It’s funny sometimes when working on projects like this. It seems like no matter how extensively you plan, you always encounter some kind of a roadblock.

But for every problem, there is a solution.

Pardon me while I take a sip from my half-full glass.

During the last few sessions I had with Minecraft, I was beginning to feel a bit stifled.

With Steamwhistle Port, I wanted to keep everything very neat and very concise, so that it would reflect the kind of people who lived and worked here. I wanted there to be a very clear residential district and commercial/business district.

So basically, as I see it now, everything north of the palace will be mostly commercial, and everything south of the palace will be mostly residential — although, I doubt I’ll be building too many more houses.

I’m only going to be able to expand the settlement to the north and east from now on, which is great, because it’s going to make the palace the focal point of the settlement, which is why I built it to be elevated over the town a bit.

I set out to build an herbalist shop in the newly terraformed area north of the palace. I got to sketching out a rough floor plan for how I wanted it to be laid out.

As I was planning, it became clear that this was going to be a rather large building. But in my mind, this conflicted with my original vision of the project. It was clear that this wasn’t going to end up being an herbalist shop.

When I took a few steps back to review the footprint of the building that I sketched, it became clear that I was going to shift gears and just build whatever the hell came naturally to me. It’s funny what can be produced when you improvise and just go with the flow.

What took shape was Steamwhistle Port’s very own art gallery.

Once I saw the facade of the building, I knew this wouldn’t pass for anything else, really. And I think it turned out fantastic.

Before I decided to make it an art gallery, this building almost turned into a museum, but I realized I was more focused on where to put paintings than anything else, so, again, it kind of just became its own thing.

I was going to hold off on giving this its own update, but I got an idea to try something a bit different when I was terraforming the area around the art gallery.

There’s an area in between the elevated area leading to the gallery and the palace steps/fountain. I stared at it for about ten minutes, and I have a few ideas of what to do with it, but I’m going to let you guys decide what I build there.

Refer to the pictures below to make your decision, and there will be a poll at the bottom.

Catch ya next time!

Be sure to follow me on Tumblr to get all the latest updates.

Stop by the Minecraft forums and leave a comment on the official thread for Crafting an Empire.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me personally at mcfly1.21gigawatts@gmail.com

Keeping with my goals, I recently began work on some more houses within Steamwhistle Port.

If you asked me if there was anything about Fallsview Mines that I didn’t like, I’d have to be honest and say that it would be the lack of houses within the town itself.

Bear in mind, this can be rectified at any time, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be proactive in the present and future. 

Hence, my recent house building.

As usual, I got to clearing and leveling the area I wanted to begin my project. I chose the area that seemed most logical to do this, which was the elevated area in front of the palace.

Once that was finished, I decided that there needed to be a way to actually access the houses. I started to build some stairs.

I originally built the stairs off to the left side, near the gate to enter the palace steps. Then I realized, if this were a real town, once those doors opened, the gate would block the stairway. This is a prime example of the kind of thing that I go out of my way to keep consistent. Obviously the giant gate doesn’t actually swing open, however, building with aspects like that in mind allows me to keep another level of realism within the project.

I ended up building the stairs on the closer side of the wall, near the water.

Next, I began to lay the foundation for the houses.

What I had in mind for the houses themselves was to keep with an RPG theme, to an extent. Think of your favourite RPG (for this example, it works best if your favourite RPG is from the 8 or 16-bit era, but I digress), and think about the houses you see in them. One of my favourite RPGs — in terms of style, among many other things — is Secret of Mana. The houses in that game often feature one, maybe two rooms within them. And many of the exteriors for the houses don’t differ all that much.

To keep the building time to a slight minimum, I decided to go with this kind of idea. The “filler” houses will be similar in structure, while the houses of more importance, gameplay-wise or narratively, will be a bit bigger, and with some variety.

What a “filler” house is, basically, is a house that isn’t going to serve too much of a purpose to drive the story forward, but it’s there to take up space and bring some authenticity to a settlement.

I think that’s what my problem was when I was working on Fallsview — I was trying too hard to make every single house unique, even if they weren’t going to serve any other purpose than to take up space inside the town.

That’s not to say that I’m not putting effort into filler houses. Believe me, everything I do in this project is being done with care and foresight. I’m not here to half-ass anything and waste your time.

So now that you’ve had a good example of what a filler house is, here’s an example of a house that will serve a purpose.

I can say with complete honesty, that that is quite possibly my favourite house I’ve built so far.

Which made what comes next, even more difficult…

This is a house that lies on the path between Fallsview and Steamwhistle Port. It’s something you see just before taking the turn to enter the tunnel into town, and I feel that it fits the tone that I want for the player entering the town for the first time.

I built the house large enough so that when I set off an explosion within the center of the house, only some of the outer structure would be damaged, but the overall “shell” would be recognizable. It’s supposed to be a house that caught fire, more or less.

It was pillaged by a local thieves guild, and set on fire, leaving the residents for dead. I will be exploring the thieves a little more extensively in coming updates.

Thoughts on 1.6:

Overall, I’m very happy with the new patch. Hatches are going to add a great deal of ideas for this project for me. I’ve been wanting to work on a settlement that’s nestled entirely underground, and this will lend a hand to that in a big way. But that’s all I’m gonna say about that for now :D

Also, the tall grass is fantastic and will also be a very welcome addition to the project. Unfortunately, since this is a pre-1.6 world, I don’t have any tall grass anywhere near my towns. But that’s not to say I can’t hack some into my inventory. It certainly makes the land feel much more abandoned and destitute.

Catch ya next time!

Please be sure to follow me on Tumblr to get all the latest updates.

Stop by the Minecraft forums and leave a comment on the official thread for Crafting an Empire.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me personally at mcfly1.21gigawatts@gmail.com

It’s challenging to find the time to work on the project when work begins to ramp up for the summer season. It certainly puts my time management skills to the test. But, I feel like I’m updating Crafting an Empire at a steady pace. Sure, I could update more, but I will almost certainly end up burnt out, and updates wouldn’t contain the kind of substance I would ideally like to see.

Lately, I’ve been getting the urge to begin a larger scale build for Steamwhistle Port. More specifically, I’ve been wanting to add a castle to the area somewhere.

The problem with large builds like castles, at least to me, is that since they take up so much space, it can be kind of risky to hastily place a building like that. I like to plan the position of my buildings in respect to one another. I also like to find the ideal place for buildings, rather than just slap something somewhere for the sake of “progress”.

My philosophy, not just in terms of Minecraft, but in general, is to be proactive, not reactive. Meaning, basically, plan ahead so that you’re doing things the way you want to, on your own terms, rather than being forced to do something because of prior circumstances.

After much planning and consideration, I finally worked up the nerve to begin construction on Steamwhistle Port’s castle.

As you can see, it’s not overly large. When you see the Cartograph map of the area, you’ll realize that the scale of the castle fits perfect with the rest of the settlement.

When planning the castle, I knew I didn’t want it to be just a square or rectangle — I wanted to change it up, even if just slightly.

The grass blocks you see at the stairway there are just makeshift markers to indicate where the exact center of that side of the castle lies. This is a simple trick I use quite often when building.

Following the same motif as the rest of the settlement, I stuck with the same building materials:

• Wool
• Cobblestone
• Stone half blocks, single and double stacked for variety

I kept in mind my original concept for this project, but I also improvised a lot of the smaller details and accents for the castle walls and such. For example, the alternating double and single stacked half blocks on top of the outer wall. It keeps with the same style as the regular city walls, but since I alternate the single and double half blocks, it gives it a fort-like feel. At least I think so.

I had originally planned to break this blog post into a few individual posts. However, I think you guys deserve a big update, so I’m just going to cram it all into one mega post. Hopefully you guys will enjoy the rest of this.

After I finished the outer walls and towers, I began plotting down the framework for the actual castle itself.

When doing this, I had an image in my mind of what I wanted — three towers, taller than the towers on the outer wall and the central tower taller than all of them. I wanted this structure to be visible from all over Steamwhistle Port.

I started with that — three circles, side by side. Then I began to construct the outer two towers first, to give myself an idea of how much taller the central one should be.

Once I did that, I began building the rest of the structure. I guess I got a little but carried away with building, cuz I forgot to take some screenshots in between the last picture and this next one.

Bear in mind, that isn’t the finished product. I haven’t finished the details on the central towers, and I haven’t landscaped or terraformed the earth inside the walls yet either.

I wanted to get the majority of the big stuff out of the way so I could give you guys an update, and then focus on most of the minutia another time.

Next, I began working on the front of the castle yard. Basically when I plotted out the location, I made sure it was elevated above the rest of the settlement. To have access to it, it required a stairway.

I’m not sure what motivated what came next, but it just felt natural to me. With so much water incorporated in the settlement already, I figured it would be a shame not to have any here.

The rest of the surrounding area around the stairway and fountain will receive its much needed facelift in due time.

Having a castle in this town, in my mind, establishes this settlement as being much more major than Fallsview Mines. Which is exactly what I wanted to accomplish.

After I get some more detail into the castle and the surrounding area, I’m going to begin working on some more houses and businesses around town. It occurred to me that this town is severely lacking businesses at the moment. I’ll have to fix this.

Catch ya next time!

Please be sure to follow me on Tumblr to get all the latest updates.

Stop by the Minecraft forums and leave a comment on the official thread for Crafting an Empire.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me personally at mcfly1.21gigawatts@gmail.com

Here we are — post number twenty.

I finally got back to work on buildings in Steamwhistle Port recently. After a few sessions focusing on terraforming the surrounding area and a couple focusing on the overworld, it felt good to start working on some of the main buildings once again.

I started back up with a library.

The people of Steamwhistle Port were more dignified in terms of their appreciation for knowledge. And as such, they were an intellectual population. Clearly this didn’t help them much, because they are all gone, along with the more simple, rustic people of Fallsview Mines.

I think it fits in very well with the architecture of the rest of the settlement. This is the first flat-topped structure, and I wasn’t sure at first how it would blend with the rest of the buildings. But, I’m happy with the outcome.

When I’m brainstorming ideas, I’m usually looking at the inventory of items and picturing what kinds of buildings you would find these things in. That’s about the simplest way I can think of ideas. Bookshelf? Library. Cake? Bakery. Furnace? Blacksmith.

I’m very pleased with how the building itself turned out as well. I wasn’t sure how big I should make it, or how tall. Admittedly, I didn’t even really sketch anything, just a simple floor plan from a top-down perspective. The rest was just improvised on the fly. Which, in itself, is a skill this project has helped me hone greatly.

I also did more work on the overworld. By overworld, I mean the surrounding areas outside of the boundaries of the settlements. I don’t want people wandering aimlessly between towns, so there will be paths with signposts here and there.

You can, by all means, wander and explore. But also, don’t worry about getting lost. I’m going to take precautions against that.

When I was working on the pathways outside of town, I tried to wander around the way I think most people would — I followed the gradual inclines instead of climbing up hills. I just let myself wander naturally and plotted down the path as I went.

And then I came across this gap here, pictured above. When I saw that, I immediately got the idea in my head to build a bridge to connect the two hills.

Then I thought, why would there be a bridge if people could just go down the hill and back up again? I became a bit discouraged in my bridge idea.

After a bit of ruminating, I decided that the area between the hills was pretty flat and wide open… what if there was a dried-up lake bed there?

So I got to work.

To make it more obvious this was a lake, at one point, I decided to build a dock that looked kind of out of place, and still somewhat on dry land. I thought that would really push the point home.

Then, I built a cabin, cuz I knew I wanted some houses between the towns.

The area you’re seeing now is pretty much the route that is going to connect Steamwhistle Port and Fallsview Mines. I’m sure, at some point, I’ll add alternate routes and stuff, but this is going to be primary way you’re going to want to take when you play.

In my last entry, I’m pretty sure I promised that I was going to share with you guys how the quest system was going to work.

Basically, the way I’m envisioning it is that the game will rely heavily on quest chains. If you’ve played World of Warcraft or Fallout 3/New Vegas, etc. you’ll be right at home with this.

You get a quest from somebody/something and it sends you to a specific place to do a specific thing. Along the way, you may get another clue pointing you in another direction and you’ll have to go along that path before you can finish the overall quest. It’s classic, it works, why mess with a good formula?

Without NPCs, though, you’ll need a way to get your quests. I’ve seen other custom maps and games where people post signs telling you when to open certain files that came with the .zip file.

That’s fine and dandy, but to me, somebody who is OCD about the details of your environment, it seems very out of place to have dozens of wooden signs posted with the narrative all over it.

So I thought of a way to implement a narrative while still keeping with what we are already comfortable with and have been doing within Minecraft all along.

When exploring the environment, players will come across chests inside houses, buildings, businesses and so forth. Inside these chests, will be pieces of paper “drawn out” into a number — the same way, when we use crafting tables, we “draw” a pickaxe with the materials to correspond with building a real pickaxe.

For example:

You walk into a house, and you see a treasure chest. You open it.

Inside, you’ll see something like this.

The #1 will correspond with a text file within the .zip folder of your map download. The text file will also be named #1.

Not every file you open, or every chest you find will mean a different quest. Sometimes a chest might correspond with a diary or journal entry. These will have the same tone as the files you’d find in Resident Evil or Fallout 3 — they may have nothing to do with the overall narrative of the story, but could give perspective from a person in the middle of what’s going on.

Or maybe you’ll find a file that corresponds with a menu from a restaurant. Or a letter to a friend. Or a ransom note.

Who knows.

My first passion, before Minecraft, is writing and storytelling. So I’m very excited to combine my two hobbies into one. And I’m hoping those who take the time to play this will enjoy playing it as much as I enjoy making it.

Catch ya next time!

Please be sure to follow me on Tumblr to get all the latest updates.

Stop by the Minecraft forums and leave a comment on the official thread for Crafting an Empire.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me personally at mcfly1.21gigawatts@gmail.com

Keeping with what I focused on in the last “main” entry for the project, I didn’t do much work on the buildings for Steamwhistle Port. I’ve been focusing more of my time and energy on shaping and terraforming the surrounding area. That primarily entails putting up the walls around the settlement that you’ve seen.

Basically, I’m trying to get a clear-cut idea of where that boundaries of this settlement are going to lie. I’m much more comfortable building and committing to larger-scale buildings when I know that I’m not going to be disappointed with its position in the end.

What I focused on today was building and placing the second entrance into Steamwhistle Port. This entrance was placed on the other side of the town, closer to the lighthouse.

It’s an exact copy of the door from the other side of town from the last entry. Except, this time, there’s a gaping hole blasted into it, which has compromised the ground around it also, and part of the wall. I did this with actual TNT.

I’m very surprised I didn’t get carried away with it. I’m a bit of a pyro.

One of the tough things about this project is meticulously building something with a certain amount of care and detail, only to “destroy” part of it, for the sake of storyline. I guess it adds to the overall mood, so it’s worth it.

I also got to building a guardhouse on the immediate outside of the gate.

Some of the smaller buildings that don’t have much to them will end up fitting in with the quest system.

I will likely give a preview in the next entry outlining my ideas for quests in this project. I mentioned a while back that I had a unique idea on how to show when to read certain .txt files that fit in with how we already play Minecraft. Well, I think it’s almost time I share that with all of you. Stay tuned.

Next to the guardhouse is a pathway that leads out of town, and to one of the main roads that will somewhat connect Steamwhistle Port with Fallsview Mines. 

Before you leave town, you’ll have the option to visit the beach on the outskirts.

A caution sign warns you of hazards in the water.

Just after the beach, the road leads to the tunnel which passes through the hillside to the territory outside of Steamwhistle Port.

Outside the major towns and settlements in this project, you can expect to discover some much smaller settlements along the way. Maybe a town with a couple houses and a store to scavenge supplies. There may even be a few easter eggs to uncover. Or a dungeon.

Maybe.

After taking some time off from the project, I definitely felt a bit on the rusty side, creatively. But after I jumped head first back into it, I came along.

Hopefully you guys haven’t lost interest in this project, because I’m just getting started, to be honest. There’s a lot of cool things coming up for this project.

As always, I thank you for your continued support and feedback regarding Crafting an Empire.

Catch ya next time!

Please be sure to follow me on Tumblr to get all the latest updates.

Stop by the Minecraft forums and leave a comment on the official thread for Crafting an Empire.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me personally at mcfly1.21gigawatts@gmail.com

I know, I know… it’s been forever since I’ve updated the blog.

I’ve been playing a lot of survival single player on my legit file, along with a bit of the new Mortal Kombat — which, in its own respect, is a great game. I highly recommend it to anybody who grew up with the originals.

I also took some time to make a trip home to see my mom for Mother’s Day weekend. It was nice to get away from the city for a while and clear my head.

But that’s not why I’m updating today. Since the original tutorial post seemed to get such a positive reception, I figured I’d take some time to give you another one.

If you haven’t already read the tutorial for the cabin, I suggest you go back and do so now because this tutorial builds on top of what I’ve established already with the first one.

The Concept

A Minecraft treehouse — to me, at least — it basically your average house you would build, but utilizing trees as stilts to provide some elevation to your base.

The treehouse should be as organic as possible. And by that, I mean, you should shape the leaves as much as possible to create your structure. The finished product should not simply be a house built on top of a tree. But rather, to combine the two elements harmoniously. You’ll see.

The Materials

• Lots of wood blocks
• Wooden planks
• Saplings, at least 5 (and preferably the default saplings)
• Glass
• Sugar canes
• Ladders
• Lots of bone meal

The Steps

Firstly, you’ll want to find the ideal spot for this project, which is an area of grass on the water. 

Something like that. Don’t use sand — search around for an area like this. It’s perfect for what you need to do later on.

Clear any trees, and flatten any land that you need to.

After you finish that, you’ll want to extend the land a bit into the water, so that you have some dirt surrounded by water. Again, this is important for later.

In this case, the lot we’re going to be working with is 11x11. Remember what I said in the previous tutorial — it’s important for projects like this to be working with odd numbers!

The dirt/grass blocks that are raised +1 relative to the rest of the area there are markers I’m using to show where the corners of my treehouse will be. I will remove them once I’m ready to plant my saplings. 

For this project, you’ll ideally want these trees to grow into the big, monstrous ones that sometimes spawn naturally. By applying bone meal to these saplings, you’ll run the chance of spawning some of the puny, pathetic trees that I absolutely hate. They are useless.

So to combat this, you’ll need to force them to grow into the biggest possible tree they can. To do this, we’ll build a guide. Rather than trying to explain this first, I’ll show you a screencap.

That contraption there is three blocks above the saplings. The empty row in the middle is directly above the sapling — this is crucial. Having this opening allows the sapling to grow, but forces it to grow into the massive trees. There are a few variations on how to build this, but I go with standard dirt blocks and this pattern.

Now, you’ll want to apply your bone meal to the saplings. Unforunately, you may have to spam the bonemeal on the sapling until it grows. Sometimes it takes a few, sometimes it takes a stack. Hopefully you’ll get lucky.

Once you’ve finished, it should hopefully look something like that.

Go ahead and remove the dirt from around the trees.

Next, you’ll want to begin placing some wooden blocks — not planks — along the inside of the tree trunks. Place them about four blocks above the ground.

The reason we’re using wooden blocks is to break up the monotony of using wooden planks for the floor. It will also serve as a marker soon.

Next, begin placing wooden planks inside the wooden blocks you just placed. This will be your floor.

Once you’ve finished that, find the very center of the grass and place a torch to mark its place.

Then, remove a 3x3 area of wooden planks from directly above the torch, making sure that the middle of the 3x3 area is directly above the torch.

Once you done that, replace the torch with another sapling. Repeat the steps you did before with the original saplings — spam bone meal until it grows. The trunk of this tree will provide you with a place to put your ladders to get into the treehouse.

I should also take this time to say that your trees will, in all likelihood, be completely different shapes to mine shown here. The trees spawn randomly, and as such, you’ll have to improvise a bit in terms of how you apply these techniques. So be aware of that as you’re building.

You will need to remove some leaves around the top to get into the house.

Also, removing leaves will cause other leaves to despawn. Be cautious of how much you’re removing, but also don’t let it discourage you if you see a lot despawning. This is going to happen regardless of what you do at this point, so just roll with it.

Also, very important, try to refrain from removing too much wooden blocks that naturally spawn within the tree. Removing these causes a lot of leaves to die off and despawn, and if you remove the wrong one or too many, the entire tree will die off. I’m not sure exactly how the algorithm works for this, but I’m pretty sure if you remove the very top wooden block from a tree, most of the leaves die off. Don’t quote me on that though.

You may want to take this opportunity to place some fencing within the perimeter of the trees. This may make the area a little bit safer if you’re playing with hostile mobs on.

Ascend your ladder and try to get into your treehouse. There should be a lot of leaf blocks inside here preventing you from moving about too much. Don’t be afraid to clear some of them out to make room.

Now, remember when I said you’ll be using the wooden blocks as a marker? Well, here’s where that comes in handy. Begin removing the leaf blocks within that area of the wooden blocks. Try not to remove any from outside that area. Remove some from about three blocks high.

Now, start clearing out any of the wooden blocks within the wooden blocks you placed earlier. Kinda confusing, but use the screenshots to your advantage.

You’ll see what I meant when I said removing the wooden blocks and leaves will despawn more of the leaves in the area. This is okay. Don’t obsess over it. That’s pretty much what I tell myself when I build these.

Next, begin putting up a wall around the wooden block perimeter. Don’t remove the wooden blocks in the corners that are coming up through the floor. You want these.

Now, leave one layer above that wall empty, and place some more wooden blocks directly above the wooden planks.

Here’s something like what you should have, at this point.

Here’s where reading the previous tutorial comes in handy — you’ll begin doing the roof the same way as you would with a cabin. The only exception is that you won’t have an extra row of wooden blocks hanging down the side of the building, as it will end up covering the opening you have where your windows will be going.

Repeat this step on the opposite side of the house. Continue constructing the roof the way I illustrated in the previous tutorial.

Also worth mentioning — do not remove any leaves that prevent you from placing a wooden block for the roof. You want this. It gives the house a more organic look, and it obscures the roof a bit. Trust me.

It’s also okay if you have some leaves inside your house. I think it suits the overall feel of the project.

Next you’ll want to add some wooden stairs outside the house, above the windows. Like so.

Adding some windows above the stairs also looks pretty nice, and it provides a bit of natural light inside your house.

At this point, anything you do is really up to you now. The essence of the project has been completed. I’m just going to show what I usually do when I build these types of bases now, but feel free to go at it your own way. Experiment and have fun with the concept.

In my mind, the purpose of this kind of project is to create a house that looks very Earthy, so I like to use a lot of natural materials. Another thing I do, is I like to add a sugar cane/bamboo privacy fence around the real fence on the ground. It adds a nice touch.

Catch ya next time!

Please be sure to follow me on Tumblr to get all the latest updates.

Stop by the Minecraft forums and leave a comment on the official thread for Crafting an Empire.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me personally at mcfly1.21gigawatts@gmail.com

I started playing Minecraft sometime in mid-to-late 2009 — I wish I knew a more precise date, but the specifics escape me, unfortunately. I got my first glimpse of the game through a YouTube channel… again, the details escape me.

The premise hooked me immediately. Build whatever you want, and if you wish to do so, survive against monsters.

After a bit of help from Google, I discovered Minecraft.net and began playing the free version of the game. This was the indev version of the game, I believe.

I liked to dig into hills and hollow them out with a few windows here and there. I’d push my limits and see how lucky I could get with tempting the monsters.

Eventually, the novelty of this grew old, and I began building castles and houses I could live in to survive against the endless horde of abominations. Sadly, I couldn’t save any of my creations, and all of them have been lost.

I held out on buying the game for over six months. I debated with myself about whether or not I thought the game was worth $13 CAD — in retrospect, this isn’t even worth arguing about, as I’ve easily gotten my moneys worth.

In June of 2010, I finally caved and purchased Minecraft Alpha. Before this, I had never played survival single player. It was even better than I had imagined.

At first — as I did with indev — I hollowed out hills, put in windows, and spammed torches to stay safe. Slowly but surely, I learned the mechanics of the game, and I started build simple structures that were by no means worthy of posting to the internet for anyone to ogle.

As I’ve said in the first post of Crafting an Empire, in December 2010, I discovered the Yogscast, and since then, I’ve looked at Minecraft in an entirely different light. That’s when I began building not just a base, or a house, but entire communities with stories behind them.

I began building my first town almost immediately upon returning home from my parents’ house after Christmas holidays. Attempt number one was pretty much a complete failure. There was little-to-no cohesion among the buildings within the community. The scale of certain buildings in relation to one another was way off. I became frustrated with the entire project and I scrapped it.

I decided to start with a clean slate. I generated a new map, and began searching for the ideal spot to begin my new town. This time, I planned it out a little bit more meticulously — although, keep in mind, at this time, I still had no audience other than myself. But I still put the time and effort into making something I could be proud of.

I began to see a bit of improvement in my creations. The small details began to make a big difference in terms of creative quality. I’d build things with a story in mind and I’d incorporate elements within buildings to illustrate those stories.

The project was rewarding to me, but I began to get a bit discouraged from it. I love to entertain people. I love to make people laugh, I love to intrigue people with stories and I enjoy sharing my hard work with others for feedback. I wasn’t getting this by keeping this project to myself. At the time, I still hadn’t had the idea to begin this blog.

Even before this blog, I would use Cartograph to keep a “record” so-to-speak to chronicle the progress of my project from point A to B. Perhaps I’ll release those eventually. This would be pretty crucial to the overall crux of this endeavour.

For years prior to this project, I’ve attempted to create a blog that I’d keep up with on a semi-regular basis, but this proved impossible for me, apparently. I just didn’t care about what I was writing. And therefore, I lost interest and gave up completely.

Then, almost randomly, I reconnected with an old, good friend of mine who I grew up with. A friend who shares an almost identically insane sense of humour and appreciation of creativity, regardless of how absurd it is.

After realizing that we both were avid players of Minecraft — again, how random — I introduced him to my creation. A bit awestruck at my obsession, I realized that he really did appreciate my effort and enjoyed what he saw. I, too, enjoyed giving a tour of what I had poured my spare time into. This proved to be the inception of my idea.

I started the Crafting an Empire blog that night.

So Phil, buddy, I know you’re reading this. Thanks for appreciating my craft, brah. See what I did there? Pun shamelessly intended.

You’ll likely notice influences pertaining to many of my current buildings in these screenshots. In a lot of ways, this town has served as sort of a rough draft for much of what you will see my future towns. It certainly was great practice.

I’m now seventeen posts into this project, and I’m still just as interested and motivated to see this through to the end. And I don’t even know what would constitute an “end” to this project. I can’t see myself being satisfied with anything enough to say that this is done. Minecraft is virtually infinite, and therefore, this could go on for a very long time. 

Can something like Minecraft be considered art? I wouldn’t, by any means, be presumptuous enough to label myself an artist. But I have seen things done with Minecraft that I’d consider to be works of art. The game itself, I would argue, is, in itself, a work of art.

In a lot of ways, the randomly generated world we shape with our hands is like a blank canvas, or a handful of clay. It’s what we do with it that defines whether or not it becomes art.

If one defines art by whether or not you could frame and hang something aesthetically pleasing from the wall, then I would definitely argue in favour Minecraft being considered art.

Much of that town hasn’t been completed. As you can see, the two towers in the background were meant to be identical to the one in the foreground, but I couldn’t be bothered finishing them. When I was actively working on this town, if I had an audience, I’d have finished them. But I can’t be bothered at this point.

The picture above is a blacksmith shop, and is almost identical to the building in Fallsview Mines. I like the design so much that I recycled it with a few improvements. 

Above is my interpretation of a castle in Minecraft. You haven’t seen much of that in Crafting an Empire yet, but you will. I’m thinking Steamwhistle Port is nice enough that it deserves some sort of a castle or keep. We’ll see.

I remarked in the last post that I didn’t really have anything to commemorate the blog hitting fifty followers — we’re now at fifty-three. So I kind of wanted to do this as a retrospective on where this series came from. Hopefully enough people enjoy this. I know I’ll probably get a bunch of tl;dr comments. But those of you who enjoy the writing aspect of this series, will hopefully appreciate this post.

As always, I thank you for your continued support and your kind words.

Catch ya next time!

Please be sure to follow me on Tumblr to get all the latest updates.

Stop by the Minecraft forums and leave a comment on the official thread for Crafting an Empire.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me personally at mcfly1.21gigawatts@gmail.com

Well, I’m back from a tiny holiday hiatus. I didn’t do much family-wise for the holidays, but work always picks up during the silly seasons, so I haven’t had much spare time on my hands.

But that’s not to say I don’t have spare time right now.

Keeping with what I said in the previous entries, I’ve continued working on more houses straight off the get-go instead of focusing on businesses and shops.

I started building on the plot of land diagonally-right from the lighthouse, in an area that was just crying for something to be built on it.

Also keeping with the common denominator, I’ve continued with the motif within the town of building with the same materials. White wool, cobblestone, and smoothstone half blocks.

I also kept with the exterior layout of the rowhouses from a few entries ago. I think this is the biggest single house I’ve built so far. The interior isn’t finished yet, but I’ll get to that eventually. I had other plans for my build tonight.

I also mentioned recently that I was going to be working on the town infrastructure — roads, paths, what-have-you — as well as the boundaries. I worked a bit on that tonight.

I extended one of the pre-existing walls a bit and built it up where it felt natural.

And then I built the entrance gate into Steamwhistle Port.

A simple archway marks the entrance to the town. Next, I added a giant wooden door, half open.

I think it looks kinda cool like that, to be honest. I didn’t want just a solid door blocking the entrance, I wanted a way to actually use it.

I also plan to add some guard towers to the corners of the entrance somewhere.

Just as I finished the doors, something rather surprising happened. I finally experienced weather. Which, in itself, is extremely ironic.

Today, in real life, on my walk home from work, I got caught in one of the worst downpours I’ve ever seen. It was to the point where I couldn’t even see about ten feet in front of me because it was raining so hard. To make matters worse, it was extremely windy, and the rain was coming at me.

Luckily, I was near a gas station, so I ran inside and waited for the rain to let up a bit.

So the fact that those two things coincided today is kinda cool.

I still would’ve preferred not to be caught in the frickin’ rain though.

But to finally see it for myself in Minecraft was very cool. I like it. Especially within this town I’m working on now — it was very atmospheric.

Also, on a very good note, Crafting an Empire has hit fifty followers! That is absolutely awesome to me. I thought I would be lucky if five people thought this project was interesting enough to follow regularly, let alone fifty of you guys. That’s just fantastic.

I wish I had something special planned for this, but I really don’t unfortunately. Hopefully by the time I hit one hundred followers, I’ll have all the kinks worked out regarding my Let’s Play series.

I worked a bit on that in the last little while, and I’m not having much luck with it, to be honest. My footage is rendering fine and my commentary is decent, but I’m having trouble with lowering the audio in-game so that you can hear me clearly. I lower the in-game audio to around 3% and yet, still, when I break leaves or dig up dirt, you can’t hear me worth a damn. Very frustrating stuff. But I can see it being totally rewarding once I get the hang of it.

Thank you all for your continued support of this project, and stay tuned, I’ve still got some cool stuff planned for the future!

Catch ya next time!

Please be sure to follow me on Tumblr to get all the latest updates.

Stop by the Minecraft forums and leave a comment on the official thread for Crafting an Empire.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me personally at mcfly1.21gigawatts@gmail.com

In the last post, I mentioned a few structures and features I wanted to add to Steamwhistle Port in the coming posts. I was going to begin doing some more work on the infrastructure around the town and work more on some of the boundaries as well. But, I thought that I may only get a couple posts out this weekend and I didn’t want one of them to be of just paths and lightposts.

So I began working on the lighthouse. And, much to my surprise, my original concept for it worked out pretty well and I didn’t have to do much refinement on it.

I knew I wanted the lighthouse to be on the water somewhere — obviously — but I wasn’t quite sure where it would fit nicely. That plot of land above stood out to me. It was already naturally raised up, and it was directly on the water.

After a bit of carving out the land, I got some nice results for the hard work.

The end result was a nice, smooth and flat surface to build my lighthouse. Again, I’m sticking with the theme of white wool for white-finished walls and stone. I think this really distinguishes the town from Fallsview Mines.

Once I finished the lighthouse, I realized I didn’t take up as much space as I intended to, and was left with a fairly large empty space next to it. That’s where I built the lighthouse keeper’s cabin. I used a different method to construct the roof of that building.

For this roof, I alternated double-stacked stone slabs and single-stacked stone slabs. Say that ten times fast.

This gives a nice, round look to the top of the building. I like this method, so I’ll probably keep with it for the rest of the buildings from this point. We’ll see how it looks on largers ones though. It may not maintain its appeal.

Since I’ve been expanding the boundaries of the town as well, I decided to build a bridge connecting the two sections of the town over the canal. I’m probably going to have to build a few of these by the end.

So far, this town is coming together well, I think. Fallsview gave me some practice in how to lay out a town, and now I’m putting what I learned to good use.

I like that you can easily distinguish where you are based on looking pretty well in any direction. That’s going to be a test I use in building future settlements.

Let me know what you guys think so far, and if you have any suggestions on what you’d like to see in this town, be sure to let me know. I always look forward to hearing feedback, be it good or bad.

Catch ya next time!

Please be sure to follow me on Tumblr to get all the latest updates.

Stop by the Minecraft forums and leave a comment on the official thread for Crafting an Empire.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me personally at mcfly1.21gigawatts@gmail.com

In lieu of the main Crafting an Empire project, I’m taking some time to make a post dedicated to my main world in Survival Single Player mode. Everything done in this world is legit — no hacks, no INVedit, nothing. I get my fix with that kind of stuff within my building project. I use them to cut down on building time so I can get the most out of the time I have to play Minecraft.

My SSP world is also played on ‘Normal’ difficulty, so I do contest with monsters from time to time. And I do not switch to peaceful mode when I’m exploring cave systems either. I used to switch back and forth, but for this file, I’ve kept monsters on the whole time.

I used to be completely terrified to step foot in a cave with monsters on, but since I’ve taken the time to learn how the spawning system works, and how to deal with monsters at close quarters, it’s been much more fun. Still scary, but also fun.

The house I’m focusing on here is going to be my second house — the one I made a legit building project out of. I had a shelter I used while I gathered materials for the main house, but that’s been long abandoned.

The house is two floors with a basement underneath. It’s mostly comprised of big, empty rooms, unfortunately. Aside from the bedroom and the basement, the house is empty. I did this, however, because I wanted to have some extra space now, so that in the future, in case Notch does add some features for houses or bases, I’ll have room for stuff without having to add on to the main structure.

As you can see, I like having lots of windows. Having natural light is a major bonus, but it also allows me to see where all the monsters are. Especially creepers. Which is why you don’t see many trees in my yard at all. Especially now that I’ve been seeing monsters spawning on top of trees.

Pics or it didn’t happen?

I can think of almost nothing worse in Minecraft than having a creeper drop on top of your head from a tree. As if they weren’t deadly enough.

That’s my bedroom for the house. It’s simple — nothing too fancy about it. A chest, crafting table, jukebox, bed and some books. I like it though. Serves its purpose.

I also recently added the door leading outside. I needed a backdoor of sorts for the house itself, and this just seemed like the most convenient place for me to put it.

That’s the upstairs/attic area of the house. As I said, it’s very empty at the moment. But, I’m sure in time I’ll figure out something to put in there.

That’s just the large room off of the first room you come into upon entering the house. Again, empty. Not really too exciting yet.

Next I’ll show you my workshop area in the basement.

My basement is the most “fortress-like” structure of my world, really. The basement has a workshop, an incinerator, a storage room with many different chests for specific materials, a portal room and tunnel access leading back to my first-night shelter, and a few cave systems.

I keep all my stuff very organized. This is half a flaw, I’d say because I obsess over it most of the time.

The incinerator is simply a whole in the wall I carved out and dumped some lava in to create a wall of lava. This a really efficient way to get rid of stacks of materials that I no longer need.

If you’re going to build one of these, and your base is made out of wood, make sure your incinerator is far enough underground that you won’t have any accidents. Trust me, it’s no fun. One of my first worlds I started in Minecraft, I built one of these in it, but it was in the first floor of my basement, with a wooden ceiling — which was the floor of my house resting on top of it.

Coming back through my caves, I heard an unfamiliar sizzling noise. Being relatively new to Minecraft at the time, I thought nothing of it.

Until I walked into my workshop to see the night sky above me, and several smouldering blocks. And then a creeper fell on my head. No lie.

The moral of the story? PLAN.

Pictured above is my shrine dedicated to how obsessive compulsive I am — my storage room. 

The portal room has an entrance with glass windows surrounding it. I did this because I’ve heard rumours of ghasts spawning outside the Nether by portals. Whether this is fact of fiction, I’m not sure, because I haven’t actually witnessed this myself. I hope it’s not true, to be honest.

That tunnel leads to a few mineshafts and a failed monster trap. The trap is now a glorified hole in the ground that drops from the surface world all the way to the bedrock where I have a mining base. I’ve gotten a few pieces of pork, some gunpowder and a chicken floated down it once.

Very inefficient — I need to try again.

An exterior entrance leading directly down to the basement.

My greenhouse which I’m currently using to grow wheat, which is going very well. If you’re wondering where the water is, it’s one block below the dirt and cobblestone. It’s a very neat and tidy method — much nicer than some of the layouts I’ve seen using trenches of water outlining all of the crops.

My sugarcane farm. Chopping off all of them at the middle block yields about a stack and a half of it. Which is why you see books all over in my house. My world is full of this stuff, so it was no trouble to get this started.

And lastly, my dock and boathouse. Simple and to the point. Not really much to say about this.

So that’s that. My SSP world, I feel, is almost as nice and planned out as the main Crafting an Empire project. That should answer some of your questions.

I should be back on track with more updates to the main project this weekend. Luckily with the holiday, I’ve got lots of time off and I’ll be able to work on it a bit. My parents live about two hours from where I’m at, and my girlfriend’s family lives outside the country, so we won’t be doing anything too exciting for Easter.

Thanks for reading, and if Easter is your kind of thing, then I wish you a happy holiday.

Catch ya next time!

Please be sure to follow me on Tumblr to get all the latest updates.

Stop by the Minecraft forums and leave a comment on the official thread for Crafting an Empire.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me personally at mcfly1.21gigawatts@gmail.com