Minecraft

[fustercluck]

I'm pretty late to the Minecraft party, but I started playing it recently out of supreme boredom and it's kinda fun. I had already played a lot of Terraria, which is 2D Minecraft, so it lost some of it's appeal. Still enjoying it, though. Seems like it'd be a lot funner to play with other people but none of my friends play it or have moved on from it by now.

If anyone here plays it, post pics of your creations! Your Minecraft houses or whatever. Doesn't have to be as good as this

Also any tips might be helpful.

 

[CrowDog]

I've also missed the Minecraft party.. Haven't tried it or Terraria. Been bored and thinking about trying it though!

 

[Dannar26]

Minecraft is basically the sandbox of sandboxes. If you want it to consistently hold your interest, I have a few suggestions:

1) Play survival, and on the hardest difficulty. Playing creative may allow you to build large-scale projects, but every block you get in survival is earned. Makes you appreciate things.

The monsters are overwhelming at first, but usually become trivial once you get your base figured out, and start getting armor and sophosticated weapons. But still, sometimes despite your best planning, you can find yourself in a dangerous situation... Usually involving creepers. Again - - helps with perspective.

2) Play on a multiplayer server. Find a good community server on minecraftforum.net or host one yourself. Play with friends. It always motivates me to know that somebody could appreciate my work (even if they never do).

Try to get a copy of the world file from the sever admin from time to time. This allows you a sense of permanence, so that you feel justified in making epic-scale projects.

3) Have goals and projects. Pretty self explanatory...a game as open ended as this could leave you meandering without a focus. For me this means establishing a base with all the tools I need to make things (my own "laboratory"...like dexter's lab), then branching out into landscaping, farming, or exploring.

4) Try mods. Namely tekkit. Tekkit makes the game more interesting by adding more blocks, resources, and crafted goods & machines. Tekkit light is more balanced than Tekkit classic. Regular tekkit apparently allows you to go to the moon now; haven't tried it yet.

 

[Soundmanred]

I've been playing it over LAN with my daughter (6) and it's pretty fun. We just do creative mode, and it's fun learning how to do everything (using dynamite, mine carts, how fluids work, etc)

 

[The Boston Dangler]

1. survival multiplayer (SMP), normal difficulty (monter health) is IMO the most rewarding gameplay. the more a server deviates from the default, like creepers not destroying blocks or you keep your stuff when you die, the worse it is.

2. use a creative mode flat world as your sketchpad

3. projects! either solo or collaborative, you need a goal to work towards. sort out a base, then use it to work on something big.

3. if you get tired of the "vanilla" (i hate that term) game, the mod pack to use is called feed the beast. there are several different packs available within FTB (magic, high tech, everything, et cetera) . here is the all-important wiki:
http://ftbwiki.org/Feed_The_Beast_Wiki

the mod pack has its own launcher and minecraft.jar, so what you do is -
a. download and install
b. run the launcher
c. select the pack you like
d. enter your minecraft login

4. another mod i recommend, but not included in FTB, is optifine.

5. these guys know minecraft (vanilla and modded) as well as anyone:
Etho
Docm77
GeneriKB
BdoubleO

 

[JamesV]

I tried to get back into it recently, but I only die one way, and the same way every single freaking time - a skeleton archer I did not see, drops down from somewhere and hits me with an arrow, sending me into lava.

Man that drives me nuts.

 

[Wyndru]

After beating the game on hard without cheats a few times, I finally started using the keepInventory game rule, because the thing I hate the most is dying somewhere in a cave and not being able to get back to my stuff. I've used the safe house strategy (basically storing things in chests and temporarily living in caves I'm currently exploring), and that works, but it still drives me nuts when I lose all of my diamond armor simply because I can't get back to my loot in time after falling or burning in lava, etc....

3. if you get tired of the "vanilla" (i hate that term) game, the mod pack to use is called feed the beast. there are several different packs available within FTB (magic, high tech, everything, et cetera) . here is the all-important wiki:
http://ftbwiki.org/Feed_The_Beast_Wiki

A few months ago I tried out FTB and wow...what an overhaul to the game. I found myself overwhelmed though, it seems like 10% of the blocks in the game are blocks you should be collecting for one use or another. My inventory was always full, and every time I made it into a cavern I would just keep mining everything. It was actually too much for me, I should learn to let some blocks go haha.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I run a server at home that me and a friend play on and off. Have not played much lately though. We're waiting for Crea to come out, it's kinda like terraria but it looks like it will be even better... and work in Linux.

Here's a couple random things we've done:















That giant building took a while. There's rooms in it and everything. I want to do the twin towers at some point. May as well use up all that cobblestone that tends to accumulate.

 

[fustercluck]

Cool stuff, Squirrel!

After beating the game on hard without cheats a few times, I finally started using the keepInventory game rule, because the thing I hate the most is dying somewhere in a cave and not being able to get back to my stuff. I've used the safe house strategy (basically storing things in chests and temporarily living in caves I'm currently exploring), and that works, but it still drives me nuts when I lose all of my diamond armor simply because I can't get back to my loot in time after falling or burning in lava, etc....

I'll have to use KeepInventory also. I too am always getting lost then I get mobbed by a bunch of skeletons or creepers and die and I can't find my stuff. I wish they gave you a compass to start out the game with. Do you have to be in a cheat mode to use KeepInventory?

 

[Newbian]

Use some of the map mods.

They let you place waypoints and have a lot better maps to view you can never get destroyer and it will even make waypoints if you die.

 

[guidedbyechoes]

I wish it let you create stories or alternative game modes. You know like starcraft did. I know someone did a hunger games mod but I never got to play it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

One thing that bums me out in Minecraft is some of the physics are totally messed, specifically water. Physics similar to terraria would be totally awesome. I guess with Java you would need a quantum computer to process that logic lol.

I think what would be neat though is a Minecraft like game but that is also a MMO. Like you can buy land so only you/your guild can modify and basically build cities and such + all the typical mmo elements like pvp/artifacts/bosses etc. I want to learn more about graphics related coding like OpenGL and make such a game one day.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

One thing that bums me out in Minecraft is some of the physics are totally messed, specifically water. Physics similar to terraria would be totally awesome. I guess with Java you would need a quantum computer to process that logic lol.

I think what would be neat though is a Minecraft like game but that is also a MMO. Like you can buy land so only you/your guild can modify and basically build cities and such + all the typical mmo elements like pvp/artifacts/bosses etc. I want to learn more about graphics related coding like OpenGL and make such a game one day.

there are minecraft-based rpg's, challenge maps and at least 1 mmo

 

[El Guaraguao]

I remember when I first started Minecraft. Played it for 8 hours straight, haha. When member here (Kraken) opened up a server for us, it was on. I think I still have a snapshot of the map. The pic itself was 100mb+.


Good times.

 

[fustercluck]

anyone know of a mod that'll just let you import any item you want? I lost all my shizz like 1000 ft below and don't wanna start all over

 

[maevinj]

anyone know of a mod that'll just let you import any item you want? I lost all my shizz like 1000 ft below and don't wanna start all over

change it from survival mode to creative mode in game and you can get any item you want.

 

[ControlD]

anyone know of a mod that'll just let you import any item you want? I lost all my shizz like 1000 ft below and don't wanna start all over

One easy way is to simply always play multiplayer, even for your single player sessions. You can then use server commands to give items to yourself if you really want to.

You might also look into mods that let you keep your inventory on death, or at least place the items in a chest at your death point. I prefer the later because it gives a little more sense of adventuring to at least have to get back to where you died.

 

[Newbian]

One thing that bums me out in Minecraft is some of the physics are totally messed, specifically water. Physics similar to terraria would be totally awesome. I guess with Java you would need a quantum computer to process that logic lol.

I think what would be neat though is a Minecraft like game but that is also a MMO. Like you can buy land so only you/your guild can modify and basically build cities and such + all the typical mmo elements like pvp/artifacts/bosses etc. I want to learn more about graphics related coding like OpenGL and make such a game one day.

A lot of decent servers do stuff like letting you purchase land only you and people you add can use and there are pvp guild type servers out there.

 

[vshah]

I remember when I first started Minecraft. Played it for 8 hours straight, haha. When member here (Kraken) opened up a server for us, it was on. I think I still have a snapshot of the map. The pic itself was 100mb+.


Good times.

Kraken's map was good times indeed.

 

[Wyndru]

I'll have to use KeepInventory also. I too am always getting lost then I get mobbed by a bunch of skeletons or creepers and die and I can't find my stuff. I wish they gave you a compass to start out the game with. Do you have to be in a cheat mode to use KeepInventory?

Yeah, cheats need to be enabled in the game, but if you have an existing map that doesn't have cheats enabled, you can still temporarily enable them by changing it over to a lan game and enabling the cheats. The you run the command:

/gamerule keepInventory true

It's case sensitive (lower k, upper I).

After it's enabled you can leave the lan game and it will stay enabled on single player.

Definately makes the game less frustrating for me. Especially since items dropped time out, so if you are really far from spawn when you die, you might as well not even bother returning for your stuff, since it will be gone by the time you get there...

 

[Red Squirrel]

What's the time out on items when you die? I thought it was 5 minutes but I've actually found items 15+ minutes later. I had long given up, and happened to pass by that area later and my items were all there.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

What's the time out on items when you die? I thought it was 5 minutes but I've actually found items 15+ minutes later. I had long given up, and happened to pass by that area later and my items were all there.

it's 5 minutes, while that chunk (16x16x256 section) is loaded. what happened to you was:

1. you died, stuff goes everywhere
2. you respawned, either in a bed or at the spawn point (somewhere close to 0,0)
3. your spawn was more than 15 chunks (or 240 blocks horizontally) from where you died, so anything outside of the 15 chunk radius is unloaded from the game. everything is frozen until you are within 15 chunks again.

 

[Red Squirrel]

it's 5 minutes, while that chunk (16x16x256 section) is loaded. what happened to you was:

1. you died, stuff goes everywhere
2. you respawned, either in a bed or at the spawn point (somewhere close to 0,0)
3. your spawn was more than 15 chunks (or 240 blocks horizontally) from where you died, so anything outside of the 15 chunk radius is unloaded from the game. everything is frozen until you are within 15 chunks again.

Ahhh I see yeah that's pretty much what happened. I died very far from the last bed I used.

 

[fustercluck]

highly recommend Rei's minimap mod and the TooManyItems mod. Although TooManyItems is a bit cheaty - I just use it to get back the items I had in my inventory when I died if i can't get back there.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

highly recommend Rei's minimap mod and the TooManyItems mod. Although TooManyItems is a bit cheaty - I just use it to get back the items I had in my inventory when I died if i can't get back there.

not enough items (part of chickenbones mods) is packed into FTB. i think it works well.