Glenfiddich Cinema
 Glenfiddich Cinema
| |
 Film | |
| About | |
|---|---|
| Owner |  mrsprinkly
|
| Contributors |  nosefish (film),  bubba_basti (music),  AndreyDio,  FlyingJellyfish (signs)
|
| Category | Attractions |
| Underground? | More craftbook signs than you can shake a stick at |
| Public? | Yes |
| Completed | 18 August 2011 |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | X=222 Y=64 Z=2666 |
| Dimension | Overworld |
| Settlement | Glenfiddich |
| Map Link | |
Housed in a beautiful building by mrsprinkly, the cinema has an ultra-low-resolution black and white screen with 9x5 pixels. As far as we know, it is the first and only working Minecraft cinema in existance. It currently shows the film CREEPER! by nosefish. Press the button on the rear wall of the auditorium to start it, and be sure to turn up your sound!
The Making Of
While fooling around with AndreyDio and bubba_basti in the new cinema building constructed by 
mrprinkly, nosefish half jokingly mentioned that it should theoretically be possible to make a film for it. After some calculations and drawings, he came to the conclusion that it was, indeed, possible to make it. Together with AndreyDio, he needed two days to build the "projector room" that can set individual pixels on the screen using Craftbook Advanced Doors and Receivers.
A test "film" was then made by nosefish and bubba_basti, which did nothing more than turn on and off all the pixels in sequence. After the bugs with the projector room had been worked out, it was time to start the real thing.
Making a meaningful image with 9x5 black and white pixels is hard. Go ahead and try it. Making a film with such a limited resolution is even harder. So the first thing nosefish made was a scrolling "N". An "N" can be drawn with 12 pixels. When it scrolls across the screen, it is shown in full in 5 different positions, so this adds up to 60 pixels. When it scrolls off the screen on either side, you need an additional 2*(7+6+5)=36 pixels. For each pixel, one Craftbook Transmitter sign is needed, so for only one scrolling "N", a room was filled with 96 signs. And after resolving some timing issues, it worked quite well, tedious though it had been to make.
But nosefish had a better idea: many parts of characters are repeated or can be re-used in other characters, for example the vertical bar of the "N". So nosefish, with invaluable sign-production support from FlyingJellyfish, made a large library of shapes in underground rooms. Take the minecart ride in Happy Ghast Film Studios to see one of them. Using the library, the "N" only needs 4 Craftbook Transmitter signs for each frame instead of 12, which enabled nosefish to get his whole name to scroll across the screen.
Now that the credits were done, it was time to make a real film. After a lot of tinkering in paint, and 
fmxstick's helpful hint that smileys would work at this resolution, this concept drawing emerged:
Each frame was subsequently made like the shapes before. Count the pixels — there is one Craftbook Transmitter sign for each one deep below the cinema. And a Transmitter/Receiver pair for each frame. Plus some transmitters for the sound. And lots of redstone, repeaters, Craftbook Monoflops, clocks, ...
One of the sign-filled halls under the cinema (part of the shape library).
If you are interested in learning more about it, ask nosefish and he will probably show you (if you are nice and he's not busy), and talk your ear off while doing so. You have been warned.