I FINISHED!

I wrapped up the adventure map. I put the final punctuation mark in the last in-game text file.

I’ve written the teacher’s supplements.

I’ve transformed the map from Creative to Survival.

I’ve included the map, the texts, the supplements, the specialised texture pack and some bits of trivia, and put it all into a 43MB package on a stick drive that is currently residing with my house keys.

Tomorrow, I deliver the whole benighted package!

The day after tomorrow….

MWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA(coughcoughcough)

The day after tomorrow, I shall be sharing a 14.3MB zip file containing all of the above with the entire world. I’ll be giving all my loyal fans the URL to download.

And now that it’s all done…

I don’t know what to do with myself. There’s only so much housework to do before it becomes mundane maintenance. I could throw myself back at my writing and see what happens, I suppose. I could learn how to handle Meteor and make Realm of the InterNutter a free app or something. Apps are apparently in.

This whole thing is a huge personal accomplishment. I spent months of my time making this map, engineering traps, building set pieces and, more often than not, breaking something I’d been trying to make the heck down and starting all over again.

My personal deadline was September. I’m over the moon to have finished by July.

So when this comes out on Tuesday(My Tuesday, possibly your Monday), have a go at it. Post some videos. Have fun.

And let me know what you think. Feedback is important to me.

What I’ve been doing all this time.

I have spent the last couple of months intensively building a map. Which I have now finished.

These are a few, choice pix of what I’ve been up to.

My map is called Threat of the MathMagician and will be released on the interwebs real soon now. I have to deliver a copy to Mayhem’s teacher, first, and then it’s out into the world.

I plan on giving a copy to Minecraftedu and mailing a copy directly to the Yogscast, under the challenge of, “Are you smarter than an Australian 5th-grader?”

Look out, Simon and Lewis.

A few highlights from my completed rooms.

I will share new rooms as they happen.

I had to do an ice-based jumping puzzle because they’re almost obligatory in Minecraft adventure maps.

…of course, if the player melts or breaks the ice, the whole set-up is ruined… And monsters float.

Progress at last!

After one computer broke down, got replaced with another [Best. Easter present. EVAR!], had the data transferred, re-set up Minecraft, had that holiday in Thailand, and figured out how to install an old save… I’m back in business.

Hu-freakin’-zah.

I know, last time I posted about this, I swore I’d never talk about the sewer level again, but whilst I was making the area level, some mob tripped the circuitry off and fried my processors in the first place. Laborious process above later, I discovered that well over half of my crap dispensers didn’t contain any crap. So along with re-setting the circuitry, picking up the dispensed crap and topping up the dispensers, I had to go around and make sure every last dispenser was full of crap. Fun.

I have since done quite a bit since then, including finally surpassing the point at which I forced myself to re-make the goddamn math puzzle room set.

Why didn’t I just keep building upwards? Why?

Well, the beta rooms have neater circuitry now that I understand redstone a mite better. I included some lanterns as a “wrongness” indicator in the early rooms and got downright mean to my poor players in later levels.

I don’t recall there being an original perimeter room, but now there is one. Hooray.

And, since my kind, loving relatives threw out the one piece of paper I needed to finish the dang adventure map, I now have a good excuse to completely destroy the alpha draft rooms.

Theraputalicious.

I leave the ceiling for last, since it’s the floor of the next level. All the better to prevent dynamite-style cheating, my dear.

Last of the sewer level pix, I swear.

The finishing touch on the third floor is an array of randomly flickering lights in the ceiling.

Three concentric redstone repeater circles make a random signal generator. The rest of it is to take the signal to the lights.

When I finally moved on to build the next chamber, an asshat mob went and stepped on the triggering pressure plate, and damn near killed my computer. I’ve stopped all the circuitry, but I have to fix the dang doors in the startup area on the bottom floor.

I’ve got the fog set to “Tiny”, the graphics to “Fast” and everything that could make my poor computer wheeze turned down or completely off. And I *STILL* have framerate issues.

Not helped by my computer spontaneously turning itself off at random moments. Ugh.

I’m taking my time with the sewer level.

It’s almost a month later, and I’m still working on this thing. As I write this [24 Mar] I am STILL stuffing dispensers with brownish objects and occasional representative junk.

And by “representative junk”, I mean: leather for dead animals, raw fish for fish, empty bottles, string, lilly pads, grass, iron fences, gravel, slime balls and pieces  of paper. Because it’s not just poo and wee that winds up in our drains, ya know.

Oh, and the odd stack of silverfish eggs ‘cause I want this sewer to be overrun with “rats”.

In the process of building this thing, I up and decided to add some interesting titbits about sewers and sanitation into the entire labyrinth. I now know more about such things than a mere mortal really should.

Except for one thing. As an Aussie, I felt I had to add a bit of trivia concerning sanitation in our fair country. As an internet dweller, I could not find one crumb of such info. I asked MeMum [Hi!] who is old enough to remember life before television(ghasp), and also recalls a few things about when sewers actually came in.

I picked on Sydney because it’s the one city in Australia everyone knows about. That also doesn’t possess an identically-named city somewhere else in the world. I know from movies that “night soil carts” [look it up] were employed in Sydney and other Australian cities as late as the 1960’s, and my fellow Brisbanites were joking about sewering certain suburbs in the '70’s.

The closest she could guess [in between repeated enquiries as to whether I’d looked EVERYWHERE - and Yes, I have.] was the 1970’s.

Does anyone similarly fecaly fascinated have a firmer date[Full credit is all I can offer, alas]?

More progress pix on my adventure map.

Slowly making my way back to the part where I was starting to desperately need math from Mayhem’s teacher. I haven’t taken any of these pix recently, ‘cause I’m still working on the sewer level a week later 9_9

It’s really complicated to make a sewer level! I’m still working out where to put all the dispensers and whether I should make another random signal generator or where to put it. Gah.

The lengths I go to for scatological humour.

More on the sewer, next post.

I call this one the “mining chamber” and tried to create a labyrinthine cavern of twists, turns, nooks, crannies and, of course, mine-ables.

And lava.

Can’t forget the lava.

Reasons why I want user-controlled spawner blocks, even if it’s just in creative mode:

1) Squids de-spawn when you’re not looking at them
2) I want a room full of squids
3) Even if I add a cubic metric butt-ton of them before the last save, I’m scared they’ll go away before my adventurers get there
4) There are other creatures I want in my chambers that de-spawn at the slightest provocation. 

Last of the alpha-draft adventure map pix.

Comments? Opinions?