Hmm. I logged back in on 1.9 and again on 1.12 and saw that while all chests were empty, some had disappeared completely. I guess this overwrite only happens in loaded chunks (because my chests/map wall in a remote part of the map wasn't affected).
Can you suggest a way to cut and paste a file or part of a file from an older save into my current world (I still want to play on 1.8.9 for the time being) to restore my chest contents and map wall?
Actually, I just looked around a little more and noticed all my chests were empty and my tagged horse was gone, though my personal inventory is fine. Must be another dat file glitch. Maybe this world is just a little too old. Not sure I want to go back to my last save and have this happen again....
I've been playing on a single 1.8.9 vanilla survival world for a long, long time (essentially since the 1.8 release) and have had various corruption issues with a game file that old. This evening I accidentally logged in in my 1.12.2 profile, but quickly logged out again- something I've down once before with no apparent consequences. However, this time, after logging back in on my 1.8.9 profile I quickly noticed that the item frames and maps on my map wall disappeared. The jack o' lanterns are still there, but the frames and maps (224 of them!) are gone. I traveled through the nether to a remote part of my world and a second map wall was still there- jack o' lanterns, item frames, maps and all.
I really don't think it's an issue with using my 1.12.2 profile (but I thought I should mention it), and obviously not all my map data is corrupt. Can anyone suggest a way (or a link to an explanation) of what might have happened to my save file and how to cut and paste older saved versions of my map data into the current world?
I'll go poke around a little more to see if I can more accurately diagnose the issue, but any insight would be appreciated!
I love the idea, and I think you're off to a good start- if I were ever to start a creative world just to play around in it would be in this kind of terrain.
I've never been much of an interior decorator, but with all that volume within the mountain you could do some neat stuff. I'm not sure I'm into the cobblestone roof, but otherwise the aesthetic is nice. I'd consider swapping out the dirt on the pathways for coarse dirt, gravel, or maybe even silk-touched grass blocks eventually, but that's a personal choice.
You've got the paths lit up nicely, but I'd be a little concerned about mobs spawning above me and dropping on my head as I walked the paths at night. Unfortunately, making things "safe" and making things "pretty" are not always compatible.
That giant hole in the top is fun- I'm not sure I'd put a big building in it, but at least some catwalks through it so you can properly appreciate it. And, maybe, a few tiny crop fields on the ledge off to the right of the big hole.
I, too, have a few of these oak patches here and there, but they're all underground, in which case it's easy enough to limit tree growth by the height of the cavern ceiling (I place them at major subway/mining nexus). In this particular case I thought it would be fun to "encourage" large oaks just to see what a patch of them would look like. I've been trimming off all the leaves, removing trunks of standard-sized trees, then replanting the saplings in an iterative process. Solitary large oaks are kind of a pain to process, but it's easy enough to scramble around on the top of a dense patch like this. Although it's a lot of wear and tear on the tools, this also provides more than enough saplings to perpetuate the grove- a small consideration given this is out in a desert!
You know, I too have noticed sapling inhibition while under branches (though not while under leaf blocks). I thought I was imagining it and haven't done any tests, but I swear, there are some saplings in this kind of dense grove that will not grow for love nor money- I *think* virtually every time it was because of an overhead branch. Kind of odd, that.
I started carving out the mountain at the end of my elevated rail- I'm going for a "medieval Anasazi" kind of look and will post pictures as I get farther along. Of course, executing a big build (particularly one that I'm not at all sure what I want it to be) requires a certain level of procrastination, so I've been doing a few other things as well, like playing around in my rudimentary wood-charcoal-glass "factory" out in the desert wastelands. I'm trying to see what a compact grove of large oaks would look like...
Because... why not?
I've also done a little mapping to further the procrastination and now have 48 zoom step III maps (1024x1024) filled out. This works out to 50.33 square kilometers of mapped terrain, or 196,608 surface chunks. Of course I map at two scales simultaneously (step III and step II)- here's a picture of my step II wall containing 192 individual maps (it's getting harder and harder to fit it in one frame):
And here a re a couple of screenshots from the last mapping expedition- the first is kind of hard to see, but shows three grass entities perched on sand- whoops! The second is from one of the more "dangerous" villages I've found. The door to one of the huts opens right onto a ravine. Lucky for the inhabitants there's water immediately below the fall. I've since secured their area of the ravine bottom (even providing them a door and a "house" to hide in at night) and will eventually go back and see if I can't construct a means for them to get back up to the surface. Or, maybe, I'll just start building a village along the walls of the ravine...
Quick question- do you use redstone blocks for your powered rails just to avoid having to place a redstone torch under the rail or off to the side (breaking the 1x2 symmetry), or is there some other reason?
And yes, meaningfully comparing resource blocks becomes messy with Fortune. Except in two cases I've used Fortune for pretty much everything since I first got the enchantment. The exceptions are when I want raw ore blocks for decorative purposes (this is rare, but at one time I stockpiled a bunch just in case) and emerald ore. It took a long, long time in my world to find my first village and that was a long, long way from my base. Eventually I found more convenient villages and once I realized how easy it was to accumulate emeralds through trade I started silk-touching the emerald ore I found to provide a more accurate estimation of my activity (but darn, of course I don't have the numbers with me).
As for raw coal ore, I've mined 60,488 adjusted to 138,275 compared to your 1,000,000. I branch mine and tunnel my subways at y=11+12 and so occasionally run into caves, but rarely do I follow the larger ones to exhaustion (I also don't think I've ever *completely* cleared out a mineshaft- the amount of rails I've harvested is miniscule compared to yours!). When I get a wild hair and do some extensive caving, I do notice an uptick in coal and iron recovery relative to my mining activity, but I don't have any hard numbers for it.
My ratio of coal blocks crafted to ore mined (28,378 : 138,275 , adjusted) is comparatively twice as high as yours (107,078 : 1,000,000) as I've faithfully used Fortune for a long, long time and switched from coal to charcoal for all my torches and virtually all my smelting needs.
Whups, gotta go- maybe I can get back to this a little later...
Pretty amazing- congrats, and thanks for sharing! I'm sure I'm not the only one here that appreciates your technical knowledge of the game as well as the efforts you go to to illustrate your points (I particularly like your "block of ore" visualizations- I wonder why!). I find it amazing that you were able to catch the 1,000,000 block mark- I do look at the stats once in a while, but usually only to answer some obscure question I have. Perhaps I'll pay closer attention to them in the future.
Of course, it's hard for anyone to put this in perspective without comparing your stats with their own. I've done some simple comparisons with my own stats, just to see how we differ. Spoiler: I've mined no where near 2,000,000 blocks all told- actually, not even close to 1,000,000!
First, I see you've played 2238.48 hours over 643 sessions for an average of 3.48 hours per session. I myself have played 979.92 hours over 1,497 sessions for an average of 0.65 hours per session. I often sit down and play for only 10 or 15 minutes at a time- I have no "standard play session" whatsoever except that I tend to play longer on weekend evenings. I started playing a couple days after 1.8 was released (767 days ago!), so on average I play 1.27 hours a day (can that possibly be correct?!?).
I also see you must do a heck of a lot more PvE fighting while caving than I do while (very cautiously) branch mining- I have only 4% of the kills you have but have died 3 times to your 12- disproportionately more often given your combat, though this was and continues to be my very first and only world, so chalk up a couple of those deaths to noob mistakes...
You have also done a lot more walking than I have. Adjusting the numbers to compensate for the longer time you've spent in-game (2.286 times as long as I), I still have only walked some 7,700 km compared to your 11,562 km. I don't see "time sprinted" in your version of the stats, but it occurred to me that I do do a lot of sprinting (apparently I sprint about a third of the time). If you add that in I'm getting closer to your distance walked (9,841 km adjusted to your 11.5). I have spent far more time, comparatively, riding minecarts though (1,547 km, adjusted), to your 627. I, too, calculate that I have about 14 km of rails in my world but I use them all the time to get from one base to another, often quite some distance away. In fact, at 192,512 fully mapped chunks my world is slightly over 2.5 times the size of yours, which is the result of my surveying the surface, not exploring every cave! This difference in style is borne out by the fact that, again adjusted for amount of play, you've crafted almost exactly four times as many torches as I have.
I'll play with some of the block totals tomorrow if I get a chance- I'm about out of steam for tonight. Again, thanks for sharing- it's fun to compare notes!
Thanks, and yes- it's been a study in resource transportation logistics. I've never purposely hoarded andesite (or used much of it in my previous builds)- I typically plug up holes in my branch mines with diorite, andesite and granite first (to keep them out of my inventory), which means I don't tend to have a whole lot of those materials lying around. I generated piles of silk-touched smoothstone in digging the approach subway and have been *almost* self-sufficient in iron for the rails, but I've definitely had to scour my old depots to come up with enough andesite for this first leg.
I managed to connect point A (where the rail exits the mountain to the west) with point B (where it runs into the bump in front of the savanna mountain to the east, about 950m away), but I still have three or four stanchions out of 21 to complete. Here is a shot looking west from on top of the eastern terminal bump:
As it turns out though, I'm a bit stumped (and intimidated) with what comes next. I want the rail to continue into the mountain behind the bump (wherein I'll make a major base), but I haven't quite figured that part out yet. Here's a couple shots looking east at the terminal bump and the cliff face behind it- it's just begging for something impressive:
The bump actually sets out in front of the cliff by 20 or 30 blocks, which allows for all sorts of architectural possibilities:
I think tonight, though, I'll take a break and do some mapping farther east, just to stretch my legs and see exactly how big this desert is...
Despite a busy "real life" I've managed to play some Minecraft over the last few weeks and thought I would give a brief update. Last time, I reported on finding some nifty savanna-M and savanna plateau-M features while out mapping the extreme northeast corner of my world. While there, I got inspired to do some larger (for me) builds out in the open, including an elevated rail system from which to appreciate the scenery. I do have a subway system for my world consisting of about 11km (I think) of 3x3 tunnel with the floor being at lava-level (y=10). Well, I ground the tunnel another 4 km or so out to the boonies, then cut diagonally up to y=80, the level at which I'm building my elevated rail.
Here are a couple images of where the tunnel dramatically exits the mountain just before and during the construction. I haven't quite finalized the glass entry, so it still looks kind of derpy. The cobblestone is all naturally formed and I think I only disturbed one lava block in installing the entryway.
Here are a few "progress" shots of building the first section of elevated rail:
The elevated rail actually plunges through a desert mountain in this first section, which necessitated marking the top of the original sand layer with dirt, excavating the sand, installing a glass ceiling, then removing the dirt and replacing the sand as it was before the construction of the tunnel. These pictures don't really capture the whole effect, but they give you an idea of what I was trying to do.
And here are a few pictures of finished sections.
Again, the rail is at y=80 and the materials are polished andesite [edit], stone slabs, stone bricks, stone brick stairs, chiseled stone brick and glowstone. When the base of the stanchions fall in water I use a core of cobblestone, then a facing of smoothstone to two blocks below water level, then continue with cobble down to the riverbed. The support stanchions are 44 blocks apart on center with glowstone and slab details every 11 blocks on center. The 44 block distance is sub-optimal for rail speed, so I compensated by laying three powered rails in a row to maintain speed. The spacing of the glowstone is close enough to prevent mob spawns on the diorite railbed but not necessarily the sides- I'm using upside down stairs to discourage spawning along the sides.
Overall I'm pleased with the design- semi-realistic, functional, visually interesting but not overly complicated (or difficult to build). Here are day/night aerial views of the area:
I don't have the exact numbers on me, but the first leg of the elevated rail will be just under 1 km (21 stanchions), shooting out of the mountainside in the west then penetrating the little nub next to the savanna-M feature to the east. From there I'll bridge into the mountain and make a cool lair. In the night time image you can see a couple little villages to the north of the elevated line and one good-sized one to the south (as well as two of the three nearby deserted wells). Eventually these villages will all be linked by elevated rail, but that's not going to happen for another little while...
As always, comments are appreciated and thanks for looking!
I'm not big on doing stuff over or revising ad infinitum especially on a large scale... I've used creative to plan out features or to test mechanics when I'm really not sure how to go about something and I need to know so I don't waste time or materials in survival.
What I'm really crappy at is doing finishing details/aesthetics after I have a functional structure up. I tend to get lazy and not put the work in.
This. For the last two years I've been playing in one single-player survival world in which one of my aesthetic "rules" has been to keep my impact on the local landscape to a minimum, without relying on creative mode. I use Excel to lay out floor plans, to create color-coded topo maps (much of my construction is underground, barely) and even to keep track of my maps, subway exits/entries, etc. I've got over 48 square km revealed and mapped, but almost nothing visible on the surface apart from a couple bases/pet projects.
However, I've recently changed building philosophies a little and decided to construct an above-ground rail line and some very visible building projects in a large desert area. I broke down and used creative mode to flesh out the mechanics and aesthetics of the elevated line, mostly because it's such a pain in the butt to experiment with in survival (and the building site is a loooong way away from anywhere). However, I went back to Excel to plot out where the stanchions of the elevated line should be. Assuming I place the first one correctly, the next 20 should fall into place perfectly (and I'm not building them a second time!).
And yeah, once I get something up and running it's hard for me to spend the time polishing it...
After a few months of Doing Other Stuff (tm), I've been floating back into my one and only ultra-vanilla single-player 1.8.9 survival world. Frankly, I'm a bit daunted by the large projects I've set for myself, but I did want to get a few more things done before updating to 1.10. So, until I get motivated to tackle some of the mega-projects and make the switch I've been doing little things, one of which is adding to my map wall (always a favorite activity).
First, here's a screen grab of my zoom step II map wall- 176 individual 512x512 maps. I have a second, more or less identical zoom step III wall (44 maps that are 1024x1024), but that's at my other base. Obviously I'm working on filling out the top part of the map; the newest eight maps are the ones on the upper right.
As you can see, I haven't come across a lot of desert in my world yet, so that section was pretty fun to explore. Here's an MCMap rendering of that upper area- it's 128 chunks tall by 64 chunks wide (plus an extra couple of chunks along the eastern edge to catch the savanna-M biome).
There at least five villages in this section (which is probably about as many as I've discovered everywhere else) along with at least one temple and one "abandoned well" structure- only the second I've ever found. I'm also pretty jazzed about the savanna-M biome patches- they're among my favorite in the game. Here are a couple close-ups...
Each of those spires are over y=160 in height. In the upper image you can just make out a single house and "church" to the left of the base of the spire- quite a place for a monastery! I was able to climb the formation in the lower image by swimming up the central waterfall, which partly obscures a large cave or pocket near the base of the spire- a perfect place to tuck away a secret lair...
Here's a couple of front and one backside view of the formation, more or less from ground level...
Lastly, just for the heck of it, here's a view of my "farm tower" and mineral cubes. From here they look just about the same as last time, but they're growing. This shot also gets me to thinking about whether to go taller or start making another stack (and how I should go about building an aesthetically pleasing wall around my compound). As a bonus, the second image is my currently active branch mine (another of my favorite activities). That's roughly 14.5 km of 1x2 mineshafts at y=11+12, all under a large extreme hills biome...
Quick update- I played around with MCMap a bit and verified that, excluding two small savanna-M biomes, there are only seven 150+ peaks in my world (surface area of 44 x 1024 x 1024 maps = 46.137 sqkm) and none reaching y=160. From an expeditionary standpoint, that seems like a good goal. The two independent savanna-M biomes max out at y=168 and y=169. The taller one has a fairly substantial area above y=160- a blobby triangle roughly 30x45 (I've referred to this peak as "Mt. Doom ever since its discovery).
R- yes, a written catalog of the seven major (non-savanna) peaks would be perfectly doable. A default map of each peak is an excellent idea, though I'd go one step farther by placing temporary redstone blocks down in an "x" pattern to mark the actual summit from above. You could even crudely label them in that way...
Thanks again for the continued conversation and yes, I now recall that you've previously mentioned editing out the naturally generated torches in your world.
I'll have a look at Minutor- adjusting the slicer in real-time would be a bonus.
Have you used Mapcrafter? The results look pretty slick. It doesn't do the altitude analysis I'm interested in, but it does look like you can edit in custom markers... I'm just a little too dim to really understand the installation notes...
If all else fails I can fly around in a creative copy of my world (which I've never done) and manually inspect peak heights (though that sort of takes away from the experience of actually climbing the mountains!)....
R, TMC- many thanks for the suggestions- I'll take a closer look at them. As TMC mentions, I'm rather fond of my snow-white vanilla world but am not philosophically against using mods so long as they do nothing more or less than what I'm interested in.
And yes, I could iteratively manipulate the y slider in mcmap to "brute force" my way into figuring out various local min/maxes, but it seems like it would be a relatively simple coding matter to automatically identify them. Visualizing them on the rendered image might be a bit more complicated, though. Better yet, how about a toggle to produce color-coded isometric topo maps? I'm no coder, but it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do...
And TMC, I really like the torch-related mods you've made to mcmap- was this easy? Could I get a 32-bit modded version from you?
0
Hmm. I logged back in on 1.9 and again on 1.12 and saw that while all chests were empty, some had disappeared completely. I guess this overwrite only happens in loaded chunks (because my chests/map wall in a remote part of the map wasn't affected).
Can you suggest a way to cut and paste a file or part of a file from an older save into my current world (I still want to play on 1.8.9 for the time being) to restore my chest contents and map wall?
Thanks!
tbg
0
Actually, I just looked around a little more and noticed all my chests were empty and my tagged horse was gone, though my personal inventory is fine. Must be another dat file glitch. Maybe this world is just a little too old. Not sure I want to go back to my last save and have this happen again....
0
All-
Sorry if this has been covered before but...
I've been playing on a single 1.8.9 vanilla survival world for a long, long time (essentially since the 1.8 release) and have had various corruption issues with a game file that old. This evening I accidentally logged in in my 1.12.2 profile, but quickly logged out again- something I've down once before with no apparent consequences. However, this time, after logging back in on my 1.8.9 profile I quickly noticed that the item frames and maps on my map wall disappeared. The jack o' lanterns are still there, but the frames and maps (224 of them!) are gone. I traveled through the nether to a remote part of my world and a second map wall was still there- jack o' lanterns, item frames, maps and all.
I really don't think it's an issue with using my 1.12.2 profile (but I thought I should mention it), and obviously not all my map data is corrupt. Can anyone suggest a way (or a link to an explanation) of what might have happened to my save file and how to cut and paste older saved versions of my map data into the current world?
I'll go poke around a little more to see if I can more accurately diagnose the issue, but any insight would be appreciated!
cheers,
thebugguy
1
I love the idea, and I think you're off to a good start- if I were ever to start a creative world just to play around in it would be in this kind of terrain.
I've never been much of an interior decorator, but with all that volume within the mountain you could do some neat stuff. I'm not sure I'm into the cobblestone roof, but otherwise the aesthetic is nice. I'd consider swapping out the dirt on the pathways for coarse dirt, gravel, or maybe even silk-touched grass blocks eventually, but that's a personal choice.
You've got the paths lit up nicely, but I'd be a little concerned about mobs spawning above me and dropping on my head as I walked the paths at night. Unfortunately, making things "safe" and making things "pretty" are not always compatible.
That giant hole in the top is fun- I'm not sure I'd put a big building in it, but at least some catwalks through it so you can properly appreciate it. And, maybe, a few tiny crop fields on the ledge off to the right of the big hole.
Fun!
thebugguy
0
rodabon-
I, too, have a few of these oak patches here and there, but they're all underground, in which case it's easy enough to limit tree growth by the height of the cavern ceiling (I place them at major subway/mining nexus). In this particular case I thought it would be fun to "encourage" large oaks just to see what a patch of them would look like. I've been trimming off all the leaves, removing trunks of standard-sized trees, then replanting the saplings in an iterative process. Solitary large oaks are kind of a pain to process, but it's easy enough to scramble around on the top of a dense patch like this. Although it's a lot of wear and tear on the tools, this also provides more than enough saplings to perpetuate the grove- a small consideration given this is out in a desert!
You know, I too have noticed sapling inhibition while under branches (though not while under leaf blocks). I thought I was imagining it and haven't done any tests, but I swear, there are some saplings in this kind of dense grove that will not grow for love nor money- I *think* virtually every time it was because of an overhead branch. Kind of odd, that.
cheers,
tbg
0
All-
Kind of a "what have I done lately" update...
I started carving out the mountain at the end of my elevated rail- I'm going for a "medieval Anasazi" kind of look and will post pictures as I get farther along. Of course, executing a big build (particularly one that I'm not at all sure what I want it to be) requires a certain level of procrastination, so I've been doing a few other things as well, like playing around in my rudimentary wood-charcoal-glass "factory" out in the desert wastelands. I'm trying to see what a compact grove of large oaks would look like...
Because... why not?
I've also done a little mapping to further the procrastination and now have 48 zoom step III maps (1024x1024) filled out. This works out to 50.33 square kilometers of mapped terrain, or 196,608 surface chunks. Of course I map at two scales simultaneously (step III and step II)- here's a picture of my step II wall containing 192 individual maps (it's getting harder and harder to fit it in one frame):
And here a re a couple of screenshots from the last mapping expedition- the first is kind of hard to see, but shows three grass entities perched on sand- whoops! The second is from one of the more "dangerous" villages I've found. The door to one of the huts opens right onto a ravine. Lucky for the inhabitants there's water immediately below the fall. I've since secured their area of the ravine bottom (even providing them a door and a "house" to hide in at night) and will eventually go back and see if I can't construct a means for them to get back up to the surface. Or, maybe, I'll just start building a village along the walls of the ravine...
That's it for now- cheers!
thebugguy
0
TMC-
Quick question- do you use redstone blocks for your powered rails just to avoid having to place a redstone torch under the rail or off to the side (breaking the 1x2 symmetry), or is there some other reason?
And yes, meaningfully comparing resource blocks becomes messy with Fortune. Except in two cases I've used Fortune for pretty much everything since I first got the enchantment. The exceptions are when I want raw ore blocks for decorative purposes (this is rare, but at one time I stockpiled a bunch just in case) and emerald ore. It took a long, long time in my world to find my first village and that was a long, long way from my base. Eventually I found more convenient villages and once I realized how easy it was to accumulate emeralds through trade I started silk-touching the emerald ore I found to provide a more accurate estimation of my activity (but darn, of course I don't have the numbers with me).
As for raw coal ore, I've mined 60,488 adjusted to 138,275 compared to your 1,000,000. I branch mine and tunnel my subways at y=11+12 and so occasionally run into caves, but rarely do I follow the larger ones to exhaustion (I also don't think I've ever *completely* cleared out a mineshaft- the amount of rails I've harvested is miniscule compared to yours!). When I get a wild hair and do some extensive caving, I do notice an uptick in coal and iron recovery relative to my mining activity, but I don't have any hard numbers for it.
My ratio of coal blocks crafted to ore mined (28,378 : 138,275 , adjusted) is comparatively twice as high as yours (107,078 : 1,000,000) as I've faithfully used Fortune for a long, long time and switched from coal to charcoal for all my torches and virtually all my smelting needs.
Whups, gotta go- maybe I can get back to this a little later...
cheers,
tbg
0
TheMasterCaver-
Pretty amazing- congrats, and thanks for sharing! I'm sure I'm not the only one here that appreciates your technical knowledge of the game as well as the efforts you go to to illustrate your points (I particularly like your "block of ore" visualizations- I wonder why!). I find it amazing that you were able to catch the 1,000,000 block mark- I do look at the stats once in a while, but usually only to answer some obscure question I have. Perhaps I'll pay closer attention to them in the future.
Of course, it's hard for anyone to put this in perspective without comparing your stats with their own. I've done some simple comparisons with my own stats, just to see how we differ. Spoiler: I've mined no where near 2,000,000 blocks all told- actually, not even close to 1,000,000!
First, I see you've played 2238.48 hours over 643 sessions for an average of 3.48 hours per session. I myself have played 979.92 hours over 1,497 sessions for an average of 0.65 hours per session. I often sit down and play for only 10 or 15 minutes at a time- I have no "standard play session" whatsoever except that I tend to play longer on weekend evenings. I started playing a couple days after 1.8 was released (767 days ago!), so on average I play 1.27 hours a day (can that possibly be correct?!?).
I also see you must do a heck of a lot more PvE fighting while caving than I do while (very cautiously) branch mining- I have only 4% of the kills you have but have died 3 times to your 12- disproportionately more often given your combat, though this was and continues to be my very first and only world, so chalk up a couple of those deaths to noob mistakes...
You have also done a lot more walking than I have. Adjusting the numbers to compensate for the longer time you've spent in-game (2.286 times as long as I), I still have only walked some 7,700 km compared to your 11,562 km. I don't see "time sprinted" in your version of the stats, but it occurred to me that I do do a lot of sprinting (apparently I sprint about a third of the time). If you add that in I'm getting closer to your distance walked (9,841 km adjusted to your 11.5). I have spent far more time, comparatively, riding minecarts though (1,547 km, adjusted), to your 627. I, too, calculate that I have about 14 km of rails in my world but I use them all the time to get from one base to another, often quite some distance away. In fact, at 192,512 fully mapped chunks my world is slightly over 2.5 times the size of yours, which is the result of my surveying the surface, not exploring every cave! This difference in style is borne out by the fact that, again adjusted for amount of play, you've crafted almost exactly four times as many torches as I have.
I'll play with some of the block totals tomorrow if I get a chance- I'm about out of steam for tonight. Again, thanks for sharing- it's fun to compare notes!
cheers,
tbg
0
rodabon-
Thanks, and yes- it's been a study in resource transportation logistics. I've never purposely hoarded andesite (or used much of it in my previous builds)- I typically plug up holes in my branch mines with diorite, andesite and granite first (to keep them out of my inventory), which means I don't tend to have a whole lot of those materials lying around. I generated piles of silk-touched smoothstone in digging the approach subway and have been *almost* self-sufficient in iron for the rails, but I've definitely had to scour my old depots to come up with enough andesite for this first leg.
I managed to connect point A (where the rail exits the mountain to the west) with point B (where it runs into the bump in front of the savanna mountain to the east, about 950m away), but I still have three or four stanchions out of 21 to complete. Here is a shot looking west from on top of the eastern terminal bump:
As it turns out though, I'm a bit stumped (and intimidated) with what comes next. I want the rail to continue into the mountain behind the bump (wherein I'll make a major base), but I haven't quite figured that part out yet. Here's a couple shots looking east at the terminal bump and the cliff face behind it- it's just begging for something impressive:
The bump actually sets out in front of the cliff by 20 or 30 blocks, which allows for all sorts of architectural possibilities:
I think tonight, though, I'll take a break and do some mapping farther east, just to stretch my legs and see exactly how big this desert is...
cheers,
tbg
1
All-
Despite a busy "real life" I've managed to play some Minecraft over the last few weeks and thought I would give a brief update. Last time, I reported on finding some nifty savanna-M and savanna plateau-M features while out mapping the extreme northeast corner of my world. While there, I got inspired to do some larger (for me) builds out in the open, including an elevated rail system from which to appreciate the scenery. I do have a subway system for my world consisting of about 11km (I think) of 3x3 tunnel with the floor being at lava-level (y=10). Well, I ground the tunnel another 4 km or so out to the boonies, then cut diagonally up to y=80, the level at which I'm building my elevated rail.
Here are a couple images of where the tunnel dramatically exits the mountain just before and during the construction. I haven't quite finalized the glass entry, so it still looks kind of derpy. The cobblestone is all naturally formed and I think I only disturbed one lava block in installing the entryway.
Here are a few "progress" shots of building the first section of elevated rail:
The elevated rail actually plunges through a desert mountain in this first section, which necessitated marking the top of the original sand layer with dirt, excavating the sand, installing a glass ceiling, then removing the dirt and replacing the sand as it was before the construction of the tunnel. These pictures don't really capture the whole effect, but they give you an idea of what I was trying to do.
And here are a few pictures of finished sections.
Again, the rail is at y=80 and the materials are polished andesite [edit], stone slabs, stone bricks, stone brick stairs, chiseled stone brick and glowstone. When the base of the stanchions fall in water I use a core of cobblestone, then a facing of smoothstone to two blocks below water level, then continue with cobble down to the riverbed. The support stanchions are 44 blocks apart on center with glowstone and slab details every 11 blocks on center. The 44 block distance is sub-optimal for rail speed, so I compensated by laying three powered rails in a row to maintain speed. The spacing of the glowstone is close enough to prevent mob spawns on the diorite railbed but not necessarily the sides- I'm using upside down stairs to discourage spawning along the sides.
Overall I'm pleased with the design- semi-realistic, functional, visually interesting but not overly complicated (or difficult to build). Here are day/night aerial views of the area:
I don't have the exact numbers on me, but the first leg of the elevated rail will be just under 1 km (21 stanchions), shooting out of the mountainside in the west then penetrating the little nub next to the savanna-M feature to the east. From there I'll bridge into the mountain and make a cool lair. In the night time image you can see a couple little villages to the north of the elevated line and one good-sized one to the south (as well as two of the three nearby deserted wells). Eventually these villages will all be linked by elevated rail, but that's not going to happen for another little while...
As always, comments are appreciated and thanks for looking!
cheers,
thebugguy
0
This. For the last two years I've been playing in one single-player survival world in which one of my aesthetic "rules" has been to keep my impact on the local landscape to a minimum, without relying on creative mode. I use Excel to lay out floor plans, to create color-coded topo maps (much of my construction is underground, barely) and even to keep track of my maps, subway exits/entries, etc. I've got over 48 square km revealed and mapped, but almost nothing visible on the surface apart from a couple bases/pet projects.
However, I've recently changed building philosophies a little and decided to construct an above-ground rail line and some very visible building projects in a large desert area. I broke down and used creative mode to flesh out the mechanics and aesthetics of the elevated line, mostly because it's such a pain in the butt to experiment with in survival (and the building site is a loooong way away from anywhere). However, I went back to Excel to plot out where the stanchions of the elevated line should be. Assuming I place the first one correctly, the next 20 should fall into place perfectly (and I'm not building them a second time!).
And yeah, once I get something up and running it's hard for me to spend the time polishing it...
cheers,
tbg
0
After a few months of Doing Other Stuff (tm), I've been floating back into my one and only ultra-vanilla single-player 1.8.9 survival world. Frankly, I'm a bit daunted by the large projects I've set for myself, but I did want to get a few more things done before updating to 1.10. So, until I get motivated to tackle some of the mega-projects and make the switch I've been doing little things, one of which is adding to my map wall (always a favorite activity).
First, here's a screen grab of my zoom step II map wall- 176 individual 512x512 maps. I have a second, more or less identical zoom step III wall (44 maps that are 1024x1024), but that's at my other base. Obviously I'm working on filling out the top part of the map; the newest eight maps are the ones on the upper right.
As you can see, I haven't come across a lot of desert in my world yet, so that section was pretty fun to explore. Here's an MCMap rendering of that upper area- it's 128 chunks tall by 64 chunks wide (plus an extra couple of chunks along the eastern edge to catch the savanna-M biome).
There at least five villages in this section (which is probably about as many as I've discovered everywhere else) along with at least one temple and one "abandoned well" structure- only the second I've ever found. I'm also pretty jazzed about the savanna-M biome patches- they're among my favorite in the game. Here are a couple close-ups...
Each of those spires are over y=160 in height. In the upper image you can just make out a single house and "church" to the left of the base of the spire- quite a place for a monastery! I was able to climb the formation in the lower image by swimming up the central waterfall, which partly obscures a large cave or pocket near the base of the spire- a perfect place to tuck away a secret lair...
Here's a couple of front and one backside view of the formation, more or less from ground level...
Lastly, just for the heck of it, here's a view of my "farm tower" and mineral cubes. From here they look just about the same as last time, but they're growing. This shot also gets me to thinking about whether to go taller or start making another stack (and how I should go about building an aesthetically pleasing wall around my compound). As a bonus, the second image is my currently active branch mine (another of my favorite activities). That's roughly 14.5 km of 1x2 mineshafts at y=11+12, all under a large extreme hills biome...
Nothing too special here, but thanks for looking!
Cheers!
thebugguy
0
Quick update- I played around with MCMap a bit and verified that, excluding two small savanna-M biomes, there are only seven 150+ peaks in my world (surface area of 44 x 1024 x 1024 maps = 46.137 sqkm) and none reaching y=160. From an expeditionary standpoint, that seems like a good goal. The two independent savanna-M biomes max out at y=168 and y=169. The taller one has a fairly substantial area above y=160- a blobby triangle roughly 30x45 (I've referred to this peak as "Mt. Doom ever since its discovery).
R- yes, a written catalog of the seven major (non-savanna) peaks would be perfectly doable. A default map of each peak is an excellent idea, though I'd go one step farther by placing temporary redstone blocks down in an "x" pattern to mark the actual summit from above. You could even crudely label them in that way...
cheers,
tbg
0
TMC-
Thanks again for the continued conversation and yes, I now recall that you've previously mentioned editing out the naturally generated torches in your world.
I'll have a look at Minutor- adjusting the slicer in real-time would be a bonus.
Have you used Mapcrafter? The results look pretty slick. It doesn't do the altitude analysis I'm interested in, but it does look like you can edit in custom markers... I'm just a little too dim to really understand the installation notes...
If all else fails I can fly around in a creative copy of my world (which I've never done) and manually inspect peak heights (though that sort of takes away from the experience of actually climbing the mountains!)....
cheers,
tbg
0
R, TMC- many thanks for the suggestions- I'll take a closer look at them. As TMC mentions, I'm rather fond of my snow-white vanilla world but am not philosophically against using mods so long as they do nothing more or less than what I'm interested in.
And yes, I could iteratively manipulate the y slider in mcmap to "brute force" my way into figuring out various local min/maxes, but it seems like it would be a relatively simple coding matter to automatically identify them. Visualizing them on the rendered image might be a bit more complicated, though. Better yet, how about a toggle to produce color-coded isometric topo maps? I'm no coder, but it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do...
And TMC, I really like the torch-related mods you've made to mcmap- was this easy? Could I get a 32-bit modded version from you?
Thanks for the comments, and cheers!
tbg