Building Ascala in Minecraft

Heyo. Zed here. So I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft recently. Yes, I’m taking some off time while I finish setting up book printing. After writing the books, proofreading them, finding the right paper and moving my entire website over to Blogger, I’ve been busy. I’m making sure I don’t burn out. All this means Minecraft. But this actually has a second purpose. I’m practicing building areas and cities from my setting the Astral in preparation for building them as level maps for the first Astral video game.

Let me take you on a tour. Our tour starts off in a cafe. Because every skilled engineer needs their coffee. Then down these stairs is something very useful.

Okay, so there’s an aquarium first. That still counts as useful. I filled it with a couple pufferfish. Okay, a couple hundred pufferfish. I’m in Creative mode and they’re free. By the way all this is done in Creative mode where you have unlimited blocks and can fly. This wouldn’t be possible physically in normal Survival mode. In Survival mode you have to actually gather all the resources and materials you use. And you can die, including of hunger.

Down these stairs is the useful thing I mentioned.

Welcome to the Topaz Sector train terminal. Here are all of the rail lines that lead to my building projects from the setting’s region named the Topaz Sector. Also, the gemstone topaz can be yellow. I don’t know why some people refer to it as blue or normally blue. It can be yellow quite frequently in nature. Anyway. Onto a minecart.

Now after a long, really long, underground minecart ride we’re here. In Old Town Ascala, at the Old Town Ascala subway station. Just outside is the real reason we’re here.

This is Old Town in the city of Ascala, The City at the Centre of Creation. We finally get to see what that city looks like now that I’ve completed a portion of it. It took a while.

Okay so it took most of six months. For those of you who are curious the buildings follow an exact pattern. Each city block is 40 metres wide and the buildings are all built in standard units that are 6 by 8 metres long and wide and 4 tall. Blocks in the game are one metre each so these numbers allow me to make sure everything looks cohesive. The final level maps for sale will be identical down to the metre to this one.

Here’s another region of the city that’s still under construction. This is District 14, one of the 21 Districts that compose the city. That’s all for now. Next up I need to do interiors and furniture for all of these structures. I know, I’m doomed. Thanks.

Zed

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