Minecraft

[Robert Maxwell]

TheGodBen wrote:

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What do you need to run it? Because I caught the Minecraft bug the other night and spent yesterday building a bridge over to my monster trap, and now I have a hankering to convert that area into some sort of containment facility with walls and warning signs everywhere about the dangers of a containment breach. The world I uploaded is already out of date.

Nothing other than Windows. I just have a batch file and it uses the command-line FTP client built into Windows. I'm sure it would be easy as pie to write a *nix shell script to do something similar, too.

All you need is an FTP server where you have permission to upload stuff.

[Itisnotlogical]

TheGodBen wrote:

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A nice start. But I refuse to build in snow biomes until notch fixes it so that snow and ice reform after a couple of minutes. 5 months later and that still hasn't been fixed.

I saw a video with a snow trap that took advantage of the fact that snow would cover up the pressure plate and thought "Snow's cool! Notch wouldn't have taken that away!" And started hacking away at the side of a hill. Now all I have left is some uneven patches of snow and a lake of ice to prove that I built a house in the snow. Much sadness

[Cutter John]

Yeah, I'd love to have reforming snow and ice. I always live in fear of falling through a hole in the ice and drowning.

Also, regenerating tree leaves, flowers and mushrooms that multiply when you plant them...and I'd really like to see falling snow come back. Oooh I could make a list.

[Robert Maxwell]

It's a bit ridiculous that snow hasn't been added back in yet. I think there are even some mods out there that basically cause constant snowfall in snow biomes and they work. It can't be that insanely difficult, it's likely just a low priority.

[TheGodBen]

itisnotlogical wrote:

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I saw a video with a snow trap that took advantage of the fact that snow would cover up the pressure plate and thought "Snow's cool! Notch wouldn't have taken that away!" And started hacking away at the side of a hill. Now all I have left is some uneven patches of snow and a lake of ice to prove that I built a house in the snow. Much sadness

Back before the big halloween update, there was something like a 10% chance that any new world would be a snow world where it snowed all the time and ground-snow and ice reformed within a matter of minutes. But once biomes were introduced, not only did it not snow in snow biomes, but it also stopped snowing in former snow worlds. Notch said that he was going to fix that but it has been 5 months now and nothing has happened with it.

The more I think about it, that halloween update was a bad idea because he tried to do too much and did none of it very well. Biomes still don't work properly, they're too small and the biome-specific plants and mobs still haven't materialised, except for different shapes of tree and leaves. Nether portals never worked properly without spending 20 minutes fixing them and the update that Notch claims fixed that problem managed to make it worse. The new mob-spawning mechanism was so terrible that Notch reverted to the old one in a matter of days. Fish were supposed to be an actual mob, but they ended up being an inventory item. Making torches a temporary light-source never happened.

He should have spent the next few weeks following that update fixing everything that was wrong with it, but instead people kept complaining about survival multiplayer and he focused his attention there. Since then, it seems like Jeb has been the guy working on adding new stuff to singleplayer.

Cutter John wrote:

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Yeah, I'd love to have reforming snow and ice. I always live in fear of falling through a hole in the ice and drowning.

My first time in a snow biome I broke the ice and dived in. Stupid mistake. By the time that I made my way out I only had 1 heart left.

[Robert Maxwell]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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Nothing other than Windows. I just have a batch file and it uses the command-line FTP client built into Windows. I'm sure it would be easy as pie to write a *nix shell script to do something similar, too.

All you need is an FTP server where you have permission to upload stuff.

Derp derp, I'm an idiot. You also need a command-line zip utility for packaging the world files. I use 7zip, but you could use anything. Maybe I could turn it into a Python script...

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, Ben, I agree. So, it seems like half-assed Biomes that don't even really act like Biomes. What was the point then? It's severely undercutting the potential. Feels like the kind of updates we get are scattered all over the place with no real improvements to what's already out there.

[Itisnotlogical]

^^

Yeah. There should be some mobs exclusive to certain biomes, like goats in the mountains, birds in the forest, polar bears in the snow... and creepers EVERYWHERE! As usual.

[Robert Maxwell]

I agree that the biome concept is pretty half-assed right now.

One wonders if they'll even go back to it, or allow for more world-generation options.

[Cutter John]

Well, I cut them some slack since the games still in Beta, and because they're still just a handful of guys. I do hope its mor epolished by the time we get to the full version.

[judge alba]

i've decieded to buy minecraft and i have a question, what dose the stone cubes look like?.
so far i'v got gravel,sand and dirt not sure what they all do yet.
are there certain areas that make certain cubes?

[TheGodBen]

Stone is stone-like. It's grey. You'll either find it in cliff-faces or under a few meters of dirt. You can't mine it by hand though, you'll need a wooden pick, which you can craft from wood, which you collect by punching tree trunks. Here's the crafting chart to explain all the different tools and how they're made.

Certain resources can only be found at certain levels (diamond, gold and others are very deep under the surface), and snow and ice only exist in snow biomes, but other than that you should be able to find everything else anywhere in the world. Except for blocks native to the Nether realm, but if you're just starting out you shouldn't be thinking about going to the Nether yet.

[Canadave]

The best way to find stone is to either dig down three or four blocks, or to look for cliff faces, which usually have exposed stone. When you see it, it'll be pretty obvious, I guarantee it.

[Cutter John]

Welcome to Minecraftia, Judge!

Rock also immediately turns to cobblestone as soon as you dig it up.

Lets see...

Dirt - soft block that you can plant trees, wheat, and flowers on.

Gravel - Chunks of small pebbles that actually obey gravity. Very easy to dig through (i.e down stand under them while you dig). For about every ten blocks of gravel you dig you get a piece of Flint, which can be used to make a firestarter, or arrows.

[judge alba]

theres a grey cube that i whack but it just disspears after a lot of whacking, if that's the rock then i'll need a wooden pick axe first..