I had finished my testing in my test world with adding add-ons and the extra one I had tacked on… didn’t seem to want to work with the main theme so I removed it and added the one that I’m using on the world I can’t seem to stop working in.

I played Borderlands 4 for a whole mission – and I checked my other characters to see if their SDUs had been reset and discovered something: When I re-populated the SDU for C4SH (I think that’s right), it repopulated the SDUs for all my other characters exactly. Which, in a way, isn’t a bad thing but then again, it is but let’s get Minecraft out of the way.

I go into the world, check my inventory to see if I need to add stuff or take it away – sometimes, I forget to “put away my toys” when I’m done in a world. There was a cave segment I’d discovered the day before that I wanted to investigate and mined two sets of 64 plus 16 of coal which, honestly, I didn’t need but if someone in the family wants to stay and play, they can hit the stash for some coal and this reminds me to add stuff to the stash so that no one has to go looking for the basic stuff.

So let it be written, so let it be done. I’m finished in the discovered spot and I’m thinking it’ll make for an interesting place to build in since it’s not connected to the main cavern system as far as I know; for all I know, I could knock out a block in the wall and… there’s the main cavern system and I’ve done this in three other locations so I won’t be surprised. I climb out of the cave and leap into the air to head back to the main area when I’m hovering over the greenhouse because my left eye was itching and I spot… a near-perfect place to build one of the hardest constructs I’ve devised.

This. Looking at it from this overhead view does not do the size of this place any justice but it takes me real-time days to build one of these. I have to look to see if I have a pic of the inside of one of these puppies that might give you a better idea of how big it is… and how intensely complicated it can be to build one.

Shucks – I don’t have an interior pic on my computer so I’ll have to try to remember to upload one from my Xbox. Anyway, I’m hovering in place, gently rubbing my left eye, and my mind is already calling up the specifications to build the outline of the building while my right eye is looking at the area in question closely and… shit, I think part of it is going to hang over a “gorge” that also leads into the main cavern system but, okay, I know what to do about that and I’m not going to worry about it because other than making sure I get the outline right – and sometimes I don’t – I have to clear out the surrounding land so that the building is sitting on flat land and… I’m about to tear up some shit.

Preparing the land alone takes a lot of time and I found that if I lay down the outline first – and even if I haven’t cleared out the land, well, it’ll give me a precise idea of how much work I’m going to have to do to clear it out – and sticking with the five-line space between the building and surrounding stuff. It takes me almost three hours of monotonous work to clear out the space outside and inside of the outline and now I’m into the next phase of setting up the “support columns” and putting in patterns of blocks in the right places when I notice that… something isn’t right.

Yep, I screwed up the outline. Again. Not to worry because I almost always screw it up and this thing is so… complicated that if it’s off by one block, the whole thing has to be repaired and this outline was one stinking block off and that had me checking all of the outline and, fuck, I had to readjust one whole half of the outline. Again. It’s like I forget how to count when I do one of these and that pisses me off, but my choices are to fix it and continue or say fuck it and delete the world but, nah, I’m not deleting this world, so I go about the repair. It is at this point where I’ll share something about building this structure.

When I first hashed out the design for this structure, it was like therapy – making me think, plan, and focus through the neuropathic pain I was experiencing (and still doing so). It started out as a rather small structure and blossomed into the one in the picture. The funny part is… this isn’t what I had wanted to build. So, I started with the small version and over time, figured out how to make it bigger and better and, importantly, not stressing myself to get it finished. In the beginning with the big structure, it would take me almost two weeks to do all that needed to be done.

Today, it’ll take me about four days, maybe less but I still have to pay close attention to details, oh, like making sure I count all of the blocks correctly. And, hmm, how many blocks are there in the outline/framework? I dunno because I refuse to do the math but let’s say there are a lot of them that has to be laid down before a whole lot of other bricks combine to create the building in the picture.

I really didn’t plan to build this. In a way, I didn’t want to build it… which made me build it anyway, dredging up the details for the framework which, again, has to be precise or the whole thing gets fucked up. I have to remember how to construct the basic floor, i.e., what blocks do I want to use for it so that, later in the build, I can create designs on the floor. I might have to go find the last one I built to peek at the floor to refresh my memory but it’s all good and it’ll keep me busy for a few.

I was right; this ain’t over yet. Since my last scribble about this, I’ve built three more bridges and three buildings because I keep looking around to make sure that I’ve done all I can to the area and, wait, there a spot over there that could use some trees…

…which would make my daughter happy since I am notorious for cutting down trees and not replanting them, at all or not right away and it really pisses her off knowing that I do this and, yup, sometimes, I do it on purpose because she’s funny getting on my case about not doing what she taught me to do.

Anyway, I planted like eight trees in a rather bare area; I built three buildings because I saw spots that said, “I need something here…” so, um, er, I put something there. Of course, because I put the buildings in where I did, I needed bridges and one tunnel to connect it all together. Hours later, I’m hovering over what I can call my “city” and I love what I see. I think I have the cave system lighted to where the number of mobs can be limited in the caves since they can’t spawn in well-lit areas or they shouldn’t; this doesn’t count the ones that spawn underwater and drown and I’m not sure what I can do about them… but I’ll think of something.

I saw that I had a problem with weeds growing and making areas look ratty. I normally “mow” this stuff even though I know that just like real grass and weeds, it’ll grow back. So, I got some black sand and put it down in the five-lane area around the building because I’m sure that the weeds won’t grow on the black sand, but I’ve seen them grown on regular sand so this is a wait-and-see thing but, wait – there’s more!

I get some red sand and “outline” the black sand and only in the sixth spot I could create a lane in and against the glossy white quartz of the building, the red and black sands really stand out and makes the building’s area look pretty spiffy. I can’t do it with all of the buildings but for the ones I could do this for, it got done. After this was done, I… created a new world to play in.

What I wanted to do is to test the add-ons that I have and how multiple add-ons can impact a main theme and I would have had my answer to the first test except I ran out of time and went to bed. Hopefully, I’ll remember what I was doing at the moment I called it quits so I can finish… whatever I was doing. With the world I built with my granddaughter’s world seed, only one add-on is connected to the theme so since you can add-on more than one, let’s see what happens.

Oh, I did play Borderlands 4 for a few. I find that as much as I love the franchise, I’m kind of bored with BL4 since I’ve defeated the game with all characters except the new one – and I’m working on that but the problem is, well, lemme tell you what happened.

Gearbox updated the game for Xbox Series X to add some stuff and to fix bugs, etc., and I had to wait for the game to update before I could play it. Then, upon starting the game, it checks for updates then reboots to put them in place and something that makes me scratch my head because if the game’s software gets updated, it should know that it was updated so no further action on its part should be needed… but I didn’t have anything to do with how the game was developed and coded.

My new character is already selected so I have to just click “Continue” and I pick up where I left off. I go into the next area that I gotta kick ass in and I’m blasting bad guys with a new shotgun I picked up and… I ran out of ammo. What the hell? I quickly switch to my submachine gun and mow down more bad guys and… I ran out of ammo. Okay, there’s a problem and I need to check something, but I also need to kill the last two bad guys with my assault rifle and before it runs out of ammo.

Finally, I’m standing there alone, all bad guys in the area vanquished. I check my SDU and… they’ve all been reset. I realize that this isn’t the first time this happened because it did the last time the game updated. I curse and restore all of the ammo capacities for all weapons, the bank, and the lost loot part. I’m muttering to myself about how stupid it is for this to keep being reset every time the game gets an update, and I made a note to check my other characters’ SDU.

It ain’t Minecraft but BL4 comes with its own set of issues…

I started my gaming day playing Borderlands 4 to advance the new character Gearbox gave us until I whupped Vile Lector’s ass – in about two minutes – and decided to stop after this so I could (a) open my Minecraft world to my family if they wanted to visit and (b) look to see if I was really done building stuff.

I wasn’t. I examine the “storage building” I threw up to make sure that, in my haste, I messed something up and as I did so, I’m looking at an area just past the last bridge I put in – and I counted them last night and I’ve built eight bridges (so far, damn it); I see this area and the unbidden thought of “What can I do with this?” came to me and, yeah, I know – put in a growing area for crops! Yeah! That’ll work!

Except, um, I built four of them: Wheat, beet root, carrots, and potatoes. I’m hooking this up and knowing that I’ll have to build something similar but different for melons and pumpkins and I had a quarter of a thought about creating pens for the food animals but, okay, let me get this done first. Not only did I create four plots but I built a greenhouse on top of it; afterward, I lit up the area, which took more time than it took me to build the four plots and greenhouse – and I’d gone back to the main base to take care of some iron ore I’d picked up when upon leaving my main base, I’m looking out over the area that I’ve built on and… decided to get an overhead view of things so I built a “viewing area” with an all-glass floor.

But wait! There’s more! As I’m finishing the viewing area, I look to my right and where the T-bridge is and my brain asked, “What can we do over there?” and I’m building bridge number nine and the area is starting to look similar to the bridges over the Chicago River in downtown Chicago and… I’m not mad about that but, yeah, wait for it. The bridge is complete and I’m looking at the area immediately in front of the bridge and it’s a “multi-level hillside” and the kind that I’ve build stuff on… like a few years ago.

The trick of dong what I was about to do was to build a structure that used the existing terrain and without me having to overly modify it. Sounds easy, right? It isn’t. I got the front and half of the two sides completed and I had to stop (a) for dinner and (b) my brain needed the break and after I realized that I’d miscounted enough blocks to make my structure lopsided and, shit, okay, stop doing this, take care of that, go back to doing the other thing and, fuck it – I’m gonna eat and think about this some more.

My oldest son dropped in to visit and his avatar literally scared me because I left my avatar facing one of the walls so when I turned around, there he was! He had me laughing when he said it took him a while to figure out how to get out of the area where the spawn point it and, oh, yeah, the only person who knows about that is my granddaughter. I talk to my son for a few, he asks me how long I’ve been working on all of this and I say, “Oh, about two weeks…” and I went to ask him something but he’d left the world but I was happy to see him in my world and that someone came to visit.

Back to the structure.

I realized – all late and wrong – that the “land” I’m building on is going to need a bit extensive terraforming as both sides of the structure is butted up again the land and there’s no space there. Now, when I build a new structure, no matter how I design and build it, I want to have a minimum of five “lanes” that are clear and gives me a nice space to move around in and all around the structure and I rarely, if ever, fail to do this. I honestly hadn’t planned on doing this for this build but, unfortunately, I had to and thanks to a lot of trees in my way. I sighed, rubbed my eyes and flexed my fingers and got to tearing shit up. In the process, I discover there’s an “entrance” to yet another part of the area’s cave system and, at first, I thought I’d been there already but, nope, I haven’t – but I don’t have the time to even go look at it some more because I have to get this structure built while my mind is still focused on it.

I clear my five lanes on both side and the rear of the structure and now, I can see where I… screwed the pooch in a few places. See, I knew what I was thinking about when I started this and I “knew” that I could run across something that would make me change something and, yeah, I sure did and now I have to completely “redesign” the area that has become the structure’s basement. Redesign it; make sure it’s consistent with the rest of the build. Not even thinking about lighting at this point – I haven’t even put a door in for the front door. The roof and “second story floor” haven’t been touched or even thought of until I realized that I again miscounted a few blocks and, oh, yeah, I guess I should think about how I’m doing to do the roof and this fucking floor… after I finish the basement.

If you’re reading this and laughing your ass off, I can’t say that I blame you. My brain is on overdrive as I work to get as much of the structure finished before I head off to bed and… I got the second level’s floor done; all of the windows are in place, I still hadn’t put any doors in; I didn’t put the first level’s roof in because its geometry is kinda goofy and I don’t have time to figure it out. The basement is finished and lit… because I had a couple of bats flying around down there and getting in my way as I worked. I’ll worry about the cavern entrance I found after I do the roof, put in doors as needed and, oh, yeah, figure out (a) what the purpose of the structure will be and (b) what the fuck made me decide to build it in the first place.

I’ll say that, normally and when I start a new world, I follow the must-do stuff my teachers drilled into me. Find a location to build a safe place to lay my head. Get wood and look for cobblestone to build a furnace to turn cut-down wood into charcoal for torches and any iron or copper I come across. Build the initial structure out of dirt – and provided the world seed generator didn’t plop me down in the middle of a desert and sand as far as I can see – then, after laying it out and setting up a crafting table, start digging a mine shaft to (a) get cobblestone, (b) coal, (c) iron and, here lately (d) copper which I thought was useless. Cut down trees as needed. Find and kill sheep for the food and its wool so I can make a bed; replace the dirt framework of my ‘house’ with cobblestone or even granite if I can gather 192 pieces of it, which will take care of the frame, the walls, the roof but maybe not the floor, which is still dirt but I’ll deal with that after I look for and collect 56 blocks of sand to make windows.

Once I finish the structure and my mine shaft, I’m… done. Eh, maybe I’ll build a place to put an enchantment table or, if I’m really kinda/sorta bored, build a nether portal and activate it even though I very, very rarely go messing around in the nether. But if my family shows up, meh, they like playing in the nether so I can be accommodating. Sometimes. But I’m done building. Everything is set up. I may or may not roam the area to find interesting places. I have built over 200 worlds in Minecraft but only maybe two or three of them have extensive building and the like of which I’ve been doing now. Find it. Establish it. Leave it and find another world biome to work in. Rinse and repeat.

I… can’t leave this world seed alone. Once again, every time I think I’m done setting shit up, I find something else to do. I have this picture of it in my mind and I know that I keep “looking at it” and thinking about, “What else can I do with this?” and just when I think I can’t do any more, well, I fibbed.

Again. Stay tuned. Methinks that this ain’t over yet.

I’ve been busy in the world created with my granddaughter’s world seed and two themes that were new to me. I had been in the location’s vast cave system lighting up the dark areas, getting coal, iron, and diamond galore when I discovered something that I know I didn’t build.

I figured that my granddaughter started it and I found what she built to be curious because it was underwater but with no way inside the glass construct she’d made so my mind asked, “Hmm… what can I do with this?” It took me about twenty minutes of roaming around and looking at the area as a whole to see (a) what I could do with her unfinished construct and (b) how I could connect it to the rest of the main base and other buildings and…

I started to build. Minecraft purists probably don’t use Creative mode all that much but I could care less about fighting mobs but even as easy as this mode makes building easier – you don’t have to go on a scavenger hunt for materials – my task of finishing her construct and connecting it was taking time and especially with my underwater work – the Luminous Dreams theme doesn’t make it easy to see underwater even with the Night eight-minute potion but I fought through it slowly but surely.

I finally finished what I was doing including creating a way to get to the underwater part of the construct and once I finished with this, I saw there were other things I could do. I wound up building several bridges; I created pathways that all connect to the “main building” in some way; I created a hill-side room only because I was looking in that direction and thought that the place I was looking at would be good to build something – so I built something.

In fact, I built a lot of somethings. Like six bridges in total along with six above-water structures and one specifically for me to store all the materials I was using to do my builds – they would quickly fill up my inventory and I’d have to “go home” to empty it and… I saw that I was running out of room and, well, fuck, I gotta do something about that as well as do a better job of organizing the stuff in my chests.

I’d finished the “storage building” and was looking around to see dark spots in the area which aren’t good because whenever I go live with this world, dark places will spawn mobs and I’m doing all I can to keep them out of my area and making getting rid of them manageable. Then, at the darkest spot I saw I realized that, yeah, I can build yet another bridge over this wide gap over part of the cave system and, of course, once I built the bridge, I had to build another building in that sweet space I saw while building the bridge.

Every time I think I’m done building and “mob-proofing” things, I’m building something else or I’m damned near getting lost in part of the cave system that I hadn’t seen before so it needed exploring like this one area I found down around level -53 that was lit up in one of the prettiest shades of blue that I’ve ever seen in the game. My grandchildren told me that if I see this blue stuff, there could be devices that, if bothered, could call a Warden and… I did not ever want to meet a Warden. Okay, I got that loud and clear and noted it because in Creative, well, I can turn the mobs on without them fucking with me and I used to do that but these days, the mobs get in my way when I’m trying to build. They don’t attack me but they’ll just stand there looking at me and, okay, you need to get the fuck out of my way.

Select my sword and bye-bye obstructing mob thingy. Having to stop building to kill a pig, cow, or sheep because they want to wander into whatever I’m trying to do and hang out and… I won’t be running out of food any time soon when I go live. I finished connecting the last building I constructed to the path that connects the other buildings to the main building and if reading that has you shaking your head over how convoluted it reads, yeah, you should have watched me building all of it.

Now, I think I’m done building or that’s what I thought. I still have to create guest rooms for when my family shows up to play in my world and I’ll work on that today and, hopefully, I’ll finally be ready to go live… maybe. Sure, they could occupy existing building areas that are empty or they can build their own stuff somewhere. My daughter who was one of my Minecraft teachers (and the toughest one) will eventually come in and give me her ten cents worth on my builds and other things and, knowing her, she’ll have a ton of suggestions. My grandson will come in and “freak out” over the vast cave system and… I’ll just wait for him to get lost. My granddaughter will return to see what I’ve done recently and pronounce it good and maybe offer suggestions that are similar to what she’s doing in the same world seed and the exact same location and, whew, you should see the things she’s built that make my stuff look like I don’t know how to build stuff in Minecraft.

I’m off to my ENT doctor for yet another post-cancer checkup and… I’ll catch ya later.