MAIN MENU     FRONT PAGE MISSION STATEMENT SINCLAIR'S FOUNDRY MINECRAFT IN THE ARCTIC REJECTLAND THE FUNGUSLANDS & OTHER WORLDS RESOURCE PACKS & WORLD DOWNLOADS OTHER LINKS       ASSOCIATED WEB PAGES     THE HAMMER OF RETRIBUTION OGG-CAST HAMMER OF RETRIBUTION PRODUCTIONS PERSONAL PAGES FROM DAYS OF YORE ZX SPECTRUM SECTION: PROGRAMS & VIDEOS COMP.SYS.SINCLAIR CRAP GAMES COMPETITION 2021 RICK DANGEROUS RESURRECTED PROJECT 45: EXPLORATION PART ONE - MORE MAPS AND THE WOODLAND MANSION     Project coordinates: X +2581 : Y +86 : Z -975 Screenshots: 47 (+ 1 Sinclair) Date completed: 8 December 2016 Version: 1.11 Minecraft day completed: 6106 1.11 - The Exploration Update. It's the bringer of good news. There's nothing I like more than going out on an adventure (like Bilbo Baggins, only more enthusiastic from the start) - in real life and in Minecraft. But Minecraft adventuring has been rather too much on the back burner for too long... ...time to change that! MAKING MAPS OUT IN THE WILDERNESS First, we start with this old screenshot in the Cartography Room just after it had been built (way back in 1.8.3). See the empty item frames where I intended to have more maps? They're still empty. I'd intended to reveal the new territory in 1.9, but didn't get round to it. Then I'd do it in 1.10, and again, other projects got in the way. What better way to start this new version than to do some actual exploring, as the update title tells us to? Open Forum has spawned a Cartographer while I was busy doing up the base, and... wait, you're not a Cartographer, are you? You're the village idiot. What use are you to anyone? You know, I'm sure Mojang intended the "nitwit" to be a placeholder until they found something to do with the green robe, and I thought that would have been done by the time 1.11 launched - clearly not. That's better! Now, Mr. Magellan, what do you ask for your wonderful maps? 18 emeralds for an Ocean Explorer and 25 for a Woodland Explorer... I suppose one will be far more useful than the other, but I'll have both, to be a completist. Time to grab a horse from the stables - preferably a fast one - and onwards we go! So I chose Dylan, the fastest of the lot, who's also an excellent jumper. At this point I've had to leave him behind (in a hole on those sandy islands at the top left of the map) so that I can get in a boat and row across the oceans that will be hard to uncover otherwise. And though I've known about this Mesa biome practically since the beginning, here's the evidence that I never revealed all of it - there's one of the new(ish) abandoned gold mines that first generated in 1.10. As I reunite with Dylan, this map-making project has been the first time I've found the off-hand genuinely useful. Not only can I see where I'm going and swing my sword at the same time, I can also hold two maps if I want! This works well when I'm filling in the edge of two consecutive maps, and also when I'm trying to see if I'm near the Woodland Mansion. Which I am - the small dot on the Woodland Explorer Map has changed to a large one and is moving, which means I'm not too far away from filling in that map as well. My lovely horse, running through the fields, where are you going with your fetlocks blowing in the wind? I see you're going through the Mesa, and specifically Mesa Plateau F. It's handy having Dylan for this job - running fast over land and jumping up the Mesa cliffs as if they were molehills. This first map is nearly complete - I'll have them all done in no time! Look what else we've found on our voyage of discovery - it's the first pack of llamas in the Sinclair's Foundry world! I wonder if I should tame one and give it some grazing space outside Jeff Minter's Llama Friendly Woolly Jumper Facility? The hairy old hippy would appreciate that. Hopefully. And I wonder if there are any more, of any other colour? Bingo! Here we've got the slightly-grey llamas, just the white ones and the brown ones to find now. And there I was thinking they were only found in Extreme Hills, these two packs have been on a Savanna Plateau. And now, it's a rare, wild pink sheep! It's not the first one I've seen - there are a fair few wandering around this new map, and I know I've found one roaming around the area immediately outside the flooded ground surrounding the witch farm. I did find a brown llama in the end, but no plain white ones so far. Still, there are plenty of unexplored Extreme Hills to have a look in, it's a biome I haven't seen much of in this world! "Yeah, man, I'm, like, really into nature, but this is too much! Heavy!" Come on, Dylan, don't you want a closer look at some aquatic life? Why not try waterskiing behind my boat? How else am I supposed to get you across to the next land mass? There wasn't anywhere near as much "new" to see in the three maps south of what I'd now uncovered, other than the occasional desert temple to raid, but at last the nine maps around the central hub are complete. Looks a lot neater, don't you think? On the other hand, it has increased the size of the world by an extra 50%... Something else the Cartography Room has been lacking is a 1:1 scale visual representation of the central hub; the maps above are the old-school 1:8 scale from way back in the day. So I dug further into my supplies of iron, redstone and paper, calculated that I'd need 35 maps on a 7×5 grid to show the whole lot. It didn't take too long to fill them all in, mainly because a 1:1 scale map is almost already done as soon as it's looked at. Of what we have here, furthest west is Horace's Revenge, furthest east is the Time Trax Rune Cube, furthest south is Life, The Universe and... Chocolate, and furthest north is Hop 'n' Chop's Treemendous Timber Yard, the only project that just scrapes into the top row of maps. There's a load of room left to use here yet! EXPLORING THE WOODLAND MANSION So this is it - never mind the snapshots, Sinclair's Foundry now has a Woodland Mansion that the map has led us to. Word is, since that initial foray, the evil villagers inside have been given a massive boost to their killing capacity. Xisumavoid and three other Hermits found it a very tough proposition, and they all make Minecraft videos for a living... what chance have I got? Plenty, it turns out. For I have a full set of Protection IV armour! I also have a large stash of torches to light the place up with (especially on this bottom floor where there are no windows, for some inexplicable reason) and a couple of stacks of netherrack. I've been back to base, dropped off Dylan at the stables and returned via a Nether portal (and another new tunnel from the hub!) and I intend to conquer this place by taking it just a bit at a time - block off an area with netherrack, light up what I've got, and draw it on a map as I go, so I know I've been everywhere. There's nothing untoward yet. This big hole in the floor that's been naturally generated didn't turn out to be too much of a problem - and had there been no entrance to the room it digs into, I could have accessed it that way. I don't remember seeing this room in the snapshot test, with its huge vindicator statue (made out of wool, like the giant cat that sometimes also appears). But I do remember killing the vindicators as I progressed through the mansion, whereupon they dropped emeralds. Thoughts of making an emerald farm were torpedoed as vindicators don't respawn, but they can be used for other purposes... so instead of slaying everything in my path, I'm going to round them up and clap them in irons. Here's my first victim. Look what I've found inside the giant vindicator's head... a lapis lazuli block! So it's some kind of useful treasure, at least... This is easy, isn't it? That's two more vindicators I found wandering the corridors, who can now only stare at each other from their adjacent cells. I've found the jail cells - these might be useful for keeping our prisoners in, if I can be bothered to move them. After all, we've got three floors to explore and a lot to go wrong if any of them escape... ...and one of the cells is occupied with a different kind of villager. See, I knew these "illagers" were evil - they've captured a butcher, thrown him in the cell and left him to rot until he's little more than a zombie. What are they, some kind of militant space vegans? ZX Spectrum screenshot: Long Way Home Volume 2: The Ludoids (1985) Watch this game completed by ME! Yes, ME! via the RZX Archive. To set the scene, I will once again mention that 90-something games compilation that was bundled with my Spectrum +2 in late 1987 - assembled by Argus Press Software. Some of the games on it were very low-budget, being taken from Argus' 16/48 Tape Magazine, which could be seen as a publishing halfway house between a full release by a proper software house, and a listing printed in a magazine to be typed in by the reader. On this compilation, The Ludoids was "a quadruplex adventure" from Bug-Byte (owned by Argus Press by this time), promising four separately loadable parts... but only one was ever dumped on the tape! The standalone Bug-Byte release did indeed have all four parts on the tape... but later on, much later (mid-2016, in fact!) I found out that it was originally published in eight parts, serialised in subsequent months on 16/48 Tape Magazine. Bug-Byte had taken four of those parts and shunted the order around for their re-release. The text adventure itself is very simple, and the eight parts are all rather small, but the essential goal of the game is this: the Trans-Mat teleportation device has incurred the wrath of The Ludoids, a bunch of good-for-nothing militant space vegans (no, really, that's what it says in the instructions!) who have decided they should jam the Trans-Mat network and bring the universe to a grinding halt - presumably The Ludoids are a kind of mockery of political activists whose one single plan to convert people to their beliefs is to cause as much disruption as possible. As the only adventurer ever to have returned home via Trans-Mat, you have been picked to stop them. Which you won't, if you don't sort out a bug in part 6 first... One of the more bizarre features of this mansion, other than the hole in the floor, is how leaves are growing through the walls. It's entirely possible this is a consequence of the mansion appearing in the very rare (and mountainous) Roofed Forest M. After clearing out the ground floor and imprisoning the four vindicators that were chasing me with an axe, I wonder if this is their doing. All that's in the chest is an Efficiency I iron axe - and Xisuma and his cohorts also found the same room with the same axe in the same chest. Time to move onto the middle floor, and joy of all joys, there are windows - despite this I've still gone mad with the torches for when night falls (and also for those windows that are blocked by the scenery outside). This library, though, has copied itself twice more on this floor... which makes me wonder if there's a slight issue with the code. This is a room I've definitely not seen before - with a huge bed, a balcony, and a double wardrobe (just visible to the left). There's nothing in or behind the wardrobe... ...but there is another bed on the balcony with a chest containing... ...diamond armour, a music disc, and lots of generic junk. Bah. I'd only found three chests on the first level and the most exciting thing in any of them was a diamond hoe. So this is where the story really starts. The middle floor brings us our first evoker, who will cast all sorts of nasty spells in my direction... ...oh, look, he's summoned a swarm of vexes to do his dirty work for him, and they're doing it. Vexes are nasty - they squeal a lot, swarm around and disappear through walls and floors, only to reappear, whack you with their sword and fly out of reach again. It's like swatting flies - the larger human almost never wins. Fortunately, they have a limited lifespan. And that's just brilliant, now he's hitting me with that snapdragon spell, with the scratching and the biting and the jaws made of iron. I have just about had enough of this... SLASH! Taste the kiss of steel... I mean, diamonds, purveyor of flying annoyances and jaws that jump out of the ground. And while you're at it, I'll have that Totem of Undying that you've helpfully left behind on the floor. What... you mean, there's another one in the huge room next door? And two vindicators? Still, look what I've got protecting me now... I have no fear. LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINS! Two vindicators, imprisoned. One evoker, life revoked. And all that was left was silence... except for the occasional indignant grunts of the vindicators. This floor is toast, and eight vindicators in total are behind bars. Onwards, to the top! But before we do... never before have I seen this set of armour in such a fearful state. It's Unbreaking III and Mending all over, so even when it does take damage it repairs itself on the fly and most of the time it doesn't have a single scrape on it. Not after this battle, though. I think I'd better make a pit stop at the Blaze Farm of Firetop Mountain and do some running repairs! I have no record of ever having seen this Vindicator face adorning the stairs. Maybe last time I wasn't looking hard enough. Another of the more bizarre features of this mansion, other than the hole in the floor and the leaves growing through the wall, is this pile of soil on the roof with a tree growing in it. It's entirely possible this is a further consequence of the mansion appearing in the very rare (and mountainous) Roofed Forest M. Five rooms, that's all we get, and four of them had vindicators in (one of which was that double-wardrobe room again - he was hiding behind it). This large library, though... is home to two evokers. I think I may be about to be in a whole world of pain if I'm not very careful... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH I'M IN A WHOLE WORLD OF PAIN RUN QUITE FAST DOWN THE STAIRS... *THWACK!* ...THE TOTEM WORKS! I AM SAVED! Whereupon, it disappears, and one of possibly only four of these that I will ever find in this world is lost forever. But I'm alive. And I want revenge. I got revenge. This Woodland Mansion is toast. Four evokers were sent to meet their maker (Jeb, Dinnerbone or one of the other Mojang deities), and twelve vindicators languish in crude prisons made of iron bars and cobblestone slabs. And here's the final haul of loot - from the chests, from the Evokers, from any other nasties I found roaming around, and from digging in the statues to find their hidden treasures. Got to say, this was rather disappointing - not just that I've lost one Totem Of Undying, but that several of the rooms were duplicated more than once, and the treasure-bearing rooms were thin on the ground. One secret room on the middle floor was completely empty, with the windows boarded up. There were no giant cats made of wool, and no lava fountains with a diamond block at the centre. But not to worry - the three remaining Totems and the diamond hoe (which I'm still convinced Mojang put in as a joke) have gone on display in the Golden Hall of Valhalla - this is where I'll keep any other trophies that aren't the Dragon Egg. After all, it's what I did in Rejectland. THE OCEAN EXPLORER MAP Meanwhile, I wasn't going to waste the Ocean Explorer map - I'll use it as decoration, so it helps to reveal it. No horses this time, just a load of Speed II potions to charge over land and a boat for when we get to the map. I was slightly annoyed that this mushroom island is just off the map, it'd give it a bit of extra colour, now that it shows up in strange shades of purple. Here's the Ocean Monument the map pointed to. Some time ago it would have been a mighty fine idea to have this map with me - and it may still be, as my notes show this isn't one I've previously raided. So, just for laughs, I'm going to sack it. Hang on a mo while I nip back to base and grab some potions... First target, the elder guardians - easy enough when I've got Strength II. Sure, it only lasts a minute and a half, but that's more than adequate to cleave my way through them and any of their minions that get in my way. Next, once that horrible Mining Fatigue has worn off, down comes the sponge. I would say I was annoyed there's only one sponge room in this monument, but I've already got enough to last me an entire lifetime. Finally, the gold room. Again, why bother, you may ask, when I've got an efficient gold farm? I'm not leaving without my prize, that's why. And these eight blocks were obtained faster than sitting with the gold farm on insta-kill. I'll be leaving now, with all my loot. The guardians aren't at all pleased to see me go. And so the treasure maps take their final place on the wall of the Cartography Room. We're not done exploring yet. And to keep on going from here we will need the Wings of Wrath, and possibly a bit of luck.