For a while now I’ve used the XPKeeper Bukkit plugin by eccentric_nz on my multiplayer Minecraft worlds to provide some form of “XP banking”.
I’m now in the process of replacing XPKeeper with my own xpbank data pack which I’ve written as a replacement capable of functioning with a vanilla Minecraft server. It’s been an interesting foray into data pack creation as a form of programming within the bounds of the vanilla game.
Myself and another Underbelly tech have been working on recreating Underbelly Cowgate in Minecraft.
It’s still a work in progress, but here’s some screenshots:
View from “Cowgate”
View down the lane
Entrance to the bottom garage
Reception area, including flyer shelves
Box office counter, with “Demon Shelf”
Reception desk
Behind Reception, showing radio chargers, and doorway to behind the walls.
Behind the walls near the web team. To the left, you can see the Demon Shelf, so called because it’s a pain to get past behind the wall when wiring everything up.
Office of the web ticket office
Entrance to Cow Cafe
Cow Cafe
Door to the Press Office
Inside the Press Office
The Laughing Stock, at Cow Cafe
Kitchen area of The Laughing Stock
Entrance to Top Garage
(WIP) Inside the Tech Store
Bin Store
(WIP) Flyer Store and Street Team Office
The bottom of Block Stairs
Middle floor of Block Stairs
Top of Block Stairs
Belly Dancer, from the door
Belly Dancer, from the tech position
Belly Dancer, from the stage
Belly Dancer storage area
(WIP) Dehli Belly corridor
(WIP) Dehli Belly Corridor
Delhi Belly, from the door
Delhi Belly, from the tech position
Backstage in Dehli Belly
Dehli Belly from the stage
Delhi Belly dressing room and storage area
Delhi Belly and Iron Belly V/AC area
Outside Jelly Belly, near Block Stairs
Staff room corridor
Staff Room, and The Wall Of Shame
Duty Manager’s office
Jelly Belly Dressing room and storage area
Iron Belly, from the door
Iron Belly, from the tech position
Iron Belly, from the stage
Iron Belly storage area
Iron 2
Iron 2 near Iron AC area, hole for water siphon into Belly Button
White Belly, from door
White Belly, from tech position
White Belly, from stage
Backstage in White Belly
Belly Button, from door
Belly Button from seating area
Belly Button, from stage
Belly Button, from op position
Behind seating area in Belly Button
Underneath the seating in Belly Button
Mind Yer Heid! (Belly Button tech position)
Button Corridor
Button Corridor
Button Storage area
Button dressing room
Big/Button stairs
Big/Button stairs
Big Belly
Top of the Lane Doorway
Beer Belly Bar
We’ve still got the other half of the building (Beer Belly / Jelly Belly / Belly Laugh / Wet Corridor / Wet Alcoves / Spiral Stairs / Victoria St Box Office / Lady Cave / Top Office) to do. Stay tuned for updates! I’ll try and get some real photos for comparison too!
Quite a bit has happened recently!
I’ll try and give a bit of info about each, there’s quite a lot to write about though!
An IRC bot which stalks changes to Wikipedia based on regex matches. Read more
Those of you who use my Minecraft server will know that the server known as “caterpie” was bad. Any more than one person connected, and it would lag to the depths of hell. I’ve replaced it with a 1.7G beast of a server, still running as an Amazon server instance.
I registered a new domain! I’m still in the process of setting the thing up though, but that will become my main website, not quite sure what I’m gonna put there yet, but it’ll probably replace what webspace I had at http://helpmebot.org.uk/~stwalkerster/
A couple of weeks ago, the IRC bot that we use over at Wikipedia’s Account Creation Assistance project decided it would stop giving notifications to the IRC channel.
I’ll write more about this at a later time, hopefully soon, but probably when I’ve finished messing with my new site :P
Growing tired of the poor strobe light applications available on Android Market, I decided to build my own.
I’ll also write more about this too at a later time – I think this bit and the last one need their own posts.
Hey folks
Just thought you’d love to hear about a few things I’ve been doing in Minecraft recently!
PIXEL ART!
I decided to make the Google Chrome logo from coloured wool in Minecraft.
I took the Google Chrome Logo:
Reduced it to 32x32px (actually, I initially found a 32x32px image :P):
Applied this GIMP Colour Palette to it to adapt the colours to the wool colours in Minecraft (Image -> Mode -> Indexed, using custom palette – you’ll need to right click the palettes window and import it first):
(this is the one I’m actually using, if you use the one above, you’ll end up with this)
Build in Minecraft!
I’m considering building all the major browser’s logos, but I’m having a hard time finding the resources to do just Chrome’s. And Chrome has gone and got itself a new logo in the meantime…
Because I was finding it hard to know what I needed, I also built a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet knows all the requirements for the wool blocks, asks you what you need to complete the project, what you currently have, and goes away and calculates what else you need to gather.
If you want to download it, feel free to. I’ve released it under CC-BY-SA, so do whatever you want with it under the terms of that licence (attribute me and share any changes you make under similar conditions, otherwise do what you want). Details are in the file.
So, I’ve wasted a considerable amount of free time building what was at first a tower, then a few towers, then an aerial walkway, canal system, boatlift, and now is a fully fledged quadrangle.
The towers themselves are really impressive, the basic structure being a 5×5 square tower with a hollow inside, then building a double helix in the centre:
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | air | air | air | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | air | air | air | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | glass | air | air | glass |
| glass | air | glass | air | glass |
| glass | air | air | glass | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
etc. The bottom is slightly more fancy, in that it started out like that, but I added a walkway through the middle, and sealed off the bottom. Hence:
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| air | air | air | air | air |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| air | air | air | air | air |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | air | air | air | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
| glass | air | air | air | glass |
| glass | glass | glass | glass | glass |
There’s nothing special about the top, you just need to stop building the glass spiral when you don’t want to go any higher, and stick a lava source in one side, and a water source in the other. If all goes to plan, you should end up with zero cobblestone, zero obsidian, and a nice tower that looks something like this:
or by night:
I ended up building a glass staircase around the outside edge of the tower to aid getting up and down. Alson if you’re fast enough, you can get down the tower before the lava has finished forming (jumping down into water helps!), and you can watch it form:
Now, I decided to go to the top of the world. Then I decided that wasn’t enough, so I moved 100 blocks and built another. And another. And another.
Here’s three of the towers, the other one hadn’t been built yet (I’m actually stood halfway up it while building it)
Four fancy looking towers still didn’t seem good enough, as I seemed to be able to rattle off new ones far too quickly, so I built a walkway between them right at the top, then a few blocks down a canal system:
… which in itself was starting to look really cool from the ground:
Add a fair amount of water…
I ended up building an extra ledge onto the outside wall of my canal system, and flooding that too to form water curtains:
A 1 block deep trench directly underneath the fall path of the water ensured no unintentional flooding, except for the one time I forgot about doing that…
I decided I ought to make a few “portals” through the curtain so others on the server could easily come and go to their respective bases, so using the 1 block trench idea, I created a very simple doorway with the trench on top:
I also added a boat lift, which is essentially just a column of water, and a drop into a 3-block deep area of water, with a current driving you off the edge. It works really well, assuming you can get the boat to move where you want it to!
More photos can be found here
All in all, I’m pleased with the result, though I’m not so sure about the water curtains.
If you want a look around for yourself, take the backup dated midnight on the 14th from here, and have a look around!
