Tutorials Land Vol.4 - Roadbuilding

If you prefer to flatten all terrain before building anything and your roads are straight and flat, dont even start to read and do it your way. This post is for people who want to build long roads with as little impact on the landscape as possible.

Before we even start preparing, we should know the goal. The main goal here is to connect HoneyValle to existing road system around Doha. Beside that, Pegasus can be connected too, so we have this situation plan shown on the map screenshot:

Numbers explained:
0 = pumpkin trail from /wild north to HoneyValle.
1 = already finished part of the road.
2, 3, 4 = Approximate directions onwards to the junction and to HoneyValle and Pegasus.
5, 6 = Rejected/Cancelled detailed directions
7, 8, 9 = Common exploring routes from the /wild west teleport with possible griefers coming

Now more text:

0 = Pumpkin trails are quick and easy to build if you have stacks of Jack-o-lanterns, just run or ride and keep placing them. The disadvantage is that if a grief happens, there is nothing left and if the path was close to some traps like ravines or lava lakes, it can be fatal. This specific pumpkin trail has two more disadvantages, the first one being the direction from /wild north around vvoutpost, possibly leading some griefers directly there. The second disadvantage is that the trail is marked over some places difficult to ride - if you go on bike/horse ride irl, you usually dont want to climb rocks or swim. Pumpkins will be removed and reused for lights around new road.

1 = Once you lay down a solid path, it is much less vulnerable to griefers. Material variety is limited, it should be cheap and allow slabs to make walking and running easier. Cobblestone is the weapon of choice here, but there are more choices when it comes to actual placing:

If you are lazy, you choose the left one and just lay slabs over the ground. If a griefer is persistent enough, he can completely remove quite long part of the road with no traces (that means, you see the road is gone, but you dont see where exactly it was placed). Second disadvantage becomes obvious with sprint-jumping when slabs make you lag and get stuck, or with riding a horse along the edge of diagonal road, going up-down over each half block, both is quite annoying.
If you are low on material, you choose the middle one, dig grass/dirt away and lay slabs top side flat with surrounding terrain. Griefers can still remove the road but they have no material to refill missing dirt, so you can use the road even if its badly griefed, but you still lag or get stuck when sprint-jumping.
If you want to do it thoroughly, choose the right one, use full cobble blocks and dont worry about the price - come on, its just a cobble. Survives a lot of damage and lets you sprint-jump easily.

2, 3, 4 = General planning is best to do on the map: We want to connect HoneyValle and Pegasus agrees to be connected too, so we can avoid risking conflicts with vvoutpost, and we still can and should keep quite away from /wild north while heading near Pegasus before final turn to HoneyValle. There are some biomes that can be difficult to cross, so that will need detailed planning.

5, 6 = Rejected/Cancelled detailed directions, #5 was joining the pumpkin trail but we decided to not use the trail, and #6 would bring the road close to /wild north.

7, 8, 9 = an excursion into a newbie's mind: jungles are scary, forests in general are scary, open areas are safer. So #8 is where we can expect most newbies to come from.

Fine, general idea is done. Now more detail:

Numbers are the same as above, arrows point at troublesome/risky places.
10, 11, 13 = Ravines. Although they are easy to cross with a bridge, we should avoid them if possible. If the bridge is griefed or the rider misses the bridge, falling down can be fatal for both player and their horse.
12 = River. Water areas are not as deadly as ravines, but still a significant obstacle if you are pushed to swim and pull your horse on a lead.
Another type of possible obstacle is a big, steep hill, where we can choose if to dig a tunnel or rather walk around. Tunnels can be really dark when lights are griefed. But for both bridges and tunnels, we cannot completely avoid them, so the decision always depends on the length of the bridge/tunnel vs. the length of the bypass.
The road goes around ravines #10 and #11 quite easily, then there is a forest before it comes to the river - no major obstacles between #11 and #12 but the terrain will need to be examined ingame for the best possible route and cutting down as few trees as possible. #13 is very tight place where the ravine sits between a lake and a hillside.

Road bypassing ravine #10, view from the north side.

The house is my Czechpoint, protected with protection stone

The situation east from the Czechpoint towards #11, view from the north side.

You can see how pumpkins help to guide riders during nighttime and how the road is smoothly curved around the hillside to avoid blind turns. A rider must be able to see what is in front of them.

Further east from ravine #11 is a birch forest. Some trees will have to be cut, but it looks like an easy work.

Now i can go straight east between first two birches and against the hill, the slope is smooth enough to allow me to lay two blocks for each elevation halfstep (2 slabs, 2 solid blocks, one layer up, 2 slabs, 2 solid blocks). But before i do that, i should see few (hundred) blocks from the west side to see what i am going into.

And there is a cliff.

This is a good example of how you need to know what is some 100 or 200 blocks in front of you, so you can plan the details to fix issues before they happen. In this case i am going to push the road more towards the river, where the hill is smoother.

So i kept pushing and when i finally looked from above i saw that i am going directly into the cave. Another mistake that could be fatal for a rider.

Time to back off few blocks and climb up the hillside.

Like this.

Fortunately i managed to keep the direction change slow, so riders will not have to jerk cursor all the way from left to right and back.

How to make the direction change slow?

If you start straight and want to end in say 18 degrees diagonal (e.g. for each 3 blocks forward move 1 block to the side), put some longer diagonals first: here it is straight, 6, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3 etc. for each 1 block to the side. The bigger direction change is, the more important is to smoothen the corner.
Also notice that i always overlap sides by 2 blocks, so the diagonal section is about the same width as the straight section.

 

reserved for part 2