It’s been a little while since my esteemed colleague Paul started up a Minecraft diary here on PCGN and then got distracted by a bee, so I’m going to pick up the reins. For new readers, and old readers with failing memories, the idea of this column is to highlight the incredible creativity of the Minecraft community – picking out the mods, custom maps and texture packs that will blow you away like a creeper that just wants some friends.
The highlight of this week has been a vast 12,200 x 32,400 custom map of the Earth, created by Lentebriesje. The vast map covers the planet’s frigid poles, lush jungles, vast deserts, huge mountain ranges and verdant grassland. It’s 1:1500 scale, which means about 1.2 kilometres a block north-south and around the equator, making it easy to render most large scale features. My biggest issue with it, as something of a map geek, is the choice of an equirectangular projection – a better choice would probably have been a Miller projection.
A coordinates convertor and interactive map let you hunt down whatever part of the world you’d like to live in. “Getting this map would be a good start for all your world domination ambitions, and who wouldn’t want to mine diamonds in his/her backyard?” says Lentebriesje. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take some sheep and set up home on the shores of Kamchatka.
The other treat we’ve been granted is Cake Defence 2, a fantastically complicated map by Disco that tasks you with defending the top of a cake from waves of bad guys. That’s not all, however – by slaying the baddies you earn gold, and you can use that gold to buy upgrades for your weapons and new abilities. You can play solo or with up to two friends, and it’s tremendous fun.
On a side note, the map’s creator, Disco, is one of the most interesting builders in Minecraft. He’s the creator of the piston-powered Compact Calculator, Sonic the Hedgehog map, and the Evil Santa boss fight. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on his website.
That’s all for this week. 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.