A Gaming Diary
Mac
Minecraft (Mac)
Aug 25th
Done a fair amount of work on my castle lately.
There’s a new section below the Secret Shrine.
There are new towers over the throne room.
The graveyard walls are now covered in moss.
It's not as awesomely impressive as other buildings on the server, but it's mine.
I’ve even got a couple of waterfalls. (And, yes, there is a secret passage linking them.)
Mostly, though, I’ve been exploring a massive cave system I discovered under the hills near my castle where I’d been mining. I found a couple of (non-working) monster generators and some empty chests. (Apparently you get stuff if you destroy the chests, but I didn’t know that at the time and have never been able to find them again.) I did, however, get enough gold to top my throne and enough diamonds to make a wall of jukeboxes in my guard house.
Minecraft (PC/Mac)
Aug 23rd
I added a glass-domed tower to my castle at the weekend. Shame I forgot to take a screenshot of it, really. To make up for it, here’s a picture of a duck in my graveyard.
Quack.
This lunchtime I spent a very therapeutic forty-five minutes or so constructing a wine cellar.
Wine racks.
Okay, so the new fences don’t make very good wine racks, but I can’t think of anything better right now.
Minecraft (Mac)
Aug 20th
Sorry for the lack of updates, but it’s a difficult time right now – my wife and I got some very bad news earlier this week.
While I’ve been offline, though, someone built a road outside my castle, so now I’m linked in to the rest of the server.
Follow, follow, follow, follow....
That’s very nice.
I’m hoping normal blogging service should resume next week.
Minecraft (Mac)
Aug 17th
The evolution of my castle on the multiplayer server I talked about yesterday.
As it was yesterday, not much more than a tower.
I built on the back.
Then I built a courtyard garden on the front.
Here you can see the courtyard on the front.
Time to sign my work.
Building a big entrance way and hall on the front of the castle.
I didn't like the way it looked, so I built a guardhouse by the main entrance.
A view from another angle after some more tidying up.
The view from above.
It’s not as impressive as a lot of the other things that have been built on the server, but I like it.
Minecraft (Mac/Web/PC)
Aug 16th
Yes, I used all three clients over the weekend. I played it on my desktop PC at home (a winter wonderland I forgot to take a screenshot of) and using the Mac and browser clients in the office. (I had to come in on Saturday and Sunday over the weekend, briefly.)
But, today, I’m not going to show off my single-player achievements, instead I’m going to show you some of the stuff that’s been built on the BeeX server.
What you see when you log in.
And this is what you see when you turn round. The tunnel links a lot of the stuff people have built.
A statue I made (which then was added to be an unknown user).
My great beardy tower. You can jump from the top, which is as high as the came lets you build, into a pit that goes down to the bottom of the world. It kills you, but it's fun.
Strange, oddly beautiful towers.
Roads, walls, towers and more.
Castles are popular - and very impressive.
Dimrill's castle is simply amazing.
It's even got a library.
Graffiti, Minecraft style.
And that’s just a tiny fraction of the amazing things people have built on the server.
What’s nice is how well everyone’s been playing together. I don’t think there’s ever been any intentional vandalism, people have found open, unused areas of the world and made their homes there.
Minecraft (Mac/Web)
Aug 12th
After spending some time exploring massive caverns beneath the earth, I decided to build a stairway as high as it could go.
Building the staircase was stressful.
I fell off several times making it, but always found my stone and steps.
The view from the top.
Once it was as high as it would go, I made a platform with a couple of holes in it and poured lava down one and water down the other. I was hoping for some obsidian when they met at the bottom, but it was not to be.
The falls.
Still, it’s fairly successful, I think.
Minecraft (Mac/Web)
Aug 11th
I just lost everything.
I was building a big tower to make a lava-fall and I fell off the top and died.
Ran back, but couldn’t find my stuff anywhere, except a couple of bits of stone. That’s a bucket, full set of iron armor, diamond pickaxe, etc. all lost forever.
I had just enough iron in storage to make another bucket, so I managed to complete the lava fall, but now I’ve got to go looking for more sources of metals and diamonds to replace all my stuff.
At least I had a good stock of stone and iron pickaxes and some food.
It glows!
It’s a nice lava-fall, but I don’t think it was worth it.
Minecraft (Mac/Web)
Aug 11th
I decided to make a giant stone face, full of sadness, then use water to mimic tears streaming down its face.
A very good idea.
But things didn’t work out as I’d hoped.
The Crying Man.
I still think it’s a good idea, but that version isn’t very good at all.
Must try harder.
Minecraft (Mac/Web)
Aug 10th
Things I have done in Minecraft, a pictorial guide.
Built a statue holding a flaming sword.
Built a house for myself inside a hill.
Carved out a staircase into the depths of the earth.
Fought terrifying creatures hundreds of feet below ground.
And that’s not even the half of it.
Minecraft (Mac/Web)
Aug 9th
The indie game sensation that everybody seems to playing right now.
It’s baffling at first and I had to read forum threads to work out what the heck I was meant to be doing, but I’ve wormed my way in. I’ve made a nice little house inside a hill and below it have a sprawling mine network.
The main room in my house.
I’ve found lots of coal, but only small amounts of iron and gold.
My first night was terrifying, sat behind a door in the dark, hearing terrible sounds all around. Since then, though, I’ve been mining at night and haven’t had any problems with monsters.
