Well after a lot of trial and error and a lot of time on the modded server (almost 3 days worth at this point), the team are almost done working on the construction of the second BFC. Wow that sounded like a line from Star Wars talking about the second Death Star. But I digress. The BFC is now operational and aside from some minor aesthetics here and there it’s done. For the most part, the building process was a simple case of looking at the original source via pictures or in my case, running both servers at the same time and comparing the two and then copying the design. Fairly simple idea, place this block here. It’s not as simple as all that as it’s a lot easier to miscount based on simply judging where to place the next block and it has happened where I was off on a wall or a section by a row. The biggest annoyance was miscalculating the giant chicken logo on the front of the BFC. After awhile, the body can only take so much Minecraft before the system starts to blur and this inevitably happened where I placed the chicken (which is a 4×5 grid that looks like the Minecraft chickens) two blocks too low. Talk about a real annoyance tearing that one down. But for the most part, the aesthetically part of the build went well and wasn’t particularly challenging as it was time consuming.

But then came the technical part. The cooker/dispenser portion of the build is a whole different ball game, mainly for two reasons. The first being that the original BFC does not work anymore therefore we can’t perfectly replicate that build. Secondly, modifying that build so it will actually work. Those who get the chance to see both will see how different the two are now (I’d show but for some reason I can’t upload media…). Our BFC cooker is based off of a redstone circuit which will govern the system and make it an independent entity within the server. For my portion of the build, I copied a lot of the directions from this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJcJ4vZOFFA and made appropriate modifications since our BFC does not have the same design choices as this once, most notably ours being suspended on the now second floor. To be honest however, despite my grip and understanding of Minecraft and it’s rules, redstone has been something that I both never really needed and never really used, therefore my understanding of the science eluded me. So while I had the tools and proper materials to make the redstone circuit and the cooker, I didn’t quite understand what I was making, I was merely blindly copying. That works great until there is a problem and naturally, we had a few of those. Things as simple as a support rock not in place or the dispenser was facing the wrong way were among the problems that prevented the dispenser from working properly. Instead of popping out hatched eggs, the system would act as a funnel and simply allow those eggs to traverse until it’s final destination. Now, due some adjustments, our dispenser works in the fashion that it was meant to.

It was brought up by Marie-Christine, who helped with the final adjustments, that the server runs 24 hours and won’t stop ticking even if no one is online. While she will go into more detail in her companion blog entry, it is still worth noting that the possible demise of BFC 1 was due to that system getting backlogged to the point where everything simply short circuited. We’ll be adapting the BFC in order to ensure this particular scenario won’t happen to us, as we are sure those chests will fill up rather quickly based on the population of the Minecraft server which leaves BFC over providing the Minecraft population, which at the moment seems to average at 4 online at a time. Another interesting point that was brought up which directly effects the commons is who will actually use the BFC? Will players venture from their bases or projects to go to BFC or will they already be appropriately prepared and stocked up on resources. I know my own chicken coop at Valhalla, my wonderful base, might be lacking in the instant cooking department, but I have enough chickens there to ensure I won’t ever go hungry. Will other players share a similar ideology or will the idea of not having to have farm animals at the base be a more appealing option. As always, time shall tell.