Building Oceana: The Verge’s Minecraft Pyramid – Week One

The Verge’s Senior Editor Paul Miller standing next to the penthouse suite named for him.

Oceana’s Definity – April 8, 2012

On an early Sunday, T.C. joined the Vergecraft crowd to unveil the new VTA line beyond Seatown, one that had originally fed to the Suburbs, now took an abrupt western-ly turn through vast jungles, a snowy biome, and finally straight out across a kilometer of expansive, empty ocean before looping back to civilization. On the ride back, the crowd discussed “Oceania”, something that could be a massive arcology and pyramid-shaped.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

But where to start? Enter Verge Senior Editor Paul Miller.

Now let’s not be stupid: it doesn’t matter how well we’ve trained ourselves, we all still get a little giddy around celebrities, even if they’re internet celebrities. In the land of Vergecraft, Paul Miller is a god. The afternoon that it was decided what form Oceania would take, Paul decided to return to Vergecraft. Those of us working on projects throughout the world dropped everything so we could chase him around like crazed paparazzi as he fumbled through the elaborate structures that had been erected in his absence. We lead him around, showing up the major sites of Verge City, culminating in a big spleef tournament at the stadium that BenCrazy had constructed for such an event. (Spleefing is a game in which players are armed with shovels above a single layer of dirt and most dig out the tiles below their opponents to force them to a padding below.)

Yes, I lead Paul out to the Suburbs to see my tower, which he described as ‘a million blocks tall’.

As the night wound down, we all gathered to take a big cart train out on the VTA from Verge City with T.C. and Paul tagging along. As he reached the end of the line, Paul stopped and immediately hopped off the line, which hung in the air without a destination. I’d already made my way back to the Suburbs to swap gear at my tower, but when I got back out to the end of the hanging rail, I’d found that Paul and moderator ConnerTurnbull had begun digging into the earth to harvest resources. Paul had come to the conclusion that “Oceana” should be crafted after the Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid and feature nodes in which we could travel all directions by rail. The three of us sat alone on the ocean and I crunched the math (incorrectly at first), coming to the conclusion that to build a pyramid to the height limitation, it would need to be 190 times two in each direction, using the center point as an odd-number to accommodate T.C.’s railway, which in turn would fly to the center of the pyramid, arriving at a grand central terminal.

And so we sat alone along that expanse and constructed the initial line of dirt that would form the east end of the pyramid, constructed to the original, smaller scale I had miscalculated for. Paul had begun working on a smoothstone and glass tunnel at the base of the pyramid, right under the railway, becoming quickly frustrated with the flooding water. We prototyped tunnel designs in dirt, settling on a 4×4 design that would allow rails to go back and forth with redstone torches to aid propulsion alongside. We even constructed mocks for railings that would allow to travel between levels by carts, but because of the size of the nodes (12x12x12) they haven’t been drawn into the plan yet.

A far corner of Oceana’s original guidelines. LOOK AT ALL THAT OCEAN.

The bookshelf that had been placed along Oceana’s original line hangs in the air with an incorrect nameplate (this is the east end of the structure). Based on the British spelling, it appears to be Connor’s fault.

Of course, I would’ve stayed up for an age, but I had obligations to the occupation that provided me with a paycheck on a regular basis, so I wound up in bed early on, only to barely get any sleep, excited at the prospect of working on the structure.