Minecraft

[tehsam016]

Sorry i haven't posted for a while, just been busy with school/this amazing game. Yes, Minecraft. I'm feeling a bit lazy right now/it's hard to explain the premises, so i'll just post a excerpt from the wiki:

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Minecraft is a sandbox game which allows players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. It is currently in development by Markus Persson, aka "Notch". The gameplay is inspired by Dwarf Fortress, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Dungeon Keeper, and especially Infiniminer. Minecraft features two separate game modes, each focusing on the core mechanic in a different way: Survival mode and Creative mode. Creative mode is solely a building simulator, playable in single or multiplayer mode. Survival mode adds monsters as well as many other features.

Alpha is the only version of Minecraft which is currently being updated, and is only available to users who have purchased the game. Currently only featuring a survival mode (although with single and multiplayer variants) Alpha requires that the player use the building and mining mechanics as a method of protection from hostile monsters, and as a way to uncover useful ores in the ground. Alpha also includes limits on the number of blocks that can be held by the player, using an inventory system, and requires that all blocks be mined first rather than giving the player an unlimited supply as in Classic's creative mode. Different blocks can be crafted into items such as chests, minecarts and tracks, and buckets. There are also plants and animals, which can be farmed and hunted for other resources. The player has an inventory in which to hold blocks and items, as well as a health meter. Health can be restored upon eating certain items and is lost from long falls or attacks by monsters. Upon death, the player respawns at their original spawn point with an empty inventory, though items can be recovered if the player reaches the point of death before they disappear.

Alpha also places a heavy emphasis on creativity. Players must devise methods of building functional and navigable structures that can withstand the nightly assault from various monsters. The player's short reach and short jumping ability forces players to plan structures carefully, lest they trap themselves or fall to their death during construction. More advanced players can create complex traps and mechanisms using the game physics as well as primitive electrical circuits and logic gates.

Alpha allows for an effectively infinite horizontal playing surface, though limits exist on vertical movement both up and down. The game world is procedurally generated as the player explores it, with the full size possible stretching out to be nearly eight times the surface area of the Earth before running into technical limits.[3] Alpha can be played either with a stand-alone client or in a browser, and in either single or multiplayer mode (which is still under heavy development). Minecraft Alpha is expected to move out of alpha status into beta soon, along with a name change.

This is a good video series that's helpful for beginners:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANgI2o_Jinc#ws

While the graphics are indeed primitive, it really only adds to the charm of the game, and kinda takes older gamers back to the NES/Doom days. You really get a sense of accomplishment after you've built your first fort/find a huge underground cavern system. Plus, at the price of 9.99 EU (13.00 US) you can't beat it. I'll post some screens of my current fort soon.

*edit* Sorry, guess I should have posted a link to the actual website: minecraft.net

resized pics / Art

[Art Blade]

Thanks for the introduction, sam :) Having watched the vid I can see how this may be addictive (I like the creating tools and digging/building stuff thing). The graphics are erm, sufficient to recognise stuff  :-D

[tehsam016]

No problem Art ;). Unfortunately there's no demo, but Classic mode is online and free, but feels nothing like the paid for version.
As promised, here's screens from my current fort:

The front of my fort.
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Inside, in the item room/main floor.
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The boat launch.
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Underground tree farm.
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Inside my temporary empty house.
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View from my lookout tower.
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The huge cave system connected to my Fort.
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Last but not least, an outside view of this beautiful mountain range that's by my fort.
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This game is too fun :P.

resized pics / Art

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, I've seen this mentioned around before, and I would either find it boring or a complete drain on my spare time, so it's dangerous both ways!

[Art Blade]

if only the graphics were more polished.. it would sure be a game I'd consider potentially addicitive  :)

[tehsam016]

There are various texture packs people have released that make the textures more pleasing to the eye. For instance I just installed  the Painterly Pack(http://painterlypack.net/) today, which also has the option on the website of editing what type of textures you want included. I get where your coming from though.

[Art Blade]

:)

[Dweller_Benthos]

Imagine if it looked as good as FC2......   :o

[Art Blade]

heh, that'd be fun.. imagine you'd start up digging holes and building your own fort on the other side of the street facing a GP  ;D

[tehsam016]

Eh the graphics don't bother me much. Guess it's because I grew up with older games (Nes/Snes/Dos). If it had good graphics the mechanics would have to be totally different since blocks would look funny. Just wouldn't be the same IMO.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I don't know, it might be cool to have it look as good as FC2 - it could still w@&k the same way, just instead of digging out a block, you just make a hole in the ground.

Of course, it then wouldn't be the tiny download that it is, I gave it a try since the payment system was offline for a while, it was free for a couple days. You can still play it offline anyway, so no problem there. I can see how this would be a serious time sink. I've come up with some ideas that I'm sure have occured to others and I see from looking on the web some do exist / are possible.

For instance, there is lava if you dig far enough in the right places.

The cave systems are huge and cover the whole map pretty much. If you dig down from the ocean/water into a cave, the water flows into but doesn't fill it up (darn).

Anyone see a winter world yet? Just started a new one and it was snowing - never saw anything like that in any of the screen shots I see around. The water is frozen over and everything is covered in snow.

Can you build a tower so high you touch the clouds???

There are a couple of overview map programs that will read your world fie and give you a map to go by, something that I really needed.

OK, now I just need to fight the urge to play it all the time.

[tehsam016]

I've seen winter worlds however never really tried playing with one since it kinda kills my fps (not sure why), but yes you can build into the clouds however not very high after that since there's a vertical limit, but not horizontal. It's weird how excited i get whenever i find caves though, guess it's unique in that matter as you never know what the world around you will contain since it's always random. I'm currently playing on a private server with some guys and we've built quite a few cool things like a huge soccer stadium.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Probably the snowflakes falling in winter is what kills your framerate.

As to caves, there are a lot more than I ever expected. Here's the Cartographer output of the snow world I have, it's a small map:

[smg id=2587]

And here's the cave system:

[smg id=2586]


???

[Art Blade]

 ??? :-X

[Dweller_Benthos]

Talk about a necro-post! I dug this topic up to see when I actually started playing this game, over four years ago now, dang. Things have come a long way in Minecraft, both for the game and myself. I now run my own server that is heavily modded with over 190 mods. All sorts of things are possible in Minecraft now. Here's a quick video I made of the last day we had on our old map before doing a reset with a new mod pack:

Minecraft Boss Fights on the Obsidian Abyss server

How do I embed videos again? There's no button for youtube. Ah, now I remember.. I just copy paste the YT URL and make sure the https doesn't have an S. Thanks, Art  :)

[Art Blade]

nice one, D_B :) As it seems, you remembered how to embed videos. Just edit your own post to see what you did to get it right.  :-()

[fragger]

@#$%& tourists, they're here and using up all the local bandwidth again. I'll have to wait until some ungodly hour to be able to watch that clip.

Just like the good old days... :D

[mandru]

An interesting game D_B.  Those boss fights were pretty frantic.

Out of curiosity are you now stuck on Mars until you can gather the materials and build a rocket to return to your point of origin?  Or is it that you can select your position with a reset?

[Dweller_Benthos]

Thanks for the tip on the video Art, I knew I would remember how to do it eventually!

I feel your pain, Fragger, as you can see from the video, if you ever get to watch it, my connection was especially poor that night.

Mandru, the way you're supposed to get back is to take the rocket and launch pad from your lander, then refuel it and use it to get back home. You can see me take the rocket and launch pad out of the lander at about 2:40 in the video. But I didn't have to use it to get back as we had another mod loaded which allows you to set teleport locations that I used to get back. I also set up a portal to connect to the network on other worlds to use just in case, but I didn't show me building that in the video.

The new mod pack we are using required a completely new world, and a fresh start for everyone from scratch, so all of that is gone. Well, it's backed up but the only way to run it again would be to load the old mod pack, which is also backed up, but I will probably never do that. We had been in that world for long enough that we all had super powerful armor, weapons and extended health so that under normal circumstances we were practically invincible. On that last fight with the fire guardian, I was lagging so much I took a lot of damage just because I couldn't tell where anything was when it was really in that spot. Normally you have 20 hit points of health, I had used mods in such a way that I had 240 hit points by that time.

[Art Blade]

you should use your office (the nice internet there) for playing and your home for working. :-D

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, well, *ahem* .... I have been known to sneak a game at w@&k now and then.... Minecraft is easy to conceal, but something like FC4 would be a bit hard to explain, lol.

[PZ]

  :-X

I remember seeing software that would install a "boss" key for just such emergencies.  It;s about the only time I like the word "boss" applied to something.

[Binnatics]

At my w@&k, they don't even allow people to use internet. We do have access to intranet, which is an internal, heavily secured network, but real internet is only available for people how somehow are obliged to have internet access. Like nurses, or managers.
In fact the organization is just scared people will mistreat the liberty and may violate the privacy of our 'customers' or use internet for their own personal goals.
That way of thinking is so 2007 ::)
Anyway, they can ;literally control everything people may do on their worker accounts, so abuse is easy to encounter. And the internet speed and general system behaviour is so crappy (we still run on winXP 8-X) that no one would ever try to do anything stupid with it. You can't even watch youtube films, because the graphics or internet explorer can't handle the complexity

I'm lucky to be a manager so I do have normal internet access, but the performance is so shitty, that would it be like that at home I would either throw the puter out of the window, or change my provider. Probably both :-D

[Dweller_Benthos]

Lol Binn, exact opposite here, everyone has internet access and most of the time a youtube video is playing on someone's computer. But we are a small company and it's easy to keep track of who is doing what.

[PZ]

I've found that having open internet access actually increases productivity because people remain sharp rather than burn out.  Sure, people will do personal things, but it is no different than a coffee break.  After all, everyone has a job to do in  a timely way so it all balances out.