Minecraft
I created a new world a while back and it was intended to be a place where I doodled and prototyped things for my main world, over time my new world has taken on a life of its own.
On a large area of flat grassland I put up castle walls in a roughly circular shape. There's two large entrances to the castle on the north and south sides. I created a river that flows down from a nearby mountain, runs through the castle from east to west, and exits into the ocean. I'm building a small city of structures inside the castle and the river helps explain the irrigation that the farms will have. There's no need for realism and narrative in Minecraft, but I'm trying to make this city into something that's fantastical but believable. I'm working my way inside-out and so far I've built my major set-piece dead in the center that will be the focal point, I'll describe that in a second. In time there will also be shops lining the north & south entrances (main street) of the castle. Once you go off main street you will find houses, farms, and a planned cathedral (I'm not confident on that one, I don't know how to build the type I want yet). Those predictable structures give an illusion of society, agriculture, and trade.
Getting back to the focal point of the city, right in the middle I just finished building a cloud-scrapingly tall birch tree that is hollowed-out, can be fully explored from top to bottom, contains living & crafting quarters for a multitude of players, and gardens to grow food. The wide bottom of the tree has been carved out into four large roots that serve as supporting columns. These four roots straddle the river that runs through the city, and rise up to meet the first explorable floor of the tree. The way you get into the tree is from the bottom, and I designed at least two ways you can enter. There are vines along the roots that you can use to climb up to the first floor. Also you can swim up a waterfall that comes down from inside the center of the tree above! The waterfall begins at the top near the clouds where I've built a tree-top rain catch pool, and exits at the bottom of the tree into the river in-between the roots. As you explore the inside of the tree you can freely view the waterfall from all the levels you come across.
The first floor acts as an uncluttered entry-way so you can get your bearings. You can climb some ladders and get to second floor where you encounter 4 hallways. Each hallway leads to crafting and living quarters, and there are signs above each doorway to show you which resources and rooms you'll find down that path. The hallways and rooms I've mentioned are actually built into hollowed-out branches, and it took me a while to get them to make sense. They had to look like organic branches (not geometric sticks), fit rooms and paths, yet be small enough so that they're proportionate to the trunk. Higher up the tree there's some platforms where you can take in the sights (the height of this tree dwarfs the castle-walls), but eventually you get to the rain catch, which is part of the trunk, and there's tree-top gardens which are supported by small branches. The gardens contain boxes full of seeds and tools.
The hollowed out tree-fortress is my pride and joy so far, and I've intended for there to be a vague multi-aged narrative to why it exists. It could be explained through the minimalistic sign-post messages around the city, museum-style and told from the POV of the current age's civilization. In a millennium lost to myth an ancient race found the giant tree, used unknown magics and tools to carve it out into a stunning livable tower, and then suddenly disappeared. In a later medieval age, explorers came across the tree-fortress and decided to make it their own, slowly building the stone city around it that we see today. In the current age which cusps on an industrial revolution, most citizens clearly revere the tree as a mysterious engineering marvel, but a few people are afraid of the ethics it may represent. Despite its beauty, a few see it as a mutilation of nature. An arrogance, taking what was once a great tree and carving it for man's own purposes, attempting to dominate nature instead of living in harmony with it. The fact that nobody knows what happened to the original Tree-Carvers leads some to speculate wild theories, and breeds worry at the coming age of industry and expansion.
It would probably be pretty neat to take that rough premise and create a full game out of it, and not in Minecraft.
Ringworld
I've nearly finished my first reading of Larry Niven's classic 1970 hard-sci-fi novel Ringworld. I've been reading an hour before bed each night and I'll likely finish this weekend. I got interested in this book because Bungie writers cited it as their biggest inspiration for Halo. Bungie people have always loved sci-fi and there's apparently a lot of Larry Niven fans at the company. Luckily my Dad owns this book and I found it lying around in the trunk of his car (my Dad carries books everywhere, there's even stashes of them in his car apparently).
I've absolutely loved this book. The pacing is great, Niven does a fantastic job of building awe and mystery, and it's way more creative, smart, and wild than I thought it would be. If you're a fan of science-fiction in general you should give this a read. The alien species are well thought out, their attributes and personalities unfold interestingly as you read. The action, drama, and violence in this book is uniquely smart and realistic (in its context), it's different than the action in any books, games, or movies I've seen. This is not a book about space-marines and monsters shooting lasers at each other, I'll put it that way. The Ringworld itself is so immense, detailed, and mind bending it makes Bungie's Halo structure seem trivial. Once I finish this book I'll definitely like to read the other books in this series.
If you're a Halo campaign or novel fan you will want to read this because in Ringworld you can clearly see the genesis of the the entire Halo universe, and it's fascinating how many awesome parallels and inspirations you will find.
A Song of Ice and Fire
This week I bought a box set of the first four books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. I'm a big fan of the TV show and I wanted to start reading through the books. Once I'm finished reading Ringworld I'll start with A Game of Thrones. These novels are really long but I'm wondering how many I can get through before Season 4 of the TV show starts. If I can I want to at least catch up to the show and hopefully go ahead of it.
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