.
The chicken chucker (Episode 82) has a chronic annoyance I've never dealt with. All the chickens leave a lot of eggs about, plus I'm getting way more feathers than I can use, so I have a lot of inventory to clear as I'm butchering. If there were room, I could just stuff them into the egg dispensing system - but it's generally full. So I make another double chest and place it right behind the double chest in the control room, along with two more hopper so it feeds into the dispenser. So it won't fill up with eggs from the laying room, but stuff in will feed into the dispenser to be hatched (for eggs) or despawned (for feathers or trash).
Not a great pic; it's the chest in the back. With this done, I finish off the chickens. It is indeed quite a convenience.
I head up to use the Nexus to gate back through to Fallingwater but as I do I look through a window and am once again enchanted by the views that helped get me to build here in the first place. For a year and a half I've been tweaking my mod set and my own mod programming to get a pretty and interesting world and sometime I just crave enjoying it. So I head out the east door in the Tundra and spend the (Minecraft) afternoon just enjoying the views.
This is basically the view I gloried in all the way back in Episode 2 (!), only slightly changed with a bit of surface adjustments, and the bridge to make crossing the chasm easier (Episode 37). I cross the bridge to enjoy the views from there
Like this view of the Tall Pines biome (Highlands) just southwest of my base (which, in spite of it being so close, I never got around to visiting until Episode 47).
And this view of the back of the Winter Tower. Although the Winter tower is pretty symmetrical, the shape of the land makes it seem like it's facing west. There's also something of a face design on the west side (mentioned in episode 27). I'd known about the face design, but it's only just now that I've gotten the feel that the tower is an entity *looking* to the west. Like me, It must enjoy the Minecraft sunsets. Well, it's been a great help to me and I'm glad it gets a nice view.
Not all my plans come to fruition. Early on, I thought about doing an Ice Palace on the hill. But I never figured out a way to make it work with the Winter Tower so it never got built. Such plans as I had ended up influencing hte material selection for the Winter Tower. Maybe it never will be built - or maybe I'll have a stroke of inspiration or an insightful suggestion and it will.
It's getting late in the afternoon, so I head back, glance through the windows at the setting sun the Winter Tower is enjoying, and then gate through to Fallingwater.
Next episode - finishing Flyingwater - for now.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Somehow, I think the most interesting aspect of this, play-wise, is the whole "Nothing can give me any problems, except maybe drowning" side. The last time I saw someone fall in lava, and survive, was back when armor protected twice as good as it was supposed to, even from lava, and the person was in full diamond. Fully panic-ing (in the nether), yet taking no damage at all.
So when are you going to get an aqua affinity / respiration 3 helmet and not even have that worry anymore? (Or, you know, carrying a stack of jack-o-lanterns with you as your emergency lighting supply?)
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
I have in other worlds survived many falls into lava with only vanilla gear, sometimes even under skeleton fire or in the Nether. I wouldn't have survived under these extreme circumstances, of course. I actually have a Respiration helmet and I was using it in this episode but even with that on things move very quickly underwater. When you can't see it can be surprisingly tricky to place - I did have some jack'o'lanterns on me in the last thought-I-was-drowning episode and even though I was in a relatively benign ravine I had a hard time getting them placed.
A point-blank creeper explosion would still do the trick, and I had a situation not too long ago where a spider jumped me just as I was finishing off an Enderman and knocked me down to something like 7 hearts (meaning 2/3 or so damage since my Runic Armor pseudo-heart had been chewed up). A Wither skeleton + Blaze got me into a similar situation in the Nether Fortress.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I'm quite happy with you being invulnerable. It means I get to continue enjoying your builds
That ice bridge - I'd forgotten about that but now that I see it again, I think it might benefit from some prettying. What do you think about using one of the low, shrubby jungle-type trees (like the ones growing in front of Flying Water) just to the left of the bridge? It would help break up the white on white, leaving the bridge itself more defined. I'd probably do a slight bit of landscaping to shear the the top 4 or so layers of snow from the bulge to the left of the bridge as well. Unless there's nothing you actually need the snow for ...or the bridge xD You're right about it being a pretty area, though. Personally, I always thought that ice bridge would be a good approach to the suggested Ice Palace, essentially placing it (the palace) between the bridge and the Tall Pines biome. It would sit far enough away from your current tower to warrant concerns about the two "working", yet it would still be a visible backdrop, if built high enough. It would have to be quite big - palatial, even, but I don't doubt you could pull it off.
Next time you're down to half a heart, then you can talk :-)
Just look at that image ...
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Yes, I was thinking about putting the Ice Palace somewhere else in the area. My original motivation was to capture the view in the first outdoor pic; so I'd like to find a place with a similarly striking view. I was actually wondering if I could build something like a bridge between the two hills on the far right in the last pic; there have been times I'd have liked to have been able to walk across that. Having wandered about in the area, though, it's hard to find a competing view. The back of the mountain is much less striking and there are large areas of Cold Taiga and Ice Plains without much contrast. That view has a gorge and three different but harmonious biomes which makes it a really nice view.
The other possibility is to make something to look at, rather than from. Something built atop the Ice Spikes mountain could do that, apart from the issue that I'd currently have to walk outside to look. That, at least, could also serve a functional purpose, which as you know I usually like from my builds (Fallingwater being an exception). I have reasons to cross that mountain sometimes and it's kind of a pain to get around - steep slopes, dropoffs, and a disorienting effect from the spikes.
Yes, that bridge could use some prettying up. It could use an arch, and in retrospect I shouldn't have used snow. I was trying to make it blend in with the landscape and it works a bit too well. If you look closely in the first landscape pic there are little shrubs in the biome - I think Highlands places them and they are spruce shrubs.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
The view in the last pic is beautiful - and would be well encompassed by a palace of.... palatial scale I guess it could be hollow, with a central courtyard ...or central ravine, visible from the inward-facing windows.. this is making me want to build a palace now lol.
I actually really like the bridge the way it is, too. I just think that a single shrub right next to (perhaps either side of) the bridge's entrance would help to "frame" it. The materials seem perfect for the ice spikes biome. And the shape seems just right too. It's just the lack framing/decoration that stood out to me in those pics. You're quite right about the views, though. They're stunning.
Episode 133: First Fallingwater Finish
I'm wearing my Goggles instead of my water-breathing quicksilver helmet, so as I swim out:
Hunh, *Two* nodes I hadn't seen before. But, I've got enough nodes for now so I don't even bother to scan.
Once there I switch to my water-breathing helmet, because I'm operating three blocks underwater. It's pretty easy with the helmet. I use my excavation focus for the sand. You can see I've got plenty of mana already - I didn't even bother to recharge the staff, and it's still more than half full. Plus, it recharges on its own if it gets below 10%. Hence my loss of interest in nodes.
After I'm done, I go back inside and toss the Andesite in to roast.
Four clicks with the Equal Exchange focus and I've placed all my Siltstone. Boy, is that easier than manual placement and chasing falling blocks. There is one disadvantage with the Equal Exchange focus: there's a "change one block" click and a "change all surface blocks" click. On occasion I've done wrong one and placed an entire stack I didn't want to. But not today.
I place my little quasifloral pattern as the Andesite roasts up. It works pretty well, but there's a bit of a problem in that it blends into the wall a bit. Hopefully that will lessen as I work on the walls and ceiling. If not I'll put in a border of all-siltstone right on the edge.
Now I have to work on the walls and ceiling.
The ceiling has a nice swoop to it and I like the "natural" look but a complete natural cave is not looking right with the floor. I look at various angles and consider various plans, including going for a complete box. I eventually decide maybe the room should be at least 3 high everywhere (regardless of what else I do). I raise the ceiling in one section and it works, so I do that everywhere.
Having raised the ceiling along the walls, I consider the shape of the floor. I try changing a section from the irregular natural shape to a straight line and, again, it works, so I do that everywhere too.
Finally I tackle the ceiling. Here I start out by smoothing out some of the rough sections and switching all exposed dirt to Andesite, except right by the window. I work by eye, looking for symmetries, and after a bit I have a roughly paraboloid shape separating the topmost level (a 5 high area) from the middle level (4 blocks high). I then duplicate that same shape, with an offset, for the boundary between the 4 high and 3 high sections, with a bit of a bobble near the entrance door.
And here's the result. Putting a clear straight line between the floor and the now-flat walls does pretty much solve the problem of the floor blending into the wall. The ceiling swoop softens what would otherwise be a very stark shape. I normally try to make floor, ceiling, and walls of three different materials. I didn't do that here, but the contrast between flat wall and curved ceiling is enough to my eye.
I pop out to take a look from the northwest. I've looked at this angle several times before even though I haven't posted it. I always do lots of look checks when I'm building but because I'm trying to fit in with the existing landscape I'm doing far more than usual here. From this angle the artificial nature of the build itself is much more obvious than from others, but it still seems to fit the surroundings. I could view the spire of Flyingwater better if the build were set further back but you can see from this view that wasn't really possible - it's right up against a steep drop into the lake.
Looking at this reminds me of a bit of landscaping I'd been thinking about. The overhang on the left looks like it should have a waterfall coming off. So I fly up to drop a water source there.
I fly up and place one but it immediately splits into multiple streams and I just wanted a single stream. So I snatch it up, add some dirt to control the flow, and replace. Except now it's even *worse*, splitting into even more streams, and doing it in midair!
I drop down to take a look at it. From this height, even with a flying harness, I take some damage. Good to know it won't protect me from *anything*. But one look at my waterfall and it looks *awful* with that weird midair split. Why is it splitting?
I snatch off my source block and soon have my answer. The falling water take a LONG time to go away. My previous placement had hit the still-not-gone placement of the column before and split to go around. So, I have to sit and wait for all this glitchy water to go away.
I cliff-dive into the bay just for fun and then head over to view from the northeast.
This view - well, it just knocks me out. Like an old World of Darkness Toreador, I just stand, staring, entranced for several minutes. It's like a dream to have a base like this with the soaring mountain and pouring waterfalls and the storying trees. The traces of snow on the Extreme Hills in the background, the splashes of color right around the build proper, calling "come and be welcome" - well, it's a nice place.
That one little waterfall is a nice improvement viewed from the waterfall balcony as well. I linger here as well, soothed by the sounds of falling water.
With all this lingering, it's sunset and time to sleep - wait, I've got the sunset view balcony to check out!
Oooh, MUCH better as a view balcony than as an (enclosed) entrance.
Then inside to watch the stars come out next to the spire of Flyingwater.
When I said I was going to be finishing here I didn't mean I was finish finished. Obviously I've scarcely started on the interiors. But, I like play variety and I'm ready to do something besides building.
Next episode: off to the Forest village to look for Mystcraft pages.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Episode 134: Birchwood Building, Buying, and Bashing
The rock mountains make approximate navigating fairly easy. I can get pretty close using them as a landmark. Right here is Andesite so they're acutally *both* Andesite and Soapstone. The shades are close enough you don't see the difference from afar.
Spotting the village once close is trickier. Honestly, if it weren't for this one tower I might have gone right past it.
I buy a couple pages and two notebooks and then retire to the Mystcraft library to review my purchases. I seem to have gotten very little of the Climate Control pages - only one "River Chasms" page.
I head out looking for the Mystcraft villager but I can't find him. I chop a bunch of trees to make looking easier and make and plant some Beech seedlings hoping I'll get some large Birches that way (the Beech sapling makes a Birch tree - somewhat confusing nomenclature.)
I'm concerned the Mystcraft village has fallen into a pit somewhere and become zombie food but eventually I find him and do a little more trading. He darts into the village smithy and I quickly block him in so he won't become zombie food now.
However, I've only gotten one more page and it's another River Chasms page. Concerned something has gone wrong like *only* River Chasms getting registered, I quit the game and review my mod programming and some Mystcraft source. Everything looks fine, so I decide to try a creative test world. On reviewing the code, I'm now sure the "rarity" is actually "commonality" and increasing the "rarity" makes them less rare.
I change the "rarity" of the Climate Control pages to 10,000x what they were before and start a test world. They do indeed become quite common, so apparently I was just having a combination of bad luck and getting swamped by the enormous number of Mystcraft pages.
I reset the rarity and on going back I have more luck and get five more CC pages spending the rest of the two stacks of emeralds I bought.
I start using the notebooks I've bought to sort the pages into categories. Currently I'm sorting into "biomes", "effects", "Climate Control", and "everything else". Here's my 7 CC pages, showing "Mild", which will control Cool and Warm climates together. As yet, even if it were programmed, I couldn't do anything, as I don't have the "Native Biome Controller" to use CC in the first place, plus I don't have any of my modifiers like "Less" or "No".
Now I start securing the village. Fencing is a bit annoying because of the slope. The village effectively goes from near the top of a hill down to a depression below. I can skip a bit of the village at the very bottom because there aren't any villagers but it's still a hassle.
While I'm working on the fencing and not quite done I see a horrifying sight. There's a baby zombie scampering onto the roof of the house where all the villagers besides the Mystcraft villager have gotten stuck. I dash over but he's already in the yard by the time I get there. I manage to smack him out of the yard before I hear any grunts from injured villages. Phew!
Usually zombies turn their attention to me after I smack them but he seems to be still hunting villagers. On the second smack he finally goes after me but he's easy prey by then. I get the Monster Hunter acheivement because the name change reset my achievements.
The town butcher now wants to buy pork. There are carrots in the town farms, three pigs stuck in the house with the villagers, *and* I haven't made a pig farm yet so building one now seems an obvious choice. I flatten out some land and build a pen right next to the yard of the house with the villagers in it. I use carrots and temporary fencing to get the pigs out and keep the villagers in. Annoyingly, the librarian manages to climb over a solid fence corner while this is going on - I have no idea how. The fence was the town fence as well as the yard fence so he's now wandering around in the woods.
I get the pigs out and breed my first piglet. Shortly after this the librarian comes over to take a look at the pigs so I quickly build a fence around him and then get him into the pig pen. Guess he's a zoologist.
And now, one of my Beech saplings on top of the hill has successfully grown into a large Highlands Birch. So it *does* work, sometimes. As a fringe benefit, this tree is now highly visible (taller than vanilla forest trees, and atop a hill) so it should be easy to find the village in the future.
I discover the top of the tower is a particularly pretty place to sleep. Sorry I didn't manage to get the messages suppressed. I think I'll call the town Birchwood now.
I plant a couple more Beech (large Birch) saplings and one Highlands Great Oak, just to see how it looks.
I look through my Mystcraft pages to see if I can make a stable age now. I have a passable number of pages, but as yet no Sun page, so any Age I made would be unacceptably dark (unless I used the Bright Lighting page I do have, but that makes the Age unstable, which I figure is an unacceptable risk for Hardcore.) So it's back to Lazy River Landing for some more emeralds.
I didn't bring Mystcraft linking books for a portal so I trek back to Fallingwater. Navigating back is easy because of the Rock Mountains nearby.
I obsidianize a pool of lava too close to the travel route.
Before I go home, I check out the area between the two Flying Mountains sections. I'm wondering how they got split, in case I want to modify Climate Control's biome manipulations. It turns out they are NOT split and there's a continuous strip of Flying Mountains biome. It's just that in the middle is a below-water section. I have no problem with CC making occasional coastal strips so I have no work to do on this. Whew!
I'm curious whether taking damage on a long fall is because of my Boots of the Traveller. To test, I take off the boots and take the long fall from the heights of Flyingwater down to the Greatwood tree. Smack. I take about one heart of damage. So it's the height, not the boots.
I chop a few Birches and plant some Beech seedlings and head back to the Nexus.
Next episode: back home
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Love the achievement Zeno. You're finally a monster slayer!
Began playing during Alpha 1.2.6.
Have you updated to mystcraft 0.12 and the new API? (I'm assuming yes, but it does mean 1.7.10, not 1.7.2 -- I think you said you were in 172 before)
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Such as I've written so far works in 0.10 and 0.11 (plugins for each conforming to interfaces). Haven't looked at 0.12 yet as the journal is shackled to 1.7.2. Right now I'm more concerned with the difficulty of actually using the CC connection. As I've planned it you HAVE to have the BiomeNativeController page and pretty much at least the major modifier. But, it seems there are effectively something like 500 pages (there about 200 biomes in my game and they are well less than half the pages I'm getting) meaning people with bad luck might have to get thousands of pages to use CC2MC in-game in survival. Yipe!
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.