The foundations for a new project

The title pretty much says what this post is all about. I have decided to try out a new project. This time, I am planning to build a city next to my primary base. Now, a city is something I have always wanted to build in Minecraft. There have just been one tiny little problem: until recently, I have had no clue how to build house properly. Most of my time have been focused primarily on resource generation, and/or more imaginative builds. The closest thing I comes to actually building a house, was back when I built my longhouse, which ended up being reverted into my new sheep farm. But still, I did not even bother to make a proper design for it, and thus it is very basic, and not as good as I wanted it to be to begin with. But I chose a very poor building site, as I built it right in between already existing buildings, meaning that I did not have the room to experiment that I would wanna have. I was very lucky though with the height of the long house, as it just barely ended up fitting underneath my extensive base. Which is good, because it would have been very annoying having to abandoned this build. But thankfully, I was able to at least bring my long house up to the point where it could begin to serve a purpose as my sheep farm.

But enough talking about the past. Let`s focus on the present. After a bit of back and forth, I decided to build my new project on the southern side of my primary base, behind my tree farm. In the past, I have tried to establish a city here, but I abandoned the build, due to my attention being turned towards more critical builds. I have gotten a basic idea of how I want things to turn out here. But do not expect me to waste time on building surrealistic houses. My building style is very simple, and I will not waste time on building houses that looks absolutely out of our world. I intend on building houses that looks realistic, yet they still have that hint of Minecraft in them. This means that I will not spend all too much time into building those extravagant houses you see around the internet that have been built in Minecraft. I will primarily take inspiration from my own country, where houses are built in a primarily simple manner. You will rarely see houses with extravagant decorations, and glowing lamps all over the place. Some people will sometimes decorate their house with cheap lighting, but this is mainly restricted to the christmas season.

With the clearing of my style out of the way, here`s my current progress. As with many other of my builds, the first building to be put down, will be an observation deck. This building will not only serve as a point of reference for future progression screenshots, but it will also serve as the point of start when one are to access the city, as the primary walkway passes by it. I have already built two houses, to try and get comfortable around this new type of builds in my world, and they turned out quite nicely. Though these houses are very basic and are only on the testing stages, they will give an idea of the kind of style one can come to expect in my city. That, and the fact that I will provide all houses with smaller walkways. Because over in my country, having a road you can drive on where you live, is starting to become a luxury a lot of people have to live without. A lot of people do not even have a parking space, and can only dream about having a garage. This means that most, if not all, houses, will be built without a garage.

Laying the foundations for the first house I built, to try out my skills on building houses. You can also see the technique I have adopted for building houses to get the best results, which is to simply build the house in 3*3 cells.

Looking at the first house from a distance. To the left, you can see one of my older attempts at getting a city started. You can see the size difference, and the lack of the technique I have adopted at the moment.

A closer look at the first house as seen from above. This one turned into sorts of a pyramid shape, but that`s fine, because to me, it is more important to have fun while building something, rather than to focus entirely on the final result, and its size.

Looking at the house from ground level. As you can see here, messed up the design a bit there, but its not too much. And this is what we learn from after all :).

A second house under construction. This one is significantly bigger than the first one, and also features a more realistic look. You cannot see it from here, but it have a walkway that leads into the main parts of the house. It turned out way too small for my liking, but it`s a start.

Looking at my two houses from where I have laid down the foundations for a new observation deck. You can see the size difference here, and if you look  closely, I got the design right this time on my second attempt.

The foundations for my new observation deck. The blocks you can see in the foreground are markers I have put down, for where the walkway will be set up. 

Looking at the foundations for the new observation deck at a slight distance.

Looking at my current progress, with the new observation deck foundation, from my primary observation deck. You can also see here the clearing I have made in the forest in preparation for future progress.

There are plenty of work still to be done though, so I will just have to get down to it. Updates will come as progress is made.


- Mattias.

Walkway progress

Well, that was so much for keeping updates going. There have not really been too much to report on though on my part in my survival world. In the recent days, I have mainly been focusing my attention on getting my newest addition to my walkway network, completed. And I am happy to say, that after a lot of pondering on the design, I have now completed it. And if I may say so myself, I think it turned out quite nicely. The only thing that annoys me a bit is the fact that my walkway had to be incorporated into my old roller coaster build (which is not included in the screenshot, because I used my roller coaster as a base for my photoshoot). But it is a very minor problem. A more annoying problem, was just clearing out the bits of the forest that would get in the way of my project. But I got it done, so I am quite happy with how it turned out. This walkway connects my new EXP farm to my base. I am planning on also making an extension to my minecart network, so that I can travel uninterrupted between my EXP farm and my base, without the need to walk. You may ask why I built my walkway to begin with if this have been my plan all along, but even if I do not use the walkway, it still serves a display purpose. And the fact that I will probably use it`s design later. But at the moment my minecart network is still very far away from being connected to my EXP farm, though I do have a station at my roller coaster build, which is located a few seconds walking away from my EXP farm. I will post more screenshots from these builds as I move along, but for now, I will focus on my newest walkway. I ended up with a classic design. Classic, as in that I developed the design from my older designs, that I used on my original walkways, when I established the network.

I have not really been able to get down as much progress in my world as I would like to get, but I have finished my walkway at the very least. I am very busy on the side, so I am not able to focus as much time into Minecraft as I would prefer to do, but that`s just how life is.

Pictures and screenshots still speaks much more than a thousand words, so I will include some screenshots here. Some are old, and some are new. Butt they show what I am working on.

A screenshot from early August 2015, which shows the early stages of my walkway network. In this screenshot, we can see my old transportation network in the middle, with the walkway with a lighter tone of stone crossing it. At this stage, I was experimenting with the redstone, as I had no clue how to use redstone back in the days shown here. The main challenge I faced at this stage, was how to supply my redstone lamps with power to light them.

A couple of days later, after the progress shown in the screenshot above. At this point, my modern and current design for my walkways, began to take shape. I made the primary part of the walkway three blocks wide, made up of stone slabs, framed by a row of stone on each side. And than, just for added details, I decided to put one row of spruce wood, and then one row of stone bricks, on each side of my walkway. And the solution to the problem with my redstone lamps turned out to be as simple as just adding a row of stone slabs on level with my redstone lamps. These two rows serves exactly the same purpose as our powerlines in the real world; they support the power cables, which supplies my redstone lamps with the redstone power they need to light up. This design also means that I can power my redstone lights on and off at will. Though very stable in the early stages, later updates, especially 1.9, led to many of my circuits to fail. Thus, my once fail-proof design have become a bit rusty, but thankfully, this part of my network have not suffered too much. It is a different story in another part of my world, where half my design have just simply vanished. That design was intended to incorporate this exact design seen here, only with a birch roof above, so that I could use the walkways during thunder storms without risking getting hit by the lightning. I am planning on fixing this design though in the nearest future, so we will see more updates coming from this. 

My most recent walkway, which is what I have been building on for the past days when I have had the time to spare to do so besides my studies. In this decide, I decided to go for much more simple and cost-effective design. As you can see, I chose to cut out the flower pots that could be seen in the screenshot further above here. And I also chose to cut out the electricity system, which I had put so much attention into in the earlier designs. For the design here, I chose to simply stick with the standard glowstone, on the side of which I put open trap doors. And than it is only a matter of putting down a three block wide walkway, neatly framed by stone blocks, birch wood, spruce wood, and finally stone bricks. One major improvement I made in this design, is that the design seen here, is much cleaner, and a lot more organised. Plus the fact that I chose different materials, so that it would stand out much better. I originally intended for dark oak in the place of spruce wood, but eventually ended up with spruce wood, because dark oak gave too much contrast with the birch wood. As far as the expansion to my minecart system goes, I am not entirely sure what I wanna do about it, but it will be a bit of time until I can get to it, as I have a lot of stuff to do first.

If you look closely on the upper right hand side of the screenshot, you can just barely notice my old birch wood roof design I made for my walkway. Originally I planned for it to cover the entirety of my walkway network, but after updating 1.9, and seeing how blocks vanished, the design was scrapped to the advantage of expanding my minecart railtrack to a two tracked network.

So that`s where I am currently standing.




I will keep posting updates as I go along. Or so I hope :P.



- Mattias.

Tree Farm Progress

So, it`s been quite some time since I last wrote about my tree farm on my blog here.

So, since I last wrote about my tree farm, I have made quite some substantial progress. I am currently in the works of clearing the lands where my tree farm will one day come, and I have also put a great deal of effort into expanding upon it`s area of influence. With "influence", I am referring to the areas which have been prepared for the trees. I have two layers that I am building in. First there`s a layer which is completely flat. This layer is what I have been mainly focusing on lately, as I need to flatten out the lands in order to make room for my tree farm. When the grounds have been cleared and flattened, the next layer is the layer which defines my walkways, and that also marks out where the trees will one day be planted and grown. The tree farm stalled for quite some time, while I kept working on expanding my transportation network. But now, I have returned my focus to finishing my tree farm. I have no timetable for when I will be able to do so, but I am working as hard as I can, to achieve that goal. The tree farm has been under construction for almost three years now, so finishing it will be quite a victory for me. Plus the fact that it will revolutionize my survival world, in that I will gain a primary tree farm, where I can grow and harvest an seemingly endless supply of trees.

There are still lots of work to be done on the farm, but I am getting there, slowly but surely. My main focus now, is to clear the lands, and to finish off my walkways, as well as marking out where the trees will one day come. Besides that, I have also tried to equip my tree farm with its own independent smelting oven, but my attempt at building an automatic one, has turned out as a failure. I am therefor in the works of connecting my tree farm with my primary base through a goods transportation network, which will make it possible for me to transport resources between the two with ease.


Until next time though, this is my current progress.

My current tree farm progress. Take note of the tall spruce trees visible in the background. My game is running at 30chunks render distance, and I cannot see the other side of the farm. That`s how massive this thing is starting to become. At the right side of the screenshot, you can see my current progress on flattening the lands, mainly building a flat surface above the water, as building without a flat base can be rather challenging and inefficient.

- Mattias.

Current progress and project: goods transportation expansion hub

So, finally getting myself into posting an update on my current progress in my survival world.

Now those of you have been following me here on my blog, and on my profile on G+, may already know that I take a great deal of pride in my transportation network. The network spans more than 5000blocks at the moment, and is double filed, meaning that it`s not just a simple and cheap network, this is an actual network. Stretching from my primary base, to my tree farm, and from my tree farm, it will one day connect to my jungle base as well. Though I have chosen to reduce it`s upkeep for the last stretch, most of it is made up of an intricate design I made for it, which was designed to make room for an expansion which I was planning to add in the future. And today, that expansion, is coming together. The expansion is, of course, to expand my transportation network with two additional lanes, which will enable me to transport resources. At the moment, I rely heavily on my ender chests, as well as my empty inventory, to carry my resources from A to B. Easy to say, it can become pretty boring and time consuming, to run back and forth between my base and my projects, whenever I need to transport resources. And that`s where my goods transportation expansion hub comes into play. It adds two more lanes to my transportation network, and makes it possible for me to efficiently transport two minecarts with chests, alongside me, while riding the network. At the moment, I have been mainly focusing on getting my starting hub up and running. The starting hub is located at my primary base, next to my secondary observation deck. In order to simplify the collection of resources, the hub is equipped with hoppers, that will automatically transport resources down to my storage facilities.

There are a few challenges though that I need to overcome. The most important one is the fact that because of my original design for my transportation network back when I started expanding to a two laned network, adding the goods transportation expansion, just wont do sideways. This means that I will have to build in two levels, one for my own transportation, above which I have the lanes which transports my resources. So far, I have not even gotten halfway to my tree farm, which will be the first target on my list to connect to my primary base, but its getting there eventually. Another challenge is also to supply this project with enough gold to make it to the tree farm. I have quite an extensive gold farm, but even with my stockpiles, I will still need a whole load of gold to get there.

But thirdly, and not least, my world is already so crammed full of builds, that just buiding my transportation hub, faced me with my challenges. Not only did I cover the area immediately surrounding my primary base with trees back in the day, the area is also so crammed that making a proper design for my train station, just will not be possible at the current moment. Fun fact though, is that my storage facility started out as a train station. Ah its kind of ironic now that I come to think about it... Oh well, one thing at a time. I was able to fit the transportation hub though, and thats all that matters. It may look a bit messy, but thats my style, so I`m happy with it. Though I will probably go ahead one day, and add some more detailing, but I wont do it anyday soon though.

Planning out where to place the transportation hub. My old furnaces here have not been used in years, so I eventually decided to remove them, tear down this wall here, and place the hub outside my base here. My storage facility is located to the left here, so its just a small walk for me to store my resources. Plus, to the right, I got my automated oven, which means I will have an easy time smelting and crafting.

Tearing down the wall where I have decided to place the expansion hub. These walls are the original walls I placed down on my first day in Minecraft back late 2014, so this is quite a special moment, as my base remains virtually untouched on this side.

The hub is completed, and the hoppers are in place. There are four chests here, plus the hoppers, meaning I can easily stockpile my resources, before moving them on to be stored in my storage facility.

After a bit of debate with myself on where to place the tracks for my transportation hub, I chose to add an expansion to my original plan, and have the tracks be lowered down to ground level. This means that I can load my minecarts and send them away, without the need to climb my new hub. The tracks that will come here, will be placed so that one will be sent up the hub, and placed onto my transportation network there. The network from that point onwards remains unchanged, apart from the added tracks. 

Due to my original design here when I expanded to a two laned network, I am forced to building up in the height. I could add the new tracks on the sides, but it will be a slow, and very painful process, to do so. Therefore I chose to do it the easiest way.

The new tracks as seen from above, on top of my primary base. Parts of my transportation network can be seen to the right, underneath the water course. 

Another angle of the new tracks. My secondary observatory acts as the foundation for my new tracks, from ground level, up to the new hub. The new hub can slightly be seen here, on top of my transportation network, and next to my secondary observatory.

My most recent changes as seen from afar, from my primary observation deck. One can clearly see my secondary observatory, as well as my new hub, to the right of the observatory. 

There are still a whole load of stuff to be done though before I can call it a success, so I will just have to get back to it tomorrow, and continue to expand my new expansion to my transportation network.



- Mattias.