Minecraft

[Capt. Vulcan]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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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!

Funny thing is the Wiki for the project links to a thread here at Trekbbs. Unfortunately all it shows is that people here can be kind of snobbish dorks.

Quick question about Minecraft. I've seen the 1st survival video on youtube, how do you know how to make stuff? In the video he says you just put the materials in the shape of what you want and it makes it, but... does it tell you? Or is there like a chart or a recipe list or something? I'm tempted to get in to this, but not sure how much micro-managing or alt-tabbing to gamefaqs I want to do to make a pickaxe or what have you.

[Robert Maxwell]

Check out Minepedia: Crafting recipes

The list is expanded every time there's an update and something is added.

I ended up making a diagram and using it as my desktop wallpaper on my second monitor so I can see what the recipes are as I'm playing. I don't have them all memorized yet.

[TheGodBen]

Capt. Vulcan wrote:

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Quick question about Minecraft. I've seen the 1st survival video on youtube, how do you know how to make stuff?

There's no tutorial or tool-tips for anything, but Notch is planning them once the game is finished; there's no point in making a tutorial now in case he changes things during development. The crafting page on the wiki is the only way to find out this stuff at the moment. It's not such a big deal, most of the recipes are easy to remember, and there's only 10-15 objects that you'll be making on a regular basis, most of the objects are speciality items that you'll make infrequently. Most of your time is spent building, mining and exploring, and you don't need a guide for that stuff.

[Robert Maxwell]

So, I've started using a little "resource saving" strategy when I'm mining: if I hit an area underground that's made of dirt, I switch to using my hands and burrow out all the dirt. I usually stand a good chance of finding coal, iron, and/or redstone in such areas, but primarily coal. And some of the underground dirt blobs are very large so you end up hollowing out quite a spacious area. Since it doesn't require any tools to do this (doing it with your hands is reasonably quick) it saves me consuming pickaxes.

[TheGodBen]

I logged on this afternoon to find this:



(Ignore the floating blocks in the distance, they're just a graphical glitch.)

That's Sky City on fire. Here's another picture close up.



Somehow, a band of griefers called the Red Faction Miners found a way to use fire on the server and they burned down practically all of Sky City. I spent about an hour with a few other guys trying to put out all the flames, which was difficult due to all the floating blocks. It was like the aftermath of a Mongol horde, practically the whole city was destroyed.

My own home was fairly badly damaged, but I managed to repair most of it. They destroyed my chests in the house but, luckily, they were too stupid to find my hidden mine under a hill near my house, so all my gold, iron and diamonds were safe. All I need to do is fix one wall and get my flashing redstone lights working again, then my house will be good as new. But Sky City is absolutely ruined, and the mayor there gave up because of how upset he was.

[Robert Maxwell]

Perhaps this is a stupid question but does no one make incremental backups of these persistent online worlds? At least that way they could revert to a backup from before something like this happened. Some people would lose their work but it would be better than just having everyone's work destroyed.

[Lindley]

Or, how about allowing one to install alarm systems which send a text to your phone when your structure is damaged. Then have a means to alert the moderators or take action against the offenders directly.

[Robert Maxwell]

Lindley wrote:

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Or, how about allowing one to install alarm systems which send a text to your phone when your structure is damaged. Then have a means to alert the moderators or take action against the offenders directly.

Once the game is in a more developed state I could see how certain areas might be assigned to specific players, and then forbid anyone else modifying blocks in that zone. That way you really could give people "property" in the game and have it be enforceable.

[TheGodBen]

There's backups made every hour, I think, but there was something like ten hours between the attack and the admin logging in, so a lot of people had repaired the damage to their buildings and did other stuff in that time. The admin held a vote if people wanted to do a rollback, a small few (including myself) voted yes, but the vast majority voted no. The admin doesn't like doing rollbacks anyway. When I first joined on Saturday, they did a 2-hour rollback for some reason and a lot of people bitched at him because they lost some of their work. A 10-hour rollback would have annoyed a lot more people.

[Robert Maxwell]

If the entire city was virtually destroyed I really wonder why people would be so against a rollback. Is it on principle that actions in the game world should have lasting consequences, or just petty bitching by people who don't want to lose whatever work they've done in the ensuing 10 hours, everyone else be damned?

[TheGodBen]

Sky City only had around 20 residents, most of the map survived intact or with minimal damage. On Gerp's Island (where I live) I only saw one building (a treehouse) burned down, while most of the rest of the buildings took little to no damage. People living in these areas don't want a rollback that will only benefit the "elite" that lived in the fantastical city in the sky. It's almost like a form of class warfare.

Interestingly, many people that were affected by the fire in the main settlement, or are just scared of further griefer attacks, appear to be taking part in an exodus to a location known as the Citadel. I followed the signs to it, and it's a small community around 15 minutes away from the main settlement, surrounded by walls or cliffs. I'm thinking of building a small house here myself, just for the hell of it.

[froot]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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I ended up making a diagram and using it as my desktop wallpaper on my second monitor so I can see what the recipes are as I'm playing. I don't have them all memorized yet.

That, sir, is a brilliant idea. I don't like leaving Minepedia up constantly because its white background makes windowed Minecraft all the harder to see when I'm somewhere dark


That's rotten you lost some of your stuff to fire, btw At least they weren't smart enough to dig for the buried treasure! Also, even though they're clearly total jerks, Red Faction Miners is a clever name. When I first heard about Minecraft, the first thing that honestly came to my mind was "I CAN DIG HOLES IN THE WALLS JUST LIKE RED FACTION?! I MUST BUY THIS GAME!" (Red Faction wasn't a fighting game to me; it was a hole-digging game. ) I think the second thought I had was something to do with Legos, but that's unrelated.

[Robert Maxwell]

Thanks, froot! If anyone would like, I could make an up-to-date (and less haphazard) version and post it here. It's designed for HD monitors. I play Minecraft in 1080p on one, then have the chart in 1080p on the other. If there is any interest I could put a bit of work into it.

Anyway, last night I continued with my "dirt clearing" strategy. It expanded my underground cave complex substantially--wound up connecting to several other cave systems. I cleared them out of dirt and resources and in a couple spots found I was near the surface, so I went ahead and dug my way out and set up some obvious entrance/exit points. I've now got three entryways fairly close together, but they lead to different parts of the cave system. They're connected to my spawn base via a lengthy underground tunnel. I need to make up a bunch of signs for navigating inside the complex, as it is easy to get lost. I intend to eventually clean up the complex and turn it into a series of rooms rather than just a bunch of crazy caves. Already did one room, probably a few hundred to go. At least I'll have an ample supply of cobblestone and gravel to work with.

I also built a house out of wood and tried to make it look nice. I managed to make a chandelier (fence posts, wood, and torches, suspended from the ceiling.)

After I got done with that I went exploring, found some new areas and some pumpkins. I took pictures of what I was doing so I might post those later.

Once I have my stuff in a more refined state maybe I'll record a video tour.

[froot]

^ I'm totally interested in the chart! I have a 4:3 monitor, though, since it's a drawing monitor. I can always edit it down to fit, though.

[Robert Maxwell]

I've made the chart as a web page, so you can use it with Active Desktop (if you're so inclined) or just take a screenshot and scale it. At full resolution it doesn't quite take up the full browser window on a 1080p monitor. If you scaled it down 25% it would probably fit just fine in 4:3.

I apologize if it's not well-organized. I nicked most of the images from Minepedia.

http://gorzek.com/recipes.html