Link to the Past in Minecraft - The Video Tour (Finally!)

I've finally done it! I managed to get video recorded of my Link to the Past Hyrule Minecraft project and here is part 1. If you've been following this blog for a while now, you've already seen most of this in screenshot form, but now you get to see what it's actually like in-game. Check it out. Comments and feedback are always welcome.

Let's Play: The 7th Guest

A while back, Good Old Games (www.gog.com) had a really good sale and I picked up a few games cheap including The 7th Guest and its sequel The 11th Hour. I played these games a long time ago, probably in 1999 or 2000, and really enjoyed them. In fact, I still own the original copies of them, but they unfortunately do not play on modern versions of Windows. GOG's versions do.

The 7th Guest

As I was playing The 7th Guest, I decided to finally take the next step and start making videos for YouTube. Turns out, Windows 10 and the Xbox app have a built-in Game DVR which works really well and I was able to record my gameplay footage for this game. As time allowed over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, I started recording footage of me playing through the game and uploaded them to YouTube.

Here's the playlist with all 6 episodes: View Playlist

I learned a whole lot about recording and uploading during the making of this short series and I've re-watched my own content and can see a difference myself from the first video to the last. While the voice audio is better in the later episodes, it still has some room for improvement. With this game, there is no volume controls on the audio, so I couldn't really turn the game volume down to balance the mic better.

I also learned that I shouldn't just wing the episodes and that I need to prepare a little better before I start recording. There's a few too many long, awkward pauses at times.

My next plan for recording is to do Minecraft videos, specifically give a video tour of my Hyrule project. Unfortunately, I can't get the Game DVR to record Minecraft at all, so I'm looking at alternatives that don't completely drain the resources on my laptop. I tried recording full-screen at 1080 resolution with another screen recording software, but it's extremely laggy. I'm playing around with lower resolutions to find one that works. Maybe at some point I can upgrade to a more powerful rig if I decide to pursue YouTube heavier than the occasional video.

Anyways, I hope you guys take the opportunity to view the initial videos and future videos and leave comments or feedback.

Thanks, and catch you next time,
 - Ebi

Minecraft: Hyrule Project Continues in the Dark World

Hey guys! In the last post, which was forever ago now, I mentioned a setback where my Hyrule save became corrupted and I lost a ton of work in my Link to the Past Project. Well, I've recovered from that setback and I have picked it up again and have gotten back to work on it! In fact, I found the old schematic file I created in mcedit to copy the Light World into the Dark World.With that gem located, I basically pasted it back over the corrupted Light World and within a few minutes, hours of work was recovered. I then did the same thing on the Dark World level and began the process of modifying light into dark.

I began working in the center of the map by removing Hyrule Castle and forming the footprint of the Pyramid. I next moved south and have completed everything from the edge of the Swamp east to the edge of the map including the frozen Lake Hylia. I've moved north from the corner and am currently working on the area around the first dungeon. I've been taking care of the small caves and buildings as I've gone, but haven't done anything with the actual dungeons yet.

Progress in the Dark World

I don't have a lot of screenshots for the work done so far as the screenshot above actually covers most of what has been completed. Plus, I've been experimenting with screen recording software and it is my hope to put some videos on YouTube later on and give you an actual tour of the world from start to finish.

That's all I've got for you this time. Catch you later!

~ Ebi

A Setback and a Sky Factory

I'm so bummed out. My hard drive crapped out on me a few days back and I lost quite a bit of information. The greatest loss was my Legend of Zelda Link to the Past Hyrule build. Luckily, I had made a backup at the beginning of February, so not all is lost. What I did end up losing was all the progress I made in the Dark World, as well as the last chunk of work in the Light World after the Lost Woods. Guess I need to make backups more frequently...

On the plus side, I've also discovered ATLauncher which gives you one click backups of your saves. I've loaded the backup I had there and updated the world to 1.9. Well, I've got some work to re-do. Glad I have the screenshots though. That should make reproducing it smoother.

Speaking of ATLauncher, I've fallen in love with Sky Factory 2. In my world, I've done so much and I'm producing a stupid amount of resources and it all started with a tree and a dirt block. So much fun figuring everything out. Challenge wise, I've completed the Wood, Stone, Farming, Exploration, and Machine Ages and am working on the Age of Power and Age of Dragons and looking towards the Age of Insanity. I actually have a 1k by 1k Ender Quarry running in the Deep Dark already. That took a while to place... Anyways, here's a peek into my world:

An overview of my base. Monster spawning area on lower right, house in the center, max size reactor framed out, tainted soil room on left. The only thing not shown is another building with 5 blaze spawners (it's behind me).

The "processing" level. Just finished this up last night. It takes End Stone and Cobble Stone and grinds it down to Crushed End Stone, Gravel, Sand and Dust. Those are sieved down to produce Crushed Ores which get auto-hammered to Pulverized Ores which get auto-hammered to Powdered Ores which then get smelted into ingots. Very efficient and produces a ton of stuff.

A peek into my base. Nothing special, but it's "home". LOVE the Ultimate Furnace from Magical Crops.

Minecraft - Link to the Past Lost Woods

This post will finally finish off the tour of the Light World in my Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past Hyrule Build.

This makes the 11th post in my series of this project spanning 3 years (with massive gaps in between). To help you get caught up, here is the history:

• Project Start (Hyrule Castle) - March 2013
• Eastern Palace - August 2013
• Sewers and Sanctuary - September 2013
• Death Mountain / Tower of Hera - December 2013
• Zora's Domain / Lake Hylia - April 2014
• Swamp / Misc Updates - November 2014
• Wooded Area (Flute Boy's Grotto) - November 2014
• Desert Palace - December 2014
• General Progress Update - February 2016
• Kakariko Village - February 2016
• Lost Woods / Finishing Touches (this post) - February 2016

Now that that's over with, lets wrap this thing up and officially call the project "half complete".

Minecraft - Link to the Past Kakariko Village

Since my last post a few days ago, I've completed the entire Light World! Everything is built and in place from every tree, bush, cave, and building. The only things that remain are aesthetic touches like what you are able to see from certain viewpoints. The prime example is being on top of Death Mountain and looking around the world, you can see past the "boundaries" of the map to the blank outside world. I'm working on creating natural looking structures (mountains, fields, etc) outside that to blend it out and/or hide it. I'm really putting a lot of effort into making the world feel "real".

But for now, I'm going to leave you with two more posts. The first one, this one, will give a tour of Kakariko Village. The next post to follow will cover the Lost Woods and remaining areas as well as a few of the finishing touches I've done on the Light World. So without further ado, I present my take on Kakariko Village.

The southern end of town.

We'll start at the south and make out way north. One of the biggest challenges with the entire world is the elevations. Taking a 2D game into 3D has been a huge challenge and I've done my best to make the elevation differences work. For this area, I wound up dropping the entire space down into a valley just so I could create the ramps back up into the main village. I believe it worked well enough.

A game of chance perhaps?

House of the quarreling brothers.

Race to the Heart Piece.

Some light reading in the library.

Moving up into the village, lets start at the Blacksmith's House. I had to be extra careful around this house to insulate it because of the lava in their furnace. I think it turned out great and I like using cobwebs as smoke coming from the chimney.

The Blacksmiths' House.

The Blacksmiths' House.

And of course, the caves under their house are there complete with the shrine to "curse" your magic.

Moving into the village itself, I spent a lot of time detailing it out as much as possible. In one of my earlier posts, I said I had to "stretch" the world to fit the full-size castle in place. For Kakariko, that greatly worked to my advantage. Where I normally did the world in as close to a 1:1 ratio as possible, the village itself is 2:1. This allowed all the houses to be decorated internally in a way that fits their size without making them feel cramped. I really like how this scale turned out. Looking inside the tavern (below) is a prime example of the amount of detail I was able to achieve.

The Tavern and surrounding space.

Inside the Tavern.

Grass filled yard.

The cave in the northwest.

Inside the northwest cave.

So there you have it, my rendition of Kakariko. I didn't post a screenshot inside every house, but you can get the idea from the ones I did post. Next time, we'll move on into the Lost Woods.

Minecraft - Hyrule from Link to the Past Update

It's been almost 3 years since I started my Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Hyrule Build in Minecraft. I pretty much stopped working on it for a very long time, but recently have picked it back up again to try and finish it. Quite a bit of the places around the Light World have been updated or modified slightly since I originally started as my methods and design ideas have changed over time. Plus, when 1.8 came out, I gained a whole new set of blocks to play with that made a lot of areas just look better.

The Light World as it currently stands.

My last status post was almost a year ago and I covered the Desert Palace. Since then, as you can see in the screenshot above, I have moved north from there and finished Kakariko Village and the Lost Woods. All that is left in the Light World is the strip from the wood cutter's hut down to the blacksmith's house and the Light World will be complete according to the original layout. I still have some aesthetic cleanup to do around Death Mountain and Zora's Domain to blend or create the background and try to make it appear more natural.

When I started doing this, I didn't have the most powerful computer and my render distances were low. On newer hardware with a high distance, the flaws around the edges show a lot more, so I have a little cleanup work do do now.

Once the Light World is complete, the plan is to put MCEdit to the test and see if I can copy/paste the entire map into the Dark World below. As I explained in my first post, I created a custom super flat map that consists of two "worlds" on top of each other. The Dark World is the first 150 blocks and the Light World is the second 150 blocks.

I'm in the process of taking more screen shots, so look for detailed updates on Kakariko and the Lost Woods soon.

Download Link?
I've had several people ask for a download link. I do eventually plan on doing just that and releasing it to the wild, but for now, I want to keep it until it's finished. Since the Dark World mirrors the Light World in so many ways, creating it should not take nearly as long to complete as it will mostly be "done" as soon as I paste it in and switch the grass to Mycelium.

Minecraft - Link to the Past - Desert Palace

 

Work continues in my Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Hyrule build in Minecraft. I just finished work on the Desert Palace which brings my Light World up to about 75% complete. I'll move on to Kakariko next (which will go fast) and then the Lost Woods which might take a bit due to the sheer number of trees required.

Minecraft - Link to the Past Work Continues

Okay, so I've been back on a Link to the Past kick recently and have been working on it more than I should. Sue me... :-P

Anyways, I've completed the wooded section between Link's House and the lower section of Kakariko. I was dreading this because of the sheer number of trees in this section, but it turned out not to be bad at all. I laid out the basic foundation with just the stumps, then used MCEdit to copy/paste an already done tree on top of all the trunks. It actually didn't take long at all.

The wooded area.

Another update I made was to the woods surrounding Link's house. Before, they were in-game grown trees (instead of the hand-crafted "Hyrule Tree"). They got the job done, but never quite looked right. Now I think they look a whole lot better if I do say so myself.

A closeup view of a single "Hyrule Tree". 2x2 stump, 7 blocks high, with 4 Glowstone in the leaves making each tree give off a little bit of light.

Now where did he bury that ocarina flute?

Another section that I have completed the roughing in portion is the lower half of Kakariko. You can see part of it in the first screenshot in this post. In order to accommodate the levels and still stay in sync with the rest of Kakariko, I wound up digging that section down into a valley. It works and I don't think it's too disruptive to the world design.

Plugging away and the half-way point is approaching. I'm 2/3 done with the Light World now and then it's on to the Dark World! The Dark World will go a lot faster as I plan to copy the entire Light World using MCEdit and Paste it down below. A quick find/replace with Grass for Mycelium and voila, a rough Dark World. Little bit of hand editing to the over-world and build the dungeons and call it good.

Minecraft - Link to the Past Updates

It's been a long time since I stepped foot in my Link to the Past build in Minecraft, but I did just that and have made a good chunk of progress. I finished the light-world swamp area and the entrance to the desert. I've also laid out the ground work for Kakariko village and part of the Lost Woods. It's not much to look at yet, but it's progress nonetheless.

Now that 1.8 is out, we have many new blocks at our disposal and I really like what is now available. I need to go back through my world and see if any of the new blocks can benefit the rest of the map in terms of design. One place I know of off the top of my head is the Tower of Herra. Because of world height issues, I had to make each floor only 2 blocks high with a 2 block high floor so that the orange/blue "switches" wouldn't show from the floor below. Now that we have carpet, that's no longer an issue. I'll remove one layer of flooring to make each floor 3 high and replace the wool blocks with carpet tiles.

Below are some screens of the recent progress. I'll post more when I have more work done.

The Swamp Area is now complete.

Entrance to the Sewer area.

Flood Gate room.

The path to the desert area.

The very roughed in desert area.

Paths are in place for Kakariko. I've doubled the scale of the village to help it fit in the world since I have extra space. It will also make the houses much less cramped once constructed.

Taking advantage of the better render distances to show off an overview of most of the world. Here is Hyrule Castle and the Eastern Palace.

Overhead view of the lake and swamp.

Sanctuary and Death Mountain.

Minecraft - Link to the Past - Zora's Domain and Lake Hylia

Time to continue on with my Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past recreation in Minecraft. Today, we'll head into Zora's Domain and jump down to Lake Hylia.

Minecraft - Link to the Past - Death Mountain

Time to scale up to the heights of Death Mountain in Part 4 of my Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Minecraft Project.

Minecraft - Link to the Past Hyrule - Sewers & Sanctuary

This is Part 3 of my Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Hyrule recreation in Minecraft. [Part 1 Here | Part 2 Here] This time, we head back into the Castle's Throne Room and begin our jaunt through the sewers to the Sanctuary and surrounding area

Minecraft - Link to the Past Hyrule - Eastern Palace

And I'm back! After a lot of work, I'm ready to reveal the next set of screenshots from my Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past Hyrule Build in Minecraft. The first post took us through the basics and Hyrule Castle, so now it's time to head east towards the Eastern Palace.

Minecraft - New Survival World Castle

I bet you were hoping my next update would be a continuation of my own Hurule project. Well, work on that has slowed down a bit, but I am still plugging away at it. I've finished most of Death Mountain now except for the Eastern caverns. Figuring how to make all those work has been a pain! (There are a few quick photos at the end of this post)

What I want to share today is a new world I started that I've become rather fond of. As usual, I started on pure Survival without cheats, but with the Bonus Chest. Right off the bat, I found an extreme hills biome with a great mountain that had a huge opening through it. Naturally, I had to climb to its peak and claim it as my own. From a simple dirt base in the side of the mountain, my castle began to take shape. This is where it stands currently.