the mind block

Bit of a short update today. I’ve roughly sorted out where the remaining walls are gonna go along the southern edge. I’d like to connect both satellite mounds by bridge, but don’t know what style to link them by. I imagine I’ll connect them either by drawbridge or some kind of simple arching bridge. Despite this construction I still don’t have a very clear idea of what style of base I’ll commit to. I know I’d like to have some kind of tower at each of the satellite mound, but however that’s topped will be determined by my main building.

I put together a massing sketch of the kind and size of buildings I’d like to add in the future as a scale to guide how large the main castle should be. That said, I’m most likely leaning toward a large central tower up on the mountain.

On an unrelated note, I’ve had issues getting shaders to work properly in Optifine lately. My system used to run them effortlessly with high settings, but now I can’t get anything above 10FPS. It’s nothing game breaking, but I’d love to be able to spin up shaders like Chocapic again.

In order to get back into the multiplayer spirit of the game I joined the Hermit Veterans server to reconnect with old friends. The server was created a while back when the Blockhermit server showed signs of shutting down. At the time I had never joined it so the players there could manage and create their world on their own, and to make things more complicated I was starting school so it didn’t make sense to venture somewhere new anyway.

After countless hours spent roaming the server I finally came across a cozy cherry blossom hillside located next to a village. My initial instinct was to build atop the hill in the trees, but doing so would defeat the purpose of looking for a spot with a good view. Instead I opted to build further out to be closer to the village. There’s a region pole floating up in the trees, but that’s something I can always manage at a later time.

I began by mapping out 7×7 grids (5 spaces between identified blocks) along the ground where I’d like to build. The base will surround the large hole in the ground that will provide easy future access to the caverns below. I explored below and found a spider spawner—gonna add that XP farm to my to-do list later on!

I’ve arranged for a couple of bridges that’ll span between hilltops. I think I’ll place a couple of towers along the south side that’ll overlook the water to the west. East of those towers I started laying out a snaking path that follows around the bend and leads players towards the village. Speaking of villages, I have plans to move the original village closer to my base where I can set up villager shops and farms.

When I started college back in 2018 I took a hiatus from Minecraft to focus on my studies. Before that point the game had consumed all aspects of my life. Apart from the usual mining and crafting I used to spend my mornings, afternoons, and nights dreaming and researching architectural plans and facades that I could incorporate into my builds. Once school ended I continued to drift away from that hobby. Years later I still miss those dreams.

Now I’m back on the grind putting in a few hours a week, documenting some of my process with a website and the fediverse. It’s just an experiment for now, so let’s see how that goes!