Minecraft World: The Self Sustaining Factory

Whilst building yet another castle on Mojang's incredible sandbox game, Minecraft, I began to think about something more than turrets and portcullis's. I wanted to challenge myself to build a place which I'd never have to leave, and could feel safe in when the mobs came out. To this end, I began construction of the industrial site of Bigfoot's Big Foods. Oh, and there is no Tekkit here, since I am playing on Xbox 360 edition!

So, here is an aerial shot of the site:

As you can see, the main feature of the site is the enormous warehouse to the top-right of the image, which houses all of the food necessary to survive, along with the treasure vault. There is also a corporate pool (for relaxing) and a house in the middle to sleep at night! The two main fields are a wheat field (to make bread) and a sugar cane field (for sugar to use in cakes), which ensures that I never have to leave the site for food if I choose not to. Also, to be rid of any excess materials I don't need, I have constructed an incinerator (top-left) to prevent my chests from becoming cluttered. The most recent additions, however, are the cobblestone generator (so that I don't have to dig up the land to make infinite cobblestone for tools) and an underground (and underwater) access tunnel to the other island (where my sister is building another castle/village!)

The next step is to construct an orchard to provide a renewable source of wood (and charcoal) which will make the factory site completely self-sustainable, and a permanent safe haven from all manner of mobs which might try to kill me in the night.

Except for spiders. Those bastards get everywhere that water can't!

Explorer Chronicles: Book Series

For a long time now I have looked back at the old YouTube series that made me as popular as I am. Of course, I mean to say as popular as I am in the realm of Zoo Tycoon 2 machinima! Yes, in it's day, 'Explorer Chronicles' was an exciting account of the thrill-ride that was Gordon Turnley's life as a cryptozoologist and paranormal investigator, but now it just seems dated. The dialogue is childish, the action is limited and the depiction of events is... well, it's hardly fantastic.

At the same time, I do not want to go back and simply re-make the entire series; such a feat would take months to achieve with any success, and frankly my computer hasn't improved since the time of creation anyway. So I began thinking of ways around it, and I came up with the idea to recreate the series in book form. This is an idea in a developmental stage for now, but there are already a few key things I want to address:

1) This is NOT the literary version of Explorer Chronicles - it is merely based on the series, updated for an older audience (teenagers) with some of the characters and plot points being retained.

2) Forest of Terror, although my most watched series, is also unarguably the weakest story. Were the zombies' origins ever truly explained?! As such, it will NOT be made into a book. I almost made this the case with Final Maintenance, except we met Janice there and it would seem too short a series to just plonk her in somewhere else!

3) I want to tighten up some of the plot points. The xenomorphs from Screaming Lake were okay villains, but they didn't have much backstory. I much preferred the aliens from Resort of Horrors who were intelligent and treacherous. Also, what happened with Janice between Final Maintenance and Screaming Lake, and how did she survive in Devil's Cruise. More to the point, why didn't she tell Gordon? There are so many areas I want to re-write and flesh out. Aliens played such a huge role, that I don't want to remove them outright, but I do want to get rid of some of the species - tighten up the story so that it flows as one big, arching plotline rather than lots of episodic alien showdowns.

4) Get rid of the link between Stalker2K7's and Udaho456's A Dawning End storylines. Their films never came to fruition, and it left a huge plot hole in the final series. Speaking of which, I was never happy with the short length and so-so quality of A Dawning End, so that story will receive a huge overhaul: it is the final chapter in the series, so it should go out with a swan song as such!

So without further ado, let me introduce you to the conceptual cover art for the series:

Book One: Greenfields
Book Two: The Resort
Book Three: Screaming Lake
Book Four: The Poison Within
Book Five: Devil's Cruise 
Book Six: A Dawning End

In the meantime, here's a link to the original YouTube series:

Explorer Chronicles - YouTube Series