AHH!

That's the best title I can come up with to everything that happened this weekend. Not only was our main server down, but my computer got hacked! Luckily, the only thing that was stolen were my e-mail and facebook passwords. Everything has been worked out now. Good to be back!

Now for the reason you guys read this. MINECRAFT. Well, as you know, I've been working on this witch tower project that I've been really excited about. And I was, until I started building last night and figured out that the clouds go straight through one of the stories of my tower. Still unsure about what I'm going to do about that. May just end up finding some more sulphur and blowing up the whole thing. Yeah, I'm pretty bummed about it. I've just left it alone for now and continued working on the town, which is really starting to look nice. I put in a lot of sidewalk/road area, and started building lanterns to light up the roads. The lantern look is one I stole from Sammy, and I think it looks really nice. To make a lantern like the ones we make, you need the following:

• 5 fence pieces
• a block of some kind to put torches on
• 3 torches
• something to build "up" with (I use dirt, it's the cheapest and easiest to find around my area)

To start, build yourself "up" about three blocks. I say three because I like to have my lanterns four blocks above ground level. You're going to put the first fence post on TOP of the third block of whatever material. I'll just say dirt for this tutorial. You're also going to want to put the block that you're going to put torches on to the side of the dirt block. The side depends on which way you want your lantern to face. I usually put mine in front of the fence posts. Next, put another fence post on top of that block. Then you're going to want to knock the dirt out and put another fence post under the one you just made. Repeat this process until you get to the bottom. Finish off by putting the three torches around it and you have yourself a cute little lantern. I'm putting them up all over my town, because it just looks a lot nicer than random torches on the ground around the roads. Hope you guys can use them too! Also, I'll post a picture of what the finished product looks like as soon as minecraft.net is back up! Have a great day!

New Launcher

I don't know if you noticed yet or not, but theres a new a launcher. Still waiting on 1.3

Straight From The World of Notch - Our office is cold during the winter

Seriously. The radiators are tiny, and the rooms are huge. I think the landlord turns down the heat during the weekends as well.. I stopped by yesterday to get some bonus work done in between the two trips (I was in Mexico one week ago, and we’re going to GDC in one week followed by a short stop in Vegas).
Most of the work I got done last week was with the new launcher, and it’s almost done now! Here’s a mostly complete summary of the changes:

* Newly designed window looks slightly prettier, and also has a nice big space to load an HTML page showing the updates in the latest patch
* If there’s a new update, the launcher asks if you wish to update. You can choose between “Not yet” and “Yes”.
* The launcher only downloads modified files
* Logging in is done over https, preventing sniffing (we even double check the certificate)
* Downloaded files are checksummed, making sure the correct file was received
* You can force a full re-download of all game files in case you suspect your local files are corrupt
* There’s a handy link to go directly to the game install folder

We have a couple of bugs left to fix, and we’re going to try adding the ability to choose what dir to save/load levels from. Playing against your dropbox dir might be fun. Once all that is done, it’ll get released!

While I was away, Jens’s been working on 1.3, which we’re aiming at releasing sometime early/mid-week next week. I’ve forgotten all the new stuff in there (it’s sunday, ok?), but my favorite two are the redstone delay/repeater blocks and the beds. We’re hoping to be able to make the beds feature complete before GDC, but it’s more important to get the 1.3 update out, so some of the functionality might be missing for a week or two.

In other news, all the lights are on here. I tried playing Amnesia, but it turns out I’m a coward. If you’re reading this, Frictional; AMAZING JOB! I’ve never been this scared in a game, ever.

Welcome home, Notch. I look forward to seeing the new content.

AFK Til Monday.

Well, our server admin is out of town and our server kind of hiccuped and set back a couple of weeks, so until he gets back Monday to fix it, I have nothing to update. I hope you all have a great weekend and I'll post a lot of stuff next week when the server is straightened out!

Why I am not done with my tower.

The picture will tell it all.

Yes. I was building a little fishing pond in front of the greenhouse and near the restaurant-in-progress, because I thought hey, I can catch the fish then put them directly into the kitchen. Easy, right? Wrong. A creeper spawned there because of..just a guess..a lack of torches. He did manage to miss part of my road, but blew up the back end of my kitchen and a little bit of the front of my greenhouse. Sigh...so obviously I wasn't able to finish my tower today like I had hoped. I do have my little pond finished though! I have yet to catch a fish in Minecraft, but hopefully I will start soon. You know, making that pond was such an ORDEAL. I had no idea that the water has to be placed in a certain order for it to even out. I had water going every way for a long time until my wonderful boyfriend told me what I was doing wrong. Now the water is nice and smoooooth for the fish! If you are wanting to build a pond and don't know how, this is the way he told me.

1. Dig out a 1 block deep area in which you want to build your pond. It can be as long as you want and as wide as you want, just make sure the depth is only one block.
2. Start at one corner and dump a bucket of water in.
3. Go to the opposing corner on the same side and dump another bucket in.
4. Continue along the edges between where the two corners have the highest amount of water until it all evens out.
5. Continue along the rest of the edges until all the water is smooth.
6. Go under water and dig down one more block deep. Two blocks deep is enough for fish to come. I was originally going to go three down but learned that two does the trick!

Also, if you don't know how to make a fishing rod, it takes 3 sticks and 2 pieces of string. put a stick in the bottom left corner, middle, and top right. Then on the right side, put the two pieces of string in the right-middle and bottom right corner.

To fish, right click to cast the fishing pole. Make sure the bobber (I'm not sure what they're really called, that's just what we call them down south) is slightly above the water, with the hook in the water. You'll see it start to bob up and down and you'll see splashing. Right click again to reel it in and you may have a fish on it!

Hope this helps y'all out as much as it helped me! Oh, and here's a picture of the new fishing pond!

Fishing pond! Ignore the chunks missing out of the surrounding buildings. Those will be patched up accordingly!

New Layout!

What have I been doing other than avoiding homework (something people on Sanctum Server are known for) and playing Minecraft?

See that banner up there? Yeah, I worked on that. Amy did the nice layout. I really like it! I hope you do too!

Oh and some more minecraft fanart : Creeper-tan!

Tsundere Creeper-Tan by ~SammyGoddess on deviantART

Tower Time!

I didn't have as much time to play today as I wanted, but I did complete two floors of my little witch tower!! I have a couple of pictures of it so far, so I'll share those with you. I can't wait to finish the rest, and I will continue to work on it as soon as it's daytime.

In other news, my boyfriend John has been working on some really cool projects. I can't wait to take some screenshots of his creations, because they absolutely blow mine out of the water. He has a huge castle, complete with a few fun attractions such as a shooting range and a basketball court. He also has a little Asian-inspired bath house which is just adorable. He's now working on a haunted house type deal. When he's finished with that I'm going to take pictures of everything so you guys can see them (and maybe steal some of his ideas...I certainly did!). Hope you all are having a good weekend! I'll have a lot more to update tomorrow, and hopefully a new blog design!

The first floor is sort of a waiting area, lots of bookshelves lining the walls.

There's also a couch so visitors can make themselves at home until I'm available!

The second floor is my office area. Again, more bookshelves. Also a little desk which has a pretty killer view behind it!
There's also a crafting table and a chest amongst the shelves.

My favorite painting with this texture pack! Some of you may recognize it, but if not, it's Sunday Afternoon on the Island La Grande Jatte by Georges Suerat. I studied this painting in my art class in college, so I was excited to see it! I thought it gave the room a little museum-y feel.