"Feed The Beast" and The Minecraft Building Contest

By Bixyl Shuftan

Since the Minecraft "Angels Village" server was updated, and it's contents wiped away, the attention of the game's players in the Sunweaver and Angels groups switched to the FTB, aka "Feed The Beast," servers set up by both Kit Repine and Nydia Tungsten. Kit's initial server went from a shack set up near the spawn point for anyone unfortunate to drop in at night to a small stone fort with an ever-expanding underground chamber and tunnel network. Valkyrie McGil built an impressive build on the cliff next to the fort.

Jasmine quickly noticed the wide variety of tools the FTB version of Minecraft offered, from robot miners that could clear out sections of underground for stone and ores, to better suits of armor, including one with limited flight ability, and some nifty gadgets. One I found useful was a mechanical arm that acted like a combination diamond pick and gun. One could use it against zombies and creepers, but it had a strong recoil. Another was a pair of boots that kept one from getting hurt when falling from a great distance. It's a safe bet most Minecrafters ended up back in their bed after making a misstep at least once. One gadget some players had fun with was the "Portal" gun, which acted like the one in the game. One fun thing that came later were the funny hats that one could collect from mobs they appeared on at random.

But building these tools and toys required machines, machines that required energy. Exploring around, I came across a few oil fields some distance away. Those were one source of energy. But Jasmine's bigger machines required more. One interesting feature of "Feed The Beast" was accessing other worlds, or overworlds in Minecraft jargon, besides the Nether and "The End." Some of these places were quite strange, such as one in which players could end up damaged from sunburn if not wearing certain types of armor, which put us in the same position as a zombie or skeleton. These worlds could be accessed through portals, but they could also be traveled to and back via special books, leading to this part of the game being called "Mystcraft," after the popular computer game Myst in the 1990s. Besides places to explore, Jasmine used them as a source for mass quantities of energy-supplying lava and lots of ores.

All these features were certainly a contrast from the Minecraft we'd first set foot it, and it came with a price. Lag began to become a problem. And then, the servers would start to occasionally crash. This became quite frustrating to players and server owners alike. As it turned out, "Feed The Beast" was the combined result of over a few hundred Minecraft modifications cobbled together. Little wonder it could get unstable at times. And then came the server updates, which would sometimes wipe out what was made.

Despite the bugs, interest in Minecraft persisted. Nydia took some time to clean up her new FTB server before inviting her friends over. Once she thought it was ready, she wondered how it could be tested.

"I wanted to test the latest FTB server, see if the problems were solved," Nydia told me in a conversation, "so … I thought what a better way to test it than to have my friends go NUTS with their builds." Nydia decided to hold a competion to see who could come up with the best build, "So I turned them loose with OP powers and kept an eye on the server." The rules were fairly simple, build a town a small group of players could reside in, " purposely left the build requirements vague, I wanted to see how they would be interpreted, and I must say I was NOT disappointed in the creativity that was generated. (I wasn't the) only one impressed either, the builders were as well when they got to see each other's builds."

The competition attracted a number of players, "We started with over eight builders, but due to their real-lives, some had to drop out, which was a shame really. The beginnings of their builds looked so promising. We had futuristic to medevil and even fairy tale fantasy. We even had some Anime thrown in, but unfortunately that one wasn't finished. … This will sound obscure to those not familiar with the series 'Girls und Panzers' it was going to be a city ship," a ship with a city built inside, "It qualified for the contest (laughter)."

"The way it was judged was very unique as well," Nydia explained,  "I have never heard of (Minecraft) being done like this at all. I left some of the judging be done by the builders themselves. The only reason I did it that way was I knew all the builders and knew they would be fair. They would judge the others, but not themselves. And I had 2 people here with me in real life that don't play MC (yet) to help me with the judging. And yes I did the live broadcast the event to help." Nydia put a live feed of what she saw into her video channel on the day of the judging.

One problem the contest had was the unstable nature of FTB Minecraft, and the contest was suspended and extended a couple times due to the server crashing, " I run it off my same system I use I thought it could maybe it could handle it this time, unfortunately...it cant. … I wish I could invite everyone on to view the builds, but itwas just too hard on my system, I have 8GB of RAM with the server and (with) Second Life running, it would climb up to the 80% used area. If I was linked a video....it would go into the 90s. More than once it got to 98%, if it went higher I would crash." Still, she persisted, "But we were able to finish the contest and have a lot of fun in the process."

Of the winners, Skylark's village came in third place. Valkyrie was second "by only a few points." Her village was near the server spawn point, and had crop and berry bush areas, with miniature golems gathering the fruit. For first place, it was "a tie between 2 good friends and Angels Jasmine and Shion (Winkler), it was so close it was almost a 3 way tie!"

Jasmine's place was a treehouse village with buildings set up on super tall trees, "t was a fully function town any elf would DROOL over with all the tech any mage would envy and then it had the walk ways between the massive trees to count as a city in itself." Jasmine tapped into another overworld via "Mystcraft" for the lava to power it, "Val went into the Nether to power all of her computers and tech as well." Jasmine's village had a diner in which automated machines could dispense a variety of foods with the press of a button. Kryxia Silverfall helped her out during the building.

Shion's town was build around a cathedral, as were some Medieval cities. It was the most detailed building, both inside and out. It had a harbor with ships, and a balista and a number of cranes around, to give it the look of a place still in construction.

For the winners, Nydia had a prize, "I kept the prize secret until the day of Judging I was able to offer the winner $50 USD or split it as it turns out, but they both turned it down. Sooo, I donated it to 'The Furry Gamer' group to help some of our members get into the rest of (the games we play). They wanted me to use it for my Angels, which I will do if it is needed. But I think it could do better for a group dedicated to having some fun. Thats what this was all about, having fun."

As good as the builds were, Nydia had to take the server back down. The FTB was just too much on her systems to keep up without crashes. But her new "vanilla" server, updated to Minecraft 1.62, was available. This newer Minecraft is commonly called the "horse update" due to its now including horses. They can be fitted with a saddle and "broken" for riding.

So how to build a place for the Angels there? Nydia soon had her answer, "that night when I finally had all the votes, I brought them all to my office at home (in Second Life) and told them who won, well, they started talking about each others builds, and before I knew it I had a build crew on my hands for the new Angels Village. … once in and started they met up with 'Hojo' another builder from the last world we had and he joined in"

Dropping in for myself at Jasmine's invitation, the place wasn't too far from the spawn point. Just walk down the road for a few minutes, and one would soon see the place, encompassed by walls. Inside, they had built a barn for horses (by Jasmine) and other critters, a town hall, an inn, an outdoor market, a mages tower (by Valkyrie), a cathedral (by Shion), a harbor with ships (also by Shion), and more. When Nydia saw it for herself, "I can sum it up with one word: 'Whoah …' "

So what was next for Nydia and her Angels & friends in Minecraft? She does have some plans, "in the future I am planning on having adventure maps for group play. I have a bit to learn still before I can start hosting events but it IS planned for in the future. We have had 'End raids' in the past and those were a LOT of fun."

So despite "Feed The Beast" acting a bit beasty, the action in Minecraft from residents of the Sunweaver and Angel's estates continues.

Nydia has a video of the villages during the contest judging donwloadable in the following link (here - 498MB).

Bixyl Shuftan

Minecraft Angels Village: An Ending and a Beginning

By Bixyl Shuftan

Since I last wrote on Minecraft, the activity continued in Angel's Village's server. Jasmine continued to work on improving her chicken cooker at her place of Havenshire, and then went on to work on other projects. She built an object sorter, a "silkstone" maker, an obsidian generator that worked on redstone dust, and more. One of her newest, an "enderman spawner" in the nether. She had corralled them so in one region they spawned only in one place, and players could easily hack away at them from spots they couldn't reach, getting lots of experience orbs. Trouble was, there were more orbs than could be easily absorbed at times. So a player could easily be swinging blind at the enders in front, and not notice another player stepping in front of him/her. The result could easily be one player back to her bedroom, without her gear.


Jasmine and I had been alone with occasional visits from others, other friends of Nydia preferring her "Feed the Beast" and the Kitsunuki servers. But we soon had company. Kryxia and Valkyre signed up on Minecraft and joined. Kryxia made a nice longhouse near Havenshire with Jasmine's and my help. Valkyre once she had a little time to figure things out went on a 24 hour building spree, creating a *massive* tower. Taking a look at it, Jasmine had thought Nydia had made Valkyre a server op without telling her. That wasn't the case. Valkyre had done the big build simply through hard work.

Then Jasmine went to work on her biggest project: literally. Nydia's Village was surrounded with a  detailed wall. Jasmine planned to do even better by surrounding the place with castle walls and towers. So starting in one corner, the first structure went up, and bit by bit the walls extended away from it, with castle gates and battlements going up along the way. Jasmine did the planning and the bulk of the work with some help from Kryxia and I. We soon came across one problem: Jasmine's house was built into a hill that would be level or taller than the castle walls. So an excavation was called for, one done partly through server op powers of easy digging, and partially through blasting through TNT, "Jazzy wants big boom." Eventually most of the hill was replaced with flat land on level with most of Havenshire, and the walls continued to go up.

Soon, the walls were more or less done. Havenshire was surrounded by castle structures that could be walked through via gates or climbed from the inside via doors in the battlements and ladders upward. It was so big, only from the air could one see the whole thing. From the castle led roads to Valkyre's tower and Kryxia's longhouse. There was also a road heading north to the desert. To the east deep in a region of tundra was Nydia's ice castle. And further east of that was Skylark's home. The area north of Angel's was getting some truly great builds.

It was about this time that came two major events. One was the Dragon. If Minecraft has a way to win, it's beating the Dragon at "The End," accessible only through the nether. Getting there, there's only two ways out, die or defeat the Dragon. Nydia never had, and when she was on with Jasmine, Kryxia, and Valkyrie also there, they decided to team up to beat him. And they did. Jasmine got a dragons egg out of it, as well as able to say she had "beaten" Minecraft.

Going to the spot where they had gone to "The End," instead I was shown the credits, as well as something else. What is it? Well, I won't spoil the surprise. You'll just have to find out for yourself.

The other event, well, it seems all that has been created in Angles will soon be coming to an end. Nydia says the servers will soon be updated, an update that will essentially wipe the slate clean. Back to an unspoiled wilderness with no buildings, roads, machines, farms, or roads. Just the players, the wilds, and the monsters that come out at night.

Nydia says those whom were still active there will be made server ops, once this change occurs. Which means the option of playing the regular way, or being able to create as we please, flying across the land. And since the server's starting over anyway, Nydia's installing a modification called "Terra Firma Craft." It's a bit different from normal Minecraft in a number of ways. For one, you can't just knock down sections of tree trunk to get wood for a shelter. You need to collect small rocks on the ground, gather branches from trees, notch a rock to make an axe head, make a hatchet, *then* cut down the tree. There's also a thirst bar in addition to the hunger bar. But the hunger bar doesn't go down as fast. And the monsters at night are stronger. More information can be found in the Tera Firma Craft Wiki, in addition to the youtube Brandi Strussel sent me (Click Here).

Our friend Ranchan, or Amaya as she's sometimes called, has a server as well, the Kitsunuki one, of which the Angels world is one of several the players can free hop and take inventory from one to another. Her Angel's Village was duplicated there, as well as the Newser building (before the top floor was finished). The difference there seems to be mainly graphics. Nydia also has a server with a modified version of Minecraft called "Feed the Beast," but as of the writing of this article it is shut down due to bugs. Our friend Kit Repine has a FTB server as well. I've heard that one has a number of machines one can build. It also has a number of new materials, and plants. A short look at Kit's server also revealed new dangers. There's quicksand in places which can trap you if you're not careful. Some of the monsters are more powerful here too. There seems to be a number of different versions of FTB, so what works in one may not work in another.

So it looks like the Minecraft journeys of Jasmine and I will be taking a new turn. Will we build a new Castle Havenshire, or just take things one step at a time. We'll soon see.

Bixyl Shuftan

Back to Minecraft Part 2

Earlier this month, I wrote about the continued activity in Nydia Tungsten's Minecraft servers, notably what Jasmine Dawn Shuftan had been doing. Far away from Angel's Village, she had been building a place of her own. Since I first wrote about it, her progress continued.

Jasmine's complex, seen from a log cabin on the outskirts. Note the archery tower to the right, with a flaming netherbrick roof for easy visibility at night.

Jasmine soon made a second archery tower, with the two connected by a glass and iron rail walkway.

 The first level of Jasmine's place, or "Jazzytown" as I dubbed it, which contains some stables. Here's some unusual cows I hadn't seen before, which she called "moo-shrooms."

Looking for monster spawners, she found this zombie one not far from the surface. Since they're not as bad as other hostile mobs, slow and they don't blow up on you, she had the idea of an experience farm.

So she surrounded it with fencing, and the zombies were trapped. She made a ladder, and built around it, including a glass ceiling. Now one could hack and slash the baddies and have the experience orbs fall into your lap, just waiting for new mobs and occasionally having to replace your sword.

And yes, that's my sword. Jasmine tossed me a few diamonds for one. Reminds me a little of being a "rune goon" in Runescape.

While digging her tunnel, Jasmine came across this place, which she named "Strussel Village." I later came back and added this nether portal for quicker access.

While digging the tunnel, Jasmine wanted to take a break, as well as get a few supplies. So we made this waystation that she later dubbed "Havenshire."

And this is where our marathon tunneling session ended, a village northwest of Angels that someone had built a wall around and improved. Not sure who made it or what name it was given. After that, Jasmine's main focus went back to Jazzytown.

While finishing the tunnel, digging west from Angels and south from the walled village, I came across a few obstacles, such as water when coming across rivers. So the way to go was lower, at least until it was past.

Ranchan's ship, due west of Angel's Village. The tunnel went under it, and I built an entrance next to the boat.

"And the twain shall meet." Finally Jasmine's subway from her place to Angel's Village was complete.

Jasmine showing off her place to a neighbor, Skylark and friend, who made their own place north of Angels, and east of Jazzytown. Note the signs showing how far it is to Angels and Strussel.

And Jasmine's latest creation: her "chicken plucker." The fowl in the upper chamber lay eggs, which fall through the water, into dispensers, which lay chicks into the lower chamber. When grown, a user can press the pistons to crush the birdies, "Buck-AWWKK!!" And one gets seperated feathers, meat, and sometimes more eggs.

Small irony it was built by a fox, "Colonel Sanders, eat your heart out!"

And that's it for now from the Angels server.

Bixyl Shuftan

Back to Minecraft

By Bixyl Shuftan

I haven't mentioned too much about Minecraft lately. That doesn't mean things have been quiet there. Nydia Tungsten has continued to keep a presence there. Besides her original server, she also got a second one. This was of a variant of Minecraft called "Feed The Beast," which has more things to build. And "Angels Village" with the other builds was duplicated on it. Then Alynna Vixen and Skylark Lefarve got their own servers, and with another copy of Nydia's map became part of a group of realms which players could freely move from one to another. These were an upgraded version with slightly better graphics. Nydia's original "Vanilla" server was getting only a little traffic.


Then my partner Jasmine got into the act. After she had a talk with Nydia about Minecraft, she gave it a try and began building on her own. Unlike most of Nydia's friends, she preferred the original of Nydia's worlds, and so began leaving her mark there. Unlike myself, who set up a location not far from Angel's Village, Jasmine wanted to go far off. Earlier, Nydia had dug a tunnel about a couple miles long to encourage exploring. Jasmine went down that, and set up a place. With Nydia's help, a portal was set up and in the Nether (to those who don't know, a hellish-looking paraell world Minecrafters use to get resources and travel through as a shortcut) a tunnel was dug through to the Angels' Village own portal. Jasmine was in business.

 I've been going in time to time to check on Jasmine's progress and help her out. But she's done most of the work. She's expanded her original "safe haven" to quite a complex, with a few structures poking up onto the surface. We have done a little exploring. Going into a dungeon area, we stumbled across an abandoned library. The two of us together made off with well over a hundred books, to be used later for an enchanting room.

Thinking of Nydia's tunnel, she wanted to do one of her own. So we both began digging. Two players with iron pickaxes can dig pretty fast, so we made quite a bit of progress. We did find a village about a third of a mile away from Jasmine's place, which she named Streusel village after Nydia's partner Brandi Streusel. After a couple other stops along the way to get wood and other materials, we finally stopped at a large village most of the way over.

Jasmine plans to finish the tunnel, eventually. For now, she's gone back to improving her place, putting in underground gardens, an underground greenhouse with the sun shining through glass on the surface, animal pens, pastures, and an archery tower, taking down those pesky creepers from a distance. I pop back on occasionally, to help her out, work on the tunnels, and maybe work some on finishing the SL Newser office. The unfinished office was duplicated in all three locations, so it does seem I won't be bored for some time as far as Minecraft's concerned.

What's that hissing noise? Oh, great … *BOOM!!*

Bixyl Shuftan

Minecraft: Scenes from Angels' Village

Last month, I wrote a little about the place in Minecraft for my virtual neighbors: Angels' Village. A few weeks later, for the Sunweavers/Angels' Estates residents looking for a short break from Second Life, the place is still getting traffic, and being worked on.

 Seeing an entrance to underground while looking just outside the walls, I went in and came across this: an underground arena.

The place had quite a bit of detail, and must've taken quite some time to build. Whomever did it was most likely expecting few others to see it, let alone getting images of it publicized.

While down there, I found this snow golem moving about, one with a jack o' lantern head.  Guess one can call it the "Headless Snowman."

Not sure who did this: a tiny cage with a piggy inside, with torches on all sides. The porker was franticaly twisting and turning, as if trying to break out of it's prison that was slowly roasting it alive. Cruel, but creative.

Back on the surface, I found this roaming the village. I thought someone had created some kind of flesh golem, but looking it up, I found it's a zombie pigman. Not hostile unless attacked, they're almost always found in the Nether, or near a Nether portal. While they can be created when lightning strikes near a pig, it's supposedly very rare.

Around the village, players are making builds of their own. One was a smaller village of sand, which I forgot to get pictures of. Another was some kind of enclosure with a three story building with glass windows, and a flaming front gate, making it visible from a long distance away. Inside were a number of cows. They were probably being used just for milk, but that gate, I kept thinking "Burger King."

And this certainly took some creativity, as well as lots of work. This highway in the sky leads to who-knows-where beyond the horizon, accessible by ladder from a ground station. I haven't used it, yet. Something to do next time.

And that's it for now from Angels' Village in Minecraft. A place to go and build for my neighbors when they're not in Second Life.

Bixyl Shuftan