Minecraft

[137th Gebirg]

Hopefully this patch will fix the connectivity and display issues I've recently experienced.

[Robert Maxwell]

I don't think connectivity issues have anything to do with the game client, but the network setup Mojang uses.

What kinds of display issues are you having? I know Minecraft doesn't play well with some video card drivers and crashes a lot. It runs rock solid for me, though.

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ It was working very well for me, too, up until this past weekend. I mentioned in a recent post on the last page that I was getting some connectivity error every time I bring the client up the first time. Trying the second time gets me through, but then the screen goes all wonky, the monitor clicks, turns off (no video signal any more) and the machine freezes. I should try out some of my other 3D graphics-intensive games to see if I have problems with them. In thinking about this further, the last time this happened (about 7 years ago), it was a sign that the video card was dying. Replacing it fixed everything, although I'm not sure why a broken video card would interfere w/ network connectivity, unless it was sending bogus information back to the CPU, bogging it down, but that is a wholly uneducated supposition on my part.

Having done some additional web research, connectivity and graphical issues could also be attributed to a corrupted JRE.

[Robert Maxwell]

Wow, that is weird. Never heard of it doing that before. I wish I had some insight on that but I don't.

[Owain Taggart]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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In keeping with Minecraft tradition, I suspect new features are only generated in new chunks, so there would be no NPC village magically cropping up near our spawn point. I am still considering pruning explored but undeveloped chunks once we go to 1.8 or 1.9, though. I doubt any of us just wants to wipe the slate clean.

An alternative would be to generate a brand-new world, then copy and paste the structures we built in our "old" world into a designated area. I could tweak the landscape enough so it's not too discontinuous, but even that whole process might be too radical for us. I am open to suggestions.

Yeah, that seems a bit drastic, not to mention it would be a lot of work. I'd rather just see where the update takes us.

[Itisnotlogical]

I like the idea about pruning off explored but undeveloped chunks, and maybe picking out a few structures on the edge of the generated map that we really don't visit anymore so that those chunks can be sacrificed too.

[Owain Taggart]

The problem with that idea is that we've been growing and building things off the generated map. I had to chart that Titanic location by looking at the c10t map.

[Itisnotlogical]

Well, maybe we'll just have to install the update and explore more chunks. Other than that I don't really have any idea what to do about this...

[Reverend]

Have you tried MCEdit? It's a graphic world editing program. It's a pretty straight forward matter to delete unused chunks and you can see what you're deleting so there's no feat of accidentally erasing any projects. I used it back when the biomes changed and my main fortress found itself in a winter zone and it's interior moat froze over. I moved the whole thing (right down to the bedrock) clear across the map into a newly generated temperate zone.

[Cutter John]

This might get shot down pretty quickly, but what about the idea of generating a second world just for adventuring and exploring once 1.8 comes out? Maybe even put Creepers back in. Seems like a lot of our current map is explored/mined out.

[Robert Maxwell]

MCEdit is exactly what I will use to do the pruning. And I'm not going to prune any area where there is building going on. I will spare a large area around the Titanic.

I don't have the horsepower on my server to run two instances of Minecraft, though.

[Owain Taggart]

So, if I'm getting this right, you can remove a lot of chunks anywhere so that they regenerate. In that case, it might actually be possible to do it near the spawn point, but on the other side that's less populated so that we don't have to go too far to find a village. I'll propose that anyone who finds a village makes a path to it. Eventually we could have a main path that these branch out from.

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, I can do that. I can selectively prune chunks so they will be regenerated by the server using the new code. So that would mean the new biome/NPC village code.

[Owain Taggart]

Sounds good. I think there's still a lot of unexplored land and land that has been explored but hasn't been built on. You can prune the area I explored north of Phil's island leading up to the Titanic. I only built little huts there because I knew I couldn't do the journey I had set out all in one day, so those can go.

[TheGodBen]

I've read that some servers are planning a great migration after the release. They're going to walk as a group for an hour or so until they find a nice location to set up a new town then set that area as the new spawn.

I spent a little time today digging a 1km tunnel through the Nether. I just need to plop down a portal, throw my inventory into a chest, step through and hope that I'm not "under" an ocean biome.