Minecraft

[Sly Reflex]

It depends on how you want to play in all honesty though I have the monsters on, it's rare I get into a conflict. The basic premise is that when the light gets under a certain tolerance, it allows hostile mobs to spawn. If you get too close to a wandering mob they will hunt you down until you manage to put enough distance between you and them, or one of you dies. If the monsters are still about when the sun comes up, it either alters their behaviour or burns them to death depending on the type of monster you have.

Like I said, it's very rae I have to fight them, occasionally one will manage to break close to one of my dwellings or whatever but it's not long before it burns up in the sun. I normally sleep which fast forwards time to the next morning, so I'm minimising the chance of them being about for me to bump into.

Other players actively go out to hunt specific mobs because of the items they drop on death. Many people prefer to play on 'peaceful mode' which basically removes all elements of danger from the game, bar what you'd naturally die from. It's really up to the player how they'd like to deal with mobs.

I finally managed to finish off my dam and all that crap on that side now. I really want to try my hand at building a monster grinder although I'm not sure how big I'd want to make it or where I'd put it. I think the best plan of action would to be to build it backwards. I might look at putting it directly under the place where I am walking about so the monsters spawn but I'm still not sure that would work. The way I have it in my mind it is a stupendous about of work and I don't want to undertake that and it not fucking work right. TGK showed me his monster grinder (FNAR!) and I think I'm going to use a similar method apart from I will make it so they are killed automatically rather than kill them by my own hand. Or maybe make a set of doors I can open so if I feel like it I can take monsters from the feed and give them a good hiding myself. I dunno. I'll have to see what I feel like when I start the project.

[Sly Reflex]

I noticed you could make note blocks last night, but I couldnt really figure out what the timing was or how they worked wihout putting a lot of effort into it, so I had a quick look on youtube and found this.

Holy fuck!

[Sly Reflex]

I've not put any pictures up for a few reasons just lately.

Reason #1 is that I don't think you guys enjoy me throwing up shit every time I do something. TGK did mention that this is the Minecraft thread and therefore you should expect Minecraft if you click, but I'm a bit wary of flooding the thread with 1001 pictures.

Reason #2 is that I've not really done anything all that interesting. As mentioned before I'm clearing out a spot so I can make a mob grinder. However, mob grinders without a mob spawner take up a ludicrously large amount of space because the spawning floor has to be fucking huge You are talking 1 level for the roof. 2 or 3 levels for the mobs to comfortably spawn in. a floor 2 or 3 deep so that I can have water channels built into the floor. Then I have to have a few floors that lead from the hole under the spawn floor that lead to a kill point. Then after that I have a collection point for the loots to bundle up. I did some rough calculations last night using the new update that marks co-ordinates on the map and when I've done preparing the site I'm going to eventually build on and it came inbetween the region of me removing 3000 block minimum to 4000 blocks maximum depending on how the landscape was formed. So far I've done 3 sessions each compromising or 3 hours or more and it still isn't fucking cleared and ready for me to start building. When it is all cleared off I'll bang a picture up and show you how much of a chunk I have removed. It's well fucking big though, I've stumbled across several caves and potholes which will need to be dealt with or incorporated into the build. When I build the floor of the spawner it is sure to dominate the skyline of that part of the map. I bet it'll show up on the in game map also, I built a dam and flooded a desert and did other numerous big stuff that showed on the topography of the level.

I think once this mob grinder is done I'll look at making some fancy timed rail system that fires a cart out every 30 seconds between certain destinations. I have brief knowledge of circuitry, so I have some sort of idea how this will work. I need a fucking load of iron and gold before I even contemplate on doing something like that though. Not to mention lots of redstone. One to do after I've spent a bit of time down my mine I think.

How is everyone else getting on?

[Hendo]

Personally, I think you should go nuts with pictures and text. Better more than less.

Put them behind spoiler tags if you feel it's too much.

[Sly Reflex]

Yeah, I'll probably put them behind spoiler tags if there are more than a few. I should have done with the excavation today, I'll put that up when I can be bothered. I feel like doing a memorial plaque or something because the amount of damage I've done to the hill side is quite drastic, catastrophic even.

[Sly Reflex]

Here we go then.

Just for scale I left the stone pyramid in. There's 165 blocks in that. My actual estimation reading the map co-ordinates was way wrong. The space I cleared was 37x69x20. That's over 50 thousands blocks I've moved. So yeah, I underestimated a bit on how much I'd actually shifted. The hill actually had a sheer drop off that went right up to where the crate and workbench are. Sadly I don't have any pictures of that.

Eventually there will be a big fuck off building there. One that will murder lots and lots of monsters.

This is the first thing you see when jumping into my world. Oakley was lost when I flew over the pond. Long live Oakley. Eventually I'll get round to making a staircase that joins up to the main streets. Eventually.

This game is never ending. Never. Ending.

[Craymen Edge]

Reason #1 is that I don't think you guys enjoy me throwing up shit every time I do something. TGK did mention that this is the Minecraft thread and therefore you should expect Minecraft if you click, but I'm a bit wary of flooding the thread with 1001 pictures.

I think pictures are good, and spoilers if there are more than a couple is the right way to go.

Reason #2 is that I've not really done anything all that interesting. As mentioned before I'm clearing out a spot so I can make a mob grinder. However, mob grinders without a mob spawner take up a ludicrously large amount of space because the spawning floor has to be fucking huge You are talking 1 level for the roof. 2 or 3 levels for the mobs to comfortably spawn in. a floor 2 or 3 deep so that I can have water channels built into the floor. Then I have to have a few floors that lead from the hole under the spawn floor that lead to a kill point. Then after that I have a collection point for the loots to bundle up. [etc..]

I didn't understand a lot of that, but it sounds like a real time sink.

How is everyone else getting on?

I haven't spent much time in Craymen's Edge since Thursday night. My 3 tier tree-farming terrace works really well (my only project so far). I turned on monsters for my last session, and found myself getting attacked every time I tried to sleep. I think I've sorted that now though.

[Sly Reflex]

I'll put pictures up of the mob grinder as I make it. There'll be fucking loads of them though, it's a good few sessions work. Once it's all up and running you are fully welcome to come and have a look around it. Everyone is.

[Sly Reflex]

I've had to concede defeat here with the water system in the mob grinder. I'm consulting the internet now. I've tried numerous tricks with sign posts, steps and buckets of water but I can't get that fucking shit flowing how it should do.

[Sly Reflex]

I said there would be pictures, and pictures there is.

I construct the top level of my grinder. I put 6 lower channels all feeding into a plughole that will eventually drop mobs onto the next level of the grinder. At the minute it just drops them to their deaths. I know this because while I was constructing this several mobs spawned and ended up committing assisted suicide. I wasn't to bothered with the zombies, but every time another mob spawned up there I shit my pants. Skeletons and Creepers are well fucking annoying.

I have no idea why the picture is so small either. I took it and uploaded it exactly the same as they others and they turned out right.

I start to construct the far side.

This is the best way I could manage. I noticed when I was building once that if you put stairs in a certain way, it blocks the water up like you see in the picture from one side, but the other side the water pushes right over the step, allowing the current to be consistent for faster delivery. It still works this way simply because the mob cannot walk fast into the current, and if it so much as touches the source block of water they will be carried off. I'd be fucked if I could get the steps method to work, so I ended up slumming it with the sign post way. It'll do.

The drains funnel all mobs that step into the water down this plughole. This will go to another floor where mobs can spawn in a similar fashion to how my mushroom shed worked. Building that should be fun...

Because the grinder casts such a shadow mobs are constantly spawning under it.

You can compare this with the other sign and see just how bloody big the grinder is. When I finally finished the floorplan it amazed me how big it was. When you see it from distance it looks even fucking bigger somehow.

The cow likes the spot light.

[shaolin_monkey]

Jesus fucking Christ, where the hell do you get the time and patience to do all this stuff? I start doing things, get ores, and wander off to fight beasties and stuff. Kudos to ou for the self-discipline, but I think you need a shed with some powertools, a workbench and a shit load of wood so you can make stuff in the real world!!!

[Sly Reflex]

I've made stuff in the real world. Several machines including one that had a chain that was over a mile long. The difference is when something stumps me in real life I have all the shit to tidy up before I can call it a day. In this I can just save my game and turn the console off of things don't go the way I expect them to.

You should come and see it if you are online. You can maybe lay a few stones. Any help would be lovely.

[Sambob]

I've made stuff in the real world. Several machines including one that had a chain that was over a mile long.

Only a mile long?! pff what is this, amateur hour down at playbarn?

[Sly Reflex]

Progress report time.

This is the floor of the top tier of my murder hut. It's now all closed up and fully functioning. I blocked it up though while I was doing the lower tier, simply bcause watching shit fall to its death is a bit off putting. It's still lit up a bit in the top tier too, I need to do a quick run and make it totally dark. I might bang it on peacefull for that, I don't fancy dying to my own contraption.

I took this before I put the roof on.

The roof is now on and I've started working on the lower tier in this picture. The first line below the top tier is the floor the mobs spawn on, the lower on is where they get pulled under by the currents to meet their demise.

[Sly Reflex]

I've still not finished the mob grinder. I totally emptied out all my cobblestone resources, somewhere in the region of 7000+ blocks, although it could be more. Each double chest has 3500 bits of cobble in there and we've emptied at least 2 of them to my knowledge just on the lower tier alone. When I say we've I'm talking about me and Toxiedogg/Tromadogg. Some of you might know him from various gaming sites. He's been dead good and helped me out a hell of a lot since I started undertaking these tasks.

To make matters worse I miscalculated where the bottom floor should be in the water traps, so I am not sure if the self preservation of the mobs will fall off the ledge of certain drops. I'm sure I can just put sign posts up or ladders or something to make them more likely to walk into the trap, as I am thinking those blocks although hollow confuse the mobs into thinking they are walking onto a solid block, therefore dropping down. On the upside, if Endermen ever make it into the XBLA version of the game I've got a trap that doesn't need to be altered, so my calculation fuck up might pay off in the long run.

I started a new mine on one of the stair cases of the double shafts. The co-ordinates they have put on the map are invaluable, now instead of taking an educated guess I can go to where I wanted to come out, take a mental note and 9 times out of 10 I come out exactly where I wanted to be. It can be a bit squiffy, but you are sure to come out on the block you want to come out on or the one next to it, which is close enough for me. Incidentally, Troma was mining down in the mine where I started mining before I created the double shafts and somehow managed to break through into the double shafts mine at bedrock. It is unlikely we'll go down there other than to grab lava though, the mine I started up con co-ordinated 17 is turning up a hell of a lot more goods than the one at bedrock did. Lava isn't as much trouble either, but sometimes burrowing through cave systems with hostile mobs can be a tad frustrating. We went exploring one last night and ended up getting lost for about 10 minute in which time we gains a lot of ores and other valuables but nearly lost it due to suicidal green fuck Creepers. I was glad when we found our way out. I'll probably tidy the walls and roof up and put doors on them if we need to venture into them again.

Hopefully next time I feel I need to post I'll have finished the bloody mob grinder. It's looming over the hill like a big unfinished monstrosity and it bugs me to have loose ends.

On a lighter note, do you remember the store room I had with the lava down lighting? Well a creeper managed to get in and blow up. It was like that scene from Titanic where the glass breaks on the bridge and the captain goes down with his ship. Except in this case the water was death dealing lava. Needless to say I just turned it off after that. I normally like to patch up the damage done by Creeper blasts, but fuck sorting that out. I would have lost almost everything. I really need to look at making a contingency plan in case I get mobs at the door that can ruin my day.

[TromaDogg]

I've still not finished the mob grinder. I totally emptied out all my cobblestone resources, somewhere in the region of 7000+ blocks, although it could be more. Each double chest has 3500 bits of cobble in there and we've emptied at least 2 of them to my knowledge just on the lower tier alone. When I say we've I'm talking about me and Toxiedogg/Tromadogg. Some of you might know him from various gaming sites. He's been dead good and helped me out a hell of a lot since I started undertaking these tasks.

S'Ok dude, no worries, always happy to help other people out with stuff in their games, you've helped me out with a ton of Achievos and things in the past. Plus, talking about random garbage to people online at 4am is always fun.

Incidentally, Troma was mining down in the mine where I started mining before I created the double shafts and somehow managed to break through into the double shafts mine at bedrock. It is unlikely we'll go down there other than to grab lava though, the mine I started up con co-ordinated 17 is turning up a hell of a lot more goods than the one at bedrock did. Lava isn't as much trouble either, but sometimes burrowing through cave systems with hostile mobs can be a tad frustrating. We went exploring one last night and ended up getting lost for about 10 minute in which time we gains a lot of ores and other valuables but nearly lost it due to suicidal green fuck Creepers. I was glad when we found our way out. I'll probably tidy the walls and roof up and put doors on them if we need to venture into them again.

Ah, it was funny while it lasted. Kinda turned into a survival horror at one point when we were running out of torches and Creepers and shit were spawning from fuck knows where, and we couldn't find which way we came in.

On a lighter note, do you remember the store room I had with the lava down lighting? Well a creeper managed to get in and blow up. It was like that scene from Titanic where the glass breaks on the bridge and the captain goes down with his ship. Except in this case the water was death dealing lava. Needless to say I just turned it off after that. I normally like to patch up the damage done by Creeper blasts, but fuck sorting that out. I would have lost almost everything. I really need to look at making a contingency plan in case I get mobs at the door that can ruin my day.

Yeah, you were telling me about that just as I was leaving, think I turned my Xbox off and cut you off mid sentence, sorry

Hopefully will find you some more gold ore when I'm next around....seems pretty scarce in my Minecraft world too, but I hit on a nice patch of it last night just before the end of the session. I've got a feeling that there will be an absolute shitload of it all together somewhere, and probably not too far away from where I've been mining. We'll see.

[Sly Reflex]

Picture time.

This is the scoop under the mob grinder. I worked with RoboticMonkey on this. He is the 2nd person to help me construct in my world. Many props to RoboticMonkey.

Despite wanting to drowned mobs in a big glass tube, in the short time we had to put water through this we couldn't make it so that the water would run in the right direction. I think next session I will look into it a bit more, but I I cannot figure out a way to kill them via drowning then I will incorporate lava into the mix and burn the fuckers to death.

Despite this landmark not been finished I'm still thinking about the next thing I am going to do. I am going to build a trainyard that fires out carts every 30 seconds or so that automatically make their way around my camp and actually have train stations that will bring the carts to a stop so you can get in before sending them off on their way again. I've got some redstone circuitry in mind that will allow me to send out carts, but to stop them all bunching up from me riding them around I think the stops between stations will have to start off long and get less as the carts journey increases, simply because a cart you are riding in travels faster than one that is empty. I really don't want carts to bunch up, as that would totally go against the whole point of having a timed automated rail system. Anyway, that is the next project I think. First of all the mob grinder will have to work right before I think about starting with the rail system. Maybe the rail system will be next weeks project. Is it slightly scary that my projects have now moved or from a session, to 2 session, to weeks? Yes. Yes it is.

This game is a tinkerers dream. You should at all least try it if you already have not.

[Sly Reflex]

Mission complete, sort of. If anyone knows how to make circuits can you stand up now? My knowledge of them is very limited and I'd like to pick your brains if you are willing.

This is the last thing most mobs see.

When I eventually let the flood gates open they all fought like cat and dog not to go first. Eventually once a few shook loose business was resumed.

I think this is another batch that fell through, although I'm not sure. They tend to come in big clumps of mobs. It's really hard to see in these pictures, they are a lot more definable when you see them moving.

And so begins my battle with trying to understand redstone circuitry. In the picture you can see pressure plates near the water, a loop with repeaters in and to the lower right 2 blocks that when supplied with lit redstone produce a musical note. The idea is whenever items wash up on the pressure plate, it lights up the circuit which sets the circle of redstone off. The circle keeps repeating until the items are taken off the pressure plates, thus playing the 'ding dong' of the note blocks. However, I've not got the hang of it yet, I think I need to make the loops slightly bigger or throttle the current further back down the circuit. I'm not sure. Ideally I need to get this whole chain thing down because the idea I have in my head for the time train station thing is based around one of these 'clock' circuits.

[Sly Reflex]

Soon I will be starting my railway. While I am at it I will be building a long straight line of rail to get the achievement for Tromadogg. This track will be temporarily in place before being removed and put to proper use. If you would like to ride it to get the achievement you best get in sharpish. It won't be there forever.

I've also got plenty of wheat if you would like to make some bread for the achievement. There is no rush on that one.

[Craymen Edge]

I spent a good few hours just aimlessly wadnering and chatting with Sly last night (when his connection allowed it) when he accidentally discovered you could dye sheep.

This eventually ended with me on a hillside in my world resembling teletubbies more than minecraft, being surrounded by the regular white, black & brown sheep, joined by a flock of green, yellow and red ones. I wish I'd had the Facebook nonsense set up for a screenshot.