I have just mapped Ma'Spa centred on the spawn, and labelled all the places I know about upon it (and one or two I discovered during the course of my cartography).

http://www.oddworldforums.net/attach...1&d=1329500709

Kind of gives us an idea of what's out there and how spread out it all is.
I'm kind of seeing a main north-south line and a main east-west line, which could pick out most stuff there.

If anyone has anything I've missed (especially if they want it on the train line), please say.
That corner of Genesis looks pretty obscure; there are pumpkins and clay there, both of which were rather rare back in the day, so I'm guessing it's the middle of nowhere. I've no idea how much of the empty land around Genesis Havoc carried over, though.

It might be cool if those who wish get the chance to design their own stations in the areas around their properties...

I came up with a design for a railway, although I'm working on a way to make it curve. It's explained in this 2 minute vid:



(I wish I knew what causes my YouTube vids to corrupt like that, perhaps I was lucky with the AO intro thing. Maybe it doesn't like the WMV format that Windows Movie Maker spits out?)

I'm not expecting anyone to say "Cool, that's fantastic, let's use it!" but it may give people ideas. I also had the idea of making the railway suspended from "cables" like the one surrounding RF, although it ended up looking uglier and would be a lot harder to build.

I may not help with construction since you guys need something to do and I'd like to get more or RF finished, but maybe I can help occasionally with materials.

I should probably finish that compound one of these days. Or start it.

Incidentally, I could really use some cobblestone. A lot.

I like the idea of having two tracks per route, but it will of course double the required resources.
If we have main lines north/south and east/west from Ma'Spa we could double those, and single the 'minor' routes.


OddHunter, stick a donations box in the town or something, and make a formal request here. I'd be willing to dump in some of my excess.

I can't wait till I can join you people in this server it looks great!, Sometime soon hopefully :)

I wouldn't count on it. :)

I’ve just set up a chest outside the Inn at Ma'Spa.

Any cobblestone (or other stone types) is much appreciated, folks – I have a lot of building in mind, and may have bitten off a bit more than I can chew.

By the way, I built a prototype of an overground rail near my house. You'll find it if you walk past the Cathedral. It's a bit wider and bulkier than the original in Genesis, but I personally think it does look better.

I've plotted an outline for the Ma'Spa station. It's behind the tree-farm and walled by cliffs on one and a half sides, so building the outside will mean working with that. There are also a few chests inside where you can donate materials (please donate materials) - the chest system is not at all organised at the present time but we'll work on that when the building has some walls and a floor (it currently has a lake instead of a floor).

There will, i think, be four main rails leading in the four cardinal directions.
Below is a list of the places I intend to make the rails go to - tell me here if you don't want your building connected and I've mentioned it, or if you do want it featured and I've missed it.

North line:
Arcane Hermitage/Record Farm (station will go somewhere between them as they're quite close)
Desert Village
(Side route to Nikki's house)
Possibly the Stronghold digsite? Is it over there?

East Line:
(Possibly Wil's house)
Dark Castle
Exoddus Town

South Line:
Cathedral
Havoc's mansion
Manco's compound

West Line:
Havoc's Tower
The nearest corner of Genesis (Genesis centre itself is thousands of blocks away - I really don't know why we have all the old empty land. A route to Genesis might eventually be made if there are enough supplies, but since it's so far you can all rely on the stargates for now)

Let me know if I've missed you and you want to be included.

I'm also gonna give people the opportunity to designate a plot of land for, and possibly build, their own stations. I'm thinking mainly of places like the cathedral, Havoc's mansion (which has a few outbuildings), my castle, the desert village and Nikki's house. That's generally so I don't accidentally build into space you intended to use, and so you can match the building to your local style.
The main lines will have two tracks, one towards Ma'Spa and one away from it. And side lines will have only a single track.



Havoc, are you gonna lower Exoddus again? Or nay?

The stronghold digsite will be far, far away to the north-west. It's probably not worth running a line all the way out there. Also Genesis is more or less directly to the south-east of Manco's compound, a short stretch across an ocean. I walked back from RF today. You'll come across Wil's old compound and Nile Lair first.

Ah, ok. I'll have another look.

I'll see if I can lower Exoddus tommorow. As for Genesis and the empty land, I made rectangular selection around the most outward structures I could find. I think it was Nikki's mountain house thing that was built so far away from society that I had to copy a fairly big chunk of empty land. When I imported it and wanted to rotate the 'island' it wouldn't let me for whatever reason, otherwise I would have put Rupture Farms' side closest.

Ah, ok :).
I went looking for Genesis town today; I found the sight of Wil's first attempt at the cathedral but couldn't remember the way to civilisation from there. Some odd biomes are setting in over the land.

I've decided that I'm gonna build Ma'Spa station myself, based vaguely on Birmingham Moor Street station (Google it) - it's a small station I pass through often and it looks pretty cool; it'll take a fair amount of clay bricks and iron bars so I'll get gathering when I have the time/motivation.

Exoddus needs a station, though, if anyone wants to build that.

I don't know enough about exoddus to build it a station. I am quite intrigued at the propect of setting up a system that allows for the introduction of carts to the track without needing the player to place it there.

I've got a couple of ideas lined up for it, my favourite so far is allowing each station a bank of carts, with each station also being responsible for ensuring it has a full number of banks. the idea being that, if the player takes a train from Ma Spa to Exoddus, along with the player, a signal will be sent telling Ma'spa that it needs a replacement cart, which will be sent back from Exoddus.

The real problem is the problem of unloading chunks. If Exoddus sends a cart back down the long track to Ma'Spa, will the cart stop when it hits an unloaded chunk? I think it might, in which case it may be frugal for each station to have memory of the station the player is going to, that would allow for an additional cart to be sent along with the player if needs be.

Hmm, The number of carts would have to be pretty large in each station as to ensure that we avoid the possibility of a popular station ending up with all the carts before anyone ever uses the stations to go anywhere else.

I'd need to do some tests on this to make sure it's doable. The redstone will be fairly complex because each station would essentially need 15 bits of memory, 5 for each station it connects to and 5 for itself.

Actually, thinking about it, if each station contained a bank for each connecting station, then we could just use specific carts for each leg of the journey. The only way that would work would be if there were no interconnections between stations, i.e. the player couldn't take a train to exoddus, Ma'spa, genesis, then from genesis back to exoddus. Though I guess I could work out a counting mechanic that moved tracks to other lines if needs be.

I'm looking forward to this ^_^ (that is if you're interested in any of the above ideas)

Hmm, well an empty cart needs more power than a full one, so it would require a lot more power rails, and therefore a lot more gold. Also, interconnected tracks were a feature I intended to include; I think the inconvenience of having to change carts at every station would quickly outweigh any other benefits of your system.

As awesome as your system is on paper, Glitch, I think just placing a cart and hitting a button is about 10 times faster and more efficient.

but... needlessly convoluted systems are cool D:

You know what else would be faster and more efficient? If Abe HD were just a single, endlessly repeated Quick Time Event.

But you're doing that anyway :(

The /back command wasn't really all that useful. The idea of having lockable chests is great, the new minecart tracks should be a sight to behold when they're all done :D.

Hmm, now I'm wondering about considering Crashpunk's advice and basing the Ma'Spa station on FeeCo Depot.

Might be better since we have lines going in all directions.

A Mini FeeCo (though I might grab more space)...

Building this station is gonna take more time, resources and effort than all the track :p

Right, Edd, I challenge you (or anyone else) to build this in wool and post a screenshot here. With or without the words, though if you have the words change them to 'Ma'Spa Depot'.
As small as it can be feasibly made please.

All I have to go on is that one blurry external shot... (or I could get on AE and screenshot it myself).

EDIT: Fortunately the game CD was to hand. Now I wish I hadn't spent part of yesterday levelling the inside of that cliff.

EDIT2: Rough mockup of an overhead shot of FeeCo, not including the sign on top.

http://www.oddworldforums.net/attach...1&d=1329763622

The bits on the top, bottom and sides are where the tracks enter/exit and there are iron girders running over the corners and across the whole building (gonna need a ton of iron bars, and maybe a ton of obsidian). The actual body of the building appears to be circular rather than square, but circles are hard in minecraft [/whiny].

I'm gonna try things out in Single Player, but would people mind, in the interest of getting this station built so I can get on with the train lines, if I make it in creative on the server? I'm seeing heavy use of obsidian and nether fence to get the colours right, not to mention iron and wool, and it'd take me the rest of the month to gather what I'll need (not including in this calculation the inherent shortness of the month in question). (Sorry, the whiny tag should have ended here.)

EDIT3: I got the girders all wrong :p I'm gonna go have dinner and then work on this in Single Player. Hopefully I'll have some screenshots later tonight.

Press X to step forwards.

If I'm allowed to build RF with Creative, I don't see why building Fee-Co's shell with creative would be a problem IMO.

Also maybe you don't need to make the shell entirely square or entirely round - perhaps instead you can round it a little bit.

EDIT: BTW I'm working on the logo. There's no such thing as small though, Minecraft block resolution being what it is.

Well FeeCo is a great deal smaller. If it can be done without creative, I vote for doing it the old fashioned way. I'll help collecting resources if you want, shouldn't be too hard to get I think. Especially with people donating.

Using stacks and stacks of obsidian, and the same of iron bars, and I haven't even started on nether fences yet.

Maybe someone with more artistic skill than me could give it a try. I may modify this a bit.

Apply this to a black wool background, centre the text/put it at the top, and it may look reasonable. I don't think it can be any smaller than this without losing detail though.

http://www.oddworldforums.net/attach...1&d=1329780901
http://www.oddworldforums.net/attach...2&d=1244197137

You guys are so epic at pixel art.

Looks brilliant, though the circle is 32 blocks across if I counted right, and the floor of the station is only 30. :fuzconf:
Ah well; looks epic anyway. I really wish you could make custom paintings, then I'd get the FeeCo logo and the Mudokon Pops billboard up.

Is it too late to expand your floor, maybe? :P

EDIT: Later I'll try shrinking it a little.

A 27-metre-wide design.

It'd be a great amount of effort and re-planning (I wish I'd made it one block wider so it'd be an odd number, but I can't be bothered to remake the corners even one block).
It doesn't matter that much; unless you can really shrink it (which I know is impossible in Minecraft's limits) it's not gonna fit inside the building. However, having it outside, visible from one or two of the tracks, would be cool. And in that case, size isn't a problem at all.

Mountain Station is ready to be connected. Built it just now with double tracks. Just need to finish the redstone wiring and such. I'm probably going to extend the tracks to Exoddus, since it's pointing right there anyway.

If it's pointing towards Exoddus then it's pointing the wrong way. It should be going south.

The East track will go to Exoddus.

I'm not particularly interested in having a railway line to my house. Maybe a couple for different ends of the cathedral. I'll have to have a think about how to incorporate them into the design.

I'll also start planning how to turn the cathedral into a group project.

Maybe Wil's design could be used for the floor - But of course the smaller the image, the lower resolution it will be.

I've improved mine a bit - Gotta think about the text, maybe it'll be possible to make it go around the logo. Will release a grid soon for someone to copy from... Or I could do it (legitimately) when you're done with the frame of the building, as my contribution.

http://www.oddworldforums.net/attach...1&d=1329843477
http://www.oddworldforums.net/attach...2&d=1244197137

EDIT: BTW I just went onto the server for the first time in ages (Been busy with RL stuff) - Impressive work you've done so far for the Depot!

The corner pillars are almost done; all the tricky bits are done on them anyway. There are big glukkon heads that sit on top of the four corner pillars and those I fear will prove a challenge for me, but mostly the hardest stuff is finished now.

With the inside I'm gonna use mainly iron bars, sandstone and stone bricks, since they match the colour-scheme of the level fairly well in my eyes.There will be a lot of pillars and gantries and probably the odd cosmetic redstone torch. It's a shame we can't work in many of the iconic posters but I'll see if I can at least fit 'WHERE WILL WE SEND YOU TODAY' over one wall, and maybe put in some of Edd's Rupture Farms barrels.

I must confess that I fear the complexity of the iron bars on the outside is beginning to lag my laptop, but it might have just been 'cus my laptop resents playing music and running Minecraft together. If anyone else finds they get laggy around the station, and it's a notable problem, I guess I'll take it all down and replace it with stone of some sort. If it is a problem now then it'll be a worse one later, so we'll know sooner or later. If it is the case, I'll strip off the iron and replace the outer layer of obsidian with stone bricks or some such thing.

See attachments for progress and comparison (the 'snouts' will go on next).

I would love to add a zombie crypt under the cathedral.