The forge (finally)

So... uh... you took it from far up in the sky? I had no idea very far render made it look like that. My pc can't handle more than normal render, would I still be able to get that far distance if I had optifine?

It can double your fps if you're lucky. My laptop gets 100fps on far without optifine though. It helps, and it can remove void fog

An fps boost would be great, but far render and not getting crashes would be way more awesome. If you're around I can hop on for 10 minutes now before leaving for the bus.

Unfortunately I'm heading out :/
I'd suggest giving optifine a shot, it may help. If you have winrar, just open up minecraft.jar, delete META-INF, then copy all CLASS files from optifine into the minecraft.jar

I'm heading out too now, maybe tomorrow.

That sounds both complicated and risky. I'll look into it when I'm not feeling lazy

Not risky at all... you start by copying everything in your .minecraft folder into a backupjust in case you do something stupid... There;s some other way to do it as well, but I like to mod the old fashioned way :p


...... and once again, thread horribly derailed

I don't like messing around with important files, I'm bound to screw it up. When I was 10 I deleted windows 32 and since then I don't want to touch anything

How did you manage THAT!? Fortunately you can fix pretty much anything you do to minecraft by just forcing update...

Now, anyway... Back on topic :p

We've discussed the idea of having a cauldron of lava, fed by "pipes" from above, pouring into it. If we do that, that cauldron/bucket-o-lava thing, should we have it tipping out the lava to feed the furnaces, or have some holes in the bottom of it?

Or, do we want to have the lava flowing from the pipes in the roof out into a lake in the centre instead?

What I'm wondering is how these pipes will look like. Will we use glass to make them see-through? They would have to be rather big so we'd need plenty of space and if everything else was small they'd look really out of place.

When I get on tomorrow I'll get a picture for you.. Too hard to explain hy I thinking

So, here we have our mini scale mockup - the skyforge
I was going to make a paint drawing showing a complete aerial view, but it just looks shit, so you can get the actual screenshots... just be interpretive, as we didn't actually finish anything


We decided that making a cauldron would be too much effort, so we made it more like a pool of lava. Flowing in from pipes along the roof we have a few lava falls going into the pool of lava. This pool is central to the forge.

Where the gold blocks are, up the top right of the picture, is where access from the mines will arrive. Since we will have a minecart track there, it will have a small room for the minecart arrival and departure. From there, the only access to the forge itself is the bridge over the lava, as the lava pool blocks off all other access. This bridge takes you straight across, and lands you right next to the smelting storage area.

Going through the storage area you will come to stairs which take you up onto a viewing balcony, looking down on the rows of furnaces (directly across), and the bridge and lava pool. This balcony leads directly to the store room. The store room itself is on y=20. The uppermost layer of bedrock is on y=6. That means that at the lowest, the top of the lava will be at y=8. That leaves the problem of void fog. Yes, void fog can add to the effect, but we don't want it to have too much of an effect on the visibility, so it can't be too deep.

Anyway, back to the picture. The lava flows out of the pool into small channels, which then go down between rows of furnaces. The furnaces will be on both sides of the lava; the side you see in the bottom right of the photo, and then opposite that, beneath the viewing platform and tunnel back to storage. There will probably be at least 3-4 rows of furnaces on each side of the pool, giving a total of a shitload of furnaces.

Here's the rest of the gallery

Spoiler:

I like the concept, but what if we make it an underground lava river instead of a pool? The forge will be on either side of the river and can be connected by one or a few bridges. Wouldn't change your design by much at all just extending the pool to either side giving a river effect.

Also, I think we need to generally go larger scale, like the size of Portal Room if we can.

Not sure if I did say it or not, but this is a tiny scale model :p think triple size at least... I like the lava river idea, but we want to make it look like we've manipulated it all for ourselves, hence the pipes pouring lava in from above

Oh ok, That size would be just right. Also, I like that idea with the lava river being unnatural, it works better for our design purposes anyways.

What about the roof to the room. Is it going to be low or high? Natural or unnatural looking?

Hmmm.... I don't think we'd thought that far :/ open to all suggestions on that front. I have no clue.

Also, do we want that central lava thing to be rectangular of more of a round shape? And what kind of size do you think we'd be looking at?

Since we already have two circular lava pits (Atrium and Dome room) maybe we should change things up and go square. As for size I think that it should take up about 1/5 of the floor space in the room. Just as long as it is not too small or too big.

The Trainman and I are building a small forge room on a "dwarven-style" mine on our other server. I'll let you guys know if we come up with any interesting features or design concepts.

I'm thinking that we start with the lava pool, and build the room around that. I really am stuck on ideas for the roof though... Guess we overlooked that with our sky forge :p

SW, that sounds like a great plan interested to see what you come up with

Okay, here's the entrance to the "Dwaven-Style" mineshaft Trainman started with another of our members, MetGreDKo. They didn't check with me first, or I would have pointed out that they were directly on top of my underground base, and their first staircase-down shaft wouldn't have broken into the ceiling of one of my sheep pens.


Here's the same entrance, with the piston door open:


And here's looking back out the open piston door:


Deeper in the mine, just inside the forge room, looking back out to a closed piston door:


In the middle of the forge room looking back towards the entrance (right) and the work/ready-storage area (left):



What you're waiting for, the wall of furnaces with vertical lava highlights:

I found putting the lava behind half-slabs looked better than glass blocks or glass panes. I was short on iron or I would have tried iron bars. I traded most of my iron to another player (for him to use in making a beacon pyramid) in exchange for diamonds (to make enchanted tools to hand out as thank-you gifts for members who donated towards server costs). The rest of my iron got handed out in block form as another server-donation thank-you gift.

Here's a neat staircase-down coming out one wall of the forge room. Too bad it doesn't go anywhere yet:


And one more view of the furnace wall:


I did most of this myself this morning, I don't think the Trainman has even seen it yet.

Not a bad little forge.. Completely different style to what we're aiming for, but I'm gonna see what the lava columns looks like for our furnace rows. I can almost guarantee that iron bars won't work for you anyway... I'll post a couple of pics in a second

I'm going to try an do my own little design mock up to get some more ideas flowing, nice to see all this discussion and planning getting more detailed. I'll post pictures when I finish.

Ok, so... incorporating the lava columns to the furnace rows we have...

This is 2 rows of furnaces... I'm thinking at least 3 on each side



That gives you an idea of how large the room will be overall

Ok, this is for more of the place. Gold blocks represent the lava lake. You can see the start of a bridge across. To the right is the staircase up past the storage area, which goes to the entry from store room, as well as viewing area of the forge. Directly beneath this platform will be more rows of furnaces.

The storage area and everything currently connected will be one block higher, I just screwed up :p

Also, the area for storage will possibly be a bit longer too

That's a neat little mine/forge thingy. I like the slab ceiling work.