Minecraft: Upon Pillars of Sand

| Tuesday, October 11, 2011
NPCs are idiots. They built this really nice village, then apparently fled, despite having more than enough torches to keep away hostile mobs. Except in the biggest house which had one torch, not enough to prevent a creeper spawning inside. And what I suspect was their watchtower or church, or both (though it lacks bells), which also had insufficient lighting on the upper levels.

This isn't the full stupidity. There is also the location. I haven't fully explored it, but on at least two sides of it, there are caverns. This means that the sand that is the basis of the desert can, if disturbed, collapse, into a cave that players need to dig out of. I'm actually understating it. On one side it's a small cave, apparently too narrow for hostiles to spawn inside. On the opposite side, there is a larger cave system, mostly unexplored by me, which extends an indeterminate distance under the town. What I have found suggests that it goes very far in several directions. The sounds I hear under the sand in other areas suggest that the cave system may go entirely under the town, possibly at a very shallow depth.

The town is built on pillars of sand.

I'm currently leveling it all out, to get flat roads, though is a major slope on one side and so I have to let it be a bit higher. Stage two is going to be digging out the bottom of the town and adding a foundation of stone, layered again with sand and gravel. This is to ensure that I don't cause a major cave in while trying to explore the caves. Instead I'd cause the major cave-in while digging at the surface, which I think might be better.

Future stages will call for the repair of a farm plot that fell victim to a creeper attack and the dynamiting of some nearby hills that overlook the wall. I plan to fill the resulting irregular holes with water. The ocean isn't far away and I have a bit of iron for buckets.

In the meantime, while I work up the will for a major project like digging up the entire town, I built another small house for storage and added a basement to the biggest one, with lots of windows so it doesn't feel closed-in.

As part of the beautification effort, I will, someday, clear out the valley being created by my excavations, smoothing out the bumps and opening it to the sun. Then I will line it with dirt, drop some water in, and plant trees. It will be a valley of life next to my strangely deserted town.

4 comments:

Bronte said...

I love these emergent stories from MineCraft. And I think I will have to play some tonight!

Tesh said...

These are the stories that should be the "fourth pillar" of gaming. ;)

Klepsacovic said...

@Bronte: I'm glad you're enjoying them. I think I'll have more.

@Tesh: I'm not sure this is the basis of a very good game. Can you imagine the quests I'd give? "Go kill ten creepers in that cave." And of course I'd ask the next person to kill ten creepers, because the first jackass didn't lay down any torches so they all respawned. Or worse, he did, so then there are no creepers and he can't do the quest. Then there are the gathering quests, 64 wood, just one god damn redstone because I have been digging all this time and not found a single one, despite nearly dying many times.

Tesh said...

I'm not really talking about this as a fourth pillar within a particular game, though I have before. I'm talking more about the potential to *build your own narrative* (just within your own head if nothing else) and how that becomes a story you then share. It's the point of gaming, I think, and how it differs from movies. Everyone talks about a movie's story afterwards, while everyone talks about their own story when playing Minecraft. It's a different entertainment experience.

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