Alocto Stadium Part 2 - Archery Floors

This is a continuation of yesterday's post on the Alocto Stadium which can be seen here: http://tinyurl.com/3jy5gr3

Today I'll be talking the second and third floors of the building, which make up the archery floors.

The second floor has two stairs that come up from the Gladiator Floor, and come into mini rooms with four exits. This mini room goes into a larger room with four stairs going up to the third floor.

After getting up to the third floor, there is a great open space to snipe people on the second floor, but it is very open, so people can fire back at you and gain cover on the bottom. 

QOTD: Bows or Swords? 

Alocto Stadium Part 1 - Gladiator Floor

Over the next few day's i'll be talking about the 5 story PvP stadium that I've been  working on with a few other people.  First off, why Alocto? Well, I decided a while ago that it would be really cool to have a perfect octagon shaped building, but then I figured out that it's impossible, unless you make it really, really big. So I compromised and had the long sides be 17 blocks long , and the diagonal sides be 12 blocks long, making them 16.97 meters in length. (sqrt(2) *12). I was going for perfection, so I decided I couldn't call it the octagon stadium. So Instead it is named Almost Octagon Stadium, Alocto for short.

Today I'm going to talk about the first layer of the arena, the Gladiator Floor. On this floor we exclusively sword fight, with no arrows. The floor is very basic, simply being a large flat area. On either side there is a room with a bed to reset spawning points, and chests to store swords and armor.

QOTD: Do you ever PvP in Minecraft? 

Testing the Traditional Mob Trap Part 2

I decided to  try something new for my mob trap today. I expanded the base of the trap to a 5x7 area underneath instead of a 3x7.

After doing this something interesting happened, the item rate seems to have quadrupled. A fifteen minute test got a rate of about 400 bones and arrows per hour 800 items per hour in total. As some of you will recall my old design using 3x7 only got about 200 items total per hour. These numbers are only approximations off of 1 test each, but i'm going to start doing testing.  It is possible that expanding to 7x7 or 9x7 will have even better results, I'll just have to see and post back later.

QOTD: Which do you prefer: Creative or Survival?

(Btw, for all of you observant people who noticed the pictures are beta 1.4_01 its because the server i'm on is waiting for the server mod to update before updating the server)

Sunrise :D

I'm a little busy minecraft wise working on a better version of my station. I over thought the design by a long shot yesterday so i'm redesigning the whole thing. In the meantime take a look at this sunrise in the rain :D.  I must say, I've always found something peaceful about rainy sunrises. Even in Minecraft.

Beta 1.5 Update and Basic Minecart Station concept

Today, if your not aware, Minecraft Beta 1.5 came out. A list of the updates can be found here http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Updates

Today I want to focus on powered rails, so I designed a basic minecart station using the new rail.

The basic setup

The basic concept is that there are minecarts going in a circle constantly accelerating, and when a button is pressed the track switches and a cart comes onto a powered rail with no power (making it stop).  At this point you would get into the cart and press a second button to have a second cart come out and push the first along the powered track (which now has power) making it accelerate.

The first Minecart has been stopped on the powered rail, waiting to be pushed by the second.

Coming into the station, minecarts are stopped on a powered rail again with no power so that they stop. At this point you would go and press a third button to cause one of the carts still in the circle to come out and push the minecart you rode along with itself back in the circle to be ready for the next departure.

The minecart has stopped and is waiting to be pushed back into the main circle

Overall, the system is very buggy and only works about half the time, but I do like that we can now make minecart systems without using glitches. I will continue to improve the system, and post a cleaner version of this in a few days.


Here is a video I made to demonstrate it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzlmF0dNnTo

QOTD: What is your favorite part of the Beta 1.5 update?

Mining Efficiently

Mining is something that very boring for many people, so it is optimal to get as many ores from mining, as fast as possible. The system of mining that I use does just that. I mine 33% of blocks, and look at a total of 66% of blocks. I find an even larger percent of the ores i the ground. How do I do this? Well:

I begin by digging a two wide whole down to level 15 using ladders on one side and having a basejump (water) on the other side for quick entry. In order to quickly figure out if you are at level 15 click f3 and look at your y value.

Dig out a box that is about 3x3x10. On the far side start your first tunnel. Move over two blocks, and start your second  tunnel, but dig down to level 13 to start this tunnel. Move over two more blocks after this and begin a third tunnel, this time using level 15 again. Continue this process alternating tunnels until the end of the room is reached.

After this Go to the opposite corner and dig down 4 levels to level 11. Dig another 3x3x10 room directly under the first. Dig the same pattern in the second room as in the first. To finish off simply choose a tunnel and dig it as long as you want, then start on the next.

 

Why this works

This method, as previously stated, covers 66% of all blocks in the search for ores. The goal of mining is not to get the greatest number of ores possible from a given space, but it is to get the greatest number of ores in a minimum amount of time. The only way that a vein of ore will not be found, is if it exclusively in one of the 1x2 blind spots. If an ore is in the blind spot it is most likely a small vein of two blocks, and therefore it is not necessary to find it.

Grey squares are tunnels, yellow squares are
exposed squares, white squares are blind spots.

I'm going to start having a Question of the Day section at the end of each blog. 

QOTD: What are your mining techniques? Are they different from mine? 

Simple Farming With Bonemeal

Today I'm going to cover a simple farm system that I use. The system is only good if you have a good source of Bonemeal to grow crops with. I start off with a simple system 15 blocks long as seen to the right with water in the middle and walkways on both sides. After this I use a continuous 3 step process to farm. 

 Step 1: Plant

Run up the both sides and plant seeds on all spots. 33 seeds are needed for a full harvest.

 Step 2: Grow
With this system the next step is to grow each of the crops with a piece of bonemeal. Again, 33 bonemeal are needed or a total of 9 bones.

 Step 3: Harvesting

After this I go through and break every wheat, it is optional to collect items on the walkway during this step. Some of the wheat and seeds will be tunneled down through the water to be collected at the bottom

If you do this process multiple times, during step one you will collect all of the wheat dropped onto the sides.

Once Piston's come out (Notch has confirmed that this won't be in Beta 1.5 so it may take a while) I will create an automatic collection system and share it.