I made a little progress on Chapter 21 of Tico3. Minecraft’s utter brutality towards me yesterday may well see me devoting less time to it and more to writing, which is where my attention should be. Stay tuned.

While I was heading out to see Ender’s Game last night, I saw something interesting. We’ve recently had some heavy rains and last night we had a thick fog. At first I was making jokes to myself like, “What’s with this draw distance? It’s like I’m playing Turok. I half expect some blocky velociraptor to come at me.” Then I started to realize just how creepy it was.

With such low visibility, I was naturally going slower than usual, which drew out the drive. With the regularly spaces trees and lightposts, the road seemed to go on forever. Then I took a turn onto the highway and there wasn’t a light one to bed seen for a good half mile. I thought, “Man, this is where stuff goes down.” Fortunately, no stuff did go down, but I got a nice visceral sense of the atmospheric quality of fog. I’ll certainly have to remember it.

Given the previous post, you’d be surprised to hear that I actually have managed to make some fresh progress. I’ve finished most of the narrative for Chapter 20 of Tico3, so I actually have a solid three-week buffer to absorb some of the impact of my new Minecraft obsession. ^_^;

You’re probably wondering what’s happened to me. Minecraft. That’s what’s happened.

I first heard about Minecraft when it was still in development. I tried the demo of the beta and was going to make a point to get it once the full version was released, but I never did. Even so, I’ve been watching Achievement Hunter’s Minecraft vids ever since I heard of Plan G and the recent foray into Galacticraft seems to have been critical mass for me. I purchased the game Saturday evening and no small portion of my waking hours since have been devoted to it. (You’d think after the Fantasica debacle, I’d show a little more sense, but, alas, I have not.) Minecraft takes hold of my love of collecting, exploring and building in a perfect maelstrom that consumes much of my time and brainpower.

When I created my first world, I wasn’t used to the controls and it ended poorly. You see, I’m used to using the keyboard only for PC games (except an RTS like Starcraft), which was fine 20 years ago, but you can’t get around the keyboard and mouse requirement and once I stopped fighting and learned the controls, things picked up. It was entirely unnecessary, but I deleted and recreated the world to start over.

Kronos 04 has proven to be an interesting planet. I appeared on a small island with nothing but ocean as far as the eye could see. I dug in for shelter and slowly began exploring the depths while fortifying my new home, Ithaca. Penelope’s Wall was raised around the island to seal it off from the ravening hordes. After uncovering the cavern I codenamed Area Zulu, I had to beware the monsters of the depths. Taking advantage of the fact that I was on an island I flooded the tunnels to keep the beasts at bay. The island was too small to support wildlife, so I pretty well had to resign myself to starving with only the occasional apple from the oak trees or the rotting flesh of zombies for sustenance. In addition to filling the island with trees, I slowly began to build a farm that made bread a possibility. After a failed mining expedition where all the fruits of my labors were lost to the lava, I committed myself to the construction of my great sanctuary, the Tower of Telemachus. (Somehow a creeper still managed to slip into the chamber over 130 feet in the air. >_>)

Yesterday I finally dared the endless blue in search of new lands. My search has been quite fruitful and I have established new forward operating bases to extend my reach. However, beyond the Wall’s safety, I found myself far more vulnerable to the depredations of the creatures of the night. Some of my acquisitions were saved and some were lost, but soon I’ll tighten my grip on the new territories and unite my empire. Until then, I hunt, I gather, I mine, I build.