State Of The Art


Here's a painting I did this morning after reading an article on the state of my industry. It's called "State Of The Art" and it's kind of inspired by Norman's "CROSS...ROAD." I like how it turned out.

Here's the article, by the way. I recommend that if you're an author (or looking to get into writing) you should read this to know what you're up against. Don't let it get you down, though. We're all in this together. Keep fighting the good fight. I know I will.

http://www.derekhaines.ch/vandal/2012/11/self-published-authors-get-ready-youre-being-dumped/




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Welcome to Jefferson County.

You have no memory of how the world ended. No one does. You don't know when it happened or why. Sometimes it feels like everything fell apart centuries ago. Sometimes it feels like it was only yesterday. Only the ruins know for certain.

Hidden among the detritus of a fallen civilization, scraps of paper detail the days preceding the fall and the hell that followed after. Gathered together, they tell the story of what went wrong, and perhaps elude to a deeper mystery that only the keenest of mind might gather from the whispers, the voices of the ghosts of this dead earth.


Letters From A Dead Earth brings over 100 "book" notes to bear, all scattered throughout a massive (almost 4,000 x 4,000) map featuring 8 cities, 10 towns, five "large vehicle crash sites" and more secrets than you can shake a Mayan calendar at. What happened to the Dead Earth? Find out by collecting numbered books (1 - 100,) piece together the story and decide for yourself. Lots of other (non-numbered) books exist to give the map more character. Can you find them all? Generated with Minecraft version 1.3.2, the world upon which everything is built still retains most of its ores, dungeons, strongholds and other secrets. Play is open-ended and non-linear. Mine, explore, build, conquer, mod or grief by yourself or with friends in this huge post-apocalyptic map. Whatever your playing style is, there's something in Letters From A Dead Earth for everyone.

BOUNDARIES:

This map is open but limited. There is no stockade, no guard towers, no electronic frontier, no bedrock walls or sudden dropoffs into endless void to keep you inside the "dead earth" area. If you walk far enough in a given direction, the map will start generating brand new terrain for you to explore (useful if you're playing on a later version than 1.3.2 or running a mod that generates structures (like Ruins,) ores (like IndustrialCraft) or plant life (like LCTrees.) How will you know when you've crossed into new terrain? The main area of the map is bordered by a lopsided ring of cratered wasteland (no grass, no leaves on trees) that serves as a sort of boundary for "Jefferson County." Go beyond it, and new terrain will start generating. That being said, there are a few secrets in the wasteland, so don't be afraid to venture into the unknown, if you feel so inclined!

BUY THE BOOK TODAY FROM THUNDERUNE PUBLISHING!
Official site: http://www.thunderune.com/p/dead-earth.html

Find out more about the author of the book here: http://www.eswynn.com/




SCREENSHOTS:












More screenshots on the official Imgur album for the project: http://imgur.com/a/TTBIZ#0



DOWNLOAD:

Originally designed to look best with Santiago3's texture pack "The End Is Extremely Nigh"
Get it here: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/787848-32x32-131-the-end-is-extremely-nigh-now-with-vanilla-version-over-150000-downloadsfeatured-on-curse/

Letters From A Dead Earth V.1: (121MB zipped) [mediafire link]


Special Thanks to:
Santiago 3 (Texture pack)
SveinKB (New Mexico Suburbs)
Randy Morgan (Feedback)
Desiree Wynn (Supportive and awesome sounding board)
Kevin Winnick (Music for associated youtube videos)
Daniel Chartrand (DJ SYNN) (Music for associated youtube videos)
Krista White (Music for associated youtube videos)
Cavechunk (Water tower, empty pool, bank tower, etc. schematics.)
Oldshoes (Broville)
Everyone involved in the creation of Greenfield, Modern City and Dead State.
Reichenstein7 (Twin Brick Condos, Microwave Antenna, etc.)
Matt23116 (Empire State Building)
emerindyl (Isis)
HappySk1LL (Mall)
scroogemc (Library)
drchocobo (Fairbanks Housing)
Supersnaketate (lots of stuff)
WoutR (Kingsview Apartment Complex, Torch Factory, etc.)
matioshka (Dystopic City bits)
NoobLars (Apartment building with Cafe')
Formule (Formule's building, Triple towers)
ew0054 (North Korean Apt, 1950's, etc.)
jacksmith13 (Skyscraper)
Abrightmoore (32x32 apt building)
Lazy_Architect (Lazy tower)
TheVrok (Lots of stuff)
zelrokyz (Apartments)
DxGamer (9 story modern apartment)
WashuChan (Apartment Block)
Tempus (3 leafs)
DrakeBD (Modern Residential Tower)
cyanidesandvich (Premier Hotel, Large Office Building, etc.)
Jetkidish (Metlife Building, WIP hotel, etc.)
Helkellen (lots of stuff)
faragilus (Spiral Skyscraper)
blueflame6 (Round office building, Modern Hotel)
papab3ar (Blue Hotel)
Jefferman1 (Office Building)
Dragonrider (Sable Supplies)
Fatrabbit (Glass Tower, Office Building)
edusenx (7 floors)
bobdole ("skyraper")
upruppu (Modern Unfurnished Skyscraper)
AdamNDJ (Cobble towers)
the_nexus86 (Medium Office Building)
brinton (Luxury Apartment High-Rise
warfighterxl (Hotel)
SchematicDownloader (Condos)
devilbat26000 (Stronghold Home)
Jacknife (Qantas A380)
the11ama (Urban School)
dakotacore (Smaller scale modern home)
Polonx (McDonalds)
Meatshield (Powerplant)
meatballo (Thornville Medical Center)
Spliter cell 354 (Small Forest)
Steam_Punker (Erupting sand volcano)
dolmashin (Fountain)
Mario Esquer (Marty Partner)
Goodreads (Lots of favorite, non-storyline quotes)

. . .And everyone else from the MCSchematics forum who inspired me, provided rough elements or unfurnished buildings (especially those I've forgotten to name specifically.)

To see/download/use some of the structures I built by hand for this project, check my post on MCSchematics: http://www.mcschematics.com/index.php?topic=14118.0

The World Ends 10/10/12

Test renders





















Testing renders and screenshots for "Letters From A Dead Earth."

Progress!

just as an update, I'm still in the process of furnishing skyscrapers for the release of "Letters From A Dead Earth." There are only about a dozen left to go before I plug in the storyline I've written, convert the map to survival and start using Minema to take vids. Getting close! :) I'm aiming for Saturday, though I might need another week beyond that, depending on what comes in and how long these last few scrapers take.


World-In-A-Bottle Map







I've seen a few "World in a bottle" type maps on here, and since I think it's such a cool idea, I decided to make my own take on it as a break between some of the larger, more complex maps that I've been making.

There are no specific "challenges" with this one. It's totally free play (and I would love to see what you create in the void!) but feel free to limit yourself with rules like "don't break the glass," etc. if you want to.

There is only one thing to beware of. If you die, the map will spawn you a handful of blocks outside of the bottle, so, like a skyblock challenge, if you die, you fall forever (unless you've built a platform out to catch your fall.) I could tell you the coordinates of the spawn, but that wouldn't be any fun, so I'm keeping it a secret for now.

So what makes this particular "world in a bottle" map unique?

Features:

* A sort of multi-biome on the surface that has all of the main elements of all the biomes.
* Veins of every ore in the game
* Mineshaft (with Cave Spiders)
* Dungeon (With Zombies, Spiders and Skeletons)
* A Lava level
* Fun secrets

. . .And more!


World-In-A-Bottle V.1 (1.1 mb .zip)
Download it here: [mediafire] http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?gqbcv5mjyox8fez



My other maps:

Letters From A Dead Earth (open world survival with over 200 books and a storyline)
Gasoline Dorado (in progress)

Gasoline Dorado







Letters From A Dead Earth













My latest project is a MASSIVE post-apocalyptic Minecraft survival map consisting of 7 complete cities, half a dozen smaller towns and a number of other sites all connected through highways, wilderness trails and back roads. For this project, I'm using Santiago3's texture pack "The End is Extremely Nigh" and populating the various deserted and destroyed areas of the map with a mixture of buildings of my own design and some modified structures from the MCedit schematics forum. Full credit will be given on posts (and in a book in the map) once I release it. To give you an idea of how big this map is-- each of the pictures above comes from a different city or town location and the current size for the map itself (unzipped) is 196 MB.

It's not ready for download yet, but I'm close. I have one city left to build, a few towns to spruce up and assemble and then it's on to bug fixing and inserting a huge number of "written books" that allow the story of what happened to this "Dead Earth" to be discovered by players adventurous enough to explore the map. Sounds like a lot, but at the rate I've been working, it should only be a few weeks. I'm looking to release before the end of October at the very, very latest, but realistically, it should be no later than the beginning of October.

A Little Off-Time












Just some screenshots of what I do in my offtime. :)

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