Minecraft

[TheGodBen]

Iasius wrote:

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Awesome!

froot wrote:

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OMG yes a Minecraft thread!

I love this game as if it was my own child. I am, however, worried to open it after the Halloween update - most of my base is underground and I hear tell that mobs spawn underground, even in lighted areas :\ Will placing a torch every five blocks really work? It wouldn't be so bad if my quarry/base wasn't pretty much the same thing.

My fault for building underground, I suppose, but I'm still a bit disappointed.

I've read stories on the forum that mobs can spawn near bedrock level even if there's torches on every wall, but I haven't ventured down into my mine or Hades Station since the update so I have no experience with it. Notch has said that the new system needs better balancing, so I'm hoping that the patches make it possible for me to venture back down my well-lit mining shaft without fearing a Creeper sneaking up behind me.

For now though, I'm focusing on my Nether realm. I now have two functioning portals, one at my base and another in a snow biome. I'm going to try to build a safe tunnel between them, but I currently have no idea where they are in relation to one another. Plus, one of them is out in the open with several Ghasts overhead.

Peak wrote:

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I fell from a mountain and lost all my stuff..

I fell down my mineshaft the other day, from 30m above sea level all the way down to bedrock. Luckily, I was able to make it back in time to collect my items.

[froot]

TheGodBen wrote:

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For now though, I'm focusing on my Nether realm. I now have two functioning portals, one at my base and another in a snow biome. I'm going to try to build a safe tunnel between them, but I currently have no idea where they are in relation to one another. Plus, one of them is out in the open with several Ghasts overhead.

Yeah, I'mma stay out of my basement too, I think. The Nether seems pretty cool. Are you going to build in the Nether realm itself, too? Apparently blocks like lightstone don't stick around when taken out to the normal world.

Maybe you could do a really tall 1x1 tower at one of the portals and light it to see where it's at?

Also, Painterly Pack updated all their stuff for the update - they even have a biome-compliant grass option! Although you guys probably knew that already

http://painterlypack.net/

[TheGodBen]

froot wrote:

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Yeah, I'mma stay out of my basement too, I think. The Nether seems pretty cool. Are you going to build in the Nether realm itself, too? Apparently blocks like lightstone don't stick around when taken out to the normal world.

Maybe you could do a really tall 1x1 tower at one of the portals and light it to see where it's at?

A tower wouldn't have worked because the Nether is a system of caves and caverns, and even though I knew the general direction of the portal, I had no idea how far it was or what its elevation was. After an hour of blindly searching, I checked the distance between those two portals in the main world with Cartograph, divided that by 8, and dug a tunnel to that point. From there, I knew the portal was either going to be above or below me, so I decided to check below first, I dug out one block, and there was the portal in the middle of the cavern. I went down there, threw some cobblestone around it, and connected it to my other portal with a 2x2 tunnel (too small for ghasts to spawn in it). Now I have quick, safe transport to a snow biome should I ever want to relax with some ice fishing.

Since then, I've connected up two more portals, so I can now quickly access my monster trap (which used to require a 2-minute boat-ride), and I've connected my mountain base/mining hub. I only need one more portal at my holiday home on the other side of my island and I'll be set. I've also cleared out a small space in the Nether as a sort of base, but I don't spend much time there because of the horrible noise the ghasts make. I also made a small observation room that allows me to see into the nearby cavern:



Thank Notch they can't see me through the glass!


As for the new spawning system for monsters deep underground, Notch said he doesn't like it. He's entertaining the idea of changing it so that torches give out less light the further down you are, which I think is a much better system. I agree with him that there should be a greater risk lower you are, as that's where the most valuable minerals are, but the current system doesn't give enough indication of when you're safe or not.

[Iasius]

This is a bugfixes only update:
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* Reverted mob spawning back to the old code, it was far to annoying. I have plans on what to do with this.
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Yay!

Forgot to say, thanks for the nice comments.

I've been thinking about what to do next and I've thought about a better looking solution to "supporting" my greenhouse, but it would require changing the minecart tracks and walkway on the ground and I'd hate to just tear down hundreds of stone blocks that took so much coal to get in the first place.

[Trekker4747]

I got linked this on Facebook by a friend. I see someone linked to it above but didn't really seen any comments on it.



Impressive! The guy's voice will make you want to murder kittens but you've got to admit him building a 1:1 scale of the ship is pretty darn dedicated!

[Reverend]

It's certainly interesting to get a "real" sense of scale with that thing, but I don't think (assuming he ever finishes it) it'd be as interesting to walk around inside it. 99% of it would have to be miles and miles of identical corridors with only a handful of interesting areas to visit....still I would like to see in inside on the main shuttle bay...

[Trekker4747]

Given the limitations of the program, the guy has another video of what his plans are for the interior, I don't think making the interior will result in anything impressive. You're basically stacking 1m^3 blocks on top of one another and the blocks can only be one color on all sides. So it'll be very limited on what he can do for the interior. The video does give a very, very nice presentation of scale of the sucker, however.

I'm assuming some of the unidentifiable "greebles' sticking out of the edge near the deflector/secondary hull is some-kind-of scaffolding or something.

But, God. My friend and I were talking about this and I was just said that the video does give you an idea of how really fucking huge the ship is. I always knew it was like half-a-mile long and, figuring in the thickness of the hull and the space between decks, pretty much as tall as almost a 50-story building. But seeing it 1:1 scale like that really is humbling.

[Robert Maxwell]

I was on vacation last week so I didn't really get to play around much with the Halloween Update until now. I started a new world and it put me smack in the middle of a valley between several really tall mountains--the kind with big holes in them and some tiny, floating islands. If I go in one direction, there's snow. If I go the other way, it leads to a beach and an ocean. So, I've started building up a small fortress into the mountainside and am underway with mining. I've got a lot of coal and a small amount of iron but no gold, diamond, or redstone. I did find an underground cavern last night--damn thing almost killed me because I was digging and all of a sudden lava came pouring out of the wall in front of me. Yikes! So I started chipping away very carefully to find the source of the lava, and sure enough it led into a small underground cave. There's a fair amount of redstone there so I just need to make some iron pickaxes and get to work.

There's one area in the cave with a waterfall and it's the only thing holding back a skeleton that's gunning for me. Little fucker.

I do have a question for any of the more "expert" players, though: if I want to totally enclose my spawn point, what dimensions does the room have to be? I enclosed my spawn point with a room that's 6 wide by 3 long by 2 high, and that ended up moving my spawn point above the room. So now I spawn on my roof.

[TheGodBen]

I got a little bored with my world, I'm waiting now for Notch to fix the biomes so that snow and ice return in the snow biome. Right now I want to build a giant igloo base in the large tundra area to my south, but if I dig the snow up it becomes a regular area.

So I decided to give multiplayer a try, and I found a good server at game.minerealm.com that suits me fine. It's open to all (no registering) it's large, the mods come down hard on griefing, and you're not allowed to use hacks, you have to gather all your resources. I spent the last day building a replica of my house in singleplayer for some reason. It's pretty empty at the moment because my singleplayer house is filled with chests, I have yet to find papyrus to make some bookcases, there's no sheep on multiplayer to make paintings or a bed, and fire is disabled so my fireplaces are pointless... but it's okay. Some of the other stuff on that server is amazing, I was especially impressed with the blinking tower as I walked past it at night.

[Robert Maxwell]

Last night I had a bit of fun torching some forests. I took the wood from all the trees then broke out my flint and steel and lit the remaining brush on fire. Sure lit up the night.

Is multiplayer worthwhile? What about the Nether realm? I haven't mined any obsidian yet--just now got my hands on some diamond.

[TheGodBen]

The Nether is surprisingly easy so long as you're careful and your first portal spawns in a cave. Just make a base with a roof 4-5 blocks high (so that ghasts are unlikely to spawn), don't attack the zombie pigmen, and you'll be safe. If you do spawn in a cavern with ghasts attacking you, just throw up a cobblestone building around your portal as ghasts can't destroy cobblestone. I use the Nether all the time as a fast travel network and the only bad thing about it is the noises the ghasts make.

There's not much to do in the Nether right now, there's only three blocks and two mobs, but the fast-travel aspect is a huge advantage for large maps like mine.

Multiplayer is good, but it has two major problems right now. The first is that health hasn't been implemented yet, so all you can do is build and explore without fear of dying. That's not so bad, and it's fun exploring some other people's buildings, but without a sense of danger it can be a bit dull. The other problem is the griefers. I logged on today to find that one of my windows was broken during the night, which wasn't such a big deal, considering. There's an area on that server called Sky City, which is a large floating platform you can purchase land on (using diamonds and gold you've mined) to build a structure. It's the exclusive area of the world, basically. Over the last 10 hours it was griefed very badly, some buildings were ruined, the ladder up to it was destroyed, and the bank was robbed. The guys that did it were banned, but the property owners up there now have to rebuild their stuff, and any goods that were stolen from them are gone. You can't collect and place water with buckets because the mods had to turn that ability off, too many griefers were using it to annoy people.

[Robert Maxwell]

Wow. I think I'll stay out of MP for the time being, then. I don't even want to think about investing time into it if some dipshit is just going to fuck it up.

Thanks for the tips on the Nether! I'll have to give it a try. I've got a lava pool I found under my base that I'll probably set up as an obsidian generator.

[froot]

Dear Notch:

THANK YOU for taking away the new mob spawns. I look forward them being fixed so that they're a challenge - not something that makes me want to rip my hair out!

TheGodBen, that server sounds suspiciously like the one griefed all to heck in this set of videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXK-C-xR-Kw

Of course, a lot of servers probably have Sky Cities, I suppose.

Either way, I've been avoiding SMP for that reason, myself. I'd love to build with other people, yet I don't trust anyone! Heck, I let my husband wander around my single player base the other day, and the first thing the man did was walk up and break one of my windows!

Also, do you guys do YouTube? I like seeing what people make - you should fraps your cool stuff and post a link!

[Robert Maxwell]

I'd be happy to record some of my exploits in the near future, once I have something to show. I intend to build a lattice across the valley I'm inhabiting and construct a sky castle (naturally) with a shaft leading down to my spawn fortress.

[TheGodBen]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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Wow. I think I'll stay out of MP for the time being, then. I don't even want to think about investing time into it if some dipshit is just going to fuck it up.

It's not so bad, just don't build near the spawn point. Most of the tall/fantastical buildings are built near the spawn, so griefers tend to stay in that area. I just walked down the road for a minute or two and built there, griefers tend not to go that far. During a major griefing session that left the Sky City looking like a warzone, all I lost was a single window.

froot wrote:

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TheGodBen, that server sounds suspiciously like the one griefed all to heck in this set of videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXK-C-xR-Kw

Nah, I don't think that's the server, there's very little snow on the server I'm on, and I haven't seen a single ice block yet. Sky Cities must be really common.

Either way, I've been avoiding SMP for that reason, myself. I'd love to build with other people, yet I don't trust anyone! Heck, I let my husband wander around my single player base the other day, and the first thing the man did was walk up and break one of my windows!

Luckily, most people online know how much work goes into making these structures, so they'll obey the rules of common decency. The griefers are just idiots that like to make trouble.

Also, do you guys do YouTube? I like seeing what people make - you should fraps your cool stuff and post a link!

I might if I can find a free alternative to Fraps that works well, but I don't have anything too impressive. I'm pleased with my mountain base and working portal network, but they're nothing to write home about.