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

For this week's post, I decided to make a guide for crafting Fireworks, since the Fourth of July and Canada Day are coming up in their respective countries! Let's begin.

Part 1: Gathering Materials

The first step to any good project. For this activity, get the following items. I will demonstrate what they do in the next segment.

Basic Materials:

• Paper
• Gunpowder
• Any Dyes of your choice

Extra Effects:

• Feather
• Gold Nugget
• Fire Charge
• Wither Skeleton Skull (or any head in Creative mode; Wither Skeleton Skulls are the only ones available to players in Survival Mode)
• Glowstone Dust
• Diamond

Part 2: Learning to Craft Fireworks

Open up the old crafting grid! It's time to learn how to make basic fireworks! Get your basic materials, and let's get to it.

The first item you will need to make a firework is a Firework Star. It is simple to make, since none of the recipes involved with crafting fireworks have a specific shape. To make it, just place Gunpowder and your dye color of choice inside the grid, and you will get a Firework Star. Notice its shape is Small Ball, which is the default. Pretty self-explanatory.


Now that you have the Firework Star, you can add it to a rocket. To do that, just put paper and an extra unit of Gunpowder into the crafting grid, along with your firework star.


There is your firework! When you launch it, it will have all the traits of the star you created! Here is the one I made as it explodes.


Before we get into different shapes and effects, there are a few other options we can use on our fireworks. For one, try adding more gunpowder when you make a firework. You can increase the duration of the firework's flight from 1, to either 2 or 3! 2 is usually ideal for visibility.



To demonstrate this, I set up a small row of dispensers. They each have a basic firework, only with different flight durations and color (to distinguish between them better). The rockets increase in length going from right to left, from 1 to 3, with 1 being red, 2 being lime, and 3 being yellow.


This is the result:


Some brief tidbits: you can use multiple dye colors when crafting a single firework star, and you can have multiple stars in one rocket! So, you can do craziness like this...


I guess the multiple stars is only for adding extra colors, in terms of what we are currently doing. I sort of expected to see two explosions, apart from each other... We will have to try using stars with two totally different shapes.

The final option for this segment is a fade-out. To do that, throw more dye onto an existing star, like this:


Here are some photos of the explosion!

Exploding...


Fading...


Faded.


Part 3: Shaping Your Firework

Alright. On to the final segment! In this part, I will run you over all the different shapes you can use, and the ingredient you will need for it. To change your firework's shape, add an ingredient when you are initially crafting the star, like this.


Okay. Now for a run-through of all the different shapes and effects. Here we go! After this, we will do the little two-shapes experiment. The fireworks used will all have no special effects added other than the one being shown. Also, I've used Red as a default all post. Let's shake it up and use lime!

Feather: Burst
This shape has no particular form.


Gold Nugget: Star-Shaped
Looks like how one would imagine a 3-dimensional star to look: kind of like a spiny ball.


Fire Charge: Large Ball
This one is exactly like the default shape; Small Ball, only larger, and with more sparkles!


Wither Skeleton Skull/Head: Creeper Face
Inspired by everyone's favorite (or quite possibly least favorite) monster! <3


Glowstone: Sparkle (effect)
Adds an extra shimmer to your explosions, and makes a satisfying crackle, like a bowl of Rice Krispies. Since it's an effect, not a shape, you can add this in with any shape ingredient you want. It's a bit hard to see on the screenshot. You will have to try it for yourself!


Diamond: Trail (effect)
The explosion now has a tail, like the white willow fireworks you see at most celebrations involving fireworks.


 We are almost done here for this week, but since I said I'd try this, here is a firework with two stars: one is a purple Large Ball, and the other is a green Creeper Face.


It worked as expected: both explosions happen at the same time. Although, I have seen servers make fireworks behave differently than what's possible normally, on custom servers.

So, that concludes this week's post. 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!

For today's post, I have created a new system for storing blocks, which is also a nice utility for building: a color spectrum of building blocks in Minecraft. In theory, it's useful for seeing how blocks match up with each other. I wouldn't be surprised if anyone else had a color spectrum, but for this one, I have included all viable building materials, and some other decorative blocks, just for comparison with the building blocks. Anyways, here it is...


There are 22 categories in my spectrum (at least at this point in time), all properly flowing into each other. The bulk of the blocks are past the Red category, and is mostly made up of the dye-colored blocks. Minecraft seems to have a clear lacking of non-dye-created cold-toned building blocks.
Dark Grey

One of the least viable colors, at least for my style. It feels like it lacks the finished feel of black, and neutral grey's variety, not to mention the go-with-everything trait, which may, or may not be intact for this category.


Neutral Grey

Minecraft was in part, meant to be a survival game. This means a great presence of stone-like objects! The color alone is not that appealing, but it's the most neutral color, and goes with virtually everything. Also notable is the many different options for this color. I almost ran out of room in this display chest!


White (I better'd not had made any typos, I can't see what I'm typing...)

White is a more cheery alternative to Gray. It's good for when you are doing something colorful, because the human eye likes to compare adjacent colors, and gray can theoretically dilute brighter ones. There seems to be a trend toward clean textures, which is great in every case I can think of!


Cream/Beige

The perfect combination of White, and the color of oak wood, a block that has worked for as long as any Minecrafter can remember. Except for the ones from the days of Classic Version, when it looked like beige bricks. :p Since Sandstone occupies most of the category, it's naturally the go-to block for desert builds.

If that's what you need, Birch Wood is virtually a lighter version of Oak Wood Planks. Finally, End Stone comes in to play when unpolished Sandstone is too strange with the slab-like surface.


Creamy Gold

There is a bit of history behind why the blocks that are here don't exist anywhere else. For the longest time, Oak Wood Planks weren't specifically Oak. They were just Wood Planks, because the other variants of planks didn't exist, and every wood type yielded them. (The other tree types didn't exist up until Beta, either. Can you imagine?) It wasn't up until 2012 that they appeared, but most of the wooden objects stayed as generic wood, and that's why this stuff is sort of special in this category; if you need a birch wood fence, you're out of luck. Sorry!

But, the log-top textures look almost the same as Oak, as to not disrupt any pre-existing builds that used the top texture, so they are here too.


Medium Brown

This category effectively plays the same role as medium-grey for its color: being less harsh than its darker counterpart.

This category is also the first appearance of Grass, but it only applies if building in a Mesa biome.



 Dark Brown

Not many thoughts here, but in my opinion, this is effectively Black with a little extra creaminess.



I don't really have many thoughts on the rest of the categories, either, since they are mostly just colors, and not much more. Nonetheless, I will show you guys each of the other categories, and you'll hear from me if I have any other thoughts. If not, then at the end of the categories.

Red

Humans see red as an eyecatching color, which is why it's used on stop signs. This is the color to go bold with; it's not too light, and not too moody.


Darker Orange

I felt that Minecraft seems to have two shades of Orange, so I decided to separate them as such. This may be obscure, and I might merge the two oranges in the future.


Lighter Orange

You can really see the color difference! I had two sort of shades of grey in the light grey chest, but these ones were just too different.


Yellow

Yellow is a cheery color, with more vibrancy than creamier hues, which are used more often.


Light Green

I debated with myself if I should put Lime Stained Clay in this category, and ultimately decided to. It's probably actually somewhere between Light Green and Dark Green, but it wasn't worth giving its own category.

Dark Green

Use this color if you want, but I seem to be missing the point...


Cyan

A great combination of the freshness of green, and chill qualities of Blue. This color reminds me of water, so in my opinion, it works great if you're building near a lakeside area!


Light Blue

I see this color as a light and super-cheery, yet somewhat chilly one; this is where the Ices and the Block of Diamond can be found.


Dark Blue

Yeah... Little jump in shade, there, but what else can you do? Anyways, this is my favorite color! It's nice and deep, but it still has color, unlike Black. The only block that isn't a dyed one is, ironically, made of a dye: Lapis Lazuli.

Purple (This Color Is Weird)

I've got nothing. I never use purple.


Impromptu Random Bonus Screenshot of the Day (Wait, what?!)

Okay, so I guess it's that time of post again... In today's screenshot, I observed Fire_Cat2000 (her skin almost never loads for me) with a head positioning glitch while she was sleeping.


My caption: I never knew Steve was a stomach sleeper, but that looks outright uncomfortable.

Magenta

Once again, I think I'm missing the point, here... *Sigh...*


Pink

Hmm... Should Mycelium be moved to Grey? It's hard to say... Hah! I created a rime without giving a try! ;D

That Jungle Wood Color (Creamish-Pink)

This color is a more notable shade of pinkish: it doesn't have a single dyed block. Rejoice! \o/


Miscellaneous <-- (Spelled without Auto correct, what's up??)

These were the colors that just didn't fit in that well. Stained Clay tends to be slightly discolored from the normal dye colors, so these ones simply didn't have a good place. :l


Oh, and don't judge me, you can build with Chickens. Come on, you guys can see a door and a wall, right? :p


Well, that's it for today. Look for an update to the color wheel once 1.8 is out. I'm excited to play with the new stones! I will most definitely find a place for them. As always, your feedback is appreciated, and thanks for stopping by! I'll see you all next post. Until then!