i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

Why does it bother me so much to get lost in MineCraft?

I'm not talking about odd situations like "fell down hole with no tools, waiting to die of hunger" (last night's situation) or "stuck in an endless desert with no trees whatsoever" (one of my iPad worlds; I started at place-with-trees, because I have tools and torches, but right now I can *not* get out of the desert, and I am running low on said tools and torches, and trees are kind of necessary for those things; you can eke out a basic existence with just wood and cobblestone (since logs can be burned into charcoal), but you can't do diddlysquat without trees). I'm also not really talking about "I built a perfect scale replica of the Enterprise and don't remember where it is" or whatever.

Just ... getting lost. Having to start over.

Basic early-stage gameplay (on survival) is: punch trees for wood, get basic tools, get torches, get basic shelter. Survive first night. Figure out food source, go looking for resources, upgrade tools, kill things, survive more nights, go out for more resources. Upgrade home base to have chests, furnaces, maybe some decorative stuff.

Sometimes, in foraging for resources, I lose track of where home is. And it frustrates the hell out of me.

Like, my non-desert iPad world? I spawned on a savannah, so had several stairstep-trunk trees, so I just adapted one into a treehouse: partially done, with an 11x9 floor of acacia wood blocks and a frame but no walls or ceiling. I decided I wanted the walls to be mostly glass, so I went off in search of sand to smelt down. Found sand; found a NPC village; have no fucking idea where home is.

Now, the rational reaction is one of two things:

1) Shrug and make a new home base, maybe (in this example) centered on the NPC village. It's not like old home base had a whole lot, and all of what's there -- furnace and crafting table, wood, cobblestone, coal, a modicum of iron -- is not just replaceable but *easily* replaceable.

2) Temporarily make a place to store stuff, dig down far enough to get redstone, make a compass, follow compass back to spawn (while leaving trail if I want to do a more permanent pathway)

But somehow my brain flips out and chooses door number 3:

3) Panic, flail, and stop playing that world, with sometimes the added bonus of wanting to quit Minecraft altogether, though I usually end up just creating a new world to play in.

The odd thing is, there is *no actual advantage* to starting a new world instead of continuing with the old one. I mean, either way I've "lost" the time and effort put into making the first (usually basic and crappy) shelter, and the shrug-and-rehome option at least allows me to start with some resources on hand. And yet I can't seem to do it. I'm too disappointed to take it further.

...I feel like a dolt.

I decided to play Minecraft on my iPad before going to sleep. Just a little minecrafting, not for very long, because I need sleep, and because my morning caregiver is coming early (for her reasons, not mine) so ... Sleep is good.

I should know better.

Because I get sequences of just-a-little-more going. I sent to build up the giant tower I have over my base (because tall structures are visible from farther away, and the pocket version has no coordinates so if I get lost I'm kinda screwed), but to do that I need more cobblestone, so I go off to my mine, and get sidetracked by a cave I hadn't explored yet, which leads to more tunnels and caves and stuff, and ooh, diamonds, but oh right I was getting cobblestone, and I really ought to collect more gravel for paths so it's easier and prettier finding my way between my base and my farm and my mine and stuff, and I might as well dig out the trough for the gravel path, and--

This is akin to wanting food, but first you need to wash up some dishes, and that reminds you that you need to get dish soap, which makes you remember that you also need paper towels, but you have one last roll that you really should get, and on your way there you see some dirty clothes that remind you you heed to do laundry, except first you need to find quarters for the laundromat, and searching for those digs up a bill that needs paying...

It is also deceptively time eating. Because digging out a few stacks of cobblestone doesn't take long since I have iron tools and now diamond ones, and pathing gravel doesn't take long (but is a bit awkwarder than with PC controls), and so on, but they add up. *And* there's no visible clock to remind me of the time.

And then it's after 1:30 and I'm still not asleep.

Sigh.

(On the bright side, my tower is taller, and I didn't stupidly fall into lava and die even after finding the seven-diamond vein...)

So minecraft is sort of saving my sanity right now because it's the only one of my games I can still play -- using the mouse right now is problematic enough in the best circumstances, but since I'm still trapped in the backup chair (wrong height, wrong angle, no side to side tilt) it's even worse, and all of my games require both mouse and some keyboard.

(There are of course mouse-only games for things like Bejeweled, but that's not really the same sort of thing, and doesn't scratch the right itch; plus which, I'm using the mouse awkwardly with my non dominant hand, so anything that requires speed or accuracy is right out, and generally mouse-only games require both of those.)

(Plus, there is something innately therapeutic about virtually smacking things in the face with a sword.)

Not being able to do gaming is making the house-arrest of not having my real chair (have I talked about that here? How I can't really go anywhere safely so I'm stuck at home) way more frustrating.

But minecraft has an iOS version. That I can play on my iPad. And that works for the way I hold it. (Landscape, with hands along the sides, mostly touchpadding using thumbs.). And while it's not the only game I have installed, it's the only one that feels like gaming.

Except.

Mods (which are IMO a pain in the ass, and confusing, to install in the PC version) are pretty much impossible (without jailbreaking and other stuff that is beyond my capacity given that I can't really figure out the PC equivalent, which is easier).

Which wouldn't be a problem except that I get lost.

Easily.

So, like, I build a house, and make it all pretty, and put important stuff in chests, and then go wandering -- above ground for NPC villages or other kinds of tree/flower or just because wandering is fun, or below ground for iron or diamonds or redstone -- and then can't get back home argh.

I have a workaround for the PC version, which is F3 to get the debug info up, and write down the x/z coordinates of important places like my home base, and then when I want to get from somewhere else to a known place I just compare coordinates and travel as necessary. This is a tad kludgier than ideal, not as good as installing a mod that allows me to set visually-marked waypoints, but it works.

The iOS version, as far as I can tell, has no way to display coordinates. At all. No debug screen, no way to get info, nada.

So in my current world I have a house that is aesthetically pleasing and also decently functional and defensible, and it is close to good sources of trees (spruce in one direction, birch in another) and close to sheep and pigs, and I'm scared to go anywhere because I won't be able to get back. And sure, it's valid to play nomadically -- carry with me the important stuff, food and coal and iron and any diamonds I come across, and just wander with no fixed home -- but that's not what I want to do right now. I want cozy adventures, where it doesn't matter that I'm hoarding gravel for no apparent reason, where I don't lose everything when I die, where I feel safe and not stressed.

I'm a little frustrated.

*gnaws on things*

I've been wanting for a while to make Something Awesome in Minecraft. Problem is, my jerkbrain keeps derailing me with ( well, jerkbrain pseudologic )

...but I am currently drowning in jerkbrain so as a public KICK MY JERKBRAIN IN THE TEETH act, I am hereby declaring that I am going to make a Minecrafty castle. So there neener.

(in creative, not survival, because I'm not that masochistic)

So I'm playing around in a relatively new minecraft world, just wandering and exploring, and I get lost in a cave, and finally decide that since I am going around in circles and can't find the way out (as defined by "the way I came in", I would dig my way free.

Now, digging straight up is a recipe for Getting Dead; and digging straight across gets you nowhere, except possibly lava; but digging at a 45 degree angle, up and over, works fine, as long as you have the tools. So I dig... and dig...

...and dig...

...and dig...

...and check my altitude, because hot damn have I been digging a lot; it's 68, so I figure I'm near the surface. Right?

Gotta be.

So I dig...

...and dig...

...and dig...

I finally see sandstone, which is generally an indication of sand, which is often an indicator of desert, which is sometimes an indicator of fresh air. So I keep digging.

I come out--
(finally)

-- to find that I basically was digging up a really tall-ass mountain.

I came out at altitude 85; just for fun I climbed to the top, which was altitude 115. Nice view, really.

In miscellaneous news of miscellany:

* I have been closing my door at night to keep Suri out, just because getting licked every few hours and/or getting walked across (she's a small cat, 7 pounds something, but when that weight is packed onto four tiny spots of surface area, it's a lot of pressure, and she has a fondness for walking directly on my boobs as an exit route from the wall side of the bed) was not conducive to getting a necessary amount of sleep.

I did this for the first time Saturday night, because I knew I had to get up for church and I didn't want to snore during the sermon or anything. When I got back, Suri spent a lot of time on my lap, about 1/2 enthusiastic licking, 1/4 snoozing, and 1/4 "you ABANDONED me" reproachful looks.

I did it again last night, and Suri has taken the more catlike approach of completely ignoring my very existence.

(But I slept very soundly...)

* Minecraft has eaten my life. In short form, my brain decided that it would be an /excellent/ idea to implement a mob farm that I saw on youtube. The basic first steps are a) find a good center point in an area that's as oceany/icy as possible, b) do four lines, one each direction, of 74 cobblestone, c) fill out the square that those lines form the midline + of, and d) clear out anything within that frame that is not water.

The basic subsequent steps are e) build up the frame to make a sky-high cube, f) fill in one of the quadrants nine layers down from maximum height to be the floor of the mob trap, g) build a middle floor, h) build a ceiling one block down from max height, i) set up some complicated system of water canals to funnel mobs to an exit point (either a hole in the floor, or a door that you can control with redstone wiring), g) make a platform at sea level underneath the exit point that mobs will fall and go splat on, h) make sure any and all underground caves beneath the cube are well-lit to prevent mob spawns, i) cover everydamnthing with half-steps to prevent spawns on the structure itself, and then j) set mode to something other than peaceful, stand in the middle of the cube, and profit.

I have not gotten there. I am still on step d.

(I don't do well one-on-one with mobs, so I have no gunpowder to make tnt, nor creepers to blow shit up for me, so "clearing out" involves a lot of digging and mining and digging and digging and discarding the fucking snowballs. I am up to three double chests full of dirt, one double chest full of sand, one double chest full of sandstone and cobblestone, and three quadrants cleared and the last almost cleared.)

As sidetrack from the Project of Neverending Digging, I decided to create a minecart track between my home base and the mob farm. I got about twenty squares in before realizing that a ground-level track would not do, because the damn cows and sheep kept standing on it, so I did one at the height of my home base, which is elevated 15 or so blocks off the ground. And because a) I am a huge dork, and b) there is currently a bug that randomly drops the player through solid surfaces, I built support pillars. Which aren't necessary for support, but they can be laddered on to get back up.

To give you some idea of scale:

- the bottom level frame for the mob trap takes a bit less than 900 cobblestone to lay out, i.e. 14 full stacks.
- the distance between my home base and the mob trap is 1100 squares, which is more than 17 stacks, just for the track alone and none of the pillars.
- each stack of 64 tracks takes either a) 24 iron and 6 sticks, for normal rails, or b) 64 gold and 11 redstone dust and 11 sticks, for powered
- I am using about 1 powered for every 24 normal, which means that 100 rails are 4 powered and 96 normal, which means that 1100 rails are 44 powered and 1056 normal, which means that to complete the track I need a total of 396 iron (a bit over six stacks), 44 gold, 8 redstone, and a bunch of trees.

(and of course my sense of honor requires that I not use an inventory editor, so all of the digging is manual, and all of the building is out of stuff I've dug, and I'm maybe halfway through the tracks and in desperate need of iron again)

Or to sum up, I am insane.

* I really wish I could shake the writing brainsquid of "I can't do the idea/image justice". Because yeah, what makes it onto paper will never match up to the vaguely shaped ideal in my head, but if I don't write my stories, no one will. Even if they're plots that other people have written, the stories are mine. (Aren't they?)

Boneheaded minecraftian things I have done in the past few days:

* accidentally discarded my diamond pickaxe into lava ... with no other pickaxe in inventory, and iron ore but no coal to smelt with

(but I did have enough wooden sticks, barely, to use as fuel, and a crafting table plus enough cobblestone to make a furnace)

* gone down to set up a nether portal ... with no flint-and-steel to activate the portal, and while I had flint and iron ore, I still did not have coal, nor did I have a crafting table to make a furnace

* gotten lost in caves... despite using a map. (Round and round in circles we go where the hell is the exit anyway)

* dug a staircase up ... into the middle of the ocean

(yes I did go back down and collect the wiped-out torches)

* went all the way down inside a cave to build a nether portal ... that was close enough to the one near my base that I ended up way high up anyway.

On the bright side, I now have tons of netherrack? and mushrooms.

And, unrelated to that but the usual sources I use for views are kind of disappointing:

I can has book! (_Pack of Lies_ by Laura Anne Gilman. Book two of what is basically CSI:Magic, only way awesomer.) I ♥ the 'verse that this and the Retrievers series is set in. And not just because I'm biased from knowing the author ;)

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I finally, after much hair-tearing-level frustration, managed to get the new Minecraft build modded to work with the map program I use. It is happiness.

(Except for the bit where I fell into lava.)

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Two more days until kittyday \o/

(Yes, there will be pictures when possible)

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I am so far behind on the Stargate big bang story. I don't know why; I have the next bunch of scenes sketched out, enough that I have general knowledge of what happens but not enough that I feel like I've written it already; but I just. I don't even know.

(I have a bit over a month still. I can do this. And if not ... /shrug/ Pulling out feels like giving up, especially since I have no good excuse (the last time I pulled out it was because DW coding and stuff had totally eaten my brain), but it won't kill me.

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Have not emailed the singing group yet. Still need to work on how I'm saying it. I am overthinking this like whoah, which doesn't help.

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Managed to break one of my glasses (plastic, so it didn't shatter or anything, but meh) and also run over one of my grabbers (which never worked well to begin with but having the tip snapped off ... makes it just as effective, ironically) and had sigma in my head being all loud and obnoxious.

WTB robot body and better brain.

(I seriously need a minecraft icon... I just can't decide what would be good.)

Good idea: Building an off-the-ground castle-fort-thing (single pole with ladders leading up to platform floor) at spawn (or other awesome) point. Good place to have forges and chests, and (if on spawn point) gives a good safe space to respawn after death.

Debatable idea: Building a (not-very-practiced) lava trap near said otgcft in a way that would theoretically trap, set on fire (mmm lava), and then wash any loot that drops to a safe collection point.

Bad idea: Building said lava trap near said otgcft *when everything about the cft is made of wood*.

...this has been brought to you by the Department of Not Setting Your Minecraft Home On Fire (Because It Looks Cool But Then You Have No Place To Hide From Creepers).

So I figured out why I am getting stuck in Minecraft.

There are plenty of beginner-level tutorials, both in text and in video. How to punch trees to get wood (insert bad jokes here); how to build tools; how to build your first shelter (which I will admit is less of an issue when playing on Peaceful). I know the basics of cave exploration and similar.

There are also plenty of advanced-level tutorials, mostly video but a few in text. Building mob farms; doing cool shit with minecarts; building epic structures; doing fancy stuff with redstone circuits; etc.

What I haven't yet found are midlevel tutorials. Like: how to find the vast amounts of iron that you need for minecart tracks. Like: how to find lots and lots of diamond so you can have diamond tools and diamond armor and stuff like that. Like: how to use minecarts for the best effect, and the dynamics of boosters and where to put them.

(Okay, so there are some booster tutorials, but I don't really know how best to set up tracks, and idk)

So I end up starting a world, getting to a certain point, getting frustrated because I can't go anywhere, and then starting a new world.

(I also seriously need to set up speakers so I can have sound so I can play on non-Peaceful levels without dying every night. Though I wish it were possible to, like, turn off creeper spawning but leave the rest.)

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World 3 currently has a mob farm - as described here, and yes it did take a while to make -- but the design is less than optimal because I kept getting foiled by lava. There is also a sealed shaft from the collection-point work area to the surface.

I have shittons of stone, several stacks of redstone, a couple of lava buckets, and all of one iron because I lost the rest of what I had to lava. And the world does not seem to be very providing of iron.

World 5 currently has a pretty awesome mini-castle (stone and glass), and almost two full stacks of iron because it just kept appearing everywhere. But it doesn't have much else.

(Worlds 1, 2, and 4 are not really much of anything.)