Seegras Logbook

I noticed some time ago that multiple spawners could be active at the same time, as long as the player was within 16 blocks of each of them. However, if too many mobs of the same kind the spawner spawns were within 9x16x16 around the spawner, it would stop spawning after 6 mobs or so.

So in principle, it must be possible to have a lot, maybe 8, spawners, completely with their delivery- and killing-system within a sphere of 16 blocks around the player, all churning out mobs and items. So that’s where I started:

In green you can see the 16 block sphere around where the player would be standing, in yellow are the 9x16x16 areas where no mobs of the same type should be (and consequently, the area any spawned mobs need to leave as soon as possible). The cyan circle is the ground layout, and of no consequence. The spawners along with their spawn-boxes are in brown and in stone. Those structures made of end-stone are elevators and droppers, to the left is one for skeletons, to the right one for cave spiders.

This made for a rather cramped internal layout, with 7 spawners and all the mobs which needed to be lead out, upwards, thrown down, and led to the middle again. Plus the redstone, mostly for lighting. it was a mess, the spider-grinder didn’t really work, for blazes and endermen I hadn’t implemented any automatic system, and I didn’t know where to put them because of lack of space.

Then I watched Etho Plays Minecraft – Episode 234: Egg Delivery where he demonstrated with Minecraft 1.4 items will go up a solid block, if there’s no other space around where they could go. So I redesigned the whole interior. I decided that only blazes would be left to kill for XP, and the other mobs would just get killed as soon as possible, and their items sent up to the central room.

This I did. And I moved the spiders to one side, making space for another spawner, slimes, making it the whole 8 spawners I initially envisioned. Of course, if I hadn’t cared for isolating zombies, creepers and skeletons from each other, it would have been possible to put in more spawners. Probably all of them. So this isn’t as efficient as it could be.

I initially had some problems with the redstone-circuits, but I finally realised that something simpler would do the job just as well. Now it’s only tow clocks, one for the item elevator and one for the grinder, a T-flipflop, also for the grinder, and a pulser, for sweeping out items.

The two mobs posing the biggest problems were blazes and slime. blazes, because they need a light level of 11 or higher in order not to spawn (which I solved with lots of redstone lamps and a smaller spawn-area) and the slimes, which would spawn in any light. I now put half their spawn area under water if spawning is turned off, but small slimes still spawn. For the cave spiders, I just turned the above item elevator into a killing machine, killing spiders and sending up items at the same time.

Right now, I’m still not entirely happy with the blaze-situation, I would like to have them delivered to the central room, so I can kill blazes while I wait for items, but I’ve not yet found a good solution.

Finally, I couldn’t resist to give the thing a facade, and I decided upon a late 19th century industrial look. Half of it is buried in the ground, so this makes the main control room in the middle of the structure easily acessible from ground level:

I call it “The Manufacture”, although it’s of course none. But this fits with the 19th century theme, where factories sometimes still were called manufactures, although the production wasn’t really “handmade” any more. And it works day and night ;):

Level and schematic:

• TheManufacture.schematic
• The Manufacture, Level

Update:

Minecraft 1.5 is out, and it makes item-handling so much easier. So this is the totally revamped mob factory, now called “Mob Products”, featuring lettering on the roof (idea and font by Etho), and using hopper conveyors, dropper elevators and an item sorter.

Also, I went over it with 1.6.2 and the HostileSpawnOverlay mod, and fixed some lighting.

Update 2:

I fixed the typo on the roof ;).

No new level but simply the schematic:

• MobProducts.schematic

The license of these files and my screenshots is the OPL 1.0 or CC-by-sa 3.0.

If you go to Planet Minecraft or mcschematics and look for schematics of levels of towns, you’ll notice something: Just about none of them are. They’re villages with walls and maybe a castle. Rarely, there are some that somehow make sense, like Skycrown (Nothing historically correct in this one, but plausible).

There are, however, cities that look like cites. This Imperial City is simply unbelievable.

But I didn’t want a city, but simply a fortified town for the NPCs. And I wanted a town which looked like it, and not like a village: Neither totally flat, nor with too straight roads, nor one with dispersed single-story buildings — the latter being the defining characteristic of a village. Towns need to be cramped, buildings built in rows and blocks right next to each other, with a small footprint but multiple stories high to maximize real estate.

I decided to go for a rather medieval look in general, with upper stories protruding in front of the building, sometimes with arcades in front of the houses. Also, with firewalls between the houses which are slightly higher than the roofs. Most houses feature a stall/shop behind double doors, and another entrance for entering the workshop and the living quarters.

However, the medieval looks is not drawn trough. Think of a medieval town that was modified in the later centuries, and arrived in the 18th century. Most buildings are still of older types, and only the most modern buildings really have a baroque look. In that case, it’s the city walls, which are already in the model of a star-shaped fortress of the late 17th century, including the gate-tower, the town hall with it’s tower, and the church. The church is actually the uppermost part of a cathedral by someone else, inspired by the Frauenkirche in Dresden. I won’t include it in the schematic (so I can put the town under a free license), but you’ll notice the big round place at the top of the town — just copy paste in either the cuppola of above cathedral, or something else there. And the lighthouse is actually too modern, these turned up in this form later in the 19th century.

The schematic is a cut-out from my usual map, since the town didn’t lend itself nicely to being placed on flat ground. It’s supposed to be on a hill towards the sea. If you want to set it into its original setting, the world seed is “3327780” (structures, cheats, no bonus chest, type default). You’ll find the place at +850/+600, southeast of the spawn point. There’s a village there (which in fact, was the base of my town and supplied its population).

Here’s the level and schematic:

• BaroqueTown.schematic
• Baroque Town, Level

The license of these files and my screenshots is the OPL 1.0 (which is about the same as CC-by-sa).