StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Oskuro wrote:

Stark wrote:'Retro art direction'? I thought it was just 'shit graphics'. It's seriously 'worse than Underworld 1' level awful/hideous.

When even stuff that does not need be made of blocks, like animals or clouds, are drawn with low-res square blocks, tends to mean it's an art direction, not just sucky graphics. And it is a practical choice, seeing how the terrain engine will make it look blocky anyway.

The graphics are simple because the game is capable of generating a world eight times the size of the Earth, relatively speaking.

Survival mode usually starts like this:

Start the game, find the nearest tree.

Harvest the tree for logs, go on to the next one. Repeat until you have at least 12 logs.

Craft the Logs into Wood, And a portion of the wood into sticks. Use the wood and sticks to create a Workbench and some wooden tools (Axe, Pick, etc...)

Find a mountain and look for an exposed Coal Deposit. If there are no mountains nearby (unlikely), start digging until you find one. Mine it out (Surface and higher deposits tend to be small). Use the coal and some remaining sticks to make torches.

Use your gathered wood and cobblestone (gained by digging through rock) to build a simple shelter. It should be completely enclosed with a single block for a window, and space to get away from said window (skeletons shoot arrows). I recommend digging your first shelter into the side of the mountain. It cuts down on building time, and you can dig up more cobblestone and possibly coal while you wait out the night. Otherwise, use the time to craft stone tools and weapons or make more torches.

That's pretty much your first day and night in Minecraft.

A few general tips:

You will eventually gather a lot of dirt and gravel. You can use that to fill in holes or build up/flatten land as needed, but if you have too much (and you will), you can later bring up a bucket of lava or two and make an incinerator.

When the Halloween update goes into effect, torches will become temporary. As a service to all of us who presently use them for illumination, all presently placed torches will become permanent lanterns. So until then, don't be afraid to place your torches liberally.

If you fill a hole in the dirt 2x2 or larger with water (i.e.: each square space gets a water bucket emptied into it), it becomes an eternal spring that you can draw as much as you like. You can cheat this buy building a bowl of dirt underground and take a spring down there. This is invaluable when you dig deep underground and start encountering lava. Incidentally, if you use just a 2x2 square, you can make a spring with just two buckets of water poured into opposite corners.

Never dig or mine straight up or down. You never know if the block below you is part of the ceiling to a cavern, and when you dig deeper, you might end up digging up or down into lava. Not fun.

Gold and Diamond require Iron picks to dig up.

Always carry a supply of Wood with you (or at least a workbench and/or chest) when digging underground, especially if exploring a cave. I once suffered a crash (the game is in Alpha state, after all), and when I re-entered the game, I found that it had erased the entrance I dug, leaving me stranded in a cave literally at the bottom of the world.

The final Bedrock/Adminium layer is not perfect. This is another reason you don't stand where you dig, even at the lowest levels. Falling into oblivion is understandably fatal.

SAMAS wrote:
When the Halloween update goes into effect, torches will become temporary. As a service to all of us who presently use them for illumination, all presently placed torches will become permanent lanterns. So until then, don't be afraid to place your torches liberally.

Is there a way to make lanterns after the update beyond having your pre-placed torches turn into them? I like lanterns...

Lizzie wrote:

SAMAS wrote:
When the Halloween update goes into effect, torches will become temporary. As a service to all of us who presently use them for illumination, all presently placed torches will become permanent lanterns. So until then, don't be afraid to place your torches liberally.

Is there a way to make lanterns after the update beyond having your pre-placed torches turn into them? I like lanterns...

Yes, but no one knows what the pattern will be yet. Many suspect that you will need one of the new materials from hell (or whatever the final name is), but that is just speculation.

I'd guess its some combination of glass, sticks, and coal.

Maybe iron, if he's in a bad mood.

SAMAS wrote:The graphics are simple because the game is capable of generating a world eight times the size of the Earth, relatively speaking.

I don't think you understand how 'world size' affects 'art style'.

More to the point, the graphics suck because it's made by one guy, and he's still doing the basic game, and may be sufficiently shit at art to not be able to do graphics anyway.

Well, one guy with four million dollars. At least he's got the sense to hire others, even if his structure sounds poor.

Darmalus wrote:

Lizzie wrote:

SAMAS wrote:
When the Halloween update goes into effect, torches will become temporary. As a service to all of us who presently use them for illumination, all presently placed torches will become permanent lanterns. So until then, don't be afraid to place your torches liberally.

Is there a way to make lanterns after the update beyond having your pre-placed torches turn into them? I like lanterns...

Yes, but no one knows what the pattern will be yet. Many suspect that you will need one of the new materials from hell (or whatever the final name is), but that is just speculation.

Is it also true that torches are re-lightable using flint and tender or do they disappear once they burn out?

Ryan Thunder wrote:I'd guess its some combination of glass, sticks, and coal.

Maybe iron, if he's in a bad mood.

You know I'd say glass is a given considering it's used for little else other then windows currently and that doesn't take a crafting pattern

To answer all your questions, I direct you too the Halloween Update FACTS: What we know about the update so far thread on the official Minecraft forums. Anything not on there is just wild mass guessing.

And yes, you can relight torches, which seems redundant considering they are lit when placed, just knock em off the wall and put them back up, no need to set your log cabin on fire by accident.

So I originally got into this game when I saw the fire vid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjSWPxJxNs Decided it was so hilarious, I had to try it out. And... this game is more addictive then WoW. My entire DnD crew is playing it, and my WoW guild is starting to switch over. Our map is awash in pyramids, 8 bit figures, and castles, and Ive got a Barad-Dur looking thing with a thousand torches.

I am dreaming in block art.

Enforcer Talen wrote:So I originally got into this game when I saw the fire vid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjSWPxJxNs Decided it was so hilarious, I had to try it out. And... this game is more addictive then WoW. My entire DnD crew is playing it, and my WoW guild is starting to switch over. Our map is awash in pyramids, 8 bit figures, and castles, and Ive got a Barad-Dur looking thing with a thousand torches.

I am dreaming in block art.

Oh my god, I haven't laughed that hard since I first saw Jeremy Clarkson set fire to a caravan... And then Richard Hammond set fire to somebody else's caravan.


Oh god, I'm going to have to get this game, aren't I?

To be fair, the art style could be much better. Originally, when there was an artist on board, the player model was to look something like this:



But when the artist left the project, it was removed and players now look like this:



But to focus on gameplay and leave purely aesthetical issues for later is fine for a game still in alpha.
We'll see how things turn out later on.

Ok, a game in which people build decoy houses made purely out of TNT is awesome in my book :

From Minepedia:

Decoy TNT House

Made by building the frame of a house of any size out of TNT, minus roof, and with a three space wide opening (this is extremely expensive, and you can not make any mistakes), then covering it with stone or another material, except for two blocks connecting the TNT at the entrance. Make the floor out of solid stone and wire to the two holes. Connect a stone pressure plate to the Redstone, and have an empty chest in the decoy house to attract thieves. When they walk in, they step on the pressure plate,and the only thing to do then is play 007 music as you watch the failed thief and house blow sky high.

The game's popularity will certainly Skyrocket (even more) when some form of game mode aimed at exploding people comes out. Maybe a deathmatch where you cannot directly hit your opponent, but can only kill it with traps?

It'd help if there were goals, specialisations, broader trees, and all the trappings of actual games, too. Its a shame that despite his infinite money he didn't bother to hire a project manager, which is arguably the only thing he actually needs.

It'd definitely help for those who don't like the pure sandbox approach. As I gather, that's partly the point of the upcoming Adventure mode.

As for a project manager, I guess they'll get there eventually, keep in mind this guy has been at this for little over a year, and it's not like his previous experience was in project management. According to him, the decision to expand the company was due to work piling up (particularly attending player feedback), so I guess these issues will come up naturally.


What I'm fearing might end up biting him in the ass is the decision to build the game with Java. It is a sound decision for a browser game, and does have some nice multi-platform compatibility, but as the engine grows in complexity there might be a need to optimize beyond the capabilities of the language. I guess we'll see about that too.


To the very least, apart from an interesting game, this whole exercise will be a good case study for an indie developer hitting gold (pun intended) and having to deal with it.

Oskuro wrote:Ok, a game in which people build decoy houses made purely out of TNT is awesome in my book :

From Minepedia:

Decoy TNT House

Made by building the frame of a house of any size out of TNT, minus roof, and with a three space wide opening (this is extremely expensive, and you can not make any mistakes), then covering it with stone or another material, except for two blocks connecting the TNT at the entrance. Make the floor out of solid stone and wire to the two holes. Connect a stone pressure plate to the Redstone, and have an empty chest in the decoy house to attract thieves. When they walk in, they step on the pressure plate,and the only thing to do then is play 007 music as you watch the failed thief and house blow sky high.

The game's popularity will certainly Skyrocket (even more) when some form of game mode aimed at exploding people comes out. Maybe a deathmatch where you cannot directly hit your opponent, but can only kill it with traps?

Much like this?









Note that the only reason the cavern exists to show the "inner workings" is due to someone setting it off previously - I covered the crater and rebuilt it.

Since then, it has been set off again, and I rebuilt again - although now it includes a stone path, and a forest.

I'm with Stark: the game seriously needs an ACTUAL survival mode, where monsters actively try to penetrate your hideout, rather than just wandering aimlessly at night. Right now, you're 100% secure as long as you build a 3x3 roofed box around yourself. If monsters were an actual threat to your buildings, survival mode would be a lot more meaningful and fun.

Right now the most fun I had was when a bunch of Creepers exploded near my little castle and blew holes I couldn't repair in time and I had to spend the night fighting for my life.

Are people still....doing this or did it flash in the pan like I thought it might?

Chardok wrote:Are people still....doing this or did it flash in the pan like I thought it might?

It's still ongoing, each new major update produces a flurry of playing to test out the new content for a week or so then subsumes into quietness. Notch has been on vacation/attending award shows the past few weeks so there is a lull in updates. But people are still messing around in it plus you have long term growth from people who did not know about Minecraft getting addicted for a few weeks and joining the rest of us junkies getting their minecraft fix every time their is an update.

We are still doing it. I have a sky castle. It is sweet. It's pretty damn fun just making things to show off to friends, and just randomly getting some stupid idea can lead to awesome fun. Like boring a giant hole in the earth with tnt and spelunking the resulting cave. Just go on every once in a while and add more or do something ridiculous.

A friend of mine and I built a giant Airship that's hovering over our server. It's so high that the clouds drift through the ship and give it a foggy feeling and give it a rather ethereal feeling.

Its a great game, for nothing else than its a way to let loose your creativity.

I definitely still play this game. My current project is a recreation of Helm's Deep. Been done before, of course, but I saw it and it sounded fun. I think that Penny Arcade strip earlier in the thread pretty much summed up how I feel about the game.

Pfff, Minecraft, bunch of Posers...
I'll stick with Dwarf Fortress thank you very much

Running a minecraft server, the server software is a) amazingly buggy b) really horribly on performance.

There are a few crash bugs in the server which cause the process to still live, but you can no longer connect and everyone gets booted. And performance wise, hundreds of thousands of sub-4k files really fucking sucks. Oh, and the "save-all" console command doesn't.

I've applied a server mod which hacks around the crash bug(s) as I find them(both bugs & fixes) and dumped the world save & google-maps rendered stuff onto a ramdisk which syncs to physical disk every 10 minutes.

Crossroads Inc. wrote:Pfff, Minecraft, bunch of Posers...
I'll stick with Dwarf Fortress thank you very much

So tell me, is this truly epic conflict somewhat like the endless macho posturing between fans of paintball and airsoft?