I've tried a couple of different times, but I can't think of any good way to build cities or towns. I go onto Youtube (and these forums of course), and I see cities that are well laid-out and have nice designs to them, but every time I try to do it, it sucks. Does Minecraft just hate me for some reason?
Also, is it better to use a flat world (such as one of Tyken's Test Worlds), or use a legitimate vanilla seed and flatten out an area?
Start from the center and work your way out. The centerpiece can be your spawn-point or your seaside hut. Use the centerpiece as a storage area so that it wont be far from where you are building. Build along guidelines (Roads, tunnels, ect...) Add some scenery(Trees, Flowers, Statues,ect...) Light up a celebratory cigar because you are finished!
Also: WORK IN THE DAY! I have have multiple houses destroyed by godforsaken creepers at night in the past.
Make wall to hold the city.
Make bunch of houses in it with roads.
Thats it :biggrin.gif:
Your way implies building from the outside-in when it should be the other way around.
Start with the main buildings and work your way out with the smaller buildings. When all the buildings are done you build the wall.
Edit; Ninja'd
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The Sun rises in the North!
Now these points of data make a beautiful line...
I have always tried building a cit but have failed, but I'm working on a city right now, and it seems to be doing good, Just start by building useful things and then building other things you don't need. It will all work out in the end
About the Legit thing, don't ask that, as far as you should be concerned, it's a sandbox game and you shouldn't care if others think you 'suck' or are 'bad' at a SANDBOX game for using a tool that people call a hack.
About the town/cities problem, they always look bad until they're done, because it's not finished yet, but a very important view of a town/city is the type you're making, so futuristic, Medieval, Modern, ect.
I feel the first step to building your own city is to find your own style. Start with one building. Give it a use. Tell a little story with it. Once you have that one building done, take the basic layout of that building and do it again, but this time change the story a little and see how that changes how the building comes out.
Personally I tend to thing in D&D terms. Towers, castles, villages, huts. Having spent years doing the D&D graph paper thing I find it really neat to be able to build in 3 dimensions. But consequently my style doesn't really move beyond the sword and sorcery genre.
Some people like to make a single room that stores all their stuff and they can build from. I like to make a town where each building in the town is used to contribute to that 'inventory'. An Armor stores leather and finished suits of leather armor. A blacksmith with some furnaces, swords and metal armor. A Bowyer Fletcher. And so on. ANd then of course each of these buildings have to have a home built somewhere in town for the 'blacksmith', the fletcher, etc. As though there were NPC's running these shops instead of me.
The more character, the more story, you include in your town and the more you express that through little details, the better your town will look. Pick a style, make some basic rules about how and what you will build and then 'go to town'. :wink.gif:
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Jt Spring - Creative Lead "SNSO - Save Now save often" blog.zorts.net
I like to grow the town organically, and give each building a separate use. From a pure efficiency standpoint this is suboptimal (I could easily put all storage and furnaces in one room), but it makes it look more interesting, and increases the number of buildings that actually serve a purpose (I find it harder to get motivated making purely decorative structures).
So my town grew like this:
Tree Farm, Foundry, Main Street, Lightposts
Restaurant, Wheat Farm
Elevator to Mines
Cactus Farm, Reed Farm, Warehouse, Second Street
Observation Tower
Road extended north to coast (about a day's travel)
There's still a lot of future buildings planned - specialized storage buildings, a Nether portal, a Rail Station (fancy booster), maybe a library to show off my reed production, or a museum to show off my valuables. And a mob grinder, although I may put that underground because of the large size.
Building a town like this does delay putting up a real wall though. Once it's "done", I may secure it fully, but for the moment, I just use a fence and kill any spiders that wander in.
when i'm looking to strictly build without worrying about mining or defending my construction site from mobs i use invedit in a vanilla world... screw the people who say this isn't legit and that is hacking... personally i always start with my center first... i like to make a small park... fenced in with a few trees and a fountain or something like that... then i'll scout the area to try and picture what i want where... once i've got a basic idea of how i want the buildings to be grouped i'll lay out the roads first... it helps me see what the town will look like better with just the streets... that way if i don't like the look of it i can change things around without having to tear out foundations... after my buildings are done i'll put up a wall... usually just one layer of cobblestone with a fence on top... and depending on the size of the town maybe some canals or a small river... i had a lot of trouble building towns at first but it seemed easier for me when i started doing them like this
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Man your own jackhammer. Man your battle stations.
I've tried a couple of different times, but I can't think of any good way to build cities or towns. I go onto Youtube (and these forums of course), and I see cities that are well laid-out and have nice designs to them, but every time I try to do it, it sucks. Does Minecraft just hate me for some reason?
Also, is it better to use a flat world (such as one of Tyken's Test Worlds), or use a legitimate vanilla seed and flatten out an area?
It really depends on what sort of town you want to make. A highly structured town with street grids and such? An organic town built around the contours of the landscape? What points of interest are there?
For example, castle towns would be built up within the city walls, with the main road going from one gate directly to the castle gate. You would start by building the castle wall, and then a city wall, and a castle. Buildings would tend to follow a grid in this sort of city, but they might be very tightly packed.
A more modern city bight be built around a central point, perhaps a park or city hall or courthouse or some combination of those, and many modern cities have a structured layout, though if they began long enough ago, they may have some areas that follow the contours of the land instead of a strict grid. Modern cities tend to have space between buildings, too, as well as having green areas that a castle town would probably lack.
Scale is also important to consider, as it's easy to build a very small and compact city that feels big because of how crowded it is... And now it's time for me to leave for the night, but I'll check back tomorrow.
Personally I tend to thing in D&D terms. Towers, castles, villages, huts. Having spent years doing the D&D graph paper thing I find it really neat to be able to build in 3 dimensions.
I've played from 2e to 4e and DM'd twice! Planning those out on graph paper is fun. The roadblock is when I get into Minecraft. My first thought is "Oh boy! Ebberon, you are coming to Minecraft!"
After a few hours of laying things out and starting to build, my brain decides to rewire itself and send subliminal messages to me saying, "No. You can't do it. Seriously, that's a pretty crappy-looking housssSSSsss "
...or maybe it's the creepers. I haven't decided which.
Well, what I did to make my town was create a very, very large square/rectangle and then divide it up into seperate spaces. Then build buildings inside of the spaces and in no time you'll have a town. Here is a pic I have of what my town looked like once I divided it and added the roads and alleys and stuff, and then what it looks like now. Keep in mind- its still not done.
The trickiest part, I think, is making single buildings that look decent on both the outside and inside. Spend some time just playing around with single units to try and make a good stock model or building style that works for you. If you get something that works well, plop some down in a pattern, and voila, you've got yourself a town. Use a similar building style to build special buildings you want to use, and stick those in as well. It's more a matter of just playing around than it is getting it "right" or "wrong".
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"Any sufficiently sentient being feels a certain alarm at the prospect of ceasing to exist."
Well, what I did to make my town was create a very, very large square/rectangle and then divide it up into seperate spaces. Then build buildings inside of the spaces and in no time you'll have a town. Here is a pic I have of what my town looked like once I divided it and added the roads and alleys and stuff, and then what it looks like now. Keep in mind- its still not done.
This is a really good example of a highly planned city. From the very beginning you decided exactly where the plots of land for each building were, and everything goes inside your blueprint. You can extend the city (fairly safely) by extending out one of the main roads and walling in the extension area, then following the same method you used for what's already done.
On the other side of things, though, you might build your roads around your houses for an organic effect, especially if you build houses in a manner intended to mesh well with the natural lanscape -- instead of building houses within the empty space after making roads. YOu might, for example, have an interesting curve of hillside and decide to set a "row" of houses a block or two back from the edge of the hill, with the road being 1 step down from the houses, but also following the curve of the hill.
I just let mine grow organically by thinking about what I'd want in a town I was living in. Started with the Inn & Lounge (well, yeah) and then put in a library and an art museum and then some shops and a theater/music hall and it's just kept on growing from there, what with a school and a post office and a swimming pool and a train station and so on. As others have said, you start making up stories about what things are used for and what people need - I actually started worrying about the lack of affordable housing - and it sort of all comes together. And then I think of stuff I'd like to build, like a tugboat and a suspension bridge and a replica of the Georgian Ministry of Roads building in Tbilisi, so I add them. I like my town - someday I'll figure out how to make a Minecraft video and then I'll put it up. In the meantime there are some pictures here. http://minecraftworldjournal.blogspot.com/.
oh and yeah I play without mods or hacks and in normal mode. More fun that way, for me at least.
Ok. There are a bunch of different stratagies.
My favorite being a circluler desighn with a circular fountain in the center with roads branching out.
Some use a rectangle, some use random stuff and then build a wall. Theres different ways. Each with a different outcome.
Hm...anyone got any ideas on how to make an octagonal design? I keep trying it, but I'm not sure how to do each section of the octagon without weird-shaped buildings. :/
I've come to realize that attempting to build a city is a lot more rigorous than letting it grow naturally. I just apply different ideas from human geography and let my towns practically build themselves.
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Also, is it better to use a flat world (such as one of Tyken's Test Worlds), or use a legitimate vanilla seed and flatten out an area?
Also: WORK IN THE DAY! I have have multiple houses destroyed by godforsaken creepers at night in the past.
Your way implies building from the outside-in when it should be the other way around.
Start with the main buildings and work your way out with the smaller buildings. When all the buildings are done you build the wall.
Edit; Ninja'd
The Sun rises in the North!Now these points of data make a beautiful line...
About the town/cities problem, they always look bad until they're done, because it's not finished yet, but a very important view of a town/city is the type you're making, so futuristic, Medieval, Modern, ect.
Steam: RobotDeathParty
Personally I tend to thing in D&D terms. Towers, castles, villages, huts. Having spent years doing the D&D graph paper thing I find it really neat to be able to build in 3 dimensions. But consequently my style doesn't really move beyond the sword and sorcery genre.
Some people like to make a single room that stores all their stuff and they can build from. I like to make a town where each building in the town is used to contribute to that 'inventory'. An Armor stores leather and finished suits of leather armor. A blacksmith with some furnaces, swords and metal armor. A Bowyer Fletcher. And so on. ANd then of course each of these buildings have to have a home built somewhere in town for the 'blacksmith', the fletcher, etc. As though there were NPC's running these shops instead of me.
The more character, the more story, you include in your town and the more you express that through little details, the better your town will look. Pick a style, make some basic rules about how and what you will build and then 'go to town'. :wink.gif:
blog.zorts.net
So my town grew like this:
Tree Farm, Foundry, Main Street, Lightposts
Restaurant, Wheat Farm
Elevator to Mines
Cactus Farm, Reed Farm, Warehouse, Second Street
Observation Tower
Road extended north to coast (about a day's travel)
There's still a lot of future buildings planned - specialized storage buildings, a Nether portal, a Rail Station (fancy booster), maybe a library to show off my reed production, or a museum to show off my valuables. And a mob grinder, although I may put that underground because of the large size.
Building a town like this does delay putting up a real wall though. Once it's "done", I may secure it fully, but for the moment, I just use a fence and kill any spiders that wander in.
It really depends on what sort of town you want to make. A highly structured town with street grids and such? An organic town built around the contours of the landscape? What points of interest are there?
For example, castle towns would be built up within the city walls, with the main road going from one gate directly to the castle gate. You would start by building the castle wall, and then a city wall, and a castle. Buildings would tend to follow a grid in this sort of city, but they might be very tightly packed.
A more modern city bight be built around a central point, perhaps a park or city hall or courthouse or some combination of those, and many modern cities have a structured layout, though if they began long enough ago, they may have some areas that follow the contours of the land instead of a strict grid. Modern cities tend to have space between buildings, too, as well as having green areas that a castle town would probably lack.
Scale is also important to consider, as it's easy to build a very small and compact city that feels big because of how crowded it is... And now it's time for me to leave for the night, but I'll check back tomorrow.
I've played from 2e to 4e and DM'd twice! Planning those out on graph paper is fun. The roadblock is when I get into Minecraft. My first thought is "Oh boy! Ebberon, you are coming to Minecraft!"
After a few hours of laying things out and starting to build, my brain decides to rewire itself and send subliminal messages to me saying, "No. You can't do it. Seriously, that's a pretty crappy-looking housssSSSsss "
...or maybe it's the creepers. I haven't decided which.
This is a really good example of a highly planned city. From the very beginning you decided exactly where the plots of land for each building were, and everything goes inside your blueprint. You can extend the city (fairly safely) by extending out one of the main roads and walling in the extension area, then following the same method you used for what's already done.
On the other side of things, though, you might build your roads around your houses for an organic effect, especially if you build houses in a manner intended to mesh well with the natural lanscape -- instead of building houses within the empty space after making roads. YOu might, for example, have an interesting curve of hillside and decide to set a "row" of houses a block or two back from the edge of the hill, with the road being 1 step down from the houses, but also following the curve of the hill.
oh and yeah I play without mods or hacks and in normal mode. More fun that way, for me at least.
My favorite being a circluler desighn with a circular fountain in the center with roads branching out.
Some use a rectangle, some use random stuff and then build a wall. Theres different ways. Each with a different outcome.