Tag: hermitcraft

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Streamer’s log: let’s open the name tag shop!

A screenshot of Minecraft showing a bunker with no entrance and a mess of shulkers atop a beacon in the darkness.

Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!

Earlier this afternoon, I gathered all the quartz and coal blocks I’ll need to complete the lobby of my name tag shop. 

With the POE POE on the Hermits’ cases to get all of our unbuilt shops constructed, I opened the stream knowing I’ve gotta stay focused on wrapping this up so I can proceed to my other unbuilt permits before the end of the month: Tuff/Calcite and white wool.

I actually wrote a list of objectives before the stream (in no particular order):

  1. Add a ceiling to the lobby
  2. Extend the walls of the lobby
  3. Set up sales inside the lobby
  4. Add “coming soon” signage to the team hallways and observation deck entrance
  5. Create a proper bunker entrance
  6. Clean up the storage around the entrance beacon
  7. Remove the entrance beacon

I wanted to work fast and started throwing things into D.O.OM. shulkers.

A screenshot of Minecraft showing a blue skulker in an anvil renamed to: "@JoeHills D.O.O.M box: Didn't Organize, Only Moved."

And then I immediately realized that a project at this scale couldn’t really happen without some sort of dedicated storage space, so I dug out a shaft between the green team hallways and the coal shell of the arena.

A screenshot of Minecraft showing Joe Hills in a hastily dug out storage room. Double chests rest in two lines atop blocks indicating their contents.

After that derailment, I was actually able to knock out the rest of the list pretty quickly! Completing the lobby wasn’t complicated now that I had all the materials handy.

A screenshot of Minecraft showing Joe Hills in the completed lobby of the name tag shop.

Scar even showed up for an inspection and gave his approval, but the details of that encounter will be in an upcoming episode and don’t need to be recounted here.

I closed out the stream by doing some light terraforming around the bunker entrance and bonemealing some tall grass and flowers around it. There’s definitely room for a refinement pass in the future, but I’m excited for now to jump to my next shop build tomorrow!

A screenshot of Minecraft showing a bunker entrance made of sandstone just north of the Nametag

This week may have some schedule changes, but please keep in mind that you can always keep an eye out for my next show via my streaming calendar at https://joehills.net/soon/

Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN.

Keep adventuring!

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Streamer’s log: Hermitcraft 10 nametag shop choices

A screenshot of the game Minecraft showing an 80-meter wide concrete name tag that reads, "Hello my name is Lasertag"

Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!

The POE POE have given the Hermits until the end of the month to finish our shops, so today I spent over four hours on a bonus HermitCraft 10 stream developing my NameTag shop, “Hello, my name is Lasertag.”

The core concept of the shop is that the lobby will have a place where Hermits can buy name tags, but the main attraction will be an arena for an asymmetrical team-based attack-and-defend PVP game. My layout design for the arena is still a very early work in progress that is out of scope for the shop month deadline, but I can share now that it will be  inspired by the third area of the map CTF Badlands from Team Fortress, which I also enjoyed the Team Fortress 2 interpretation of.

Rough dimensions and terraforming

I love playing Etho’s Ravager Rush game in his froglight shop, but it always felt to me that the observation area could be more welcoming if it was directly accessible from his lobby.

When approaching this project, I knew that I wanted the ceiling to feature alternating layers of air and glass for a fog effect, but a real breakthrough moment was realizing that an extra-tall air gap in the layers of glass could serve as a a broad observation deck for the arena that’s easily accessible from the rear of the shop’s lobby.

A screenshot of Minecraft showing a ceiling made of purple froglights with purple glass below it.

There’s three meters between the floor and ceiling of the observation deck that overlooks the future arena.

Sorting the y-levels for the purple glass floor and ceiling there was the last step I needed to determine how deep I needed to dig out and add a grass roof over the lobby bunker.

A screenshot of Minecraft that shows that dirt and grass covers the sides of the building that were exposed at the beginning of the stream.
This is only a rough terraforming pass, we’ll clean this up after all three shops are minimally functional.

Color and material choices

In terms of materials, I’ve decided to use coal for the black shell around the skybox and gathered six shulkers of coal ore from the chest beacons around my Hermit Holmdel area. As my entire coal supply will probably be required for this project, I also gathered some wood to cook into charcoal for fuel for future glass furnacinations.

I also finally selected team colors for the attackers and defenders in the mini-game. Green and yellow don’t appear in TF2, but in Team Fortress Classic they were used as colors for teams three and four in quad-team maps. Green and yellow are better-suited to a lasertag theme in Minecraft than red and blue because of the easy availability of high-visibility green and yellow froglights.

I decided to use quartz for the slabs and white interior accents in the shop. which led me to Impulse’s shop, which sells quartz at a rate of one stack of quartz blocks for 3 diamonds. Impulse’s grass shop sells grass at a rate of 1 diamond per stack, so I decided to text Impulse and inquire about dropping off 8 double chests of grass for 8 stacks of quartz. Until we hear back from Impulse, I’m using white concrete as a placeholder.

A screenshot of Minecraft showing a lobby with purple froglight stairs leading up to the observation deck. Green and yellow team entrances face each other on the sides of the lobby.

Looking forward

This is only one of three shops I need to finish by the 31st, so my plan for my grindy Moby Dick stream tonight is to gather materials for the entrance and shop area of this build.

Best case, the main lobby and bunker entrance door can be completed early this week so that I can shift my focus to the Wool Street collaboration and to my Tuff/Calcite shop.

Don’t forget, you can always keep an eye out for my next show via my streaming calendar at https://joehills.net/soon/

Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN.

Keep adventuring!