Topic: Minecraft (Read 474912 times)

smack that isaiah · « **on:** 19 Sep 2010, 17:03 »

INFORMATION EDIT:
Hey party people, Jimor is generously hosting a Minecraft server at the moment. If you're interested in joining, PM him your Minecraft user name to get whitelisted!

So, Minecraft was free to play this weekend (is still free as I write this, but I'm unsure when it will no longer be free) because the servers were down, and it is so awesome. Once everything's back up, I plan on buying it. It's very basic gameplya, I'm a bit unsure why I enjoy it so much. You just kinda go around and break things, and then make them into other things... and at night monsters like zombies can be threatening.

There is a minecraft wiki, but it's down right now.

So, does anyone else here play minecraft? Does anyone have some crazy fun random things about what (and how) to make? (Does someone here know what to do with the material cows drop? I tried eating it like pig flesh, but it didn't work, and I couldn't make boots out of it. Also, is it possible to turn wool from sheeps into the string that spiders drop?).

(I searched and only found a few mentions of Minecraft in the Dwarf Fortress thread, I hope this isn't a repeat thread)

edit: oh god, I have work I have to be doing. Why am I still playing this?

bicostp · « **Reply #1 on:** 19 Sep 2010, 18:30 »

It's an alright game, but not one I would pay $12 for.

Melodic · « **Reply #2 on:** 19 Sep 2010, 20:22 »

The multiplayer-friendly construction mode should still be free of charge, and it's plenty awesome.

JD · « **Reply #3 on:** 19 Sep 2010, 20:55 »

I played it a bit when it was it's early early early stages. It was boring as fuck at the time though.

Perhaps I'll give it another try if they do another free weekend.

Beren · « **Reply #4 on:** 19 Sep 2010, 23:33 »

Sweet, sweet minecraft. I love it so much.

The thing cows drop is leather, you can make all of the armor out of it, just like iron, gold, and etc.

I'm currently in the middle of building a giant treehouse; you can put a block of dirt on a tree and build one tree on top of another. It looks awesome so far. I'm thinking of making a huge ship-like structure soon.

Catfish_Man · « **Reply #5 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 01:58 »

I've noticed myself developing a very distinct architectural style for both practical and aesthetic reasons.

The current version of minor exits from my tunnel system are a two block glass window next to a door (I like windows, and it's nice to check for enemies and the time of day from inside), with a mass of torches just behind the window (so that they shine out and I can spot it when frantically running for home at night). The whole thing is ringed in one layer of stone, with a torch on each block of that. Any dirt impinging on the entryway is cleared.

Major "home"/tunnel exit areas are much more elaborate. They typically have large walls topped with torches, and an open courtyard inside (with trees and flowers). An all-glass entryway with a door at each end forms an "airlock" to make sure no creepers get close enough to blow up and damage the structure.

The tunnels themselves have periodic windows in the walls or ceilings, both to act as a location reference and to allow day/night checks.

Still haven't found diamonds. I want to make a diamond pick and mine obsidian for my grandest fortress location's walls

I do have a metric shitton of redstone dust... need to decide what to make with that.

smack that isaiah · « **Reply #6 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 05:44 »

I have only been playing for a few hours so far, and have no redstone yet. Once I do find some, I'm going to make a compass. Then try some switch activated doors.

My roommate has a house made entirely of glass right now. My plans on a stronghold (eventually, once I get more resources) will be to have a 2 story one, where the entire bottom floor is all doors, so I can run back in coming from any direction (do you know if Mobs can open wooden doors? Also, do you know if that idea of mine would work structurally?

McTaggart · « **Reply #7 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 09:46 »

I really like the world generator. It can create some striking views if you roll the right kind of map. I don't play the game so much as sight see.

Oh and torches:
On the right, into the light
On the left, into the depths

smack that isaiah · « **Reply #8 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 10:31 »

Quote from: Zombiedude on 19 Sep 2010, 20:55

I played it a bit when it was it's early early early stages. It was boring as fuck at the time though.

Perhaps I'll give it another try if they do another free weekend.

It's still free to play the Alpha mode right now if you have time. The only reason for this "free weekend" was because the server went down so it's just free until it goes back up, and apparently the main dude is having trouble getting the server back up (the main page now says he hopes the server is back up on Tues).
The game is certainly for certain types of ppl, so it still may not be interesting for you, but what really keeps driving me to keep playing is all the insanely complicated awesome creations ppl have made that can be seen on youtube.

Scandanavian War Machine · « **Reply #9 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 10:33 »

Bought this a month or two ago and it was probably one of the best $12 I ever spent.

Haven't played much in the last couple weeks because of Reach and other things, but it's one of those things that I'm pretty sure I'll be playing for a long time.

Quote from: Beren on 19 Sep 2010, 23:33

I'm currently in the middle of building a giant treehouse; you can put a block of dirt on a tree and build one tree on top of another.

I had an amazing tree house going in my world, but it is no more. I finally got it up to the clouds and ended up accidentally burning the whole thing to the ground while I was trying to make a glass-encased lava river on the top floor. I had been working on it pretty much since I got the game and it was really really cool.

Melodic · « **Reply #10 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 12:32 »

Minecraft is basically a 3D, first-person Dwarf Fortress without the other dwarves and the ridiculous ways in which to lose.

ackblom12 · « **Reply #11 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 12:35 »

So Dwarf Fortress but infinitely less amusing?

Melodic · « **Reply #12 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 14:05 »

It's less sadistic than DF. So yeah.

Alex C · « **Reply #13 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 14:24 »

Yeah, the beauty of Dwarf Fortress is the simple fact that most expedition leaders end up making Aguirre look competent.

SWOON! at My Gravitas · « **Reply #14 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 19:16 »

Welp time to go quit college and play this game the rest of my life

Wasteroo · « **Reply #15 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 22:33 »

Quote from: Scandanavian War Machine on 20 Sep 2010, 10:33

probably one of the best $12 I ever spent.

Jace · « **Reply #16 on:** 20 Sep 2010, 23:36 »

So I built a castle. Then I built another, then, while trying to build an underground tunnel to a third location, I accidentally opened the tunnel in the middle of a lake! Then I built a giant tower in that spot instead. I found a giant underground cavern by mistake and spent some time trying to get out of there. Then I dug around underground for a while in linear paths until I hit surface again, this time I built a church. Then built a giant sand escape tunnel to my first castle.
This game is too much fun.

Scandanavian War Machine · « **Reply #17 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 09:32 »

Thanks to this thread I started a new world last night and started playing again and hot damn, I love this game.

My new world has really epic cliff formations with overhangs and floating bits, and there are waterfalls and caves and everywhere. All right next to my spawn. I started exploring a cave and immediately found about a dozen other tunnels and rooms, many of which actually connect to the surface through natural cave mouths. It's going to be a magical place, I can tell.

SWOON! at My Gravitas · « **Reply #18 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 13:51 »

I died while mining coal in a tunnel deep underground, from something I didn't see. Unfortunately I have no idea where my fortress was in relation to my spawn point. If I ever find it again I will have to make a really tall tower of dirt so as not to lose it

Melodic · « **Reply #19 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 14:26 »

Torches are your friend for finding landmarks easily -- although to be honest, depending where your spawn point is it can sometimes be impossible to find your way back again. The way the Alpha version of Minecraft makes maps, theoretically each landmass is about 64 times the size of the surface of the Earth.

snalin · « **Reply #20 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 15:49 »

I built mine right next to my spawn, and I'm in the process of making a long highway of bridges and stone cairns fitted with torches to find my way around. The plan is to make a wooden cabin every four or so cairn. I'm also making some big underground halls, but that process is stopped by mobs that's spawning inside of my cave. There's no entrance, so it seems like they can spawn pretty much anywhere that's open enough. I'm going to try to set up more torches, to see if that can help.

Great fun to build, but the mobs doesn't seem to do anything else than keep me away from the fun. If fighting them were more rewarding, or the posed some other challenge than being in the way of big constructions, I could see the point. Right now they're just annoying.

Scandanavian War Machine · « **Reply #21 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 16:05 »

One of he recent updates included the ability to craft a compass that poins towards your spawn.

it involves steel and redstone, I believe. Very helpful.

LTK · « **Reply #22 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 17:00 »

In my second world, a winter world, I made my first home in a cluster of giant trees. I went up the trunk and hollowed out the canopy, and now I have a gorgeous two-storey treehouse with an extra stargazing room at the top. Here is a virtual tour. The immediate underlying area is crawling with caves and rich in iron ore, but very low in monsters. After going quite deep I came across a room that was crawling with monsters, so I set up a second base just before that with a bunch of furnaces for smelting. Then I dug a vertical tunnel straight up to the surface, which was only a dozen blocks away from my treehouse by coincidence. I crafted a full set of iron armor and embarked in the infested tunnel, which held ores of iron, gold, diamond and redstone, and then a spider jumped onto my face and I fell in lava.

This all happened in about 24 hours. Minecraft is the best.

Tom · « **Reply #23 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 18:08 »

Quote from: snalin on 21 Sep 2010, 15:49

There's no entrance, so it seems like they can spawn pretty much anywhere that's open enough. I'm going to try to set up more torches, to see if that can help.

That will help, monsters span in the darkness.

How far down do I have dig for iron?

smack that isaiah · « **Reply #24 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 19:19 »

I found these two topics recently, and they're very helpful to newbies like me, someone else may find use of them:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=35905
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=28299

about iron depths, from that second link was this: Iron: "Normal up to 64, virtually none at 67, none at 68"

also, apparently since this free weekend Notch has been making a ton of revenue of ppl buying this game. at this current rate it's approximately $2million a day, and he's kept it constantish for a few hours. And paypal had to set up a queue for all the traffic coming to his account.

SWOON! at My Gravitas · « **Reply #25 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 20:36 »

Jesus. Good for him

Melodic · « **Reply #26 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 20:42 »

Fucking PayPal won't let me buy the game for another 6 days.

(Buy me the gaaaaaaame)

Wasteroo · « **Reply #27 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 21:54 »

I'd consider PMing you so we could share an account until you buy it for yourself but damn me if you internet people aren't untrustworthy

Scandanavian War Machine · « **Reply #28 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 22:46 »

I wouldn't worry about it, I can't even login to play single player anymore. I think the huge influx of new people has destroyed his servers even more than it already had so it'll probably be a little bit before anyone can really play.

unless it's just me. Can anyone else not login?

Wasteroo · « **Reply #29 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 23:24 »

I'm definitely playing right this moment without any trouble, but maybe that's because I logged in earlier today?

Tom · « **Reply #30 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 23:47 »

I'm running it on Mac and it crashes like every 30 minutes.

smack that isaiah · « **Reply #31 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 05:37 »

I would say that the 30 min crash time could be due to a memory leak in the code*, since it was one guy who wrote it all, there wasn't much room for someone else to be checking him for leaks, but he wrote it all in Java, which is much less prone to memory leaks than c++ since Java has secret pointers that track when a variable is no longer in use and frees up it's memory space.

Also, my roommate runs it on his Mac and he plays for much more than 30 min a session and often doesn't run into crashing troubles.

*This isn't unheard of, if you try to play lugaru for about 3 hours straight it often crashes due to memory leaks from the coder forgetting to free up space on the heap after he stops using them

Wasteroo · « **Reply #32 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 16:36 »

man why did this thread have to remind me of the existence of Minecraft, it is going to ruin me academically

smack that isaiah · « **Reply #33 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 20:10 »

so I bought it today (b/c my roommate heard a rumor online saying Notch is planning on taking it out of Alpha soonish. and when it's not in Alpha the 1/2 off sale will be gone). I can say that my grades may suffer.

Jace · « **Reply #34 on:** 24 Sep 2010, 01:18 »

snalin · « **Reply #35 on:** 24 Sep 2010, 03:04 »

holy mother of God.

smack that isaiah · « **Reply #36 on:** 24 Sep 2010, 05:34 »

That's not you and your world, is it? 'Cause if so, I gotta say, you may have been playing a tad too much...

Wasteroo · « **Reply #37 on:** 24 Sep 2010, 07:53 »

jesus, I was kind of proud of my world until now

Melodic · « **Reply #38 on:** 24 Sep 2010, 14:50 »

In Alpha, that's the most grueling accomplishment I've ever borne witness to.

Surgoshan · « **Reply #39 on:** 24 Sep 2010, 17:39 »

My god.... that's the mother of all sports cars.

Jace · « **Reply #40 on:** 24 Sep 2010, 21:41 »

not mine, something I found on 4chan in a minecraft thread. I usually build deep into the ground, with lots of narrow twisting caverns

smack that isaiah · « **Reply #41 on:** 24 Sep 2010, 22:20 »

I just played for 3 hours on a new world, and it is absolutely amazing. I spawned under a waterfall in a shallow lake in a valley surrounded on all sides by giant cliffs. There are caverns all over this map. I made stairs out of my valley, as well as dug a tunnel straight thru one of the cliffs, and as I explored I found tons and tons of caves. I did get lost (and it took me about 30 min to find my way again), which is why I've decided to start mining downwards and not exploring more until I get redstone to make a compass.

Also, in my starting valley there were only 3 trees, so I had to start a tree farm for wood, and that quickly got out of hand. I have 2 huge trees in the middle of my valley, as well as quite a few smaller ones on the cliffs and all over the place when i was desperately trying to plant as many trees as I had saplings in order to get wood.

Scandanavian War Machine · « **Reply #42 on:** 24 Sep 2010, 22:55 »

As I've saidbefore , I've been playing this game for a while now, and I just realized that I haven't really tried anything harder than Peaceful yet so I've been missing out on all the monsters.

So I started a new world just to play with monsters and holy cow it is so much harder when there are things trying to kill you and your health doesn't regen. I have to make weapons and armor and heal myself and oh god what is that noise

Melodic · « **Reply #43 on:** 24 Sep 2010, 23:27 »

I don't have much faith in trees -- how exactly do saplings work?

Scandanavian War Machine · « **Reply #44 on:** 24 Sep 2010, 23:46 »

Plant them in dirt and go away. They won't grow if you're watching.

Also, there seems to be a random chance that it just won't take for whatever reason, and then on top of that there is a small chance that any given tree will become a Big Tree which is way taller and has more volume, not to mention more wooden blocks in the foliage ("branches"). I like the big ones for tree houses; my new world has a neat little valley with a stream, a cave, and three Big Trees so close together that their foliage is connected. I built some stairs into it and have spent one night hiding on top while skeletons shoot arrows at me feebly.

oh yeah, and they won't grow within like 4 blocks of another tree. Or something like that. I know you have to spread them out a fair bit.

Jace · « **Reply #45 on:** 25 Sep 2010, 01:03 »

I was messing around on a new map and I had it on easymode, found a couple rooms in a cavern with a hollow blue grid block with fire inside that spawns zombies. The rooms were made out of mossy cobblestone and also had 2 chests in them with a few items that are hard to come by in the upper levels of a cavern.
This cavern I found is ridiculous deep, diamonds, gold, iron, and redstone everywhere. Also, I got tired of monsters and having to wait out the night so I turned it to peaceful mode because fuck those guys. Built myself a giant floating house with a wacky spiral staircase, and now I'm gonna make a couple diamond pickaxes and hollow the entire cavern out as best I can.

Oh, and while building my giant floating home, I fell off the ledge and died, losing a stack of 64 iron ingots.

Wasteroo · « **Reply #46 on:** 25 Sep 2010, 01:07 »

hold down shift when you're in a precarious position like that and you won't fall off

Theriandros · « **Reply #47 on:** 25 Sep 2010, 06:13 »

I ended up spawning in a world with a lot of tall, thin mountains, small valleys, and a lot of waterfalls, so I swam up a waterfall, hacked into the rock behind the water block so I could get a footing, and made a base there. Unless mobs swim, I have an invincible base.

Now I just have to extend the glass bridge I made to another mountain and find more coal for the furnaces.

smack that isaiah · « **Reply #48 on:** 25 Sep 2010, 08:05 »

I think spiders can swim, but they become docile during the day. But I know all mobs can drown.

est · « **Reply #49 on:** 25 Sep 2010, 22:29 »

I just built a spiral staircase tower that has hit the game ceiling. Having a lot of fun with this game and I haven't even really started exploring yet, just building a home base cave+tower near my spawn point at the moment.

Here's a picture of the work so far:

The top is above the clouds. It's pretty neat to watch the sun come up from the top. I'm building it with dirt and glass, hoping to make all the stairs have grass on them. Still have some work to do cleaning up the undersides of the spirals so that they are uniform and there's no wasted blocks. I'm going to put torches on the top so that it can act as a homing beacon when I'm out exploring.

Also, everyone knows that you can jump and put a block underneath you, right? If you have a bow & arrow you can jump-block up higher than even the skeletons can shoot arrows (can't remember the height, just play around with it), then fire down on the mob(s) that are trying to attack you with relative safety.

edit: Here's what it looks like after I've tidied it up a bit:

I'm calling it the divetower, because there is water at the bottom, and when I want to get down I just jump.

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Author Topic: Minecraft (Read 474912 times)

ackblom12