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

In today's  Building Showcase, it's another Asian-themed build on the spotlight: the Building Dojo! This is a building project that Fire_Cat2000, ThunderrrCat, and I completed not long ago. As you may have expected, this build has been built on the Bluestrike server, and for a special purpose: helping our players master creative builds! Alright, now let's go visit it!

To get here, the fastest route is through our little Nether Hub. Unfortunately, I had weird difficulties with getting the proper portal to link, so I placed the entry portal right here, since it was the only spot it would link to in the plains. But, I did think to make this gravel trail. Hopefully, it will help people not get lost.


My master plan with this plains area is to, over time, have players do field building challenges, and with the extra houses, make an NPC village! The only trick will be finding a way to get them to stay away from the Dojo.

After a while of walking, the trail  will end (because I ran out of gravel), and the Dojo will stand before you. Yes, this is it! (I got us a night view, just for added cinematic effect. Now, if only I had some shaders, but I don't know if my laptop would handle it... :c


Let's head inside! Immediately at the front door, we have a little lobby, with a chair to sit and wait at...

 And a pen for our school mascot, Cherri the Chicken! :D (I couldn't quite get her to look at the camera. I think she's camera shy. Just a little bit.)


 By the way, to accommodate Cherri, most rooms have a hitching post, so we can lead her around to keep the students company.


Yes, I could had made this room, and this building a lot bigger, but I have discovered that I like to make buildings that are big and cool enough to impress and do their jobs, but not unnecessarily big, so people aren't overwhelmed. (Not to mention that I don't have all the pickaxes in the world to mine huge amounts of stylish black clay at my Mesa Base-a.) This is Survival Mode, after all, and I'm one to mind spending a long time gathering resources. Bottom line, the size of my builds is "just right."

Sorry about my rambling. I must be in that kind of mood today. Well, hey, opinions are a good thing! You can't always be neutral!

Anyways, there is one more feature to this room, and it's a retractable desk! Normally, there is an activated lever that sits on the far (my)left block. But, if it is disabled, or removed, the desk comes up!


Also, the indentation in the wall is not just for decoration. In case you didn't notice the pressure plates, it's a door!


Like any good door, if we stand on the pressure plates, it will open up, revealing the main classroom!


But before I show you the classroom, I just wanted to point out this lever. If I pull it...


The door will lock!


Anyways, here is the room!


In this room, we will gather to discuss lessons and other lectures. Basically, it's the homeroom. I have four student chairs; that sounds like a fair undertaking for us, and three chairs for myself and the other 2 founders. I even put an obsidian blackboard to place signs for notes! We haven't done any lessons yet though, so I haven't put any up.

Let's head through the doors by the desk, and head into the class hall. The name is pretty self-explanatory; this hall connects the three classrooms. I will show you them in a moment!



There is also a side exit, and a staircase, which is currently right behind me. At the very end, we have a door to the Block Room, for ease of access during lessons.


As I promised, here is a classroom! There is a block storage chest rack off to the side, and an indented floor. They all look alike, so I don't really need to show you all three of them.


Also, in case you were curious, here is the Block Storage Room. It's a pretty normal storage room, and like I said, nothing needs to be bigger than it needs to be, so this room should be able to comfortably store all the free-to-use blocks. Students will be allowed to come here if they need a certain kind of block. Players, us or students, will also be able to make new blocks here.


Did you happen to see the door in the main room? Either way, just so you can see, it connects to the Block Storage!


That's all that there is on the first floor, so let's head upstairs. As we head up, this nice, simple two by two window beams down on us. Awesome! :D


At the top of the stairs, the hallway splits off in two directions. On the left of the staircase, (the side passage at about the center of the screenshot) the teachers' rooms are present.


Going the other direction would bring you past this empty nook, which by the way, I have no idea what to do with, (Do you guys have any ideas? Leave a comment at the bottom of the post, please! ;) ) then the Dojo's library, and some student bedrooms.


Here is the library. It is through a door right next to the nook.


A bit down the hall, there are two student bedrooms, each meant to house two students. Again, they're both virtually the same, so here is one of them. Hmm... Maybe I should decorate them at a later date?


Okay, now let's head down the other end, and see our bedrooms! Here is the hall. It's not that long, but hey, small is cozy!


Fire_Cat2000's room is directly above the lobby. Since I did most of the building and resource providing, I got first dibs on this room, (since I was the one to build the rooms) but Fire_Cat payed me for the front room.


She set up a crafting station in here, so she could craft in privacy.

ThunderrrCat's bedroom is quite similar to Fire_Cat's but with a few more decorations. It is on the other side of the wall in front of the staircase. The rug is also in one of her favorite colors. I love how all our rooms reflect our styles! :)


Last but not least, my room. I put down a crafting table, but not a furnace. I, too have a rug in one of my favorite colors; Royal Blue! Not a lot going on in here, but I will probably decorate it more as I think of things, or get items that I wish to display here. Now, there's an idea: I could put up a map of Nirikon Forest, my territory!


That's all for the Building Dojo for now, so here is one last hilltop view! (For some reason, this place spawns a lot of mobs at night time. :l)


So, this concludes this showcase. Sorry this post is a little late. As always, your feedback is very much appreciated, and thanks for stopping by my blog!

I'll see you all next post.
     Until then!

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

A while ago, I did a post where I decorated an Ancient Aztec noble's house, and I promised a tour of the other houses. I realize it has been a while, but today, we're going to go on said tour!

I think that the best plan is to start at the smaller houses, since they won't take as long to tour as the noble's house. So, here is the first house I built; a basic hut.



The house is pretty plain on the outside, but on the  inside, we have a tightly packed little room! It is fitted with a table, some sleeping mats, and an oven (I made a glitch furnace using MCEdit).


I didn' show the furnace in the above image, so this is the furnace in case you were curious.


As you can see, the Tile Data of the furnace is improperly set, so the furnace appears to be lit, but in the GUI, the furnace is indicated to be inactive. (Hey, I got to kill two birds with one stone, and show you guys my Furnace GUI texture! :D )


Religion was very important to the Aztecs, so each room in each house has a shrine. But, since Minecraft doesn't have many options for blocks for the shrines, they ended up looking kind of ridiculous.


Another common house feature was a steambath. The doctors found them to be healthy, so many people had them built outside their homes.



The Steambaths are actually quite simple! They would light a fire inside, then pour water on the wall to heat it up, so I added a fireplace, even though it really doesn't help in Minecraft. Well, if you're going to do something, you may as well do it the way it's meant to be done: in my case, with a fireplace!


I used some cobwebs to make pretend steam. I saw this on a video somewhere. Why not make a spider's day for a change? :D


Um, yeah...


Next up, we have a more unusual lot: a Chinampa, AKA Floating Farm!

These things are literally a farm floating on a lake. The Ancient Aztecs used to lay down lake mud on a lake, and grow willow trees on it, so the roots of the trees would quickly grow and hold together the farm bed.


I did try to build some small Willow trees. Hand-crafted plants are sort of a lost art in this game.


This house is quite crammed! But still, religion was important enough to the Aztecs that they would always have a shrine.


In here, there is some storage. I'm not sure if they actually had something like this storage room, but none of the web sources I could find had any details on what they would build on the Chinampas, so this was my best guess. Also, a guy has to keep his tools somewhere, and you know me and how I am a chestaholic, and this is the result.


Finally, here is the Noble's House. I'm right in front of the entracne.

Once again, I couldn't find any specific information on the architecture of the homes of the Nobles, so this house is largely based on a Mexican house I've seen before.


Anyway, here are the rooms! I didn't want to do too long of a post today, so down below are pictures of all the unique* rooms. Here we go!

But first, let's call it time for the Impromptu Random Bonus Screenshot of the Week!

In today's photo, we have a very random Spider Jockey.


My caption: that awkward moment when a Spider Jockey holding an enchanted bow decides to climb into your back window...

First of all, heading to the right at the front entrance, we have the dining room. Yes, the Aztecs actually would sit on blocks of stone.<3


Next room down the right side of the house is the Kitchen.


Last on this end of the house are the servant quarters. The Nobles did have several servants!


We have reached the end of that part of the house, so let's head down the other end.

Immediately to the left are the Men's and Women's Reception Rooms (they appear in that order, going down the left stretch). This is where the residents would entertain their guests!



Right after that, we hit the master bedroom...


...and then *a whole TON of minor bedrooms! This is only one photo! XP <- (Dead face)


Down below, all the orange-highlighted area is filled with bedrooms.


The final room on this end of the house is a nursery. (Yes. The crib may be horribly historically inaccurate. :p)


Last but far from least, we have the outdoor garden! Here it is, along with the Wacky Water God! (Remember him? :) )


Well, that's it for this week. If you have any suggestions, I would really appreciate them, and thanks for stopping by my blog!

I'll see you all next post Until then!