During the New Year's holidays last year (January 2011), I broke ground on only my second world I'd created in Minecraft and began what you see today.
I left "normal" play (meaning mobs) on and got pwned frequently but one of the first early safe houses was built into what was then a naturally occurring mountain. That entire mountain has been shelled out and carved down to what is today the Citadel Complex (see below). It looked much more like a fortress in the old days but when I started to see my proto-city rise and was fed-up with Creepers blowing my hard work up I quietly set the game to "peaceful" and from then on it was just that.
Here's some "aerial" photography of the four cardinal directions of the city. (Of course my avatar Steve is actually poised fearlessly atop a temporary single-block-width tower to maximum height. He should be a bit nervous though 'cause if he falls, even while in "peaceful" he'll be dead.) Feel free to click on pics for larger view:
7. This grassy ridge is the first vantage point where I stood taking the first photos of my new city skyline. Remember?
8. This causeway bridge goes to the mansion formerly known as the North Citadel, now called simply Frostwinds. Though it's still in the same biome as the city, it sits on an island which faces west towards a vast and mainly unexplored frozen alpine area.
9. A small lighthouse and pier. There are supplies and crafting implements for the brave sailor.
10. The Tree Of Life, a temple devoted to the big green leafy things we all too often under appreciate as we harvest them for wood.
11. Another man-made forest. A pitiful attempt to re-gain what was once here, vast rolling forested lands.
12. Here's the diagonal roadway I talked about in the first pic.
13. This is another of those plazas I worked hard to preserve. There'e a whole slew of underground tunnels converging right about here but from the surface you'd never know it. Just a nice patch of grass and a small bubbling fountain.
14. The first causeway ever built. Back then it connected two hills. Now they're buildings.
15. These two trees, trimmed a bit to allow it to form a canopy to the original entrance to the Citadel, are the only original trees in the city. All others were planted later. Oh yes, my axe, pick and shovel have been busy over the past year. Very busy, indeed.
I left "normal" play (meaning mobs) on and got pwned frequently but one of the first early safe houses was built into what was then a naturally occurring mountain. That entire mountain has been shelled out and carved down to what is today the Citadel Complex (see below). It looked much more like a fortress in the old days but when I started to see my proto-city rise and was fed-up with Creepers blowing my hard work up I quietly set the game to "peaceful" and from then on it was just that.
Here's some "aerial" photography of the four cardinal directions of the city. (Of course my avatar Steve is actually poised fearlessly atop a temporary single-block-width tower to maximum height. He should be a bit nervous though 'cause if he falls, even while in "peaceful" he'll be dead.) Feel free to click on pics for larger view:
NORTH: (Actually only since version Beta 1.8, prior to that all the directions were shifted one over to left and this was east back then...no matter, it's all good.)
1. One of the first diagonal roads I built this intending to connect it to a planned sea village but right about where this number is the landscape drops off in steep steps to the coast and I saw it was gonna take much more cobblestone than I planned so I halted progress and never picked it up again.
2. I wanted a domed roof building but I didn't want to overwhelm the scale of the city so this was a bit of a challenge. Doomed buildings can look great in Minecraft if you want to build big. Really big. For a really impressive Buckminster Fuller type dome it'd have to cover my entire city. But I needed it to fit aesthetically with it's surroundings. This is the result. I filled it out with wooden bench seating-in-the-round, a central stage complete with red wool curtains and topped it off with a neat skylight. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Theater! Tickets please...
3. This plaza was open and looked too flat for a long time so I decided to build a tower in its midst. Organically built like everything else in this city, once I finished it, I noticed it looks like a high-rise tenement government housing project. So, this is the "Old Steve's Home".
4. Hard to see in the dark, I know, but here is where there was a small pond on the top of a hill. Well, you know what that means...waterfall! It was the first waterfall I'd ever created in Minecraft. I've neatened it up over the past few months but it still looks neat.
5. I started building a few buildings and a wooden dock here even back in the early months of January/February. I planned to have this be a sleep community by the sea or maybe the heavy industrial area only factory workers and longshoremen would visit. It's still just a couple of factory style buildings and a dock. Not much development for most of the year.
6. Here's the road to it though, one of the first to connect to something outside the core of the city.
7. When I built this, mobs were still "on" so I had to only venture out here during the day and mine the materials from would would eventually become the vast mine complex underneath the City Citadel. It was quite a trek from the doors of the Citadel to the statue across vast fields and sands. Today, you can see, the sprawl of the city is slowly encroaching on it. Fear not though...this monument to the Victims of Mobs, shaped like a zombie, will stand for a thousand years! "We remember!"
8. Though the centrally-located Citadel used to serve as both King Steve's castle AND the seat of the government, I built this House of Congress to change that. It had a nice cupola entrance hall and two houses each with large glowstone and glass chandeliers. The Northside Portico is for those big-wig outdoor cocktail parties everyone wishes they could get invited to.
9. Just a postage stamp nondescript plaza designed for the nearby office workers. I placed a small dedication marker here commemorating the six-month anniversary of the city. It's a nice place to sit and feed the chicken/ducks.
10. One of the first buildings to become totally glassed in. Many buildings still aren't, and many are that way 'cause I want it that way.
11. I loved the look of this building when I got done with it. The central column of sand is illuminated by hidden torches and I think it looks really neat. Another nice effect of building organically...you get little surprises when your done.
12. For the longest time this was a large hill in the midst of my expanding city. Now it's fully converted into the City Police Station. Are there jail cells inside? What to find out? Well do ya', punk?
13. An early "needle eye" decorative tower (like #19). This one came to be the beacon for the "Arts District".
14. Other than the main Citadel itself, the next fully converted hill into a building. The long stairway running up the backside (north) is one of the oldest structures in the city. This building houses the Central Bank, BTW.
15. Soon after building my first portal to the Nether, I brought my Nether specific blocks here and built what looks like a 1970's style Olympic stadium torch out of glowstone and topped by the Eternal Flame of ignited netherrack.
16. The Stone Runes surrounding this tower looked plain housing only a scattering of flowers so I dug up many of the flowers and built this.
17. The Citadel Complex.
18. I loved this natural plaza and when my city was growing and I thought of paving it all with cobblestone, I thought of the beauty of this patch of grassway and decided to keep the city mainly green. Of course the color changes in version 1.0 made this a polluted-looking green but, meh...whatcha gonna do?
19. The original Needle Eye tower. When it was constructed so many months ago, it was the tallest structure in the city.
20. Another of the many quick and impromptu decorative towers. They can't be entered or ascended but they look pretty.
21. My first little suspension bridge. When I built this, there wasn't much to the east (then south) of it.
EAST:
1. That port area again. Still un-named. How sad.
2. A better shot of the Victims Monument overlooking the sea (not to be confused with #13, The Monument to the Fallen Heroes).
3. Harbor Entrance Park. All the trees here planted from saplings.
4. Almost invisible in the dark, the Island Lighthouse. Probably not too effective if you can't see it in the dark.
5. These are some of the newest buildings. I call this the Warehouse District.
6. Though only a nub here, this is where I'd traditionally build a sand tower to about a 16 block height or so to take my many west-facing nighttime skyline shots.
7. This is a glassed-in observation vantage point right at shore level across the harbor. Great skyline viewing.
8. This nether flame marker indicates a very, very deep shaft directly below it way under the bay. What's there? Obsidian!
9. The Harbor Bridge connecting our city's continent with the continent to the east via a natural narrowing strait.
10. The harbor. Pretty much as it was on First Spawn Day. I've mined a bit of the sand on its bottom to neaten it up a bit though.
11. A cargo ship. Cute, huh? Frozen forever at dock. Is it loading or unloading those colorful cargo containers? We may never know.
12. The Original Spawn Point. If you remember, I used to have a dark grey cobblestone mess I called the Dockmaster's Tower here. It was hideous so I demolished it and put a simple glassed in booth above the gold block signifying the OSP and built a low-level port service building near it.
13. After securing a hollowed out safe niche in the mountain that would eventually become the Citadel, I built this well-lit arch on a natural hill near the spawn point so I'd always know which way to run like hell if I got killed and re-spawned in those early mob-infested nights.
14. An early extension of the naturally occurring pond near the side of what became the Citadel, this is still a very pretty little canal cutting through the heart of downtown.
SOUTH:
1. Another shot of the Harbor Bridge west end entrance.
2. This is the first "light house", really just a beacon. Built soon after I discovered redstone, it's topped by 4 of the very first redstone torches.
3. I literally stumbled into this natural cave entrance. It remains, through some interconnecting excavation, one of the largest, and deepest cave networks in the area.
4. The Harbor Torch again.
5. The entrance to The Grande Canal, ie, The Great Failure. I still don't know how to get man-made canals to work. It's totally un-navigable though I filled it with many, many buckets of water. The currents are rougher than the roughest seas. The squid like it though. It's a pain 'case it goes the whole length of the continent, most of it under the city. Pity. Minecraftia tax dollars to waste.
6. I like the look of this simple arched bridge over the canal.
7. The Clocktower.
8. I started this building so many months ago and never got around to finishing it. I guess I'll call it my Majesty Building. LOL!
9. After completing this I thought it looked like a quintessential government office building like Health and Human Services or something. Maybe it's the DMV? I should put a shitload of chests filled with paper symbolizing the endless bureaucratic forms and paperwork.
10. Though the scale of the whole city is small (ie. Steve's head just clears most ceilings) this building is one of a few forced-perspective lies. The floors are only one block high and thus inaccessible. A cheating way to get the building to look taller than it really is.
11. The Superman Building of my city. Styled like the 1930's Daily Planet Building, I wonder if there's a Clark Kent working away in there? My luck he'd turn into an Enderman!
12. Not too sure if I like it much but it was a quick attempt to fashion a CN Tower style "space needle" building. Meh...
13. Kinda small but again I was concerned with overall scale, this is the Train Station. There are tracks that run from here to just before the Great Causeway that leads out to the Portal Complex (all off-picture). I'm way too cheap with my iron to really build an extensive rail network though.
14. This cobblestone "belltower" which sits atop a part of the Citadel complex was the tallest structure for a very long time.
15. The three-story post-modernist penthouse suite of the Citadel Complex. Fully encased in glass, it offers some of the most cozy accommodations and really stunning skyline views. Lisa Douglas would love it, Daaaaahhling!
16. Built from the remains of a very large outcropping of the original mountain which begat the Citadel (wheh!), this grassy viewing platform was where I watched my ever-growing city blossom over the many, many months. It kinda looks low in this shot but it's actually kinda high up.
17. These organically whipped up low-rise building represent the reverent temple complex of the city, and, being quite possibly the first free-standing structures built, they form the symbolic (and almost geographic) center of the metropolis.
18. I first sought to have this be a stadium but it was way too small. Now it's the hospital.
19. Inside this building, which can only be accessed through a subterranean foyer, is a huge depiction of a torch made out of black wool, gold and jack-o-lanterns. It is the headquarters for the Power & Light Company.
WEST:
1. "All Aboard!" The Train Station again.
2. The Zicorp Mining Company Building. The tallest in the city. Just one block shy of max. Well, I guess the sand tower I'm snapping this photo on is now the tallest. (Well, not for long, it was built only for this shoot.)
3. The dual observation platforms at the west entrance to The Grand Canal. You can watch the squid trapped in the inescapable currents of the canal, opening and closing their gaping toothy mouths, screaming in silence, forever and ever.
4. Worker's Town. Factories, bars and simple houses, this is where the mining folk stay.
5. So sometime about 4 or 5 months into building the city I get ambitious and I want a fancy lava accented art structure here, not far from the then north Citadel entrance. Many deaths later I completed it. It's safe now, all enclosed in thick tempered glass.
6. Soon after the devastating losses while building #5, I converted an awkward looking sand pyramid into this Monument to Glass, in appreciation for it's beauty...and strength.
7. This grassy ridge is the first vantage point where I stood taking the first photos of my new city skyline. Remember?
8. This causeway bridge goes to the mansion formerly known as the North Citadel, now called simply Frostwinds. Though it's still in the same biome as the city, it sits on an island which faces west towards a vast and mainly unexplored frozen alpine area.
9. A small lighthouse and pier. There are supplies and crafting implements for the brave sailor.
10. The Tree Of Life, a temple devoted to the big green leafy things we all too often under appreciate as we harvest them for wood.
11. Another man-made forest. A pitiful attempt to re-gain what was once here, vast rolling forested lands.
12. Here's the diagonal roadway I talked about in the first pic.
13. This is another of those plazas I worked hard to preserve. There'e a whole slew of underground tunnels converging right about here but from the surface you'd never know it. Just a nice patch of grass and a small bubbling fountain.
14. The first causeway ever built. Back then it connected two hills. Now they're buildings.
15. These two trees, trimmed a bit to allow it to form a canopy to the original entrance to the Citadel, are the only original trees in the city. All others were planted later. Oh yes, my axe, pick and shovel have been busy over the past year. Very busy, indeed.