Don't play Minecraft!

I was going to buy it and then realised I have too much on as it is. I really want to play it though. I might buy it in support of the developer.

Setting up a server must be doable, we have the technology after all!

With Hamachi it's disturbingly easy...you connect via IP address once thats done. I had it running (and you may have spotted "Pete's Minecraft Server" on the lack-of group). It was more the relaibility of the hardware that was the issue for me, but I reckon that can be solved with a reinstall...

I did notice your server, I also discovered I can access your shared folders over hamachi too.

No idea whats on there...would guess at old DIVX stuff, probably pinched from a Fishcon? As I said, it needs a re-install...

Ah minecraft it's like a gaping pit of a time sink one minute you are just having a quick go to try it out the next you have spent over a week contructing a skull castle floating in the sky or an undersea fortress made of glass or in my case both plus a rollercoaster mine cart track to take you to each location.

Not tried out the new update with the new portal tech and annoyingly torches that go out but had a great time with the previous version.

Took my first steps into The Nether last night it makes for a fun new addition plus some new blocks to play with. Eternally burning hellstone is pretty cool makes for fun if rather dangerous torches.

Made another portal a short walk away and came out underground in an extensive cave system that was full of good stuff like coal and iron.

Found my railway system that I built to move quickly to my various bases also occationally collects animals that wander onto the track. Had a pig a sheep and a cow sat in mine carts looking confused.

I'm about to start a new game...I think i've learnt enough about the system now to give it a proper go...

Hopefully I'll find more iron this time...very light on it last time.

I'm resisting. I just have too much on. But I want to play desperately.

I did a properly embarrasing session yesterday. The game started me on an icy lake, so I moved off to some mountains in the distance, as I needed some trees to get me going. Spent an hour or so digging down to bedrock (bottom of the level) and constructing a ladder all the way down, lit with torches, topped with a small stone hut.

Then I fell off the ladder to my death, and respawned miles away (you always spawn in the same place), and I have no idea where my mine was...I completely failed to mark it, so from any distance it's invisible :-(

Started again, and will be constructing my initial mine very close to my spawn point...

LOL, classic! It sounds like a beautifully unforgiving game where you make your own bed to sleep in.

My plan for the weekend (well, Monday actually, as I'm at a 40K tournament on Sunday, and fireworks on Saturday night) is to reinstall the spare PC and try to get a stable Multi-Player server going. I think that I've convinced Skunty that he'd like to play it, and I fear what the assorted minds on here would come up with if let loose.

Considering an investment around the next payday (15th Nov) so shall keep an eye on developments.

It is one of those games that takes a few restarts to get the hang of :D

Most of the time assuming you can find your body dying isn't too bad as you just locate your death site and all your items will be hanging around waiting. Of course if you respawn at night and have no weapons and it's a long trek to your cave while avoiding zombies, spiders, and those damn creepers.

Falling into lava is the worst death as it burns up all your stuff that rare and very useful diamond pick ax is dust :S

It would be nice to be able to rebind your spawn point even if it's only a relatively close grid point. The Minecraft world is pretty vast so wandering off exploring is a fun thing but death puts a bit of a damper on that. I guess with portals to the nether and rapid travel that way it's possible to sort that but that requires a lot of forethought and investment of resources upfront.

Aaaaaaaaaaa!

So how was your first night?

I spent a productive evening starting a new level, and for starters have done my "straight to the bottom" mine, next to the spawn, and with a sighting tower, and a glass safety wall on the ladder. I think it's almost impossible for me to actually kill myself falling down it now...though I did have to do a couple of trips to the bottom to pick up my stuff during construction...

I watched a couple of short videos (below), followed the crafting advice and survived my first night. Starting at the base of a mountain, I dug up. And up. And out the top. Then I created a ladder (no glass, only found out about that long after) and created a couple of viewing platforms. The chap in the videos makes a good point that you should create big stacks high up to navigate. Once, I got caught outside at night and utterly lost. I died, spawned and then had a royal bastard trying to get back home as I had nothing on me to block the entrance of the base off (didn't know about doors).

Before I play again, I want a server to play against because I want to build a massive sky platform built on a spindly ladder (didn't know about glass until I checked the wiki much later). I like building for myself but I think it would be much more fun to build with others.

I prefer minecraft to Fallout:Nev Vegas for sure. Where NV has awe, Minecraft brings the fun.

First night
This vid is brilliant and took me through as I played. His other vids are great too.

It has that classic lego style fun aspect and also zombies all for a tenner

how can you go wrong!

Well, I sat down to work on Chom Isis last night and ended up completing my tower-to-the-top-of-the-sky. I also walled it in with glass. The glass texture is a bit rubbish but as Pete points out, it stops you falling off.

I don't seem to find much ore. Is that found by digging down or do I have to go to another rocky outcrop? I caught myself out last night by wandering too far (can't get lost now though as my super tower can be seen from everywhere) when night came down. It comes down really fast, doesn't it? I got myself safe, tho.

Yeah, you want to dig deep. From what I can work out, the highest concentrations of ore are near the base of the level (though I struggle to find Iron ore as well...Evil Matt may have a better plan, as he's had enough to do mine tracks etc). My normal start is to dig to the bottom of the level (typically 70-80 blocks down), and then have a ladder down...any mining is then done right near the base, and I get a fair bit of Redstone, Iron, Coal and occasional Diamond from that. You'll probably hit a cave system or two en route, which can be explored at a later date.

Another place to check is tunnel systems, as there always seems to be a few veins in there, though take a good supply of torches.

A handy tool, if you are looking for resources is Cartograph, which will show you your world, and you can also select to show just certain blocks 9Code 15 is Iron Ore, for example). From what I've seen is is fairly evenly distributed across the map...hard to tell depth without doing loads of slices, but from an isometric view seems to be grouped near the bottom...

Thanks for the tip. I imagined that digging down might be the solution, given the name and all. Part of me wants to check out the many different cartography programs but I rather like the idea of

Really looking forward the the server. And Co-Op. WICKED.

Big Rob has been doing a lot of Minecrafting too.

Ah, the secret is out!

I'm ahead of the game for sorting out my Blood Angels for Sunday (just a bit of dremelling and magnet work to go...shouldn't take more than half an hour), so I might see if I can spend some quality time this evening re-installing the PC and getting it stable. A patch has come out today which hopefully makes the server a little more robust as well...

My tactic to find ore is to dig in a sort of spiral downwards. I also spent ages digging out my undersea base collecting any ore I found there. I also like to dig out any pockets of shale or mud I find as it will often reveal usefull viens or cave systems to be explored.

Iron ore is found at almost any level I've seen it above ground at times

Diamond you need to go deep same with redstone.

Gold I think is also pretty deep but it's not very useful you can make a gold sword out of it but it's equivelent to a wooden sword so really only for giggles.

My most recent success was using portal technology where I started with one portal in my cave and opened another some distance away in the nether which came out in the real world in an extensive cave system full of iron and coal.

Mine tracks come in packs of 16 so they go further than you would think for the iron they use.

Texture wise lots of people have done replacement texture packs to improve the look of minecraft I've not investigate them as I kind of like it's clunky graphics though I'll admit glass is crying out for something better or some pixel shading goodness :D

A multiplayer server would be awesome we can all set up our own caves and then run a train system between them :D

From Minecraft

That app is quite fun needs an update to cope with the nether but there is a workaround.

It seems very little of my base is actually above ground :D

Ok, server is up!

Get thee on Hamachi, and on the lack-of group, then join the IP addess of the MINECRAFT! machine. It's just running a Minecraft server, nowt else. It it can deal with it I shall spend some time on Monday moving it somewhere a little safer (rather than my desk)

I have built a small safehouse next to the spawn point (look for the subtle pointer) It seems that near the spawn there is a bug where you cannot remove blocks (known MP bug), but given its a flat lake not a major issue. Also, MP bug is no damage...

I've done a small mine in the back of teh safehouse, however I don't reckon it's a great location, so may want to move off elsewhere (for example, nearer some trees!)

Ok, not so much a "small mine" or "safehouse" anymore.

If anyone gets on there, feel free to extend the orchard!

Fucking excellent! Am feeding big F at the mo. Will get on later. Thanks Pete. :-)

If someone sees Big Rob on steam, please do give him the Hamachi info.

Had a go on the multiplayer server bit of a mixed bag seems like it takes forever to work out the landscape I was first floating in empty space then was on a small block with random parts of the insiodes of mountains in every direction It did eventually work out enough land for me to wander about and find the tree tower. It seems like it's not designed to cope with the lag of my distance to the machine as harevesting stuff is weird I'll attack a tree and it will break up but I get no wood out of it and then the tree regenerates the blocks. Eventually the wood I should have harvested pops into my inventory.

I'll give it another go later it may be that it need to build up some sort of local cache of the level but it seems the multiplayer parts of system needs a lot of work still.

On the server now! ROCKS! Does take a while to sync the map up.

Multiplayer is very dodgy. I was doing loads of stuff that kept coming back. Tried to make a nice moat around the entrance and failed due to the way water works. Doh! I (we) did make this:

There are a number of known issues for multiplayer
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Known_Survival_Multiplayer_Issues#Surv...

One is that near the spawn point blocks cannot be destroyed (also buckets of water do not spawn springs correctly). The front door is just outside the spawn segment as a guideline. for the mine bottom, the turning left that's blocked off my glass leads to the non-destroyable spawn segment.

The loading issue is probably my broadband being shite :-(

Also, who pinched the iron I was stocking up?
Also, stop writing "Pete is Gay" in big letters...Gill found it far too funny :-(
Also, stop buring my orchard (Evil Matt, I'm looking at you...)

Minecraft is officially the greatest game I've never played.

EMW and I were laughing far too hard over Skype to not finish the letters. The torches were his genius as it was getting dark as I was building.

After exploring your big mine, I wanted to make a big tower to space but blocks kept disappearing, so I started the moat but didn't quite understand how water worked. I tried to fix the dirty great trench but the blocks kept disappearing again.

Is the server plugged straight into the router? Will be better than wifi.

Promise I will be more useful next time.

Our intial efforts in there were indistiguishable from griefing :D

I did move some iron from the forge to the chest next to it so I could smelt the gold I found but other than that I only nicked stone which I figured you wouldn't mind about.

Oh and top marks to Rob for positioning that sign perfectly so that the sun rises over it :D

I put in a ladder for the main shaft using the one off ladder trick to reduce the number needed.

we can keep the stairs for local access or for a minecart when we get round to building one

I've added a couple of markers to help you find your way back if you fancy some overlanding.

While mining out the big room I found some coal and iron ore. I stuck in on to smelt and then the server did the lag hug. I logged outand back in and the smelter was empty. I also found some diamond and tried mining it but it just disappeared! Given that, if I find interesting rock, I'll just bung it in the now nicely labelled crates.

The more complex ores like diamond or redstone dust usually require at least a steel pick to get a block of ore. If you hit them with just stone they are just destroyed and yeild nothing.

I think obsidion requires diamond to yeild a block

Ah. Fail.

Had another bit of a go and widened 'Big cave' to as tall as I can reach standing on the floor and started widening it a bit.

You might see some veins of 'posh rock' left ready to mine. Please do! I would have taken them out but I was worried the smelter might give me trouble like before and so didn't risk burning up good ore and coal. Whoever going in next should find plenty of ore/coal to smelt themselves the right pick-axe and mine it out.

Felt really good making Big Cave. I cobbled together an entrance but time was running short, so it's a bit hurried.

I was thinking that we could build a little town inside big cave with buildings made out of wood/sand/other pretty rock. What do you think?

I just saw the server was down when I got back in, so rebooted it. Tomorrow I shall sort out a harness that will do that automatically, and also move the server somewhere where the cat can't sit on it...

The smelter will run on wood instead of coal it just takes more of it but since wood is renewable and coal isn't it seems a good option. Having said that coal is not exactly scarce :D

oh another little trick I picked up if you want smooth stone like the unmined stuff rather than the cobbles you get once it's mined just run the cobbled stuff through the smelter for smooth un cobbled stone. You can then also use this for some of the other mechanics stuff like pressure plates

I put in a sky light in the big cave it's a lot further down than I thought

it's only a 3x3 might put some more in or expand it now I know where it comes out (on top of the hill behind the main above ground building.

I'm looking forward to what you've done...currently watching F1, then I shall go and have a look...

On a completely un-related note, I came away with a 3rd place trophy from the 40k tournament I went to yesterday...tank-spamming for the win! (well, 3 wins and a draw, and a slightly weird scoring system...)

Question - I found the "monsters spawn" option in the server settings. Default is off. Given that;
1. We can't hurt them in Multiplayer
2. They can't hurt us

Do we want them on or not? My gut feeling is "not" at the moment...as and when they are fixed/damage is on I reckon we enable them (and make damn sure the base is secure first!)

@EMW - Skylight, nice! Great idea. You must have started from the bottom and worked up! Did you find anything cool en route? I knew about the wood, I was more worried about losing the ore in a lag-bug-blip.

@Pete - I think we should wait to turn the monsters on because there a loads of multiplayer bug outstanding on those. Other people who have given it a try have had poor server stability.

Sitting at work thinking about mining out more of the cavern, like a sad, sad git I am.

Pete, can you upload a piccy of 'big cave'? Ash at work would like to have a butchers.

A thought - we might need to be a bit careful with our building because when we turn on survival mode, our complex needs to be safe. We don't want zombies spawning in our Big Cave.

I have an evening to burn, and just having lost a load of ore and my diamond pick in a lava flow, I am in the mood to try somewhere new.
Any chance of getting access?

GOD YEAH! Details coming on MSN now.

Big Cave (now with added tree!)

...and here is a map of the deep-level mine layout to date...

To get access;

1) install Hamachi LogMeIn
https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi2/download.aspx
(unmanaged mode)

2) Join the lack-of network (I'll PM you the details)

3) Join the Multiplayer server IP from the subtly named PC :-)

Great! Thanks for posting those, Pete. Having serious withdrawal symptoms now.

Hang on - is there a tree growing in a GLASS CAGE? LOL, who put that in? Classic!

Cracked on Saturday evening and purchased, suffice to say Sunday was entiely lost to MineCraft.

So far I have partially hollowed out a mountain and died to a skeleton, will probs check out the multi later tonight - someone will need to ping me the LO dets over steam.

Also being imminently redundant aside I have completed approximately nothing today since finding a stash of graph paper (I knew it would have a use one day).

Seem to be having trouble connecting to Hamachi, it says the network appears to be full :(

You must have already spotted my tree-growing habit...after all, there over 60 of the blighters on the top floor! We shall never be short of wood!

I had to expand the sun-light slightly, as I couldn't plant the tree dead centre due to bedrock.

I've just done a new deep-shaft on an island, and then put a vertical river in (behind glass) , and then built a funky bridge over to it. Very tasteful, I think...

Looking at the Hamachi group, there are a lot of duplicates, so perhaps they need to be removed? There is a limit of 16 clients per network...

Does someone have the admin to Hamachi? Is there such a thing?

While still working on getting access to the server, I thought I would add a few pics of my current front garden; featuring such highlights, as the flaming nether portal, the levitating arena of DEATH (nothing has died there yet though) and few other fun things if you can spot them.
By day:
By night:

[edit ... sorry, increased size]

WAY more impressive than anything i've managed so far.

Yet to find enough iron for water/lava transportation, probs my own fault for attempting to pull down a mountain rather than dig downwards.

Also I appear to have spawned in a desert area as there is tons of sand around and barely any water, biodome imminent.

Re: Hamachi - I don't think there is an admin thing but I will try and remove my duplicates later. They might be keyed on some sort of MAC address or something?

To remove a client from the network, the client machine that originally created the network is the only one that can evict machines. The problem is that I don't know who that client machine is and if that person has done a reinstall then the creator is lost! The thread I just linked mentioned the web interface but that's in a managed mode only and I think we're unmanaged mode.

The only solution people suggest is a new LogMeIn network. Perhaps call it "lack-of2"? Pete, as a lack-of admin (and at home and with the minecraft server) would you look into making a new 'Managed' network (free also). Then we can remove clients in the future and do everything through the web interface.

I have created a new un-managed network for now, called "lack-of-minecraft"

Currently on there we have me (babychaos) and the server (MINECRAFT!). The creation machine is mine.

Password is cock.

Good man! We will need a new Lack-Of general purpose net. Can you be logged into two at once?

Great, can't wait ... ... ... Damn work getting in the way of things that are truly important.

For the skylight I just dug upwards and stood on a pile of mud on the way I encounted a few pockets of redstone and the odd iron or coal pocket.

Redstone seems amazingly common which is nice we'll have loads for control circuitry once we start mucking about with that.

You can be on multiple networks at once...I have taken the server off the general lack-of server for now, so it pretty much as it's own network now.

I got rid of some of the spare rock lying around...

Depressingly all you'll see is the big sign :-(

OMG, that's absolutely fabulous, Pete! Can't wait to see it in-game. Just waiting for dinner, will check it later. Did you use most of the stone? There was a silly amount of it.

I suspect even with that massive structure there is still stone lying around we did have some f5 or 6 big chests full of the stuff.

BTW who found all those saddles? As far as I know you can't make those they can only be found in secret caves. We can go pig riding :D

Oh you can see both of the skylights I did the large useful one and the small pointless one that nearly flooded the cave :D

This took no time at all, and didn't involve me accidentally burning down about 30 trees at all...

I put in a small tower

I wanted to do a water elevator up to it but unfortunately water is broken for non admin people on multiplayer.

Oh and I expanded the skylight a little

Last night Pete used Lava and Trees to light his lovely house thing:

We also had a server crash, which lost a load of stuff but it's only to be expected as the whole thing is Alpha. A very good Alpha, I may add.

Matt, why do I get the feeling "small tower" and "expanded a little" are vast understatements?

I shall put some water in a chest for general usage. Lava is by request only, after Bigger Rob's escapades last night. I was quite chuffed that all my water only uses 4 sources, right on the top level. I might see if I can do it all from a single central source.

May I request a stack of 64 lava please.

You certainly can request a stack of 64 lava!

Watched some videos at lunch on the topic of mine carts and switches/electrics. OMFG.

notch said he was working on minecarts and boats in MP on twitter...fingers crossed Friday's update has them working! I already have plans for a railway into and up my botanical fortress!

The tower did go till it hit the ceiling so tall but very thin hence small :D

And I only expanded the skylight by two squares ... all the way around :D

I've been experimenting a lot with boosters and wired up auto mine cart systems in single player so it'd be nice to try some of that out in multiplayer.

I notice someone put in a portal to the nether but I didn't have any luck going through it guess that's another bug that needs ironing out.

Fingers crossed Notch gets some of the stuff going more smoothly in multiplayer.

His blog is a good way of seeing what fixes are coming in...one benefit of the Alpha status is that it's fast from code writing to live

http://notch.tumblr.com/

Found what we think is a corrupted data chunk...a rather surreal error make physical. Worth a wander next time you're on the server. A map is provided!

All hail the TOWER OF EVIL!

(yes, I made a big arrow and wrote "tower" on the beach so I could find it in Cartograph).
There is a streak of obvious map generation error over there, resulting in sudden cliffs.

Popped in to do some sightseeing and fellout the bottom of the tower of evil. Here's some pics of the Tower of Evil:

wow it looks like that's got blocks of bedrock as part of it which is odd so high up in the air an interesting glitch to say the least.

Had a quick lunch session of minecraft as I had to go to frys to look for some cables for work. Did some more work on the sky tower am working on the elevator shaft now I have some water blocks (course notch may well fix that issue in the next update but still :D

whiles digging the shaft for the skytower water flume of fun found an extensive cave system which contained a moss cave complete with non active spawner. Plenty of iron ore down there but I ran out of torches so had to turn back.

If someone wants to take a look I've still got ladders down the shaft while I'm building it and pre flood so feel free think it was the top most opening in the shaft.

Did a bit more work on the sky tower the water lift nearly works thing it needs some more fine tuning for repeated trips and comfort you can sort of ride it now with a boat but you tend to end up in the sea.

Also installed a staircase in the tower of evil that goes to the top. Mind the lava.

Once minecarts are working I think we need to set up a trainline to the Tower Of Evil! I believe our ultimate goal should be to subvert this malign monstrosity into a tourist attraction, with a water slide.

People will visit it at the weekend, and buy tacky mementos of the fun time they had at the Tower Of Evil!

As a tourist attraction there should probably be at least a "mini tower of evil" replica nearby.

Do we plan on excavating it down to it's base too?

At home today and can't see the minecraft server. NOOOOO!

(There's no connection to babyc but I can see everyone else!)

Just in case someone goes on before I do, I was halfway through extending the arboretum so it was symmetrical with the new entrance and putting in nice new steps down to the trees when Felix woke up. Not been able to get back in since to finish it off. Hope you like the new entrance.

It's probably crashed (server or hardware). I shall reboot it once I get home (about 4:30-5pm)

OK, my landline is down...bit of an issue.

Currently seeing if I can get the server saved and emailed to Rob initially, then it can be re-hosted...

The Tower of Evil was somewhat interesting to work with it seemed those pockets of lava that make up it's structure were dormant such that only by mining near them it triggured them to activate and flow like normal. This flooded most of the stairs with Lava but I went back throught and sorted that out with some mud.

BT have confirmed a fault on my landline, upto 3 working days before a fix is progressed probably.

I have a copy of the server (~8 meg zipped), but GMail won't let me send it, so I'll do it from work tomorrow, when it won't take an hour to get past the Lead Curtain of Burghfield...

...so I've spent the evening sticking magnets into little plastic men!

while we wait for the server to come back maybe a little Minecraft Larp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl36SsszqpY&feature=player_embedded#!

:D

Big Rob is sorting out the server today. Huzzah for Big Rob!

The server is back!

I am going to leave the server on my desktop for the rest of the evening, then switch it to an old laptop (probably around 11pm).

This may provide a comparison on which to judge the effect of server processing power on lag and general gameplay.

I have added the laptop to Hamanchi, but it is not running a server yet using the name 'Minecraft! BigR (not live yet)'.

The LIVE server is currently 'BiggerRob (Temp Lack-of Minecraft Server)'.

I know, great naming ... simple and easy to remember.

Given no one was online, I have taken the opertunity to switch to the laptop, 'Minecraft! BigR' is now live.

Horay I needs me minecraft fix gone a whole day without :D

Admittedly yesterday was down to going out drinking rather than lack of server but still :D

I made some improvements to the skytower

Put in some more sky lights and also made a start on a mine cart compatible tunnel it goes all the way down from behind the "pete is gay" sign to just beyond the big cave.

Also repacked the metals in the chests into blocks (9 ingots) slightly smaller space in the long run though actually at the moment it's more :S easy to convert back one block of metal in a crafting station yeilds 9 ingots.

Wanted to get on last night but Kate has been ill, so I have been working+childcare. Knackering! She's mostly better now but I've got a shed load of freelance stacked up. :(

Very nice texture pack:

http://www.modminecraft.com/2010/11/11/tronic

Quandry tex pack looks good too...

http://www.retributiongames.com/quandary/

And this one is a bit LOTR http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=25676

Really like the first one...very clean look to it!

I tried the painterly pack that has some customisation scripts on the website to make up a specific texture pack to your liking

http://painterlypack.net/

expanded the skylight and joined three together to make one massive if irregular one

hmmm seems like there is a long way to go before minecarts work I had a quick go today but you can't yet delete and reposition them which makes building tracks pretty tricky one sheep stuck in a cart and your buggered.

i'm just going to leave this here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpJXZq3gYtk&feature=player_embedded

Added some signage to the carbuncle

You really can't get the size from that piccy.

Perhaps the carbuncle sign should have been one of those things that remained in the imagarium?

I've started the roof to the acropolis. You can find a ladder up to the builders ledge around the corner from where the smelters are. I've left 180+ sand on to smelt and there is some glass in the store.

If you want to get more sand, there is a big load round the back of the acropolis that needs flattening. Something else that needs doing is a nice path between the acropolis and the main shaft entrance/arboretum.

Oh and what we've been calling the arcropolis is actually called the Parthenon! My bad.

Crikey! It's a biodome!
http://crafthub.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/BioDome.png

Mods! Have been playing with some mods and the only 'must have' is:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=55700

And switch everything on. Check the Readme. Minimap is well useful but only gives a top-down, which is ok tbh. Especially if you're trying to link underground bits together. The ambient occlusion stuff makes it beautiful. I'm also running the simple tex pack at the moment, which is a nice change.

Minecraft hookshot mod!

http://asumgames.blogspot.com/2010/11/legend-of-zelda-style-hookshot-for...

put in an experimental neon sign in big cave

looks better in motion. It's basically a redstone oscilator hooked up to a redstone in the shape of letters and a few inverters to extend the range

using what I learnt on the neon floor sign set to work on a redstone torch based tower of evil sign

currently only about half of the tower part is wired to a switch to allow it to swithc on and off later once the whole thing is wired I'll connect that to a redstone oscilator for blinking tower of evil signage

Once I have completed the glass tower I have planned for one end of my road, I intend to extend it the other way towards the TOWER OF EVIL. Ultimately, once Minecarts are working I should be able to turn it into a highway, using the Botanical Fortress as a station/nexus.

So you chaps have built 'the two towers'? Perhaps we should all make a tower, like wizards in an architecturally bereft place. That would make Pete the good wizard. Which is terrifying.

I was thinking about making a wooden village. Am going to start playing with house designs next time I'm in.

mmm...Wooden Village.

Given my discovery that wood currently doesn't stop burning, I reckon that could be awesome.

Yes, well, it might not be the best idea. Especially as you and Big R - and EMW come to think of it - yes all of you - have a fascination with lava.

I do use lava exclusively for strip-lighting, and not for burning stuff down.

At some point I shall convert the Fortress to lava-lighting rather than millions of torches.

Ash just asked me how you set fire to stuff.

Introduce him to the Flint and Steel for starters...when you absolutely have to move that tree right now...accept no substitutes.

Indeed when building the tower of evil sign there were some inconvenient trees nothing flint and steel can't solve.

Got the flashing tower of evil sign almost all going just need to wire up the last few letters

the wiring loom is a bit crazy and I may have a go at refactoring some of it later but currently it all works and I've installed a extended oscillator for a pleasing blink factor. Stll had one redstone torch on one of the 'E's I just couldn't find a connection for.

Maybe extend it or do another sign that has more complicated logic to light each letter individually in sequence

Can't wait to see it. Will pop my head in tonight after putting F to bed.

Found a convient cave system that runs right to tower of evil if you head past the sky tower I marked the entrance with torches and a sign then follow the obviously dug pasageway

Had a good wander about last night. The Tower of Evil is looking fab, the blinking sign gives it a certain Vegas charm. I love Pete's tower too - it has a stark utility to it and is quite a sight up close.

Most mental award goes to Big Rob, who is trying to create a floating lake by laying down a glass bowl and then digging underneath it. It's right next to the Parthenon. It's the sort of lunacy I don't think I've ever dreamed of.

I started experimenting with little wooden and stone houses up on the hillside. Some of the hillside near me has a load of sand, which I want to replace with earth so it's nice and grassy. If you want sand, please take it from that hillside!

Thanks to Rob H for providing me with diamonds so I could get a diamond axe.

I'll be needing sand, as I have another 5 half-height glass towers I want to build (and perhaps an additional 16 quarter-height towers outside those...)

If you need earth (yeah, I know...it's pretty common) I have a chest full of the stuff...at some point it's going down the waste disposal...

Loads of sand in the big cave and also by the village.

I had a bit of a clearout on the sand patch near your hill...took away 20 x 64 blocks, thoguh will undoubtedly be needing more at some point!

Hopefully tonight I'll get some time to continue work on the glass towers.

WOW! I'll start rebuilding with earth.

Aparently Rob has finished his lake lunacy last night.

The bowl is complete, the underside still needs clearing and lighting, then maybe a few viewing walkways can be added.

I am also considiering creating another smaller bowl of water, hovering above this large one, perhaps with a waterfall between the two.

You're going to end up with Pandora (from Avatar) in glass.

Had some problems logging in last night so didn't get anything done in crazy world. Instead experimented in single player with water lifts and water ways think I can make nice glass aquaduct going over the mountain between tower of evil and main base maybe link it to big cave via the sky tower.

Also saw an awesome auto boat dispenser design that I recon I could rip off. Pity I've got so much to do this weekend real life is getting in the way of minecraft time :D

So the water lift is now working it goes from the big cave to the sky tower quickly.

See if there is a boat running if not grab a boat from the chest put it at the far end of the slope near the chest and jump on the boats occasionally get stuck so jostle them free and then leave the controls as otherwise you'll end up exiting the water fall randomly at speed.

ride up to the skytower jump out of boat to get off there or ride it back down again to big cave.

Later I might add refinements like a stop at ground level or a boat dispensor perhaps a more exotic boat call system.

Occationaly the physics gets confused or miss fires and you end up flung out or the boat breaks but there are plentu in the chest

EMW - wicked! Will check that out later!

Big R has reset the server, apparently it had thrown a nullpointerreference exception. Is much more stable now.

Pete - there is load of sand in the village. I'm also on the scrounge for 1 more diamond because I accidentally used up my diamond shovel. What a prat.

Something has gone funny with the server again.

java.io.EOFException

Well, I hope that does not happen too often; the process locked the CPU usage at 100%! Forcing a save resulted in me getting booted out before the operation completed (although it did complete).
I have restarted the minecraft server app again and it seem to be running fine (again), infact is seems to be using half the amount of processing time as before ... I am guessing the speed step has kicked in.

Lightswitches?

I'm working a lighting system for the glass skyway. I don't want to use torches or lava, so am going with redstone. I had hoped that redstone wires emitted light, however my experiments in my darkroom have confirmed that they don't, so the new plan is a series of light-switches along the route, linked to redstone torches (nice low-level lighting)...

...however I can't get wires, switches and torches to work. From my reading up, if a Redstone Torch is connected to a tile that is powered by an alternate means, then the torch should go out, however I can't seem to get this to happen.

Key
----

P - pressure pad
w - Redstone Wire
R - Redstone Torch

PwwwR

My understanding is that if the Pressure Pad is activated then that would power the wire (which is does), and the torch should go out, as the wire has another power source. If the pressure pad is NOT activated, then the wire would still be powered by the torch, which would come on.

What actually happens is that the torch stays on irrespective of the status of the Pressure Pad. I've also tried switches in place of the pad, also to no avail...

Where am I going wrong here?

That's how I understand switches to work. What is the redstone on? Were you doing it on glass blocks?

Nope...it won't lie on glass, I was using natural stone down in my workshop.

Have you tried it in Single player?

(Not saying I know the answer to this, just offering debug ideas)

Bah damn internet swallowed my carefully crafted reply now i have to type it all again!

anyway I think I said something like this ...

As someone who spent hours wrestling with the vagueries of redstone wire to achieve the flashing neon sign of evil I feel I can help in this matter.

With redstone torches and wires the level the wire is at and the orientation of the torch is important. Torches are essentially power sources in their own right and if you have them set up incorrectly then they act to power the circuit you wanted to used to switch them. This can lead to alsorts of weird effects I was getting extra oscillators cropping up spontaneously in the flashing sign because of the number of torches I was using and a few wired incorrectly were powering elements independently.

The first key thing to be aware of is how the power output works. Torches that are vertical ie sat pointing up from a block power every square on a level with them in all four directions as well as the square directly above them (this fact can be used to achieve vertical wiring where you stack torches one on top of the other to transmit a signal vertically without meandering wireing) the accept power only from one level bellow. These torches are also fussy about whether a wire is straight or not. It must be a straight line to the block not a corner or a multiway piece or it won't work. The other torches are more forgiving.

So if you have a pressure plate on the ground and a wire leading off from it your torch must them be on top of a block 1 block up from the wire. Or you can dig a hole just before the torch and have it at ground level as the wire will go in the pit.

Torches on the side of blocks power the squares left right and front of them and they will accept power to the block the sit on exactly like the vertical torch but also from a wore on the top of the block as well. They are usually a bit more forgiving about wire directions.

So for a side torch and the pressure plate you could run the wire along the ground and have the torch on a block or in a pit.

There are all sorts of little tricks to getting wiring to work by placing a block directly above a wire you can stop it forming sideways attachements and force it into a straight line a trick I used several times when wiring up the letters.

Anyway hope this helps

Thanks to Matt's notes I got them working last night in my laboratory.

I now need to work on relays etc (as the power only goes 15 blocks, and the road is a tad longer than that), and also how I'm going to have them on/near the walkway. I was thinking of pressure pads setting off an area of lights, however now I think I may just have light-switches each end, as it's cleaner, and more impressive thowing a switch and getting the entire thing to light up.

I like the idea of switching on the lights at each end. However, what about leaving them on? Think of the carbon footprint! Nice mate, please use as much of the redstone as you need from Big Cave, I don't think anyone will mind and there's silly amounts of it.

I found a load more redstone while extending big cave. It just wasn't big enough for the n of us

where n is the number of people playing on the server ...

I put it in the usually place. I also found gold up to 2 blocks of the stuff now my scheme to convert ingots to blocks is paying off.

Doen a bit of work with Redstoen, but server lag was causing issues. Come up with a Power repeater for long lines of lights...don't know if there is a neater/smaller way of doing it...

S is a swtich, and the 6 R's in a row are the main lights, linked by wire (with the pre-requisite level changes to get it working. To do a power repeat off the last light (upto 15 blocks away from the switch) you run a new wire being powered from that back to _another_ torch, and that one acts as your new switch (so when the main light is off, the repeater light is on, and that suppresses the next 15 blocks down the line.

I need to get it as clean as possible before lighting up the skyway with it. As it stands I'll need a row of blocks 2-high...1 to run the wire, the other for the lights...then repeater sections every 15 blocks.

Oh when we're sealing up the base we need to remember the railway that runs right to big cave. By it's nature it's an open tunnel enemies could wander down or potentially spawn it tho I think it's pretty well lit.

I have turned off monster spawning and PvP for the time being (as they were turned on by default).
This is partly because the general agreement was that we would take a few days and shore up our defences; but mostly because monster spawning hammers the processor (probably causing the lag).
For the time being I will probably have to switch the server over to my desktop if we want monsters wandering around (i.e. short bursts while I am at my desktop).
I'll try and set the share up tomorrow (with the files from just before the upgrade) and start pondering setting up a faster server.

So I've been converting a mountain to a glass shell most of the top is done. After that I've been thinking of filling it with water or maybe boring down to big cave.

EMW - Oh, it's a mountain! Pete and I were wondering what was going on up there! Looked like you'd had a bit of a spazout.

I spent most of the time tidying up Big Cave and some of the tunnels that lead from it. Where possible, I've put in steps so that if you need to run around like a headless chicken, you can. I also repaired the Sky Tower ladders and tidied up the Big Cave end of it. I lit all the air shafts that didn't have light and clearly marked the 'Twisty Staircase' exit from Big Cave to The Village.

We still need some doors on a few tunnels on the way from Big Cave to Atlantis/Spawn Fortress because there is a sodding huge cave network (the one we were playing in last night, Pete) out there that might still have dark spots.

I started work on an 'Underground' style map of the area but had a better idea and will start remaking it in Google Docs so we can all edit it.

I've basically replaced the original mountain topography with glass so it's the same blocks but a hollow glass shell rather than mud and stone. I think when they finish adding fish I'll fill it with water and fishes.

After that I plan to build a monster grinder but I might need to do some test runs in single player first where I can mitigate failure and am not so resource constrained.

I've installed a mob killer which is further back from the arboretum building. Works quite well you can attract the mobs in the fall in and can't get out then get roasted by the integrated lava system they drop their loot and a water way moves it to a secure room at the back.

Still needs some current tweaking but it does work and probablhy a few more conveyors.

Be careful not to fall in thio I ran out of wood to build an escape lader and to prevent spiders juming out the wall is two blocks high. it's realtively easy to fight the current and avoid the lava so if you do fall in punch down the sand walls so you can climb out then put them back.

Everyone has minecraft now right? If there are any hold outs it's worth noting that when the game goes beta on the 20th not only does the price go up (to a whopping 14-15 euros :D) but more importantly you won't get the free updates that alpha users get so it's worth getting now as you get free updates forever.

I have a cave on my own MC. And a flatter bit of land where a hill used to be. And a hole as far down as I could do. And an observatory for watching skeletons at night.

Now what?

And doors. I have doors too. Wooden ones.

Armour is useful for wandering about dangerous areas, and it also reduces falling damage which is handy.

Upgrading to iron tools lets you mine more exotic ore (redstone and diamond).

And feel free to join the rabble on the server ;)

Build something fucking huge.