Zman's Remake Golden sun in minecraft project

[zman9000]

THIS PROJECT IS ON HIATUS UNTIL idk
I've wanted to do something like this for a long, long time.
I've made a few attempt's at it in the past but either gave up or never got around to it.
The reason why I'm doing this again now is as some of you may know I deal with a lot of issues, depression being the main one. I don't have a lot that really interests me and with every thing that's happened i'm basically at home jobless doing nothing but sleeping and surfing the net.

While it may not seem like much I'm going to be working on this project daily to keep me doing something routinely, recreating all areas of golden sun block by block (in creative mind you). it will not be perfect as you will see in the images i post, it is just me Looking at the maps in the the map viewer in the editor and recreating them at a 1-1 scale.

It takes a lot more thought then i was thinking it would, while the tiles in golden sun are the same size as minecraft's blocks, not everything will fit perfectly and i have to make some tough choices to make it work. for now i'm only building what you see from the perspective of the game, later i will fill in the roofs and other things that you can't see, along with making working traps and puzzles. all dungeons will be self contained allowing you to walk through them in minecraft. I may at some point make a texture pack for it as I've quickly realized, matching what is there even color wise isn't easy (let alone texture) luckily even if i end up needing to change something, the basic building blocks are there so all I would need to do is use mc edit to change them.

Sol Sanctum, Days 1 - 3
[spoiler]
Day 1 Sol Sanctum first floor
[spoiler]
Here is my first Project, Sol sanctum first floor.


The basic process involved in starting it was looking through the entire dungeon, looking for door ways that have stairs, and counting wall tiles to find the lowest point. While I don't need to do that at this point as the Sol Sanctum is only a few floors, its good to keep it in mind as you might have to really be careful with it later when to comes to a full sized lighthouse.

During building I realized there was a bit of a difference between the flat 2d image and translating that into minecraft. because of the angle its not exactly clear where the wall ends and begins. and while you could count the top tiles of the walls, that can sometimes lead to problems down the road. as such I've had to give some rooms one extra block of space in one direction, while others i followed exactly how it looked. i also may give it a block of extra space if its a dead end room and it feels too small depending on what its used for.

Finally... the finishing part of the first floor... the stairs to the next floor...
One thing golden sun does really well is having dungeons that could actually be build in real life and in minecraft... except while you can build small compact stairs in real life... you can't exactly to it in minecraft... now while what the stair case actually looks like is never seen, based on later areas you can guess that they fit in either a 2 tile space or a 2 x 2 tile space, which isn't easy to do and end it where you need it too. May have to experiment this this in the future.

I'll admit i'm not super happy with the color and texture it has turned out with but when i was walking through it, for a moment i got flashes back to when i first played.
[/spoiler]

Day 2 Sol Sanctum second floor
[spoiler]
Day 2 update.
Finished the second floor of the Sol sanctum with the exception of the Elemental Stars chamber (since that's technically on the second floor).

Sol Sanctum second floor


The process today while shorter, i ran into some trouble with the first room of the second floor.
Using the information from my first post on how to figure out where the floor starts and walls begin i ended up having to redo the second part of that first room twice because it didn't end up matching. However i figured out if i just focused on building the ground first for most of this floor it worked out better then my other method... however this isn't flawless from what i remember from an older project when i was doing a GS 2 area, so this is yet another thing i have to look into.

Finally yet again I realized the stairs to the next floor are going to be an issue. I have even less room this time. though I think i'll be able to figure something out. though in the picture you might notice i didn't even start them this time cause i was frustrated enough having to redo a large area twice and i wasn't going to spend another half hour building and rebuilding the stairs again this late again.

If I keep up with my plans, tomorrow I'll be doing the third floor which i think is the smallest(?), along with the elemental stars chamber though i might not finish the chamber cause that's huge and i'm still not sure if i want to build it in the neither or not. (the alternative is just building it somewhere else not connected...)
[/spoiler]

Day 3 Sol Sanctum third floor and elemental stars chamber
[spoiler]
Sol Sanctum third floor


Sol Sanctum Elemental star chamber (nether)


Sol Sanctum floors 1, 2, and 3 complete.


Building the main part of the floor was even easier then i thought. even more then being the smallest floor so far, the Sol and Luna rooms are directly above the ones from the second floor making it very easy to build.

The hardest part of the third floor was actually the gem room. Unlike literally every other dungeon in both games, this one room doesn't fit in the design. on the outside the room looks like its 3 or 4 blocks long, but inside its 7 or 8 blocks long, basically twice as big. Also on the out side the door is 3 blocks from the outside wall but inside its 4 blocks. In the end i fit it in based on the rooms inside size, because even then it doesn't get in the way of anything else since that area is a dead end. (seeing how every other dungeon in the game matches up perfectly, i half wonder if this out of place room was shoe horned in near the end of development)

Finally the Elemental stars chamber... This could have been finished in less then a half hour if you did it with worldedit or mc edit, but doing it by hand took forever. also being in the nether i can't place the water needed to i'm just going to say this is what it looks like after the stars have been removed. I may still build a version of it in the over world with the water, just for completion sake.
[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]
Colosso stage 1, 2, and 3,  Days 5 - 7
[spoiler]
Colosso stage 1 map.
[spoiler]


This map is fairly easy to build which is the reason I picked it for today since i was having issues. however what i didn't realize was it would still take as long as a normal map building session because there are a lot of blocks and its just time consuming.

Finally the hardest part was building the reverse part of the map that wasn't in the game.
While i said before building stuff you can't see isn't what i want to do... at least not yet, but i noticed on this map you can see part of the other area on the edge of the map and once i finished the first half it didn't look complete so i did the other half. it was tricky but luckily it took half the time of the first half.
[/spoiler]
Colosso Stage 2 map
[spoiler]


When i started, i stated with the battle stage which is how i realized the battle stage in area 1 was messed up, however because of that i made another mistake and i built the bottom half of both sides before i realized i made this stage 2 blocks wider (one on each side of the stage) so i had to go back and shift everything on one side two blocks, though luckily that didn't take too long. the rest was fairly simple like before aside from messing up a few areas by building them backwards on the other side, but again those fixes took only a few minutes to fix each.
[/spoiler]
Colosso stage 3 map and complete
[spoiler]


Despite being the biggest it didn't take any more time then the others, in fact i think it may have been the quickest, mainly because i'm getting use to building them. if i have the time down right, i generally spend 5 hours a day building these, (by hand) but while today did take 5 hours, i also spent an hour of that rebuilding half of colosso 1. I don't know if this means i'm also getting faster building golden sun maps in general or just the colosso maps.
[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]
Suhalla Desert area 1 and 2 complete, (area 3 incomplete) Day 8
[spoiler]


I messed up a lot which made me take 8+ hours to build, the third area isn't complete cause it doesn't fit (again likely because it was a last minute thing/after thought since it connects to the offshoot area with the tornado that takes you to the island), and really i'm just done with sand for a while... lol. I might come back to fix things at a later date though it wouldn't match up completely so i'm not sure if i should or not...
[/spoiler]

Day 9 Mass Update
[spoiler]
Tret's dungeon Inside complete (day 9)
[spoiler]

Its only the inside because the outside doesn't fit
[/spoiler]

Great Gabomba Dungeon complete (day 9)
[spoiler]

It actually looks like the outside dungeon, and the entrances and exits are in their relative respective places despite the dungeon being much bigger on the inside. I was impressed by this one more then any others so far
[/spoiler]

Crossbone Isle complete (day 9)
[spoiler]

This one is so bit it goes from bedrock to above the clouds, and it has everything except for the boat at the end... I will go back and build it once i figure out how too, though I won't have a picture for that update but i will let you know when it happens.
[/spoiler]

Tundaria Tower First floor incomplete/work in progress (day 9)
[spoiler]

The dungeon has an issue on the first and second floor where it doesn't align perfectly unlike every other room so far, but a few people I've been talking to have said i should build it anyway just altered sightly to make it work. I won't go into detail, but if you look at the first floor layout you should see the issue.
[/spoiler][/spoiler]

Mercury lighthouse Complete, day 10
[spoiler]

Ran into a few issues, mainly dealing with the stair cases to the next floors being to small to actually build a staircase so i just put ladders for now. I also didn't build the very top as you technically teleport there and i'm not sure where to put it... though i may just add it in at a later time.
[/spoiler]

Lunpa Fortress Complete, day 11
[spoiler]
Aside from having to rebuild it (resulting in me taking a long break), the construction went rather quickly...
I'll admit there may be a few issues, ones that if i hadn't just finished rebuilding it, i'd go back, destroy it and rebuild it AGAIN. Aside from one room on the second floor that doesn't perfectly align (by one block), though you wouldn't notice it easily, while typing this i realized that i may have off set the entire second floor (by one block) which, in this case may be the cause of the error. So hey... thats... um... a thing.

Aside from that nonsense, I noticed some interesting things while building the fortress, and while i won't get into them here, its construction and layout is oddly detailed. something I've noticed in other structures. something i need to look into[/spoiler]

Lamakin Desert Unfinished, days 11 & 13
[spoiler]Lamakin Desert Unfinished day 11 drama~
[spoiler]
Before the break This was going to be the next update. the larger area was complicated to get right and had to rebuild it a few times. it was frustrating, but once i got to the unfinished third area, i realized I couldn't finish it yet. In the editor, which is mainly what i use as a building guide, since the map view is detailed and even has a grid for the tiles, however the map for the third area is corrupt in the editor. not only that but the guide I have for reference, so i can tell how more complicated dungeons fit together, has a very small map for that third area. Meaning if i want to finish this map I'll need to play through the game up to this point just to get the map. I have no issues playing through the game normally since I've done so like 40 times. however it won't be much fun since i'll be rushing to this point just for the map. either way, this map should be done by the end of the year.[/spoiler]Lamakin Desert Finished day 13[spoiler]
Took an... ungodly amount of time to finish the last part of this map. between using the in game screen, the editor, and my game guide, all in combination to get a tile accurate version of the map...
Let me just say I've never been more thankful for the editors map viewer then now...
to put it in perspective. all i had left to do on this map was less then a third of it. the first part i had done a while ago took around 6 hours... for less then half of this last part, it took that same amount of time... total time for this map is around 15 hours of non stop building. the most time I've spent on any map so far by at least 5 hours. (Edit: should mention there is an area again in the desert that doesn't fit, its the area between the two half's of the final area of the desert, i just have a make shift path there. Note that there's a chance that i may be able to fit it in and i'm just mistaken but it will take some experimenting)[/spoiler][/spoiler]

Air's Rock Unfinished, days 12 - ??
[spoiler]Air's Rock Exterior Finished
[spoiler]
So this was planned to be a 3 day project but it ended up being a 2 day project. its only the outside so its not the whole thing completed yet. The inside is so complicated (mainly because there's an area that won't match up perfectly right at the entrance which judging by how it looks was one of those last minute end of development changes) in short it will take a while for me to even get started on it due to experimenting so don't hold your breath, it might be a while before i finish this one.

Other then that the weird shape of it has got me thinking, though that's not important for this topic, yet.[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]

Kibombo Mountains Complete, day 14
[spoiler]
This was made more complicated mainly be my own mistakes. it was a little confusing with it having so many different levels and those levels moving from area to area. in the end the thing that finally let me finish it without much more issue was actually taking a bunch of screen shots of the editors map view and stitching them together so i could see in one image of the connection. This is a first and it was way more helpful then i thought, i'd even say it was totally worth the hassle to stitch them together given how much trouble i had before i did it. Something to keep in mind for the future.[/spoiler]

Piers Ship Complete (maybe), day 15
[spoiler]
Honestly there are several issues with this map, but i think i'll get into them at another time. for now i think i'll focus on the good things about the map. it looks amazing, it actually looks a lot like a ship, in fact i'm pretty sure i can build it into a ship... which i may do very soon. other then that, nothing i really learned from this that's different from other maps other then the fact base wood texture looks like crap[/spoiler]

_____________________
Current world download
Minecraft version: 1.8.9
Last Completed project: Kibombo Mountains

>>>>>>>>World Of Golden Sun In Minecraft<<<<<<<<<
_____________________

I'll post more pictures when i make more progress, and I'll post the world download every time i finish a dungeon. (unless i don't)

[Luna_blade]

Good grief, that's already a lot of work!
Looks like a good replica!

I suppose you know WorldEdit kind of stuffs and the GS minecraft mods that are being developed?

[zman9000]

I suppose you know WorldEdit kind of stuffs and the GS minecraft mods that are being developed?

I've never used WorldEdit or MC edit though i'm fully aware that at some point with bigger projects I'll almost have to learn to use it. The first floor Of the Sol sanctum is roughly 5 hours straight of work.

I'm also aware of the mods being made. Even before people started working on the mods i started a topic to see if anyone would be interested in making a Golden sun mod or texture pack, cause i was willing to learn if there was interest in the subject but at the time there wasn't much. then a few months later someone else new to the site (i forget who) made a texture pack, and then later another person did. so to answer your question, yes i know about the mods and i'm super excited.

[Rolina]

Which version are you doing this in?  Gonna update to 1.9 to take advantage of the shiny new purple blocks to make the jupiter lighthouse with?

[zman9000]

Day 2 update.
Finished the second floor of the Sol sanctum with the exception of the Elemental Stars chamber (since that's technically on the second floor).
[spoiler]
Sol Sanctum second floor


The process today while shorter, i ran into some trouble with the first room of the second floor.
Using the information from my first post on how to figure out where the floor starts and walls begin i ended up having to redo the second part of that first room twice because it didn't end up matching. However i figured out if i just focused on building the ground first for most of this floor it worked out better then my other method... however this isn't flawless from what i remember from an older project when i was doing a GS 2 area, so this is yet another thing i have to look into.

Finally yet again I realized the stairs to the next floor are going to be an issue. I have even less room this time. though I think i'll be able to figure something out. though in the picture you might notice i didn't even start them this time cause i was frustrated enough having to redo a large area twice and i wasn't going to spend another half hour building and rebuilding the stairs again this late again.

If I keep up with my plans, tomorrow I'll be doing the third floor which i think is the smallest(?), along with the elemental stars chamber though i might not finish the chamber cause that's huge and i'm still not sure if i want to build it in the neither or not. (the alternative is just building it somewhere else not connected...)
[/spoiler]

Which version are you doing this in?  Gonna update to 1.9 to take advantage of the shiny new purple blocks to make the jupiter lighthouse with?

I'm building currently in the latest version 1.8.8, and when 1.9 is finally released I want to update it though i'll have to look into Worldedit and mc edit. cause while not quite yet, i'll want to use those and i'm not sure how they work and how long it takes for them to be updated to the latest version of minecraft.

[zman9000]

Day 3 update
Finished the rest of the Sol sanctum
[spoiler]
Sol Sanctum third floor


Sol Sanctum Elemental star chamber (nether)


Sol Sanctum floors 1, 2, and 3 complete.


Building the main part of the floor was even easier then i thought. even more then being the smallest floor so far, the Sol and Luna rooms are directly above the ones from the second floor making it very easy to build.

The hardest part of the third floor was actually the gem room. Unlike literally every other dungeon in both games, this one room doesn't fit in the design. on the outside the room looks like its 3 or 4 blocks long, but inside its 7 or 8 blocks long, basically twice as big. Also on the out side the door is 3 blocks from the outside wall but inside its 4 blocks. In the end i fit it in based on the rooms inside size, because even then it doesn't get in the way of anything else since that area is a dead end. (seeing how every other dungeon in the game matches up perfectly, i half wonder if this out of place room was shoe horned in near the end of development)

Finally the Elemental stars chamber... This could have been finished in less then a half hour if you did it with worldedit or mc edit, but doing it by hand took forever. also being in the nether i can't place the water needed to i'm just going to say this is what it looks like after the stars have been removed. I may still build a version of it in the over world with the water, just for completion sake.
[/spoiler]

Next project hasn't been decided yet. I'm sticking away from towns and lighthouses for now but literally anything else goes. though i generally want to start out with same smaller dungeons.
if you have and ideas for one let me know. What i pick will mostly depend on which dungeons I can find in the editor that don't have messed up maps, or if they are early enough in the game that i can quickly get there to see them.

[isaac3000]

I definitely can see all the time it took you to do this! It is awesome! Everything is accurate!

Hmm, what to do next, how about the Goma Cave? (Or the Lunpa Cave).

Do you do things in order the party visits them? If not, I would like to see Aqua Rock!!

[Salanewt]

Wow, nice work mate! I can't say for sure what I would want to see the most out of this, but maybe Tundaria Tower. Either that or you could try playing with command blocks to make sandfalls for the other one.

[zman9000]

Day 4 Update.

Today I did experimentation with red stone as well as a few other things in a testing area i have off to the side.
I managed to make a system for the light house beacon, where it activates when you throw an item down the hole.

Since the beacon can only travel through glass and you can't place pressure plates or trip wires on glass, the beacon or air, i had to wire it so when you throw in an item in removes the block below the trip wire, and also activates the beacon. (i also may have had to build it twice because i didn't look to see its actually 2 wide not 1)

I also tried to make a system that would work like when the statues fall into place in the Sol sanctum, but it didn't go well. I came up with another idea for it while i was typing this actually so i may be able to figure it out actually... hmm

Tomorrow I'll start the next project. I don't know which one i'll do but I was originally thinking about doing them in order, but i don't know. I also don't want to shy away from medium sized dungeons but i would prefer to keep them small for the time being. As such aqua rock is out for the time being (even though i know its possible to make, I've checked it in the past cause i wasn't sure.)

I'll start one of these tomorrow: Goma Cave, Lunpa Cave, Tundaria Tower, path between Tolbi and Venus lighthouse, Lamakan Desert, or Suhalla Desert.

[zman9000]

Day 5 Update.

I wasn't sure which one I listed to do. I looked through them for a while, and after having trouble running minecraft and the GS editor at the same time because of a minecraft launcher update that seemed to crash the editor every time you start minecraft, I decided to pick something not on the list for today.

Colosso stage 1 map.
[spoiler]


This map is fairly easy to build which is the reason I picked it for today since i was having issues. however what i didn't realize was it would still take as long as a normal map building session because there are a lot of blocks and its just time consuming.

Finally the hardest part was building the reverse part of the map that wasn't in the game.
While i said before building stuff you can't see isn't what i want to do... at least not yet, but i noticed on this map you can see part of the other area on the edge of the map and once i finished the first half it didn't look complete so i did the other half. it was tricky but luckily it took half the time of the first half.
[/spoiler]

I'm considering on starting tundaria tower tomorrow, but if i don't i'll be doing the second stage of Colosso. (i'm considering the tower despite the size because i had tried to make some of the puzzle rooms in the tower in minecraft before, though it was only messing around in minecraft.)

[zman9000]

Day 6 update.

Had a lot of trouble with just about everything today. First I started tundaria tower's first room only to quickly realize I don't remember how all the rooms fit together so i decided to go just do the colosso 2 area. However then I noticed that yesterday i messed up... The stage in colosso 1 i build one block too small the long way which means if i want to fix it i'd have to rebuild one entire half of it by hand or finally learn how to use mc edit (i'll have to do one or the other before i consider colosso 1, 2, and 3 finished...).

Colosso Stage 2 map
[spoiler]


When i started, i stated with the battle stage which is how i realized the battle stage in area 1 was messed up, however because of that i made another mistake and i built the bottom half of both sides before i realized i made this stage 2 blocks wider (one on each side of the stage) so i had to go back and shift everything on one side two blocks, though luckily that didn't take too long. the rest was fairly simple like before aside from messing up a few areas by building them backwards on the other side, but again those fixes took only a few minutes to fix each.
[/spoiler]

Just like yesterday, my plan for tomorrow is to work on tundaria tower, but if anything goes wrong i'll be working on the next Colosso area, colosso 3. Though for me to work on the tower means i'll either have to play to that point in game, or find my old strategy guide that has every map in the game in it with the rooms connected...

[Rolina]

Heh, it'd be nice if you could move those pillars in minecraft.  Who knows, maybe in a later update they'll make something just for that.

[Luna_blade]

Wow, the colosso and a nice Sol Sanctum!
The whole nether Idea with a portal is go(o)d.

Heh, it'd be nice if you could move those pillars in minecraft.  Who knows, maybe in a later update they'll make something just for that.

Actually, EliDacreach (I'm not sure of his name anymore) was making a GS mod with Psyenergies. My brother helped him out on a server a few times.
so yeah, a Move Pillar does exist.

[Rolina]

Not without crazy redstone magic it doesn't.  Can't count mods towards vanilla features, Luna.

[Luna_blade]

True.

[zman9000]

Day 7 update.

Took a few days break due to not feeling well. But i finished Colosso 3, and went back and redid half of colosso 1 so its now accurate. so today is the end of the second area build (if you consider colosso 1, 2, and 3 to be connected)

Colosso stage 3 and complete
[spoiler]


Despite being the biggest it didn't take any more time then the others, in fact i think it may have been the quickest, mainly because i'm getting use to building them. if i have the time down right, i generally spend 5 hours a day building these, (by hand) but while today did take 5 hours, i also spent an hour of that rebuilding half of colosso 1. I don't know if this means i'm also getting faster building golden sun maps in general or just the colosso maps.
[/spoiler]

Not sure what I'll do next. Have to look through the editor again to see what maps i can do. I have an idea where my strategy guide with the map pictures are, but its buried in the basement in some boxes... though if i do end up finding it, i'll be able to do just about any map no problem.

Also one other thing... I don't know if anyone was able to download the map files from the link in my first post... If anyone has any ideas for a better file sharing site that's free to use, let me know. I've never really used public file sharing sites before...

[Rolina]

I tend to use Mega.  It works rather well.

[Atrius (He/Him)]

How large is the file?  I wouldn't mind hosting it here.

[zman9000]

Its a standard minecraft file so it should be a few MB...
Last i checked its 16 MB, and that number will slowly go up after a while as i add more places.
though i would only have to store the one file since i'm just updating the same minecraft map.
its up to you Atrius.

[zman9000]

Day 8 update.

the map is all Suhalla desert areas except the one room connecting to the tornado that takes you to the island...

Suhalla Desert area 1 and 2 complete, (area 3 incomplete)
[spoiler]


I messed up a lot which made me take 8+ hours to build, the third area isn't complete cause it doesn't fit (again likely because it was a last minute thing/after thought since it connects to the offshoot area with the tornado that takes you to the island), and really i'm just done with sand for a while... lol. I might come back to fix things at a later date though it wouldn't match up completely so i'm not sure if i should or not...
[/spoiler]

Download here
http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=downfile&id=81