Lingarn's Structures
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Hello,
I’ve decided to start logging some of the various things I’ve built. This will be updated and organized over time, but for now, here is an overview of the things I’ve built:
I will update with more details later on!
Best Regards,
Lingarn
Zombie Statue
The idea for the zombie statue was actually inspired in part by Kaosubaloo’s self-portrait in his Golden Saucer, and in part by the guard towers that were being built all around New Spawnville. I thought that it would be neat to create a lifelike monster attacking the town, that also qualifies as pixel art.
Construction was relatively straightforward. I harvested some of the wool from the public sheep farm, and dyed the rest myself. Green took the longest, because I had to smelt cacti to get the actual dye. I set up fabrication inside the zombie itself — you may not realize it, but the zombie is a bit like the Statue of Liberty. There is a door in the back, and you can climb all the way up to the top of the head. It gives a really unique view!
The Great Library of New Spawnville
The idea for a library for New Spawnville came up in chat with, I believe, Taborlin. Whereas Taborlin’s idea was to make a version of your local library (which is really well done, and very close to the spawn fortress), my idea was more like the Great Library of Alexandria — something that could house all the knowledge of the Server of Awesome, and was in itself a spectacle to behold.
The pillars that hold up the building (between the glass walls) are actually hollow — this was useful for making ladders between the floors, but also meant that monsters would occasionally spawn inside of them while they were being built. The hardest part of this build was the windows, because they are so high — I would have to put up a scaffold, add as many panes as I could reach, and then break it down and move over to the other side of the window.
I really like how it turned out, though — and as of writing this, we have more than ten books (including a few chapter books) in the library!
Light on the Water
This is a one-off art installation in Mopkins’s town. It starts as an inverse pyramid made of glowstone, with water flowing both inside and over the edges. On top of that is a series of glass walkways, leading up to glass arches that support a floating ball of glowstone and glass, also pouring water into the pyramid. If you are a good swimmer, you can enter the pyramid through the bottom to get a better look.
Mopkins’s town is filled with all sorts of interesting structures, so if you have never been, I highly recommend checking it out.
Docked for Repairs
This is a little wooden ship I built as a means of advertising the fact that there was a new area of New Spawnville to build in. Though I was originally considering making an airship of some sort, I ended up leaving it as a simple sailing ship.
The area it is in had just recently been cleared of trees, lit to avoid monster spawns, and levelled a little in order to facilitate new building a bit further away from the main area of New Spawnville (as people were starting to complain about lag). Since these pictures were taken, a number of buildings have popped up in the area, including the Lawman Headquarters.
Home
This quaint structure, built into a hillside, is my original home on the New Server. It was designed with the intention of creating as little disturbance of the environment as possible — before the weather switched, I had built in a beautiful area surrounded by multiple kinds of trees next to a lake. After the weather changed, the lake froze over.
There isn’t much to say for the interior — it was built for function, not form. It has farming and ranching facilities, and a mine that goes down to bedrock.
The lights you can see under the ice are a series of underwater tunnels (which, given how shallow the lake is, are a bit silly). The holes in the ice are from near-misses with creepers.
The Tower
I originally started building this tower out of twin desires: to have a place that was safe from monsters, and to have something to do with all of the extra cobblestone that was coming out of my mine.
With that in mind, I laid foundations near by home, and started buildling up. My original idea was to build up to max height (which was lower at the time), and then set up a nice house and garden, or possibly a statue. I completed the tower and started to set up something on top, but the height limit was raised before I finished. As such, I had no choice but to keep building up, and up, and up! You can clearly see where the old tower ended, and the new tower began. By the time I reached the top, my idea for the tower had changed considerably.
Instead of buildling a house for myself, I decided to make the upper portions of the tower into a plumbing experiment. I set up two waterfalls and two lavafalls, and set about adding holes and infrastructure to allow them to cross paths inside the tower to create different patterns outside the tower. This was fraught with danger, because I didn’t design the plumbing before starting the lava — so I had to troubleshoot at death-range heights with water or even lava flowing at me if I was wrong. I still intend to go back and add more layers of plumbing, when I get my nerve up.
To decorate the bottom of the tower, I added sprites of two of my favorite characters — 8 bit theater’s Black Mage, and Dr. Horrible.
The interior of the tower was dug out all the way down to bedrock, but has since been filled in with more farming experiments.
In some of the pictures you can also see a glowstone/glass forest I started building — the idea was to replace tree trunks with glowsone, and the leaves with glass, from actual trees that were growing in the area. Progress halted in part because it didn’t look quite the way I thought it would, and in part because I could replace a limited number of trees before night would fall and creeper attacks would start.
Something in the Sea
This is my third research site, primarily underwater and inaccessible from outside of my locked tunnels. This research facility was built partially because I am a big fan of Bioshock, but also so that I could conduct experiments that were deemed too hazardous for my other research sites. My primary research site had livestock and crops, and my secondary research site (which I will detail in a future post) had villagers to worry about. This underwater facility was not only far away from either of those sites, but by virtue of being underwater it is also easy to flood in the event of a containment breach. Remember, kids: Always have a doomsday plan in the event of catastrophic failure of containment. This facility also allows for the observation of underwater flora and fauna, which is why I scattered glowstone around the nearby sea bed.
Unfortunately, this facility is largely still under construction. A few chambers have been completed, and a source of test subjects (read: zombie spawner) has been located in a controlled environment, but it will take a lot of work to make this into something worth touring.
A few of the villagers from Research Site 2 found their way into my tunnel system, and were kind of a pain to get out. It was easier to herd them to Research Site 3, and set them loose there. Rather than let them die, I built them a little seaside village with a lighthouse, a small farm, and a chicken coop. Their descendants show every sign of a thriving community. And if I ever need non-zombie test subjects…
Research Site 2: NPC City
The project that I’ve probably put the most work into is Research Site 2, what I have come to call NPC City. I was originally interested in learning more about NPCs, and how they propogate, the best kind of structure for them to live in, and so forth. A lot of this information could be found on the wiki, but the wiki’s observations aren’t always entirely reproducible in the game.
This project started with a big empty strech of plains, two villager eggs, and a dream. The first step was to create a temporary base (you may note a squat cobblestone and glass structure in the pictures) from which to build and in which to hide through the nights. From there I set out building a town square with roads radiating out, levelling the ground and adding houses as I went. My original houses were not optimal — they were more about substance, and less about packing the maximum number of doors to generate the most possible villagers. These houses surrounded the original square, and still do.
I quickly switched over to a simpler, more villager-efficient house modifying a six-door design I found on the wiki. An important addition was glowstone to each house, to decrease the probability of monster spawn. Though I didn’t intend it at the time, this six-door design was central to my vertically modular housing.
Before villagers were added, I cleared a space five blocks from the road around the town, and built a fence two-blocks away from the road. This fence kept villagers in, and most monsters out, except spiders. Some of the golems ended up on the wrong side of the fence, but this was actually useful for keeping monsters away.
The original village also had a well, a church, some stalls for a market, a small blacksmithy, a couple of small wheat fields, and a small pen for animals.
(continued)
Before long, however, it was clear that I had used up all of the space I had inside the fenced area. The number of NPCs I had was good, but I thought that the space could be used more efficiently. To that end, I began experimenting with increasing the number of doors per house through vertical expansion.
It turned out that because six doors left space on alternating walls, I could run a staircase up one wall and build an identical house on top. This enabled me to quadruple the number of villagers that could be supported on a single square of land. I decided to stop at 4 levels more because of aesthetics than engineering — in principle, I could make a house that goes up to the height limit.
It wasn’t long, however, before the maximum amount of space available was once again used up. The original village, though managable, was becoming too small.
This led to the next major phase of expansion: Wall building.
Unsatisfied with the number of spiders that came into my village each night, I decided to build a wall around an expanded area, rather than just a fence. From the fence, I went a set distance in each direction, and started to build. The height of the wall is uniform at the top, but varies depending on the height of the nearby terrain. I decided to use two layers of wall, with a layer of space in between. This much larger area was then lit and flattened, to allow for building. Towers were added to the corners, and a gateway into the city.
With so much space to expand, I began to realize that building just houses out in all of these spaces would likely produce a number of villagers that would kill the server. Though it would be interesting to determine how many villagers would be required, I felt that this experiment wasn’t worth the likely banning (or mass murder of my villagers). At this point the village had also expanded well beyond the original parameters of the experiment, so I decided to make things that would increase the quality of life for my villagers.
Rather than detail these chronologically, I will skip to the end.
One of the structures built was a hospital, in case the villagers get sick.
I also built a School for Young Villagers, complete with a playground (growing minds, growing bodies!)
There is also an Ampitheater, for various performances and cultural events.
There is also a restaurant with outdoor seating for those warm summer nights, and a library.
There is also industry: A functioning mine, sectioned off for safety, with a bunkhouse.
There are also rumors of a cult located somewhere in the city, but I think these can largely be disregarded.
The other primary feature of the city is the castle.
The castle was built in several stages, which I will describe through pictures rather than words. Suffice to say, the castle has a main hall, tapestries, cooking facilities, a prison, a guard room, a forge, a wizard tower, and plenty of room for serfs.
Truly, the city has come a long way from its humble beginnings.
And further expansion is ongoing.
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