The other week I spoke about how Minecraft was pushing the boundaries of online gaming and being redefined by its community as a sandbox MMO. This however, is not the only area in which Minecraft is expanding as players add entirely new features and gameplay systems.
Some of these changes include adding advanced machinery or magic to Minecraft, while others flesh out certain aspects of the game making it more complex and creatively as liberal as possible for the player. Recently, one of my gaming sidekicks and I delved in to DireWolf20’s edition of the Feed the Beast mod pack, adding many new features for us.
Our goal is simple, build a world that blends both technology and magic utilizing no teleports, op mode, or any type of advantage not available within the core gameplay of the mod pack. Everything must be done through the game, therefore we must utilize what is available to us in order to make this world-building venture as efficient as possible.
After a short trek from spawn, we found a nice ocean-side village which seemed perfect for our first city. Set up on the side of a hill, the village was built next to some relatively open terrain that would allow us to get a few basic buildings up with relative ease. It wasn’t long and our work began gathering basic resources, we decided my friend Erika would be the technology expert, creating new machines and computers and I would be the builder, creating the infrastructure to support whatever crazy machines Erika would come up with.
We decided that the best course of action would be to focus on building a frame quarry first, that way we wouldn’t waste hours mining. Erika worked on setting that up, while I worked on building a storage facility to house all the blocks we were about to begin receiving. Additionally, we set up our first automated wheat farm and a tree farm to handle food and wood for us while we worked. Before too long, the basics were coming together and our automated industries were under way – slowly bringing us resources to move ahead.
The frame quarry had begun its work, digging out a huge hall under the ocean which would soon become a factory. We decided the most efficient use of space would be to mine out under the ocean itself and then convert the space in to some practical rather than filling it back in or leaving a huge empty gap. With the storage facility finished, towering over the village with its massive red cobblestone roof – Erika moved his focus over to sorting out the blocks the frame quarry was now bringing in.
Work began on a logistics system that would take the blocks from the quarry and move it to chests in the storage facility I had built. Running pipes underneath our town, Erika wasn’t happy with the blocks just being stored – he also wanted them to be automatically sorted and available for delivery at a moments notice. After a sleepless night, he came back from the drawing board with a new system based around a computer tablet. This tablet was like an inventory system, listing everything we currently have in storage and in what quantities.
The tablet also allowed us to order blocks, resulting in them shooting off through the pipes to a designated pick-up point. That’s not all it did however, the system would also automatically craft or smelt whatever you was ordered even if it wasn’t in stock, as long as the basic materials required are available. With my nifty new tablet in hand, Erika disappeared back down in to the depths of his factory where he would not be seen again for a few days. I on the other hand decided it was time to put this tablet to the test.
My homies, the village people and my #1 bro Enderman (see above) set to work on building small homes which would later on be used as blueprints for our robot workers (yes, robots) to duplicate throughout our cities. After doing some browsing on basic house designs for inspiration, I quickly pieced together our first little cottage. The tablet allowed me to get everything I needed all at once and just focus on the fun part, building cool stuff.
The house was easy, I needed a real challenge for this new system – something that would require a ton of crafting, smelting, and nonsense for the factory downstairs to sort out. As I mentioned earlier, magic has been introduced through some mods, some of which we are using. As Erika is also our resident Wizard, I decided it might be fitting to build him a Wizard’s tower on the edge of the cliff next to a lone, magical Silverwood tree.
Even though I was ordering a large amount of stacks at a time, the system held up remarkably well – smelting an entire stack in as little as a second before shooting it up the pipe. With this sort of power in my hands I was able to build the entire wizard’s tower in just a few hours – something that might have taken me a whole day or two to complete the old fashioned way. It had been a considerable amount of time since I had seen Erika, so I headed on down to the factory to check out what he was getting up to.
I found him to be finalizing his new factory, which he was very proud of. The farms were moved down underground, with plans to expand them and maximize their efficiency and Erika was now working on R&D for a renewable power source. Hanging around Erika too long can be dangerous, his work is borderline crazy scientist and accidents do happen, a lot.
Retreating back to the surface where there was safety and protection from all kinds of crazy schemes, the week was brought to an end with me finally moving back on to improving our village, building some basic buildings, and finally building myself a home – which will we go in to next week. Until then, enjoy this gallery of our work so far!
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