I spent the entire day in bed today sleeping. Yet, I’m still tired. I suppose this is the price I must pay for sinking so much energy into my latest project, to the point of sacrificing sleep, during the week my ex was here.

I didn’t want to engage with him and he did try. Sunday was his last day and we had gone over to my brother’s house for his step daughter’s birthday party and every time I tried to speak with my brother, my ex was quick to scurry over and take the stage. Nothing has changed. For whatever reason, as far as he’s concerned I’m not allowed to speak to my own flesh and blood. Well… no. I’m not allowed to speak to anyone when he’s around.

So I just sank myself into this project, and ignored as much of his bullshit as I could.

I’m not married to you. I’m not your property. I no longer need to cater to you.

What I found troubling is how much time he spent focused on my oldest son rather than on our mutual son – my youngest. What the hell does he hope to gain there? Dad seems to think he will be able to get information out of Scholar Owl if he keeps him as a buddy – which sadly isn’t a far fetched leap considering how Piggie caught him fishing for information when chatting with her daughter online.

Hope Dad is wrong. Hope that if Dad is right, that my son will figure it out quickly and not get badly hurt. Hope that my ex and his father will not do to my children what they have done to my ex’s sister and me.

And what can I do about it? This is one of those things that I can’t prove until it happens. Doesn’t matter that he fucked us over with the money while we were married. Too easy to say, “Well, that was between your mother and I.” Too easy to say something similar about his sister too. Too easy to believe it won’t happen to you because you’re somehow different. Somehow your relationship is different. Anyone who says otherwise is jealous or crazy or… whatever. Been there. Done that. All too familiar with it.

It’s a train wreck waiting to happen that you can’t stop. All you can do is be there to pick up the pieces when it does. I pray it never does.

Bah! I sat down to write about THE PROJECT and ended up writing about THE EX.

How aggravating is that?

So I didn’t get to finish it completely as I would have liked before entering it due to time constraints. The biggest issue is for some reason I decided to make the island HUGE. Which made exporting a time sink from hell, never mind uploading the zip file. I ended up putting the tutorials videos, showing how I made the map, on hold just to get what I did get done on time.

To give you an idea of how long it took me to make this custom terrain, I had spent 20 hours alone just to sculpt the coastal beach.

Now that the map has been submitted, I can take my time making the final minor adjustments I wanted. I finally got the waterfall to work the way I wanted it to and now slowly getting the terrain palettes mixed the way I think they should be.

These are the screenshots of the post contest adjustments I’m working on now.

Forgive the ugliness of the waterfall. It takes awhile for the water to realize it’s a flowing block and needs to start actually flowing. I would need to leave the map open in the game for awhile to get all the water falling like it’s suppose to and I’m too impatient for that right now.

I think all that’s left to do is make the map survival friendly. Right now structures and resources are shut off to preserve the look I’ve created, which I will leave out for the creative version for the map. I know with structures on that Monuments can really screw up the terrain you sculpted by carving in these big random chunks for their placement, but in survival mode it really sucks not having these things since treasure and all.

World Painter doesn’t give you the option to turn off specific structures while leaving others on. Honestly, what I would like is to see them left on for the terrain the game randomly generates, but doesn’t place them for the terrain you created.

Like if I created a desert, don’t spawn an igloo there. Witch’s hut? Weird, but fine. Big ass square chunk cut out just to spawn in an ocean monument? NO. WHY? I suppose this is the price one must pay when one uses mods of some kind for any game.

But any way… my map isn’t the only one in the contest. You can see them all here. There are some really good ones in there! If you have an account at Planet Minecraft, be sure to diamond and favorite the ones you like best. This determines which maps make it to the final judging phase.

As for me… I’m going to set the map to include resources and structures, launch the near 3 hour exporting process, and go back to bed. Tomorrow I will get back to work on editing the tutorial videos.