Minecraft Hoenn: Part 8/43: Route 109 & Abandoned Ship

Part 8/43 of the creation of the Hoenn Region in Minecraft.

In this part I made Route 109 and the Abandoned ship. Route 109 is a combination of land and mostly water. The 'land' is really just a sandy beach that leads up to Slateport City. The abandoned ship however was a bit more complicated as the abandoned ship had areas above water and underwater but despite that it all worked out fine.

ROUTE 109:
Route 109 is essential to travel on in the Gameboy game. It is first traversed by the player on Mr Briney's ship. Route 109 also has four sandy islands plus a beach which leads up to Slateport City. It is a north-south route that joins Route 108.

Like all water routes there is dirt, clay and sandy structures that form a barrier that, in the Gameboy game, prevents the player from escaping into the unknown.

The islands and the beach are the highlight of Route 109.

This is the only island on Route 109 with decorations on it. There is an umbrella made of wool and an inflatable bed made of wool mats.

The beach has a bit more umbrellas and a bit more inflatable beds. There are 10 umbrellas in total. The beach also has the Seashore house where players can win 6 cans of Soda Pop once they have defeated the trainers inside the building.

The three steps of building an umbrella. All you need is some Netherrack Fence and two or more colours of wool. Once you have all those:

1. Build a 2x2 base of Netherrack fence 3 block high.
2. Place four blocks of wool right on top.
3. Place 8 blocks of wool (2 blocks per side) around the perimeter 1 block below the highest level.

The Interior of the Seashore house. Unfortunately you cannot buy soda pop here. The interior of this building differs from the Gameboy as there are only two rows of tables where there should be three. This is due to the lack of space inside the building.

Here is the beach after all the decorations. The sun beds are made of quartz for aesthetic reasons. Obviously quartz would be a poor choice for a sun bed in the real word as it would be very expensive and quite hot to touch on a hot day. The inflatable beds are actually wool which could make a comfortable inflatable bed if it had an inflatable bladder inside with the wool simply acting as a covering although it would be difficult to wash and also impossible to get rid of all the sand it will absorb. Oh well, you have to work with what you've got.

This route is going to be the last water route for a while. The next water route I'm expecting to build after Lilycove city is created which is expected to feature much later in part 27.

ABANDONED SHIP:
The Abandoned Ship is a location on Route 108 which is not an essential destination for the player to visit in the Gameboy game. A reason one might want to visit the Abandoned Ship is to collect all the hidden items. The key item the player can obtain here is a Scanner which can be given to Captain Stern in exchange for a DeepSeaScale.

The red area was marked out while making Route 108 because the Abandoned ship is much, much smaller on the outside than what it is on the inside. You can see what I mean by this in the following screenshots.

The ship started with the stairs that lead up one of the decks on the side. One issue of the Gameboy game being 2D is that the stair appear to be going normally up the side of a vertical wall as stairs normally do. But in the code the stairs are nothing more than walkable tiles on the wall made to look like stairs. This does create some problems when translating the 2D design into a 3D world.

The Abandoned ship is build from the inside out. Like all building interiors in this world it is built at a 1:1 scale. Because of the 1:1 scale some detail will be lacking.

It's getting there. My idea for building from the inside out is to build the ship around the interior to try and hide as much as possible when looking at it from the outside.

This is the underwater area. It is completely dark down here so a night vision potion is needed for the best visibility.

The exterior is almost complete as is the interior. The ship has an odd short and wide look to it. It's short because I didn't want the ship to take up too much space and it's wide because there is a room that is only accessible by diving and it's hidden under the deck on the opposite side of the entrance. This adds to the width.

The interiors. This is the first room the player walks into. There are cabins but in this world only have one room. The Gameboy game would have 4 rooms instead.

Only one room can fit because building these rooms would be like building the interior at a 1:4 scale and in an already low detail world, this would be very difficult, nearly impossible to achieve. Instead only one room (with four doors) built at a 1:1 scale will be built instead.

Ladders replace stairs because of their compact size. Stairs would take up at least 4 times the space.

The lower room. This room leads to another room which leads to the captains room where the player in the Gameboy game can obtain the Scanner. The cabin on the left in the image below contains the pool of water where you travel underwater to reach the final room.

The captains room. The quartz stairs and slab are supposed to be a model of a ship. The table looks like a table (obviously) but there was no block that looked like an electronic user interface. As a substitute I used Emerald ore because the green spots look a bit like the small lights one would see on a user interface panel in a ships control room.

The view towards Route 107 as seen from the captains room.

The hole in the floor that leads to the underwater room which takes the player to an otherwise inaccessible location.

Light is filtering down from above. Would you like to use DIVE?

This is the room that is only accessible by travelling through the watery cavern.

And here is the exterior of the Abandoned ship all finished. It took a while because it is quite a complicated structure but in the end it all comes together.

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.

Minecraft Hoenn: Part 7/43: Route 107 & 108

Part 7/43 of the creation of the Hoenn Region in Minecraft.

In this part I made Route 107 and Route 108. These routes were easy to make as both routes consist of rocks and shallow sandy islands. Routes 107 and Route 108 connects Dewford Town to Route 109 (featured next in part 8) which goes to Slateport City . Route 108 features the Abandoned Ship which is not an essential location to visit during the Story in the GameBoy game. These Route's were so simple that it took less than one afternoon to create them.

ROUTE 107:
Route 107 connects Dewford Town to Route 108. Route 107 runs east west and in the GameBoy game is first traversed on Mr Briney's ship.

The rocks are all similarly shaped and the entire route is made of 3 materials. Dirt, sand and light blue clay. Because all the rocks were similar it was easy to make the Route. The whole route took less than 2 hours (including breaks) to create.

 The beautification of Route 107 by adding vegetation.

That's all there is to Route 107. There's not much to write about so apologies for that.

ROUTE 108:
Route 108 is very similar to Route 107. The similarities include slightly longer length and the Abandoned Ship (reserved space marked out with red sand), and some sandy islands covered in shallow water.

While I was experimenting with the FOV settings I found that decreasing it to 30 creates a viewing angle that looks similar to the GameBoy game.

And here is Route 107 and Route 108. The render distance is set to the maximum of 16 chunks which is almost but not enough to render the entire route.

And finally, this is the view from Dewford Town as the player leaves for Slateport City.

 

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

Apologies for the lack of content. There's not that much to write about these Routes.

In the next part I will have built Route 109 and the Abandoned Ship. Hopefully this will be more exiting.
I have also prepared a spreadsheet containing a broken down list of everything that is going to be built and what part it will be featured in. The list contains a total of 43 parts including my release of the Minecraft Hoenn Region for all to enjoy. Hopefully I will be done by the end of the year but I have a very busy few months ahead due to exams as it is my final year at school (finally) and when I need to I will prioritise school over this but this project will almost certainly be completed within the next 6 months.

Stay tuned and subscribe.

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

Minecraft Hoenn Region: Part 6 Granite Cave & Dewford Town

Part 6 of the creation of the Hoenn Region in Minecraft.

In this part I made Granite Cave and Dewford Town plus Gym. The highlight of this part of the game is that Granite Cave is where the player first meets Steven, the Hoenn Champion. Dewford Town is home to the Gym where the player battles Gym Leader Brawly to earn their second gym badge.

The most complicated part of creating this part in the series was Granite Cave as in the game, the ladders that lead up and down floors don't line up properly which isn't a big deal on the GameBoy because the world is 2D the ladders simply act as portals to different areas. In Minecraft the world is in 3D and therefore the ladders must match up otherwise the ladders would just stop in odd places. More detailed information and the full story below:

GRANITE CAVE:
Granite cave is a dark cave that the player must explore in order to progress in the game. Granite Cave is three levels, two of which are under sea level. In the Minecraft world the cave's interior is built at a 1:1 scale so it fits in the 2:1 scale exterior.
Red sand is simply used as a marker as to where to build Granite cave and to displace some water.

First thing was to create the first floor the player enters. One issue is that because the ladders that lead up and down floors don't line up properly the interior is not an absolutely perfect copy that would be seen on the GameBoy. Despite this I tried to make is as close to the GameBoy game as possible.

This is the floor underneath the first floor illuminated with torches. The area up the back in the GameBoy game is accessible only by riding a Mach Bike up the muddy incline. Because there are no bike's  in the game I substituted the muddy slope for some pine wood stairs. I chose pine wood because it is the closest matching colour to the dirt interior.

This floor is built below sea level so it wouldn't stick up and be visible while traveling route 106. The depth also adds, I think, to the mystery and nervousness of exploring a deep, dark underground cavern. The stone floor is the last 5 blocks until you reach bedrock and then, the void.

To keep the look real I changed the stone floor to a dirt floor. The pine wood slabs are suppose to be rocks. I know they aren't but they are the closest looking thing in terms of colour to dirt slabs.

Finally the lower most layer. The layer of stone is the final layer until you reach bedrock (Bear in mind that the superflat world is 1xBedrock, 5xStone, 10xDirt and 3xWater).

As predicted, while removing the stone floor to replace with dirt I hit bedrock. Also the stone walls and stone ceiling were replaced with dirt.

While revisiting the over world I decided to just pop back to Littleroot Town for a minute and look what I saw in the distance. Route 106 and a tiny bit further (not visible) Granite Cave.

The interior of the lowest level before decorating. Illuminated with torches so I could see what I was doing.

The second lowest floor... or the first  underground floor the player visits all finished up.

This is the underground area that is directly underneath the sea (evident by the water droplets coming through the ceiling). It the area that is only accessible by Mach Bike. The Soul Sand is a substitute for a broken floor that on the GameBoy game the player falls through if they didn't ride over it fast enough. In Minecraft digging into the floor achieves the same effect. Digging through the Soul Sand floor causes you to end up on the level below. Soul Sand is there purely for cosmetic purposes.

And this is the level below. There is a ladder so the player can try again to get to the end (not 'The End') where there is a special item.

And here is the special item. It is quite simply, Quartz ore.

This is the first floor that the player enters. There is a dirt barrier to prevent the Minecraft player jumping up the ledge and therefore preventing cheating.

The interior of the lowest floor. The player must get to the ladder behind the dirt wall to get to where they need to go.

For added authenticity I removed the torches so the underground floors are completely dark and the player must used Flash/Night Vision Potion in order to navigate... or place torches if they so desire.

 
An unintentional benefit of removing the torches is that a heap of wild Zubat spawn, further enhancing authenticity.

 

Back up in the overworld and it is time to create Steven's room. Steven's room is only accessible once the player has navigated through the dark caverns of Granite Cave.

The exterior of Granite Cave after completion. To make it look more real I changed the roof of the cave a bit to make it a bit less, flat.

DEWFORD TOWN:
Dewford town is a small town between Route 106 and Route 107 with Granite Cave just to the north. Dewford Town also has a Gym which is the second gym the player goes to in game.

There are five buildings in Dewford Town. A Pokemon Centre, Gym, Dewford Hall and two houses.

These two houses have identical exteriors making it easier to make the houses.

After completing the Gym, Pokemon Centre and Dewford Hall it was time to build the Gym's puzzle section underneath the town. After excavating the maze it made the town look like it had an odd and angular sinkhole.

The most annoying thing about excavating underneath sand is that sand just falls and it all has to be removed. To make this as easy as possible I used the yellow clay (which  is part of the Gym) as a marker to then excavate upwards on so that I wouldn't lose my way when most of the ground was removed.

This is the interior while it was being completed. Purple and yellow clay walls and stone brick floor and ceiling made it look like haunted house themed amusement park.

 
And the stairs leading down into the Gym from the building above ground.

After all that excavating it looked as though the town was blown up a little.

But after filling the gaps with more sand it looked as good and untouched as it did before.

And now the scenery. A dirt floor under the ocean forms the base.

Then a layer of sand after marking the edges with leaves.

Then adding wooden blocks to add more leaves

Then finally, finishing the tree's off

And now the town and cave is complete.

 

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

In the next part I will have built Route 107 and Route 108.

Stay tuned.

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

I have shrunk the screenshots down furthur and converted them to .jpg in an effort to reduce file size and bandwidth usage as well as improve page loading times.

Thanks for reading.