geekosystem

When we think of the Mines of Moria, we think of either Gimli's crib or the place where Gandalf got crunk with the Balrog. But when Redditor and Minecraft enthusiast Tigerballs07 saw the Mines of Moria in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, all he saw was virtual 1-cubic-meter blocks. For roughly a year, Tigerballs07 and a team of over 40 volunteers worked to create a 1:1 scale replica of Middle Earth's Mines of Moria. Read on for a little more about this tremendous project, gallery included!

Continuing today's theme of incredibly ambitious projects carried out in city-building games -- someone has created a Dwarf Fortress city that operates, effectively, as a Turing machine.

No, it's not called "MOAR-ia." Although it should be. For the uninitiated, Dwarf Fortress is to normal city-building games as the UNIX command line is to Windows: abstruse, catastrophically punishing of newbie mistakes, unfailingly esoteric in documentation, and thoroughly opaque in operation. In addition to its incredibly steep learning curve, Dwarf Fortress is an insanely difficult game. Forgot to bring along some lumber when you founded your city? Oops, all of your dwarves died. Left your gates open when the local Cyclops came by for a visit? Oops, all of your dwarves died. Accidentally hurled an elven emissary into a magma vent when he was just trying to offer you a trade agreement? Oops, all of your dwarves died. Also, the interface is entirely composed of ASCII-based graphics. Scared yet?