London's burning, London's burning - in Minecraft!
Great Fire history project reaches the all important stage two.
If you owned a bakery in London in, ooh let's say 1666, and you were in the middle of a roasting hot summer, would you leave your oven on overnight? I wouldn't even leave my oven on now! Though I may have accidentally done that once. But I watched those harrowing Fire Service videos at school in the '80s - I know what's at stake.
Had Thomas Farriner watched those videos, albeit hundreds of years before videos and televisions were invented, London would be very different today. But he didn't, the idiot, and so his Pudding Lane bakery went up in flames, 2nd September 1666, and London went with it. He caused the Great Fire of London!
350 years later the Museum of London is making a big to-do of it, and the to-do includes recreating ye olde London in Minecraft - and then burning it down!
The idea comes in three phases, three maps that you'll be able to download. We've had the first. It was a recreation of 1666 London with all the landmarks: St Paul's Cathedral, a very old and different London Bridge, even the Pudding Lane Bakery to nose around while tutting loudly at what is to come. It was very, very impressive.
The second phase is what's next, due Friday 2nd September - and this one's the best. This is when London burns down, when the bakery goes up in flames, and those flames lick their way greedily through the rest of London.
A video has been released ahead of the map to give a rather a large glimpse at what the Great Fire will look like in Minecraft. The video is embedded here.
The third phase comes February 2017 when you'll get a chance to rebuild London using actual architectural plans of the time.
The map is commissioned by the Museum of London and built by the amazing group Blockworks. YouTuber Dragnoz oversees it, from what I can tell, and Adam Clarke, better known as Minecraft YouTube personality Wizard Keen, evangelises it. It's great stuff!
Incidentally, the Great Fire of London maps are free to download but only available on PC.