Minecraft - The City

Well, it's been a long while since I posted anything remotely interesting on here, so here's something I've cooked up with assistance from Eksfaktr, Malachai, and a number of other sorts of folks.

Our project is to create an actual, proper "city" in Minecraft, in the sort of way a real city might be built. We are, of course, using Creative Mode, as mining all these materials by hand would probably increase the time it takes to build this by about 20 times (even more for the sheer amount of gold, lapis lazuli, and yellow wool we're using). This is still a work in progress.

The basic configuration is a single city block - the interior of the block is 24 blocks by 24 blocks, bordered by stone half-blocks as a sidewalk. A road surrounds this sidewalk which is 5 blocks wide, with road lines (yellow wool) indicating lanes and crosswalks. Sure, there aren't any cars in Minecraft, but just in case it happens...

Our idea here is to create a believable city, with notable landmarks and buildings that obviously serve a specific purpose...and once we're done building it, turn the monsters on, revert back to Survival mode, and try not to die.

I really apologize for the haphazard way I'm arranging these images. Blogger's Compose editor really sucks and I don't care enough to learn HTML the "proper" way to fix it.

 It starts with our base of operations: EksWeasel Apartments. It's a small apartment stack (only enough room for two small-ish rooms), but each apartment has just about all the furniture an average Minecraft player would need - a bed, a workbench, a large chest, a couple of furnaces, and a record player (just because I can). This building was designed more for aesthetics than actual utility, but I imagine it'd stand up to a few Creeper assaults, given my use of stone bricks and iron bars. The only thing I'd really worry about is the glass breaking, and even then, most of the windows have "suicide prevention" bars outside of them...

A front view of the Apartments. Yes, the Apartments come with free HBO, but unfortunately I didn't have room to put in any TV's without knocking down a few walls.

Off to the right, we have the interior of Eks's room. His is slightly larger than mine, just from the quirks of how the building was built. I should note that no prior planning or drafting goes into these buildings - I'm very much a "spur of the moment, stream of consciousness" type of builder.



Progress shot #1. This came just after the Apartments were built. We've only got two city blocks finished here. Fun fact: this city is actually nowhere near the spawn area, and even with a map, you have to travel a good distance past the south-east corner of the map to find the city.

A view at night (because we lazily didn't bother resetting the time of day despite all of us being server ops). My "street lighting" in action. I can't make the street lights as tall as real ones would be, because torch lighting doesn't actually reach that far.


The second floor up on Eksfaktr's office building. His idea is to just make foundations of each floor, complete with carpet patterns, before bothering with trivial things like lighting and stairs. There's a different carpet pattern for each floor. He puts a surprising lot of effort into these.

In these two shots, you can see other carpet patterns. Lighting was supplied by me for purposes of actually making them visible. I really like the sun pattern he put on the third floor. The "diner" pattern, thankfully, can now be made using colored wool; the last time the two of us attempted such a thing (at the GigaBurger restaurant on the ZDoom Minecraft server), we were forced to use snow blocks and obsidian.

Exterior view #1 of a Dubai-esque luxury hotel suite, which I dubbed the "Prince of Persia." The rooms actually aren't that big, considering that we're working with relatively limited floor space given the 24x24 city block size, but I managed to fit four of them on the upper floors. The "P" sign was Malachai's idea.

And here's the other end of the hotel. This actually looks a bit better if I turn smooth lighting off, but you get the idea - the building is actually wedge-shaped and curved on the back. The fountain at the front is a really simple addition that needed one bucket of water and a simple barrier (part of which is actually the sidewalk).

It's almost like a different world up here. This is the rooftop of the Prince of Persia, with fancy lapis walkways bordered with gold. From here you can see the table I built. What didn't end up in this picture is that, on the other end of the roof, there is a swimming pool with a diving board.

One of the rooms at the hotel. I tried to integrate everything into the curved design of the building, but this ended up being slightly troublesome. Each room has a small tub of water, two double-beds, books, a large TV (bottom left corner of the photo), one furnace and one dispenser.

The lobby. Even if you're just sitting and waiting, at least there's lots of reading material. Would have done more with the glowstone lights, like perhaps a full-on chandelier, but the ceiling isn't quite high enough to prevent it from becoming a hazard.

Progress shot #2, after the finished Prince of Persia and a city park (i.e. lots of dirt and trees). The fact that there was a sunset going on is a complete coincidence and not an attempt by me to pass this off as artsy.

Inspired by a certain recent game that came out that month, Malachai and I set to work on building a LIMB ("Liberty in Mind and Body") clinic. Mal took care of the interior, while I mainly handled the logo on the outer wall. Minecraft blocks don't really have the resolution needed to capture LIMB's logo in full fidelity, but well, I made a decent enough attempt at it.

Interior of the LIMB clinic, in progress. The vaulted ceilings are mainly due to us having not put in the proper ones yet. I have, however, installed the major feature here: the purchase terminal. Because we need our Praxis kits and hypostims.

In the lobby facing towards surgery. I've faked fluorescent lighting by embedding glowstone in the ceiling. This looks a lot better if you're using a custom Painterly pack and made the glowstone less crystalline in appearance. You can also see Malachai standing on top of my reading material, in the guise of Minty Fresh from A Dirty Job.

Progress shot #3 with the LIMB clinic finished, as well as a radio tower on top of that natural rocky outcropping and a school campus installed (with a helipad on the gym, because I bloody felt like it). After this shot was taken, more city blocks were constructed, and I eventually built another GigaBurger restaurant.

Progress has kind of stalled on this in the last month or so, but mainly due to most involved parties being kind of bored and getting a lot of real-life obstacles in the way. But hey, I felt it was worth sharing the pictures I'd accumulated.