I’ve been playing Fortnite since about last October. I quite enjoy it, it’s not my favourite game but it is the only one I play where I get to interact with the family and run around killing things. I’ve played Navy Seals in the past and the online experience wasn’t great, especially if you’ve only just started playing online and don’t have all the time to get good at the game. Fortunately the Legend has guided me through Fortnite and I’ve got some kids who play better than me and carry me a lot. Here are the stats from the Fortnite game itself:
Fortnite Solo Stats
Fortnite Duo Stats
Fortnite Squads Stats
I get carried a LOT in squads. I think I’m most proud of the top 5 statistic in the Duos category. Considering a lot of the time the Legend and I are just driving around breaking things and generally having a bit of a giggle to get top 5 that much I think is impressive.
Fortnite Stats as percentages
The above table is all of the stats but percentaged for each category. I honestly have no idea if the percentages are good. Also, to be honest, I don’t care. The thing about these games is to have fun. Once you become too competitive I think it becomes less fun and more stressy. This is the main reason why I don’t play Gran Turismo online that much. There’s too much stress. Oh, I’ve just passed 800 hours on Minecraft – yes, I’ll take that applause, thank you.
This distance is 40,000km. I think that’s why it was chosen by Polyphony to be the last achievement for distance in Gran Turismo Sport. I completed this yesterday after competing in some online races around Interlagos and then twatting the 787B around Special Stage X for four laps which was remarkably boring. I guess I should try and get the other achievements completed but I can’t be bothered to take that many photographs within the game or create that many liveries, I’ll look later and see how many that entails, if it’s one hundred then I guess I could manage it but any more will be met with a resounding “fuck that shit”.
Final [not online] GT Sport Achievement
It’s fitting that this is communication 1900 and it’s about Gran Turismo, a game I have played since its initial release back in the last millennium. It is a game I have enjoyed and still do. I am, however, concerned that the next level of controller will be produced by Fanatec and having looked at their equipment I am shocked at how expensive it is!!
Here’re some of the vaguely interesting things that happened in the year 1900:
Miners in Austria go on strike looking for better working conditions [amazing we still have issues with working conditions].
The legal workday in France is limited to just 11 hours – for women and children.
The Italian King is assassinated.
Max Planck discovers the law of black-body radiation.
I really liked my beach house that I built in the Minecraft series that is on my YouTube Channel. It was placed nicely although a little small. So, in the latest world I wanted a nice big beach house. And I’ve made it.
RTX Sunrise
Now, I’m not sure I’m happy with some of the texturing and so I am going to remove and change of it. There’s too much detail in the fascia of the villa. The villa faces east and so this is a shot of the house with the sun rising.
Glorious Sunrise
This is a more front on view and you can see the levels. There’s an animal farm to the right rear of the villa. All the storage systems and other farms are hidden in a basement to the rear of the building.
View From North
Here you can see the side of the villa and the animal farm. In this series of screen shots I’ve got RTX turned on and it’s lovely. Absolutely lovely.
Second Balcony
This is the view from the top balcony. There’s a bridge in the mid-distance and that has the old entrance to the mine that we started. I now have a minecart that goes from the basement to the mine and I can get there straight from the villa rather than heading into the dangerous outside.
I recently had a long session on Minecraft, I was stuck in the house and couldn’t get out as I was waiting for someone to come and fix my boiler. I didn’t really feel like getting into a TV show so I spent some time [too long really] putting an idea I had a while back into place. Here’s an overview of part of the latest world:
Latest World Overview
The mess top right next to the bay is the MAIN Base. I’m going to see if I can get some screen shots of it, or maybe give a walk around viewing video, I’ll see what I can manage. The big grey blob in the middle of the map is a gravel topped mountain and I’ve not been there to get the gravel yet but it will be useful at some point I hope. In the bottom left of the map you can see the nearest village to the base. I wanted to create a way of getting to and from the village without having to walk over land. I could have created a minecart track but in this world I chose to dig a canal.
Sea Level Details
This cross-sectional map shows everything at level 62 – sea level [currently]. If you look closely at the top you can see a thin blue line going horizontally. That is the canal I dug and added water to. You enter the canal from top right and move directly westwards and exit in the Great Lake. From there you follow the passages and mini-canal southwards to get to the village. There could be an issue that I can’t remember whether it was this village or not that had actual live villagers in it. I didn’t bother to check before I started this infrastructure project so it could have been for nothing!
Length Of Navigation Route
My map making software also has a measuring tool. You can see that the total canal length is about 0.85km. So that’s 850 blocks long. I’ll probably create a video soon of the base and where the canal goes but until then, I leave you in peace.
Gran Turismo has been accepted into the 2021 Digital Virtual Olympics. Anyone playing can attempt to qualify and so I have. Attempted.
IOC Virtual Series
The first round is a time trial around a Tokyo street circuit which makes sense given the actual games are going to be in Japan. The circuit has a good mix of slow technical corners and high speed straights and high speed esses. There are some slightly annoying things though – if you touch, and I mean just touch, a wall then your lap is discounted. I have completed around 200 miles around this circuit and I think in all those I have fewer than ten green laps. I guess it means that I am pushing it around the corners but at the same time it is very frustrating. Maybe I’m just not that good?
After my first few attempts I managed a time around 2 minutes and I knew I could improve by about two seconds. I will have another go I think but it is marginal gains and I’m already too far down the rankings. I’m also about FOUR seconds behind those in the lead. That’s quite depressing. My driver rating is around a C or B whereas those at the top are all A+ rated drivers. I know I’ve been playing this game since 1997 but perhaps I’m not that good? Ahhh, I think I’m suffering a bit with imposter syndrome. Anyway, I made it into the top 5000. I’m nowhere near that now, but given that the “local” area is made of Europe, Africa and most of Asia I’m probably doing OK. Perhaps I’ll try again tomorrow. See if I can get below 1:59.
IOC Virtual Series Countries
Here’s a screen shot of my initial qualifying time:
So, as time goes I progress on my Minecraft Megabuild. Even as I continue to build I keep coming up with ideas for new things and extensions but I have decided that once I’ve completed the inside and possibly adjusted the route of the underground railway approaching the build I will stop. I’d love to make a launch control like the one at Kennedy Space Centre but maybe another time. I need to start playing on a new world. This server is now known as Season Two and Season Three has already started. I expect another couple of weeks of tidying up this thing and then I will start recording the tours. I’m keep planning how this is going to work. I’ve practised recording a video with audio and it went ok. I just need to sit down and plan the sections. I think I’m going to make each video around five minutes long covering a single aspect of the build each time.
River and Rocket
I’m currently fitting all the control systems to the rocket. Really this is just a bunch of switches and toggles in places that look right. I’m also moving all the material I excavated from the hole into rocket storage. I guess my plan is to have this thing be able to blast off and then build a new world somewhere. I’ve got my cabin sorted and I’m pleased with the view from there.
Top Half Of The Rocket
I’m not sure how much time I’ve spent on this. It’s been around an hour a day for quite a while. I’ve been spending time collecting the resources as all this has been made in survival game mode.
Minecraft Statistics
I’m waiting on a new camera and then some more time just to sweeten off this model and then it’ll be record time. I’m looking forward, it’ll be a new skill and one that I’ve kinda tried before but the result was terrible!
Gantry and Beach Base
Here you can see my beach house, tree farm, beach bar and monolith. There’s also a nether-portal and if you know what you are looking for you can see Beach Station. Anyway, just wait for the videos!
I’ve found a website which looks through all your GT Sport data and makes in nice and clear. I’m not sure what this means. I’m not sure if I want this much detail but I am sure it’s cool. There are a couple of sites that do this:
Both of the above sites should link to my profile on those pages. This is what I have foiund so far:
My GT Sport Stats
I’ve only driven 35,409km. I think I probably need to get that increased. I’m also concerned about my driver rating, below, but what I can do about it I’m not sure.
My Driver Rating Within GT Sport
I guess I just have to keep plugging away at this in between bouts of Minecraft building.
I’ve been working on a Minecraft mega-build. I don’t think it’s as mega as some of the things made by the Hermitcraft server people but this is still pretty large. I’ve been working around an hour a day for what feels like ages. It started out as an experiment and now I seem somewhat obsessed with it all. I think about the plans as I go about my daily business and some of those have had to be binned as just too extravagant. Once this build is finished I think I might have trouble becoming motivated again in Minecraft, it’s been such a labour that this could end my metre-cubed-block career.
Sneak Peek
There’s also the problem of saving this build for posterity. That is where I will be upskilling. I intend to record some videos, to be placed on the YouTube platform, of me moving around the world and talking at the same time. I tried doing this in the lockdown and I hated it but I think it’s the only way to record the details of this build. I’m going to be testing recording and talking in other areas of this world to get practiced at this and hopefully be able to sound almost professional when I publish the videos of this build. I’ll also be using the PC rather than the PS4 to complete the screen recordings so that should look at lot better too.
Beach House Complex
I do not intend to learn any video editing software so I expect my tour around the base will be short clips rather than one long massive video. That way I can maximise the information given. Wait and see.
Turns out that today is Friday 13th. Not that I’m bothered by that. I’ve had some bad luck recently but if I linked that to a random date then that would really be pushing the causation correlation fallacy. My recent bad luck is mostly my PC blowing up but also my left leg refusing to work yesterday morning. So far today things have been OK.
Chillblast have sent me a new PSU for the PC and last night I fitted it. The PC powered up and all seemed good, so I powered it down and then cable tied everything in place within the PC cabinet. When I fitted an extra HDD to the PC shortly after it arrived I only had a blue SATA cable and that didn’t match all the other cables so I replaced that for a black one and now the insides of the PC look all lovely. More importantly I have a functioning PC and there doesn’t seem to be any damage from the explosion last week. It all seems to be working well.
Two albums were released today and I purchased them. I expect there were many more albums released that just these two but these were the only ones I cared about. I have, of course, bought the new AC/DC album, Power Up, because. I will listed to that later but I expect it to be full of solid AC/DC songs and definitely not a disappointment. GrooVenoM also released their latest album and I got that too. I like all their music, I do prefer the mix and sound of the first album but the band deserve my support. It’s a nice mix of everything I like and so sounds different and familiar at the same time.
GrooVenoM AC/DC
Since my Minecraft server runs from my PC I’ve been doing other things on the PS4, which pretty much means I’ve been playing Gran Turismo Sport which I probably would have done anyway. I was racing with my Mazda and noticed that I had driven quite a distance in it!
Mazda Atenza Gr.3
If you look at the right hand side lower panel you can see I have driven 3,266 miles in this machine. I think it’s the car I have used most but I could be wrong. Perhaps I should look up the statistics for my Porsche also! I wondered then what my total distance within this one game was and went to my career summary:
GT Sport Progress
21,669 miles in total when I took this screenshot. That’s not too shabby! I’m a little embarrassed of my Sportsmanship Rating because it has been up to a grade B but I’m not sure what happened there. I think I did quit an online race a couple of weeks ago after being forced off the track and ending up in last place but other than that I think my driving is generally OK. I’ll see if I can work to bring that rating back up a little.
I’ve got a slightly better version if you can’t get to Twitter.
Beach House View
While the structure I am standing on remains top secret I can talk you through what you can see. The green rectangle in the lower left area is my redstone testing area, it’s where I go to practice or test out builds before taking them to their proper installation place. Directly above this in the picture is Beach Station which is just visible but is made of glass and green concrete so it is quite well hidden. The lump of red in the sea is my nether portal. The monolith of obsidian is a monolith of obsidian. Below the red nether portal is a clump of trees with my beach house hidden just behind them. The small wooden structure in a lagoon is the beach bar and above that is my wood farm with height restriction.
Keep a look out for news and maybe a video of the monster build I’m currently working on. I’m currently trying to decide whether to have an external block on the latest layer and I am not quite sure – maybe it should be glass?
At the beginning of the national lockdown I went out for daily exercises with the kids and they talked constantly about Minecraft and I just nodded along. Then, I decided to join in and at least understand what they were talking about. Now, about half a year later, I still don’t always understand what they are talking about but I do at least get some of it. Our second world is progressing well and the luxury now is that we’ve conquered farming and so are able to devote time to “projects”.
I will confess that I have been using a map application to help with guided mining. While cheating I don’t think this is the worst cheat. I also started showing coordinates on screen which feels a little like cheating, but, not the worst as far as I’m concerned. Recently there have been nether tunnels made to progress around the world faster than my minecart railway from the Meadow to the Beach.
A while back I introduced the world to the HOLE via my YouTube channel. I don’t think I wrote about it on these informative pages but I didn’t really have much of an idea what to do. I think the HOLE took about two weeks to dig playing one to two hours a day. Two hours is my limit before I start getting restless.
The bottom of the HOLE is now layered with glass, there are torches placed at the lowest bedrock level and I have also filled a layer of water at the moment to save me dying if I fall into the HOLE. I might or might not remove the water, I’m not sure yet.
I have started a build project in the HOLE. It is going to take some time. So far I think I have spent about a week on it, playing for one to two hours per day. There are a few issues. The main one is resources. After building for a session I am generally out of particular resources and have to spend the next session building those resources up again. It does give me a break from the project I guess and allows me to think about how to design the next stage. The lowest level of the build was almost done as a proof of concept and it looked so good that I decided to carry on. After about a week of building the whole project started to take shape in my head and I now have most of it loosely planned. I know what I am going to do, it’s just a matter of getting the resources and doing the building.
I guess there will be a grand reveal here and on YouTube. I expect this project to take another two weeks to complete the main section of the build. I think it’ll be another couple of weeks after that to build the extras – such as minecart tracks and redstone components. So, given delays and that a national lockdown seems unlikely, this project looks set to last another month. I can’t wait to show people around the project. I will have to come up with some name for it.
Back during my self-isolation period in March I had a shift around in the lounge / entertainment room. I wrote about it in this communication. A part of the entertainment system that has always bothered me is tech-corner. In this corner of the room there are a number of heat producing devices all stacked but separated by two layers of Lego bricks.
Entertainment Corner [asymmetric]
There is an AV-Amp, the PS4, a Blu-Ray player, PSVR interface ,Nvidia Shield TV Pro and ancillaries. The AV-Amp gets quite warm just by being powered up and the PS4 sounds like a Harrier hovering straight above the house. I have spent occasional minutes searching online for a “stacking system” or something to make this whole collection on electronics a little more stable. Two days ago I tried again and search for hi-fi stands. This produced no helpful results but did lead me to looking at computer monitor stands and laptop stands. I went and found the tape measure and chose a product which seemed like it would do the job well.
Yesterday the stands arrived and I installed them into Tech Corner.
Aeration Stands
Although it looks as though there is a large gap above the amp – there is – but the whole point of this was to spread out the devices more. The Blu-Ray player is rarely used, but it works better as a disc player than the PS4 and so will maintain its position in the corner for now. Most movies are either streamed through the internet connection or via the LAN from the NAS Drive. The PS4 now has more radiating space and hopefully air circulation around the corner will be improved. A few years ago I had a small fan in the far corner to push the air around and I might consider that again, if I can find a silent one. It doesn’t need to be a powerful fan, just strong enough to push some of the hot air out of this cave.
The devices in the photograph are slightly different from the March picture. Top to bottom they are:
Blu-Ray Player 250GB SSD – expansion drive for the PS4, to the right of PS4 USB-C hub – for the PS4 PS4 LAN Switch – grey, to the back AV-Amp – Sony STRDN1080 NVIDIA Shield TV Pro – now “standing” to the left of the Amp PSVR interface – bottom right Bloody cables are all over the place, caused by length of cables not matching dimensions of room.
It’s been interesting removing oneself from the shit-show that is 2020 and enjoying my Minecraft server world. In the server world things aren’t perfect. I die sometimes, normally from entering the Nether, creepers seem to blow up my most treasured aspects of the world and occasionally I get lost and spend days walking back home. All of this still makes Minecraft better than 2020 or almost any of the last four years. My favourite time is when it rains in Minecraft. I love it. The sounds, the smell, the not getting wet. Now, I’m a little gutted as this is the second draft of this I’ve had to do. My first draft disappeared into the ether[net] and I don’t know what I wrote. I know I was happy with my prose but something will be lost this time around and you won’t get the chance to read my brilliance.
So, here we are, another video which is a screen clipping from the PS4. I looked into doing this properly with a voice over and all that jazz. I downloaded some software and recorded some screen clips on my computer and then starting meshing all that stuff together and having a go at a voice over. What did I learn? I learnt that I hated speaking out loud. I can just about do it for work stuff when I record lessons but I did not enjoy trying this out. Then, I also learnt that I spoke too many “ums” as I tried to commentate on a five minute clip. So I decided that I wouldn’t do it. Now, I do know that learning a new skill takes time and practice. I am giving it neither at the moment but I think that might change in the future and maybe I’ll give this another go over my summer break. What follows is a written description of the sort of stuff I was going to say.
This video takes about a Minecraft day. In fact I go to sleep at the beginning and the end so it is pretty much a day. We travel from one end of the Empire to the other but there are still aspects that are missed and maybe I will cover those one day.
So, we open at night and I am atop the Mountain Base. I sleep in the mountain top hall that I built and then head down the stairs to the internal secret hall. I think I want to make all the walls by the steps the same as I feel it’s a little messy at the moment. It was meant to be a secret staircase and so didn’t matter but every time I use it I think it needs smartening up. At the bottom of the ugly steps I look in a chest and take a rail – I’m not sure why because I didn’t even put it in its rightful place in the basement later, then I head out into the main hall and get a minecart from that chest. Then the journey starts! We get a tour of the underground railway I built.
Mountain to Harbour 2
The journey from mountain to harbour 2 station has smooth stone blocks and the railway lays on wooden planks. The lights start out as yellow stained glass and all the torches are placed one block rearwards from the track and with smoothstone surrounds. The emergency doors into the mountain base open and close automatically keeping the different areas secure. Once the yellow accented lights run out we get shroomlights. The whole idea of this was to give each branch of the underground from the main Meadow House a certain look and feel so you always kinda know where you are in the system. At Harbour 2 station we can see it has a purple concrete and smooth stone design to it. The way to the surface is a long ladder. The station at the top is designed to be similar to the platform area. We get a short look at the mountain base. Then, there is the harbour with the flip-flop switches that are operated by buttons and open and close the water exit to the harbour.
Harbour 2 to House
This section of the journey doesn’t take too long and we head to the main house and store room. House station is designed in white concrete with a light blue concrete ceiling to match the store room. The floor is glass and most of the lighting is torches under the glass. It costs a fortune to keep the glass clean of soot and dirt! Then we head up stairs to the Basement Storage Area which I built. It’s all nicely labelled and everything has a place. Every now and then I have a tidy up because other players on the server leave things all over the place. There is an enchantment room and a portal to the Nether. The doors to the station look hidden but are a bit obvious if you are the type of player who likes to go around pressing every button that you find. I do like the flip-flop circuit.
House to Harbour 1
Harbour 1 was the first harbour I built. I spent quite a while rowing around the rivers trying to map out the land. I have stairs places on all explored rivers which point back to the main house so if you come across a river you can find your way home. These walls on this line are a snazzy stone effect that I can’t remember the name of. The lights are white on this stretch of track. I think my favourite part of all the railways is the bit on this section where we go through a cave. I think it just looks nice considering every other part of the journey all looks the same. Harbour 1 station is red glass and wood accented. I think there’s even a tree growing up through the middle of the ground level building. We also see the first harbour and a glance at Meadow House. When looking at Meadow House you can see two platforms that were designed to give an overview of the meadow. The top one is called The Top and it’s just slightly too high for all the animals to be rendered when you get up there so you can’t actually see a great deal of detail. It’s nice up there though.
Harbour 1 to Meadow Station
Meadow station was originally the start of the railway line to the beach because it meant I didn’t have to have so many resources to build the line. Over time I wanted to be able to avoid walking and now I have achieved that. The underground line heading that way has the same snazzy stone things and pink accented lights. All turns in the system have signs on them in case you get lost. Meadow Station is a glass topped glorious sweet design that makes me happy. It was my first ever use of sea lanterns. There’s not really anything else there now but the station. It looks so nice I don’t think I’ll get rid of it but I rarely use the station for anything other than passing through.
Meadow Station to Beach
This is boring and takes around three real minutes. It’s quite good if you need a comfort break while playing as you can just get on the railway and head off to somewhere nice and do stuff. I’ve spent a while adjusting the redstone torches from the last video and putting them under the track to make it all a little neater. The purple concrete blocks allow you to find your way if you get lost. The side with the torch points to the direction of Meadow Station. The monolithic spikes every now and then were waypoints for when I used to walk to the beach. They also have torches on them which point towards the meadow. Getting back home has been quite important to me. The railway heads due west and as we approach Beach Station you can see my mob farm off to the right towering up over the land. Beach station is a glory of green and glass. I like the design of it. Once off the railcart we head to the beach, the house there, the small farm and the beach bar.
The Beach
The beach has an area nearby where I practise my redstone skills. It has the mob farm which kinda works ok ish. I also have an extensive mine which I have used to gather lots of lovely resources and the underground railway to that is in the next video. At the beach we gaze at the monolith which was a suggestion of a friend and I really like it. I think it adds a certain something to the whole area. The ratios of the edges of the monolith are 1:4:9, although I made this one 2:8:18, which is the same ratio. Then we head to the beach bar and dive into the sea pool I made. From there we are able to swim underwater to my ocean viewing platform. The lower opening to this was open to the sea but waterzombie things kept getting in my house so I used trapdoors to block it off. Finally there’s my storage basement at the beach and a short journey up to the surface and another flip-flop for the doors to my summer house. We have once last glance at the monolith and then head to bed, the end of a busy day in this Minecraft world.
It’s been a little while since I wrote on here but in all honesty I’ve been struggling to find things to write about. You see, nothing’s happening. We are in this lockdown and work is odd at the moment. I have been in to work three times since 17 March. Those three times were supervising and not doing my real job but at least it was somewhere else to be. I’m in a couple of times over the next week and that might be more interesting. Working at home places really interesting pressures and thoughts on you. I keep trying to manage engagement with the time that I have. I’ve also spent time in a better world, my Minecraft world. Even though there are creepers and zombies and witches and I died in that world a few days ago, it’s a far more enjoyable place than the real world at the moment.
Each day I try and have two races on Gran Turismo. Sometimes I’m not in the mood but mostly I am. It’s a nice half hour distraction from the world and it can be really enjoyable. The issues with racing online still exist and the idea that you will lose because someone else is entirely incompetent is annoying but normally it’s worth it. Of the current daily races I have enjoyed racing around the Mount Panorama circuit at Bathurst. I’ll probably write a little about my favourite cars sometime soon as I noticed I’d completed over 3000miles in my Mazda! That’s more than some people drive in the real world in a year.
Anyway, in a race yesterday I started in second position. My time of around 2’07” is pretty good but the person on pole had 2’05” and I’ve no idea how they got that. I’m not convinced I’ve really hooked together a complete decent lap but to lose a further two seconds from my time would be hard work. Also, I suspect there are people out there even faster. It looks as though GT matches you with people of a similar ability and time so I don’t know what the fastest time in the world is. Mind you, I guess there are people playing a lot more than me. I know I’ve been playing from 1997 ish but to get loads better at these circuits you just need to get practising.
For whatever reason at the start of the race yesterday the person in pole didn’t accelerate at the start and I zoomed past them. I was in the lead from the first corner and didn’t look back. Well, I did, I used my mirrors to see what was behind me but you know what I mean. The thing about being in the lead is that there’s a lot more to lose if you stack it going into a corner so it does make me more hesitant and cautious on corner entrances and exits. This can cost time and so I have to monitor the gap to the car behind. For this race it was around 1.8 seconds for the whole race and only moved by a few tenths. I sometimes get an adrenaline build up on the last lap as I get excited about winning. This time I calmed that and kept telling myself to keep a clean lap and remember where I tend to oversteer on the exit of corners when I put the power down early. Mount Panorama is a glorious circuit and very tricky, the section at the top of the mountain is horrible and fantastic at the same time.
Below is a screen video clip of the final positions along with my “win” celebrations and the delivery of my daily workout car. If you complete 26.6 miles in a day you get a free car. Most of these I don’t use. There are around 500 cars in the garage and I’m not fussed by them.
I’m pretty sure this was my first ever fastest lap in a race. I’m very happy with that. I don’t know what lap times other people got but it doesn’t matter. I was out in front with a clear road and that does make it a lot easier. You don’t have to judge what other people are going to do and brake slightly early because of the concertina effect. You can pretty much put down qualifying laps, just while hoping that you don’t get nudged or whacked by someone forgetting to break, or by someone who is just an asshole.
I am quite convinced that the physics of the car is different in the race compared to qualifying and I’m not sure why. I get a little more understeer during races and I suspect, but do not know, that it’s due to the air modelling the game does. Driving a car through mostly still air is very different to driving through disturbed air and I have noticed a very minor difference in steering and braking while racing in the pack with other cars around. There is a definite effect and the car doesn’t behave as it does on qualifying. It’s something I think I need to investigate.
I’ve been building my Minecraft empire bit by bit. The last few days have had me experimenting with redstone and what that can do. I’m now upgrading different bases that I “own” to have automatic doors and security systems. Once I get quite good at the basics I’ll try to make bigger and better things. I have an area near my beach house where I practice certain builds and I have even gone to sleep realising I could have made things much simpler but, hey ho.
Here’s a video of the journey from one end of my empire to the other. You will move from my “secret” mountain base to the beach house. It’s changed a little since I made this video as I’m trying to add more stations to the system but this still represents most of “my” land.
Once I’ve got the railway system working well I’ll try and post another video to show what I’ve done.
Lockdown has led me to have the chance to learn how to play Minecraft. I know it’s not that hard, but I’ve found it interesting and fun. I’ve also had the chance to explore parts of the world that I can’t do in real life. I had started thinking that I would write today about systemic racism and privilege in our modern society but I’m not going to, yet. I think there’s been enough said over the last while and if you read these communications you will see what side I’m on. What I will say is that if you deny systemic racism then you either a purposely not reading or learning anything about our modern society or you are racist. I think my favourite thing I’ve seen written recently was – We hate Trump because he is racist, you hate Obama because you are racist – and don’t you go thinking this is just an American problem, it is rife in this little island over here too.
Minecraft World
This is how much of the current world I have explored. It is approximately 5km across its furthest points. The base is somewhere in the middle of all that! This is the second Minecraft world I have generated, the first had me on an island in an ocean and I spent quite a while on that world but I have to say that being spawned in the woods and on a land of large area is much easier. It’s much easier to find resources. I find that I tend to separate my playing sessions into three main types.
Building Structures
Off Adventuring
Mining for Materials
The loop top right is one that I spent a few “days” exploring. When exploring I always have a bed, food and compass in my inventory. The bed is to be able to skip the night so that I encounter as few monsters as possible. Food is a requirement and then the compass I use to find my way back to the world spawn point. My main base is close to the world spawn point and I think that’s important along with a compass. I haven’t yet figured out how to use the Minecraft maps properly I need to do some reading on them. Each session I play is between one and two hours. I find the mining good fun and I think I try to see too much logic in the placement of blocks but also need to understand that while it’s random it is also procedurally generated. Building structure is excellent and my plans are slowly getting larger. I haven’t really figured out the aesthetics of it all yet and I need to practise my use of materials cleverly to look good but I’m getting the hang of it slowly.
My Buildings – Minecraft
My main structures are marked with red blotches in the above picture. Starting far left they are:
Beach House
Beach Station
Meadow Station
Main Base
First Harbour
Secret Mountain Base
I found the beach while I was off on a wander and I decided eventually to build a pathway from the main base to it as easy access to the sea is helpful in this game. Once I had a pathway in place with lit towers marking the route I then decided that the “day” it takes to walk was rather annoying and I chose to make a railway from the main base to my beach house. I knew I would have to gather a lot of resources and that I did. I needed plenty of railway and powered rails along with lots of blocks to make the whole line one straight section of railway. I chose to do this as it’s easier to head in a single direction through mountains and over rivers than winding your way, it also requires less material. The resulting railing is just under 1,6 kilometres long.
It’s a long way to the beach
To travel this far in the minecart takes about three real minutes. From main base to the beach house is about five real minutes of travel. At least it gives you time to sort out the inventory and make sure everything is placed neatly. Once the main railway was in place I built stations at each end and I don’t have any screen shots of those at the moment. I then wanted to build two decent looking bridges over two rivers and a future job is to build a nice viaduct where the railway passes over the swamp biome.
My Suspension Railway Bridge
My Standard Railway Bridge
Ill try and get some screen shots of my stations and secret mountain base and put them on here sometime soon. I wanted my stations to be fun and represent the areas they headed to. So the station near the main base is fun colours and looks like a sweet while the station near the beach is green and looks like the forests the line heads towards. I have really done any Redstone constructions yet apart from the railway. I think I will need to start these soon as I would like to have a switch which turns railway points so you can pick your destination in the station and the correct railway line is chosen automatically. While I don’t know if this can be done I am sure I could find a guide if I wanted but I will learn bit by bit.
Because I’m classically on the left of politics I’m going to mention some problems with this game. Is this important? It’s just a game you say. Well, yes this is important because all of this adds to culture and what people think is acceptable. What do the Marvel films teach us? That the world will be saved by gods and masked superheroes with immense damage and that all arguments can be solved through violence. This is partly why I don’t really enjoy these movies, that and they aren’t that good. So, Minecraft. Let’s look at the overall themes. I mine coal to power my cooking and smelting processes. I harvest trees for the wood but at least I can regrow the trees or even plant more than I have destroyed. Animals roam the land and I can use them for my own purposes. I get points for killing them and also for breeding them. If I’m trapped in a village overnight I can kick a villager out of their bed and sleep in it. I can destroy the villagers’ homes with no repercussions, I can steal their food and their possessions with no repercussions. I can kill them with no repercussions. I can take their lands and use their goods for my own purposes.
This game teaches you that there are no repercussions to stealing land, taking food, killing natives, destroying the planet, building whatever you want. I know this game is played a lot by younger children who love it. They love the creativity of it. They love challenging each other and it is a massive online arena with YouTubers careers made on explaining it to the world. But, when you break it down, what does it teach you? If there’s a better metaphor for historical and current European descent white supremacy then I’m not sure I know what it is. Where was this game created? Stockholm. Who owns it now? Microsoft. This world is biased and people claim they can’t see how! There, I managed to end this communication on a depressing note.
I recently finished all of the Gran Turismo Sport races that exist in Campaign mode. It’s taken quite a while but I am done. It was a little sad to finish but now it means that to get my fix I’ll need to start using the online racing mode a bit more. I’ve not enjoyed this in the past as some drivers out there are dicks. However, my recent experiences show that if you pick the longer / harder races you tend to get people who are quite good at racing and it seems to work quite well. I won my second race ever recently and it was a good feeling but I forgot to save the replay and I was gutted about that.
I did however recently complete a race and made a decent run of it to gain about seven places. Only a couple of these were overtakes, the rest was gaining places when other driver ran wide! I was racing in my Porsche which I like but for this race the gearing is set quite low so I only use about four gears and many of the corners are done in low revs, which is good for reducing over steer and makes getting the torque on a little easier.
Yes, that’s my gloriously bright and shiny green Porsche. It probably has an advert for this website on it!
Spent a short while last night reading through some discussion groups about how to fix my garage issues within Gran Turismo Sport mentioned in this communication. I found a good level of discussion over at GT Planet and came up with a possible method for returning my cars.
I am a member of Playstation Plus and so my saved games are backed up regularly to the PS+ servers. If the save data there is old enough I might be able to download that save file and restore my garage. There was an anxious wait while I started the PS4 and hoped that it hadn’t uploaded my save file anytime in the last 48 hours. When I could see the remote storage space I did indeed see that the game save file was over a week old. I think this is largely to do with me turning the PS4 off correctly rather than leaving it in stand-by mode all the time. I suspect that if I had left it in rest mode the remote save file would have been newer and I would not be as cheery today.
I was able to download the remote file and overwrite the local version. Then I had to start the game and wait.
The game loaded fine and the car shown on the homescreen was, in fact, one of those that had disappeared. So, I was confident that my cars were back. Shortly after that the game must have synced some information with the GT servers because I received 4 cars for completing my “daily workout”. My money wasn’t restored and the few races I had done over the last week were blank again but at least there was success in getting my cars back.
So, thanks to me turning off the PS4 and not using rest mode I think I have managed to restore the garage and my happiness. Once I did get into the garage it turns out I have over 200 cars and my initial estimate of 100 was quite low!
I had about 100 cars in my garage yesterday. Now there’s only 23. WTAF? #GranTurismoSport
I’m not sure how I found out about the Demo Version of Gran Turismo Sport but I did. The full version is due out on what I call Gran Turismo Day.
My Calendar
In the mean time Polyphony have released a demo version available for about four days. I suspect this is to test the network architecture they have in place and to spot bugs. I’m not sure how quickly they can change and fix code for the Blu-Ray disk run but my guess is they will release a fix patch at the release date to fix known issues.
I have to say this game looks incredibly gorgeous as they always have. There are new tracks and I can’t wait to get driving around some of the tracks I have already learnt. I’ve taken part in a few races online and enjoyed it. I notice that the clutch doesn’t work in this version on the Logitech steering wheel but that isn’t a problem. I try to drive with flappy paddles when the car is designed that way and use the gear stick when the car has one.
My second online race meant I had more time to qualify and I managed pole position. The race was the Suzuka East circuit which I did go on to win. My first race I qualified in tenth although I do not know what that time was based on. It would appear that GT is going to have races that start at a fixed time and then however long before that you join in you get practice and qualifying time.
I think it is worth pointing out that the quality of the resolution and video doesn’t really matter that much. I concentrate on the road, corners and braking points so much that the background is incidental. I know they put a lot of effort into it but I suspect it is mostly for people watching alongside or for overall sales, people probably buy these games based on overall graphics whereas the eye and brain doesn’t see things that way!
I’ve been messing around with the share function on the PS4 and even uploaded a video to YouTube. I couldn’t use the native app to do this, I had to copy the file to a memory stick and then upload from my PC. The quality of the shared video isn’t at full resolution so don’t be put off by the video:
I am looking forward to spending time playing the actual game soon.
In trying to keep my reputation as a very boring person I have here what is most likely the dullest video on YouTube. While I wait for Gran Turismo Sport edition to be released on the PS4 I have been driving Drive. In terms of games and realism it’s not brilliant but it has enough play and racing within it to be fun.
This is what my feet do while I’m playing the game. It’s not strictly necessary to use the clutch pedal but it adds to the fun of playing. In this video I am left-foot-braking to settle the car in the corner and also heel-and-toeing while changing down through the gears.
I had gotten to the point that while driving the beast that I would heel-and-toe when slowing down. There’s absolutely no chance of doing that in Bora Horza Gobuchul as it’s automatic and also CVT which gives a lovely drive but is pretty boring.
![Final [not online] GT Sport Achievement](http://fooyah.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/E7FgeSZXIAoPXYd.jpg)
![Entertainment Corner [asymmetric]](http://fooyah.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/20200324_065658191_iOS-scaled-e1585033501534-1024x569.jpg)
