Okay so I'm re-typing this thread because after I was about done typing everything I accidentally closed the tab and lost everything! I'm too lazy to try and re-type the whole thing so I'll basically TL;DR it
Sometime between 2021-2022 I spent many months grinding away in a minecraft survival world, and maybe its because i've got zoomer brain or something but i still think the game is really fun and can serve as a sick creative outlet to make cool stuff. The value i see in my worlds is highly dependent on if I can achieve what i call the "wow" factor, making something beautiful and eye-catching. I ended up burning out quite bad towards the end of that world, with my motivation being further tanked by having cheesed my world pretty hard in doing exploits like obtaining unobtainables (i.e end portal frames), duplicating, getting water in the nether, etc.
My rationale at the time was "I simply wish to expedite the creative process- and don't want my time + color palettes / block selection to be limited to the things I can automate or farm like prismarine or piglin bartering farms" so on and so forth. I disagree with that conclusion and the line I took to get there, and this will actually spark what I will be talking about later in this thread!
Because of how many options modern minecraft has in terms of how you can express yourself, it can become very overwhelming very quickly. For me personally I felt like it actually stinted my creativity at the time (with the biggest example being that in my primary build (((screenshots below))), almost everything I built or did was done with a tutorial and all my stuff really ended up being was a big collage of dozens of tutorials and I never built anything myself that came from my brain noodles). You have every sort of color and texture you'll ever need, you have so many different choices for mood and lighting, and trying to apply a nuanced layer of texturing through tiny details can become so overwhelming its insane! Every bit of the process gives you so much freedom that if you don't know what you are doing, things get rather daunting. Too many options! I'm not great at that if I'm not already perfectly familiar with my tools! Anyways,
Here are some screenshots from that old world:
Warning-- These spoilers have a lot of screenshots and may extend the thread to an awkward length FYI
Bonus: Here was my Nether Highway / Nether Hub from that same world! (Showcases examples of egregious cheese and basically cheating- water in nether, end portal frames, also i think like all of this is 100% duplicated. actually now that i think about it, like 95% of the main build is also duplicated items)
Now here is where the "Creative Exercise" beings: I went back to good ol' classic beta minecraft (b1.7.3). Why? I don't have access to an unlimited amount of block palettes, way less features (esp. QoL features), and you can't even conjoin stairs or put them upside down, or use the bottom half of a slab, or put buttons on the ground or anything! Well, first off I love the nostalgia and charm of older minecraft. I bought my account in march of 2011 and that was around the time of this version (like a year later iirc). Second: If I'm gonna make anything cool, I've got to stretch my creative muscles and get custom with it! With a significantly smaller selection of tools, a sky limit that cripples any hopes of scaling things unnaturally big to make it appear more extravagant, and just being significantly more limited in general- it is crucial that you learn to use what you have very effectively and I am going to try and learn to be better at making.
Is this unnecessary? Oh 100% totally, and I am sure there are better ways to learn to become more creative. Is this dumb? Probably. Will I fail? Most definitely, at least a little bit rofl. In any case, I think it'll still be a fun way to expand and burn some time while I wait for my dumb insurance to get it together and function so they can process my medical claims.
First thing I did was make a secondary world with TooManyItems mod to make a gradient in order to better visualize what options I have for making block palettes.
With the exception of Sponge in this photo (cant get it in this version of the game in survival mode), this is pretty much every block in the game I can work with!
Currently, I am working on my first little village that I plan for it to be a flop. Gonna experiment with things I haven't done before and limit test! In fact, I already (mostly) finished the first building-- a "Pagoda" that I tried building slightly diagonally (about 15deg) with no tutorials or anything- just freehanded it raw. Doing the curved roofs without the ability to use bottom-half slab placement, attach stairs, or use upside-down stairs was a significant challenge and it turned out to be a bit of an eye soar rofl. It's way too chunky and lacks depth. Colors are also very flat and could greatly benefit from some more contrast in the colors, maybe using red wool or something on certain pillars instead of white wool; among many other things that I can critique. I might continue to update this post or thread depending on how much effort I choose to invest into this little creative endeavor, but we'll see! Here it is so far
Thank you to anyone who was willing to view this thread!