Sunday 28 September 2014

Minecraft Hoenn: Part 11/43: Mauville City and New Mauville

Part 11/43 of the creation of the Hoenn Region in Minecraft.
So, here we are at Mauville City. The 7th city so far. Mauville City is very near the centre of Hoenn and can be entered from any of four directions. North, south, east and west. Mauville City has a Gym, Rydel's Cycles and the Game Corner. Mauville City also has a sub-location called New Mauville. New Mauville is a non-essential location for the player in the Gameboy game to visit. The reason the player would visit New Mauville (apart from looking around) would be to shut down the out of control power generator at the favour asked by Gym Leader Wattson.

This part was actually quite quick to make because it's quite a lot simpler than previous parts of the Hoenn region such as Route 110 and Slateport City, as featured in Part 9 and Part 10. It was simpler because there are no watery parts that need to be blended in with the land in a way to look seamless.

This is quite a long story so bear with me. It's full of great stuff however.

MAUVILLE CITY
Mauville City is a city in the Hoenn region with a population in the Gameboy game of 39. Mauville City is the most connected city in Hoenn as it can be visited from all four sides. This city was made in Minecraft with the help of MCEdit to save placing hundreds of blocks manually.



MAUVILLE GYM
Mauville gym is one of 8 gyms in the Hoenn region and is the 3rd Gym the player battles in. This is an Electric type gym led by Leader Wattson. The construction of this gym was quite simple because inside it was all just one big room.

Like all the gym's in this Minecraft world it is being built underwater so the Gym doesn't look like it has a growth sticking out of the back of the building.

Night vision potions make seeing underwater much easier.

If Pokemon was real I doubt that anyone would built an electric type gym this close to the water.

Since that sponges became functional again in version 1.8 it took much less time to get rid of the water. Before sponges were functional, all water blocks had to be replaced with sand (or any solid object) to clear the water. Then the sand would be removed to create an open space.



As you can see there is water leaking in from the ceiling which is not good. Especially if you happen to have an Electric type gym underneath the saturated ceiling.


It doesn't matter if the underground section of the gym is above the water. This bit is getting covered over anyway.

This is the interior of the gym before I decorated the gym.


This is the interior after I decorated the gym. I wasn't aware that a gold floor would be so bright. I chose a gold floor because it matched the yellow/gold theme.

And finally the interior of the gym after adding some Tesla coils. And some beacons.


GAME CORNER
The Mauville Game Corner is the only game corner in Hoenn. It contains some casino games such as roulette and slot machines. If the player is successful enough they can earn enough coins to purchase decorations for their secret base or rare items to use on their Pokemon.

The Game Corner is quite a colourful building. The Façade uses five different colours.

Here's the interior of the Game Corner. It is very low detail and you can't play roulette or on the slot machines. Unfortunately. 


Mauville City at sunset.

RYDEL'S CYCLES
Rydel's Cycles is a bicycle store where the player can obtain either the Mach Bike or the Acro Bike. The player in the Gameboy game will get a Bicycle for free when the shops owner, Rydel, learns that the player has come all the way from Littleroot town (as featured way back in Part 1).

Rydel's Cycles looks like any other house.
Because it is almost impossible to craft a bicycle using 1 cubic metre blocks I couldn't craft one at all. Sadly that means there will be no bicycles in this Minecraft world.


And that is Mauville City. All the cities look better with trees.

Here are some various screenshots.




NEW MAUVILLE 
New Mauville is a power plant underneath Mauville City. It is only accessible by surfing underneath the Seaside Cycling Road on Route 110 just south of Mauville City. It is a non-essential place to visit during the main story line. Wattson, the leader of the Mauville gym asks the player if they can go to New Mauville and shut down the out of control power generator. The reward for visiting New Mauville and shutting down the out of control power generator is TM24 Thunderbold given by Wattson who waits in Mauville City for the player to return.


So far the interior is illuminated by torches but will later be lit by glowstone ceiling lights.



To save time, the floor and cieling were made with MCEdit. New Mauville isn't actually under Mauville City in this world. Why? Because in the Gameboy game the player enters the cave to New Mauville heading north down the stairs but in the transition from cave to undergound city, the player then suddenly faces south. If I really wanted to make New Mauville under Mauville, the staircase would have to have a U-turn in it. But that would have been ugly so I didn't bother. Besides when you're underground it's a bit disorientating anyway.


Ahh. The interior of New Mauville is taking shape. Brown clay and 'White' clay is the material for the walls. I say 'White' because the white clay looks like off white with a hint of pink and brown mixed in.



I am so in-experienced with redstone circuitry so bear with me while I explain what i'm doing with it. It's the first use of redstone in Hoenn.

There's a system in New Mauville that when one colour set of door is open, the other closes. I needed a system that when one coloured button is pressed, those coloured doors will open while the doors of a different colour will close. 

After researching an idea for what type of circuit to use I came across something called an RS NOR latch. RS NOR stands for 'Redstone Not Or'. Basically when you step on a blue switch (as pictured below) the pistons connected to the blue side of the switch will activate or turn on and the green pistons will turn off. The pistons will stay on until the other switch is pressed. When the player steps on the green switch it sends a signal to the gate and switches the circuit around to deactivate the blue pistons and activate the green pistons.
If you would like a more detailed explanation of how this circuit works might I suggest watching this video:
I mean, I still don't know exactly how it works. 


While building the system and testing it I found something wasn't working. What was it? It was the redstone repeaters. I thought they refreshed the redstone signal from both ways but I found that it was only one way. I first thought the problem was that for every set of switches I needed another RS NOR latch. But when I tried that it just did nothing but waste time.
What to do?

Well what I did was look for a way to build a compact two-way repeater. After looking around I found a design for a two way repeater from Minecraft Wiki. The page is here.

2x3 Piston powered doors I found by tnthost on YouTube. I really have no experience with redstone so I had to use other people's designs. I hope they don't mind. Anyway I needed a door that can be opened and closed with redstone circuitry and this design I found delivered.

You can watch the video tutorial by tnthost here:


All the circuitry runs underneath the floor and is invisible under normal playing conditions.

This was where I was going to build another RS NOR latch (which I later found wasn't going to work) which is why the floor is heavily excavated.

I tested all the switches and doors after all the two way relays with the RS NOR latch in place and it all worked great. Except for one thing. The time it takes from triggering a switch to a door being opened is a few seconds. This is because stepping on a switch sends a signal to the RS NOR latch to change circuits and then that sends a signal to open all the doors to the corresponding switches colour. It takes a few seconds because redstone repeaters delay the signal slightly and if a signal has to go through 20 repeators before a door opens. It all adds up to no more than 5 seconds though.

But after plugging the holes in the floor you would hardly know all the circuitry was there.

And now, adding the furniture and the power generator. This didn't take long. Not nearly as long as the automatic door mechanism.






And here's the power generator. The big red button is there for the player in the Gameboy game to get out of New Mauville if they had saved their game there because upon resetting the game all the doors would be shut. That button ensures that the player won't be stuck in there forever.

That's all the progress so far in the Hoenn Region.

Stay tuned and subscribe.

If you have any tips for improvement please don't hesitate to share. It would be greatly appreciated.

Next: Part 12 features Route 117 and Verdanturf Town 
After That:  Part 13 features Rusturf Tunnel and Route 116 which links back to Rustboro City.

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