My MineCraft World - First Time Using Mods

I used to be staunchly against using any kind of mod for MineCraft. I was (and still am) afraid that any mod I fall in love with will break with an official MineCraft update or that the people who keep those mods going will end up abandoning them. But after a friend talked me into installing some mods so I could play on his friend's SMP server, I ended up falling in love. Though I'm not entirely sure which there are, I've been able to find that I'm using IndustrialCraft2, BuildCraft, RailCraft, RedPower2, Forestry and NotEnoughItems.

Also, due to how much memory Firefox eats lately, I'm unable to play MineCraft while Firefox is open. So anything I've learned to make was done after jotting down notes in a notepad file cheat-sheet.

Anyway, it's time for screenshots!

This is a Cartograph_G rendering of my world. I happened to spawn on the border between a tundra and desert with a village right nearby. So the first order of business became raiding the chest in the blacksmith (iron sword, helm, pickaxe and four apples) and kicking a pair of villagers out of their house to make it my own.

When a Creeper blew up one of the farms, I cannibalized part of my house's windows to fix it with the correct color wood, replacing it with tundra-biome wood whose name I can't remember~

Here's the interior. I haven't been attacked in the night while using the bed yet, but I always have my sword ready and flail around looking each morning just in case.

I carved out a sweet basement for the machine shop, using all of the sand collected in it to give it some sandstone walls. Sadly, about half an hour after I took this screenshot I finally had enough diamonds to make an MFE to replace my BatBox! Given my newness to the mod I had no idea that the resulting explosion would take most of the insulated copper cables, my extractor and both electric furnaces.

This is the surface entrance to the branch mine I started; it goes down at a half-slab grade all the way to bedrock. Having a BatPack and mining drill really helped with digging the whole thing out. Though three blocks wide, one of those blocks is going to be rails heading all the way to the bottom so I can send storage carts up to a railyard / storage warehouse that I have yet to build.

My current projects are to fix my machine shop (of course), build the railyard and warehouse, and continue my work on adjusting the village I live in. The spawning algorithm is nice in that it makes for randomized layouts but can be pretty horrible at making them look good; at least two of the houses had doors buried behind sand and gravel, there were about eight farms (that I condensed into a single long farm) and everything's just.. cramped. I'm going to move some buildings around, probably build a much larger church in the desert toward the northwest (upper right of the isometric map), turn the blacksmith's house ninety-degrees, continue replacing the gravel paths with cobblestone. Oh, and I'm removing the town well so I can replace it with a marble brick fountain.

Any thoughts and suggestions on things I should do are welcome!

One last thing before I forget entirely: there's a strange, fenced-in area across one of the streets from my house in the village (you can tell which one's mine in the isometric map because it's got torches all over it). That area is going to be a stone brick tower leading up to a platform with a solar array.

Quote from MagusUnion

Nice pics, but do note that your cable setup is experience quite a bit of losses in the wire. For insulated copper cable, each time you exceed 4 blocks in length for a cable, you experience 1 EU/t loss going into your machines. Might want to consider backing the cables down a bit, since you can directly attach a Generator block to a Batbox and send generated power via proximity that way...

So I could set it up in a line with a BatBox/MFE right next to a Generator, and then string cables to each of the machines? Even with four or five of them running at once I was still able to have them all going at full power with just charcoal burning in the generator. I was also a bit worried if I was losing any power of having issues due to the way the cables all interconnected to each other from above like that. Either way, I get to rebuild it all thanks to my MFE-caused detonation!

And now for some extra screenshots!

Here's a side-view of the large farm. I extended a double-farm by another length and got rid of all the other farms in the village (as there were about six of them). This way it's all consolidated. I also slightly moved the hut you can see to use as a farm office. Inside is a chest with five stacks of seeds and my ruby hoe, and a crafting bench so I can turn all the wheat into bread before bringing it back home. The only way in or out of the farm is through that hut, in an attempt to keep monsters from trampling anything by jumping into or out of the water troughs.

Here's a view down into the slanting path from the surface. It's not so easy to see because of the half-slabs being cobblestone as well, but you can sort of make out how only the left side has steps and the right is being reserved for rails and powered rails.

And it leads all the way down to the bedrock level. The chest is there mostly because of just the mods all added so many more things you can find underground! Plus, I like to save every last block of dirt, cobblestone and gravel for use in other projects. I've got a lot of gravel already mostly from changing the village's roads to cobblestone. The tunnel does go out a short while. Eventually I may place a nether portal down here, or maybe in a secret spot under the town church. >=D

I'll continue updating this thread with screenshots as I progress as I like being able to show off my creations, no matter how simplistic. If I could stream myself playing MineCraft I would every freakin' day, but it's got a strange skippiness while I've got xSplit running. =/

For fun, I've decided to start writing a blog as I play MineCraft on this world. It can be found at http://nameworldmc.blogspot.com/. I can still update here if anyone is interested, though.

Quote from TehFtw

Very nice idea!

But how about Let's play with someone?

I might be up for getting in on a Let's Play, but I honestly hate my voice. I also tend to sometimes have bandwidth issues that cause problems, and my PC isn't the greatest; while I had both electric furnaces, the macerator and compressor all running at once while the generator burned charcoal my game was showing the slightest hints of slowdown. It went away once I left my in-game home and did things in town, but still it was a little worrysome. I guess it just means I'll have to spread my machines and buildings out a bit, hm?

Also I'm not entirely sure what mods I've got or what most of them do. Every time I talk to my two friends with more IC2 experience they mention something I'd never even heard of, some of which (like the rotary macerator) aren't even on the wiki, or at least I couldn't find them. I'm also nervous around new people and am not always the most interesting of people half the time. =)

I am really enjoying writing the blog, though I never realize just how long making a post will take. I stop playing at 4:30am thinking I can bang out a quick entry so I can go to bed and next thing you know I'm hitting "publish" at 5:20 in the morning. It honestly doesn't feel like it takes almost an hour to give a quick run-down of the events of the past few hours. How's the saying go? Time flies when you're having fun? =D

I know the updates have been getting more infrequent lately, but I'm still playing. Sometimes I feel like I'm running out of good projects, or that there just isn't anything interesting enough to warrant screenshotting and posting to my blog. But I'll keep it up. For instance, today I put up the fourteenth post to the blog. =D

Quote from Snoochy

i discovered a long time ago that the Sounds from IndustrialCraft alone will cause client side strain. if you completely turn you Minecraft Volumn to off then you'll notice the lag going away. also if you notice your minecraft going slow then hit F3 and look at the pie graph it'll let you know what's using the most memory. for me it's usually the sound of like 20 recyclers, about 20 pumps and 40 compressors all running together, that alone causes alot of strain on my MC, and if i go across the top of my house at one stop next to my 80 wind turbines i go down to like 4FPS. if i turn my sound off then i have no problems and maintain around 134 fps.

also if you start getting bored of IC2 then download Buildcraft. it have ALOT of things that IC2 doesn;t and is cross compatable for the most part. if you want to see what Buildcraft is about look up "BuildCraft Spotlight" on Youtube by Yogscast.

I actually do have it; the mods I'm running are IndustrialCraft2, BuildCraft, RailCraft, RedPower2, TerrariaTrees.. I think that's all of them, or at least it's the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I thought I had the mod that includes bees and beekeeping but I haven't been able to find any hives.