DrBretto's VR* Adventures

[Drbretto]

New world, new thread.

*VR not yet implemented. This pack IS designed to work with Vivecraft, I haven't gone through all the tweaking I need to do to make it work right yet. I'm confident I will get it to work, I just have been setting this pack up for pretty much all waking hours for the last week or so and I just wanted to sit down and play. The majority of the work will be done in 2D anyway. The idea isn't to have to play in VR all the time, rather to build the game with an eye on "visiting" it once in a while and interacting with what I've built.

But this is what I've been dreaming about since I first started playing Minecraft. There's a lot of focus on graphics because this is meant to be a creative/survival hybrid. It's less of a focus on progression and more about how you utilize the technology you have at your disposal to survive with style. Basically, imagine you're a mad scientist, and you get yourself stuck in this, let's call it a microverse , what would you do?

Well, I don't know about you, but I don't survive, I conquer that mofo. I would rule over the indigenous people (minecolonies) and with their help, build a thriving kingdom (Don't worry, they pay each other ). I'd live in a absurdly elaborate castle overlooking my people. Eventually, I would be as a god! Muahaha!

Well, you get the idea. But first, interdimensional super genius or no, you still wake up naked in a strange land. I ran off to find a place to settle .this world is very beautiful, but it's also full of ways to die, especially early on. It looks like Ice and Fire Dragons has seen some heavy updates and there's a whole bestiary of mythical mobs roaming around. This will be worth it when I start hatching dragon eggs. Anyway, here's our plot:

I wish you could see it in 4k on this screen. It pops.

It's me and Rebecca again. This time, I found twin plots separated by a village where we can build some basic communal survival stuff to get situated before we start our minecolonies villages. Nice pretty Mountains for a backrop/place to build our castles to look over them. If you draw an imaginary line from the village diagonally through the mountains behind it, you'll split our twin plots. I take the Northwest, she will take the SouthEast. Makes it easier to not snake all the resources on the other person. We each get complete creative control over each region.

It's only day one and I'm the only one in so far, so all I got started on our shared bases. First, I stole the nicest looking house in the village. Then, one of the first things I always do is get started on an underground base for mining:

True to the spirit of the pack, I took my sweet time making the tunnel nice and wide. It's just nicer that way. I figure we can add tracks on each side if the staircase later. One for each of us as she will get the left side of the basement to mine while I mine from the right wall. I'm still trying to polish it up down there, but I need to pick up more of the stone to finish. I'll get more when I start mining, so I'll fix it later. This is basically going to be the center point of the whole world. It may end up being an underground hub of sorts between plots, so it can't just be a hole in the ground. Plus, it's nice running down those steps and running into what ended up looking like a carving if a monkey good or something, lol. Adds to the atmosphere.

Anyway, I was going to recdor the videos anyway, so I'll post em here in case anyone happens to be interested. If anyone wants an import zip for twitch for this pack, shoot me a PM.

 

[Drbretto]

Not much. Just finished up the early game basement/mine. It's basically an homage to the first basement I ever dug out. I was going for a more vanilla-ish feel for now. Just a super basic semi-automatic ore crusher and smelter, a bed and some sort-of sorted chests. This base here is pretty much only there so I can gather enough resources to get a basic gear set, AA drill, etc, before I head up to the surface and start with the real plot. The ore generation in this pack is pretty out of control. I have more gold and iron than I know what to do with. I'm in full emerald as trash gear, and in all the digging I've done in the little mine (mine is the first one I walk through, with the different heights, theirs is the ugly one ), I've only run into like 7 diamonds. Many of which have come in single block clusters. If I had to do it all over again, I'd tweak that a bit, but we're too far in now to worry about it. Diamonds will just mean something again.

And of course, a basic old-school mob dropper, which I was going to start the clip off demonstrating before things went horribly wrong and an enderman survived the fall. The thing is, though, it's a modifed basic vanilla mob dropper, the classic water conveyor type, I just added some openblocks fans to help it along. I was under the impression that those didn't work on Endermen. I thought the water made them teleport, but this one took a dip before dying and he didn't go anywhere. So, guess we learned that about the world.

This base should do, though. I will have to scout my main plot and get a settlement going there, with some transportation back to the mine. I will ultimately build and underground base elsewhere that's actually worthy of my evil supergenius stature, of course, but this is where I'll be doing any manual mining until that's obsolete. Later I'll convert this into a rail hub. I'm going to try to avoid any teleportation or anything just yet. I want to use a lot of rails and eventually viaducts locally, and use silents gems teleports somewhat sparingly later on. This will be the constant struggle, not trying to focus on getting to the better tech and sort of re-walking the evolution of modded minecraft and smelling the pixelized roses.

Edit: We did manage to get this running as nice looking as it is in the videos on some more attainable PCs, as I helped my friends get into the world earlier today. They're running it in 1080, but it's extremely playable even with these shaders and the resource packs. I have been looking for that perfect combo for quite some time and I think I've finally got it. If you have a relatively up to date PC, it might be worth trying this setup.

 

[Drbretto]

Moar nothing!

No video for what I've done lately both because it's mostly setup and because the one video I did record didn't work out right. But that video I did record was me dancing around to Kendrick Lamar in VR! Yes! The VR is working, and the pack is officially complete. I didn't do much in VR just yet, as I mentioned, the VR experience is really pretty much good for room scale activities and admiring your work. It's not really a comfortable experience for playing all the time, though there's nothing stopping one from doing so. This is a fundamental issue with Minecraft that will never be "fixed" without a complete re-write from the ground up with VR in mind. For an experience with a game NOT designed with VR in mind, though, it's fantastic. There is something visceral about being able to strap your world into your face and see it in full 3D. Now, I just need to have more than a staircase to admire.

But I have my 3x3 drill and am a couple of sugarcane growths away from the tier 2 speed upgrade, got my AA battery and magnetizer in my baubles and I'm pretty much ready to *actually* start the game! Today's goal is to forgo any pretense of "work" at work and start plotting a plan for my village on graph paper between calls (I work in cable sales, good money, lots of free time to screw off).

This step is crucial. I don't need to have *everything* planned out before I get started, but I really, really need to thing long and hard about the general placement of certain things because they can't just be moved. I'm not making box after box here that I can just keep adding on. Once you place that town hall, your village is permanently set. Obviously, I will need to sit and ponder for hours in-game for the exact placement, but today, I need to come up with a generalized plan that will shape the world forever. It's going to be a fun day

 

[rhn]

Your whole approach to this sounds very similar to my own preferred play style, so looking forward to seeing more

I don't need to have *everything* planned out before I get started, but I really, really need to thing long and hard about the general placement of certain things because they can't just be moved. I'm not making box after box here that I can just keep adding on. Once you place that town hall, your village is permanently set. Obviously, I will need to sit and ponder for hours in-game for the exact placement, but today, I need to come up with a generalized plan that will shape the world forever. It's going to be a fun day

I too spend days/weeks/months/years planning things out and maturing the idea. It really makes for the most thorough builds IMO.
However after a certain point, there seem to be a diminishing return on pure planning. At that point I gain massively from just going ingame with some stacks of cobble and start mapping out foundations etc. Then maybe spend a few days looking it over and thinking about the result of that(must be great in VR!), then modify it a bit.... Repeat...

 

[Drbretto]

Yes! I also very much like to improvise. Especially on all the details. The planning stage, for me, is to make sure I have what I need to improvise without locking myself into a corner. So, like, I just need to know, ok, Central processing goes here, the castle entrance needs to overlook the minecolonies villege, so it will sit up on that mound there, going back in through the mountain, connecting to processing and power generation, which is over through this section of the mountain, etc.

Then, it' comes down to making sure I have enough room for the components, deciding whether I want to have my walls with an even number so there's a 2 block center, or odd so there's a center block, etc. I just need to picture it in a wide angle first. Which, I've sort of done as I'm picturing all this from the above paragraph as I typed it.

Everything else that I've planned for weeks/months/years are all either the little ideas that have popped in my head once in a while that I finally want to accomplish, or continuations of things that I've started in the past and have learned more lately. This pack will have a little of both, while the whole thing TRIES to become the thing I've been envisioning since I tried Minecraft for the first time.

Tonight will be simple. I have my processing area mapped out. I will turn on the chunk border outlines in that spot and mark off a 2x2 chunk area and dig a hole to China. This is where I will build my real underground lair for RS storage, quarrying, processing and probably mob grinding. This will try to be something like my last one where I used FRTools Quarry to carve it out and process it on the go:

Just, hopefully, this time a little neater, lol

 

[Drbretto]

Video rendering, will add in the morning.

Finally got the time to put in a few hours. I do believe this, and Sox/Yanks, will be what I do almost all weekend, too. Things are going to start escalating real quick.

Before I go out and prove I'm good for more than digging staircases, I have one more to dig. As this one will be a *teensy* bit more elaborate, , This will *not* be done in a day. Both because of the time it would take to build, and because I will need to make some technological advances to do what I have in mind. This will be an ongoing project I add to for quite some time, but I'm pretty excited about it.

But, first, this is a modpack about farm and function. First comes function. I chose this plot because it's behind a mountain and near some oil spouts. It's a pretty little back lot, but suited for something of an industrial zone. Here, I intend to build sort of the main processing tower, from bedrock to build limit.

I used the chunk border overlay to outline a 2x2 chunk square in the zone, helping me find the most obvious center point. I use the chunk borders as a guide just to keep things clean. I've had my share of server instability and I just like to keep my machines easily within chunk borders so they're less likely to have something break because a chunk didn't load right. I also only have to keep 4 Chunks loaded for the vast majority of my automation. I've found through experience that that size space is ideal to work in, especially with multiple floors.

Being multiple floors on the same space is also really efficient. I can run RS panels on every floor with just one pipe going all the way up, for example. Same with power. And these are the things I need to plan to leave space for as I design my staircase (which, honestly, will be pure decoration eventually, when I put an RF Tools elevator in the middle.

So, these will be probably the 4 busiest chunks on the server. As such, I felt like it deserved a spiral staircase, from bedrock all the way to the top. For now, we're heading for bedrock.

Digging this initial spiral proved more challenging than expected. I honestly thought I'd get down to the bottom in 45 minutes but it took a while to figure out a good, repeatable pattern. Using chunk borders locks me into an even configuration (ie 2x2 center square, not a single center block) while trying to work with factors of 3 to match my 3x3 drill. I was eventually able to make it work by making the sides slightly twisted off each other like a ninja star. I want this spiral to be exact, and navigation is difficult underground with this kind of counter-intuituve drill pattern. I found it really hard to not screw it up every corner turn for quite some time. I ended up having to make a more complicated systematic pattern including specially placed torches and constant double checking by digging holes at the corners to make sure I don't go off track.

Anyway, got my system down finally, so I restart the game to set up a recording. *Now* I will just record my 45 minute trip to bedrock, right?? Ha!

Now, one of my favorite things in any version of Minecraft is to use the generated environment to shape what I build. Even back on my first ever Minecraft world on the PS4, when digging a hole for my basement, I ran into a cave, so I glassed in the rest of the stairs down to the bottom so you could check out the cave as you're riding carts up and down. Later, added some lava poured over the tube for a little effect. I always liked it:

Spoiler

Well, I picked the perfect damn spot for this staircase. Because shortly after I kept digging, I ran into a cave with waterfalls on all sides, going into lava falls and whatnot, all the way to the bottom. It is giving me so much to work with to really spice this thing up to give a nice view each time I go up and down. And let me tell you, I will be spending a lot of time time going up and down these caves. I absolutely cannot wait to see how this is going to look in the end. I'm going to have a lot of fun with this little 2x2 chunk.

 

[Drbretto]

Kinda disappointed in how the rendering came out, but I did rush the job so I could go to bed, lol. But ti's weird to see the rendering actually look worse than it does in real-time. I'l work on it.

Anyway, that's just a quick aerial view of the plot. Most of that green will be filled in with Minecolonies huts. The front of the mountain will have my main castle walls, and the area I'm digging will be the big ole tower of power I spoke about at length in the last post.

You can see where the stairwell opens up into the big cave here, but you kind of need my eyes to really see the potential. I do not want to work today, I want to go the eff home right now and keep working!

 

[Drbretto]

Gooood Monday morning! While I did have to deal with a few family obligations and some basic socialization like a normal person, it was otherwise a successful Minecraft weekend! Have ever been behind someone on the road that's going 5 MPH under the speed limit, and you're like "OMG, drive!! At this rate, I'll only have 13 more hours to play today!"

Anyway, sadly, a lot of that time was taken up by either planning or recording my spiffy little videos. The rest of the time was me standing there for seemingly hours trying to figure out which of the 500,000 things I need to do first. I also played a little

Anyway, first video here, I was trying something a little bit different where I would record a few shorter scenes and throw them together. This pack isn't just about building, so I wanted to at least show a blip of some of the adventurous aspects. In this case, my first encounter with a dragon that encroached all up in my space. I was messing around with different shaders this time, but I kind of wish I had just stuck with my normal shader just for the dragon shadow scene that seemed so clever at first, lol. That one is using Continuum and it looks nice on the materials and there's some really cool stuff you can do with it, but it's also a PC killer.

Anyway, so that dragon got the best of the the first time around, as you can see if flipping me all over the place like I'm nothing. I had just dumped my inventory and accidentally dropped off my arrows, so I had to go charging in like a moron, and subsequently died a moron's death. But, as you can see after the transition to scene 2, where I am placing its head as a trophy while I wear its skin, I did indeed get my revenge!

But, this is all about my hole. And you can see here how it was a very manual PITA process to lay the block pattern down. All that, btw is nothing but a mold. I still haven't figured out which slabs I'm going to use in the end, but I will be covering the whole staircase in something nice and removing the blocks underneath. I may need to look into some kind of flying options soon. But, getting ahead of myself. Scene 2, I think, does an ok job of demonstrating what I was up against. First, thank you Simsimilax Trancompators or whatever the hell that mod is called. This gives you a wand that lets you place a block behind another block. This was instrumental for building a descending staircase without having to drop a bucket of water down every step. It would also later prove very useful in trying to dig through a pool of lava as it made it easier to push it back. I didn't get any of that on the clip, though.

It wasn't long after I finished up where scene 2 ends off when I realized it's time to move my base camp over to my new plot, so I dug a tunnel for a subway system from one plot to the next, then grabbed my essential stuff and moved it along. My new camp is ever a work in progress, but it's homey enough to get started.

This clip is more like how I actually see the game. It's even in 4k finally if you have a device capable of it. This is the first time you can kind of see what I'm heading towards with the staircase as I've hollowed out (most of) the center. I did this by digging from the top and dropping to my death over and over again, but I'll need flight to really get all the detailing done. I promise, it WILL look good eventually! Lol. It's just a whole lot more work than I had estimated.

And, lastly, you can see we're finally getting started on Minecolonies! I have the plots laid down for the Town Hall and a couple of builders huts. There's some new buildings available this time around, so it should look pretty cool when that's all developed. Juuust getting started there, though.

Hopefully things start shaping up real soon. I wasted a lot of time struggling with the replay editor, so it was really hard to get into a good flow. It's time to start building some basic tech now that I have a little canola farm started. I need to get started on RS, specifically. I just have to figure out where and how and all that.

 

[Drbretto]

Well, been busy, but it's been mostly setup. Core stuff to set up some major progress up on the surface. Nothing to show yet, but I'm really hoping to get the village all ready to go, then record a single time lapse to watch the whole village sprout from nothing. I think it'll be neat if I can pull it off. And I will probably do a quick drive by of my friends' lots, just to see where they're at. One of them is super noob, so grade him as if he were a 37 year old kindergartner.

Key project so far is the refined storage setup. That sweet, sweet crafting grid. It's just so damn convenient. This thime, I've run cable all the way up to my builders huts. If you're not familiar with minecolonies, for a good portion of the progression, all you're doing is running around gathering and crafting whatever they all need to keep building. Having a crafting grid right there is going to make this a thousand times easier. This will give me enough time to keep progressing in the village as I build the surrounding structures.

But, first, I still have some infrastructure to work on. I've got a bunch of conveniences already. Built my first rftools elevator. Those are pretty sweet, and a must gave for my tower. The staircase is now just for show (it's looking a little better), but I'll need flight to go much further with them. I may not even fix them up too much more in this underground pit. It's got a good bat cave vibe, complete with actual bats.

But, what I DO gotta do down there is some serious mob proofing. It's not that I can't handle a few zombies, and Im protected from creepers because of the village, but there are new mobs in this pack. Specifically, I'm getting a plaige of Mountain Trolls attacking me. Theyre big ass trollstwith a big ass hammer, smashing blocks. They don't seem to care much about the chunk protection. I left my guard down tonight, and a troll got in and smashed my RS blocks, destroying an entire 16k item block, along with roughly 3/4 of my entire stash of literally everything that's dropped in my vicinity since I started this world. Including the past w hours of mining I had just done. Backups are once a day, restoring was a non starter.

Not mad. This is what I want. just enough stakes to inspire different builds with a focus on problem solving. I don't want to lose the cave asthetic, so I will glass in the chunks with thickened glass (completely transparent except the outter borders. It's going to take thousands, though, so I have to leave this production on between things.

Anyway, should start getting neat this weekend, I think.

 

[Drbretto]

Yay, we're getting somewhere!

I've progressed quite a bit since the last video. I just don't know how to capture that work on satisfying videos, so it just looks like a time skip. You'll see a new quick tour of my bat cave, which is looking more like a mad scientist's lab these days. It's not pretty, but it's got everything I need. It's basically the seed from which my whole kingdom will grow, and that's where it'll be more fun to show anyway.

And it's begun! If you're familiar with minecolonies, you don't need me to tell you it's slow going at first. This 6 minute video only highlights of about 16 hours of work, bit from here on, things should start sprouting fast.

We begin off camera setting up the layout on the town. I ended up placing a total of 45 buildings, times 5 levels per building, this will be an ever growing plot that will continue to eveolve for the life of this modpack.

If you're not familiar with minecolonies, the idea is that your citizens do the work, you just do the planning and gather and craft all the materials. Each of the buildings they build actually function and you build this whole community. They dig, mine, chop trees, build, cook and defend themselves. With a metric ass ton of your help.

You'll see some aerial shots of the plot. Each little taped off rectangle is a build site, so you can start to see just how big of a cookie I'm starting to eat here. I can't wait to see the whole village. When placing them, you csn see a preview, but only one at a time. It gives no sense of the final result, do we're going to figure out of it comes out ok together.

Anyway, more to come soon, but we're finally getting going! Can't wait to see how it turns out!

 

[Drbretto]

A wild village appears.

Or however that goes. My childhood just overshot pokemon.

I know it's long, but it's neat. The recording is about 18 hours worth. It skips a ton of prep, though. This by far the furthest I've gone in minecolonies. It's a lot easier to work with now, but it still took a ton of planning. That is something in the range of 40 to 48 buildings, with some upgrades bringing it closer to like 60 builds.

This was a ton of work, but there's 10 times as much to go. More, even. And is going to lead into some exciting stuff down the line, but, here's
where I'm at as of this morning!

 

[Drbretto]

Every time the Boston Red Sox win the World Series, an angel earns his wings. And I rip them off and put 'em on a ring so I can fly in minecraft!

So, I set out to upgrade my ring of the flying squid (kinda like a ring that grants the powers of a jetpack for the uninitiated) into the coveted Angel Ring. And this is the first time I've had a mod to actually put the ring into my baubles ring slot, so I'm pretty excited.

Traditionally, this is a bit of a process because on top of the ring of the flying squid, you have to gather a live bat AND a live Ghast. I've generally always had to just keep these things in mind as I play and pick up a bat when I see one, etc. And sometimes, it can take a while for the things you need to show up. So, before settling in to go watch my Sox complete their World Series run, I decided I'd go out and explore and maybe catch a bat or an ghast or something to chip away at it. I ended up just getting the whole thing in like 7 minutes!

The bat can be the hard part just running into one, but no sooner did I suit up, I found one buzzing around my own head. I made sure to capture this dramatic moment in slo-mo.

So, we head to the Nether. The ghast is the real pain in the ass part because you have to weaken it without killing it first. So, I figured I'd grab an iron sword so I don't murder them too hard before capturing. I popped into the nether and there were no ghasts around, so I figured I'd go ahead and murdify the general population to get one to spawn. Shortly after I decide to take a hop into the lava, I see that it worked! We have our target! Now, all I have to do is jetpack up and glide over the lava ocean, get its health down without killing it and scoop it up in my evil-infused golden lasso.

Aaaand, I killed it. But luckily, there was another one just around the corner, and we got it! Yay! Something about that final shot in the nether reminds me of something from Indiana Jones with the way the zombies were comin after me.

Bonus clip sees me suiting up in the bat cave with my new bat wings, as I fly up to my new bat home where I will look over my peasants and decide their fates.

What kind of god will I be, I wonder?

Can't deny that view, though.

 

[Drbretto]

Update!

Zoonmig ahead a bit because at this point, were starting to get to the bigger, more interesting stuff and a play by play at this point would be crazy.

So, we're beginning work in earnest on this game's Tower of Power. I'm still not sure 100% how this is going to end up. Right now, I just have floors and ceilings done, with a little gap for any piping and whatnot that might need to go on any given floor. There's also a width of one block all the way around the walls for moving cables up as well. But there's a long way to go.

Village is also moving forward nicely. I think I want to move a few of the basic buildings around down the line, but it's getting to be time to start building the roads and whatnot.


Next up, it's definitely Draconic Evolution time. I've conquered The End and lootee a whole comet. It's time to get the basics going for my energy ball, which will need to be wired up before I put any finishing touches in the tower.

 

[Drbretto]

Since I had to make this video to get some help, might as well throw it in here for completion sake.

This is going to be the backbone of my Tower of Power. This will be a larger scale version of my last lightning rod tower, with an array of rods deep underground pushing power up through that shaft, eventually into a DE glowy ball. Also in that shaft will be wireless power crystals, enderIO wireless chargers and powered lanterns, with space above, below and all around to hide any wiring I want to hide, giving me a ton of space to work comfortably in. At least 32 perfectly safe chunks worth of free WiFi so far, but I don't know how high up I want it to go yet. Each floor will have some kind of theme, but I don't know what's what yet. I will meditate on that as I build the structure. Whatever I do, it'll be ready for it.

This thing has a long way to go, but it's going to be pretty badass when all is said and done. Assuming I can fix this damn elevator.

 

[Drbretto]

Boom!

It's working. I can fly and don't actually NEED an elevator, but it looks neat, I think. I don't like the order of the floor names/themes, I started off at random and just left it that way. I may move them around, I may not bother.

 

[Drbretto]

So, all my plans for a rainbow generator went out the window yesterday, so I needed a new life's goal, and I've got it. I shall generate 1 million RF per tick in a way that AFAIK, no one has ever tried before! Or they have and I just haven't happened to have seen it. Either way, I will generate 1 million RF per tick using nothing but Immersive Engineering lightning rods.It doesn't need to generate 1 million constantly. That's just not feasible. But, during a thunderstorm, which I can activate at will thanks to DE, it just needs to hit 1 million per tick at peak performance. That's the official goal.

Here are the obstacles:

Materials: A single lightning rod can only output an absolute maximum of 16kRF/t. That's 4k per side, 4 sides each, and each needs to then go into a vibrant capacitor so I can pull all 16kRF/t into the main energy storage. This means I need 64 lightning rods and 64 vibrant capacitor banks. That's a lot of steel, just for starters. I also need steel fences for each rod. Lots of them. roughly 6-8,000 of them from my estimation. Not to mention 256 HV cables, 512 HV connectors, plus 72 DE crystals to send and receive all that energy.

Space: That's a lot of stuff to throw into such a small space. And it's small on purpose. The way lightning rods work, all of the steel fence at the top of the structure counts for each of the connected lightning rods, up to 256 fences. This boosts the chance for lightning to strike for all rods connected to the top, which, through experience, is enough to keep each lightning rod maxxed out on power output. IE, during a storm, that's enough fences that I can't unload the charge from any rod without it getting hit again. This is crucial for my goal. Obviously, it would just be insane to run 256 extra fences for each rod. That's 16,384 fences, not including the rods themselves. That's craziness, this ain't creative mode. So, they all need to fit in a 2x2 chunk horizontal space.

Each lightning rod can take up up to 5x5 horizontal blocks if you include the plugs, like so:

..P..
.LLL.
PLLLP
.LLL.
..P..

Where L is a part of the actual lightning rod multiblock and P is each of the plugs. The .'s are extra spaces. Obviously, I can't just fit 64 of those in a 64x64 space, so I will have to get all 3-dimensional with it and sneak in multiple payers. This is going to be a fun little puzzle trying to squeeze them all in, each with steel rods going all the way up to the mesh on the top. I honestly don't know what my limits are here, I haven't spent enough time thinking about it. But, I can squeeze some rods down those empty spaces until I fit them all in.

This is gonna be fun.

Edit: OK, this is TOTALLY doable. I pulled out a bit of graph paper to plot it out. I'd demonstrate it here, but no one but me can decipher my scribblings. Basically, if I stagger it properly, I should be able to fit a total of 3 layers of up to 49 rods each. This leaves an open center line for each rod's fences to penetrate all the way to the sky. So, fitting in 64 shouldn't be a problem. I will make sure to condense them as much as possible so I can scale it up to ~150 later, but squeezing in 64 should be a breeze.

 

[Drbretto]

I did not realize there was a mic when I recorded this, so fair warning on the NSFW music you'll hear in the background. Though, now that I know there is one, I might try some commentary some time. In the meantime, if this music bothers you, you can go ahead and mute it. there's no information in the audio whatsoever.

Just an update on the progress. I had to spend the last two days preparing for tomorrow's big build. This is by far the biggest single project I ever did, yet I feel like I am crushing it. I'm still improvising for the most part, but I really thought this one through.

I had a workday to plan it out. I calculated up how much of every raw resource I would need to put it all together. I don't have the totals anymore, but basically between 2,000 and 5,000 of everything. I had to invent an infinity generator, which is where the video starts. It's just 8 mechanical users being fed hundreds of flint and steels, constantly burning bedrock and sending the infinity things into a vacuum hopper and directly back into storage. I need somewhere around 2,000 of these little buggers and it should take about 8 hours with that machine. But, otherwise, I'm all ready to start placing things tomorrow. It took literally all day of setting up quarries, re-designing my processing, re-doing half my auto crafting, building whole new systems and even some straight up gathering in the form of 4500 glowstone dusts.

Thanks to my redesigned system and solid planning, actually crafting the pieces for the rods was a relative breeze. Tomorrow's gunna be a fun day.

 

[Drbretto]

Well, it was a fun couple of days. It's not perfect, but this is definitely the biggest project I've brought from conception to reality without a hitch. From resource gathering to material production to actually building it.

I wish I had a bit more "order" with the placement of the lightning rods. And I definitely need to do some cosmetic work to finish it off, but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

It doesn't quite hit a million. Not that worried about it. I could add more, but that's exactly 64 rids and that seems right. This is more power than I will need for quite some time. I could actually fill that whole tier 7 energy ball in about 16 hours of storm time.

I'll have more later, but I ran myself right into a migraine finishing this thing off over 3 straight days. It's break time, lol.