Tag: Minecraft

Gaming: Xbox Series X: Minecraft and Borderlands 4

First, Borderlands 4. I defeated the game again with the new Vault Hunter, C4SH, and I feel he was a great character to play with and his special skills and abilities served me well. Last night, I took down The Timekeeper, in both of his forms, in what would be for me record time: About six minutes or so.

Or, as I crowed afterward, “That ass got whupped! Take that, bitch, and die motherfucker!”

Yeah, um, I get kinda ugly when I play any of the Borderlands games. So, now it’s on to my second Xbox profile to whup that ass again with C4SH and once I do it with my third Xbox profile, I would have whupped the game’s ass with all Vault Hunters… unless they sneak another one in and there is supposed to be a major update coming tomorrow (28 May).

So, that’s where I am with Borderlands 4. Now, Minecraft. As you might recall, my granddaughter turned me on to a new theme and add-on as well as one of the best world seeds I’ve seen since I started playing the game. She was with me as I started to build things and even when I had to stop playing, I left the world open for her to keep working if she wanted to.

I can’t seem to stop building stuff, from bridges to buildings of all shapes and sizes. Every cotton picking time I think that I’ve run out of things/places to build, I find something else. Like, I built seven new houses yesterday and the last one was a little tricky because it has a main floor and two sub-floors. Why? Because I was looking at a spot that I felt was perfect for the “row houses” I eventually built. They’re so basic that they’re not equipped with the usual stuff – crafting table, chests, and furnace – but that’s not to say that I won’t retroactively outfit them all… and like I’ve been doing with some of the other places.

The area is starting to get a “city” kind of feel to it and something that, honestly, I had not intended to create but… it is what it keeps being for the moment. I already know there are at least five more spots that I can build… something in but I don’t know what at the moment but I’ll think of something. The Luminous Dreams theme is beautiful in its own way and there’s nothing more thrilling to discover a new cave location and in its darkness, see items like iron and redstone lighted and making the “normally” dark and dreary cave look exciting and rather pretty. The Biomes and More add-on brings some stuff to the party that can’t be seen if, say, I load up another add-on, like the one for caves which, er, I’m not sure how I feel about that one but I only have one version of my granddaughter’s world using that add-on.

The behavioral add-ons may or may not work with all existing themes so it’s like a trial and error thing to see what the various combinations of themes and add-ons can bring to the game and I really need to do this… if I could stop building shit. I told my granddaughter about my “building fever” and she… laughed and said, “Good – glad you’re enjoying it.” And I am enjoying it and like I did when I found my favorite ChromaHills theme but, I dunno, Luminous Dreams might replace it as my #1 theme for all worlds going forward. I was a bit sad to find that the Biomes add-on doesn’t work with ChromaHills but that’s okay.

I sometimes get asked what I do to keep myself occupied in my retirement and my answer is, “I play games on my Xbox and Steam Deck…” which might sound like a waste of time but all of the games I have make me focus and think as well as having to pay attention to detail and while I’m now kinda feeling the ache of arthritis in my fingers when I’m not working the controller to death, they’re working just fine and to the point where I might need a new controller at some point because the buttons tend to take a beating.

I put some earbuds in – like the Monster AC530s I’m wearing right now – and I immerse myself in the game play while listening to a favorite playlist and to the extent where my lady will wander in and get my attention to the time by asking, “You gonna eat dinner?” What? It’s that time already? Shit, last time I looked at a clock, it wasn’t anywhere near dinnertime! My watch will remind me that it’s time to stand up which is a good thing to give me a chance to stop playing, stretch, hit the bathroom, etc., before getting back to it. I usually play until I can get to a stopping point; in BL4, I’ll say, “When I’m done with this part of the mission, I’ll take a break…” or when it’s time to shut everything down and go to bed. In Minecraft it’s, “I want to finish (whatever the hell I’m doing) before taking a break or, shit, is it time to go to bed already?

It’s time to play and I need to check Elite Dangerous for something…

Gaming: Xbox Series X: Minecraft (No Apologies)

I was working on the building I showed you yesterday when, in the middle of putting in the roof, I thought, “Something’s not right.”

It took me a moment to look around and realized that I did not build the big version of the building: I built the smaller version and the thing that messed with my head for a moment was that I did not even think about building this one – my mind was on the big version.

Did I actually plan to build the smaller version? I was uncertain as I elevated high above to look down and, yep, this is the smaller version and… it fits perfectly in the place I built it, well, give or take five or six places. Now I’m bugging a little: Did I look at the area I wanted to build in, and my mind decided that instead of the big building that I can do in my sleep, I saw the space I had to work in, and my brain just picked the right building specs?

Fuck if I know. I finished the roof; I finished the flooring including doing some cool patterns on the floor that I’d never seen or thought of before. I’m looking around the finished building to see if I missed something – I need more light on the inside to keep mobs from spawning in there – but the building is finished and looks nice among the other buildings in my “city.”

I had quite the conversation with myself when I realized my “mistake.” I’m standing in the middle of the building and looking around while reciting the dimensions to myself and, oh, fuck me, yeah, okay, this is the smaller version because there are like six more sides to the big version and the dimensions are radically different.

To take the dimensions of the smaller version and do them times two… doesn’t work because, oddly, building damned near anything in Minecraft calls for blocks to be of uneven numbers and, yeah, I knew this before I created the big building and found out the very hard way that (a) I wasn’t thinking about the Minecraft oddity and (b) I had to tear down half the damned thing and redo it from scratch. It was bad enough that I didn’t realize my mistake before I really started building like, for example, I can usually tell when the framework is wrong just by looking at it… sometimes. I have gotten deep into the build before realizing that, damn it all to hell – I fucked up and back when I laid the framework.

If the framework is wrong, the whole building will be wrong.

Which has had me asking myself, “Do you know how to count, dummy?” Uh, apparently, when I’m building one of these places, my education seems to fail me. This reminds me of the day I wanted to sit down and write down exactly how to build one of these ‘monstrosities’ and… I couldn’t do it. Okay, look, occasional mistakes aside, I know exactly how to build one from beginning to end. I’d got the framework stuff written down and, as it turned out, that was the easy part, as was how important it was to build on flat land and, yeah, I know that when the land isn’t flat, the build doesn’t work right.

In the version I just finished – and in response to a question my grandson had asked about the number of blocks needed to start building the roof – I couldn’t answer him because I didn’t know. It never occurred to me to count those block so as to set the dimensions for the roof and like I had to do for the framework. It’s actually easier for you to watch me do the roof than it is for me to tell you how I did it. My now-late son-in-law had asked me how I came up with the design for the roof and my response was, “I don’t know – why are you asking me?” and I genuinely did not know but I… felt my way through the construction of the roof or the way I was doing it felt right.

While I love the overhead view of the building, it doesn’t compare to being inside the building and looking up at the granite and glass roof and it’s even prettier at night and the building is all lit up. I still have a note to take a screenshot of the inside of the building so you can see it from that perspective.

I had posted the smaller building on the Minecraft Facebook group the day I finished the very first one and the oohs and aahs and other compliments rolled in, but one guy had asked, “Where did you find the plans for this?”

“In my head,” I said. “As far as I know, no one has ever created a building like this so, nope, no plans.”

He called me a liar, and I shredded his ass for it but, okay, you know so much – go find the plans for this building and share it with the group. Never heard from the asshole again but I kinda knew I wouldn’t.

My Minecraft teachers decided that this building was too much work to be bothered with even when they watched me build one. They weren’t wrong, to be honest. Every time I decide to build one there’s always a moment when I ask myself, “Why did I think this was going to be fun?” because it does take a lot of work from beginning to end. I know that the building in the picture I showed you yesterday, it took me two weeks to build it from beginning to end, including patterning the floor, creating an interesting “subbasement” for it, installing individual rooms and… why did I think doing this was a good and fun thing to do?

Because when one is finished, that’s when I realize and understand that I had a lot of fun doing it.

Gaming: Xbox Series X: Minecraft (Sheesh)

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.

Gaming: Xbox Series X: Minecraft (Um, er, right…)

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…

Gaming: Xbox Series X: Minecraft (Yeah, I Fibbed)

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.

Gaming: Xbox Series X: Minecraft (One More Time)

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.

Gaming: Xbox Series X: Minecraft (Again)

The last time I had a ton of fun with a Minecraft theme was when I stumbled across the Chroma Hills pack, which became my new default theme. I have other themes and I sometimes create worlds with them… but sometimes wind up changing the theme to Chroma Hills and when I do, it’s like, “Ahh….”

The theme my granddaughter introduced me to, along with the add-on pack, is becoming a favorite. I spent almost all of yesterday exploring the caves, lighting up the dark places, digging out diamonds and just getting the feel of the location and like I’ve not done since, shit, since I first learned how to play the game.

I remember those early days and when I first tried to play it and just utterly failed at it. My daughter and her husband kept pestering me about learning how to play so I bought the game and let them teach me their Minecraft basics while playing and creating in a world that I still have today and often go in there to see how any Minecraft updates may have changed the world although, and sadly, I have not been back there since my son-in-law unexpectedly died and I created a memorial for him in the world that he’d often come into and dazzle me with his ability to build and create.

When I changed that world to the [then] new Chroma Hills pack, I had a feeling that I was going to like it based on the “tiny” look that the Minecraft store was giving but I rolled the dice, bought the pack, and applied it to that world… and wow, what a huge difference! So, as I said, almost all new worlds created have been with my all-time favorite pack and I was of a mind that of all the packs available in the Minecraft store, I thought it unlikely that I’d find a pack that would reach out and grab me like Chroma Hills did.

Thankfully, I was wrong. The Luminous Dreams theme and Biomes O’ Plenty add-on bring a world to life and in a way that I’ve not seen since Chroma Hills. I kinda ran out of places in the caverns that I wanted to work in, so I returned to my base and… I wanted to add to the existing buildings – but what could I do and how could I do it? I must’ve sat and looked at the area where the existing structure are until one area… spoke to me and said, “Dude, build something here!” I still didn’t know what I wanted to build or anything like that, but I gathered some materials and once I laid down some block that would become the foundation for my newest building, things just started falling into place, including me falling through a hole I hadn’t filled in.

I knew what I wanted to do… still had to figure out how I was going to do it, but I wanted to connect the new building to the existing interior arrangement, and the tricky part was trying to see where it was going to connect… without really seeing it. I’ll say that most of the time for me, this is part of the fun I have playing Minecraft because I have to visualize something that I know about but can’t see without having to go there and still have to figure out how I’m going to get there. I’m building, correcting some small errors and all the while thinking that if I screw this up, there will be one hell of a mess for me to fix and one big enough that I might have to scrap the new addition.

I got it hooked up even though the connecting “tunnel” did not connect in the area I wanted it to – but it did connect to a place that I’d been wondering what I could do with, so this little project was a win/win and I didn’t have to overly destroy shit to make it happen. With other projects, I’ve destroyed vast blocks of forestation; I’ve removed hills from small to big and once, I removed an entire mountain because it was in my way. I’ve flattened huge areas of land in order to build one of my “big buildings” until I deemed it level enough for me to start construction of an edifice that I keep promising myself that I’m not going to build anymore… but just one more.

Now I want and need to see how this new pack combo works in a world that’s not a copy of my granddaughter’s world and the cool part is that while I know what the Luminous theme looks like, I’ll have no idea how it’ll make a new world look because unless you specify a World Seed, Minecraft randomly assigns one and there’s no telling what you’re going to be dealing with until you appear in the world and you get to look at where you are… unless you spawn in underwater… or in a pool of lava both of which I’ve done in the past.

Keeping my fingers crossed…

Gaming: Xbox Series X: Minecraft

I often have the honor of gaming with my daughter, her son and two daughters. Well, her oldest daughter was playing Minecraft one night and after I had finished messing around in a world of my own, I dropped into her world, thinking that I’d take a quick look around then leave. Well, I spawned into water; it took me a moment to realize that I was underwater (and drowning) but I managed to get to dry land and… black sand.

What kind of Minecraft black magic is this? Now, I’ve used red sand and specifically when I’m doing cleanup work on lava pools because I know that if I go into an area and see red sand, I’ve already been there and there’s likely nothing to see. I know that she’s in Survival mode so I am hustling to get myself safe since I also spawned in at night and there are mobs everywhere and all I have is a empty map. I don’t know how long it’s been night, but I know I have to hide until sunrise, but my granddaughter sends me a message and says she’s coming to get me.

I’m following her and I’m too busy looking around for skeletons, creepers, and zombies – and keeping eyes on her – to really pay attention to the landscape around me but, finally, we get to her base and I enter it and, whew, safe at last. Now I’m looking around and see that, in my opinion, she “inherited” her late father’s ability to build beautiful structures in Minecraft but what she’s built is amazingly beautiful and I asked her what pack she was using.

“It’s called Luminous Dreams, PopPop,” she says and as I’m outside of her base and she’s got cherry trees growing everywhere and there are cherry blossoms blowing on the wind. Additionally, I can see my shadow as well as the shimmer of sunlight on the water and I have got to have this theme pack! While I’m complimenting her building skills – she was making “bubble elevators” for her place; some lava thingies will pull you down and some will pull you up and she’s used these brilliantly in her place and her creativity on display is, really, what I’ve come to expect from my daughter’s family, well, except my grandson but he’s been learning to build better and with better functionality.

In addition to the Luminous Dreams theme, she told me about the add-on that she’s using named Biomes O’ Plenty and, okay, I know it’s been a while since I played Minecraft but apparently this pack is a Behavior Pack that can be added and, from what I’ve read, with some interesting results. I had asked if she had created the water-filled ravine but she said that she hadn’t – she had been wandering around and found the location and started building on it and with some areas that are below the river’s waterline and, oh, hell, yeah – I gotta have this seed, too.

A few dollars later, I have both pack and the seed number for her world and the coordinates for the spawn point in her base. I create a new test world and… there’s no black sand. Well, to make this part a bit short, when I had input the seed number, I left off a number… because, honestly, I didn’t see it but once we figured that out, I created a new world with the correct seed number, resource and behavior packs, and I click “Create” and… I’m underwater and there’s black sand everywhere!e

I’ve said many times in the past about playing Minecraft that I will play in Peaceful mode and I’ll play in Creative mode (with cheats enabled) when all I want to do is test my hand at building something. Since I arrived at night (again), I get out of the water and teleport to the coordinates she gave me for her place’s spawn point and… I find myself underwater again! I’m not going to drown but I do have to figure out how to create or, really, duplicate her spawn point while hovering above it and, admittedly, it takes me a while to figure it out but once I did and the spawn point has been established, it’s time to start building!

In the game, I have played 266 game days and with some artistic changes on her part, buildings are cropping up in the area, there are areas above and under water; I made a tunnel to a specific point and dug upwards into the cave system that is behind the spawn point and this is where I build my primary base that has all of the comforts of home… but I have more building and exploring to do.

So far, I’ve built seven bases and one you can’t get into unless you teleport to it… or you just happen to know what cave system I built it in. With any cave system, I’ve been going through torches and sea lanterns lighting up all of the dark places I come across because when I go live in this world – that’ll be switching to Survival/Normal mode, I don’t want the mobs spawning into any dark places. As I light the places up, I’ve managed to collect 49 diamonds, and I can’t remember the last time I was in a world where there were coal and iron aplenty and so much that I’m at a point where I’m just marking or walking past coal, iron, and gold deposits because I have enough to choke a couple of horses plus I always try to leave some should any of the family jumps in – and that could be my oldest son and his fiancee, too.

I told my granddaughter tonight that every time I think I’m ready to go live, I find another place to build a base in – and I’ve shared the coordinates of all of my finds with her which, of course, matches up with her world… since I’m essentially playing in an exact copy of her world. I haven’t visited her world lately, so I don’t know what she’s doing – probably more building, I suspect. I know that I now have to spend some time to (a) build some gardens and (b) fill my food chest with foods and I will not go live until I get that done. Even though my base is built by a river, I’ve built an indoor fishing pool… because I’m lazy like that. I’ll build my gardens indoors, but I’ve built a Nether Gate that’s going to need a fuck-ton of work… when I can get around to it.

I had realized the other day that with all the stuff I’ve been doing, I neglected to do something that I’ve done in every world I’ve ever created: Dig a mineshaft. Given how mineral rich the cave system is, I really don’t have to dig one but I do it anyway because I always do it. I dig down to level 0 and start to carve out the “room” that constitutes my mine, not so much for anything like gold or even diamonds but, normally, I need the materials I’ve dug to make the shaft to make my permanent home. However, before I get to the point where I have ‘officially’ dug my mine and about to put steps in to make it easier going up and down, I find that the back wall of my mind… empties into the main cavern that I’ve already been in and have lighted up.

Well, that kinda sucks but, okay – at least I didn’t dig into a spot I hadn’t seen already – but this is good because it connects my mine with the cave system that, ultimately, leads back to where I lay my head at night. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun in a Minecraft world and with the two new packs I found out about. I figure that at the rate I’m going, I’ll be going live maybe in a couple of weeks or if I can stop building shit, whichever comes first.

Xbox One Gaming: Minecraft – The Supersized Building

The other day I wrote about my project to double the size of a building I had created and the work I had to look forward to and especially making a mountain go away. The good news is that the supersized building has been built… and it is amazing.

It looks the same as all the normal-sized ones do… just way bigger. I’d had a problem lighting it up until I realized, duh, this one is twice the size of the others so making it all nice and bright inside wasn’t going to happen and I still don’t know how I’m going to do with without cluttering things up… and I might not even try to bring more light to it… because it looks amazing being lit up as much as it is.

It has a cathedral-like look to it. My daughter had dropped in to see it and noticed that between the way I have the ceiling designed and the lighting, the ceiling looks just like Starfleet’s insignia and I hadn’t noticed this until she mentioned it but the moment she did, I also realized that the normal-sized buildings “didn’t have this look” because I can easily light them up so that there are no shadows anywhere.

Hmm. Still, the work to build it was harder than I thought it would be in that it took much longer to build the ceiling and, sometimes, it got to be so repetitive that it actually had me nodding out a few times. Creating the floor’s pattern was… a bitch. I’ve made it a point that when I build one of these to make sure that no two floors are the same and, really, to make every floor unique and this one really had me talking and cussing to myself because of the sheer size of it and then, once I had the “feel” of it, making sure that I didn’t screw it up… which I almost did a few times. Normally and once I get one side of the floor created, it’s easy to fly back and forth to make sure I’m duplicating the pattern faithfully and accurately… but this building is twice the size and jetting back and forth just “complicated” things and so much that when I finally got it finished, I found that I’d missed putting in some blocks here and there – and when my daughter visited, she found a few more I had missed.

But that wasn’t the bad part… and this part of it was pretty bad. No – that would be sticking to my original plan to make that mountain go away. I’d “take a break” from the monotony of working on the actual building to work on the mountain that was blocking the view from the building’s windows… and I was regretting the decision to make it all go away. I did try using TNT and in the hope that it would make this very boring and monotonous task easier but, nope – all that did was make more of a mess than anything else so I spend a lot of near mindless hours whittling away at it, one row of blocks at a time.

I am happy to report that it’s all gone. In whittling it all down, I even found the “entrance” to an underwater cavern that I’m now thinking about what I’ll have to do to it so it can be explored in Survival mode and without drowning in the process. It was hidden under the mountain and had I not removed it, I wouldn’t have known it was there. Still, there were moments during its removal that I just wanted to stop fucking with it; on top of building the supersized version of my building, it was too much. Not only did I have to remove all the dirt and other stuff, there was also a lot of trees that had to be removed and some of them were those damned double oak trees that, if you don’t get all of the blocks of wood out of them, the tree won’t go away until you find and get rid of them

I do not like the double oak trees one bit. Those who play Minecraft knows that once you chop down a tree, the leaves can drop stuff like sticks, apples, and saplings of the tree that got chopped down and I did my best to collect as much of those things as I could and store them in a couple of chests I had stashed in another but close-by location… because I might “make my daughter happy” and replant all of the saplings I’ve collected. Maybe. I love my daughter… but I might not love her that much as far as this project goes.

The building is done. The mountain is gone. I still have work to do. I still have to create rooms that players who may visit can call their home base as they explore things. I have to start and finish the landscaping that I do for every building. So as to not spoil the beauty of the building’s interior, I’ve opted to create rooms in the center section of the building by digging into – and down – the sides of the center section, something I’ve done before but this time it’s different.

I usually create a “stairwell” in the center of the building so that the floor’s pattern flows from one side to the other but for this build, well, I did that… but not as deep as I’d normally do it – it’s only three levels deep which (1) makes the floor’s pattern flow amazingly but (2) creates a bit of a problem creating side rooms because the “ground” is the “ceiling” so there’s grass above and that’s just not going to cut it. I was “running out of gas” after having removed the last huge chunks of the mountain so I only got as far as creating the entryway to the space where I am figuring out how to create the number of rooms I have in mind… and with the understanding that I can’t see what I’m doing.

Normally, I would build these rooms aboveground and I can see what I’m doing and all that; building them underground isn’t going to be easy but it’s on my list of things to do and, officially, the building won’t be “certified for occupation” until I get them built and outfitted to my liking.

Why go through all of this? It’s… therapy. Kinda. I have to remember how to build the damned things; I have to think about where I’m building it and not just on the surface but under it, too. I have to make myself “stick to the plan” at all times and not take shortcuts or let stuff like huge, mountain-like hills/structures stop me from the building. If it’s in my way, it’s got to go. It’s about focus. Attention to detail. Just putting my head down and doing all that has to be done so that the build gets completed the way I always want them to be.

It keeps my mind active. It takes my mind off of the neuropathic pain I continue to have to deal with and especially in my right hand. It makes me “sit still” and not be fidgeting all over the place and like I normally tend to do. As much as building one of these “gets on my last good nerve,” it is… calming and relaxing which, during this build, had my heart rate coasting along in the low 70s.

The supersized project isn’t at 100% but it has been… interesting. I am telling myself that I’m not going to build another one of this size and that’s just me bullshitting myself because I probably will because I do have fun doing it and, yeah, it’s therapy for me. I’m going to try to get some pics of it so I can show it to you and especially what I did with the floor this time around.

Xbox One Gaming: Minecraft

Those of you who Minecraft might understand what I’m about to say and those of you who don’t, well, you might be able to relate to this because there are some things in life that can happen in the way I’m about to speak to.

So… there’s a building that I created and took from a simple structure – and it wasn’t what I had wanted to build in the first place – to something that whenever I build one, I have a “hard time” believing that I created and built it.

This is the building I’m talking about. Building it required me to do some “math” because this game is… weird in that doing stuff with an even number of blocks – like ten, for example – might not “work” the way you want it to… but eleven blocks will. I know why this is but I can’t explain it but, to continue. I had to figure out how many blocks I needed to create the “foundation” that the rest of what you see was going to be built upon… then I had to build it and that started with clearing out that whole area you see where the building is sitting and “fenced in” with bushes.

Sometimes, that’s easy depending on the seed that’s randomly generated… and sometimes, it’s just not feasible to build one because there’s not a place I’d find suitable. It has to be built on flat land; I tried to build one without “terraforming” the area and, well, let’s just say that I’m not going to try that again. From finding the right place and landscape to actually building one of these can take a couple of days or more and depending on what I have to do before I can start building and if I feel like messing with it. I keep telling myself that I’m not going to build another one because it is labor-intensive but when you look at the picture, yeah, it’s worth it… sometimes.

I was playing with my grandson the other day… and building yet another one of these because, well, I don’t really know why I did but I was doing it and he thought it was cool (but he thinks almost everything I do is cool) and he said that he didn’t know how I could make it better and I said something like the only way to make it better would be to make it bigger… and like these building aren’t big enough already – but you might not be able to see that from the provided picture but it’s so big that bats hang out in there – and if you know about Minecraft’s bats, you get an idea of things.

As I’m watching my grandson working on something he was building and giving him the occasional hint or pointing out that he missed something, I was thinking about how I could make my building bigger and with the understanding that just doubling the number of blocks used to create the foundation wasn’t going to work… because that would make all of the blocks even-numbered ones. Like, to create the front of the building – and after creating a column-like thingy, there has to be 23 blocks between the two columns… but doubling them would make it 46 blocks… and 46 won’t work… but 47 will. I “did the math” and since I know how many blocks are needed just to create one side of the foundation, well, that was easier than the next problem:

Where to build it. I created a few worlds that didn’t fit the bill, like being in a frozen wasteland or in a desert which both had wide open spaces – and read this as meaning no trees – but the terrain was just too uneven and would required way too much work to make it totally flat and as I need it to be. I did use those worlds to test my “math” and I just had to build three parts of it to know that I got it right because I have learned that if I screw it up – and I have screwed it up – it will always happen with those first three sections because the fourth section won’t line up properly.

Hang in here with me, okay?

I found a world that would work for me. Kinda. Lemme start the front-side of the building because that will tell me how much “terraforming” I will have to do. I did that and realized that there’s, um, not quite a mountain smack-dab in the middle of where I can build this… which means that if I want to build this giant-sized version of the building in the picture, I’m gonna have to make that almost a mountain go away. I thought about using the game’s TNT to do some blasting except I’ve found that, um, I’m not all that good at figuring out how much TNT I need and not enough or too much will make sure that I’ll have to work harder than I have to so it’s take that bitch down to the ground one block at a time, one section of a time and while building the foundation as I go along.

There’s just no easy way to do this. I am determined to do this and I didn’t even get to completing the second section of the foundation before I started asking myself, “What are you doing… and why are you doing it?” So far, I’ve been working on this for three days (today will be day number four) and I only have two final sections to complete for the foundation and then the harder work can commence… but I gotta get rid of that damned mountain first. Not just part of it: All of it. Why? Because I like building these things and without having obstructions blocking the views from the many windows in the joint. Now, I have left some stuff “blocking” the view because I didn’t feel like obliterating whatever the blockage was but for some damned reason, I’m going to remove that mountain and as much as I’m not liking having to do it, I’m also having fun doing it.

I’ve been destroying all of the trees and smiling to think about my daughter reading me the riot act for (a) destroying all those trees and not using them and (b) having little or no intention on replanting them. Out of a kind of respect for my Minecraft teacher, I have been avoiding killing the cows, sheep, chickens, and pigs that have been getting in my way all along. Yeah, some of them died… but not at my hand; it’s not my fault they jumped off the ledge that I wound up creating as I take the mountain apart a section at a time! When they’ve done that, I have collected the meat and other stuff they left behind and stored it in a chest I have stashed somewhere out of my way.

It’s not exactly “fun” doing a project like this but I find it to be relaxing as much as it gets on my nerves. Removing a mountain is a ridiculous thing to do and no matter its size. I know this because I’ve done it before and I don’t wanna talk about that any more than this. I’m relaxed. Focused. My Fitbit is happy because my resting pulse is in the low 70s. It is driving me fucking crazy because the more I hack at the stuff I need to go away, it doesn’t feel like I’m really making a lot of progress and, yep, I’m still asking myself, “What are you doing?” I know what I’m doing. I know why I’m doing it. It just doesn’t really make sense to do all of the shit I’ve been doing so that I can get to doing something that I know is going to be a bitch doing… because building the building in the above picture was a bitch… and now I’m making one twice its size.

Why? Because I can. I have the willpower and determination to do it. I actually like having to figure out what needs to go and what needs to be built up or even created to support the building… and it also gets on my nerves. Those of you who don’t play Minecraft might not see or understand why doing something like this is, indeed, a lot of fun since it doesn’t sound like it is… and that’s because it isn’t. But I’m going to do it because, yeah, it’s fun and even therapeutic in a way because I have to build this place from memory and from the ground up; I have to give some very serious thought about the floor and letting the “artistic” side of me come forth to create a pattern on the floor that doesn’t exist in any of the other buildings I’ve built so that while the shape of this building will always be the same, all of the floor are different. I have to… feel the floor then figure out how to do what I’m feeling… and working around the critters the game keeps spawning.

I’ve got a lot of hard work to do before I can get to the hard work of building this giant-sized place. It requires calm patience to keep hacking away at the mountain and being insanely determined to wipe it out. I could work around it and a few times last night, I was gonna do just that but this is also a lesson in if you start something, finish it and no matter how much shit you gotta go through to finish it.

You tear down a mountain to the ground… because it can be done. My daughter would shit a couple of gold bricks and I thought that my late son-in-law – and who was a better builder – would have dived in with me to do something I know that both of us didn’t like doing… because why the hell not? It can be done… so let’s do it. He would have broke out lots of TNT and, against my advice, blown shit up big time and that, too, is fun… if you’re not going to be the one who has to clean it up.

I just had to add this because, well, I was thinking about it as I shut down the work site for the night and looking at what I have left to do… and I’ve only gotten rid of maybe half of the mountain. Half. The nearly completed foundation is… mocking me and reminding me that I’m not finished with it and the longer it takes for me to get to finishing it, the “harder” building it is going to be but, yeah, are we having fun or what?

I am. And not. I don’t have to do this but I’m going to. I started it and I will see it through because I’m not a quitter and this mountain isn’t going to defeat me… well, this time.

Time to go to work. There’s still some mountain to be moved and while I can’t move a lot of the mountains that life can put in my way, I can move and remove this one.