Minecraft

[Azurephoenix]

Yeah, but that just means more zombies/spiders/creepers/skeletons...

Some new enemies would be cool.

I mean... what good is a fortress with no enemies to fight?

 

[figmentPez]

Some new enemies would be cool.

There are new enemies coming with the Halloween update.

I still haven't seen any slimes in my game yet.

 

[Azurephoenix]

Cool... can't wait for that update...

I wonder if multiplayer will get some serious patching with that update. I want to be able to fight off zombie hordes with my friends!

Actually... a Minecraft server for the Halforums crew would be a pretty cool idea I think.

 

[PatrThom]

Leaving the seams open is not good enough. If you want to be safe, you have to completely enclose a lava tube and not leave the diagonals open. I've had creepers bite me because of this (creepers won't start to hiss unless they get within one square of you, leaving the diagonals open lets them get within one square of you, etc).

Also, I have a relatively tiny (we're talking something like 20x30) outpost which seems to generate so many creepers that it's borderline insane. If I stay in it at night (during the gen phase), it is not unusual to see 4 or 5 creepers bouncing outside my walls in the morning, and that's after the sun has killed off the undead. I go through so many arrows that way...

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

Cool... can't wait for that update...

I wonder if multiplayer will get some serious patching with that update. I want to be able to fight off zombie hordes with my friends!

Actually... a Minecraft server for the Halforums crew would be a pretty cool idea I think.

It'd take a pretty beefy machine... minecraft isn't into the whole "sharing the cpu" thing. As long as there's less than 5 or 7 people on at once, a regular desktop might be ok though.

 

[Azurephoenix]

What kind of machine would you need? I'm assuming the best CPU you can afford type of thing? GPU wouldn't really be an issue with a dedicated server would it? What kind of bandwidth would a game like this use?

I'm kind of curious as I want to set up my own server for my buddies at some point.

 

[GasBandit]

What kind of machine would you need? I'm assuming the best CPU you can afford type of thing? GPU wouldn't really be an issue with a dedicated server would it? What kind of bandwidth would a game like this use?

I'm kind of curious as I want to set up my own server for my buddies at some point.

A strong dual core at the minimum. I have a kentsfield quad core and even it has trouble keeping up sometimes. It mostly becomes an issue when you go exploring new territory for the first time.

As for bandwidth, as long as you've got at least 50 kbytes/sec up, you should be fine for the most part. There will still be glitches from time to time.

 

[Far]

Could we not pool some money together and maybe rent one? Don't know how possible that'd be. I was looking at prices for a couple of friends and I and it seems like it'd be about 30-40 US/month, more if we wanted it to have more RAM, which is what minecraft needs to run smootly with multiple players.

 

[figmentPez]

Haha! I saw a skeleton riding a spider today! I was out levelling some ground for my next big project, and at dawn I went over to toy with a skeleton, not realizing he had buddies. I heard the slurping hiss of a spider, and realized that it wasn't just part of the group, it was being ridden by one of the skellies!

 

[Jiarn]

Watching the Rapture video, I was overwhelmed to the point of shelfing the game for a while. I really do enjoy it every now and then still though.

 

[Rubicon]

Never leave base, with a friggin compass..

So my mansion is coming along. I got the roof complete and set a bunch of fires inside and the entire indoor perimeter is set with torches. Ain't nothing spawning inside.

I go tree hunting. I need more massive amounts of wood to create the second and third levels inside, stairs, etc. No problem, I aim in a straight line and just start lumberjacking my way across the map. Well night hit, and I put up a tiny stone structure to weather the night. Daylight comes.. and I'm lost.

I've spent the last two days wandering around day, and a little at night at peaceful, looking for my base. I've be fucking lost for two days. And thats with a giant tower as a landmark.

Rule 1, always carry a compass

 

[PatrThom]

Dig yourself about 40 or so dirt to carry with you. That way you can build yourself a tower under your feet (look down, jump, place dirt, repeat) so you can look around wherever you are. Drop an occasional torch (or build a dirt tower as above*) every so often to blaze your trail.

--Patrick
*How do you get down? Build 2 towers, dig straight down the one you don't want to keep.

 

[strawman]

Never leave base, with a friggin compass..

So my mansion is coming along. I got the roof complete and set a bunch of fires inside and the entire indoor perimeter is set with torches. Ain't nothing spawning inside.

I go tree hunting. I need more massive amounts of wood to create the second and third levels inside, stairs, etc. No problem, I aim in a straight line and just start lumberjacking my way across the map. Well night hit, and I put up a tiny stone structure to weather the night. Daylight comes.. and I'm lost.

I've spent the last two days wandering around day, and a little at night at peaceful, looking for my base. I've be fucking lost for two days. And thats with a giant tower as a landmark.

Rule 1, always carry a compass

Start digging. Find the stuff you need to build a compass, and on your way back blaze a trail with torches so you can easily come back to your summer castle.

Still, I'm surprised you can't go in a wide circle and find the trees you cut down in a line, and follow the floating foliage back to camp. After a few days, though, I guess the wood grows back, so it might be too late for that.

Just start a second mine, I say.

 

[figmentPez]

Why are you wandering in search of trees? They're so easy to grow.

1. Knock down the leaves left from trees (don't waste tools doing it) and collect the saplings that fall.
2. Find a small patch of mostly level ground, in a safe area.
3. Plant torches and saplings in a checkerboard pattern.
4. Go make some axes or something else while you wait for the first tree to sprout (a day or so, probably)
5. Cut trees as fast as you can. You might want to climb up on top of the leaves and work your way down because they're going to be going up fast and tall.

 

[drifter]

Never leave base, with a friggin compass..

So my mansion is coming along. I got the roof complete and set a bunch of fires inside and the entire indoor perimeter is set with torches. Ain't nothing spawning inside.

I go tree hunting. I need more massive amounts of wood to create the second and third levels inside, stairs, etc. No problem, I aim in a straight line and just start lumberjacking my way across the map. Well night hit, and I put up a tiny stone structure to weather the night. Daylight comes.. and I'm lost.

I've spent the last two days wandering around day, and a little at night at peaceful, looking for my base. I've be fucking lost for two days. And thats with a giant tower as a landmark.

Rule 1, always carry a compass

Start digging. Find the stuff you need to build a compass, and on your way back blaze a trail with torches so you can easily come back to your summer castle.

Still, I'm surprised you can't go in a wide circle and find the trees you cut down in a line, and follow the floating foliage back to camp. After a few days, though, I guess the wood grows back, so it might be too late for that.

Just start a second mine, I say.[/QUOTE]

Just download Cartograph and generate a map, I say. I got lost without a compass and figured I'd just wander around 'til I saw a familiar landmark (I had been following the coastline, so I didn't think it would be too hard). After a while I got fed up and used Cartograph to see where the hell I was. Turns out I got turned around somewhere and was going in the exact opposite direction I needed to, and had effectively doubled the size of my world.

 

[GasBandit]

There's also a reason the first thing I do when finding a new site is build a road, if not an elevated minecart track.

 

[Azurephoenix]

Hey GasBandit, I'm thinking of setting up a multiplayer server just for myself and one other friend (maybe two). Do I have to run a dedicated server or can I play on the machine that is hosting the game as well?

Will an Intel Core 2 Quad 9300 be enough horsepower to run such a thing?

 

[GasBandit]

Hey GasBandit, I'm thinking of setting up a multiplayer server just for myself and one other friend (maybe two). Do I have to run a dedicated server or can I play on the machine that is hosting the game as well?

Will an Intel Core 2 Quad 9300 be enough horsepower to run such a thing?

You can play on the same machine. And the C2Q 9300 is a "Yorkfield" processor (one up the chain from my "Kentsfield") so I think you should be fine.

 

[Azurephoenix]

Awesome... I can't wait for multiplayer survival mode to come out... thanks Gas.

And if you guys haven't already seen this:

Minecraft Halloween Update preview: meet the Ghasts | PC Gamer

Check out the new hell dimension, the ghasts and some new blocks. Looks like good stuff.

 

[figmentPez]

The materials you choose to make a project out of really make a difference in completion time. Building out of cobblestone? Boom, done. Building out of obsidian and cloth? Grab a Snickers, it's going to be a while.

My current project requires:
282 Obsidian
280 Cloth
104 Half Blocks
2 Gold Ore
1 Gold Block
1 Diamond Block
2 Iron Ore
2 Iron Blocks
2 Brick Blocks
2 Clay Blocks
2 Glass
2 Wood Blocks
8 Smooth Stone
8 Dirt or Wood Plank (I haven't decided)
8 Restone Torches
4 Bookcases
2 Forges
2 Chests
2 Crafting Tables
A tree
A cactus
8 Flowers (or possibly 8 torches)

No, I'm not saying what it is until I finish, but it's a lot more work than I thought it would be.

 

[Gusto]

Fig, I wish I could rep you again for using an ancient Snickers catchphrase.

 

[doomdragon6]

I made a story-based Minecraft blog if any of you are interested. Thread here: http://www.halforums.com/forum/t15411/#post446541

 

[GasBandit]

The materials you choose to make a project out of really make a difference in completion time. Building out of cobblestone? Boom, done. Building out of obsidian and cloth? Grab a Snickers, it's going to be a while.

My current project requires:
282 Obsidian

Well THERE'S your problem. That stuff takes FOREVER to dig up, and not all that easy to find in that kind of amount, even if you go dumping water on every lava pool you find.

 

[figmentPez]

Well THERE'S your problem. That stuff takes FOREVER to dig up, and not all that easy to find in that kind of amount, even if you go dumping water on every lava pool you find.

I'm doing a cast-in-place method. I ran a minecart track from my mining basecamp to the nearest pool of lava, and I'm transferring six buckets of lava at a time to the project site. I'm not sure it's actually faster than mining the obsidian, but I enjoy it more and it doesn't take a diamond pick to do it. I could cut the time down by making more buckets, but I can't bring myself to spend the iron.

As for quantity, that is really not a problem. There are huge lava pits in the caves I've found. Not only wide, but deep as well. In addition to the one I'm emptying bucket by bucket, I'd also found one at the bottom of a natural waterfall. I got roughly 100 obsidian out of that one before I started running into trouble with fresh lava coming in from above the current water level. I started digging around try and figure out the limits of the pool, and I gave up after realizing it extended into a whole new cavern system. With enough time, buckets and diamond picks, I could probably rebuild my entire tower out of obsidian.

 

[AshburnerX]

Yeah, once you go deep enough, you can find huge pools of lava source blocks just waiting to be nabbed. Casting the lava in place actually makes a lot more sense too, if your not swimming in diamonds.

 

[Green_Lantern]

Yeah, once you go deep enough, you can find huge pools of lava source blocks just waiting to be nabbed. Casting the lava in place actually makes a lot more sense too, if your not swimming in diamonds.

^That would be the greatest swimming pool EVER.

 

[figmentPez]

Project complete! As might have been guessed from my materials list, I made a chessboard.

I didn't want to build big enough to actually construct pieces out of obsidian and sheep fluff... er, cloth blocks (I love the sound it makes when you place it) so I made the pieces out of various blocks. I really like how the stone side turned out, not so much the wood side.

Wood

Stone


Oh, and that's the default texture set. I've actually been using the Painterly pack of textures recently:

Painterly Aerial View

Painterly Stone

Painterly Wood

---------- Post added at 08:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:44 PM ----------

Animal Cannon!

 

[drifter]

I built a mobgrinder 'cause I need lots of TNT. It probably wasn't worth the effort (I really should just have used MineEdit or something), but it's pretty cool to see two full stacks of gunpowder accumulate in about 6 minutes. After about 15 minutes I had accumulated about 700 drops. If anyone is interested, plans are here.

 

[figmentPez]

Awesome video.



I don't care how much external editing it took to create that, it's still beautiful.

53MB world, my world is just over 5MB. :wtf:


EDIT: Embeded the video, but you should still view it higher res.

Also, creeper art:

Source

 

[drifter]

I'm surprised that's only 53MB. Would have expected it to be much bigger.

 

[Rob King]

Very seriously considered not getting this game, seeing as I'm probably not going to be able to play it much this winter. But for the sake of $15 ...

I am so glad I got it. It doesn't run very well on my MacBook. Serious frame rate issues, but I'm having a great time building my world. I'm still in my first area. I dug a shaft to the bottom of the map, and then branched tunnels off the shaft in all four directions every twenty blocks down. I haven't even mined half of the area's potential yet.

In order to make wood gathering easier, I flattened the hill above my home and used it to plant a grove. Every so many days I burn away the leaves and chop whatever wood remains. I've begun to build a fortress wall around my hill, more for want of something to do with all of my stone that I was hauling out of my shaft than anything else. I'll post some screens later on.

Seriously. What an amazingly fun game.

 

[Cheesy1]

A guided tour of my home sweet home:

 

[figmentPez]

ARGH! Doors go on the outside Cheesy! Do you want skeletons firing arrows at you through your door? Also, put in some damn stairs you bunny-hopping newb!

Seriously, though, that is some awesome work, very impressive. I really love the fountain in the main foyer. It looks great.

A few questions:
1. What did you use to record that?
2. What fuel did you use for smelting all that smooth stone?
3. When are you going to build a minecart system to get around that giant complex faster?

 

[Cheesy1]

I like the doors that way, they trap the skeletons in the little cubby they make. Besides, with how much lighting I have on my plateau, I hardly ever worry about skeletons at my door anymore. And bunny-hopping is good for you, works your legs! :tongue: (Actually, I left them like that inside the castle because at the moment you can't make smooth-looking stairs, only cobblestone and wood ones.)

As for your questions:

1. I downloaded HyperCam as it was free. Downside is that the in-game sound it recorded was very off, so I'll have to play around with it to try and fix it for next time. Edited the video in Adobe Premiere afterwards.

2. At first, a shitload of wood! Once I had mined plenty of coal for both torches and smelting, I switched to that since one coal can smelt 8 blocks of whatever you're working on.

3. Right now I'm going to hold off on making a minecart system until I have a better idea of how I want to set it up. Didn't really have those in mind when I first started out, but once my plateaus become more developed, I'll definitely be putting them in to get around more quickly.

 

[tegid]

You can make smooth looking stairs with stone half blocks! (3 stone blocks one beside the other)
But they take twice as much space horizontally, I think.