Dead Frontier - Introduction to Fairview

     Welcome to Fairview, a quaint city somewhere in the virtual world roaming with flesh-hungry, mutated zombies.  Once you get used to the groans of the ever annoying zombies, the city really does seem quaint: always raining, random lighting in yonder distance, and the occasional rolling garbage can that rolls in your way.   That's Fairview for you, but as you delve deeper into the city, passed the "safety" limits, things are fair from quaint.  Horrible mutates have shown up closer to the heart of the city.  Luckily, the mutations are in a wave formation, mapped out with Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red, and Black (Dead) zones.  But that won't be enough to save you.  You will require knowledge of weapons, enemies, locations, loot, and professions to survive.

     Luckily the game is free to play, so maybe you might want to try the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Player Game) for yourself.  The zombies sure as hell want you to play.

Minecraft - "The Fall of Darkness" (Archives)

     Long ago, five poor adventurer's started their journey to mine in this world. They formed a peaceful village in a desert that would serve them well for years as they mined for ore. They prospered so well... Until the Darkness came... They were forced to build walls around their city to protect it from the Undead, but one enemy was able to by-pass all lines of defense. Commonly referred to as the Endermen, they were a strange race from another dimension. These Endermen could teleport passed all defenses and steal important materials and ores from the prosperous village. One resident committed suicide, for he could no longer live without the wealth he had accumulated through hard work, since he was a business man. The other four sought to destroy the Darkness and regain their lost goods. They followed one of the Endermen to a cave. The cave emitted a strange power. This power seemed to draw them closer and closer to its source: A frame floating above a pit of lava. The power emitting from it was weak, but still noticable. They noted ten holes in the frame in the shape of spheres. What this meant, they did not know.
     They went back to their village to find that it had been attacked by Creepers while they were gone. Out of anger, one of the residents, Phail, went on a rampage against the Creepers. As he went to slice one of the Creepers, an Enderman teleported infront of his blade and took the damage for the Creeper, who ran away quickly in fear for what was to happen next: The Enderman became enraged.
     A battle ensued between Phail and the Enderman. Although the battle lasted a long time, Phail emerged victorious, though heavily wounded. He carried out a pearl from the battle. A sense of power came from the pearl, the same as the one from the frame. What this meant, they did not know. It had to, however, have some connection to these creatures.
     To be safe, the four used some of their ores to form equipment, from body armor to weapons. The strongest equipment they formed was of diamond origin. It was expensive to do, but it provided the protection they required to defend their village.
     Then, one night, a large force of Endermen teleported into the village, but did not attack. They placed a frame made out of obsidian in the village. They had then vanished into the portal as it was engulfed in flame and opened a portal. The portal emitted a strong power, much like the frame from before. The four grabbed their equipment and entered the portal.
     The world was dark, enshrouded in a dark, red glow. They were on top of a cliff with a lake of lava below. The sight was amazing. Never had any of them seen such a place. Where was this place? Perhaps another dimension? They didn't have a clue. They saw the Endermen in the distance and quickly followed them to the best of their ability, as navigating the environment proved difficult with the crumbing, blood red rock. As they neared the Endermen, they saw a structure in the middle of one of the lava lakes. It looked like a fortress and the Endermen had stopped at it. The four could see the Endermen fighting a fiery mob. The four quickly made their way to the fortress. They searched for the Endermen, and when they found them, they killed the Endermen. They received numerous pearls from the fresh corpses. As they were about to congratulate one another, the fiery mobs started to attack them. They destroyed the mobs quickly with their swords and arrows. From the battle, the once fiery mobs had dropped glowing rods. The victorious took the rods and pearls and returned to their village.
     A storm raged that night, and the Endermen did not attack. It appeared to them that Endermen did not like the rain. The four were able to sleep in their beds that night. However, one of them, Twin, was unable to sleep well. He had a nightmare that night. He invisioned a dark world where the sky was black, the ground white, and tall, dark towers were scattered across the land. A creature loomed in the sky, though he could not make out what it was exactly. He was surrounded by the Endermen, all moving in on him. He awoke in a panic. The storm was starting to subside and the sun to rise. He decided to stay up as he could not get back to sleep.
     He told the others of his nightmare and they found it suspicious. Apparently, Twin had broken into their houses in the middle of the night and ground up the rods to dust. They thought they'd have to go back to get more rods and find out what they were for. However, the pearls started to absorb the dust and the power they emitted was getting stronger. An eye formed in the center of each and they started to float off toward the direction of the frame from before. The four quickly gathered the floating eyes they could before they floated away. A strange sense was in their heads: This could be it. They gathered the equipment they needed before going: one enchanted diamond sword; three enchanted bows; two complete diamond armor sets; and two extra diamond chestplates. They approached the frame. The power emitting from it was stronger now. The pearls had flown out of the four's hands and set themselves inside the indentations. Instantly, a portal formed and the four felt as though they were being sucked in. They jumped into the portal...
     The world was different. The sky was black with particles of different colors. The ground was white. And all around them... Were Endermen... In the black sky was a beast, flying around the island that was the End. It took notice of the four and began to attack. When it got close, the four saw that this beast was a dragon, known as the Enderdragon, a legendary beast that the four had read about as kids. The fact that it existed brought a sense of fear to their minds, but they did not let this bother them. They countered the dragon's attack and one of them, Buzz, attacked it with his sword. The dragon let out a loud yell, and the Endermen started to target Buzz. The dragon, however, seemed to had healed its wounds quickly. The last of the four, Nick, noted to see particles coming from the top of the many towers scattered across the island. It was quickly decided to see what was at the top of the towers. At the top of each was a crystal. They destroyed one and it exploded. They, luckily, did not fall off the tower. Buzz was down at ground level defending the tower against the Endermen to protect the other three. The three at the top of the tower took aim with their bows at the other crystals, destroying each. They then took aim at the dragon. The battle took a long time to complete, but after many wounds and close calls, the dragon was defeated. Under the location of the death of the dragon, a portal formed. It was a portal made of bedrock, and on top of it was an egg. The four entered the portal.
     The four had returned to their beds and a new day had started. They met up at the bar and celebrated a victory well earned. For weeks, no enemies attacked the village and the four made a decision: To put the legendary equipment in dungeons so that no one could use them to gain their powers. They all knew they would not meet for years, even decades. They bid each other farewell and went their separate ways...

Minecraft - Introduction and Greenhouse (Architectural Amazement)

     Want to make your designs stand out in a server?  Want people to praise your creations with damn-near perfect ratings in servers that do so?  Or just make monsters in single player to be jealous that you actually have an amazing house that they wish they had?  Then welcome to AA... I mean Architectural Amazement!

     Using the latest designs we've come to use, including designs we've come up with or modified to fit Minecraft, we can show you what kind of detailing you want to make something stand out, using very simple techniques, that look like they took hours of work!

     As a start, I will post my greenhouse design for the city of Tribus Mons ("Three Mountains") from my server.

     As you can see, very basic design, looks good.  of course, I also had the LB Photo Realism texture pack on with realistic water shader at night and while raining when I took this, but you can see how it's well organized the farms inside art, as well as how the greenhouse has a "curved" roof to add effect.  Though it looks small from this angle, it is actually fairly large, each of the areas of wheat holding enough to feed 8 people (1 grouping per person) for an entire harvest season.  As you may think, a city should have more food available than that - cities in minecraft have anywhere from 20 to 200 people.  First, I have a small server, which is made up of two main cities.  Second, Tribus Mons is a primarily destroyed city, so not many people are ment to even live there.  Third, the swamp (extremely hard to see behind the greenhouse but is huge) once held the entire Tribus Mons Middle District, which consisted of housing and a lot of farmland.

     Using the idea for the greenhouse, you could make a room that is about half the greenhouse to have a nice nighttime view or leave the design as is, except make the flooring solid (perhaps some water in the flooring for design) and have it be a bridge, which you could make however long you want, just section it to look more plausible.  Or just replicate it and have a neat greenhouse for your city, which if it's all wheat, should be able to host 16 players as is.

Minecraft - Introduction to the Griefer's Guild

     Hello there.  The first thing you may think when seeing the name of this portion of the blog is, "Hey, you're a griefer?  You are a terrible person."  I'm not the normal kind of griefer, nor anyone who is truly a part of the Guild.  Instead, we aim to teach people how to grief like gentlemen (which most of you probably think is impossible), how to avoid being caught by low-end servers, and how to prevent griefers from doing any permanent damage to your server.

     Now, I'm sure you think it is impossible to stop griefers or to be professional about your griefing.  It is virtually impossible, yes, to stop all griefers or forms of griefers, but there are a number of good ways to stop them.  And to be professional gentleman griefer?  To be so, you mustn't be "destructive" in it.  A professional gentleman griefer never makes what they grief look bad, only look better.  Of course, if this was in the eye of the beholder, it wouldn't work.  But more on that another time.

     If you are interested in becoming a better griefer or to learn how to stop griefers, then the Griefer's Guild, also known as the Gentlemen's Guild, is here to help.

Minecraft - 8-Bit Art (Creative Corner)

     Just the other day, I added a new warp in my server, titled Pixel_Art.  Simple enough, after crashing the server twice and duplicating a number of items because of the crashes, I made it through MCEdit and then made the warp.  I thought from the start we would do shit with it, more as just something for one of my friends to get creative.  In one day, Phail, Umbrella, and I worked more on 8-bit pixel art (Phail claimed out of boredom) than we worked on most of our other creations at any single time.

     With this work, Phail spent about 2 hours in the server making "Simon Belmont", "Alucard", "Pikachu", and "Soma".  Umbrella spent about 2 hours making "Lucario" and the unevolved version.  I spent a whooping 3 and a half hours making "Zero", "a ninja", "Young Link", "Sup, Bros", and "Troll Face".  Honestly, I didn't think it would be impressive for the server, but it turned out well.

Minecraft - Server-Side Nazi Zombies Redstone (Redstone Reader)

     As my first "complex" device to be displayed, I will do my own redstone device, known as Nazi Zombies.  The device is a bit complex and can be mind boggling to newer redstoners, especially since this is the first actual redstone creation post of mine.  However, this video should help explain a little bit about how it works.



     Now, obviously it's not the easiest thing to make, but that's why there is a schematic with it, found here: http://www.mediafire.com/?a3e63qxaid8ddn3

Self Q&A:
     Q: How does this work?
     A: Well, watch the video, I go over it.

     Q: Do you expect to do more with this or just leave it as is?
     A: Personally, I want to release a few "sample" maps as additional schematics.

     Q: How long did this take?
     A: The basic design took about 4 hours.  From there, it took an additional 4 to 6 hours to finish out the parts and use MCEdit to multiple the Mainframe.  So I guess 8 to 10 hours for the redstoning.  Remember, that's a number of remaking parts, but thankfully no errors at all while making it.

Introduction to R.E.T. Gamers

     Welcome to the R.E.T. Gamers Blog.  We at the R.E.T. play a lot of different video games, and it's amazing that we can keep up on most of them.  However, I personally would love to get any information and tips for any games we play out to the rest of you to see if they provide any help, either what you should do or what not to do from our experiences.

     We have three main gamers who are usually the ones in the games and two secondary, who are usually never on or hate most of the games we play.  Our main gamers are Mark (me), Ben, and Phail and our secondary gamers are Nick and Buzz.

     The games we play are:
- Battlefield 3
- Combat Arms
- Dead Frontier
- League of Legends
- Minecraft
- Starcraft II
- Warcraft III