Minecraft

Discussion in 'Gaming' started by TheGodBen, Oct 23, 2010.

  1. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 30, 2008
    Location:
    Ireland
    Does anybody else play this game? There has been a lot of hype about it in the last few months and that put me off the game as it seemed like just another artistic indie game that would inevitably let me down, so I ignored all the praise it was getting. But then I saw a video on Kotaku titled something like "How to survive your first night in Minecraft" and I was intrigued; I thought it was a level-building game like Little Big Planet, I didn't realise there was survival, resource gathering, and base building. So I took a gamble and bought the Alpha for €10, and I've been hooked ever since.

    What's so appealing to me is that it's a pure sandbox game; there's no goals beyond those that you set yourself. Want to build a giant castle? Mine some stone and away you go. Want to explore that island you see in the distance? Build a boat and try not to get lost (the game's map is randomly generated and theoretically 8 times the surface area of the Earth). Want to blow up a mountain? Kill a thousand creepers, use their gunpowder to make TNT, and set the charge. Want to build a rollercoaster? Mine some iron and try to make the best rollercoaster you can. My current longterm goal is to build a rail-line between my main base and a cottage I built on the other side of my island. It takes about 7 minutes to get there by boat, so I'd like to have a more relaxing way to traverse the distance where I can just view the scenery.

    What's more, the game is surprisingly scary. When you get lost in a cave and are struggling to find your way back out, it can be quite intense, especially if you're after finding valuable resources and you're trying to get them back to the surface. Just tonight I was exploring a new section of cave when I suddenly heard the twang of a skeleton shooting an arrow at me. I jumped in my seat, accidentally hit the throw button, and threw my sword down into a pitch-black cave underneath me. I ended up having to slide down a waterfall into darkness in order to get my sword back. :lol:


    Anyway, here's some pictures of my world.

    [​IMG]

    This is Godfrey Keep, which is the hub of my underground tunnel network. Yeah, it looks small and boring on the outside, but it's connected to a natural cave underneath, which is where I have my underground farm.

    (In case you're wondering, the sand towers are to keep the giant spiders away, I can't stand the sound of them slurping outside my house all night.)

    [​IMG]

    A minute's walk away from Godfrey Keep is Impossible Falls Cottage, built next to a waterfall I created that isn't physically possible.

    [​IMG]

    This one is kind of hard to see, but that's Atlantis Station, my glass-walled underwater base. It took 3 hours to build and I nearly drowned twice, but it's an amazing sight to see when you sail past it at night.

    [​IMG]

    And that's the door into Hades Station, my underground base built within a massive cavern complex. It's from here that I've based my search for diamonds. So far, I've found 2. :vulcan:


    That series starts out a little slow, but if you keep watching you'll be amazed at the base he ends up with, it's an incredible piece of work.

    As for the game, it's currently in Alpha so it's half-price, but it will go to full price once it reaches Beta. You'll receive all the updates until the game is finally "finnished", just remember that it's not finished yet and there is some bugs. Not that that should put you off, this game has more than enough playability as-is to make it worth the price.
     
  2. Iasius

    Iasius Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2003
    Yeah, I've been playing this game a lot lately. Partially MP, but I also recently started my own SP world. I've built my main residence into the side of a mountain, dug a mining shaft and found an absolutely enormous network of caverns. And my last project was building a sky farm to get some regular food production.

    I'm really still gathering resources for the most part, especially iron. I always need more iron. Especially since I plan on building a minecart system next.

    Not much to see yet, so no screenshots for now.



    I've also been watching a few Let's Play Minecraft series on youtube. X's series in particular was very nice.

    How long have you been searching? I found 14 diamond just yesterday in about two hours of cave searching, plus 477 coal, 35 gold, 124 iron and 504 red dust (well, I mined 477 coal, there's lots more), then my inventory was full, my diamond pickax had broken and I was out of arrows so I headed back up. Generally I find diamond near lava.
     
  3. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 30, 2008
    Location:
    Ireland
    I stumbled across that cavern complex a couple of days into playing and found a single diamond ore nearby. I mined it, dug up to the surface for easy access to the cavern (turns out I was under the water :alienblush:), and I built a base there last week. Since then I've searched the cavern on and off looking for all the resources I can find, but I've only found 1 more diamond. :wtf: I see videos online of guys like X finding diamond veins with 4 or 5 diamonds in a single area and I get jealous. I want a diamond pickaxe to mine obsidian, but I'm one diamond short. :scream:

    On the plus side, I have enough coal, iron and redstone to last me a long time. I've given up on mining for now due to post-traumatic stress from an attack by three skeletons, two zombies, two creepers and a spider, all in the vicinity of some lava. After that, I went to my holiday home on the other side of the island, that's my happy place. :mallory:
     
  4. Iasius

    Iasius Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2003
    That's odd about not finding more diamond. I guess it's a bit random. That cave system I mentioned is really huge and I found altogether 26 diamond in it. I did expend about 350 arrows exploring that cave system though.


    I think you can mine obsidian with an iron pickax. It supposedly just takes even more time, I've heard around a minute per block. But I easily get bored mining obsidian even with diamond pickaxes, so that was never an option for me.
     
  5. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 30, 2008
    Location:
    Ireland
    The cave complex I'm in is really big too, I spent the last two days exploring it, and according to the cartographer, I've still only searched around 1/3 of the caves in the area. I might need to dig into the walls in search of it because it's just not appearing out in the open.
     
  6. Quinton O'Connor

    Quinton O'Connor Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Apr 3, 2010
    Location:
    Durham, NC
    So, I looked at the pictures and mind = blown.

    I'm buffering more YouTube vids immediately. The first few were plenty entertaining (and you called them slow!) but this -- this is epic.

    Yeah... I'm definitely buying this game.
     
  7. SilentP

    SilentP Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    May 21, 2009
    Location:
    is in a very lonely Corner of the Circle
    Me and my friends were mad about it for quite a while, though I was kinda lucky in a way that for some reason my laptop didnt seem to like it, otherwise all my free time would be gone :p

    Had a save file on my friends laptop, and startedbuilding a small village and statue. The things my friends made included huge castles and the like, excellent stuff :)

    It really is a good game.
     
  8. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 30, 2008
    Location:
    Ireland
    The first videos are fun; the first few nights of the game are the most challenging because you don't have proper shelter or resources, so X dies a lot more in the early videos than he does later on. But it's pretty much videos of X collecting resources, digging a cave, and putting up a wooden fortress. Once he's finished with the basics of the game, that's when he starts work on Mine Shaft 1, and that's when the series really took off.

    As for epic, nothing can match the scale of the attempt to create a 1:1 model of the Enterprise-D, or the recreation of Bioshock's Rapture.

    Both my desktop and laptop seem to love the game, so my life is screwed. :lol:
     
  9. andyh

    andyh Cadet Newbie

    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2010
    I've been playing this for a while, and I've just finished my landing party skins:

    [​IMG]
     
  10. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 12, 2001
    Location:
    space
    I had played the original version a while back and thought it was interesting. I bought the Alpha last night and was up until 4AM. :lol: This shit is sick. I started out digging an underground lair and kept working until I had a little castle. I've got two mines accessible from the interior of the castle, too. I had a third but I inadvertently flooded it. I almost lost another mine to lava but I managed to plug it in time.

    I was set back several times by exploding zombies. It's mostly annoying because I have to replace my front door every time it happens.
     
  11. Iasius

    Iasius Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2003
    I decided to post some screenshots. I've started construction on a minecart track connecting the various places I visit frequently. It doesn't (yet) go into my actual mines though.

    Here's a view of my main house. On the left outside the picture is a minecart station and a door outside. In the picture then follows my main storage and crafting room. Here I have currently 10 sorted and labeled large boxes partially full of all sorts of more or less valuable stuff. :)

    Next is my fireplace / waste disposal, followed by the three furnaces and the door to my first mine shaft (goes 85 blocks deep vertically).

    [​IMG]

    This leads to my present cave system. I first explored many of the natural mines there, but lately I needed a whole lot of cobblestone (to refine again to placeable smooth stone) and I've started on a methodical underground quarry. At some point I got a bit careless with my torch placing and had a skeleton spawn behind me. :eek:

    [​IMG]

    The following is a portion of the cavemap generated using cartographer. I've broken into a new cave complex in the bottom of the map which I'll be exploring soonish since I'll need more iron for the cave minecart system. I already placed 216 iron worth (nearly half of what I had) of minecart tracks and I want a much larger network eventually.

    [​IMG]

    This is the view from the minecart track towards and into my house. I've installed autocart (a mod) so I don't have to built ugly booster tracks.

    [​IMG]

    In the background is my greenhouse / sky farm.

    [​IMG]

    The track leads to the station from which I go hunting (mobs and animals) and my gravel mine is also located there.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  12. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 12, 2001
    Location:
    space
    Impressive work, Iasius! :techman:

    I think I'm going to give up on the first world I generated. It pissed me off too much. I found an awesome cave complex full of redstone, diamonds, gold, iron, and coal--it had everything. It also had lots of lava. And it was full of skeletons, zombies, and creepers. I'd managed to avoid them and got myself a good load of loot and then a skeleton came out of nowhere and shot me into the lava. I lost everything. :( I think I'll start over. My castle kinda sucked anyway.
     
  13. Lindley

    Lindley Moderator with a Soul Premium Member

    Joined:
    Nov 30, 2001
    Location:
    Bonney Lake, WA
    Sig line.
     
  14. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 12, 2001
    Location:
    space
    :lol: Yeah. I didn't really do my homework before I started playing--I had no idea there were those "Creepers" who blow up when they get near you. The first time it happened I didn't even see it so I wasn't sure what the hell happened, I just heard an explosion and I was dead.

    I did manage to kill one yesterday and discovered that's how you get gunpowder. :lol:
     
  15. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 30, 2008
    Location:
    Ireland
    That is amazing work, Iasius, it puts my efforts to shame. Your minecart system especially, all I have is a single line, powered by slow-moving coal carts, that terminates out in the middle of nowhere.


    This is my world:
    [​IMG]

    It's roughly 35MB, and I've decided to stop all exploration until biomes are introduced in the Halloween update. I spend most of my time around my main base, but sometimes if I have a bad experience mining I'll head out to my holiday home that I built out in a small island in a scenic cove. Originally, you could only get there from the north-west, but I cut out a little canal so that I could get there from the southern channel as that's a much shorter journey. Ultimately, I want to have a rail-line connecting my main base to my holiday home, but so far I've only reached the small purple base. I have two temporary shelters that I built while on a 6-day expedition early into the game, and I haven't returned to them since. The brown one in particular is horrible, it's a small wooden shack on a hill, but it's a monster hotspot. Both nights that I stayed there, I woke up the next morning to find 3-4 spiders and 4 creepers waiting outside. :scream:

    To the east is my monster trap, I built it on another landmass because I didn't want a giant 50x50x5 chamber ruining the view near my base. It's simple enough, water channels lead the monsters to be killed by lava/drowning, and I receive the drops from behind a glass wall. It took me a real-life day to build, and it's not well optimised, but it gets me around 300 drops per hour and all I have to do is stand at the collection-point.

    [​IMG]

    That's a close-up of my main base. Most of it is underground, and it's all connected by tunnels, with the main keep being the hub of the network. Originally, the entire area around the keep was sand, but I was annoyed by my tunnels continually collapsing, so I transplanted the sand for soil. That grey island to the east used to be green, but I ended up taking almost all the soil from it to complete the transplant, so now it is a barren rock. :lol: On the plus side, I had a hell of a lot of sand to convert into glass, and that's how I built my underwater station.


    Diamond update: After a week of searching, I found two diamonds almost directly under my mining base. :lol: They were hidden in a small gap that I hadn't seen, directly above a lava pool. I mined them, made a diamond pickaxe, and mined out two full stacks of obsidian. That should be enough for me to make at least 9 portals to hell once the Halloween update is released.

    Something similar happened to me once, a skeleton shot me near a lava pool, I died, and half my inventory fell in the lava. I lost the iron and gold I had mined.

    The worst thing that happened to me was when I found my first dungeon, and there was 4 or 5 zombies in there. It was only 5 blocks from the surface, so rather than do the easy thing and kill the zombies, I decided to mine to the surface and let the sunlight kill them. While I was doing this, a sheep walked over, pushed me in and I was torn to pieces. I lost my only bow and arrows and I decided to try and get them back, so I went to my keep and got my spare weapons, tools and armour, ran back to the dungeon, accidentally fell in before I was ready, and died again. I lost my main supplies, I lost my backup supplies, and worst of all... the bloody sheep got away before I could kill it! :klingon:
     
  16. Quinton O'Connor

    Quinton O'Connor Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Apr 3, 2010
    Location:
    Durham, NC
    Well, it's gonna be a bit before I get this game, now. My neighbor got me Fallout 3 the other day and I'm now sucked into the Capital Wasteland...
     
  17. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 12, 2001
    Location:
    space
    Probably a wise decision. I don't think I'm going to be playing anything else for a while. :lol:
     
  18. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 30, 2008
    Location:
    Ireland
    I was up late last night working on a base I'm carving out inside a mountain. I spent the (in-game) night working on a ladder connecting the base to my tunnel network, and when I got back to the base, the sun was rising so I decided to put in large windows to take in the view. One of the windows required me to step outside to remove soil that was blocking the view, and even though I didn't hear anything above me, I had a bad feeling there was a creeper on the mountaintop that would jump down on my as soon as I stepped outside. I cautiously stepped outside while looking up, and nothing happened. This game makes me really paranoid for no good reason. :lol:

    A minute later I was clearing the soil away when I saw the horrible green blob fall right in front of me. I managed to survive, but I shouted "YOU PRICK!" at the top of my lungs at 3am. It's not that he jumped down and destroyed my work, it's that he waited a full minute, allowed me to get into a false sense of security, made me feel silly for being so paranoid... and then he decides to ruin my day.

    Still, I'm not as bad as this guy:

    [yt]v=rF9xMNuAfwE[/yt]

    [yt]v=L_S_7DRfCow[/yt]
     
  19. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 12, 2001
    Location:
    space
    I built a mob spawner last night: 24x24x2 room, no lights. Working on adding lava and water to it to make it a trap/loot machine. I've looked at some examples and I don't quite get it but I'm working on it. :lol:
     
  20. Peak

    Peak Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2002
    Location:
    Sweden
    The Halloween-update is out.. :)