Topic: Minecraft

[idolminds]

Well, I'm sort of confused about that myself. Now that the servers are still up, I'm not supposed to be able to play anymore. But when I go to log in, it just says my launcher is out of date and asks me to retry or play offline. So I choose offline and away I go. The only difference is now sound doesn't work for me (also part of the reason I turned enemy spawning off. If you cant hear enemies, you're doomed).

You might try blocking Minecraft in your firewall. Maybe it will then give you the option to play offline? Also probably no sound, but you should be able to play and see what its about.

EDIT

Screw it, I'm making a new tower in this area. I've found 4-5 awesome cave systems here, several waterfalls, and even a completely natural above ground lavafalls. This place rocks.

[W7RE]

I've got no sound also. I tried to run it today and it said it couldn't update, so I had to download the .exe again. After I did, I had no sound. It's a temporary issue due to server load, I guess when you download it fresh it doesn't get the sounds, maybe because that saves on server traffic.

Multiplayer is basically the same as single player, but not all the features are there. There's monsters, but they can't hurt you and you can't hurt them. The world is generated the same, but will be the same on a specific server each time you log into it, unless the admin wipes in and loads a new world (which I doubt you can be online for). I think storage containers still don't work, not completely sure about mining materials and gathering them. The one server I logged into had a command setup so you could spawn a bunch of tools and stuff instead of having to build up to them. You also can't take any damage, at least on the server I was on.

What I didn't like about it was that people are terrible architects. I've been playing this like a medieval adventure where I build my castle and slay zombies in my quest for materials and ore. I logged into a multiplayer server and it was like some 6 year old threw a bunch of glass up in a manner that you could get inside and called it a building. Every building had tiny little rooms with makeshift stairs leading up to more tiny little rooms, effectively turning just about every building into a massive tower/3D labyrinth.

Oh, and as I came in, someone else did, and they decided to burn the place down. So as I explored and got lost in the mess, a large section of it was burning down while people bitched. I quickly realized that my solo medieval adventure was more fun, at least to me.

[idolminds]

Yeah, I'd probably only play "seriously" on a private server with just a few people I know. The crazy "BUILD EVERYTHING" servers are just to visit to see the crazy.

[K-man]

So i've been toying around with classic mode in the browser.  I'm assuming that all you can really do there is build?  I played for 20 minutes or so, and never saw zombies.

[K-man]

Although even that alone was strangely addictive

[W7RE]

Yea you can just build in that mode. In the current alpha, you have to collect all your materials, and blocks take longer to destroy based on what material it is and what tool you're using.

[scottws]

How do you control the direction of the stairs?  They seem to have a mind of their own.

[idolminds]

Sadly, they do have a mind of their own. They set their direction based on whats around them...and they often get it wrong. Thats one thing that really needs some work.

Also there is no "corner stair" so you have to specifically design around that. Though maybe one of those half steps would work in a corner....I'll have to try that.

[scottws]

I am hopelessly addicted to this game.  I kept telling myself "just one more day" until 5:30am.

[idolminds]

I've been looking at the texture packs people have been making. There are all sorts, and some that even use higher resolution textures for things.

The Painterly Pack is pretty nice and it uses the original 16x16 pixel resolution. Comes with a bunch of alternate textures for things that you can swap in or have to do a little quick image edit to paste it in place. The one downside I noticed is the overall darker tone makes lighting caves a bit harder. But other than that it looks really nice. I like that the icons for tools changes more than just the color for the differing materials. A stone pickaxe looks different from an iron pickaxe. The default gold tools are pretty retarded and jokey (like they are made from gold bricks), but there is an alternate set that looks cool.

[Quemaqua]

Those screenshots make me want to play this again so bad.  And I actually could since I could run it on the laptop.  Fuck.

[K-man]

I broke down and bought it last night.  I figure if anything it's a good way to kill 10-15 minutes (or longer) at a time.

I'm holed in for night one.  The zombies come.

[TheOtherBelmont]

I want to spend more time on this game, but Recettear is an evil temptress.  I liked what I played back when Que and Idol first told me about it in its early stages.

[scottws]

I might follow idol's lead and turn off the monsters.  They are not a very fun part of the game, but at the same time it does create a bit of tension.

[W7RE]

My brother has been playing in peaceful mode (I believe monsters are still there, but don't attack). I don't know that I'd want to do that. Part of the fun is the danger for me. I think that's why every time I start a new world, my building of choice is a castle, because it's a defensive building. I keep wanting to build someplace that is not only big and impressive, but also a great defense against the monsters.

[Quemaqua]

Well, I broke down and bought it.  I dunno' when I'll really get the chance to play it, but... meh.  He deserves the money anyway.

[scottws]

I'll have to post a some screenshots of my house, which I built in the side of the mountain.  I also need to show a video of the crazy mine I have in the back of my house.  I have spent the last few days exploring a cavern I came upon and I still haven't seen it all.

[idolminds]

Yeah, monsters are hard to decide on. I like the tension they give, but they aren't all that fun. Maybe later on they will improve.

[scottws]

So I played quite a bit today and thought I got through the all the nooks and crannies of my cavern.  Well I found a dark corner that had a tunnel and holy crap I think I found another part of the cavern that is almost just as big.  You just cannot believe the size of this thing.

[idolminds]

The hardest part for me is moving on from the cave I discovered. Its so cool, but...theres more out there. But I dont want to get lost and not find my way back! ARG! I think I need to stripmine this thing for materials and then head out to find more. Theres just so much to see. I think I'm a bit more of a nomad in this game, more interested in moving and exploring than building up massive castles. My houses have just been areas to be in at night, not very large at all. It would be cool to do that in multiplayer, players can go out to explore and find materials to bring back and other players can stay back and build.

In the mean time, I've just been generating new worlds to explore. Hit on a couple snow world, which are interesting. A lot more trees, fewer cliffs and natural caves...at least from what I've seen. Seems like a world to build log cabins in.

The worst part about generating a new world is having to start over from scratch on materials. Having to hunt out coal before the first night is hard when you're coming from a save where you have more coal than you know what to do with.

One thing I wish is if there was a compass block, a marker you could place that the compass would point to. Pointing to your spawn point isn't that helpful if you didn't end up building there.

[K-man]

Yeah, there's no way I would play this without monsters.  They provide a sense of urgency.  I'm pretty sure I'd get bored pretty quickly with the mining/building aspect of the game.

I generated a snow world on the first play.  I've hollowed out a cave in the side of a mountain that was near some exposed coal.  Unfortunately the exposed coal was all that was there, so I'll be moving on at some point in the near future.  I've died a few times, which sucks because it's very difficult to find your stuff and recover it.  Exploding leaf guys suck.  I thought all monsters died during the day, but I have come across a few of them in the daytime and they explode and kill me.  Not a fan of that.

I'm very very interested to see how this game progresses.  I'm assuming that a retail release/steam/etc will not be far down the line.  It'll be interesting to see how that is handled considering all the people that have given their money to him already.

[PyroMenace]

Man this game is exploding across the interwebs. Apparently the guy that created it is making like 40k a day.

[idolminds]

IndieGames.com podcast #2 is with the creator of Minecraft! Check it out.

[Ghandi]

Is anyone interested in an Overwritten server? There aren't monsters in MP so it would just be a server where we build and hang out.

[idolminds]

That would be pretty fun. Gah, I still haven't bought this (hooray offline mode). I'll have to change that.

[K-man]

Is anyone interested in an Overwritten server? There aren't monsters in MP so it would just be a server where we build and hang out.

I'd probably play some.  Maybe we can create some of those insane structures like the one in this thread:

http://minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4307

[scottws]

Is anyone interested in an Overwritten server? There aren't monsters in MP so it would just be a server where we build and hang out.

I'm definitely interested and I think I have the pipe to support hosting the server.  Maybe not the computer horsepower though, we'd have to see.

What does it use as a host?  Can it run on XP or do I have to set up a Linux server or something?

[Ghandi]

Well according to this article, the system doesn't need to be high-end to host. Looks like they are running Linux but I would assume that any OS can run it - a few relevant Google searches seemed to indicate this as well.

[scottws]

Alright, if I get a chance tonight I will look into it.

[nickclone]

My computer is a real POS, its nine years old...can it handle this game?

[idolminds]

Maybe if you lower the view/fog distance.

[scottws]

Well this won't be up today.  The site is down, so I can't download the server.

[K-man]

Yeah, crap.  I really wanted to play too.

[scottws]

I've found some alternate servers like OpenCraft, but it seems to rely on the files contained in minecraft_server.zip and just replaces the JAR file.  I can't find minecraft_server.zip hosted anywhere else except minecraft.net and the site has been down since I've been checking.

[Ghandi]

Check out what this guy made....

[scottws]

Wow that is ridiculous.

I've abandoned my efforts to run OpenCraft on a Debian server.  I couldn't get it working.  I almost did once, but when I tried to connect with the client it threw up a bunch of Java exceptions on the server.  I heard OpenCraft sucks anyway.  I'm going to build an Ubuntu 10.04 server instead and use the real server whenever the website comes back online.

[idolminds]

How do you kill that which has no life?

[scottws]

How do you kill that which has no life?

No kidding.  I cleared out three blocks deep into a tall cliffside from which I was building a castle next to and the time to do that annoyed me.  I can't imagine digging the hole he did.  It must have taken days just for that.

[idolminds]

Looks like that was creative mode. You can add and remove blocks at will without having to take time to mine them.

Still, that took a shitload of time to build if he didnt use some external minecraft map editor.

[Ghandi]

Yeah, he used an editor for that. But the editor only gives you unlimited blocks - he still had to dig and build everything.

My problem with building grand stuff is that I have no artistic talent. I'm terrible at grand structures like that, but I could build a city and make it look pretty.