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The Courtyard
So if you're wondering why we even had the courtyard, it wasn't cause I needed a large area to put the Training area and rules in (though it certainly helps).
When we started out we were worried about the spawn area so I made myself un-OP and worked out the boundaries of it, and built a wall around it. If I'm honest I didn't realise I was building a castle until about half an hour later, which is why originally I'd just tiled it with Mossy Cobblestone and left it (A problem which was remedied in 1.2).
During building Lambda mentioned we should do something with the area, and since for some reason I didn't think to actually put a courtyard in it, Lambda decided he should build a tutorial area to set the tone of the map (If you didn't know, it involves a fair bit of jumping). You also may have noticed the forest outside the gate, truth be told it's just a clump of trees and some flowers, but it looks nice :D
Also, for anyone wondering where the melons in the kitchen came from, now you know :D (The Groundskeeper is an eccentric man, choosing to produce only melons and wheat).
The Hub
So the main thing here is the Chandelier, which was just some glowstone and iron bars in order to light up the chamber. But later as I tried to work out how to position a tunnel back into the hub I just thought "screw it" and decided to tunnel through the roof.
Fortunately I'd noticed from some previous building that you can fit through a four block set of Iron Bars because of the way they position themselves, though originally I was using it for a sewer system (despite the hole in it, it still holds back the water).
The Library
I chose the Academic Wing for the screenshots originally and then I realised it made it look like the entire map was just filled with bookshelves which was kind of unfortunate, though totally fitting for something with the word Academic prefixing it.
The Library was designed to be both easy, and show of the whole "This castle has been wrecked" theme going on, so though the floor was perfectly intact here, the the stairs and platforms were broken and cracked in order to provide some room for jumping. The secret was supposed to look clever since you can pull the lever to move the bookcases, but it turns out most people just stand on the judge to open the chest :<
The Alchemy Lab
The Alchemy Lab was nice since it was something I had the little decorations to make look proper (There isn't really much to work with in terms of interior furnishing in Minecraft) and it showed off the broken floors (Which is why there's a mention of an earthquake in the opening text) which you'll see throughout the castle.
That ended up making the room stupidly long though, so I put the secret here in the side through that hole in the roof.
Is it just me who doesn't understand why a brewing stand can support my weight?
The Mage's Tower
The Mage's Tower was nice since it involved alot of jumping that I could make progressively harder as you go up, which is why the stairs get more and more crumbled and broken as things go on until you reach the top. You'll notice a fair few Enchanting Tables scattered around, the point of that being in order to provide that sort of magical feel of the room.
Wondering why there was cake? Truth be told I'd forgotten that being on Peaceful meant you couldn't get hungry, since my testers neglected to do this (Monsters were turned off on my server, so no one actually noticed they weren't on peaceful, myself included) so there was some cake at the bottom of the tower and some porkchops at the beginning (Which I left there in case anyone made the same mistakes my testers did, which a few have).
You may have noticed that you can see the Mage's Tower from the Courtyard... well actually you can't. That Mage tower is just a facade to create a nice looking effect (I later noticed Lambda had put windows in the tower, which was odd since the real one doesn't have any O_o). You'll notice that if you smash open the tower you'll see some furniture and brewing stuff left by Lambda (He gets bored, I think he did the same thing in Kingdom somewhere, but he won't tell me where :<).
Anyhoo, that's enough for now and I'll be back later to talk about the rest of the map, which is probably more interesting than the Academic Wing.
If you'd like to hear more from me or say hello, you can follow me @SeriousSalmaras
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