I believe that with creativity, you can pretty much design anything. That is why I spend a significant amount of time with my son playing with Lego and Minecraft. He may become a designer for award winning products, or apply his creativity to other passions such as music. It is what makes us human. If you have read my previous articles, you will know that it is possible to use Python scripts to create monuments in Minecraft Pi. This time round, I decided to go into property development and retail. So I dug a hole to hell (as my son decribed it), levelled the land around me, and built a 22 storey shopping building. It has 13 floors below ground and 9 above. The interior is still a work in progress. Here is a snapshot taken from a link bridge from one of the castles. See the spiderman banner next to the building. Without image processing and programming it would take too long to make one. What can this do in real life? Converting photos of people into Lego mosaics that can be sold for money. Value add.
Here are a few more snapshots, where you can see a rooftop infinity pool (popular nowadays) and a helicopter landing pad for the rich executives.
Now, lets go inside the building to have a look. Notice in the photo below that the floors are numbered. This is to help me know where I am in that world. Too many floors and steps to count. The floors and ceilings are made of glass. This ensures the maximum use of natural lighting to make the building comply with new regulations.
My son started from the lowest floor. Note that the it is rather bright at the bottom. My kid had a lot of fun digging holes next to me. Whenever I fell into these holes, it resulted in the following:
He couldn't stop laughing whenever that happened. That also meant I had to respawn far away and walk back to the building. Kids tend to give you extra work for their notion of fun, right?
Kids somehow love dinosaurs. Here is the dinosaur bone museum he built. I told him that it doesn't make money for the shopping centre building. He said people will pay a hundred dollars to go. So I gave him a reality check and told him that it is free in some places like London. Of course it was allowed in the building, as long as he built the retail shops for me.
On the floor above, he built a library, another venture that doesn't create revenue. I said okay as long as there are enough shops paying rental. Need to eat, and maintain the building. Here is the library.
Notice the water flowing through many floors. He wanted to create a waterslide after watching some Youtube videos. I let him do it. Difficult project because of leak issues when I break some glass blocks. Quite nice to see. Hope I don't have to dismantle these for more retail space. In real life, this has happened to AMK Hub.
Finally, my son built a McDonald's with an ice-cream shop next to it. Will need more shops to earn the rental revenue. He said this building should come with apartments. So maybe 9 floors of residential areas and 13 floors of retail. Apartments are worth more when they are above ground.
Now, we move to another part of the map. Outdoor movie theatre! Nice? May build one in the shopping centre. Need to consider the ergonomics and design seats accordingly.
My son wanted to build Spiderman statue on a new map. However, I convinced him not to as there was still a lot of space left for development. So I taught him to reclaim land to do that. Was the construction worker on the ground laying sand and grass to make sure this happened. He built the statue subsequently while I went somewhere else to dig a hole.
That is all for today. Will have more coming up in future.
