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The canal system is meant to use boats as a means of fast travel.
By gaining speed and then holding shift, you can avoid smashing up your boat. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to widen the canals by one or two blocks, though.
I've only done one section (so far) - the first branch of the northern section from spawn.
If you'd care to help, the best thing you could do would be to gather supplies and place them in the proper chests as spawn. I need:
- Cobblestone
- Smooth Stone
- Glass
- Logs/Wood
- Coal/Torches
Special thanks to arfles for helping build (a LOT) and Dog for providing materials, as well as all of the unnamed awesome people who contributed resources to the sky bridge.
There is *one* problem, and that's the bare-minimum canals are difficult to navigate - even someone like me who can play driving games and the like and do all of those awesome "almost hit the wall" turns. Although I have precision in moving about, it's difficult to compensate for the lag and I end up grazing the wall most of the time. (I really wish that boats were less fragile. )
I'm going to test and see what's easier to navigate and then widen the canals to 3 or 4 - probably 4.
Feedback is appreciated, guys.
Oh, and to preface a likely question, that is, as to why I haven't used minecarts: minecart boosters seem to have a habit of erroneously kicking people backwards instead of forwards - especially if you have a *really* bad ping. Poor arfles has been bounced around my subway more than a few times. Considering that this costs 0 iron, is made of all renewable resources (save stone), and you can actually stop the boat whenever you like and get out, I feel that a canal system is superior.
Edit: As an addendum, for an idea of how resource-intensive the upgraded (and nice looking, I think - I hope you agree!) design is, well... every 1 block along the skybridge improvements requires the following materials (averaged out):
- Water (infinite, no big deal here)
- 11-14 blocks of cobble (possibly 13-16 or 15-18 in the future - the range depends on whether you count the 3 blocks already laid down or not).
- 1 block of smooth stone
- 2 blocks of stone steps
- 7 blocks of wood (sticks for torches, wood rails, fuel for making smooth stone/glass)
- 1/2 a piece of coal (torches)