The most recent pictures will be in my latest replies.
Im looking for suggestions on what I need to build or what I can do to make everything look better!
So, now I have a really set survival island save, and am working on building out the rooms a bit more. Here's some pictures of my progress:
This is my island up top. It's really messy and cluttered right now because I want to set up my storage room. You can see my passive mob spawner, my very temporary tree farm, and my test thing for a boat elevator I'm working on.
This is the view from my control room in the storage room. As you can see I have 3 storage squares, and a furnace square.
In the middle is my cow and sheep drowner. The holes in it's glass are so I can punch sheep when I need wool (They're temporary until 1.7 comes out and sheep drop wool when they die.) If I wanted to go for efficiency I would have used a lava grinder, but I like the look of a drowning trap more.
In the roof the passive mobs are seperated. I burn wolves and pigs (So I get bacon, I have no use for wolves right now, but when I do I'll finish my wolf seperator that I laid down the framework for.) Chickens go to a chicken farm, but I generally have them killed so they don't take up my mob limit. (I have a killswitch for them in my control room. When it's on the chickens burn, when it's off they lay eggs.)
This is a closeup of the drowner with some mobs in it. I was going to make all the items funnel to one spot but I like this look more-- Plus I'm not really grabbing the leather that often.
This is my bacon dispensor. I don't like seeing burning wolves and pigs so I hooked up Docm's baconator floodgate thing. Just on the ground in front of where I was standing (But not where the bacon is) you can kind of see a pressure plate. When I step on that it activates the floodgates, then the bacon falls when I step off.
I need suggestions on how to make this not just look like a hole in the wall.
This is my agressive mob grinder. I use lava to kill them fast. I don't seperate any of the mobs at this moment since I have no need, but I plan on eventually having a manual sorter for if I want to make powered creepers for testing or fun (You'd be suprised how easy it is to get a creeper struck by thunder in the middle of an ocean xD) I'm considering using powered creepers to make a record studio, since they take only one shot from a skeletons arrow to die, so there's no risk of them explodiong and ruining the whole thing.
That door leads into the grinder for if I need to do any maintenance. The little water patch to the left is where my chicken farm is.
Productive day so far. I wanted to fix the blandness a little bit so I posted a thread on these forums asking for help, and the two biggest suggestions I got:
-Lava
-Glowstone
So, I used both. I also got a texture pack and installed my first mods for this save today. I got modloader and betterglass. I might install SPC for taking screenshots rather than always going up to my control room, but Im thinking against it so far because I'll have the temptation to cheat. The only Mods I want to install are ones that help the asthetics and atmosphere-- no new items or mobs or anything. I want to keep this 100% legit.
So, here's the view from the control room:
As you can see there's a number of changes:
-No more torches (Almost)
-Lots more glowstone
-Lots more lava :wink.gif:
-I removed a lot of the furnaces since they looked too bulky.
-Theres no longer crafting benches in the middle of the squares
-I changed some of the items I used to mark chests (The mushroom became a flour, reeds because a pumpkin, stairs became a crafting bench.)
-The passive mob drowner is now lit up with lava underneath.
I left my game afk overnight so I'd build up a mushroom supply, and then throughout the day I kept harvesting, so I can proudly say I FINALLY filled all the rails in my mushroom farm so it will work at max efficiency (Well, semi-max, it's still slowed by light but I don't need a rediculous amount of shrooms anyways xD)
Underneath the dirt is a layer of mushrooms. Same with under the rails. And on top of the rails. I know that mushrooms grow up and down, so I through them in everywhere I could that wouldn't be affected by water. The farm is an auto-harvest system, and I never need to replant. All I need to do to harvest is remove a single dirt block that's in a room up the ladder next to it.
My chicken farm and baconator have doors that close when you walk in, so you can AFK with 0 creeper thread (Added those after I learned my lesson a couple times.)
I also spent a bit of time spelunking in the cave system I have a ladder too. I found a lot of unlit area that was really hurting my mob system, and I have noticed a dramatic increase in items after lighting them up (There was actually a whole other cave system just through a wall that I found harvesting Coal I missed.)
Alright, a quick update:
Here's the view from the control room now:
My new tree farm:
It holds 16 trees at a time in an ~11x11 space (or 12x12 or something-- something around there xD)
I am putting 2 dispensors on the wall-- One for saplings, one for axes. You can see where they'll go with the hole on the left wall.
I also added a new reed farm:
When I block one water source, the reeds auto-harvest. When I open another, they all get funneled to the collection point. This was a bit more difficult to build than the mushroom farm, but took way less time to make since reeds grow a lot faster, and I'd already figured out water controls on the mushroom one.
I added the controls in the control room for the mushroom farm, since the reed farm and mushroom farm are literally side-by-side (I had trouble fitting it in with a 1-thick wall in between. I had to redo everything a few times)
Once I have my boat elevator, wheat farm, cactus farm, and mob controls built I will release my save so people can figure out how everything functions. (I got 2 mails asking how my mushroom farm works. I didn't design it, but I lost the youtube video for how to make it.)
I gave up my research on boat elevators. Mojang has made them way to fidgety to work with, and there are other much better and faster systems for ascending, without risking breaking boats or using a million signs.
I got rid of my boat dispensors, and drained the shaft (lol) and now have a double chest full of signs, so I labeled EVERY room and EVERY farm :wink.gif:
I decided to use the way faster to make, way faster moving, easily used for multiple floors minecart elevator. I used a bit less than a stack of iron making the minecarts, and only needed some glass, water, and ladders I had left over from other projects.
Here's the result (picture taken from the inside since the view from outside it isn't that great.)
It takes like 1 second to get to ground level if you button mash the right mouse button, or like 3 if you just hold it down. Ya, it's kind of a big deal. :wink.gif: I have water breaks by every minecart for fast descent, and so you can choose multiple floors going down or up.
If anybody is interested I can send them the save to see how stuff works. The only thing that will be tricky to get to is my passive mob sorter, since it's embedded in the roof (I do have a door going into it though, it's just a little out of the way. I'll make a path to it though!)
Edit:
Made a nether trip, now I have a couple stacks of glowstone, so everythings lit with it and lava now =D Torches are purely decorative.
I lit up the elevator with glowstone too, and decorated the bottom with glowstone/cobble and lava under the floor.
I also made my first stop on the elevator (other than the surface--) I now have an easy way to stop off at my passive mob sorter :biggrin.gif:
Next step is making it go all the way down to my aggressive mob trap so I can do a couple projects I've been wanting to do for it (A mob switcher for my control room, so I can control which mobs get brought up, and which ones just get killed instantly,) and a record studio.
Alright, the elevator now goes down to layer 10. It currently goes to: My passive mob sorter, my agressive mob trap, sealevel, and of course the storage room. It takes 4 seconds to go from layer 10 up to sealevel, and that's without rushing. :wink.gif:
War is where the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other. The good people die, and so do the bad ones, but the weak people, like me, we have inherited the earth.
To be 100% honest, I designed very little of the stuff. I just know how to build it from seeing it on SMP or on youtube or something =P I did design a little, and all the asthetics were done by me. I'm running out of ideas on what to do next. I still haven't bothered doing anything on the surface other than my passive mob farm, but I'm planning on rebuilding the whole island to give it distinct areas (I want a forest, a beach, and a sandy area.) The only problem is that if I use grass anywhere it hurts my loot rates, so I'll have to use astroturf (Green wool xD)
Edit;; just had a great idea. For my storage warehouse for any excess materials I have (cobble, dirt, etc,) I'm thinking I should make a cargo ship in the ocean, and have a fast transit way of getting to it (I'm thinking of doing my first EATS road to it.)
So I ran out of space to store Cobble (I don't want to put it in my other chests because they're all organized by item type,) so I decided it's time to make my storage warehouse, which in my previous post I decided to do in a cargo ship.
I've never made a ship before, and I don't want to waste 1000's of planks, so I decided I'd do a mockup of it in a test world before I did it in my main world, just so I have the dimensions and shape decided before I go off and build it.
I just used stone for the mockup to see how it looks, and I think I'll use cleanstone for my cargo ship instead. I'd use iron blocks if that was an option, but my world's 100% legit and I'm not spending years mining (Not to mention I'd have no place to store all the cobble =P)
Here's the mockup:
I used Tykens sandstone test world for it because I didn't want to deal with water. This is a quick mockup-- not the real deal. I have some things I want to change about it, but for the most part I'm proud of it =D
These are the materials I'll use to build this in my main world:
Stone for the outside
Wood for the deck and floors of the captains house.
Tons of ladders, water, and decorative items for the EATS road that will lead to it
A decent amount of colored wool to make decorative storage containers on deck (I'll put my chests below deck/maybe inside the storage containers too)
Keep in mind this will be my first boat build ever! Please give me suggestions!
For those interested, this is how I'll transfer it to my survival world:
-Draw a detailed blueprint of the dimensions and shape on a piece of paper
-Rebuild it in my main world
-Build an EATS road to it
-Pray nothing goes horribly wrong =P
If my math is right it will use 13 stacks of planks for the upper deck alone. Times that by 2 for the lower deck, then add some for the captains house. Then you have to add ladders, signs, chests...
Boats almost done. All I need to do is fill it with chests. I scrapped the idea of cargo containers on deck-- they ended up being too bright looking compared to the rest.
And I finished all the chests for the cargo ship =D
Here's a view from above deck on the balcony of the captains house:
(The dirt trails my temporary way of getting to it)
And below deck from the front aiming back:
(The ladder goes from the bottom deck to the top of the captains house.)
I decided against using an EATS road for two reasons:
1) Notch breaks them with every patch, and they need to be fixed. I don't like something that requires constant maintenance.
2) You can't put chests on boats, which means I'd have to constantly go back and forth with inventorys full of goods.
I am going to use minecarts instead. I'm going to have it really simple from my base: You put a minecart on the track, press a button, it goes.
On the other side, underneath the boat, it's going to be a bit more complicated. I'm going to put a full freight depot under there. I'm even going to experiment with the concept of sorting storage carts from normal ones, but I'm unsure of how much success I'll have.
I'm thinking I'm going to have the minecart stations looking technical: Glass walls so you can see all the insides. Any redstone below the floor will be showcased as well.
This save I've been trying to stay away from my typical style of clean, above ground houses in grassy areas by an ocean or forest. I think showcasing everything will be good for when I share the save as well, so people can figure out how stuff works and copy it.
Sorting storage minecarts from normal ones has been proven difficult to do. I know that manned and unmanned minecarts go different speeds (Hence runaway cart detection,) so I'm going to see if that speed diference exists between storage carts and carts with mobs (me) in them.
I made a few changes since the downtime, so this is going to be a pretty good post:
I finished the minecart station. I could only figure out how to sort unmanned carts from carts with a mob in them. I couldn't sort storage carts from other carts. So, to counteract this, I just made two seperate lines: My freight line, and my travel line.
Here's the station under my base:
I am standing on the freight line in this picture. The person line is across from me. You can see my elevator in the far corner.
You press the call button to call a storage cart from the pez dispenser. The dispenser is really simple: You push the button, and it open and closes the trapdoor that has minecarts stacked on it. To make it only dispense one cart at a time I had to connect a monostable circuit to the button, which was really difficult to fit in (It's actually below the station.) This side of the station was a pain to build because I kept popping through the wall/floor of the storage room.
The pez dispenser can hold ~10 carts. It was also a pain to make because of the wall being in the way. I actually made the track up to the top of it inside of my cave.
The switch chooses the destination for the storage minecart: Either back to the pez dispenser, or to the boat.
Under the boat I have an almost identical system, just with the switches and buttons moved a bit because I had a lot more room to work with.
I'm also now almost out of glowstone and iron, and am completely out of gold =P I lit the whole minecart system (Including the person line tracks) with glowstone. Heres a picture of what the tracks look like:
If it was longer I would have made it more interesting, with waterfalls, caves and stuff, but it's too short to be worthwhile.
I removed the dirt bridge to the boat, since it was only temporary. The boat is now complete as far as I'm concerned =D
I also made it to dry land! I went to the nether and dug pretty far in one direction (I used 3 iron picks,) and then made a portal. I was worried I would come out still on the ocean or something, but I did manage to dig far enough. The portal comes out in a nice little islandy area. Not really what I was hoping for, but I'll make do.
I was really hoping the portal would come out on flat land, so I could make a nether temple around it, but this is what it came out on:
I've made a pretty big decision in these days as well: -I'm going to get rid of the island. As nice as it is, I butchered it getting my starting resources. I am going to use TNT to blow away a lot of it to keep the ocean floor looking kind of natural, and I'm going to build a new island a little away from my passive mob spawning pads.
-My elevator I'm going to leave where it is, but give it a little boathouse. I'll hook up a boat dispenser to the same building as my elevator goes into, and then I'll be able to get around and to the island for whatever reason.
-I'm going to make a lochness monster in the ocean a little away from the island. I think it'll look pretty sweet as a background object. I also want to make a volcano somewhere, since I haven't made one yet. I also want to put something in the sky in the distance near the island. I really want to make the surface above my base more than just an ocean.
-I'm either going to have to build my nether temple in the water, build an island for it, or do a shitload of terraforming. I'm thinking of building it in the water, because lava/fire will be a cool contrast to water.
I also just made my way to block off the passive and aggressive mob flow, since I've been too lazy to make it. I haven't implemented it yet, since I have other stuff I want to do first, but here's the design:
The problem with it is that it'll block spiders, but that's no concern from me, because at the same time I implement this I plan on blocking off spiders from spawning using half-steps, since I'll get enough wool from sheeps to not need to use silk.
And after a little bit of terraforming, from the same spot:
=P This build was really tricky to do, since I've never made a mountain/volcano ever before. I think it turned out alright, but there's a few changes I'm going to make to it (parts of it are a little bit too steep compared to the rest, as you can see from the picture.)
I made this by starting with a perfect circle to the bottom, then making my way up. I made little changes to the circle every one or two times I went up a layer, which ended up changing the shape pretty dramaticly by the time I reached the top. It took quite a bit of cleanstone, but way less than I expected. I regret not making it a bit bigger, but it's fine how it is.
The inside is hollow and houses my passive mob farm, my elevator, and the ladder I have for if Notch ever breaks the elevator. I'm going to make a boat dispenser coming out of the side so I have a way to get to the island I'm going to build afterwards.
This is really interesting stuff to look at. I'll keep checking in every now and then to see what you accomplished. Honestly, I WOULD do this if I didn't have internet, but since I do, I feel its a waste of my time, when I could run a server, and accomplish the same things on here. My idea of a perfect server is one that is 100% cheat free (excluding some plugins like Factions and BananaChunk, which reduces lag due to chunks nearest to you being rendered first) and this will make a server turn out to be amazing.
When you walk in my mushroom farm, it now auto harvests because you step on a pressure plate. You just stand on the plate and all the mushrooms come to you.
I spent a lot of resources on it, but I also pistonised my reed farm.
As you can see, Im running desperately low on ores (Coal, diamonds, etc,) and ingots (Gold, iron...)
Next up I'm going to fix my egg-spress machine (egg farm) so it works. I currently have the chickens routed directly to lava because I was having trouble getting my kill-switch to work, but I know how to fix it (I've just been lazy)
I'm also going to be making a wheat farm very soon, I just don't know a good location yet.
The boat dispenser on the side of the volcano is complete, here's a picture:
It has a boat pez dispenser, so I can load it with quite a few boats. All you do is enter the boat and it launches you-- no buttons required!
And here's a pretty sunset =D
And one final note:
As bad as it looks, i have to cover the volcano in torches. The amount of mobs that spawn on it at night is rediculous, then they go into the water where they wont die.
To make matters worse, when the mobs are in the water they wont despawn, since they're in just the right (Wrong?) range from my base.
Im looking for suggestions on what I need to build or what I can do to make everything look better!
So, now I have a really set survival island save, and am working on building out the rooms a bit more. Here's some pictures of my progress:
This is my island up top. It's really messy and cluttered right now because I want to set up my storage room. You can see my passive mob spawner, my very temporary tree farm, and my test thing for a boat elevator I'm working on.
This is the view from my control room in the storage room. As you can see I have 3 storage squares, and a furnace square.
In the middle is my cow and sheep drowner. The holes in it's glass are so I can punch sheep when I need wool (They're temporary until 1.7 comes out and sheep drop wool when they die.) If I wanted to go for efficiency I would have used a lava grinder, but I like the look of a drowning trap more.
In the roof the passive mobs are seperated. I burn wolves and pigs (So I get bacon, I have no use for wolves right now, but when I do I'll finish my wolf seperator that I laid down the framework for.) Chickens go to a chicken farm, but I generally have them killed so they don't take up my mob limit. (I have a killswitch for them in my control room. When it's on the chickens burn, when it's off they lay eggs.)
This is a closeup of the drowner with some mobs in it. I was going to make all the items funnel to one spot but I like this look more-- Plus I'm not really grabbing the leather that often.
This is my bacon dispensor. I don't like seeing burning wolves and pigs so I hooked up Docm's baconator floodgate thing. Just on the ground in front of where I was standing (But not where the bacon is) you can kind of see a pressure plate. When I step on that it activates the floodgates, then the bacon falls when I step off.
I need suggestions on how to make this not just look like a hole in the wall.
This is my agressive mob grinder. I use lava to kill them fast. I don't seperate any of the mobs at this moment since I have no need, but I plan on eventually having a manual sorter for if I want to make powered creepers for testing or fun (You'd be suprised how easy it is to get a creeper struck by thunder in the middle of an ocean xD) I'm considering using powered creepers to make a record studio, since they take only one shot from a skeletons arrow to die, so there's no risk of them explodiong and ruining the whole thing.
That door leads into the grinder for if I need to do any maintenance. The little water patch to the left is where my chicken farm is.
-Lava
-Glowstone
So, I used both. I also got a texture pack and installed my first mods for this save today. I got modloader and betterglass. I might install SPC for taking screenshots rather than always going up to my control room, but Im thinking against it so far because I'll have the temptation to cheat. The only Mods I want to install are ones that help the asthetics and atmosphere-- no new items or mobs or anything. I want to keep this 100% legit.
So, here's the view from the control room:
As you can see there's a number of changes:
-No more torches (Almost)
-Lots more glowstone
-Lots more lava :wink.gif:
-I removed a lot of the furnaces since they looked too bulky.
-Theres no longer crafting benches in the middle of the squares
-I changed some of the items I used to mark chests (The mushroom became a flour, reeds because a pumpkin, stairs became a crafting bench.)
-The passive mob drowner is now lit up with lava underneath.
I left my game afk overnight so I'd build up a mushroom supply, and then throughout the day I kept harvesting, so I can proudly say I FINALLY filled all the rails in my mushroom farm so it will work at max efficiency (Well, semi-max, it's still slowed by light but I don't need a rediculous amount of shrooms anyways xD)
Underneath the dirt is a layer of mushrooms. Same with under the rails. And on top of the rails. I know that mushrooms grow up and down, so I through them in everywhere I could that wouldn't be affected by water. The farm is an auto-harvest system, and I never need to replant. All I need to do to harvest is remove a single dirt block that's in a room up the ladder next to it.
My chicken farm and baconator have doors that close when you walk in, so you can AFK with 0 creeper thread (Added those after I learned my lesson a couple times.)
I also spent a bit of time spelunking in the cave system I have a ladder too. I found a lot of unlit area that was really hurting my mob system, and I have noticed a dramatic increase in items after lighting them up (There was actually a whole other cave system just through a wall that I found harvesting Coal I missed.)
Here's the view from the control room now:
My new tree farm:
It holds 16 trees at a time in an ~11x11 space (or 12x12 or something-- something around there xD)
I am putting 2 dispensors on the wall-- One for saplings, one for axes. You can see where they'll go with the hole on the left wall.
I also added a new reed farm:
When I block one water source, the reeds auto-harvest. When I open another, they all get funneled to the collection point. This was a bit more difficult to build than the mushroom farm, but took way less time to make since reeds grow a lot faster, and I'd already figured out water controls on the mushroom one.
I added the controls in the control room for the mushroom farm, since the reed farm and mushroom farm are literally side-by-side (I had trouble fitting it in with a 1-thick wall in between. I had to redo everything a few times)
Once I have my boat elevator, wheat farm, cactus farm, and mob controls built I will release my save so people can figure out how everything functions. (I got 2 mails asking how my mushroom farm works. I didn't design it, but I lost the youtube video for how to make it.)
I got rid of my boat dispensors, and drained the shaft (lol) and now have a double chest full of signs, so I labeled EVERY room and EVERY farm :wink.gif:
I decided to use the way faster to make, way faster moving, easily used for multiple floors minecart elevator. I used a bit less than a stack of iron making the minecarts, and only needed some glass, water, and ladders I had left over from other projects.
Here's the result (picture taken from the inside since the view from outside it isn't that great.)
It takes like 1 second to get to ground level if you button mash the right mouse button, or like 3 if you just hold it down. Ya, it's kind of a big deal. :wink.gif: I have water breaks by every minecart for fast descent, and so you can choose multiple floors going down or up.
If anybody is interested I can send them the save to see how stuff works. The only thing that will be tricky to get to is my passive mob sorter, since it's embedded in the roof (I do have a door going into it though, it's just a little out of the way. I'll make a path to it though!)
Edit:
Made a nether trip, now I have a couple stacks of glowstone, so everythings lit with it and lava now =D Torches are purely decorative.
I lit up the elevator with glowstone too, and decorated the bottom with glowstone/cobble and lava under the floor.
I also made my first stop on the elevator (other than the surface--) I now have an easy way to stop off at my passive mob sorter :biggrin.gif:
Next step is making it go all the way down to my aggressive mob trap so I can do a couple projects I've been wanting to do for it (A mob switcher for my control room, so I can control which mobs get brought up, and which ones just get killed instantly,) and a record studio.
The good people die, and so do the bad ones, but the weak people, like me, we have inherited the earth.
Edit;; just had a great idea. For my storage warehouse for any excess materials I have (cobble, dirt, etc,) I'm thinking I should make a cargo ship in the ocean, and have a fast transit way of getting to it (I'm thinking of doing my first EATS road to it.)
I've never made a ship before, and I don't want to waste 1000's of planks, so I decided I'd do a mockup of it in a test world before I did it in my main world, just so I have the dimensions and shape decided before I go off and build it.
I just used stone for the mockup to see how it looks, and I think I'll use cleanstone for my cargo ship instead. I'd use iron blocks if that was an option, but my world's 100% legit and I'm not spending years mining (Not to mention I'd have no place to store all the cobble =P)
Here's the mockup:
I used Tykens sandstone test world for it because I didn't want to deal with water. This is a quick mockup-- not the real deal. I have some things I want to change about it, but for the most part I'm proud of it =D
These are the materials I'll use to build this in my main world:
Stone for the outside
Wood for the deck and floors of the captains house.
Tons of ladders, water, and decorative items for the EATS road that will lead to it
A decent amount of colored wool to make decorative storage containers on deck (I'll put my chests below deck/maybe inside the storage containers too)
Keep in mind this will be my first boat build ever! Please give me suggestions!
For those interested, this is how I'll transfer it to my survival world:
-Draw a detailed blueprint of the dimensions and shape on a piece of paper
-Rebuild it in my main world
-Build an EATS road to it
-Pray nothing goes horribly wrong =P
If my math is right it will use 13 stacks of planks for the upper deck alone. Times that by 2 for the lower deck, then add some for the captains house. Then you have to add ladders, signs, chests...
Time to go to my tree farm xD
I gave the build it's own thread, since I took a lot of pictures of me building it =P
Here it is:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/391808-journal-of-a-boat-build/
Here's a view from above deck on the balcony of the captains house:
(The dirt trails my temporary way of getting to it)
And below deck from the front aiming back:
(The ladder goes from the bottom deck to the top of the captains house.)
I decided against using an EATS road for two reasons:
1) Notch breaks them with every patch, and they need to be fixed. I don't like something that requires constant maintenance.
2) You can't put chests on boats, which means I'd have to constantly go back and forth with inventorys full of goods.
I am going to use minecarts instead. I'm going to have it really simple from my base: You put a minecart on the track, press a button, it goes.
On the other side, underneath the boat, it's going to be a bit more complicated. I'm going to put a full freight depot under there. I'm even going to experiment with the concept of sorting storage carts from normal ones, but I'm unsure of how much success I'll have.
I'm thinking I'm going to have the minecart stations looking technical: Glass walls so you can see all the insides. Any redstone below the floor will be showcased as well.
This save I've been trying to stay away from my typical style of clean, above ground houses in grassy areas by an ocean or forest. I think showcasing everything will be good for when I share the save as well, so people can figure out how stuff works and copy it.
I finished the minecart station. I could only figure out how to sort unmanned carts from carts with a mob in them. I couldn't sort storage carts from other carts. So, to counteract this, I just made two seperate lines: My freight line, and my travel line.
Here's the station under my base:
I am standing on the freight line in this picture. The person line is across from me. You can see my elevator in the far corner.
You press the call button to call a storage cart from the pez dispenser. The dispenser is really simple: You push the button, and it open and closes the trapdoor that has minecarts stacked on it. To make it only dispense one cart at a time I had to connect a monostable circuit to the button, which was really difficult to fit in (It's actually below the station.) This side of the station was a pain to build because I kept popping through the wall/floor of the storage room.
The pez dispenser can hold ~10 carts. It was also a pain to make because of the wall being in the way. I actually made the track up to the top of it inside of my cave.
The switch chooses the destination for the storage minecart: Either back to the pez dispenser, or to the boat.
Under the boat I have an almost identical system, just with the switches and buttons moved a bit because I had a lot more room to work with.
I'm also now almost out of glowstone and iron, and am completely out of gold =P I lit the whole minecart system (Including the person line tracks) with glowstone. Heres a picture of what the tracks look like:
If it was longer I would have made it more interesting, with waterfalls, caves and stuff, but it's too short to be worthwhile.
I removed the dirt bridge to the boat, since it was only temporary. The boat is now complete as far as I'm concerned =D
I also made it to dry land! I went to the nether and dug pretty far in one direction (I used 3 iron picks,) and then made a portal. I was worried I would come out still on the ocean or something, but I did manage to dig far enough. The portal comes out in a nice little islandy area. Not really what I was hoping for, but I'll make do.
I was really hoping the portal would come out on flat land, so I could make a nether temple around it, but this is what it came out on:
I've made a pretty big decision in these days as well:
-I'm going to get rid of the island. As nice as it is, I butchered it getting my starting resources. I am going to use TNT to blow away a lot of it to keep the ocean floor looking kind of natural, and I'm going to build a new island a little away from my passive mob spawning pads.
-My elevator I'm going to leave where it is, but give it a little boathouse. I'll hook up a boat dispenser to the same building as my elevator goes into, and then I'll be able to get around and to the island for whatever reason.
-I'm going to make a lochness monster in the ocean a little away from the island. I think it'll look pretty sweet as a background object. I also want to make a volcano somewhere, since I haven't made one yet. I also want to put something in the sky in the distance near the island. I really want to make the surface above my base more than just an ocean.
-I'm either going to have to build my nether temple in the water, build an island for it, or do a shitload of terraforming. I'm thinking of building it in the water, because lava/fire will be a cool contrast to water.
The problem with it is that it'll block spiders, but that's no concern from me, because at the same time I implement this I plan on blocking off spiders from spawning using half-steps, since I'll get enough wool from sheeps to not need to use silk.
Ignore the dirt mixing with sand on the seafloor-- it's going to be hidden by a volcano =)
(Picture taken from the boat xP)
=P This build was really tricky to do, since I've never made a mountain/volcano ever before. I think it turned out alright, but there's a few changes I'm going to make to it (parts of it are a little bit too steep compared to the rest, as you can see from the picture.)
I made this by starting with a perfect circle to the bottom, then making my way up. I made little changes to the circle every one or two times I went up a layer, which ended up changing the shape pretty dramaticly by the time I reached the top. It took quite a bit of cleanstone, but way less than I expected. I regret not making it a bit bigger, but it's fine how it is.
The inside is hollow and houses my passive mob farm, my elevator, and the ladder I have for if Notch ever breaks the elevator. I'm going to make a boat dispenser coming out of the side so I have a way to get to the island I'm going to build afterwards.
;~;
Keep up the good work.
When you walk in my mushroom farm, it now auto harvests because you step on a pressure plate. You just stand on the plate and all the mushrooms come to you.
I spent a lot of resources on it, but I also pistonised my reed farm.
As you can see, Im running desperately low on ores (Coal, diamonds, etc,) and ingots (Gold, iron...)
Next up I'm going to fix my egg-spress machine (egg farm) so it works. I currently have the chickens routed directly to lava because I was having trouble getting my kill-switch to work, but I know how to fix it (I've just been lazy)
I'm also going to be making a wheat farm very soon, I just don't know a good location yet.
The boat dispenser on the side of the volcano is complete, here's a picture:
It has a boat pez dispenser, so I can load it with quite a few boats. All you do is enter the boat and it launches you-- no buttons required!
And here's a pretty sunset =D
And one final note:
As bad as it looks, i have to cover the volcano in torches. The amount of mobs that spawn on it at night is rediculous, then they go into the water where they wont die.
To make matters worse, when the mobs are in the water they wont despawn, since they're in just the right (Wrong?) range from my base.