The Castle of Arendelle
The castle is now all but finished. I am very happy to have it done. Gonna spend a bit of time making sure I haven't missed anything, but yeah, it is basically finished. WIP not any more!
The castle is now all but finished. I am very happy to have it done. Gonna spend a bit of time making sure I haven't missed anything, but yeah, it is basically finished. WIP not any more!
Last Christmas, I went to the cinema to watch Frozen. Then I went to see it again, and again. I fell in love with the film and its characters (except you know who, ha, if only) so naturally I was desperate to try and recreate the castle where the central characters, Princess Anna and Queen Elsa, live. Well, after several months of fun (and frustration) I have finished the castle. I should say that it is not a perfect replica. However, I have tried to remain as true to the original build as possible and of course I took tons of inspiration from the film when I was improvising. I also built a huge underground base beneath the castle. It is designed to work as a normal modded minecraft base and you can see more of that later. But for now, I wish to showcase the main attraction. The castle of Arendelle...
Sorry about the UI. Minimising it with f1 causes the sky to dim for me for some reason so I decided to take some screenshots with the UI on.
The bridge was the first thing I built and I am still really happy with it.
Here you can see both main buildings inside the castle walls. the palace and the chapel.
This is the last part of the castle that was completed. It represents the jail which features in a scene during the film.
Scenes from my favourite part of the movie where Anna sings "First time in forever". You can see the scaffold where she climbs up to get a better view of the harbour and the garden where she sings some of her song.
The castle interior is a bit sparse. There is very little unused space and I have done my best to get plenty of nice decent sized rooms in a sensible arrangement. I am happy with the arrangement, but the rooms are not highly decorated. My modpack only has so many options when it comes to furniture and stuff, but I did the best I could. There is of course plenty of room for other people to put their own spin on it. Screenshots of the inside of the castle can be found further down the thread.
The bridge was the first thing I built and I am still really happy with it.
Here you can see both main buildings inside the castle walls. the palace and the chapel.
This is the last part of the castle that was completed. It represents the jail which features in a scene during the film.
Scenes from my favourite part of the movie where Anna sings "First time in forever". You can see the scaffold where she climbs up to get a better view of the harbour and the garden where she sings some of her song.
The castle interior is a bit sparse. There is very little unused space and I have done my best to get plenty of nice decent sized rooms in a sensible arrangement. I am happy with the arrangement, but the rooms are not highly decorated. My modpack only has so many options when it comes to furniture and stuff, but I did the best I could. There is of course plenty of room for other people to put their own spin on it. Screenshots of the inside of the castle can be found further down the thread.
I have already shown some screenshots of the rooms below the base throughout the thread (starting at page 4). But I feel like it would be nice to show some highlights and new stuff here in the OP.
Most of the rooms in the base are designed so that they could fit lots of different types of machines or things in them. Here are two new examples.
I have tried to keep the rooms interesting by changing the colour schemes up and adding features, such as the doors in the second image above there. They are based off the loading bays you get at lorry (truck) depots you see off the motorway (highway). On the other side of those loading bays is a balcony which provides access to the inner works of the base. The walls are mostly hollow to facilitate running cabling and adding new rooms where there is room.
While some rooms are designed to be as universal as possible so that almost any mod can fit in, others have been designed with an express purpose in mind. These usually involve mods which require a lot of space to set up, often with quite intricate multiblocks. Notable among these mods are Blood Magic, Thaumcraft, Big Reactors and Railcraft. Here are a couple of highlights from the specialised rooms.
Overhead view of the rail depot and logistics hub. This is just a big square room and it really can be used for anything but it has a tunnel that leads directly to the land, ideal for railway linkups.
Nuclear Reactor Chamber. I plan on adding a huge array of energy cells and computer craft control and all sorts to my big reactor so I planned this room accordingly. In my mind, the nuke will sit suspended mid air in the middle of room with energy arrays connected nearby and a computer will control the reactor, possibly with a manual override done using touchsceen.
Its not all techmods though, there is room for magic here too. In fact, this could well be my favourite room. I have been messing around with the lighting just a little bit so I am taking these screenshots with night vision on but you get the idea. This is going to be the main hall of my blood magic wing, or as I like to call it, the Sanguinarium.
I have tried to keep the rooms interesting by changing the colour schemes up and adding features, such as the doors in the second image above there. They are based off the loading bays you get at lorry (truck) depots you see off the motorway (highway). On the other side of those loading bays is a balcony which provides access to the inner works of the base. The walls are mostly hollow to facilitate running cabling and adding new rooms where there is room.
While some rooms are designed to be as universal as possible so that almost any mod can fit in, others have been designed with an express purpose in mind. These usually involve mods which require a lot of space to set up, often with quite intricate multiblocks. Notable among these mods are Blood Magic, Thaumcraft, Big Reactors and Railcraft. Here are a couple of highlights from the specialised rooms.
Overhead view of the rail depot and logistics hub. This is just a big square room and it really can be used for anything but it has a tunnel that leads directly to the land, ideal for railway linkups.
Nuclear Reactor Chamber. I plan on adding a huge array of energy cells and computer craft control and all sorts to my big reactor so I planned this room accordingly. In my mind, the nuke will sit suspended mid air in the middle of room with energy arrays connected nearby and a computer will control the reactor, possibly with a manual override done using touchsceen.
Its not all techmods though, there is room for magic here too. In fact, this could well be my favourite room. I have been messing around with the lighting just a little bit so I am taking these screenshots with night vision on but you get the idea. This is going to be the main hall of my blood magic wing, or as I like to call it, the Sanguinarium.
Without the following mods, this build would simply not have been possible. So if any authors are reading this, thank you very much.
- Carpenter's Blocks - Slopes, Better stairs, Better doors, all round superstar
- Forge Multipart - Similar to Carpenter's blocks, so useful
- Chisel - A texture for every situation
- Forestry - Wenge, Walnut and Greenheart is a wonderful combination
- Biomes O Plenty - Provided the wonderful world gen I got, + beautiful decorative blocks
- Railcraft - Subtly beautiful decorative blocks. Charming lamps and excellent fences
- Minefactory Reloaded - Decorative blocks that I will not underestimate again
- Tinker's Construct - Some really nice designs for chiselled blocks
- Natura - More beautiful blocks, especially the nether woods + amaranth
- Computer craft (+open peripherals) - I have a few programs running which make everything so much better. And given how limited vanilla signs are, the monitors are super helpful
- Random Things - The facelift this mod provides turns the vanilla redstone lamp into one of my favourite blocks in the game.
- Dartcraft - Spawn resistant gorgeous bricks in all their gaudy glory. I especially love the pink one
- Project Red - For the redstone contraptions and the lamps
- Bibliocraft - The only "furniture" mod I have, and it served valiantly
- Extra Utilities - Connected textures on multiparts has to be worthy of a nobel prize. If not, then the creative builders wand surely is.
- Thaumcraft, Factorization, Greg's Lighting - Arcane Lamp, Wrath Lamp and Flood Light respectively.
- Vanilla night vision potions
F.A.Q
OK, so by frequently I probably mean asked twice but whatevs
1. Which modpack are you using?
I am using Resonant Rise (mainline). I am currently running version 2.8.3.10, but I like to stay up-to-date so this may change soon.
2. Will there be a map download?
2. Will there be a map download?
I hope so. I did not start out with the intention of releasing a map download, but community interest has encouraged me. Although I consider the build basically finished, there are still some things I would need to do if I were to release a world download. More information can be found at the bottom of this post.
Questions which should be being frequently asked.
1. In the movie Frozen, who is your favourite character?
Why what an interesting question. There are many wonderful characters, but this answer is actually really easy for me. Why its Princess Anna of course!
2. Of all the great scenes in the movie, which is your favourite?
2. Of all the great scenes in the movie, which is your favourite?
You're right Mr interviewer, so many great scenes. You really are asking the important questions today. Well, I have considered it and here is my favourite scene
Its like part of your world reprise, but somehow it manages to be even more awesome
Its like part of your world reprise, but somehow it manages to be even more awesome
Computer craft doings
Computer craft is one of my very favourite mods and I can't resist using it in almost every map. This is no exception, and if you have been following the thread you will already be familiar with some of the ways I am using it. Here is a brief summary of what I already have, what I am finishing off, and what I have planned.
Finished!
- Front Gate Control - The front gate uses a sensor from Open Peripherals to detect nearby players. It will open if a whitelisted player is detected nearby. There is also a blacklist to make sure that the gates won't open even if a whitelisted player is in range while there is also a blacklisted player. Adding or removing players from both the whitelist and blacklist is supported within the program without having to restart it or edit the code. The lists are stored on the disc too so you don't have to redo the configuration every server restart either!
- Multisign API - This is a small API that I have already released on these forums in the last week. All of the signs in the rooms are manipulated using this API. There are ~15 monitor signs in the base all controlled by one computer. It works fine right now and is release ready, although I have further plans for it.
- Railcraft Elevators - In my base I have built 2 elevator shafts to provide access to all of the different parts of my base. I am writing a program to control these elevators in a really cool way. It is not finished yet, although I have made a very messy barely working version already. I haven't had much time to work on it lately but it is a priority. If I can release a world download soon, this might not make it in time. However, I will make it available as soon as I know its working. My plan is for it to work by setting up a server to manage your elevator and then you add a client for each floor (you can freely add and remove clients, and no matter what, because the server knows about all clients, each client will automatically know about all other clients). It will work for any elevator, not just the ones in Arendelle.
- Password Doors - I have a password door program that works fine, but I want to update it to make it easier to configure and generally more versatile. I will probably be doing some monitor stuff with it too. As far as it being released with a world download, that I won't guarantee. Maybe it will, it depends on how much I get done. In fact, that goes for all programs in the "In Progress" and "In Planning" section.
- An energy store monitor - Over on the Resonant Rise forums, someone has already beaten me to it and produced a really nice looking program to monitor RF storage. I have been planning something similar but I still want to write it out myself because I like to use my own programs. I have only glanced at the code, but the implementation in at least one major area will be different and I think some of the features I have planned (and already done) are not present in their program. I will have to check it out properly, and when I dig it out I will try to remember to link it.
- A liquid storage monitor - One of the rooms I built I designed to hold a bunch or railcraft tanks. I hope to write a decent program to monitor liquid storage levels. I have done it before and I liked it a lot and I want to improve on it this time.
- Side gate control - At the beginning of this project I was building a system to control the side gate but I didn't want to use proximity detectors. The program I wanted to write did not go very well though (details in the thread) but I think I could do a better job of it now. This is one I may return to down the line.
World Download
First off, there currently is no world download.
I do hope to have one out soon. I have been asking around to see if there is anything I should know before releasing a world download and there is nothing I find too concerning so hopefully I shouldn't have much trouble preparing the world. I am also going to write a couple of books and place some stuff around the place for fun which will take a fair while.
Here is some important information about the world. The Biome Gen Config is for Biomes O plenty and it is important if you want to avoid ugly chunk boundaries.
I use the version of RR given but I have removed Chickenchunks (it crashes me all the time for some reason). I do not have underground biomes installed. The only optional mod that I can think of off the top of my head that you will definitely need is Railcraft. The others you can probably take or leave.
RR Version = 2.8.3.10-RR-MAIN
Biome Gen Config = http://pastebin.com/iVu503Hz
Seed = 2062330276
Location:
x = 39
z = 349
y = 80 - be careful if teleporting. You might suffocate or take fall damage
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