Minecraft

[Owain Taggart]

Has anyone seen this water shader? Would likely break my computer Looks beautiful though.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/200-mod-spotlight-water-shader/

 

[TheGodBen]

I've seen it and it does look really nice, but I don't think it fits with Minecraft's aesthetic. The reflection is curvy, like real water, but Minecraft is blocky, so it looks weird to me. I think it would look better if the reflection was pixelated somehow.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, I agree. I think people tend to want too much out of Minecraft.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

Yeah, and then they say Notch should do more beta testing... even though this IS beta testing, going on right now

By the way, I was doing some pixel art in Classic mode, and who else should I find but Giygas, part of the randomly generated world?

I added red and black blocks to make it clearer, and sure enough, it's Giygas.

 

[TheGodBen]

The 1.8 trailer:

[yt]v=tYoO9XkCCHg[/yt]

I've been looking forward to this update since I first heard about it, but learning that the NPCs have been pushed back to 1.9 kinda ruins it for me. I'd prefer it if they pushed back the release a week and put some rudimentary NPCs in there so that the villages aren't so empty.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

I don't know. NPC's are one thing I'd like to see done very, very well in Minecraft. I'd rather wait until Notch and co. are sure that they've done the best they can on them before they're released, rather than wait for a hasty patch because of buggy AI or something.

 

[TheGodBen]

I want proper NPCs too, but I'd prefer place-holder NPCs in the 1.8 patch rather than abandoned villages. I'd like it if they took a few days to design the appearance of the NPCs and gave them the AI of zombie pigmen with a few modifications (such as preventing them from leaving the village). They could be completely reprogrammed for 1.9, the only similarity being their appearance.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

Another thing I'd like to see is more stuff to do with wolves. As it stands, there's not really much to do with them, especially in multiplayer because combat in SMP is mostly hit-and-miss. Maybe teach them how to do tricks, or have them patrol, or maybe an "aggressive" mode where they automatically attack nearby mobs.

 

[Owain Taggart]

The biggest thing about this update is the adventure update, so the fact that there aren't NPCs yet in the NPC villages doesn't bother me too much. I think there will be too much to do to notice.

But the interesting thing is, if you watch the behind the scenes video, they say that one of the villages will happen near the spawn point. Seeing as we have already lots built near our spawn point, I wonder how that would work.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The biggest thing about this update is the adventure update, so the fact that there aren't NPCs yet in the NPC villages doesn't bother me too much. I think there will be too much to do to notice.

But the interesting thing is, if you watch the behind the scenes video, they say that one of the villages will happen near the spawn point. Seeing as we have already lots built near our spawn point, I wonder how that would work.

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.

 

[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]

The biggest thing about this update is the adventure update, so the fact that there aren't NPCs yet in the NPC villages doesn't bother me too much. I think there will be too much to do to notice.

But the interesting thing is, if you watch the behind the scenes video, they say that one of the villages will happen near the spawn point. Seeing as we have already lots built near our spawn point, I wonder how that would work.

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.