Halls of Moria

[Jexter]

I've decided to begin a thread with periodic updates on a project that has been progressing for over a year now. Many of you have asked me to start a FMB in the past, so I finally caved.

This project was inspired by the halls of Moria from The Lord of The Rings (but by no means meant to completely resemble their portrayal in the films). It started back in the summer of 2011 when Bicx and I decided to claim some joint property in historic frontier. I've taken many month-long breaks from Minecraft between then and now, but I always look forward to coming back and continuing what was started.

Fast forward to now, and the main halls are finally completed. My main fuss has been the bedrock feature that we are all quite fond of (not), so many players that visit don't really get to see the overall appearance of the halls without Optifine. Here are a few screenshots I've taken:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-2wYTNUluuN8/UQ25abTbXwI/AAAAAAAAARc/DKGwbKnvIys/s1280/2013-01-27_09.00.56.png
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-bokicgw1gi8/UQ25ZtaV6EI/AAAAAAAAARM/tT7e4pJJMOk/s1280/2013-01-27_08.58.50.png
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-drmXznR7TY4/UQ25Zmm4fzI/AAAAAAAAARQ/gyLnjaV3LqM/s1280/2013-01-27_08.58.28.png

The lighting alone took nearly a month to complete, and is all connected to a master switch.

More recently, I've been working on an outer shell to build around the halls to begin construction of a large mountain. This will essentially bury everything underground, and I expect the mountain to take a considerable amount of time to complete. I'm thinking about building a walled city on the peak of the mountain later on, and I've been playing around in creative with wall and city designs.

The dirt foundation / shell for the mountain:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9puRe3VB87Y/UQ2-TQqYxlI/AAAAAAAAAR0/ZSdJGkz4XCg/s1280/2013-01-24_10.40.53.png
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-ihdp_BKEb9w/UQ25atMxlLI/AAAAAAAAARk/x58Lt6gDmSk/s1280/2013-01-28_06.19.01.png

Wall concepts being worked on in creative:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-gH9vQd6mEvw/UQ25ZjjrvCI/AAAAAAAAARI/HlyC66Xl9KA/s720/2012-09-19_06.20.jpg

Many of my future build plans for this project have nothing to do with the Lord of the Rings lore. The halls may just eventually become the grand basement for the city above.

-Jex

 

[Jexter]

Underground tree farm, recently completed.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-JI5VnXYPhz0/UQ3NGkFOibI/AAAAAAAAASY/XCl-NX3VNeE/s1280/2013-02-02_21.32.01.png
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-ja_ypG72tdE/UQ3NGoEtUPI/AAAAAAAAASg/FV2-BkbVTnQ/s1280/2013-02-02_21.32.17.png
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-6dPaZYPZF3I/UQ3NGuW5aSI/AAAAAAAAASc/37GLCUA1bdE/s1280/2013-02-02_21.34.20.png

 

[Jexter]

Strip mining begins for mountain and landscaping construction. The plan is to stockpile resources for awhile. This dig site will also have a future role as an entrance to the halls... I'm still hammering out design details. But it should be pretty cool.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-n97HGPRIC6c/URtMyCNYx4I/AAAAAAAAATY/daFBqFpFRRA/s1280/2013-02-13_03.15.56.png
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-N4IEPkGStwA/URtMyRXq0XI/AAAAAAAAATc/PI2fnRzIk-s/s1280/2013-02-13_03.16.03.png
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-GPb6zMPlwbg/URtMyFMBJNI/AAAAAAAAATU/34kdU8H4Rog/s1280/2013-02-13_03.16.15.png

 

[Jexter]

Digging has progressed well! Thanks to assistance from Russiangal and a beacon loaned by Fista_Cuffs, the first 80x80 section of the dig site was finished today. The beacon has certainly sped up our dig efforts and is being re-located to each section that we work. Once 1.5 is released, we'll expand our dig sections to 100x100 to take advantage of the increased range of beacon buffs.

Commander Fluffy paid us a visit for the screenshot revealing the finished section.

Now that the above area is completed, I've moved the beacon over to begin working on the next dig site. All the cobble that I'm now mining is being smelted into stone and stockpiled for future build plans once the digging is done.

Adding together the approximate block statistics from older installs of Minecraft, I've passed the 1 million number for stone blocks smelted and 6 million mark for stone mined. The 200x200 area of the Halls of Moria accounted for close to 4 million of that. #WorldEditJexter.

The idea behind this dig is to eventually create a towering, extinct volcano. The volcano's crater opening will serve as the opening into the halls of moria, surrounded by a city-like wall at the peak. There will be a long staircase descending into the volcanic crater, and eventually attaches to the halls. I've got several cool ideas for what to put at the bottom of the crater, such as an underground lake (from water that has filled up at the bottom over long periods of time etc). May also have the lake shores serve as a town with available plots for future citizens. Still drawing up ideas and concept art for all this.

Stay tuned!

 

[Jexter]

Progress has been good lately. Russiangal has been able to contribute more digging time and I've also had some assistance from cowboy4234. This afternoon we completed the 2nd 80x80 dig section.

Second section completed! The small speck by the beacon is Russiangal celebrating.

Third dig section begins. Beacon has been relocated.

 

[Jexter]

Yesterday we completed the third 80x80 dig section. Been very happy with the rapid progress and assistance from a few committed helpers lately. Cowboy4234, kingalex759, Reliable_Royce, Flashlight50 and Russiangal have all helped with this section.

Even the server lord himself, alien12, offered his services. Below is the invisible figure mining with only a glass block for a head and a swinging pick.

Mission accomplished! Props to kingalex for working long and hard - he's a digging machine.

240x80 of the dig site is now complete. The doorway in the wall leads to the columned halls.

Work begins on the 4th 80x80 square. Beacon has been relocated.

 

[Jexter]

Been a very long time since I updated the thread, but work has steadily progressed. More than 60% of the dig site has now been mined out. I've continued to hire a steady stream of workers to mine. I've been stocking up on all materials I've mined to prepare for construction of the mountain to bury this place. I sifted through some screenshots and pulled a few I thought I'd share.

Within the last week, I've been splitting time between mining and building a wireframe for the mountain. This is basically just a shell I'll be using as a guide to bury with smoothstone and snow eventually.

 

[Jexter]

Work continues to progress well. A large portion of the wireframing on one side of the mountain is now complete, and I've now about doubled the area that's covered with the cobble shell since my last update. I've been in the process of smelting many hundreds of cobble chests into smoothstone to prepare covering the shell later.

Many thanks to sponge, maple, mk and limoman for lending a hand on some of the recent digging. About 65% of the mining site has now been excavated.

This mountain is probably the most difficult thing I've tried to build so far. Maintaining a consistent flow of the the rise and fall of terrain with each individual wireframe has proven a tall task. But it's been fun so far and looking forward to the final results.

 

[mk59apr]

Hey Jex, the thread is hard to load, with so many images. You might try loading only a certain number per post, then the pages would be smaller, and it would load easier.
Awesome project!!!!!!!!

 

[Jexter]

Hey Jex, the thread is hard to load, with so many images. You might try loading only a certain number per post, then the pages would be smaller, and it would load easier.
Awesome project!!!!!!!!

Sorry about that. The page has seems to load very quickly for me so I hadn't even thought of it. May just start giving screenshot links again if other people are having issues loading the thread.

 

[Jexter]

Have taken a break from framing the mountain shell lately and been putting more time into gathering materials from the strip mine. We've completed digging out several more sections (again, thanks to limo and mk for contributing time when they can).

Something else I've begun to work on is renovating the pillars inside the halls. The pillars were designed during beta and I lacked the variety of block options for building that Minecraft now features (stone brick wasn't even available at the time). I did some tinkering in Creative mode to get a design I liked. I want the pillar bases to have more of a Dwarf look to them. Something else I'm aiming for is for the pillar support shafts to be much thinner and open the place up. This will give much better visibility to the ceilings and walls. The idea is for the walls to eventually feature some designs, such as statues or tombs.

 

[Jexter]

One side of the Halls has had all the old pillars torn down and replaced with the new designs. I've also taken down the ugly smoothstone walls on the side I'm renovating in preparation for a permanent, more detailed replacement. My original plan was to add some wall art and design to the smoothstone wall. However I've instead decided to create compartments along the wall that will house stone statues. I may create unique statues to each wall housing dedicated to the players who contribute the most help to this vast and seemingly endless project.

Stone guard I've been playing around with in SP creative:

Wall housings I'm in the process of building:

I want to give the halls more of a tomb-like feel, and I think the statues will do a good job of conveying that. Once the halls are renovated, I'm thinking I'll re-title it "Hall of the Ancients" or something cool like that. I'm building spaces for a door underneath each statue housing where something like a tomb could eventually be built.

 

[Jexter]

All the time off work for the holidays has given me the time to make great progress! I've finished taking down one side of the old wall and completed building the new housings for the statues. I tweaked a stone statue design in SP creative over the last few days and finished constructing the first one on the server (screenies below).

I may eventually add some sort of lighting system to the statue housings. But I rather prefer the darkness of the whole setting, I think it does a better job of making it look like an ancient, forgotten tomb.

Here I'm working on clearing out space along the next wall for future statue housings:

 

[Jexter]

My one dislike of the stone statue was that little detail stood out. The stone and cobble composition of the statue blended too much with the stone brick background. So I decided to remove the cobble blocks used for the chain mail areas in between the armor plates and replace them with black wool. This combined with the cobble fences for the chain mail gives a much more detailed appearance under dim light.

 

[Jexter]

Finished the digging on the west side of the wall for the housings. In the pic below, there will eventually be a gate entrance towards the left side of the image in the wall.

Have shifted my beacon over to the east wall to clear room for more housings. The stone stairway on the right will eventually be torn down to make room for another gate.

 

[Jexter]

Have completed 2 more sections along the east wall.

Have shifted back over to the west wall to dig out the space where one of the future gates will be. You can also see the difference between the old and new pillar designs on each side.

I officially filled up all 240 chests of my cobble storage today, and expanded the section 2 blocks higher to accomodate a total of 360 chests. Everything I'm mining is being saved for when the mountain construction resumes.

 

[Jexter]

Plenty of thanks to the helpers who have continued working on the dig site underneath the mountain over the last month: limoman, mk59apr, ArticRanger, matthewm109, Maplethesnippa, cooliojulio, scottenergybeam, strikerpro, bneumann, Denikka, spongepunk.