I created another Just Cause 2 video in my Let’s Play Badly series. This time, I’m helping out the local criminal gang, the Reapers, take over a facility. Headed by Bolo Santosi (she of the chunky pronunciation), the Reapers lack the ladder technology to get over a three metre high gate and so need my mad grappling-hook skills (um, skillz?) to scale it for them. Oh, and to shoot lots of people.
A while back, the old multi-player Minecraft server I used to play on closed its doors and was taken off-line. Graciously, the owner packed up all the files and sent me a copy of the world map so that I could still access the builds on there I’d created.
After bunging my recent piccies on Imgur, I’d meant to revisit those old builds and create some larger, clearer screenshots. Well, here they are! Click on the thumbnails for the bigger versions.
The first new screenshot comes from the bug-eyed Fish I plopped down in the river running along my ‘island’ (first mentioned in this post).
On the left of this shot, you can just about make out the entrance to a cave where the secret switch (okay, it was right in the middle of the floor) activated a hidden piston-powered sliding door in the wall, leading to an underground tunnel that circled back under the river and led into the fish interior. It was either that or stick a door in his forehead or something. Tunnel up the butt seemed like the best choice at the time. Erm…
As you can see from the shot on the right, the interior of the Fish is surprisingly spacious. I didn’t really need it for anything so everything I put in there was for during its construction. The bed to skip the nights (pesky zombies kept swimming up to say ‘Hi!’), chest for temporary storage plus the usual crafting table and furnaces.
Once it was built, I thought it looked very sparse so I stuck in a second floor to break the space up and added the chairs/carpets to make it look a little more homey.
The second thing I constructed on the this server (apart from the bridge and dock) was a special build for Halloween. On the far side of the bridge, in the water facing the town, I placed a large Skull on a spike (original post here).
Along the back of the spike, from the waterline, there’s a ladder which runs up through the inside of the skull providing access, all the way up to the ‘roof’. Now that Minecraft has a greatly increased max-height build ceiling, it would probably be cool to extend the stem of the spike (make it a pike, as it were), and have the skull top it off, looking out across the landscape.
The third build in this post was my first attempt at making a sky situated build – the Hot-Air Balloon (original post here).
It needed an absolute f-ton of differently coloured wools to construct but was a lot of fun. The thing I like about this one is the over-sized anchor and ‘rope’ used as an excuse to provide access to the basket and balloon itself. It looks like it belongs and then you notice the ladders.
I’m thinking of creating a walk-through video of my builds on this server, showing each of these constructions (and maybe a couple of the far bases). If there’s any interest, I could probably also create some schematics of the Fish, Skull and Hot-Air Balloon and make them available for download. Drop me a note through my YouTube channel, twitter or email (the address is over on the right), if you’re interested in seeing that happen.
Update: Schematics of the Fish, Hot-Air Balloon and Skull are available to download. Check out this post for more details.
Another viewer on my YouTube channel left a comment in my Airship walkthrough video asking if the build was available to download. It wasn’t then. It is now.
I’d already built the Airship in the Minecraft Structure Planner before building it on the multi-player server just to make sure I made the balloons… well, balloon-shaped.
Unfortunately, MSP was abandoned long, long ago, before a lot of the newer blocks were added (like upside-down slabs/stairs) so I had to import the build into a creative Minecraft map then touch it up somewhat before finally exporting a schematic with MCEdit. The schematic just features the Airship itself. I didn’t include the tower/gantry because a) that bit was done freestyle when I was building on the multi-player server and b) it’s not exactly one-size-fits-all. Anyhoo, I’m sure you can knock together a tower if you need one.
As with the Clipper Ship schematic, I’ve started a thread on MCSchematics.com where you can download the Airship schematic. Here you go.
Yay, an excuse to use my JC2 explosion image!
Just recently, as you might have seen, I’ve created some videos on YouTube for my Minecraft creations (channel here). What you might not have noticed is that I have also been trying my hand at your typical “Let’s Play” style game video. Naturally, I picked the excellent Just Cause 2 as my source material. And just as naturally, I’ve called them “Let’s Play Badly” because I’m a pretty lousy gamer.
So far, there’s three videos covering the first two missions. I think I may have picked exactly the wrong game to do a series on as a majority of it is free-form chaos, going wherever you fancy… and then blowing it up. To counter this, I’ll probably focus on the bigger storyline missions (ones with cutscenes) and maybe a few random base attacks.
One thing I’ve noticed – waffling on while you’re wandering around a blocky landscape may be hard but waffling on while flying through the air, trying not to get your head blown off is really, really hard.
The first episode introduces us to our hero, Rico Rodriguez as he is transported to the island of Panau in order to locate former mentor Tom Sheldon.
In the second episode, we’ve discovered that our contact on the island, Karl Blaine, is holed up at the top of an under-siege casino and needs us to get him out.
The third episode has us putting our life in the hands of the perma-blotto Karl Blaine as we surf the roof of his sweet, sweet ride back to his ‘crib’.
I’m not sure how many more of these I’ll be doing but if you’re interested in seeing me fail repeatedly at Just Cause 2, be sure to check the site. Or you could always try subscribing to my YouTube channel. That’d work too.
Just recently I uploaded a video to YouTube of my Minecraft build, the Clipper Ship.
One of the comments on the page asked if the model was available to download. I’d never looked into how to even go about doing that but since variations of that request regularly show up in my webpage search stats, I thought it was worth finally checking out.
So after a bit of rooting around and rebuilding, I can now offer a link to a MCSchematics.com thread where I’ve attached a schematic file for my Clipper Ship for download. Here you go.
Right, that’s all the Hugh Laurie web-searches sorted (and bingo fans). But rather than a post about the cancelled medical drama (or two fat ladies, for that matter), this post is all about Minecraft, of course.
Usually, I try to make my builds a little more interesting than typical multi-player server builds. While everyone else is busy constructing houses, mansions, castles and (ugh!) ‘pixel-art’, I’ve tried my hand at large fish, ships and taps, balloons, airships and skulls. But just like wondering whether the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about – if building plain old houses was somehow fulfilling in ways I couldn’t see. So I gave it a bash.
This is the home away from home I eventually created. Its construction was a little more freeform than usual, and my only real plan was to build a structure over water, next to a cliff face so that I could add a waterfall alongside it.
Did it change my mind on houses? Am I now a house building fanatic? Uh… not so much. It’s easier building something that is essentially four walls, a floor and a ceiling but then you have to fill the interior and rather than the functional storage/crafting vibe my other builds share, I feel you’re expected to make the interior of a house look a bit, well, like a house interior. It’s not easy with Minecraft and so all your furniture tends to be built from steps and wool blocks. There’s a degree of ‘use your imagination’ in Minecraft right off the bat (see that huge stack of cubes? That’s a mountain!) but furniture asks the viewer to crank their imagination up to 11.
I will be building more traditional structures in the future (and I am currently) but I still prefer the rather loopy flights of fancy I’ve grown accustomed to.
After the relative non-failure of uploading and featuring two of my Minecraft build videos on the site a couple of days ago, I thought I’d add my third. It’s of the Airship I built, the tour that never happens. More background info can be found in my screenshot post, here.
I’m getting a little more confident putting these things together. It’s a bit longer and it has more cheesy transitions – who knows what the future will hold?! Get ready for star-wipes and checker-boards, maybe! *groan*
This is actually the second version of this particular video. I did one the other day that was incredibly quiet for some reason. I hadn’t (intentionally) faffed around with any of my settings but somehow all the sound clips came off almost inaudible in the final edit. Well, a little tweaking here and a little amplification across the board and hopefully you can hear the narration now.
Hmm, on second thoughts, is that really a good thing?
Update: A schematic of the Airship is available to download. Check out this post for more details.
Just under two years ago, I signed up for YouTube, got my channel all set up and then… well… nothing.
Not exactly sure what I was planning to stick up there but I guess I thought what-the-hey!, just in case. Roll forward to earlier this week and I finally got round to using it. Naturally, I did something Minecraft related.
My big plan was a lot like the screenshot posts I’d made here over the last few months – to archive my builds. This time though, it’s in motion and has me droning over the top, putting people to sleep. I’ve done two so far, with more planned. They’re not too long and I’ve probably dun goofed on these first outings so be gentle.
The first one is of my Clipper Ship.
The second video is of my Tap.
If you’ve visited my site before (of course you have!), you probably noticed that the two builds are from an earlier post I made here. Like I said, I’ll be doing other videos as time goes by. Probably the airship next. Since I’m starting out, any advice is welcome. Feel free to leave a comment on the channel, drop me a note by email or through Twitter.
Note – ‘Tubular!’ was a popular slang exclamation with ‘the kids’ in the 80s, borrowed from surfing culture of the 70s. Don’t worry if you’re scratching your head right now. It just means I’m so very, very old.
Update: A schematic of the Clipper Ship is available to download. Check out this post for more details.
Update 2: A schematic of the Tap is also available to download. Check out this post for more details.
I never played the original Saints Row game when it came out but when Saints Row 2 appeared in a Steam sale, I snapped it up. People had mentioned that it was a bit of a buggy mess (it kinda is) but beyond that, they assured me that it was great fun and paid homage to a lot of the gameplay elements of the old GTA 3 series that GTA 4 had sadly lost somewhere in development. And indeed, SR2 was a blast to play if you could look past the odd glitch.
The third game in the series was hinted at shortly after the second came out and with the recent screenshots and cinematic trailers doing the rounds, I’m getting quite keen to play the full game. Helping to stoke my interest is a new trailer focussing on gameplay. Here it is.
I think the thing that really pleased me about the gameplay video is the comments about driving. It looks like there will be a focus on the more arcade style of handling rather than the type championed by GTA 4 (those out-of-control canal barges they call cars).
I do wonder about the game itself though. Most games in the genre tend to focus on the kind of ground-up challenge that comes from empire building but the video seems quite keen to point out that the Saints are at the top of the pile. Where will the struggle come from this time round if you’ve got the whole toy chest at your disposal?
Way back in the mists of time (okay, somewhere around 2008-ish), I worked on a port of the popular Sony PSP game LocoRoco with Marco Mazzoli. Yes, that Mr. Mazzoli of the excellent iPhone/iPod/iPad game, Spirit. That one I keep on mentioning. You did buy it, right?
The port was for the Sony Ericsson Yari – a phone with motion sensing tech, so fairly ideal for the gameplay that LocoRoco delivered. My task on the project was a general reduction of art assets, reworking the bitmap graphics for the phone’s smaller display and reducing polygons for all the levels and scenery. Marco did an excellent job in producing an accurate recreation of the PSP gameplay but the destination hardware wouldn’t have been able to cope with the original game assets so everything needed scaling back somewhat. The levels basically lost 50% of their polygon count.
Not possessing a Yari myself has made it a little difficult for me to see the finished game in action so I’ve always had to rely on the kindness of strangers. By ‘strangers’ I mean Marco and by ‘kindness’ I mean a link on Youtube of the gameplay, uploaded by a random Yari-owner (thank you, Aivlys2010). Enjoy!
