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Server Downtime

Nothing more depressing than when the server has been down for the last 12 hours, our hosting provider has been less than helpful about it as well….atleast we got a reasonable start on Victoria Square and some of the roads around Rundle Mall though. We took a cartograph this morning that actually gave us a good look at what we had done and led to a great discussion of what we should do next.

Will post pictures in a couple days when we have a few issues with a fountain and roads lining up sorted…..assuming the server is back up by then :(

Server Arrival and Setup

Our server finally arrived on Saturday, which was very exciting. It actually takes quite a bit of work to get a project of this magnitude in a position that we can even start it. There’s plugins to configure, a map to create, satellite imagery to examine, people to manage, websites to build. The fact we managed to do all that in 36 hours was rather amazing.

Our 36 hour ordeal started when our server admin put the order in for the game server. While we waited for this order to be filled (Apparently they don’t do it at 11pm on a Friday night for some silly reason!) I was tasked with creating the map that we would use to reconstruct Adelaide. Funny thing about the CBD, its roughly 1.6 by 2.2km - which is actually a rather large area to be flattened out in minecraft. Because of this, I chose to use MCEdit and manually generate a few chunks and then clone those chunks so that they covered the distance. This had mixed results. Creating the first few chunks was fairly simple:

However, once you try clone it a couple times:

It can tend to take a while. It took roughly 4 hours to get it kinda right, tested and then uploaded to the web server. And even then I didn’t do a great job of getting the map right:

So we got the initial map ready, the server had finally arrived the next night. The server admin also bought a domain (Its not exactly done and presentable yet, so I’ll refrain from posting it at this stage) so he spent Saturday night setting that up. It was rather amusing listening to him fight with the DNS setting to get them work…..I’ve never heard someone so excited to get it to point to the right location before. We’re using Google Apps to run the backend, which actually works rather well for what we’re doing with it. It gives us the ability to host documents, take emails and create sites with ease (You totally owe me for that free plug!)

Plugins are an interesting topic on our server, we’re using a bukkit server with World Edit, World Guard, Command Book maybe another one or two (their names escape me right now). Unfortunately our server provider uses Multicraft to provide the administration. This issue with this is that it actually conflicts with Command Book, so we have a ticket on that at the moment. (If anyone actually knows what causes it to stop working after about 30 seconds, could you let us know?)

So that’s where we currently are with the Project, we’re using Google Earth and the ruler to make measurements of streets, and we actually started building earlier tonight, but that’s for its own blog post in the next day or two. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned until then!

Project Adelaide

After a long hiatus (After getting a new machine, and losing my original map I was playing on) I’ve decided to restart blogging about my Minecraft adventures.


First thing is first, who can tell me what this is:

If you guessed the City of Adelaide, you would be correct. Designed by Colonel William Light in 1835. There was wide spread disagreement with his design, but history has shown Adelaide as one of the last great planned metropolises. With a limited building height of only 109m, this makes it a great city to recreate in Minecraft.

Yes I did just say that my next great vision is the City of Adelaide recreated in Minecraft. I won’t be going it alone however, there has been a large amount of interest from several of my Minecraft playing friends about rebuilding Adelaide. Hence we’ve organized a dedicated server(which should be setup and going by the end of this weekend) and I’m currently generating a large flat map (The Adelaide CBD is about 1.6km by 2.2km) that will be used as the site for Adelaide.

Stay tuned to this blog as I document the monumental task of recreating the City of Churches, Adelaide. Next post will most likely be about the server specs, the process involved with creating huge flat maps for such projects, as well as the groundbreaking ceremony.

The Golden Apple Pub

For those of you playing along at home, yesterday I posted about the new cobblestone and rock factory recently built not far from spawn. Today I started building the subway lines out further away from Spawn station. I finally found a nice plot of land to build a small village. I did consider building something more city size with large buildings, but I thought I would save it for later in the game, and further from spawn.

I considered building the whole village up first then posting about the whole thing as one, but as I’m building a few different things in it at once and have a few ideas for it, I figured it would be better to do a few smaller posts.

Anyway, down to it: Here is an aerial view of the Golden Apple Pub.

I know it might not look exactly right, but I tried copying the sprite picture. Anyway, here is the front of the pub.

Here are pics of the inside of the pub - here is the bar.

And here is the jukebox and stairs.

Here is upstairs inside

And outside.

Next I’m looking at deciding on a tiny house layout for the space behind the pub and the general store(yet to be finished). Once the village is done, it will have a treetop home (for myself), probably a small bank, some small housing, a subway station and a few offices.

Anonymous asked: Will you have my babies? A man with such engineering skills will clearly be able to provide for me and our many progeny.

HOW IS BABBY FORMED?

Cobblestone Generator

Yesterday and today I started building myself a cobblestone generator. I found a great guide on the minecraft forums and rebuilt one based on the diagrams.

I started with an empty island not too far from spawn.

I flattened it out, tested the generator I’d seen online to see that it worked, and then built a fully functional factory for craeting cobblestone and then converting it to rock.

I chose to use an iron door activated by levers to make it look more factory like without letting mobs inside.

This here is a screenshot of the whole inside part of the generator.

It works by mining these two cobblestones here, as you mine them, the lava and water regenerate the cobblestone in the same spot.

This is a view from the roof of the factory.

Once the cobblestone has been mined, it is sent to the next area by storage minecarts.

It is either sent to the furnace room where it is converted to rock.

Or it (like the rock) is sent to the storage area in the middle of the factory.

I’ve also taken the time to build a subway station that passes through the area, although once I’ve eventually built a central hub, I may build a second line from the factory to a secure storage area somewhere.

That’s it for now, still trying to decide what to build next, any thought or suggestions would be appreciated.

Funny stuff 17/12/2010

Spawn Station

I’ve started a new building world in minecraft, I’m going to create a subway system and places spread throughout the map. Today I created the spawn point station. This station is important as it will allow me to quickly get back to wherever I was building at the time.

For those of you not playing at home I play a game called minecraft, basically its kinda like lego only more awesome and on the computer. What you essentially do is collect rocks and items and build with them. There are also monsters you fight, but currently I’m playing on peaceful.

Here is a side shot of my spawn station from the side.

Another side shot of spawn, only at night.

Long view from afar.

Right in front.

Fountain inside the glass dome.

Incinerator for dumping unwanted objects.

Simple 1 way minecart booster.

Underground tracks

Tracks being dropped to level 50 - standard travelling level for my subway.

Subway tracks heading off into the distance.

First Post

FIRST!!!!

Now that I’ve gotten that out the way, I figured I should actually write something here. I’m still setting my Tumblr up, it is pretty minimalistic at the moment, but once I have a chance I’ll make my own theme.

I’m still trying to decide what this all will be about. Some use it for their art form, others use it for the things they find online. Personally I’m leaning towards me and the random things I get up to, which is really the things I find online, the games I play and I guess the stuff that happens away from the computer.

So yeah, yay for me :D

planninganddesignaus asked: Nice blog ;)

Yes it is a nice blog :P