Minecraft questions

[CSMR]

I'm thinking of getting minecraft to play with my gf. PC + Mac on a paid server.

Questions:

1. Is the performance OK? I don't want to have to hack my system or hers to get acceptable performance. A while ago I tried a minecraft clone on a phone and got great performance, then tried the real minecraft on a powerful PC and got <1fps on occasion.

2. Is the game becoming too complicated with all the additions (enchanting, villagers, tamed animals, etc. etc.), or can we just ignore them and treat it as a simple fun game?

3. I don't want to pay the server for ever but do want to save whatever world we create to return to in future. Is this possible?

Thanks!

 

[Red Storm]

You don't need to pay for a server, you can just host the game yourself and have the other player(s) connect to you.

 

[ControlD]

I'm not sure what your system specs are, but Minecraft runs well enough on my early 2011 Macbook Pro (13"). It does make the Mac uncomfortably hot and you need to use a mouse, but other than that it works.

If you were getting <1 fps on a powerful PC then there was something wrong.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If you were getting <1 fps on a powerful PC then there was something wrong.

I get that all the time.

I have Folding@Home set to auto-launch on startup, and sometimes I forget to turn it off before I game.

 

[lord_emperor]

1. Is the performance OK? I don't want to have to hack my system or hers to get acceptable performance. A while ago I tried a minecraft clone on a phone and got great performance, then tried the real minecraft on a powerful PC and got <1fps on occasion.

Performance is fine, I play it on Linux on a really modest Dell workstation.

2. Is the game becoming too complicated with all the additions (enchanting, villagers, tamed animals, etc. etc.), or can we just ignore them and treat it as a simple fun game?

You can ignore everything. Most of the stuff you mentioned however is fun.

3. I don't want to pay the server for ever but do want to save whatever world we create to return to in future. Is this possible?

You can share your single player game over LAN now, it's about as easy as it gets.

 

[CSMR]

Performance is fine, I play it on Linux on a really modest Dell workstation.

Good, although I just tried the free demo (in browser) and it was slow and extremely buggy. But it said it was an old version. Maybe the latest version is better?

You can ignore everything. Most of the stuff you mentioned however is fun.

Good thanks

You can share your single player game over LAN now, it's about as easy as it gets.

This is over internet not LAN. Question is can the server save be saved and reused or converted into a single player save?

 

[lord_emperor]

Good, although I just tried the free demo (in browser) and it was slow and extremely buggy. But it said it was an old version. Maybe the latest version is better?

The browser version is supposed to be the same as purchased now. If it doesn't perform well look at your Java install / background programs / general performance stuff.

This is over internet not LAN. Question is can the server save be saved and reused or converted into a single player save?

The standalone server software is free. You'll just need to port forward.

 

[CSMR]

The browser version is supposed to be the same as purchased now. If it doesn't perform well look at your Java install / background programs / general performance stuff.

Hmm it was a fresh install of Java, almost zero background processor usage.

The standalone server software is free. You'll just need to port forward.

Nah I don't want that. I'm not the network administrator and don't have rights to run a server afaik, nor do I want the software running on my PC 24/7.

 

[zokudu]

Lots of quoting in this thread. I've never gotten good performance out of the browser version. You can download the full launcher and it will let you log in and play a time limited version. Test that before taking the plunge.

As far as the world you can easily backup minecraft worlds. When you generate a world on the server everything is saved into a folder (/saves/<World Name>). You can just save that wherever to back up and put it into your .minecraft/saves/ folder to load it up. A lot of adventure style maps are distributed this way.

 

[CSMR]

That's great, thanks for the info everyone.

 

[WildW]

Make sure you install the 64 bit version of java. Minecraft is a memory hog, and the 2GB limit on 32 bit java makes it unplayable very quickly.

 

[Dannar26]

Make sure you install the 64 bit version of java. Minecraft is a memory hog, and the 2GB limit on 32 bit java makes it unplayable very quickly.

QFT

 

[mizzou]

FYI, minecraft isn't "singleplayer" anymore AFAIK

it should all be one multiplayer option

 

[MovingTarget]

I've been playing minecraft a lot recently on my 2010 MBP. Yes, it does get hot, but otherwise I have no issues. If it gets laggy, you may consider installing the optifine mod. It tends to help with less-powerful systems, and it has a lot more graphics customization options, such as turning off void fog, clouds, etc. It is definitely a game worth purchasing. Its too bad there isn't an AT minecraft server....or is there? /off to use the search feature

 

[Wyndru]

FYI, minecraft isn't "singleplayer" anymore AFAIK

it should all be one multiplayer option

This, they did away with the single player development, you are just playing on a multiplayer server by yourself when you play SP. And like others have mentioned, you can open it up on LAN whenever you want. You mentioned you need a server over the internet though.

If you are using a paid (hosted) server, in order to convert that to a single player world you would need to gain access to the map files, and even when you do that it would need to be re-uploaded if you wanted to convert it back. Some hosted servers allow FTP access of the server files, some do not.

Instead of going through all of that trouble, I just hosted my family/friend server myself. It's pretty easy (and free) to get going. It doesn't require really high specs either, and even when I only had 1M upload through roadrunner it still played fine with 4 people logged in.

In regards to system specs for the client, I know you mentioned that you didn't want to hack it, but you might want to look into the optifine plugin. It's VERY customizable, and they have some tips on the download site on how to configure it. It will allow mincraft to run great on basically any hardware from the past 10 years. I play it on my laptop from 7 years ago, and I get about 40 FPS. You can enable/disable practically every aspect of the graphics to make it playable how you see fit.