An Update on the Masterwork

I've been working more lately on the cathedral I started ages ago in Minecraft, and I'm finally making some definable progress after months of nothing. Kind of like writer's block, only with, well, pixelated blocks. I tried to take this screenshot from the same location as the original shot in one of my earlier posts when I first came up with the idea for the cathedral, but I've since torn that platform down so it was more of a guesstimate.

You can see I've started to define the roof, and although it's hard to tell, a lot of progress has been made on the walls in the nave and aisles, and I put in a huge rose window at the front entrance. It's actually kind of hard to tell the scale of this thing from this screenshot, but I wish you could see it in person and walk around in it. It's so much more inspiring now that it's so much closer to being finished, I feel more and more motivated to press onward the more I add to it. Hands down it's the most ambitious project in Minecraft I've ever taken on before. The wall defining the border of the kingdom was huge, I'll admit, but it was, well, just a wall. It's not that challenging. This though, this is taking thought and planning and trial and error and a little bit of math even. Not my strongest suit.

The project at sunrise.

The above picture is purely to attempt to give you a sense of scale, but then I suppose if you know anything at all about Minecraft you'll be able to see how huge it is. Granted, it's not the greatest or most impressive thing out there, especially if you do a youtube search with choice phrases such as 'epic minecraft cathedral' but I'm still pretty proud of it. Maybe once I finish it, it won't be such an eyesore and Squid won't have a reason to complain about the half-finished building on the edge of her backyard.

I also lost the link to whatever real-life cathedral I was modeling this after, so it's completely out of my head at this point. +5 to creativity, please? One thing that really pleases me about building this is how I've come up with some new ideas and even stolen some building techniques from watching the videos of others on youtube. Did you know you could place stairs upside down? I do know, and I'm thoroughly exploiting the technique in my flying buttresses. I still wish we could put stained glass in our windows, but as I was talking with a friend the other day, the tech to implement that would be huge, and probably not something Notch would want to add, since Minecraft can be a demanding program to run anyways, at least on my machine.

Hrmmm, after going back and looking at older posts, I was apparently modeling this thing after the Metz. Mine looks nothing like it. Oh well. I'll keep trudging merrily along. /whistleahappytune

A Question of Legitimacy

As some of you may know, I decided to play through one Sims 3 family for 20 generations as part of my Day Zero Project. Generation 5 was just born to my gen4 girl, Lily, but I have a bit of a long story to preface my ... moral conundrum.

This is Lily. Lily had the start of a fantastic life. She had a great family, lots of opportunity, and a handsome boyfriend. She was determined to be a master of all the instruments in the Sims 3, and was making great progress, playing for hours each day.

Her boyfriend, Rashad, while handsome and sensitive and fabulously artistic (he painted and sculpted), wanted more than what she was giving. She wanted to get married, but he never asked her. Instead, he finally convinced her to scoodlypoo with him, and she did, in the hopes that it would satisfy him and then they would have a beautiful wedding. Instead, right after it was done, the totally cliche and very unfortunate happened: they had a fight and broke up. It was like he went crazy - implying her mother was a llama and other such nasty things. She was heartbroken, and she never saw him again. Last she heard, he was a writer for a tabloid magazine.

And then, surprise! You know what they say - it only takes once. She was pregnant! Her parents and grandmother were not thrilled, but they welcomed the child into the world, and Lily stood tall despite the rumors flying about town about how her son was conceived out of wedlock. For a while it was so bad Lily couldn't leave the house without people stopping and pointing and gasping and shaking their heads at her. One restaurant even refused to serve 'her type!' Despite all this, she persevered, and soon enough little Aegon was born.

 Surprisingly, he carries the genetic marker I put in Duncan at the start of the whole thing (bright yellow eyes. No, it has no purpose or meaning, other than I wanted something easily identifiable for a marker, as an experiment). So far it has shown up every other generation (Gens 1, 3, and 5), exactly.

All seemed well with the world, and eventually the rumors died down. People are fickle, and they will always have something new to gossip about. Hopefully it will be a while before poor Lily finds herself in the spotlight again.

Aegon was growing up quickly, learning new things every day about talking and walking and how to properly chew on toy cars. Lily continued to practice her instruments, and eventually she was able to leave the house without being ridiculed or shunned. They moved on with their lives.




 And by 'went on with their lives' I mean Lily really, truly, moved on. She went out and met people, determined to overcome the bad name people had put on her, and one of the people she met was Davon Lassiter. This time, she'd found a great guy. They got along great, he was a hard worker and, most of all, he respected her. He didn't seem to mind (or maybe he didn't know) about the rumors that occasionally still cropped up about Lily, and he was great with Aegon. He was sweet, funny, and even though he was overweight, he was a hard worker. They got married in an incredibly private ceremony (you don't get more private than the bathroom), he moved into the family estate, and soon after she was pregnant again. Things were looking up. Davon got in shape and really slimmed up, then he got a job as an inventor. The new baby turned out to be another son, and now Lily had two children, Aegon Morel (her maiden name) and Aemon Lassiter (her married name). Lily continued with her music, but it was harder now with two children.



And now the question stands: which one of her children will be the heir for the legacy game? Are there rules against bastards? Is it which ever child comes first? Does Aegon have to stand aside for his step-brother Aemon, simply because of a wedding ring? Does Aegon get precedence because he has the genetic marker? Answer in the comments below and tell me! I will go with whoever you decide, so vote!