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Minecrafting 130: Diamond Shower

Minecraft Mojang

Happy New Year, Minecrafters! Hope you celebrated appropriately, and by appropriately I mean by letting off at least one Minecraft firework.

Fun fact: the speed of sound is slower in Minecraft than in the real world – Minecraft fireworks have a delay between you seeing the explosion and hearing it, but that delay is longer than in the real world. Out here, the speed of sound is 340.29 metres per second, but in Minecraft it’s about 40 metres per second. Jeb explained back in December 2012 that this is because the realistic speed didn’t work well at Minecraft scales.

Not much hard news this week out of Mojang as it’s been the holiday season. But the community’s been working as hard as ever at making amazing things.

For example, Dutch YouTuber Jesper the End explains how to position a chest on the ceiling and have it open upside-down, showering you with Minecraft diamonds. It’s a little bit fiddly, involving multiple versions of Minecraft, editing software, and some command blocks. But the eventual result is pretty awesome.

In a similar vein, this water leak by Henrik SB both looks and works fantastic. Again, it takes advantage of command blocks, placing and immediately destroying water blocks so it looks like water spray, and then placing more blocks in a pool below to simulate it filling up. Bonus points are awarded to any of you that swap the water for redstone to make it look like lava or blood.

Good news for those of you who use the Optifine mod to make Minecraft run faster and look better. It’s now been updated for Minecraft 1.7.2 (and works in 1.7.4), but only in its HD Ultra configuration. Some people are reporting a bit of slowness and bugginess so your mileage may vary, but it’s out there.

Lastly, let’s unleash a storm of awesome builds. This “Idea Room” is the perfect place to keep track of your projects. “The yellow walls help one think clearly and come up with ideas,” says creator TheBlakers. These Roman stables by Redditor FlorestanQ are elegant and effective, and so is this modernist house by Joolyrancher973.

But my favourite build of the week is probably this cute forest cottage, by Kal-El-Clark-Kent, which conceals a doomsday bunker below. Access is granted through a switch in the toilet, and it has chests full of food and weapons, sleeping space for twelve people, and a laboratory for conducting experiments on slimes and zombies. Brilliant stuff.

That’ll do for today. If you’ve seen anything in the Minecraft community that you think I should be highlighting, tell me about it by dropping me an email. I’ll be back with another roundup this time next week.