Hello! I'm N8thanH, and welcome back to Across the Map! This week, I have another finished skisland to show you, called Rocky Ridge, as I said in the title.

Poetic Blurb:

"In a roughland up high and left dry, few people live there to give to civilization, while not getting much in return, but to stay in a place that so often forsakes them. Those there walk a hard path of stone and ice alone."

Moving on from my poems, here is the island itself.

(Default):

(With Cloud 16 Pack (The one I've been working on)):


So, now for the tour. In the last post on my resource packing map, I gave you all a tour of the world, starting from this Icarus cannon. Just this one time, I'll show you guys how to get to our destination from the start. You'll have to be caught up next time; I'll start straight from the previous skisland after today's post.

(The Icarus cannon. As seen last installment.)

So, from here, you'd blast off into the sky, and land on the first skisland, right about here. I know this photo doesn't demonstrate much.


Right below that acacia tree, there's the chest with the notebook for Lightly Forested Forest in it. Today, it's a present box, since it's Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas!


In the last post, I gave the tour of this skisland by going counter-clockwise half way around that acacia tree, heading in the direction of the jungle trees, and then making our way around in a circle-ish shape. But, if you only wanted to walk to Rocky Ridge, you could head counter-clockwise around the edge of the skisland to find this cave right here.

Fact: this cave is actually natural; I didn't carve it with MCEdit. It somehow connected with the caves in the crater below this skisland. The ores were obviously hand-inserted, although one of the coal veins might have been natural.

So, heading down the tunnel, and past the ores to the Mycelium bed, you'd just have to head across this bridge to go to Rocky Ridge.

Why did they change the gravel texture? I remember the old one. It was BETTER.

So, I'm now across the bridge, with my texture pack enabled. Let's begin the actual tour!


So, I made a path going up from here. You can see it in the screenshot below this text. Not much to be said about it... Except that there isn't much to be said about it. :s


Along the path, there is a little texturing tip, with slightly bad grammar. I don't think there was space for complete sentences. I can't remember.

We have some containers full of mine products out here. One has the nasty 1.8 stones, and the other just has coal, along with a lone block of obsidian. When you are working on a texture pack, people should be able to tell which block is obsidian.


Directly behind me in that photo is a little slope. Not very important. But, somebody felt the need to conquer it.


Actually, at this little outcropping on the side of the hill, which I grudgingly loaded with 1.8 stones, there is a hidden bridge. You can see it when you hover over the cursor. I was planning on keeping these secret, but I decided to tell the player about just this one. They are mostly for me, in case I'm doing a texture pack review on this world, which I may.


These two screenshots below this text are inside the forge building. Once again, I don't have much to say on the matter. It's just a workshop, for crying out loud.



A small way's down the hill, we have a small hut. I'm not perfectly sure why I made it, but it's mostly my nostalgia.











The reason it's nostalgic is this view right here. I remember one night of my first Minecraft experiences, I was looking outside through the door, as the snow fell down. There was a beacon in that view, which I attempted to emulate.


So, now, down the portion of the hill that the shack faces, there is a lava spring that I hand-made. It was kind of a late-addition; I pretty much forgot about obsidian and bedrock.



Heading back to the summit of this skisland, there is one more little hidden location. It's right along the side of the hill, as you can see below. There is a gravel trail leading to it, but it isn't easy to see from all angles, since it's usually snowed over. Weather happens way too often on this map. Maybe I need an anti-weather clock. I'll consider it when I build the spawnpoint.


We have a little dungeon that I carved out in here. The waterfall is artificial, but that little cave is actually natural. Darn; I misspelled 'personnel' by one letter. I would fix it and change the screenshot, but I can't be bothered. You guys can ham it up with that. :I


Anyways, here is another view of the bridge. There are some dispensers and droppers, Just for aesthetics. They don't fire for any reason. One of them has a cool firework that I made, though! :)

 Now is a good time to point out that I changed the dirt texture a bit. It's a bit flatter than the old one.

The dungeon has a bunch of precious metals and gems, and then some. Sufficient to say, the spawner isn't really the definition of a threat... XD


 Also, I did change the Acacia wood texture! Up next is the Oak log. The shading on the sides of it are a little too harsh, in my opinion. It's not terrible, and I have actually changed it a bit at some point.

Last but not least, I have some animated textures, mostly for stuff that's flaming. So, here are some GIF's of the animated textues I have!




Well, that's all for this skisland. I have finished the third, but the textures for it aren't finished yet in Cloud 16. I have been procrastinating on the double-tall flowers. I hate texturing them! As always, you feedback is always appreciated. I'm not happy with some of the textures; mostly just the Lapis Lazuli Block at the moment. If you have suggestions on any improvements, I'm happy to hear it! The texture pack can never be too perfect.

Thanks for stopping by! For now, I'll see you all next post. Until then!

Hello, I'm N8thanH, and welcome back to Across the Map!

A few nights ago, I was randomly thinking about my Minecraft LP, about how fun my old survival world was, and how fun my LP world tends not to be; yeah, bad time to be contemplating at random. I soon found myself in an annoying dilemma: too inspired to sleep; too tired to create. :( I saw that on an Instagram photo. I'm @N8thanH, by the way! I draw ridiculous stuff that I feel like!

Well, anyways, I had some ideas, which I will go into further detail another time. I don't need to stuff this post full of my rambling, which I'm apparently good at. But, in my current LP world, I am already settled, and on my way to building a Blaze farm. I'm pretty wealthy, for that regard; I have a stack of Diamonds, and about half a stack of iron blocks.

I need more adventure to my craft. So, I plan on starting a new map soon. But, the thing is that the current generator tends to make terrain that looks nearly exactly the same on every map; there is almost no variation at all anymore. Our seeds hardly seem special. I blame Mojang for changing Extreme Hills generation.

What Extreme Hills used to look like. It was like this wherever you went. Still doesn't compare to 1.0. <3

Luckily, as you may know, Mojang implemented the new Customized world type. I toyed around with it, and got some pretty awesome results. I decided to try a random seed: Cheeseblock, just to see what I could do to the generator. This is the preset I came up with.



Instead, here is a link to a PasteBin page with the code on it.

http://pastebin.com/1X2UFaDH


As far as most biomes go, this forest is as interesting as it gets.


Now, observe as my custom generator adds a little extra kick. t:


By the way, I'm currently using Cloud 16. Catch a sneak peak at what you can.

So, I found the weakest Extreme Hills I've ever seen. Pathetic. There is nothing but quarrying space behind me.


My generator at least makes the little hill that does exist a bit cooler. Ah, well. I guess it can't be helped much. :t


Now, I have a special hatred of the new 1.8 stone variants. I decided to turn down their spawn rate a fair amount, and they don't spawn at all below layer 21.

Here is my best result, and it's right by spawn. You see this cute little hill pass? Yeah, it's kind of nice...





Sure, but it turns into a HOODOO, with a river passing through the cleft between it and the cliff to the side!

This generator almost reminds me of Minecraft Beta. I assume almost nobody has seen Beta's old generator, so Google some screenshots of it. It's hard to re-create that kind of variation, without sacrificing good building space. Still, this generator can create some of the smaller formations.

Well, that's it for today. As always, your feedback is appreciated, and thanks for stopping by! I'll see you all next post. Until then!

Today is the last sequential date we'll ever see; 12/13/14; and I'm documenting a little slice of it for myself!

Merry Christmas, and happy Hanukkah! My actual post should be posted this Tuesday. (We hope.)

See you guys then!

WEIRD AND PROUD! >:O

Hello, I'm N8thanH, and welcome back to Across the Map!

In today's post, I am proud to reveal two projects of mine, which are currently being worked on simultaneously.

The first is something I had started a long time ago, and kind of forgot about: a texture pack creation world. It was originally just going to be a demo world, so I could get into texture pack reviews on YouTube, since I was inspired by a YouTuber named CocoSmackdown, who had an interesting showcase series.

Since I rediscovered this map, its purpose has kind of changed to a world that you can download, and go about completing textures in. (Sorry, I don't have a download yet; the map isn't nearly complete.)

My second new project is, well, my own texture pack, called Cloud 16. It's more-or-less a 16-bit-style texture pack, which I will show off in a bit. It's the reason map development hasn't gone faster, but I have been enjoying the experience. Just bug me in the comments if you want me to pick up the slack. I'll take any attention I'm given. XD

Back in the day of 16-bit game consoles, they didn't have it easy. They didn't have every color in the world, and at least in the case of the Super NES, could usually only display 128 different colors at a time, out of a pallet of 13,768, or, if an extra bit is given to a color, then about 16 thousand. It sounds like a lot, but on the Red/Green/Blue (RBG) color channels, you can use only every 8th level on typical channels, which can do 0-255 on each color.

The colors differ quite drastically, so you need to use techniques that you wouldn't normally, such as dithering. Here, I'll post my texture for Dark Oak Wood down here, so you can see what I did, along with FreshCraft, another incomplete pack of mine. I've used it a lot in past posts.



 I think that the Dark Oak still looks good in Cloud 16, but in practice, dithering only looks good from a distance, where the colors blend together. Just trust me; it looks good in-game. You'll see it soon.

Well, I digress. Getting back to the map, so far, I've completed one floating island (or as I like to say, Skisland) so far, and finished all the textures on it in Cloud 16. This is the first one, and it's a small forested island, known as Lightly Forested Forest. (In truth, I think "lightly forested" might be a bit of an understatement... :I)

The purpose of the island is to provide an environment for players to focus on the basic blocks; dirt, grass and other ground covers, tall grass and ferns, snow, stone and the ores are all blocks of note on the Skisland. It's also meant to emulate a small forest, so hopefully the texturer (made up word for the win!) will find it inspiring.

I'm sure you are excited to see it, so let's head into the map, which I have currently named Skylight Texture Packing World. (Anybody have a name suggestion? I'm happy to consider it!)

The map is not a flat world; it's just a typical map for Minecraft 1.7. The terrain is here if people want to see it, but this map is boring.


Generally, Minecraft is only as exciting as you make it. So, I took the initiative, and made the sky interesting.
 

These islands were crafted using MCEdit. I copied a chunk of land out of the ground, and rounded it out. Next, I ran SethBling's Floating Island filter, to make the bottoms more jagged. I cut the craters afterwards. They are done with only one brush-stroke, which can explain the roundness.


Since I had water running off the large Skisland, I decided to flood this crater.

Now, about that Skisland... I made it a long time ago. I was going to build a town on it, but when the purpose of this map shifted, I changed my attention to making a starter Skisland, which was Lightly Forested Forest. I will make some more Skislands, then return to this one when it's time to make it.

Anyways... Right over by the crater of Lightly Forested Forest, I placed a TNT cannon, a variety that I believe is known as an Icarus Cannon; a cannon designed to launch players. On that note, let's launch ourselves.



Skszzzzzz.... POW! (Fun with onomatopoeia. :3)


This is the peak altitude! It's so high, you can't see the Skislands!






We have landed! Sorry for the lack of captions; I wanted Google to make a GIF out of these photos. It made one for me last post... :o

Last post's Auto Awesome. Not bad... I'm looking forward to one today! :D

 So, now that we are up here, let's take a look at the Skisland!


 This seems like a good time to load up Cloud 16. Let's do it.


Yes, I can assure you that this isn't just a shader test effect. I guess my art style is just a lot more vibrant than the default textures. XD

So, starting from this chest, I will give you a tour while you take in my awesome new texture pack. :3


Here's the inside of it, by the way.


The book contains some poetic thoughts, and a list of blocks to texture. Don't worry if the book is inconvenient; I'll include a TXT file with the map, with all the blocks to texture.

"The last snow of the season has passed; it's time to head out and explore the wilderness. A small forest, dotted with light trees and small plants seems perfect. Why not explore, and do something fun? It seems that many people appreciate this place; to each, their own reasons. Time to head out!"

We went  up that little hill seen two screenshots ago. Here, there is a small clearing, with some jungle trees and cocoa beans. Plants won't grow on this map, since I set the Random Update speed to 0 using a gamerule. Gosh, the bean items always look like rabbit droppings to me. >.>


Now, hanging an immediate right will take us to another clearing, with a Dark Oak tree in the middle, surrounded by Podzol, ferns, and saplings of all sorts.

Do you guys think my ferns look okay? I was trying to make them look better this morning. I think they look okay. Not great; just alright.

Also, it's worth noticing these little snowdrift with some snowballs on them. These are supposed to be melting snow forts, as if some children have been playing here.



Heading counter-clockwise around the tree about a quarter of the way and going straight, we reach two things: a pile of logs, which will be in the center of the photo below this text. Slightly in the background, there is a cave. I will show you a better angle in a moment. Er, however fast you can read. No pressure.


Here is the cave! I loaded the walls with ores, and random ore products left behind. Yeah, it sort of goes against the theme of this island. Luckily, it's sort of hidden.



Getting into the details of this tunnel, I decided to be kind of goofy on the signs here. I realized that what I was doing with the signs was sort of counterproductive, so I decided to poke fun at it. :V



Here are the contents of the chest. I named it before I'd place it, so people would get the idea better. :/


The Redstone is animated, by the way. I decided to use a Paint.NET plugin I have to make a GIF to show you guys. Sorry for the poor quality and if it doesn't animate for you on your choice reading device. Such is the nature of GIFs. They only have 8-bit color. You should have an idea of what that means after what we've talked about today. ;D


I believe GIFs have access to 256 colors. Not many at all... 0_0

Anyways, the only area I have left to show you is this little cave. I made this mycelium bed while I was texturing it. Also, this cave has the, ah... exit.  There is also a gravel wall, should you want it.


Well, that's all I have to show for today! As always, your feedback and suggestions are appreciated, and thanks for stopping by my blog! I'll see you all next post. Until then!