Oh, how I had big plans for the main hub dome! Wait, dome? Yes! I wanted to turn the main hub into a dome! This of course meant a long process of digging... and possibly blowing things up! Let's look at my TNT experiments:
Oops.
And after multiple quartz-collecting trips, it was time to construct the dome!
I created a small catwalk to aid in building the top-most layers. I also wanted to incorporate the leaves into the four inclines as you can see here, and top it off with black clay.
^ This picture was taken from the MPH railway in the Power Museum. Talk about compactness!
I'm atop the slime farm roof before I demolish it.
You can see above that we cap off just underneath the railway.
And voila, a completed dome! Now it's time for those slime farm walls!
...But first, I think the slime spawning platforms could use an upgrade. Oh, and look at that moody brightness!
Well that's not something you see everyday!
Some pretty colors - won't be everyone's preferred look but the idea here is that we blend both a Starlight and Power Museum feel, since this project is a mix of both.
Next up is lighting!
Designing the lighting schematic for this floor was not the easiest thing to do! But I think this design works nicely - what do you think?
Finished the pumpkin/melon farm look, finally.
This wall was a questionable decision, as I had about run out of quartz at this point. So, I could either go back to the Nether to get enough quartz for this wall, or I could settle with something that would work until I came back to add three more sugar cane farms later on (since that's what would sensibly go here). I went with the latter.
And now for my favorite part, the dye storage rooms!!
The reason this was my favorite part of today's session was because I had to think outside of the box. I needed to come up with creative ways to denote the individual chests. So, I picked blocks/items that most closely resembled each color dye, and used those to label each chest. And I'm quite satisfied with the result.
The flower storage is that back wall. The middle two chests contain multiple inclusions (including lilypads, as you'll notice). But the four outer chests are for the four two-block tall flowers. The two on the outside correspond to the top chests. The two on the inside correspond to the bottom chests. I think you get the idea.
The Sheep Processing Facility also received a feature today: the shear system!
Quite simply, the button (on the right) dispenses a shear, and that shear is placed into the item frame until it breaks. Then the process repeats! These shears are the same ones to be used on the mooshrooms in the mooshroom farm. But wait, how do I get to those? Well, that was the other feature added today!
It seemed like everything was finished. And while we're getting there, we're not quite there yet! For instance, I still had to finish the slime farm storage room.
Easy enough, and I think it looks nice. Let's look at Mushroom Cove with the lighting now completed.
Cozy! Let's see how the rest of the storage cellars look.
I hid glowstone up into the leaves, but it's off to the side as the mycelium rests atop the leaves. It manages to work out, however, as there isn't a single spot down here underneath light level 8!
Finally off to the lobby lighting.
One torch to signify that the perfect system is unachievable.
At long last, the Starlight Resources Facility was complete!!
It felt so good to finally put up that sign, culminating seven months of work. And even more coincidentally awesome is the fact that this project was completed on day 2800! You may have caught that if you are an astute observer!
So what was this project even about, anyway? The Starlight Resources Facility - was it really worth the large portion of this season that we spent working on it? After all, I’m the only one who waited seven months for its completion. Ever since I started this project on session 151, I knew that I would be working on it in chunks. But what was my goal? I think it is human nature to set your expectations higher than realistically feasible, but when you actually achieve those expectations once, you only set the bar higher for the future. Is that what really happens, though? Or do we always assume that there is something better waiting for us – that there is an endgame we’re just waiting to see? The Starlight Resources Facility, in its original invention stage, was literally described to be “the better version of everything.” But now that’s literally completed. So is my mindset now to think of a third project that is a better version of this? The point I’m trying to illustrate is that we often naturally think that a better version of something is what we want. But sometimes, what we think we want is not what we actually want.
I’ve met a lot of people who say things like “When I jump-start my career, I’ll be happy!” or “When I’m rich and famous I’ll feel better!” The problem here is that these people focus exclusively on the destination and not the journey getting to that destination. They aren’t living in the moment, making the most of the possibility that what they have now is the best they ever will. The SRF was created with a similar, yet different, mindset. When I was building it, I didn’t just think about how it would end up. I mean, if that were the case, I’m pretty sure we would’ve been done a long time ago! The reason I say that is because I spent a lot of time focusing not only on its functional purpose (to be the collection of all the farms, automated and better), but also its place in the world. I thought about its compact design, how it could be expanded in the future, how its aesthetics would match appropriately with its design, and for what reason I was building it to begin with. In other words, I treated the SRF as a construction, not as a machine that gives me things. Because in the long run, I would be much happier with a completed construction that resembled my own thought process than a rushed idea that focused solely on the destination and not the journey getting there.
Do we always succumb to somebody else’s idea, at the very least before we consider our own? There’s a difference between replicating someone’s idea and trying to learn from someone’s idea. One of the other big purposes of the SRF was to build upon my knowledge of what is possible not only in this game, but in the way I think creatively about things in general. Many of the farms in this build are based off of existing ideas – sometimes heavily, sometimes loosely. But I don’t just pick the quickest or most efficient farm design. I pick the one that fits best with the style of the build, as well as one I haven’t yet tried my hand at constructing (the wheat farm being one of the best examples of both). See, it’s not strictly about having the farm for me. I wanted to be able to introduce many different designs from many different people, such that there is something of a “cultural connection” in the SRF’s hood. You may not have picked up on this, but almost every single farm in the SRF is from a different person. While the pumpkin/melon farm was from Etho, the sugar cane was from Nims. While the nether wart farm was from Xisuma, the mushroom farm was from Maizuma. And then you have the Sheep Processing Facility, a design that may not be entirely original, but nonetheless was entirely by myself. The great thing here is that all of these differing designs were part of a bigger incorporation of my own design: the Starlight Resources Facility.
So you see, the Starlight Resources Facility isn’t just a better version of the world I had before. It doesn’t function as a material placeholder that tides me over for the real deal, because what I made it into is exactly what I wanted it to be. This project, simply put, was an artistic approach to an idea that would initially seem lackluster, intended to become the embodiment of everything I want this world to represent: creativity and personal symbolism. I think it has achieved that goal, and so I suppose that in a way it really is the “better version of everything”. The point of this narrative, then, is to ignite your appreciation of what this build represents, even if it’s not your cup of tea.
To celebrate the build's completion, enjoy an 8-minute run-through of all the features!
Thanks for making it this far with me and here’s to the last 21 sessions of the season!
Those of you who have been following closely know that even as though the SRF is complete, there is yet another large addition coming to it. Until next time...
Next up... Session 180 - "Blowing Chunks"
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Things are not slowing down, even with the end of one project, for another shall take its place!
Session 180 - "Blowing Chunks"
The chicken farm storage, as you may know, was one of the first things added to the Starlight Resources Facility back in session 154. Thus, it didn't exactly have the same automatic features as the rest of the facility came to adopt. So I kicked off this session by redoing this storage room!
Now, the farm automatically sorts the chicken from the feathers, and sorts the eggs! This intuitively made the egg generator from inside Starlight Castle obsolete - a feature added at the beginning of this season (session 103 if you'd like to revisit).
One thing here was the lack of sufficient storage space. But that's not a problem - we can always extend the storage downward to the second level of the cellars, right? Well that's a bit more complicated; the leaves storage currently resides directly underneath. That, however, is only a temporary problem.
My days of blowing things up with TNT were far from over, for today we begin another large project - the tree farm.
Recall the original schematic from session 151, where the tree farm is drawn on the right side, entering from the Power Museum entrance. The farm will be a separated entity from the SRF, but it will nonetheless be considered a part of it. It will consist of ten trees from each of the six types. This farm will eliminate the need to traverse thousands of blocks to get to acacia wood, the need to leave Techtropolis Island to obtain dark oak and spruce wood, and the need to demolish the jungle scenery for jungle wood. Simply put, having this tree farm will significantly make wood much easier to obtain, as it should.
I started by testing the trees when four blocks from each other, which worked for all of them.
I realize I didn't capture it too well, but even these two giant dark oak trees fit within the confines of this small space:
At the moment, the tree farm is connected via a small hallway from the main SRF hub. But this will be redone later on.
It took about an hour or so to get this far:
This process took me a lot of time, and thus I felt I needed to take a small break from it. So, I headed over to the witch farm to light up some caves!!
This of course led to the inception of a mine at the witch farm - one that I titled The Bottom. But you know what makes this mine stand out among the Diamond Mine at the Starlight? It's this:
I'll showcase some pictures of this addition:
This new endeavor not only was a nice break from the vigorous mining of stone that was the tree farm excavation (though that does a present a bit of irony now doesn't it?), but it gave the witch farm higher rates thanks to the illumination of many caves underneath it! Additionally, I obtained a plentiful amount of resources.
The next day, I got back to the tree farm, and this time it was to create!
I actually took on a new strategy. Before deciding how to build the farm in Techtropolis, I drew up a possible schematic in Paint:
It's hard to see because it is based off of pixels, but feel free to zoom in on your browser to see the detailed spaces. The main problem with this schematic was the spacing - I had them all at four blocks apart, which alluded to many more explosions in the near future. However, my next move was going into a creative world to actually see what would work. And that turned out to be a much better idea:
I have each tree only two blocks apart as opposed to four. After some tests, I found that all six trees can actually grow when just two blocks apart from each other. Yes, even the oddly proportioned acacia trees (which I figured I'd have difficulty incorporating) fit nicely!
This was great news, and I went ahead to finish off the new schematic:
Here I am facing the farm as though I'm entering it from the SRF. We have spruce, birch, and oak on the left side (the "original" batch), with jungle, acacia, and dark oak on the right side (the "new" batch).
See the design comparable to the SRF hub:
Once I realized how close I actually was to begin adding trees, I returned to Techtropolis to finish the first half!
Two rows ready to go!
Time to remove the roof chunks!
And so it begins...
Dark oak happens to be the type of wood I use the most, meaning it's the one I'd want to have the largest supply of. Check out how the giant dark oak trees fit:
And then how they all fit:
A perfect conclusion to today's eventful session.
This tree farm has a long history - one that originated back in the old world discussed in session 175. My first version of it in the old world was above ground, and it consisted of 20 trees from oak, birch, and spruce, along with 5 large jungle trees (at that time, dark oak and acacia didn't yet exist). The reason I made that tree farm wasn't just so I could have it; it actually had purpose! Its purpose was to provide resources for the Aqua Lounge, which as you may know was the last big project I completed in my old world, in April 2013 to be specific. I've mentioned it a few times throughout this journal if you caught that. I think the biggest change this time around wasn't so much the timing but rather the placement. I originally planned the tree farm in Techtropolis to be located behind the barn, and so it would still remain above-ground. However, the one big problem (and this was a similar problem in the old world) was that it was just too far away from the rest of the base. Thus, it was not convenient and I was better suited to come up with something that fits it into the base nicely. And so I decided to tack it onto the Starlight Resources Facility.
With that decision, I knew this session would take some significant time to complete, mostly because it involved the removal of a tremendous number of blocks. This would not have been needed had I decided to build this farm above ground. Regardless, I think this was a fantastic move instead, and we're more than halfway through that part of the process!
A new storage unit, a new farm, and a new mine all combine in this super-sized introduction to the rest of the season!
Next up... Session 181 - "Can't See The Farm For the Trees"
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The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
1/11/2014
Posts:
42
Minecraft:
Benjii35
Member Details
Maybe I don't post a comment every single time. But you should know that you have followers!
It is just amazing!
I just started a new world. I wanted to stick to the older one (nice landscape, buildings), but I was stupid and built all farms in one place - so - "lag as b*tch". But I am really enjoyng playing again and without any problems
Maybe I don't post a comment every single time. But you should know that you have followers!
It is just amazing!
I just started a new world. I wanted to stick to the older one (nice landscape, buildings), but I was stupid and built all farms in one place - so - "lag as b*tch". But I am really enjoyng playing again and without any problems
I always assume that people are reading; those page views had to come from somewhere (bots included)! Regardless, I'm just happy I have somewhere to document my adventures. Thanks for being interested!
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LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
Today's tree-farm-centric update includes some big changes to the storage!
Session 181 - "Can't See the Farm for the Trees"
One half down, one half to go! This session kicked off with the complete decimation of the other half of the alleged tree farm!
And then it was time to plant the trees; in the previous session, we did the jungle, acacia, and dark oak trees. Today, we add in the "original batch" - oak, birch, and spruce.
Once complete, it was time to collect some sandstone from The North.
After playing around with some designs, I decided on having sandstone slabs for the walkways to keep them looking sleek and clean, whilst the tree farm "platforms" would be stone slabs.
A view of the ravine this farm cut into:
Lighting was not difficult, placed at every other tree in fact. Some conditional exceptions applied of course.
The tree farm was complete! Of course, the aesthetics were not, but that's quite the task for another day I think. Today's adventures continue with a huge addition to the tree farm and a big change to a major element of storage: wood storage. And I'm not speaking for strictly another storage cellar or storage room of sorts. How about instead, a storage wall?!
The storage wall would be the front wall of the tree farm, intersecting the entrance to the tree farm. Provided is a picture showing you the compactness of the farm's location - that the storage wall is directly perpendicular to the sugar cane farm:
Each storage "pod" would be built out of the wood type it is storing. For example, the dark oak storage pod would look like so:
This would be the main design of each pod. Let's see all the storage pods in place!
Oh look, a beautifully blossomed oak tree!
^ And that's just the first level...
Say goodbye to the old wood storage!
I tore down the entire dark oak row of trees more than once to craft enough chests to fill every spot.
The bottom level is for wood - wood logs and wood planks - for each type. However, the second layer is for all wood materials, referring to stairs, slabs, doors, fences, and fence gates for each type. There will eventually be a third layer, since one more layer can actually fit snugly up top there. But that won't be for today.
Pictured above is the stairway used to access the second layer. And pictured below is evidence of yet another slime chunk down here!
Today's session included a number of huge advancements, mostly involving the tree farm storage! This was a lengthy process indeed, but I was quite satisfied once this project was complete. Two big projects in a row? Wow, I think it's time for a much-needed break... an adventure!
Awaiting us is the final official adventure of Season 2... and having just finished it, I can tell you that it will be one hell of a ride. Stay tuned!!
Next up... Session 182 - "North Shore Adventure (part 1)"
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LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
After completing the coarse work on the tree farm, it was time to take a break from Starlight HQ! For our final adventure, I wanted to incorporate both caving and above-ground exploring. Thus, I chose a location that I've only ever visited briefly, and it's located in a land that was not labeled back in session 168: Megapolis. Megapolis is the name of the ancient city just north of the 1.7 border we explored back in session 176. Among its inclusions are The North, Fall Damage, an underwater monument, and Techtown. However, starting today, a new construction will be added: Quinone Castle! It's a new idea that was never previously planned, and thus I haven't done much alluding to its existence. But Quinone Castle is to Megapolis what Starlight HQ is to Techtropolis Island. It will be our main base on the other side of the waters!
Today's adventures will take place underneath the Megapolis Canals - a beautiful array of waterways that allow ease of boat travel and scenic glamour. We will not only embark on many caving adventures, but we will also construct the basis for Quinone Castle, map most of Megapolis's land, and attempt to conquer the underwater monument just off of the north shore. So let's go!
Goodbye Starlight HQ!
Hello, beauty!
Entering the canals!
A view of Megapolis Bay!
That torch pillar was built way back when I first explored this land, in Season 1 (so 1.5+ years ago!).
Let's view the canals:
Above, you can notice that the entry canal splits north off of Megapolis Bay into two other passageways. These eventually all lead back to the river.
From this point, I'm formating the session a bit differently to keep this adventure more organized. Since we're doing a lot of different things this time around (compared to our other adventures where we don't do much besides adventure!), I think this will be a better way to follow the adventure!
Part 1: Quinone Castle
At long last, I found a spot just over the small mountain in which to construct Quinone Castle.
The castle will be comprised currently of Rooms I, II, III, IV, and V. Each room will have its own singular purpose. In terms of aesthetics, Quinone Castle is intended to mix themes of both the Nether and the underworld of the Overworld, creating an antiquated style very different from the Starlight.
In the picture above, I attempted to find a spot in the Nether in which to build a coordinating portal to the one I built in Quinone Castle. However, I was off by nearly 1,000 blocks. I still found some diamonds, however!
So I finally found the right spot for the portal - inside the first fortress discovered way back in session 111 (during my very first trip to the Nether in this world). Of course, this was very close to the Nether Hub, and thus Quinone Castle could potentially be intertwined with Starlight HQ (something that seems to be shared across all of our builds!). Alas, I collected much brimstone and fought the Wither's madmen, so that I could start renovating our new base.
At this moment, the castle is small - not even a castle at all. But that's okay, because today isn't focused around the castle. We just needed to establish it and start on our adventure, that way we can easily come back later to develop it.
Part 2: Mapping Megapolis
The next part of our adventure involved the mapping of Megapolis - not all of it, but most of the important parts.
Can you see "Fall Damage" in the distance (sessions 145-146)? Yes, it is very much in close proximity to Quinone Castle.
Unless you've visited The North in the world download that is provided (via the Great Northern Railway in Starlight Station), you've probably never seen what our North base looks like. Well, pictured above is the "base" - in quotes because it isn't really a base at all. As you know, The North is where I collect all my sand, but it is also home to a desert temple, a village, and the recently built parkour course. Since Quinone Castle is very close to this area, the potential to further develop it is continuing to grow!
This little beauty is a nice cherry on top.
Lots of great things to see in this picture!
In the far distance, you can see the Megapolis Mountains - some of the coldest and most dangerous mountains in the land of Techtropolis! Do I dare attempt to scale these slopes??
Of course I do.
Here you can very visibly see the 1.7-generated border that separates Techtropolis Island from Megapolis (and therefore the North and Techtown). On the map, you can see the North base on the very left, with Megapolis Mountains all the way up north. Quinone Castle is in the middle there at the canals, but you can't see that very well in the above picture.
Now that's just offensive.
Part 3: Exploring the Underworld
Having explored most of the area I felt up to exploring, it was time to venture back to Quinone Castle and explore underneath the canals! You may be wondering, "Why did you specifically want to explore there?" Well, to tell you the honest truth, I actually thought that the canals were in an extreme hills biome (albeit a small one), and thus I intended to obtain emeralds. However, even upon realizing that wasn't the case, this was still the location I wanted our Megapolis base, so it doesn't change today's adventure. Besides, we have The Bottom for emeralds now!
Oh how it felt good to be in a new cave!
Check out all those ore veins!
"There is light at the end of the tunnel!"
^ Legend has it that this giant gaping hole is part of the ancient city that once existed beneath Megapolis. But that's just a legend.
I can see the gold!!
Can we be friends? Please??
After a while, I ran out of inventory space and thus had to return to Quinone Castle to drop everything off. Above you can see everything obtained. But I wasn't planning on stopping here; there was still so much more to explore!
For our second dive, the area pictured above was the rendezvous point that I returned to after each tunnel was fully explored. Of course, given the nature of caving, that wasn't very straightforward. In fact, this was even more so the case after I found another one of these:
This had been a hell of a caving adventure, and I almost stopped after finding this ravine because of how much I'd already explored. You have to stop somewhere, right? Well I actually did stop here, right here, in fact. Everything changed when I looked up...
The time-span between parts 1 and 2 was a whopping two weeks (all this past month, though)! After how part 1 ended, I had to step back and rethink all of my current (and future) plans. But given just how much we're attempting to do in these two sessions, how will this seemingly incoherent adventure end? Until next time...
Next up... Session 183 - "North Shore Adventure (part 2)"
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LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
I spent many days creating the video in this update... I'm hopeful it is accurately representative of just how intense this session was.
Session 183 - "North Shore Adventure (part 2)"
So this is where the stronghold is, above-ground, directly beneath the Megapolis Canals:
As previously mentioned, I spent about two weeks contemplating how I was going to integrate this discovery within my current plans before even starting part 2 of this adventure. Finding this stronghold was a genuine surprise, and it's hard to gather that feeling in Minecraft very easily. The verdict I came to was that Quinone Castle would not only be our main base for Megapolis, but also connected to the stronghold to serve as a hybrid base for when we venture to the End. Finding this stronghold then is even more convenient, because that saves us another base and another adventure, not to mention a hell of a lot of ender eyes. So this was an absolutely amazing find.
However, I've also decided that we'll leave the exploration of the stronghold for another day. We still have many things to do in this adventure; the discovery of the stronghold is enough for me right now. On this adventure, we still have to finish mapping Megapolis, finally collect ice and packed ice from the ice spikes biome down south (discovered back in the Mesa Mission), and conquer the underwater monument. So let's get the former two out of the way.
A little trip in the complete opposite direction (basically away from the North Shore Adventure) so that I could finally collect some ice. Prior to today, I had absolutely none.
Additionally, I got some packed ice as well! Here's a cool little thing I found:
Back to Megapolis, I won't bother showing too much more of what you've already seen (in the previous session, you basically saw all the notable parts of Megapolis so far). But here are some cool shots.
Approaching the monument, without a boat because I'm stupid and broke it, negligent of its convenience in this scenario:
A few views from the outside:
^ This picture was taken through an underground hole, where I am within an air pocket, as I approach the ocean monument.
^ Evidently, a chunk has gone missing from this monument. But as you can notice (if you look very closely), there is a sponge room in this one! This is an upgrade to our monument adventure we went on back in the Prismarine Voyage (sessions 134-135).
One down!
I found the glorious gold.
Take a look at where the second elder guardian is:
Two down!
I spent a lot of time trying to find the third. How did this final battle go down? Well, that's where things get interesting...
Left with nothing but my wit and my will to survive, death had never been more imminent in any adventure of mine to date. There are consequences to every action, or lack thereof.
Next up... Session 184 - "Loose Ends"
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LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
Busy week ahead, so it will more than likely be over a week before the next update - just a heads up ahead of time!
Session 184 - "Loose Ends"
The North Shore Adventure was one of the most diverse and dynamic adventures I've had by far, as it involved a number of new challenges and a game-changing discovery! That ocean monument was only the second of three that I've explored. The third one, which has not yet been explored, is located in Stonewall Territory. Remember when I mentioned that name in sessions 107 and 168? Well, just remember it for when it shows up again. I know you're just waiting to see what this all leads up to...
Today was focused on tying some loose ends around Starlight HQ, mostly including two areas: the lighting at the Mob Processing Hub, and the lighting atop the Nether Temple. So in a way, this is the "light it up" session! Let's get to it...
PART 1: Mob Processing Hub
One reason I needed to gather ice was because I recall reading somewhere that if you melt ice with a torch, the resulting water block will not spread unless updated. Whether or not this is a glitch or a bug, I intended to utilize this feature in the Mob Processing Hub. But first, I went to test it out:
Great! So now let's get rid of that ugly sign + pressure plate apparatus going on at the Mob Processing Hub.
Having completed this, I needed to touch on the lighting for the hub. If you are not yet familiar with the Mob Processing Hub, I highly encourage that you read through sessions 129-140, which is when its construction took place. Back when this facility was built, I did properly light some areas, including the skeleton storage unit and the enchanting room. This was great because these areas were the most difficult to light appropriately. From here, I needed to determine the best ways to incorporate lighting in each section of the hub. I tried to use different methods, including glowstone lamps, sea lanterns, and glowstone within leaves, to help vary the design a bit.
The spider storage unit saw the inclusion of glowstone lamps, with added glowstone hidden within the leaves, to match the standardized setting of a lodge office.
This staircase incorporated floor lighting to inspire intricacy.
This area (for lack of a better descriptive title) used a random glowstone lamp emerging from the cocoon of the mob chamber.
The lighting for the skeleton unit picture above was already done, and thus this picture is provided for three reasons: context, session length, and redundancy.
In the hallway above, my creative side expresses itself vividly.
This area is not lit because slabs...
...but cool border is cool.
Sea lanterns added to keep color consistency, because the rest of the picture depicts my dedication to that so well.
To the left: flowerpot lights to keep the plants alive. To the right: basic blue light that barely matches the wall.
Upstairs, the real lighting problem still has not been solved...
...and apparently neither has my problem with creative imagery.
Block added to prevent clogging.
And like that, all lighting at the MPH was finished! This was a fun process for me, and I enjoyed incorporating the lights in different ways. But we weren't quite finished yet. Another lingering issue at the MPH was that of the railway - a full chest minecart could not make the whole trail by itself. In fact, I tested it and found that it stopped at this point:
Easily enough, I simply added a few more powered rails so that it could make the way on its own!
PART 2: Nether Temple
Part two of this session was based around the lighting atop the Nether Temple. Because there is no lighting at all, it's the one spot mobs are most likely to spawn, and indeed they do every single night. So it's time to fix that and make it look cool all at once! I had an ambitious idea: to create a glass torus surrounding the dome filled with lava, placed proportionately in that it would light every block on the dome. I began to experiment with possible color combinations:
I decided against this, for consistency's sake, and used orange glass instead. But first I needed orange glass; so, a trip to the North was required!
The glass torus was built!
I think it adds to the lava bowl nicely because of its height being just below it, separating the bowl from the dome from an aesthetic perspective. What do you think?
Close-up, it doesn't look very nice. But we will never be this close to it! It will be more like this:
Much cleaner! But how would we light the rest of the roof?
I decided on a lava tube that would descend from the torus, functioning in a similar manner.
Two glowstone lights added above the spires (along with two more hidden ones above the front entrance, on the floor of the roof) were added to achieve full lighting. Let's check it out at night!
Achievement achieved!
To end this session, check out this video, in which I race the MPH minecart to the viewing in Starlight Arcade:
Cool!
Taking a much lighter approach with today's session, the second season is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel! Speaking of which, do you remember the following photo I teased at the end of session 175?
Take a breath as we see this sector commence development next session...
Next up... Session 185 - "Hall of Armor"
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I wasn't exaggerating when I said this one would take a bit longer to complete... but I think you'll agree that many good things take time.
Session 185 - "Hall of Armor"
When the Power Museum was first built, throughout the summer of 2014, I had an idea to construct a hallway dedicated to armor storage. But I originally planned to use item frames in order to hold the armor, separated by set. However, once armor stands became a thing with 1.8, my idea became much more feasible, and thus I incorporated it into the design of the Power Museum. Even though I didn't build it at the time, I was consciously thinking about it throughout the development of the Power Museum.
And now, nearly two years later, the time to build it has come.
I entered this project with two main goals: (1) to construct the Hall of Armor and prime it for potential armor sets, and (2) to expand the unfinished sector of the Power Museum (that has remained unfinished for nearly two years), which would connect to both the Hall of Armor and the old storage rooms. But before doing this, I needed to go on two distinct adventures: (1) a cave conquest underneath the witch farm to attain resources and improve rates, and (2) a trip to Candyland to stock up on both quartz and clay. I won't detail these trips specifically, but they took a bit of time to complete - enough to where I've organized an entire photo library of them, which can be viewed here.
First off, look at just how dense this base is becoming:
I took the unfinished sector a bit further in order to connect back to the old storage rooms, as you can see below:
The zombie spawning dungeon is literally just below this.
I spent a lot of time thinking about how exactly I was going to pull this off. Not only did I need to connect these two areas, I needed to build a third hall off of this somewhere. And this third hall needed enough room to incorporate armor stands and, well, reasonable air space. So I was in a bit of a pickle because of how close everything is in this particular area.
From the above two pictures, you can see that I've decided to construct a hallway connecting the two sides of the underground Power Museum. None of these halls would become the Hall of Armor, however. The actual Hall of Armor would come to be located right off of this third hallway:
I did manage to work around the zombie spawner in order to furnish our connection between the Power Museum and the old storage rooms.
What's that to the right, you ask? Well, I figured it would just make sense to incorporate an entrance to our doorbell chamber. You may not recall that we did in fact install a doorbell earlier this season! But the chamber for it was inaccessible... until now, that is.
As you can see, it is located directly beneath the sitting room upstairs.
This addendum was also the first time I used variations of the quartz block. And it wouldn't be the last, either, because we're about to spice things up with the Hall of Armor!
Shifting the focus over to the Hall of Armor itself, we had a new problem. In the picture above, you can see that the roof is a combination of three different blocks, all of which make up the floor of the old storage rooms. I knew that I needed to do something about that. And so I did...
I tore up the entire floor, replacing it in fact with the block that would serve as the roof for the Hall of Armor: blue clay. Because the storage rooms rely heavily on red carpet, this aesthetic change would not be immediately visible.
Now it was time to begin framing the design for the hall.
And if that isn't dense enough, take a look at just how close this is to the automatic boat deploy system:
I had to move some wires around.
With the first frames in place, the Hall of Armor was starting to take shape! But this was only one of two distinct features of this project. The second feature revolves around the fact that there is only one wall separating the Hall of Armor from the zombie spawning dungeon.
Today, I was going to install two things: (1) an overdue on/off feature so that I can finally turn this spawner off if I so desire (because having it on all the time causes lag around the base), and (2) a glass viewing to peak into the spawning room. Let's start with the lighting system.
Arranging the glowstone lights in this array will light up every spot in the spawning space, making it a quick and efficient way to incorporate this feature!
In order to install a glass viewing here, we first needed to renovate the entire spawning room, because yikes! That is far from presentable for such a prestigious construction! It's time to put those Candyland trips to good use.
After many long hours, the Hall of Armor was officially completed on day 2900! This new addition incorporated not only a decorative space to store armor sets, but also two overdue features to the Power Museum that will render the construction much more of an asset to the world!
This update concludes with the unveiling of Techtropolis's Season 2 World Tour trailer - a project in the works that needed the Hall of Armor as the final piece! If you are not caught up on Techtropolis development, this trailer might give you an idea on where we're at! The aim is to focus on the big highlights throughout Season 2, while also including allusions to just about everything we've built so far. I do hope it's a fun watch!
Stay tuned for the final fifteen sessions towards the epic season finale!
Next up... Session 186 - "Starting Over"
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Awesome! Now I can't stop thinking about the season finale. Your builds are giving me inspiration for my world, thank you for that.
Thank you! I am happy to be of help in that department. The world tour is one of several elements that will comprise the season finale; I assure you it will be an event!
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LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
If you haven't yet familiarized yourself with the Blaze Blaster, I recommend you do so before reading/watching this session. You can find the original developments through sessions 160-161.
Session 186 - "Starting Over"
The Blaze Blaster was a fun construction originally built in sessions 160-161, directly following the intense Mesa Mission. However, when I built it, I wasn't exactly looking at making it efficient. I simply wanted to have a blaze farm in my world. However, its lack of efficiency resulted in me not using it much. If you remember, the funnel relied on blaze AI, and the collecting area was inconveniently placed because I was too far from the spawner for it to remain active. These problems needed to be fixed! So today, I didn't just work on the Blaze Blaster. I tore it out completely and rebuilt it.
Let's look at the things I would need for this project:
And here was the original design, as of session 161:
Not only was I going to redo the funnel, but I wanted the collection point to be within the vicinity of the spawner, so that the spawner could remain active whilst I can kill the blaze. The only way for this to be feasible was to install a railway system for the blaze. I brought along some options.
Part 1: The New and Improved Funnel
I first needed to cover the blaze spawning area so that they would not bug me.
Then it was time to clear the cone...
First layer done!
Second layer done!
Well, this won't be fun to deal with:
To do the third layer, I'd have to remove the crusher system:
Done!
Notice how we funnel the blaze into a 2x2 room:
I did die when it came time to clear the top chamber, allowing the blaze (and apparently everything else) to fall into the funnel! Ironically, what killed me was a magma cube. You'll of course see this in the included video at the close of this session. But take note of what I was greeted by upon my return to the Nether:
It's in my way.
But moving on...
Another thing you'll notice is that the actual size of the funnel has not changed; it is simply much more efficient now in terms of moving the blaze, as opposed to before where the system relied heavily on blaze AI. The 2x2 room would help cut down the amount of room blaze had without risking them taking any damage and/or not actually falling into a 1x1 hole. This of course was not the killing chamber, but instead the transport chamber where the minecart would take them away. This leads into part two...
Part 2: The Minecart Transport System
One pigman took all my stuff upon my aforementioned death. But instead of killing him, I used this opportunity to give one of my stashed nametags a purpose. Meet our frenemy:
I locked him in that potion storage unit.
Pictured above is the new collecting chamber for the blaze. Yes, they will descend down the tall tube where I can kill them from any angle, remaining in proximity to the spawner and voiding the need for that entire section down below. But wait, how will I kill them? Well, first we need to bring the blaze from the bottom to the top.
The minecart would pick up a blaze...
...bring it up the twisty tower of hell...
...and drop it off into the glass collecting tube via an activator rail. Wait, what the hell is an activator rail, you ask?
Ideally, an activator rail will eject mobs from a minecart when activated, but there were some complications as it would not eject the blaze, sending them down the tube. In attempting to get this system to work, I tried a number of arrangements:
But none of these worked; the activator rail still would not eject the blaze! After hours of trial and error, I did some reading and found that, because my world was not generated in 1.8, the activator rail would not eject mobs onto an air block. It would, however, eject mobs onto a solid block. So if you plan on using activator rails in an older generated world, keep that in mind! With that, I installed the following system:
A slab is installed to allow the blaze to eject from the minecart. The detector rail adds a slight delay, retracting the slab just as the blaze is ejected, to keep it from being able to move out (a full block would clip the blaze on its way down). From here the blaze moves into the automatic crusher system.
Wait, automatic crusher system? As in, no buttons, no waiting?
Part 3: The Crusher / Lights System
Using the same comparator timer as before, the crusher utilizes two key elements: (1) containing the blaze entirely for the duration of the crushing, and (2) making sure to release the blaze fully (without killing it) before crushing the next blaze. In the top picture, you'll see two slabs and one solid block between them. The bottom slab is extended first, to keep the blaze from escaping past the crusher.
In the above picture, you can notice the comparator timer at the top, which controls the duration the blocks are extended. The bottom circuit connects to the bottom slab (which is extended before the other two blocks are). The redstone torch to the right there is the input signal that starts the whole thing.
The same circuit that connects to the bottom slab also connects to the circuit for the top two blocks, which you can see to the left in the picture above. A delay is therefore imposed, which allows the top two blocks to extend after the bottom slab. The comparator timer is then initiated, and the process repeats automatically.
The circuit itself isn't very complicated; it's also incredibly efficient because it means you don't have to touch anything, and it works every time. Said circuit was designed beautifully by Okta, so search for his tutorial on YouTube if you want to know how to build this exact design.
The crusher itself took almost no trial and error to tweak; it was basically flawless the first run (you know, once I actually got the railway system working). I'd recommend this crusher highly!
As the blaze made their way down, I needed a convenient way to kill them. So I added a slab to access them. Of course, this caused some new problems:
Of course, this was an easy fix - I just had to cover it up!
The XP started flowing it - this new system was working so much better than before! But there was one more feature to add yet... the lights! You may be saying, "There are already lava lights!" While true, they don't actually prevent blaze from spawning, since the lava falls don't quite cover every spot. Additionally, the lever I use to activate the lights is broken since it doesn't act the way a button would, instead relying on my quick fingers to deactivate the lights. The problem with using a button, though, is that you need to send a pulse to the dispensers twice in order to remove the lava. So, one flick from the lever would turn it one, and one would turn it off. In order to do this, I needed to install the following mechanism:
Each time the lever is flipped, the piston moves (extends, contracts). When the lever is flipped on (extending the piston), a signal is sent to the dispensers just before it is cut off by the piston. When the lever is flipped off (detracting the piston), the signal carries over just before it is deactivated, sending another pulse to the dispensers.
More lights!
I had to snap a shot of this - what beautiful layers!
The Blaze Blaster, from a functional perspective, was complete in its new form!
A video version of this session might help you visualize all the ups and downs that went into making the whole system work:
A new Blaze Blaster allowed me to more efficiently farm XP, making this new design one of the most intuitive in Techtropolis to date! That's just my opinion of course; I'd love to hear what you think!
An exciting number of twists and turns along with a lot of trial and error made for an interesting and eventful session today! But how will the Blaze Blaster look in the end? Well, that's for another day...
Next up... Session 187 - "Stone Canvas"
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The past week has been hectic, which made today's big project more cumbersome to integrate into my schedule. And in doing so, I realized that my original goal of getting to session 200 by June 12, 2016 might not be so feasible. June 12th, of course, is the three-year anniversary of Techtropolis, and thus I wanted to celebrate with the season 2 finale. But hey, if it happens it happens; if not, then that's okay!
Session 187 - "Stone Canvas"
Back in sessions 180-181, we did some major work on a major project: the tree farm! But its aesthetics remained unfinished, rendering the farm visually unappealing. So today, we're going to mold a beautiful aesthetic landscape out of the stone canvas that is the tree farm's walls. Now, I could have built everything flat, making this session much easier to complete. However, I had some ambitious plans for how I wanted the tree farm to look. And it starts with the following pillar:
This pillar is the base design for the walls of the tree farm. Ideally, there would be one of these at each corner. I didn't initially know what would come next, but I knew I wanted to install four of these pillars. In designing it, I first had to measure the height of the tree farm. From there it was just trial and error before I came to a design I liked. Before this, however, we needed to accomplish a different goal: the roof. Why? Well, the pillars were intended to connect seamlessly with the roof, which means we need to have the roof in place. I therefore needed to make a trip to the Nether, because that's a very large roof to cover...
I basically tore down this entire part of the fortress.
After attaining more than enough nether bricks for slabs, I did die on my out by a Wither skeleton or two or three.
^ This is promising for a future wither skeleton farm idea. When I came back through the portal, there were at least five skeletons.
My friend above killed me again before I finally triumphed with my things. This was certainly an interesting twist of events.
Upon re-spawning in Quinone Castle (since I made a brief stop there while inside the fortress), I realized I had no arrows. Thus, my adventure back to Starlight HQ was slightly eventful...
When I did make it back, I grabbed some glowstone and began covering the roof!
Glowstone was placed in intervals, skipping every other sapling spot.
The roof was finished! It took a bit of time, but I had enough to cover it and we finally were ready for the walls.
Using the first screenshot of the pillar as a reference, I copied the design right into the tree farm, where the pillar fit tightly into one of the corners. Well, I suppose it isn't a corner, but more of an end. Let me show you how I built it in survival:
1) Start with the base. This assortment of blocks was the first batch added to each succeeding pillar:
2) Surround the base. The next step was to dig up and around the base area, which is nine blocks across and five blocks deep. I don't dig it all, however, because I need to account for the sloping of the pillar in which some blocks will remain.
3) Build the bottom section. In the next picture, you'll notice the protruding layer of stairs above the light. That's where the bottom section ends.
4) Construct the pillar. By using the pillar as a guide, I can determine when to begin building the top section. See below:
5) Prepare the top section. The following apparatus is used to construct the top section.
6) Mirror the bottom section. From here, and using the protruding layer of stairs as our guide, we just need to mirror the bottom section to complete the pillar. In the process we'll dig out the stone of course.
7) Fill the backing. After the pillar is completed, the next step would be filling the wall behind it with dark oak logs.
Feel free to try and tweak the design yourself!
The next pillar connected seamlessly with the ravine walls. I might consider some type of observatory? Who knows - this area has some potential to blossom.
By the time I built the fourth pillar, I was so acquainted with the process that it took under ten minutes to construct! So that was neat I suppose; not many builds of mine feature repetitive motions, which made this build a nice change in pace as I basically did the same thing multiple times.
With the four pillars completed, I spent some time thinking about how I would build the rest of the walls. I then decided to construct two pillars in the middle of each wall. Though, because of measurements, these would have to be ten blocks long as opposed to nine. This did make them bigger, however. Using the original design, I simply stretched the center one block to fit it in.
The rest was built similarly to the other pillars, with some aesthetics enhancements.
When it came to replicate this pillar on the other wall, I saved quite a lot of time because most of the digging was already completed back when I blew this area up in session 180:
The next decision became obvious - fill the remaining two spots with two more pillars! But instead of simply replicating the same design, this time I figured we would switch it up a bit...
Using birch wood and dark oak wood, the final two pillars on each wall would contrast nicely with the brighter pillars, making them as nice dividers between the three main pillars. The diameter of these was only seven blocks, making these last two pillars the smallest of the five.
^ This was the first design. But I felt it looked too flat. So I modified it to give it more dimension:
I used birch wood logs to sharply define the center pillar; spruce logs were used to surround both sides of the dark oak pillars, while dark oak logs were used as backing for the oak pillars. Did you get all that? If not, just take a look at the pictures below!
I am very much satisfied with these walls. Yes, both sides were done!
Here's what did not get done today: the entrance and the back wall. I wasn't too disappointed though; I had a less definite plan for the back wall, whereas I basically knew the gist of what I wanted for the two side walls. So now at least I'll have some time to consider my options. Additionally, the storage wall did get cleared up, even while I didn't finish it aesthetically:
So, even though I wanted to complete the tree farm today, I also anticipated that it would take more than one session to finish the aesthetics. But I think it's coming along nicely, and I'd love to hear what you think!
Today's session took a more build-focused approach, and I'm hopeful it worked! After some fairly large-scale sessions recently, it's time to tune things down a bit as we return to an old project next session!
Next up... Session 188 - "Color Conundrum"
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If you've been following, then you know there are still many loose ends to be tied up as we hit the home stretch of the season. One of these is the Starlight Arcade!
DISCLAIMER: This session will assume you have moderate redstone knowledge. If you don't know much about redstone, you may have a hard time following the latter part of this session.
Session 188 - "Color Conundrum"
PART 1 - Starlight Plaza upgrades
In starting this session off, I paid Starlight Station a visit - you know, since Starlight Plaza was an area I seemed to be spending less and less of my time - and I noticed that I still hadn't replaced the boring torches with actual glowstone lighting! Well, I thought we should fix that today; it wouldn't take much time anyway.
In the process, you can see that I've updated the look of the interior, albeit just slightly.
Above, you can finally see what is under the hood of Starlight Station's features. There is only a one-block-high gap between the top floor and the bottom floor, which is why the redstone cannot shift in elevation. Thus, all the circuits had to be meticulously designed so that they remained independent of each other. Recall that these were built during Starlight Station's original construction in Season 1 (session 55 specifically).
Ultimately, I couldn't find a way to independently power this redstone lamp with these space limitations, and thus the lever remained visible. This was not terrible, though - this area is the control center after all, and is already comprised of multiple levers. In other words, even though I don't usually like power sources to be visible, the lever in this case did not look out of place.
In addition to updating the interior, I lit the exterior in a similar manner:
In moving back and forth between Starlight Station and Starlight Castle, I became annoyed with how much jumping I had to do. Because Starlight Station is elevated above most of the plaza, I have to jump quite a lot to access it, which drains my food significantly when you consider process of repetition. We couldn't add slabs or stairs to the road for obvious aesthetic reasons. But, because we're trying to reduce the difficulty of survival in Starlight HQ, I had an idea of building an alternate staircase for when I'm on foot, as opposed to using the road purely for horse travel (which is the road's intended purpose). Think of this alternate staircase as a sidewalk of sorts - it will get me to the same destination more conveniently.
^ I decided to mold the staircase out of this area, because it was already aesthetically prepared. Though, as I began molding, a new problem arose:
I simply worked around this problem and ended up with the intended result:
However, because this drastically affected the doghouse, I went ahead and adjusted the doghouse's aesthetics to match:
Overall I was quite satisfied with the developments of Starlight Plaza today, but not just because of the new features. See, one thing I like about constructing new projects is that it gives me new ideas for future projects. In this case, we now have official access to this hill:
What might we turn this into? I'm not sure yet - maybe a pool? We certainly don't have much space to work with, but sometimes the most creative things can come from the most limited options.
PART 2 - Color Conundrum
Having done some leisure work, it was time to crack down on today's main project - Starlight Arcade! When we first built it in session 163, its only main feature was a viewing to the MPH railway (which you can see in action in session 184). Well, that's because the construction is not finished of course. Today, my focus was to construct our first arcade game, which would be titled "Color Conundrum." The idea is that in this game, four colors would alternate on the board. Our goal would be to maneuver through the board without getting caught up, following the pattern of the colors. This was an idea I've had for a long time, and to be honest I wanted to implement this sooner. But you know what they say: Better late than never! Let's first look at the gate:
Color Conundrum would actually be the port on the right side, simply because the game's nature requires lots of redstone. Therefore, I'd want it to be as much underground as possible, which as you can see the port on the left wouldn't allow. I therefore switched the sea lantern since I'm all out of them for the time being.
I built the gate exactly like the first one back in session 163 - a gold nugget is inserted into the hopper (allowing you to play the game), and you get inside. See session 163 for the explanation of how that works here. This game introduces a new concept of redstone that I hadn't yet played with - perpetual motion and the nature of a chain reaction. When you step on the pressure plate inside, the first thing that would happen is a dispenser would shoot a poison potion at you. This would weaken you as you entered the arena. Second thing would be the second gate opening, allowing you to enter the arena. These two things can be seen here:
After this, the game would actually start, and the four colors would alternate indefinitely until you reached the exit chamber, which would reset the game. To see what I mean, take a look at the board below:
At the start of the game, the colored blocks would extend and retract respectively in this order: yellow, green, blue, red. To understand how I would accomplish this, take a look at the following concoction:
The bigger the board, the exponentially more complex the redstone would become (this is why the game itself is small). Going into this, I did not strategize a plan mathematically that would ensure the most compact execution. I just conquered each piston in a nonlinear fashion, making sure to alternate between colors so that I didn't have one layer dominated by the green lines, for example. The first contraption I had to construct was the clock that would alternate between the four lines:
From here, the process of connecting these lines to every piston commenced. Here are some pictures of the schematics:
With much trial and error, I did manage to connect every line independent of one another. The only piston that gave me some real problems was this blue one:
This was the very last piston to wire up. Because I didn't want to significantly break any of the lines at this point (I can do this later if I want to make it more mathematically compact), I suffered the consequence of this:
See, I did well at not having to extend any torch tower below four torches (which would be the equivalent of two intervals), except for this last one. I don't doubt I probably could have done things differently, but for now I just adjusted the timing elsewhere to keep it relatively consistent. Speaking of consistency...
Technical Bugs
One big bug right off the bat with this machine was the timing between the blocks. When the red blocks extend, the yellow ones need to retract almost immediately before (since they all start extended). I realized this problem comes from how the game starts. One of the key components to how this game functions is in how long the input pulse is. Take a look at this picture:
The pulse "snake" - if you will - is very short, meaning that the blocks will extend and retract without much time at all to move between them. However, in the following picture, the pulse snake is much longer, giving you time to move between the blocks at a steady pace:
How would I control this? Well, first we need to understand that the "pulse snake" is, by default, determined by how long I stand on the pressure plate at the start of the game (since that is what starts the game). But, even that is too long, because then it can get so long that the colors hardly move intermittently. To keep it steady, I installed a RS(NOR) latch with a timer that would keep the pulse snake steady regardless of how long I stand on the pressure plate:
In the above picture, the input signal is the active wire to the left. As it feeds in to start the game, the timer in the back will simultaneously run. After that timer resets the RS(NOR) latch, the output will shut off. That amount of time between the input and when the output is turned off is what creates the pulse snake that controls the time between intervals.
The result is a stable, customizable pulse circuit that can be adjusted as desired. However, before having our fun, another bug needed to be fixed. Even though I controlled the length of the pulse circuit, what if I stepped on the pressure plate more than once before entering the arena? It would send another pulse of the same length to the RS(NOR) latch, breaking the game. To fix this, I installed another RS(NOR) latch that retained the purpose of setting and resetting the game.
The input wire comes in from the left, activating both this RS(NOR) latch and the one acknowledged earlier. However, the difference this time is that this RS(NOR) latch keeps the input wire active, meaning that it doesn't matter how many times I step on the pressure plate. The wire is already active, which means that no new signals will activate the timer and create a redundancy in the clock that runs the game.
To reset the game, all we have to do is send a signal to the RS(NOR) latch that will switch the state, deactivating the input wire. This is achieved by the pressure plate you step on upon exiting the game:
To turn the game off (i.e. stop the clock), the following would be attached to the input wire coming off the exit pressure plate:
What this would do is lock the repeater, meaning that any signal going into it would be killed instantly. I only recently learned of this feature actually, using it back in session 177 to create a one-tick pulse. As it turns out, the feature is quite useful!
Testing Bugs
Great! So the game was working, it could be turned on and off, and could be customized. Yet, after one full run, I noticed a big problem:
Apparently, this was caused because the repeater to the right (intended to "lock the clock") locked the repeater while it was still active, which seemingly prevented the signal from escaping. I thus found a way to combat this problem:
The active wire in the middle there is coming straight from the exit pressure plate, intending to shut the game off. At the moment, it is locking that repeater in the clock to the left there as intended. But what you'll notice is that there is another system in play - the wire can only "lock the clock" if there is no signal from the yellow line or the red line. In this way, the signal does not even reach the clock unless the pulse snake has bypassed the repeater that needs to be locked. To better visualize this, compare the two pictures below:
In the first picture, only a signal from the yellow line is active. In the second picture, a signal from both the yellow and red lines is active. In both cases, the repeater blocking the input signal is locked, to ensure that no signal can get through until the path is clear. After some tests, this actually worked out beautifully.
However, the current system suggests that I need to stay on the exit pressure plate until the signal has reached the game clock. In other words, assuming the pathway is blocked per the contraption added above, the pressure plate may not shut the game off if I don't stand on it long enough to ensure that the signal does get through. I therefore installed a RS(NOR) latch and timer identical to the one installed earlier, only this time it was to keep the input signal from the exit pressure plate active long enough to ensure that it got through.
After a few more tests, I found that every notable issue had been addressed, and thus the game was ready to be labeled!
All in all, the completed redstone machine took up less than a 20x13 air space, which I'd say is compact enough given that nearly every part of the redstone is accessible. But what would this all be without a demonstration? Check out a run of the finished game!
The game can be customized in both interval length as well as interval speed, simply by adjusting the repeaters that control both. However, if the speed is too fast and the pulse is too long, the game won't be able to shut off on its own (and thus I would need to force shut down). But for most purposes, it should be fine.
NOTE: I do plan to make a video describing the redstone in detail at a later date, because I think a visual/audio explanation would be exponentially easier to follow.
A long and technically comprehensive session rich with new experiences was a nice way to vary the trend a bit in a session that is easily one of my personal favorites so far! Though, working on Starlight Arcade gave me some inspiration to do something we haven't done in a while... Starlight renovations! Stay tuned...
Next up... Session 189 - "Backroom Builds"
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LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
1/11/2014
Posts:
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Minecraft:
Benjii35
Member Details
I just love it
Few days earlier I had a great minecraft day.. mining for 4 hours and collected 2 wither skulls in nether. And then? My 2,5 old laptop just died.. Nice right? I am glad I have a backup. But.. I have to go mine again.. I bought a new one, so I can play again.
You are surely glad that I have a "story time" right here, are you?
Few days earlier I had a great minecraft day.. mining for 4 hours and collected 2 wither skulls in nether. And then? My 2,5 old laptop just died.. Nice right? I am glad I have a backup. But.. I have to go mine again.. I bought a new one, so I can play again.
You are surely glad that I have a "story time" right here, are you?
Well, good thing you had a backup! I keep Techtropolis backed up in a cloud, in which I could still access it even if my current system died on me. I'm running off of a desktop nearly three years of age, so time is coming for an upgrade!
Sucks that your equipment didn't last, but I guess that's the cycle with technology these days. I haven't had anything die on me yet (other than some cheap phones), but I'm hopeful I can wait out the life cycle of what I have so that I'm not constantly in need of new stuff.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
An inside look of Color Conundrum has been recorded! Check out Session 188 before watching so you can see the project in development!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
I recommend a name change: "Techtropolis" needs to be "Shrektropolis".
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Curse PremiumAnd now for that explosive finish!
NOTE: This is a super-sized session! You may need some free time to get through it!
Session 179 - "Resource Renovation Rodeo (part 2)"
Oh, how I had big plans for the main hub dome! Wait, dome? Yes! I wanted to turn the main hub into a dome! This of course meant a long process of digging... and possibly blowing things up! Let's look at my TNT experiments:
Oops.
And after multiple quartz-collecting trips, it was time to construct the dome!
I created a small catwalk to aid in building the top-most layers. I also wanted to incorporate the leaves into the four inclines as you can see here, and top it off with black clay.
^ This picture was taken from the MPH railway in the Power Museum. Talk about compactness!
I'm atop the slime farm roof before I demolish it.
You can see above that we cap off just underneath the railway.
And voila, a completed dome! Now it's time for those slime farm walls!
...But first, I think the slime spawning platforms could use an upgrade. Oh, and look at that moody brightness!
Well that's not something you see everyday!
Some pretty colors - won't be everyone's preferred look but the idea here is that we blend both a Starlight and Power Museum feel, since this project is a mix of both.
Next up is lighting!
Designing the lighting schematic for this floor was not the easiest thing to do! But I think this design works nicely - what do you think?
Finished the pumpkin/melon farm look, finally.
This wall was a questionable decision, as I had about run out of quartz at this point. So, I could either go back to the Nether to get enough quartz for this wall, or I could settle with something that would work until I came back to add three more sugar cane farms later on (since that's what would sensibly go here). I went with the latter.
And now for my favorite part, the dye storage rooms!!
The reason this was my favorite part of today's session was because I had to think outside of the box. I needed to come up with creative ways to denote the individual chests. So, I picked blocks/items that most closely resembled each color dye, and used those to label each chest. And I'm quite satisfied with the result.
The flower storage is that back wall. The middle two chests contain multiple inclusions (including lilypads, as you'll notice). But the four outer chests are for the four two-block tall flowers. The two on the outside correspond to the top chests. The two on the inside correspond to the bottom chests. I think you get the idea.
The Sheep Processing Facility also received a feature today: the shear system!
Quite simply, the button (on the right) dispenses a shear, and that shear is placed into the item frame until it breaks. Then the process repeats! These shears are the same ones to be used on the mooshrooms in the mooshroom farm. But wait, how do I get to those? Well, that was the other feature added today!
It seemed like everything was finished. And while we're getting there, we're not quite there yet! For instance, I still had to finish the slime farm storage room.
Easy enough, and I think it looks nice. Let's look at Mushroom Cove with the lighting now completed.
Cozy! Let's see how the rest of the storage cellars look.
I hid glowstone up into the leaves, but it's off to the side as the mycelium rests atop the leaves. It manages to work out, however, as there isn't a single spot down here underneath light level 8!
Finally off to the lobby lighting.
One torch to signify that the perfect system is unachievable.
At long last, the Starlight Resources Facility was complete!!
It felt so good to finally put up that sign, culminating seven months of work. And even more coincidentally awesome is the fact that this project was completed on day 2800! You may have caught that if you are an astute observer!
View the full screenshot showcase here!
So what was this project even about, anyway? The Starlight Resources Facility - was it really worth the large portion of this season that we spent working on it? After all, I’m the only one who waited seven months for its completion. Ever since I started this project on session 151, I knew that I would be working on it in chunks. But what was my goal? I think it is human nature to set your expectations higher than realistically feasible, but when you actually achieve those expectations once, you only set the bar higher for the future. Is that what really happens, though? Or do we always assume that there is something better waiting for us – that there is an endgame we’re just waiting to see? The Starlight Resources Facility, in its original invention stage, was literally described to be “the better version of everything.” But now that’s literally completed. So is my mindset now to think of a third project that is a better version of this? The point I’m trying to illustrate is that we often naturally think that a better version of something is what we want. But sometimes, what we think we want is not what we actually want.
I’ve met a lot of people who say things like “When I jump-start my career, I’ll be happy!” or “When I’m rich and famous I’ll feel better!” The problem here is that these people focus exclusively on the destination and not the journey getting to that destination. They aren’t living in the moment, making the most of the possibility that what they have now is the best they ever will. The SRF was created with a similar, yet different, mindset. When I was building it, I didn’t just think about how it would end up. I mean, if that were the case, I’m pretty sure we would’ve been done a long time ago! The reason I say that is because I spent a lot of time focusing not only on its functional purpose (to be the collection of all the farms, automated and better), but also its place in the world. I thought about its compact design, how it could be expanded in the future, how its aesthetics would match appropriately with its design, and for what reason I was building it to begin with. In other words, I treated the SRF as a construction, not as a machine that gives me things. Because in the long run, I would be much happier with a completed construction that resembled my own thought process than a rushed idea that focused solely on the destination and not the journey getting there.
Do we always succumb to somebody else’s idea, at the very least before we consider our own? There’s a difference between replicating someone’s idea and trying to learn from someone’s idea. One of the other big purposes of the SRF was to build upon my knowledge of what is possible not only in this game, but in the way I think creatively about things in general. Many of the farms in this build are based off of existing ideas – sometimes heavily, sometimes loosely. But I don’t just pick the quickest or most efficient farm design. I pick the one that fits best with the style of the build, as well as one I haven’t yet tried my hand at constructing (the wheat farm being one of the best examples of both). See, it’s not strictly about having the farm for me. I wanted to be able to introduce many different designs from many different people, such that there is something of a “cultural connection” in the SRF’s hood. You may not have picked up on this, but almost every single farm in the SRF is from a different person. While the pumpkin/melon farm was from Etho, the sugar cane was from Nims. While the nether wart farm was from Xisuma, the mushroom farm was from Maizuma. And then you have the Sheep Processing Facility, a design that may not be entirely original, but nonetheless was entirely by myself. The great thing here is that all of these differing designs were part of a bigger incorporation of my own design: the Starlight Resources Facility.
So you see, the Starlight Resources Facility isn’t just a better version of the world I had before. It doesn’t function as a material placeholder that tides me over for the real deal, because what I made it into is exactly what I wanted it to be. This project, simply put, was an artistic approach to an idea that would initially seem lackluster, intended to become the embodiment of everything I want this world to represent: creativity and personal symbolism. I think it has achieved that goal, and so I suppose that in a way it really is the “better version of everything”. The point of this narrative, then, is to ignite your appreciation of what this build represents, even if it’s not your cup of tea.
To celebrate the build's completion, enjoy an 8-minute run-through of all the features!
Thanks for making it this far with me and here’s to the last 21 sessions of the season!
Those of you who have been following closely know that even as though the SRF is complete, there is yet another large addition coming to it. Until next time...
Next up... Session 180 - "Blowing Chunks"
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
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Curse PremiumThings are not slowing down, even with the end of one project, for another shall take its place!
Session 180 - "Blowing Chunks"
The chicken farm storage, as you may know, was one of the first things added to the Starlight Resources Facility back in session 154. Thus, it didn't exactly have the same automatic features as the rest of the facility came to adopt. So I kicked off this session by redoing this storage room!
Now, the farm automatically sorts the chicken from the feathers, and sorts the eggs! This intuitively made the egg generator from inside Starlight Castle obsolete - a feature added at the beginning of this season (session 103 if you'd like to revisit).
One thing here was the lack of sufficient storage space. But that's not a problem - we can always extend the storage downward to the second level of the cellars, right? Well that's a bit more complicated; the leaves storage currently resides directly underneath. That, however, is only a temporary problem.
My days of blowing things up with TNT were far from over, for today we begin another large project - the tree farm.
Recall the original schematic from session 151, where the tree farm is drawn on the right side, entering from the Power Museum entrance. The farm will be a separated entity from the SRF, but it will nonetheless be considered a part of it. It will consist of ten trees from each of the six types. This farm will eliminate the need to traverse thousands of blocks to get to acacia wood, the need to leave Techtropolis Island to obtain dark oak and spruce wood, and the need to demolish the jungle scenery for jungle wood. Simply put, having this tree farm will significantly make wood much easier to obtain, as it should.
I started by testing the trees when four blocks from each other, which worked for all of them.
I realize I didn't capture it too well, but even these two giant dark oak trees fit within the confines of this small space:
At the moment, the tree farm is connected via a small hallway from the main SRF hub. But this will be redone later on.
It took about an hour or so to get this far:
This process took me a lot of time, and thus I felt I needed to take a small break from it. So, I headed over to the witch farm to light up some caves!!
This of course led to the inception of a mine at the witch farm - one that I titled The Bottom. But you know what makes this mine stand out among the Diamond Mine at the Starlight? It's this:
I'll showcase some pictures of this addition:
This new endeavor not only was a nice break from the vigorous mining of stone that was the tree farm excavation (though that does a present a bit of irony now doesn't it?), but it gave the witch farm higher rates thanks to the illumination of many caves underneath it! Additionally, I obtained a plentiful amount of resources.
The next day, I got back to the tree farm, and this time it was to create!
I actually took on a new strategy. Before deciding how to build the farm in Techtropolis, I drew up a possible schematic in Paint:
It's hard to see because it is based off of pixels, but feel free to zoom in on your browser to see the detailed spaces. The main problem with this schematic was the spacing - I had them all at four blocks apart, which alluded to many more explosions in the near future. However, my next move was going into a creative world to actually see what would work. And that turned out to be a much better idea:
I have each tree only two blocks apart as opposed to four. After some tests, I found that all six trees can actually grow when just two blocks apart from each other. Yes, even the oddly proportioned acacia trees (which I figured I'd have difficulty incorporating) fit nicely!
This was great news, and I went ahead to finish off the new schematic:
Here I am facing the farm as though I'm entering it from the SRF. We have spruce, birch, and oak on the left side (the "original" batch), with jungle, acacia, and dark oak on the right side (the "new" batch).
See the design comparable to the SRF hub:
Once I realized how close I actually was to begin adding trees, I returned to Techtropolis to finish the first half!
Two rows ready to go!
Time to remove the roof chunks!
And so it begins...
Dark oak happens to be the type of wood I use the most, meaning it's the one I'd want to have the largest supply of. Check out how the giant dark oak trees fit:
And then how they all fit:
A perfect conclusion to today's eventful session.
This tree farm has a long history - one that originated back in the old world discussed in session 175. My first version of it in the old world was above ground, and it consisted of 20 trees from oak, birch, and spruce, along with 5 large jungle trees (at that time, dark oak and acacia didn't yet exist). The reason I made that tree farm wasn't just so I could have it; it actually had purpose! Its purpose was to provide resources for the Aqua Lounge, which as you may know was the last big project I completed in my old world, in April 2013 to be specific. I've mentioned it a few times throughout this journal if you caught that. I think the biggest change this time around wasn't so much the timing but rather the placement. I originally planned the tree farm in Techtropolis to be located behind the barn, and so it would still remain above-ground. However, the one big problem (and this was a similar problem in the old world) was that it was just too far away from the rest of the base. Thus, it was not convenient and I was better suited to come up with something that fits it into the base nicely. And so I decided to tack it onto the Starlight Resources Facility.
With that decision, I knew this session would take some significant time to complete, mostly because it involved the removal of a tremendous number of blocks. This would not have been needed had I decided to build this farm above ground. Regardless, I think this was a fantastic move instead, and we're more than halfway through that part of the process!
View the full screenshot showcase here!
And to see some of the blowing of chunks:
A new storage unit, a new farm, and a new mine all combine in this super-sized introduction to the rest of the season!
Next up... Session 181 - "Can't See The Farm For the Trees"
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
Maybe I don't post a comment every single time. But you should know that you have followers!
It is just amazing!
I just started a new world. I wanted to stick to the older one (nice landscape, buildings), but I was stupid and built all farms in one place - so - "lag as b*tch". But I am really enjoyng playing again and without any problems
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Curse PremiumI always assume that people are reading; those page views had to come from somewhere (bots included)! Regardless, I'm just happy I have somewhere to document my adventures. Thanks for being interested!
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
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Curse PremiumToday's tree-farm-centric update includes some big changes to the storage!
Session 181 - "Can't See the Farm for the Trees"
One half down, one half to go! This session kicked off with the complete decimation of the other half of the alleged tree farm!
And then it was time to plant the trees; in the previous session, we did the jungle, acacia, and dark oak trees. Today, we add in the "original batch" - oak, birch, and spruce.
Once complete, it was time to collect some sandstone from The North.
After playing around with some designs, I decided on having sandstone slabs for the walkways to keep them looking sleek and clean, whilst the tree farm "platforms" would be stone slabs.
A view of the ravine this farm cut into:
Lighting was not difficult, placed at every other tree in fact. Some conditional exceptions applied of course.
The tree farm was complete! Of course, the aesthetics were not, but that's quite the task for another day I think. Today's adventures continue with a huge addition to the tree farm and a big change to a major element of storage: wood storage. And I'm not speaking for strictly another storage cellar or storage room of sorts. How about instead, a storage wall?!
The storage wall would be the front wall of the tree farm, intersecting the entrance to the tree farm. Provided is a picture showing you the compactness of the farm's location - that the storage wall is directly perpendicular to the sugar cane farm:
Each storage "pod" would be built out of the wood type it is storing. For example, the dark oak storage pod would look like so:
This would be the main design of each pod. Let's see all the storage pods in place!
Oh look, a beautifully blossomed oak tree!
^ And that's just the first level...
Say goodbye to the old wood storage!
I tore down the entire dark oak row of trees more than once to craft enough chests to fill every spot.
The bottom level is for wood - wood logs and wood planks - for each type. However, the second layer is for all wood materials, referring to stairs, slabs, doors, fences, and fence gates for each type. There will eventually be a third layer, since one more layer can actually fit snugly up top there. But that won't be for today.
Pictured above is the stairway used to access the second layer. And pictured below is evidence of yet another slime chunk down here!
Today's session included a number of huge advancements, mostly involving the tree farm storage! This was a lengthy process indeed, but I was quite satisfied once this project was complete. Two big projects in a row? Wow, I think it's time for a much-needed break... an adventure!
Awaiting us is the final official adventure of Season 2... and having just finished it, I can tell you that it will be one hell of a ride. Stay tuned!!
Next up... Session 182 - "North Shore Adventure (part 1)"
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
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Curse PremiumLet our final Season 2 adventure begin!
Session 182 - "North Shore Adventure (part 1)"
After completing the coarse work on the tree farm, it was time to take a break from Starlight HQ! For our final adventure, I wanted to incorporate both caving and above-ground exploring. Thus, I chose a location that I've only ever visited briefly, and it's located in a land that was not labeled back in session 168: Megapolis. Megapolis is the name of the ancient city just north of the 1.7 border we explored back in session 176. Among its inclusions are The North, Fall Damage, an underwater monument, and Techtown. However, starting today, a new construction will be added: Quinone Castle! It's a new idea that was never previously planned, and thus I haven't done much alluding to its existence. But Quinone Castle is to Megapolis what Starlight HQ is to Techtropolis Island. It will be our main base on the other side of the waters!
Today's adventures will take place underneath the Megapolis Canals - a beautiful array of waterways that allow ease of boat travel and scenic glamour. We will not only embark on many caving adventures, but we will also construct the basis for Quinone Castle, map most of Megapolis's land, and attempt to conquer the underwater monument just off of the north shore. So let's go!
Goodbye Starlight HQ!
Hello, beauty!
Entering the canals!
A view of Megapolis Bay!
That torch pillar was built way back when I first explored this land, in Season 1 (so 1.5+ years ago!).
Let's view the canals:
Above, you can notice that the entry canal splits north off of Megapolis Bay into two other passageways. These eventually all lead back to the river.
From this point, I'm formating the session a bit differently to keep this adventure more organized. Since we're doing a lot of different things this time around (compared to our other adventures where we don't do much besides adventure!), I think this will be a better way to follow the adventure!
Part 1: Quinone Castle
At long last, I found a spot just over the small mountain in which to construct Quinone Castle.
The castle will be comprised currently of Rooms I, II, III, IV, and V. Each room will have its own singular purpose. In terms of aesthetics, Quinone Castle is intended to mix themes of both the Nether and the underworld of the Overworld, creating an antiquated style very different from the Starlight.
In the picture above, I attempted to find a spot in the Nether in which to build a coordinating portal to the one I built in Quinone Castle. However, I was off by nearly 1,000 blocks. I still found some diamonds, however!
So I finally found the right spot for the portal - inside the first fortress discovered way back in session 111 (during my very first trip to the Nether in this world). Of course, this was very close to the Nether Hub, and thus Quinone Castle could potentially be intertwined with Starlight HQ (something that seems to be shared across all of our builds!). Alas, I collected much brimstone and fought the Wither's madmen, so that I could start renovating our new base.
At this moment, the castle is small - not even a castle at all. But that's okay, because today isn't focused around the castle. We just needed to establish it and start on our adventure, that way we can easily come back later to develop it.
The next part of our adventure involved the mapping of Megapolis - not all of it, but most of the important parts.
Can you see "Fall Damage" in the distance (sessions 145-146)? Yes, it is very much in close proximity to Quinone Castle.
Unless you've visited The North in the world download that is provided (via the Great Northern Railway in Starlight Station), you've probably never seen what our North base looks like. Well, pictured above is the "base" - in quotes because it isn't really a base at all. As you know, The North is where I collect all my sand, but it is also home to a desert temple, a village, and the recently built parkour course. Since Quinone Castle is very close to this area, the potential to further develop it is continuing to grow!
This little beauty is a nice cherry on top.
Lots of great things to see in this picture!
In the far distance, you can see the Megapolis Mountains - some of the coldest and most dangerous mountains in the land of Techtropolis! Do I dare attempt to scale these slopes??
Of course I do.
Here you can very visibly see the 1.7-generated border that separates Techtropolis Island from Megapolis (and therefore the North and Techtown). On the map, you can see the North base on the very left, with Megapolis Mountains all the way up north. Quinone Castle is in the middle there at the canals, but you can't see that very well in the above picture.
Now that's just offensive.
Having explored most of the area I felt up to exploring, it was time to venture back to Quinone Castle and explore underneath the canals! You may be wondering, "Why did you specifically want to explore there?" Well, to tell you the honest truth, I actually thought that the canals were in an extreme hills biome (albeit a small one), and thus I intended to obtain emeralds. However, even upon realizing that wasn't the case, this was still the location I wanted our Megapolis base, so it doesn't change today's adventure. Besides, we have The Bottom for emeralds now!
Oh how it felt good to be in a new cave!
Check out all those ore veins!
"There is light at the end of the tunnel!"
^ Legend has it that this giant gaping hole is part of the ancient city that once existed beneath Megapolis. But that's just a legend.
I can see the gold!!
Can we be friends? Please??
After a while, I ran out of inventory space and thus had to return to Quinone Castle to drop everything off. Above you can see everything obtained. But I wasn't planning on stopping here; there was still so much more to explore!
For our second dive, the area pictured above was the rendezvous point that I returned to after each tunnel was fully explored. Of course, given the nature of caving, that wasn't very straightforward. In fact, this was even more so the case after I found another one of these:
This had been a hell of a caving adventure, and I almost stopped after finding this ravine because of how much I'd already explored. You have to stop somewhere, right? Well I actually did stop here, right here, in fact. Everything changed when I looked up...
Holy ****.
View the full screenshot showcase here.
The time-span between parts 1 and 2 was a whopping two weeks (all this past month, though)! After how part 1 ended, I had to step back and rethink all of my current (and future) plans. But given just how much we're attempting to do in these two sessions, how will this seemingly incoherent adventure end? Until next time...
Next up... Session 183 - "North Shore Adventure (part 2)"
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
Looks like you'll be able to visit the end soon.
Want to read some awesome journals? Try this: Survival Journals/Worlds list
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Curse PremiumI spent many days creating the video in this update... I'm hopeful it is accurately representative of just how intense this session was.
Session 183 - "North Shore Adventure (part 2)"
So this is where the stronghold is, above-ground, directly beneath the Megapolis Canals:
As previously mentioned, I spent about two weeks contemplating how I was going to integrate this discovery within my current plans before even starting part 2 of this adventure. Finding this stronghold was a genuine surprise, and it's hard to gather that feeling in Minecraft very easily. The verdict I came to was that Quinone Castle would not only be our main base for Megapolis, but also connected to the stronghold to serve as a hybrid base for when we venture to the End. Finding this stronghold then is even more convenient, because that saves us another base and another adventure, not to mention a hell of a lot of ender eyes. So this was an absolutely amazing find.
However, I've also decided that we'll leave the exploration of the stronghold for another day. We still have many things to do in this adventure; the discovery of the stronghold is enough for me right now. On this adventure, we still have to finish mapping Megapolis, finally collect ice and packed ice from the ice spikes biome down south (discovered back in the Mesa Mission), and conquer the underwater monument. So let's get the former two out of the way.
A little trip in the complete opposite direction (basically away from the North Shore Adventure) so that I could finally collect some ice. Prior to today, I had absolutely none.
Additionally, I got some packed ice as well! Here's a cool little thing I found:
Back to Megapolis, I won't bother showing too much more of what you've already seen (in the previous session, you basically saw all the notable parts of Megapolis so far). But here are some cool shots.
Approaching the monument, without a boat because I'm stupid and broke it, negligent of its convenience in this scenario:
A few views from the outside:
^ This picture was taken through an underground hole, where I am within an air pocket, as I approach the ocean monument.
^ Evidently, a chunk has gone missing from this monument. But as you can notice (if you look very closely), there is a sponge room in this one! This is an upgrade to our monument adventure we went on back in the Prismarine Voyage (sessions 134-135).
One down!
I found the glorious gold.
Take a look at where the second elder guardian is:
Two down!
I spent a lot of time trying to find the third. How did this final battle go down? Well, that's where things get interesting...
Left with nothing but my wit and my will to survive, death had never been more imminent in any adventure of mine to date. There are consequences to every action, or lack thereof.
Next up... Session 184 - "Loose Ends"
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
Awesome!
Can't wait to see what you'll do next.
Always a pleasure to come home and see the next episode of this journal. Keep up your amazing work! 
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Curse PremiumBusy week ahead, so it will more than likely be over a week before the next update - just a heads up ahead of time!
Session 184 - "Loose Ends"
The North Shore Adventure was one of the most diverse and dynamic adventures I've had by far, as it involved a number of new challenges and a game-changing discovery! That ocean monument was only the second of three that I've explored. The third one, which has not yet been explored, is located in Stonewall Territory. Remember when I mentioned that name in sessions 107 and 168? Well, just remember it for when it shows up again. I know you're just waiting to see what this all leads up to...
Today was focused on tying some loose ends around Starlight HQ, mostly including two areas: the lighting at the Mob Processing Hub, and the lighting atop the Nether Temple. So in a way, this is the "light it up" session! Let's get to it...
PART 1: Mob Processing Hub
One reason I needed to gather ice was because I recall reading somewhere that if you melt ice with a torch, the resulting water block will not spread unless updated. Whether or not this is a glitch or a bug, I intended to utilize this feature in the Mob Processing Hub. But first, I went to test it out:
Great! So now let's get rid of that ugly sign + pressure plate apparatus going on at the Mob Processing Hub.
Having completed this, I needed to touch on the lighting for the hub. If you are not yet familiar with the Mob Processing Hub, I highly encourage that you read through sessions 129-140, which is when its construction took place. Back when this facility was built, I did properly light some areas, including the skeleton storage unit and the enchanting room. This was great because these areas were the most difficult to light appropriately. From here, I needed to determine the best ways to incorporate lighting in each section of the hub. I tried to use different methods, including glowstone lamps, sea lanterns, and glowstone within leaves, to help vary the design a bit.
The spider storage unit saw the inclusion of glowstone lamps, with added glowstone hidden within the leaves, to match the standardized setting of a lodge office.
This staircase incorporated floor lighting to inspire intricacy.
This area (for lack of a better descriptive title) used a random glowstone lamp emerging from the cocoon of the mob chamber.
The lighting for the skeleton unit picture above was already done, and thus this picture is provided for three reasons: context, session length, and redundancy.
In the hallway above, my creative side expresses itself vividly.
This area is not lit because slabs...
...but cool border is cool.
Sea lanterns added to keep color consistency, because the rest of the picture depicts my dedication to that so well.
To the left: flowerpot lights to keep the plants alive. To the right: basic blue light that barely matches the wall.
Upstairs, the real lighting problem still has not been solved...
...and apparently neither has my problem with creative imagery.
Block added to prevent clogging.
And like that, all lighting at the MPH was finished! This was a fun process for me, and I enjoyed incorporating the lights in different ways. But we weren't quite finished yet. Another lingering issue at the MPH was that of the railway - a full chest minecart could not make the whole trail by itself. In fact, I tested it and found that it stopped at this point:
Easily enough, I simply added a few more powered rails so that it could make the way on its own!
PART 2: Nether Temple
Part two of this session was based around the lighting atop the Nether Temple. Because there is no lighting at all, it's the one spot mobs are most likely to spawn, and indeed they do every single night. So it's time to fix that and make it look cool all at once! I had an ambitious idea: to create a glass torus surrounding the dome filled with lava, placed proportionately in that it would light every block on the dome. I began to experiment with possible color combinations:
I decided against this, for consistency's sake, and used orange glass instead. But first I needed orange glass; so, a trip to the North was required!
The glass torus was built!
I think it adds to the lava bowl nicely because of its height being just below it, separating the bowl from the dome from an aesthetic perspective. What do you think?
Close-up, it doesn't look very nice. But we will never be this close to it! It will be more like this:
Much cleaner! But how would we light the rest of the roof?
I decided on a lava tube that would descend from the torus, functioning in a similar manner.
Two glowstone lights added above the spires (along with two more hidden ones above the front entrance, on the floor of the roof) were added to achieve full lighting. Let's check it out at night!
Achievement achieved!
To end this session, check out this video, in which I race the MPH minecart to the viewing in Starlight Arcade:
Cool!
Taking a much lighter approach with today's session, the second season is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel! Speaking of which, do you remember the following photo I teased at the end of session 175?
Take a breath as we see this sector commence development next session...
Next up... Session 185 - "Hall of Armor"
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
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Curse PremiumI wasn't exaggerating when I said this one would take a bit longer to complete... but I think you'll agree that many good things take time.
Session 185 - "Hall of Armor"
When the Power Museum was first built, throughout the summer of 2014, I had an idea to construct a hallway dedicated to armor storage. But I originally planned to use item frames in order to hold the armor, separated by set. However, once armor stands became a thing with 1.8, my idea became much more feasible, and thus I incorporated it into the design of the Power Museum. Even though I didn't build it at the time, I was consciously thinking about it throughout the development of the Power Museum.
And now, nearly two years later, the time to build it has come.
I entered this project with two main goals: (1) to construct the Hall of Armor and prime it for potential armor sets, and (2) to expand the unfinished sector of the Power Museum (that has remained unfinished for nearly two years), which would connect to both the Hall of Armor and the old storage rooms. But before doing this, I needed to go on two distinct adventures: (1) a cave conquest underneath the witch farm to attain resources and improve rates, and (2) a trip to Candyland to stock up on both quartz and clay. I won't detail these trips specifically, but they took a bit of time to complete - enough to where I've organized an entire photo library of them, which can be viewed here.
First off, look at just how dense this base is becoming:
I took the unfinished sector a bit further in order to connect back to the old storage rooms, as you can see below:
The zombie spawning dungeon is literally just below this.
I spent a lot of time thinking about how exactly I was going to pull this off. Not only did I need to connect these two areas, I needed to build a third hall off of this somewhere. And this third hall needed enough room to incorporate armor stands and, well, reasonable air space. So I was in a bit of a pickle because of how close everything is in this particular area.
From the above two pictures, you can see that I've decided to construct a hallway connecting the two sides of the underground Power Museum. None of these halls would become the Hall of Armor, however. The actual Hall of Armor would come to be located right off of this third hallway:
I did manage to work around the zombie spawner in order to furnish our connection between the Power Museum and the old storage rooms.
What's that to the right, you ask? Well, I figured it would just make sense to incorporate an entrance to our doorbell chamber. You may not recall that we did in fact install a doorbell earlier this season! But the chamber for it was inaccessible... until now, that is.
As you can see, it is located directly beneath the sitting room upstairs.
This addendum was also the first time I used variations of the quartz block. And it wouldn't be the last, either, because we're about to spice things up with the Hall of Armor!
Shifting the focus over to the Hall of Armor itself, we had a new problem. In the picture above, you can see that the roof is a combination of three different blocks, all of which make up the floor of the old storage rooms. I knew that I needed to do something about that. And so I did...
I tore up the entire floor, replacing it in fact with the block that would serve as the roof for the Hall of Armor: blue clay. Because the storage rooms rely heavily on red carpet, this aesthetic change would not be immediately visible.
Now it was time to begin framing the design for the hall.
And if that isn't dense enough, take a look at just how close this is to the automatic boat deploy system:
I had to move some wires around.
With the first frames in place, the Hall of Armor was starting to take shape! But this was only one of two distinct features of this project. The second feature revolves around the fact that there is only one wall separating the Hall of Armor from the zombie spawning dungeon.
Today, I was going to install two things: (1) an overdue on/off feature so that I can finally turn this spawner off if I so desire (because having it on all the time causes lag around the base), and (2) a glass viewing to peak into the spawning room. Let's start with the lighting system.
Arranging the glowstone lights in this array will light up every spot in the spawning space, making it a quick and efficient way to incorporate this feature!
In order to install a glass viewing here, we first needed to renovate the entire spawning room, because yikes! That is far from presentable for such a prestigious construction! It's time to put those Candyland trips to good use.
After many long hours, the Hall of Armor was officially completed on day 2900! This new addition incorporated not only a decorative space to store armor sets, but also two overdue features to the Power Museum that will render the construction much more of an asset to the world!
Full screenshot showcase available here.
This update concludes with the unveiling of Techtropolis's Season 2 World Tour trailer - a project in the works that needed the Hall of Armor as the final piece! If you are not caught up on Techtropolis development, this trailer might give you an idea on where we're at! The aim is to focus on the big highlights throughout Season 2, while also including allusions to just about everything we've built so far. I do hope it's a fun watch!
Stay tuned for the final fifteen sessions towards the epic season finale!
Next up... Session 186 - "Starting Over"
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
Awesome! Now I can't stop thinking about the season finale. Your builds are giving me inspiration for my world, thank you for that.
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Curse PremiumThank you! I am happy to be of help in that department. The world tour is one of several elements that will comprise the season finale; I assure you it will be an event!
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
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Curse PremiumIf you haven't yet familiarized yourself with the Blaze Blaster, I recommend you do so before reading/watching this session. You can find the original developments through sessions 160-161.
Session 186 - "Starting Over"
The Blaze Blaster was a fun construction originally built in sessions 160-161, directly following the intense Mesa Mission. However, when I built it, I wasn't exactly looking at making it efficient. I simply wanted to have a blaze farm in my world. However, its lack of efficiency resulted in me not using it much. If you remember, the funnel relied on blaze AI, and the collecting area was inconveniently placed because I was too far from the spawner for it to remain active. These problems needed to be fixed! So today, I didn't just work on the Blaze Blaster. I tore it out completely and rebuilt it.
Let's look at the things I would need for this project:
And here was the original design, as of session 161:
Not only was I going to redo the funnel, but I wanted the collection point to be within the vicinity of the spawner, so that the spawner could remain active whilst I can kill the blaze. The only way for this to be feasible was to install a railway system for the blaze. I brought along some options.
Part 1: The New and Improved Funnel
I first needed to cover the blaze spawning area so that they would not bug me.
Then it was time to clear the cone...
First layer done!
Second layer done!
Well, this won't be fun to deal with:
To do the third layer, I'd have to remove the crusher system:
Done!
Notice how we funnel the blaze into a 2x2 room:
I did die when it came time to clear the top chamber, allowing the blaze (and apparently everything else) to fall into the funnel! Ironically, what killed me was a magma cube. You'll of course see this in the included video at the close of this session. But take note of what I was greeted by upon my return to the Nether:
It's in my way.
But moving on...
Another thing you'll notice is that the actual size of the funnel has not changed; it is simply much more efficient now in terms of moving the blaze, as opposed to before where the system relied heavily on blaze AI. The 2x2 room would help cut down the amount of room blaze had without risking them taking any damage and/or not actually falling into a 1x1 hole. This of course was not the killing chamber, but instead the transport chamber where the minecart would take them away. This leads into part two...
Part 2: The Minecart Transport System
One pigman took all my stuff upon my aforementioned death. But instead of killing him, I used this opportunity to give one of my stashed nametags a purpose. Meet our frenemy:
I locked him in that potion storage unit.
Pictured above is the new collecting chamber for the blaze. Yes, they will descend down the tall tube where I can kill them from any angle, remaining in proximity to the spawner and voiding the need for that entire section down below. But wait, how will I kill them? Well, first we need to bring the blaze from the bottom to the top.
The minecart would pick up a blaze...
...bring it up the twisty tower of hell...
...and drop it off into the glass collecting tube via an activator rail. Wait, what the hell is an activator rail, you ask?
Ideally, an activator rail will eject mobs from a minecart when activated, but there were some complications as it would not eject the blaze, sending them down the tube. In attempting to get this system to work, I tried a number of arrangements:
But none of these worked; the activator rail still would not eject the blaze! After hours of trial and error, I did some reading and found that, because my world was not generated in 1.8, the activator rail would not eject mobs onto an air block. It would, however, eject mobs onto a solid block. So if you plan on using activator rails in an older generated world, keep that in mind! With that, I installed the following system:
A slab is installed to allow the blaze to eject from the minecart. The detector rail adds a slight delay, retracting the slab just as the blaze is ejected, to keep it from being able to move out (a full block would clip the blaze on its way down). From here the blaze moves into the automatic crusher system.
Wait, automatic crusher system? As in, no buttons, no waiting?
Part 3: The Crusher / Lights System
Using the same comparator timer as before, the crusher utilizes two key elements: (1) containing the blaze entirely for the duration of the crushing, and (2) making sure to release the blaze fully (without killing it) before crushing the next blaze. In the top picture, you'll see two slabs and one solid block between them. The bottom slab is extended first, to keep the blaze from escaping past the crusher.
In the above picture, you can notice the comparator timer at the top, which controls the duration the blocks are extended. The bottom circuit connects to the bottom slab (which is extended before the other two blocks are). The redstone torch to the right there is the input signal that starts the whole thing.
The same circuit that connects to the bottom slab also connects to the circuit for the top two blocks, which you can see to the left in the picture above. A delay is therefore imposed, which allows the top two blocks to extend after the bottom slab. The comparator timer is then initiated, and the process repeats automatically.
The circuit itself isn't very complicated; it's also incredibly efficient because it means you don't have to touch anything, and it works every time. Said circuit was designed beautifully by Okta, so search for his tutorial on YouTube if you want to know how to build this exact design.
The crusher itself took almost no trial and error to tweak; it was basically flawless the first run (you know, once I actually got the railway system working). I'd recommend this crusher highly!
As the blaze made their way down, I needed a convenient way to kill them. So I added a slab to access them. Of course, this caused some new problems:
Of course, this was an easy fix - I just had to cover it up!
The XP started flowing it - this new system was working so much better than before! But there was one more feature to add yet... the lights! You may be saying, "There are already lava lights!" While true, they don't actually prevent blaze from spawning, since the lava falls don't quite cover every spot. Additionally, the lever I use to activate the lights is broken since it doesn't act the way a button would, instead relying on my quick fingers to deactivate the lights. The problem with using a button, though, is that you need to send a pulse to the dispensers twice in order to remove the lava. So, one flick from the lever would turn it one, and one would turn it off. In order to do this, I needed to install the following mechanism:
Each time the lever is flipped, the piston moves (extends, contracts). When the lever is flipped on (extending the piston), a signal is sent to the dispensers just before it is cut off by the piston. When the lever is flipped off (detracting the piston), the signal carries over just before it is deactivated, sending another pulse to the dispensers.
More lights!
I had to snap a shot of this - what beautiful layers!
The Blaze Blaster, from a functional perspective, was complete in its new form!
A video version of this session might help you visualize all the ups and downs that went into making the whole system work:
A new Blaze Blaster allowed me to more efficiently farm XP, making this new design one of the most intuitive in Techtropolis to date! That's just my opinion of course; I'd love to hear what you think!
An exciting number of twists and turns along with a lot of trial and error made for an interesting and eventful session today! But how will the Blaze Blaster look in the end? Well, that's for another day...
Next up... Session 187 - "Stone Canvas"
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
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Curse PremiumThe past week has been hectic, which made today's big project more cumbersome to integrate into my schedule. And in doing so, I realized that my original goal of getting to session 200 by June 12, 2016 might not be so feasible. June 12th, of course, is the three-year anniversary of Techtropolis, and thus I wanted to celebrate with the season 2 finale. But hey, if it happens it happens; if not, then that's okay!
Session 187 - "Stone Canvas"
Back in sessions 180-181, we did some major work on a major project: the tree farm! But its aesthetics remained unfinished, rendering the farm visually unappealing. So today, we're going to mold a beautiful aesthetic landscape out of the stone canvas that is the tree farm's walls. Now, I could have built everything flat, making this session much easier to complete. However, I had some ambitious plans for how I wanted the tree farm to look. And it starts with the following pillar:
This pillar is the base design for the walls of the tree farm. Ideally, there would be one of these at each corner. I didn't initially know what would come next, but I knew I wanted to install four of these pillars. In designing it, I first had to measure the height of the tree farm. From there it was just trial and error before I came to a design I liked. Before this, however, we needed to accomplish a different goal: the roof. Why? Well, the pillars were intended to connect seamlessly with the roof, which means we need to have the roof in place. I therefore needed to make a trip to the Nether, because that's a very large roof to cover...
I basically tore down this entire part of the fortress.
After attaining more than enough nether bricks for slabs, I did die on my out by a Wither skeleton or two or three.
^ This is promising for a future wither skeleton farm idea. When I came back through the portal, there were at least five skeletons.
My friend above killed me again before I finally triumphed with my things. This was certainly an interesting twist of events.
Upon re-spawning in Quinone Castle (since I made a brief stop there while inside the fortress), I realized I had no arrows. Thus, my adventure back to Starlight HQ was slightly eventful...
When I did make it back, I grabbed some glowstone and began covering the roof!
Glowstone was placed in intervals, skipping every other sapling spot.
The roof was finished! It took a bit of time, but I had enough to cover it and we finally were ready for the walls.
Using the first screenshot of the pillar as a reference, I copied the design right into the tree farm, where the pillar fit tightly into one of the corners. Well, I suppose it isn't a corner, but more of an end. Let me show you how I built it in survival:
1) Start with the base. This assortment of blocks was the first batch added to each succeeding pillar:
2) Surround the base. The next step was to dig up and around the base area, which is nine blocks across and five blocks deep. I don't dig it all, however, because I need to account for the sloping of the pillar in which some blocks will remain.
3) Build the bottom section. In the next picture, you'll notice the protruding layer of stairs above the light. That's where the bottom section ends.
4) Construct the pillar. By using the pillar as a guide, I can determine when to begin building the top section. See below:
5) Prepare the top section. The following apparatus is used to construct the top section.
6) Mirror the bottom section. From here, and using the protruding layer of stairs as our guide, we just need to mirror the bottom section to complete the pillar. In the process we'll dig out the stone of course.
7) Fill the backing. After the pillar is completed, the next step would be filling the wall behind it with dark oak logs.
Feel free to try and tweak the design yourself!
The next pillar connected seamlessly with the ravine walls. I might consider some type of observatory? Who knows - this area has some potential to blossom.
By the time I built the fourth pillar, I was so acquainted with the process that it took under ten minutes to construct! So that was neat I suppose; not many builds of mine feature repetitive motions, which made this build a nice change in pace as I basically did the same thing multiple times.
With the four pillars completed, I spent some time thinking about how I would build the rest of the walls. I then decided to construct two pillars in the middle of each wall. Though, because of measurements, these would have to be ten blocks long as opposed to nine. This did make them bigger, however. Using the original design, I simply stretched the center one block to fit it in.
The rest was built similarly to the other pillars, with some aesthetics enhancements.
When it came to replicate this pillar on the other wall, I saved quite a lot of time because most of the digging was already completed back when I blew this area up in session 180:
The next decision became obvious - fill the remaining two spots with two more pillars! But instead of simply replicating the same design, this time I figured we would switch it up a bit...
Using birch wood and dark oak wood, the final two pillars on each wall would contrast nicely with the brighter pillars, making them as nice dividers between the three main pillars. The diameter of these was only seven blocks, making these last two pillars the smallest of the five.
^ This was the first design. But I felt it looked too flat. So I modified it to give it more dimension:
I used birch wood logs to sharply define the center pillar; spruce logs were used to surround both sides of the dark oak pillars, while dark oak logs were used as backing for the oak pillars. Did you get all that? If not, just take a look at the pictures below!
I am very much satisfied with these walls. Yes, both sides were done!
Here's what did not get done today: the entrance and the back wall. I wasn't too disappointed though; I had a less definite plan for the back wall, whereas I basically knew the gist of what I wanted for the two side walls. So now at least I'll have some time to consider my options. Additionally, the storage wall did get cleared up, even while I didn't finish it aesthetically:
So, even though I wanted to complete the tree farm today, I also anticipated that it would take more than one session to finish the aesthetics. But I think it's coming along nicely, and I'd love to hear what you think!
Full screenshot showcase available here.
Today's session took a more build-focused approach, and I'm hopeful it worked! After some fairly large-scale sessions recently, it's time to tune things down a bit as we return to an old project next session!
Next up... Session 188 - "Color Conundrum"
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
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Curse PremiumIf you've been following, then you know there are still many loose ends to be tied up as we hit the home stretch of the season. One of these is the Starlight Arcade!
DISCLAIMER: This session will assume you have moderate redstone knowledge. If you don't know much about redstone, you may have a hard time following the latter part of this session.
Session 188 - "Color Conundrum"
PART 1 - Starlight Plaza upgrades
In starting this session off, I paid Starlight Station a visit - you know, since Starlight Plaza was an area I seemed to be spending less and less of my time - and I noticed that I still hadn't replaced the boring torches with actual glowstone lighting! Well, I thought we should fix that today; it wouldn't take much time anyway.
In the process, you can see that I've updated the look of the interior, albeit just slightly.
Above, you can finally see what is under the hood of Starlight Station's features. There is only a one-block-high gap between the top floor and the bottom floor, which is why the redstone cannot shift in elevation. Thus, all the circuits had to be meticulously designed so that they remained independent of each other. Recall that these were built during Starlight Station's original construction in Season 1 (session 55 specifically).
Ultimately, I couldn't find a way to independently power this redstone lamp with these space limitations, and thus the lever remained visible. This was not terrible, though - this area is the control center after all, and is already comprised of multiple levers. In other words, even though I don't usually like power sources to be visible, the lever in this case did not look out of place.
In addition to updating the interior, I lit the exterior in a similar manner:
In moving back and forth between Starlight Station and Starlight Castle, I became annoyed with how much jumping I had to do. Because Starlight Station is elevated above most of the plaza, I have to jump quite a lot to access it, which drains my food significantly when you consider process of repetition. We couldn't add slabs or stairs to the road for obvious aesthetic reasons. But, because we're trying to reduce the difficulty of survival in Starlight HQ, I had an idea of building an alternate staircase for when I'm on foot, as opposed to using the road purely for horse travel (which is the road's intended purpose). Think of this alternate staircase as a sidewalk of sorts - it will get me to the same destination more conveniently.
^ I decided to mold the staircase out of this area, because it was already aesthetically prepared. Though, as I began molding, a new problem arose:
I simply worked around this problem and ended up with the intended result:
However, because this drastically affected the doghouse, I went ahead and adjusted the doghouse's aesthetics to match:
Overall I was quite satisfied with the developments of Starlight Plaza today, but not just because of the new features. See, one thing I like about constructing new projects is that it gives me new ideas for future projects. In this case, we now have official access to this hill:
What might we turn this into? I'm not sure yet - maybe a pool? We certainly don't have much space to work with, but sometimes the most creative things can come from the most limited options.
PART 2 - Color Conundrum
Having done some leisure work, it was time to crack down on today's main project - Starlight Arcade! When we first built it in session 163, its only main feature was a viewing to the MPH railway (which you can see in action in session 184). Well, that's because the construction is not finished of course. Today, my focus was to construct our first arcade game, which would be titled "Color Conundrum." The idea is that in this game, four colors would alternate on the board. Our goal would be to maneuver through the board without getting caught up, following the pattern of the colors. This was an idea I've had for a long time, and to be honest I wanted to implement this sooner. But you know what they say: Better late than never! Let's first look at the gate:
Color Conundrum would actually be the port on the right side, simply because the game's nature requires lots of redstone. Therefore, I'd want it to be as much underground as possible, which as you can see the port on the left wouldn't allow. I therefore switched the sea lantern since I'm all out of them for the time being.
I built the gate exactly like the first one back in session 163 - a gold nugget is inserted into the hopper (allowing you to play the game), and you get inside. See session 163 for the explanation of how that works here. This game introduces a new concept of redstone that I hadn't yet played with - perpetual motion and the nature of a chain reaction. When you step on the pressure plate inside, the first thing that would happen is a dispenser would shoot a poison potion at you. This would weaken you as you entered the arena. Second thing would be the second gate opening, allowing you to enter the arena. These two things can be seen here:
After this, the game would actually start, and the four colors would alternate indefinitely until you reached the exit chamber, which would reset the game. To see what I mean, take a look at the board below:
At the start of the game, the colored blocks would extend and retract respectively in this order: yellow, green, blue, red. To understand how I would accomplish this, take a look at the following concoction:
The bigger the board, the exponentially more complex the redstone would become (this is why the game itself is small). Going into this, I did not strategize a plan mathematically that would ensure the most compact execution. I just conquered each piston in a nonlinear fashion, making sure to alternate between colors so that I didn't have one layer dominated by the green lines, for example. The first contraption I had to construct was the clock that would alternate between the four lines:
From here, the process of connecting these lines to every piston commenced. Here are some pictures of the schematics:
With much trial and error, I did manage to connect every line independent of one another. The only piston that gave me some real problems was this blue one:
This was the very last piston to wire up. Because I didn't want to significantly break any of the lines at this point (I can do this later if I want to make it more mathematically compact), I suffered the consequence of this:
See, I did well at not having to extend any torch tower below four torches (which would be the equivalent of two intervals), except for this last one. I don't doubt I probably could have done things differently, but for now I just adjusted the timing elsewhere to keep it relatively consistent. Speaking of consistency...
Technical Bugs
One big bug right off the bat with this machine was the timing between the blocks. When the red blocks extend, the yellow ones need to retract almost immediately before (since they all start extended). I realized this problem comes from how the game starts. One of the key components to how this game functions is in how long the input pulse is. Take a look at this picture:
The pulse "snake" - if you will - is very short, meaning that the blocks will extend and retract without much time at all to move between them. However, in the following picture, the pulse snake is much longer, giving you time to move between the blocks at a steady pace:
How would I control this? Well, first we need to understand that the "pulse snake" is, by default, determined by how long I stand on the pressure plate at the start of the game (since that is what starts the game). But, even that is too long, because then it can get so long that the colors hardly move intermittently. To keep it steady, I installed a RS(NOR) latch with a timer that would keep the pulse snake steady regardless of how long I stand on the pressure plate:
In the above picture, the input signal is the active wire to the left. As it feeds in to start the game, the timer in the back will simultaneously run. After that timer resets the RS(NOR) latch, the output will shut off. That amount of time between the input and when the output is turned off is what creates the pulse snake that controls the time between intervals.
The result is a stable, customizable pulse circuit that can be adjusted as desired. However, before having our fun, another bug needed to be fixed. Even though I controlled the length of the pulse circuit, what if I stepped on the pressure plate more than once before entering the arena? It would send another pulse of the same length to the RS(NOR) latch, breaking the game. To fix this, I installed another RS(NOR) latch that retained the purpose of setting and resetting the game.
The input wire comes in from the left, activating both this RS(NOR) latch and the one acknowledged earlier. However, the difference this time is that this RS(NOR) latch keeps the input wire active, meaning that it doesn't matter how many times I step on the pressure plate. The wire is already active, which means that no new signals will activate the timer and create a redundancy in the clock that runs the game.
To reset the game, all we have to do is send a signal to the RS(NOR) latch that will switch the state, deactivating the input wire. This is achieved by the pressure plate you step on upon exiting the game:
To turn the game off (i.e. stop the clock), the following would be attached to the input wire coming off the exit pressure plate:
What this would do is lock the repeater, meaning that any signal going into it would be killed instantly. I only recently learned of this feature actually, using it back in session 177 to create a one-tick pulse. As it turns out, the feature is quite useful!
Testing Bugs
Great! So the game was working, it could be turned on and off, and could be customized. Yet, after one full run, I noticed a big problem:
Apparently, this was caused because the repeater to the right (intended to "lock the clock") locked the repeater while it was still active, which seemingly prevented the signal from escaping. I thus found a way to combat this problem:
The active wire in the middle there is coming straight from the exit pressure plate, intending to shut the game off. At the moment, it is locking that repeater in the clock to the left there as intended. But what you'll notice is that there is another system in play - the wire can only "lock the clock" if there is no signal from the yellow line or the red line. In this way, the signal does not even reach the clock unless the pulse snake has bypassed the repeater that needs to be locked. To better visualize this, compare the two pictures below:
In the first picture, only a signal from the yellow line is active. In the second picture, a signal from both the yellow and red lines is active. In both cases, the repeater blocking the input signal is locked, to ensure that no signal can get through until the path is clear. After some tests, this actually worked out beautifully.
However, the current system suggests that I need to stay on the exit pressure plate until the signal has reached the game clock. In other words, assuming the pathway is blocked per the contraption added above, the pressure plate may not shut the game off if I don't stand on it long enough to ensure that the signal does get through. I therefore installed a RS(NOR) latch and timer identical to the one installed earlier, only this time it was to keep the input signal from the exit pressure plate active long enough to ensure that it got through.
After a few more tests, I found that every notable issue had been addressed, and thus the game was ready to be labeled!
All in all, the completed redstone machine took up less than a 20x13 air space, which I'd say is compact enough given that nearly every part of the redstone is accessible. But what would this all be without a demonstration? Check out a run of the finished game!
The game can be customized in both interval length as well as interval speed, simply by adjusting the repeaters that control both. However, if the speed is too fast and the pulse is too long, the game won't be able to shut off on its own (and thus I would need to force shut down). But for most purposes, it should be fine.
NOTE: I do plan to make a video describing the redstone in detail at a later date, because I think a visual/audio explanation would be exponentially easier to follow.
A long and technically comprehensive session rich with new experiences was a nice way to vary the trend a bit in a session that is easily one of my personal favorites so far! Though, working on Starlight Arcade gave me some inspiration to do something we haven't done in a while... Starlight renovations! Stay tuned...
Next up... Session 189 - "Backroom Builds"
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
I just love it
Few days earlier I had a great minecraft day.. mining for 4 hours and collected 2 wither skulls in nether. And then? My 2,5 old laptop just died.. Nice right? I am glad I have a backup. But.. I have to go mine again.. I bought a new one, so I can play again.
You are surely glad that I have a "story time" right here, are you?
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Curse PremiumWell, good thing you had a backup! I keep Techtropolis backed up in a cloud, in which I could still access it even if my current system died on me. I'm running off of a desktop nearly three years of age, so time is coming for an upgrade!
Sucks that your equipment didn't last, but I guess that's the cycle with technology these days. I haven't had anything die on me yet (other than some cheap phones), but I'm hopeful I can wait out the life cycle of what I have so that I'm not constantly in need of new stuff.
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.
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Curse PremiumAn inside look of Color Conundrum has been recorded! Check out Session 188 before watching so you can see the project in development!
LP series? Not my style! Video series? Closer, but not quite. Survival journal, maybe? That's better. Now in Season 4 of the Legends of Quintropolis Journal (<< click to view)!! World download and more can be found there.