I Ain’t ’Fraid o’ no Ghast

Entry 26 ()

The writer’s block has been blocky lately and an intro just ain’t comin’, so let’s get on to the updates.

First up, I installed the Litematica mod for entirely impractical reasons: I decided to officially, and retroactively, update Roam’s trademark “polished up natural stone” build palette to also cover ores. That’s right, I’m not just replacing stone with stone bricks and granite with polished granite (etc.) anymore – I’m replacing diamond ore with diamond blocks. In the past. With a time machine.

Looking down a diagonal rail tunnel made mostly of stone bricks, with patches of the polished variants of the various decorative stone types. Smaller patches of resource blocks are also visible, most prominently a trio of diamond blocks in the ceiling, along with some iron and redstone.
“I’m rich; deal with it.” (−306 W / −107 N), looking northeast.

(I am also replacing dirt with mud bricks since those are a thing now too.)

This resulted in a couple changes in the storage room and up in the old vault, but most of the differences were actually in the storage system’s redstone room or the rail tunnel to the mine, because of course they were. It’d be silly if I’d actually see the new shiny stuff regularly and not while on the roll.

Looking through a redstone circuit at a backstage wall of the storage room, where the deepslate tiles are interrupted by a patch of cut copper blocks.
Finally had the occasion to tick off Wax On, at least. (−240 W / −194 N), looking southwest.

Next, I worked my way west through the Nether, bridging over rather a lot of lava ocean. And, this time, I decided to take better advantage of the unobstructed views – fireballs be damned.

Third‐person view of a new length of track tube high above a crimson forest. The walls are made of glass, and the tube hangs from the ceiling by a pair of chains every three segments (about 30 m).
Besides the nice, clear windows, these new aerial sections are properly suspended – all the way down from the cavern ceiling – instead of just floating in the air by the magic of Minecraft. (I’m gonna go back and put chains up in the older sections, too, though I think I’ll leave the bars alone instead of swapping for glass.) (−559 W / −24 N), camera looking northwest.
Another third‐person view farther down the track at the end of an aerial segment. The adjacent segment, on and against a landmass, has iron bars for windows instead of glass.
The iron bars aren’t going anywhere for future construction, either – the glass is only for segments that are 100% aerial. (−698 W / −24 N), looking southeast.
Rail junction at the former end‐of‐line. Three warped signs hang from the ceiling, each readable from one direction, with this one indicating “2011 MC West” continuing ahead and “Spider Farm” branching right.
Signs don’t block spawning the way levers and rails do, so to allow for slab floors at this junction in a crimson forest I went with them newfangled hanging signs. Still love the concept; still not really a fan of how much less text you can fit on them. They get the job done, though. Besides – in due time I hope to automate the system, at which point they’ll be made redundant anyway. (−363 W / −24 N), looking west.
A zombified piglin chicken jockey in an unfinished section of tunnel.
Getting to the end of the extension and almost ready to work on the new station, this li’l guy came by to observe the construction progress. (−806 W / −25 N), looking southwest.
A black cat with a red collar on the living room rug back at the house.
Construction required several village runs to load up on glass and glowstone – one of those trips led me to take home another li’l helper. Meet Gracie! (−252 W / −226 N), looking southeast.

Eventually, 2011 Minecraft West Station was finally complete! The layout’s a bit different from usual since it’s right on the main line and not a terminus. (I mean, well, right now it’s a terminus, but it won’t be forever.)

Interior of the new station, made mostly of polished blackstone and deepslate tiles, with a portal at the far end from the track. The opposite wall has a fully‐charged respawn anchor next to a door signed “got gold?”. Other signs note the station name and coordinates, and a hanging sign notes the direction back to Roam.
It’s ended up a little grander than even Roam’s station, actually, but a big part of that was just keeping the signs visible but not in‐your‐face. (−829 W / −24 N), looking northwest.
The station viewed from its portal.
I think it turned out alright. (−832 W / −30 N), looking south.

Stepping on through…

Interior of a small shelter in the overworld. It’s simple, made of oak planks and glass block windows, with a couple torches on the far wall past a red bed and a crafting table. A toast notifies, “Challenge Complete! Subspace Bubble”.
…Challenge Complete! Having come here from Layabout, we break the 7 km barrier and tick off Subspace Bubble. (−6,657 W / −192 N), looking north.
Exterior of the shelter. It’s floating in a lake, with a small landing outside the door. Birch logs act as pillars at the corners, and the roof is made of a few tiers of oak slabs.
The shelter in the Overworld is intentionally simple and, dare I say, crappy. Not just because that’s pretty much my standard, but also because I limited myself to something that could have been built within Beta 1.7.3’s limits (can you believe we didn’t have multiple flavors of planks and plank byproducts back then?) – even the nether portal is the minimal 2×3 size – and also also because this shack in particular is in tribute to my little house on one of the first servers I ever played on, in actual 2011 Minecraft. (−6,671 W / −214 N), looking southeast.

I’m excited! Now we’ve got an easy jumping‐off point for exploring more of the Halo and beyond.

What I’m decidedly not excited about is a bug: MC-255967, “Old chunks that would have Deep Dark biomes below Y=0 if generated newly doesn't completely generate; only Ancient Cities are spawned.”

It’s newly fixed in 1.20.2, which is great, but that’s still 15 months of exploring it’s affected. I’m not looking forward to manually repairing this world again to restore what deep dark I can – and I’m extra grumpy about it because the entire reason I’d skipped 1.18 was to make sure I’d have the chance to find it closer to home somewhere.

In other news:

  • Long, long ago, back when the railway was first established, I opened a nether portal in a desert temple up north, swearing I’d add it to my nether hub and use it as a jumping‐off point for tracking down more villages outside the Core. That never happened. I’m pretty sure I literally never returned there, in no small part because I found the nearby stronghold not too long after and made a portal there, too. So I finally went back and just destroyed the portals on both sides. Now the railway is, technically, complete! Until I open more portals.
  • I fixed – or at least slapped a patch on – Roam’s little ambush issue. I just threw down a glass pane in the center of each landing. I’ll rebuild it properly with slab floors at some point, but I just don’t feel like it right now.
  • Here on the site, there’re a couple small CSS tweaks for intra‐page links. Smooth scrolling is now the default (unless you’ve set a preference in your browser/OS for reduced motion), and there’s a little extra margin on the scroll point so it doesn’t jam the heading you just scrolled to right up against the top of the viewport.

Speaking of the site, it may be awhile before the next update (again). Besides the usual real‐world distractions and discovering Stardew Valley – and the aforementioned need to fix the game world so it actually has deep dark inside the Halo – I’m looking at making some changes to my workflow.

I started working on this thing when the sum total of my experience was “had some dorky homemade sites on Geocities and Tripod a couple decades ago as a literal child; screams in confusion at CSS,” and while I’ve since done a major rewrite and even tweaked Zoner more to my needs/preferences, I want to go further in automating away some of the tedium and restructuring things a bit.

To that end, I’m looking at moving away from Zoner – probably to Hugo or Eleventy. So that’ll take some experimentation time (particularly if I go the Hugo route as a friend recommended – they’re a happy convert, but Hugo looks to be the bigger learning curve of the two by far).

Anyway, changes here probably won’t be too visible – they’ll just take a bit.

Next time: Probably exploring those mountains outside the Halo? Gotta put that new rail extension to good use.