Minecraft

Minecraft

Company:
Release date:
Platform:
Genre:
Mojang
Mei 2009
PC, Mac, X-Box, Playstation, Android
Creative build, adventure

Personal enjoyment: 10/10


Single player


A few weeks ago I decided to try my hand at Minecraft again. It’s been a while since I played as the game had lost its spark for me and I soon found that the spark hadn’t yet returned. Still I was hopeful and for the first part of my journey tried to find a good spot to settle down and build my Asian style palace. Finding a good spot wasn’t easy as I prefer to build in a lush green jungle biome which I could not find or when found were too mountainous. After trying a few world, some customized, I finally found a likely spot. Good thing too as I was just about to give up on the whole idea.
From a couple of examples (picture 1) I created an Excel model (picture 2), started flattening the land, removing vegetation and gathering resources. The building required quite a lot of coal blocks which was an resource easy enough to find and I was rather lucky to have a mesa biome nearby to supply the stained clay. Most of the interior is acacia which was also easy to obtain. Finding glowstone for the moat was a little harder but after a few days searching the nether, avoiding scary lava and deadly ghasts attacks I was able to gather more than enough to create the moat and provide lighting inside my palace.
Survival 01   Survival 02

The palace when finished consists of five levels. The farm and storage located in the basement, the ground floor is currently empty, so is the second floor. The third floor contains the nether portal, enchanting table and brewing stand. My bedroom with a map of the area on the top floor.
Once my palace was complete It was time to start on the village. The first thing I created was the blacksmith and horse stables. By that time I had turned three zombie villagers into regular villagers and attempted to breed more. Unfortunately I didn’t know that the villagers would stubbornly hang around the breeder, ignoring shelter even at night… This got them killed pretty quick. After acquiring a few more villagers I tried to protect them with golems and later added fences. I’m not sure how many villagers were killed during the construction of the village but I eventually got tired of trying to keep the population up and changed the game mode from normal to peaceful. Having the game on peaceful was such a relief and I continued to build my village without having to worry about annoying zombie sieges.

First server


When first joining the server a friend helped me on my way. We ran out of the spawn area and into the wild, looking for a nice place for me to settle. The first home I created was a house in the mountain side and began to tunnel down. The first time I tunneled into a natural cave I was really freaked out, hearing all the moaning and skittering, it was scary! My friend helped me over my fear of monsters and we happily mined for rare minerals together. On this server I created a round garden under a glass dome in the middle of a large lake. This was my first big project and it took me a long time to remove all the water from within the dome. Once this project was done I needed to make something else! So I created a replica of the Thundercat Lair.
Server data was sadly lost. These pictures were made on the second server.
Glass Dome 01 Glass Dome 02
Thundercat Lair 01 Thundercat Lair 02

Second server


The admins were nice enough to copy both my glass dome and Thundercat Lair. I decided at first to make my home under the glass dome but eventually started out into the wild as I kept bumping into tunnels made by other players. Eventually I decided once again to make my home on the water and created a castle.
Server data was provided to me.

I really loved my Water Castle, it’s made up out of circles and has an Arabic look to it. It is also full of secret rooms big and small.
Water Castle Exterior 01 Water Castle Exterior 02
Water Castle Exterior 03 Water Castle Exterior 04
Water Castle Nether Portal 01 Water Castle Nether Portal 02
Water Castle Farm 01 Water Castle Farm 02

Pixel art is fun, it can be tricky but the result is often amazing. I started with three butterflies and added to them on subsequent servers.
Pixelart Butterflies 01 Pixelart Butterflies 02

My underwater villa was rather tricky. The server had an online shop and I was able to buy some sponges. I used them to remove a large volume of water and started building my villa. Once the outside of the villa was done I thought removing the sponges would return the water but a new patch prevented the water from returning. He server owner helped me out by changing all air in that area into water. Even though this flooded my villa we were quickly able to remove the water from inside using the sponges.
Underwater Villa 01 Underwater Villa 02
Underwater Villa 03 Underwater Villa 04

A little in between project were my floating island.
Floating Island 01 Floating Island 02

A few months before we were about to change to a new server the admins organized a spawn building contest. The building I created was voted the winner and was used for the next two servers. Unfortunately the original was built so far away that I now can’t find where it is…
Spawn Building 01 Spawn Building 02
Spawn Building 03 Spawn Building 04

Third server


This time the admins didn't really want to copy anything, they really wanted us to start from scratch. As I had won the spawn building contest it was copied to make a new spawn.
Server data was sadly lost. Other lost projects are an npc village on top of four villager statues, a 200x200 Aztec village, three flying wizard towers, a burlesque house…

The Ice Globe was quite a challenge as it required “silk touch” to obtain. I eventually managed and was pretty proud of the result. The only picture I have is from the online map.
The Hellraiser puzzle box was great fun to build. It’s made of birch and brown wool.
Ice Globe Puzzle Box

I found an endportal by accident and placed a replica of an end portal block to mark its location.
The server owner asked me to create a spawn building for the nether. He gave me and a friend creative and I ended up creating a wacky alien octopus. The spawn building only lasted a few months as we had some kind of server malfunction which had reset the nether.
Endportal Nether Spawn

The flying Japanese garden I started on the second server was copied and completed on the third. It was awesome! And it is gone… I don’t even have screenshots of the online map.
Japanese Flying Garden 01 Japanese Flying Garden 02

The Egyptian barge was one of my largest projects. It was created for another contest and one of the admins had created a YouTube video of all the contestants.
Egyptian Barge 01 Egyptian Barge 02
Egyptian Barge 03 Egyptian Barge 04
Egyptian Barge 05 Egyptian Barge 06

Fourth server


My spawn building was again used, although modified. The admins copied some of my projects like the village I had once worked on and my pixel art butterflies (both from server two). After taking my residence in the village I continued expanding and adding new buildings but never managed to finish it.
Server data was provided to me.

The luxurious village I created
Village 01 Village 02
Village 03 Village 04
Village 05 Village 06
Village 07 Village 08

A communal project of mine was the “pixel art bridge”. The bridge allowed people easy access across a large stretch of ocean and was intended to bring players together by letting them create pixel art on it. The bridge wasn’t very popular and I tried to entice players by adding some of my own pixel art.
Pixel Art 01 Pixel Art 02
Pixel Art 03 Pixel Art 04

FTB


For a few months the server provided an additional FTB (Feed the Beast) server and it quickly became even more popular than the regular Minecraft server. Once again the server owner asked me to create a spawn and I was happy to oblige. FTB provided a lot more building options and I think I went a bit crazy with decoration. Everyone liked my spawn but many had an extreme loss in framerate and ended up avoiding it…
Server data was sadly lost.
FTB 01 FTB 02
FTB 03 FTB 04
FTB 05 FTB 06
FTB 07 FTB 08
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