Tunnel Works

Hurry Up and Blog

This mornings blog post is likely going to be a quick and abbreviated one as we need to get on the road soon. The wife and I are going off to Oklahoma City today in search of the illusive Half Priced Books store and my mission for the day… lots and lots of Cash America pawn shops. Last weekend I managed to pick up some amazing deals on used PS3 games at that chain, and there are far more of them in OKC than here in Tulsa. Basically I am cheap, and I would love to pick up more PS3 and Xbox 360 games… but I only really want to pay $5-$10 for them. I had a blast playing Fallout 3 on the PS3 even though I had played it countless times on the PC, so I would be interested in visiting lots of titles I had played on the PC as well.

In part because playing on a console is so easy… you pop the disc in and go. The negative however is that you can never really improve the experience. Example here is a modded up version of Fallout 3 that greatly improves the look and feel. Seeing this yesterday pretty much guarantees that I will play through the game at least one more time on the PC as well. Another prime example of better living through software is the whole Skywind project, where they are completely redoing Morrowind using the Skyrim engine. These things will never be able to function on a console, but I have to admit there is something nice about the simplicity of just pressing play. My only complaint right now is that I wish the modern generation of consoles would allow me to install the disc to the hard drive and then not have to worry about having the disc any longer. That is the thing I like the most about my PlayStation Plus titles, the ability to have lots of them “on tap”.

Most of last night was spent working on my extensive tunnel network… or what will soon BE an extensive tunnel network. Across a bridge from my main building is the first area I started out that I am using as some what of a stone quarry. At base floor I started a tunnel to see just what I might intercept digging in a straight line. Generally speaking I dig 3×3 tunnels because they feel about right, not too closed in and not too open. After quite a ways of torching every 7 blocks I came out on the other side in what appears to be a riverside valley. There is a cobblestone wall there so I am not sure who has been building in the area. Hopefully I am not impeding on someone else’s land too badly, but I like as many entrances and exits from my area as possible.

I built up a really simple fenced in area so that hopefully I won’t end up with too many creepers lurking there. One of the interesting things about the lockette mod we are using is that supposedly if you lock a wooden door it makes it so that zombies cannot beat it down. Traditionally I have used fence gates to bar entrance into my areas, because villagers cannot open them and zombies cannot break them. However I have started trying out the whole locked door thing to see if it works. I am not purposefully really trying to keep people out of my stuff, but more that I don’t want to come home and find everything full of mob spawns.

Cactus Shield

The other thing that I worked on last night was redoing the approach to my house. I ended up extending the path to make it far less likely for me to kill myself trying to leave it by hitting lots of cactus. This almost happened a few times as I seem to be unable to walk a straight line. Essentially I started the dual tier row of cactus a block further out so I have a 3 block walkway to get in and out of my area. I might add a third row of cactus because I actually managed to have a creeper make it through earlier. Granted the creeper only took a single hit to kill after being chewed up pretty badly by the cactus to get to me… but this in part was because some of the cactus has not fully grown to 3 block height yet. The creeper was able to hop up onto a single block height one and use it to make his way in.

Now that I feel like my base is fairly defensible, it is just about time for me to start back working on the “mine to bedrock” project. Essentially in every build I have done in Minecraft I eventually create a tunnel network that goes all the way to bedrock and start branch mining for diamonds. It is my hope that I picked a decent spot to mine, because so often you get down to bedrock and struggle with lava. Right now the project has been derailed in that I hit a fully enclosed cave system, but I need to build my way through it and continue digging. So far I am finding playing on the Alliance of Awesome server to be fun and refreshing, since more or less I am having to play legitimately again. If you are interested ping Zelibeli and she can get you white listed… but of note this is open to existing members of the AofA community and its requisite groups.