I’m spending quite a lot of time right now developing a nearby NPC village. Since I’ve been trying to replicate rural European styles in the buildings on my main base, leaning towards late medieval and early modern period designs, I decided to expand this NPC village into a bustling late medieval town one might have seen in Elizabethan England. Wanting the buildings I build to be functional at least in role-playing, the first building is a blacksmith’s shop and home. Continue reading
A small British cottage. It’s almost like Kinkade in Minecraft!
This week, I want to show off a small cottage I’ve built near my medieval British barn. Continuing my attempts to focus on provincial British and European architectural styles, this cottage is inspired by small houses I saw throughout rural Scotland during my time there. Continue reading
A new barn in a completely different style – 14th and 15th century English.
I know Minecraft agriculture and animal husbandry don’t technically need a barn, but I just don’t feel like I’m doing it right without one. In my most recent vanilla game (the one in which I built the Dutch Windmill), a couple of weeks ago I got to the point where I could think of no building project more pressing than a barn. Continue reading
A not-so-simple Dutch-style Windmill, using a limited palette.
I really like it when I can combine function with aesthetics. That’s one reason I like mods, especially ones like Rotarycraft and Immersive Engineering that go to great lengths to simulate real life technology and mechanics. With mods like these, you can make a turbine that looks like a turbine and actually does something.
Sometimes, though, the limited realism of Minecraft (especially vanilla Minecraft) makes it so that either function or aesthetics have to give way. One the one hand, you can make a purely functional piece of Redstone automation, like my Automatic Chicken Farm, which bears no resemblance whatsoever in look or function to real chicken farms. Other times you make something that resembles a real life structure for purely aesthetic reasons. My Water Wheel is a good example.
This project is another example of the latter category: a Dutch-style Windmill. Its turbine doesn’t turn, and no millstone processes wheat into flour at the bottom, but darned if it don’t look spiffy. Continue reading
A monstrosity such as this is probably what I should expect when trying to improvise a house while stressed.
I made a big mistake.
I’ve been spending more and more time recently playing Terraria. Being still relatively new to the game, I had not yet defeated the Wall of Flesh and made the jump to Hard Mode. This was intentional. Being the compulsive completionist that I am, I wanted to make sure that everything that could be done before Hard Mode was done. I had the best armor you can get before pre-Hard Mode, the best tools and weapons, trophies from the bosses, and all the NPCs. Moreover, I had all but eliminated one of the areas of corruption and dug a big trench around the other. My wife told me (with complete justification) that I was probably overly prepared for Hard Mode. I really don’t know what else I could have done to be ready for it. Continue reading
Phase 1 of the Mansion is done, for all intents and purposes, so I thought I’d share a little update to show in more detail what I’ve built and to talk about a couple of improvements I’ve made since I posted about this last. Continue reading
This image shows off every aspect of my suspension bridge that, in my opinion, makes it aesthetically appealing.
Last post I showed off a suspension bridge that I built in a 1.10.2 modded survival game. In this post, I want to focus on a handful of details that, I think, make the build a visually interesting one. These details illustrate six principles I have discovered that contribute to good design: wall texturing, limited palettes, symmetry and asymmetry, roofing, lighting, and non-straight lines. Continue reading
My big ol’ suspension bridge, mostly completed (except for a few details here and there).
I like building bridges in Minecraft. I’ve built a number of different kinds of bridges in the nearly five years I’ve been playing the game. Mostly they’ve been on the smaller side, and the style is usually some kind of covered bridges or stone arch bridges. In my most recent game I decided to try my hand at building a suspension bridge, and a big one at that. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose it isn’t that big. Certainly, it is not a scale model of the a real suspension bridge. But in survival Minecraft terms, this is a pretty decent size build. I’ll just let the picture captions narrate the build. In the next week or so, I’ll write another post that focuses attention on a few specific design elements. Continue reading
This doesn’t look like Minecraft. It looks like Harry Potter killing a bunny with a light saber while drowning in a pool of water.
Hold the phone! What is a Terraria post doing on this blog?!
Well, it just so happens that I also play Terraria.
Waaat???
And today I want to share something I am in the process of building.
Waaaaaat??????
Calm down. Sheesh. Continue reading
I estimate this is 90% completed. There are a number of little details I am still wanting to work on (including especially changing up the materials to include different textures and colors), but this is more or less what I had in mind from the beginning.
So last post I showed you a basic outline, constructed entirely of stone brick, of what was to become a petrified dragon skull and the entrance to my Evil Nether Castle. I didn’t get a ton of work done on that larger project this week, but I did get the skull about 90% done. And here are the pics to prove it. Continue reading
