Features of our world

 I started using Minecraft Realms back in November 2014. I found it to be a reliable option, with less to think about regarding updates and maintenace. A dedicated computer at home was no option, and renting a server somewhere seemed also a big hussle. It was even possible to download the world, add datapacks, and upload the world again.

With the Caves and Cliffs update the low render distance of only 12 chunks started to be kind of annoying. Sometimes I would download the world so I could create nice screenshots. In 2022 I already experimented once with renting a server.

Last year, in June, I finally decided to switch. After trying out a few companies, I decided to rent a server at Shockbyte. I haven't regretted it for a second.

Instead of the render distance of 12 chunks, the server goes up to 32 chunks. You already need a bit of a computer to handle this. There is also a dynamic world map. I installed Dynmap.

Currently we run vanilla 1.20.1 with the following data packs from Vanilla Tweaks:

• Armor statues
• More mob heads
• Wandering trades - Blocks only
• Anti Enderman grief

 Raids are disabled. After getting a few raids even inside my base buildings, I had enough of those ugly grey fellows.

Travel distance: no limitations, there is no world border. Anyone can go as far as they would like to go. 

Maybe it is an anarchy server after all,with this difference that only friends and family (none of them a griefer) have access. Access is controled by white-listing players.

Laurens_V

Update issues

 Not every update to a newer version went as smooth as it should. Some issues happened because of new features, others because of removed features/bugs. Let me mention a few.

• Zero tick sugar cane farm. Yes, I had one, combined with my supersmelter (design by Iskall85). This worked fine, until this feature/bug was removed. Now the super smelter is fed by a lot (and I mean, a lot) regular sugar cane farms
• Iron farms. The mechanics for iron farms have changed a few times over the years, and every time I had to rebuild/change the iron farm. Only the kill chamber stayed the same in all versions.
  
  
  
  

  

  The version with 4 pods and a lot of doors.
  
  

  
  

  

  The version with a lot of villagers and workstations.

  
  
  

  

  Improved version of the above, because the iron gollems also spawned outside the building.
  

  
  
  

  

  And finally the present version, with pop-up zombies,
  so the villagers can have a sleep and do some work.
  It has also the advantage that you can pause the farm,
  by disabling the zombie popping up.
  

• Build height. Not such a problem, would you think. Well, I have a disfunct ice farm now, since the height on which water freezes went up. And I had to rebuild a part of the guardian farm. The spawn rate had become much lower because of the new unlit caverns below Y = 0. Lighting up those caves would also have been possible, but building is much more fun. 

Maybe there were more issues, but for now nothing else comes to mind.

Laurens_V

World of Minecraft - World 2: How it started, updates and future

 As mentioned earlier, in 2017 my son Flippoow_V wanted a new world. So in June of that year I made preparations to start a new world in Realms. In April 2016 my youngest daughter, Daisy_love, started a local world under version 1.9.1, with the idea that we could all play in, one by one. Of course this concept didn't really work out, but still she claimed her spot of land. So when I had to choose a new world, I decided to upload this singleplayer world to Realms, as the new world.

Up till now we are still playing in this world, currently under version 1.20.1. I have guided it through all updates. 

• Update Aquatic saw the removal of all ocean chunks, so we could have the new ocean.
• New biomes meant, deleting all chunks which contained no structures, so we could get chunks under the new terrain generation. Luckily Mojang implemented the terrain generation in such a way that weird borders between old and new terrain were history.
• The Nether update was the most easy one: deleting the old Nether, and dive into it as if it was new.
  

Not every update went smooth, and some gave issues, which is for another blogpost.

The future for our present world?  Keep playing, and with every important update I will use MCA-Patcher to remove those not-needed chunks, meanwhile keeping our bases intact. There is an option in MCA-patcher which gives you the oportunity to automatically select the chunks where people have been spending less than X minutes in, where you can choose X yourself. I use the setting less than 5 minutes. So all chunks where people have only been travelling through, without building, will be deleted.

To me continuity is important. There are casual players on the server, and I want them to continu where they left, even if they haven't logged on for half a year. Nothing more annoying then entering a server after some time, only to discover that it has been reset and all your builds have gone...

Laurens_V

My texture pack

 As you may have noticed on some pictures, I was (and still am) using a texture pack, called Misa's Realistic Texurepack. It is one of the oldest packs around. I got somehow in touch with it by the end of 2012, and grow fond of it. I used it fore some years, tried other texture packs, but every time I came back to this one. When Misa stopped working on the pack, the community picked it up, and made the efforts to update it with all those new items. 

Some years ago, Misa got back, and is working on the pack again. Misa is a great artist, be sure to check the texture pack out, join the Discord server, and support her on Patreon. The combination with BSL Shaders is amazing.

Unfortunately for those of you on Bedrock, this is only available for the Java edition.

Laurens_V

World of Minecraft - World 1

 As I already mentioned in my previous blogpost, my first multiplayer world on Minecraft Realms started in November 2014. Players were me, my children and some close friends, and friends of those friends. It was a random seed with the world spawn in a plains biome with mountains around. As in previous worlds, I started my base as a small hole in a mountain.

My base developed slowly, and got bigger.

It was a rather busy world with 6 or 7 active players. I started also using more redstone contraptions, and building mob farms (slime and other mobs). 

We were playing in this world until June 2017. My son got bored and wanted a new world.

This is the state when we left this world. My base is in the center.

You may notice a castle on the second picture, this will get its own blogpost in due time.

Scrolling through the map makes me realise that there was a lot of building going on. A small pyramid in the desert, Maya temples in the jungle, converting a desert temple to a base, finding our first woodland mansion, almost 14.000 blocks away from spawn. Not to mention a lot of travelling.

Good memories on this world, and luckily I still have it on my harddrive.

Laurens_V

Introduction

 Hi, I have been playing Minecraft since the summer of 2012. 1 day I watched my children playing some weird looking blocky game. Of course I wanted to try it out, and since then I am kind of hooked on it. The first year I only played a few singleplayer worlds: the first one was in creative mode, the second one survival. My base started with just some cave, which over the moments transformed into a big building.

I did spend a year building and rebuilding, until the final stage on the next pictures.

This final stage, in July 2013, was in the period that Morythuj introduced me to multiplayer, on his server. This was a new experience, which made me play mostly on his server, instead of in singleplayer. After a while this server stopped/crashed, and I started playing FTB Minecraft. which was very interesting. Unfortunately all data of this world are gone.

In September 2014 Morytjuh started another server, which I of course joined. As in the previous worlds, I started my base in a mountain side.

 
Before any real progress was made, this server crashed, and gone was the world.

Being hooked on multiplayer, but also wanting to be in charge, I looked at Minecraft Realms. This seemed like a perfect solution. No need to run your own computer, no need to keep an eye on updates. So, November 2014 I started the first Realms world, called 'World of Minecraft'. This world will be discussed in the next blogpost.

Laurens_V