Minecraft Project, Part 1

Sufficiency

Canada23833 Posts

October 19 2011 22:16 GMT

I decided to build something more interesting than a mere hut on the other day.... just to continue to feed my addition to Minecraft. What should I build, I wonder?

Since my house is near a lot of water (not ocean, regretably), I decided to build a light house. It's somewhat misplaced, so maybe it's more like a radio tower. But oh well.

Plan:

1. all the way to the top of the world
2. built in stone bricks and wood
3. automatic elevator to go up the tower
4. blinking light using glowstones and timer circuits at the top
5. observatory

All of these are in SMP, not creative.

The first thing to do is to find a place to build it and draw the blueprints:
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The center 4x4 is going to be my elevator. I will build walls around it, gradually decreasing its size as the tower goes up.

Since I will be building everything in stone bricks, I need a lot of cobble and a lot of coal. Luckily I got tons of both through my effort to create a slime farm. All there is left is to cook them, so I employed a lot of furnaces:

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Soon enough I got more than enough of stone bricks. Let's start building!

Foundation:

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First level (roughly 8-meters high):

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From the outside:

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Wood scaffold every 8 meters!

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Another 8 meters!

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Another 8 meters (with smaller diameter)!

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Then I realized just stone bricks is kind of boring, so I decided to also add windows in regular intervals.

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Another 8 meters!

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Tower mostly done!

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Like I have mentioned before, I built the tower in segments of 8 meters. Each segment has a window; after every 2 segments the diameter shrinks a bit. There are 6 segments in total. I will still build on top of the highest segment once I install the blinking light and an observatory.

Now it's time for the elevator. I came up with this idea after seeing a tutorial someone else made that involves sticky pistons and pushing the player up staircases in two directions. Then I realized that I can actually build this spirally, which does not require any sticky pistons.

The outer wall for the elevator (which the pistons will be attached to):

[image loading]

Add the circuits and the repeaters:

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Make a lot of pistons!

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Add staircases and pistons!

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Get a button at the bottom.... done?!

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Unfortunately I realized that this didn't work well. This may be due to that there is lag on SMP which screws things up. Basically I would sometimes get stuck in the middle of the elevator. I realized what I need was not a single pulse of current through a button, but multiple, timed pulses that would be send out from a single button press. On the other hand, I don't want to just build a clock generator for perpetual pulsing, as that would probably create a lot of lag. After studying a bit and asking around on forums, I managed to build a RS NOR latch (monostable current) attached to a clock generator.

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NOR latch

The sticky piston controls the clock generator

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This is how it works.

1. Pressing the button causes a current that lasts about 10 seconds using the monostable current.
2. NOT gate before the sticky piston causes it to retract
3. Retracted sticky piston enables the clock generator
4. Clock generator sends pulses to the elevator, each pulse is the same as a button-press in the old design.

This way, in case the user is stuck in the middle, a second pulse will hopefully lift him up more. On the other hand, the current dies out eventually, so the pulses are not perpetual (which causes some lag and annoying noises).

Since this elevator is only one way, I built a free-fall pipe with 3 blocks of water at the bottom.

[image loading]

I'll do the lights and the observatory on another day!

SeRenExZerg

United States401 Posts

October 19 2011 22:24 GMT

i remember reading about building elevators from boats+water, i assume using the boat in the water to simply float upwards.

this seems like a much more awesome way though! minecraft is addicting as hell, be careful lol

Sufficiency

Canada23833 Posts

October 19 2011 22:27 GMT

On October 20 2011 07:24 SeRenExZerg wrote:
i remember reading about building elevators from boats+water, i assume using the boat in the water to simply float upwards.

this seems like a much more awesome way though! minecraft is addicting as hell, be careful lol

I am aware of the Boat + Water thing. It does NOT work anymore.

LML

Germany1760 Posts

October 19 2011 22:29 GMT

great, I never really have that great ideas of building stuff on the surface and sometimes get bored when done with a bigger project>_>'

I once made a 15x15 square from water level to bedrock level and from there i built a sandstone tower to the top of the map, making the hole actually took about two days and alot of pickaxes;)

QuanticHawk

United States32048 Posts

October 19 2011 22:30 GMT

You should add some wool or brick or something to break up that outside a bit!

Lighthouses are awesome. I keep mine basic, lava or glow core. I don't bother with the redstone wizardy. Shit's hard. Plus, I doubt notch fixed the big that makes the clock stop if no one is in the chunk for a certain period of time. The old map on the server I played on, our lighthouse had this problem all the time and needed to be reset.

I used to be anti-creative, strictly build what you have. But our admin on our smp adventure gave some vips creative. It's so damn addictive. I realize I just like building way more than anything else, and the process of mining is just tedious.

Spelunking still rules though

RogerX

New Zealand3180 Posts

October 19 2011 22:32 GMT

Oh.. wow. haha, that's awesome man.

Jedclark

United Kingdom903 Posts

October 19 2011 22:49 GMT

This. Was. Epic.

rebuffering

Canada2436 Posts

October 19 2011 22:57 GMT

god, minecraft is so fucking addictive! havent played in a few months cause i feel its like heroin, once you start a project, it will never end! lol. Great job tho, my friends and I were really into bulding these types of things, one person on scavenging duty, nother gone mining, nother placing stones, etc. Fun times! nice job.

Sufficiency

Canada23833 Posts

October 20 2011 03:55 GMT

On October 20 2011 07:30 Hawk wrote:
You should add some wool or brick or something to break up that outside a bit!

Lighthouses are awesome. I keep mine basic, lava or glow core. I don't bother with the redstone wizardy. Shit's hard. Plus, I doubt notch fixed the big that makes the clock stop if no one is in the chunk for a certain period of time. The old map on the server I played on, our lighthouse had this problem all the time and needed to be reset.

I used to be anti-creative, strictly build what you have. But our admin on our smp adventure gave some vips creative. It's so damn addictive. I realize I just like building way more than anything else, and the process of mining is just tedious.

Spelunking still rules though

What kind of clock generator did you use? It feels to me that with repeaters it should not go out even if no one is around.... but I don't know. If that does happen I will build a button that allows anyone to easily 'reset' the clock.

QuanticHawk

United States32048 Posts

October 20 2011 13:34 GMT

#10

Oh I didn't do it, it was our resident redstone wizard on our server. He hasn't been on in a bit otherwise I'd ask for ya.

And yeah, I don't think it's too hard to reset, but it's just kind of lame to go through all that work and realize that, so I thought i'd just give you a heads up!

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Minecraft Project, Part 1

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