Minecraft!

[Sousa]

I know Wormmaster is playing, but is anybody else?

I decided to give the demo a shot earlier, and I think I'm in love. It's got just a really simple, addictive quality to it. I'm a sucker for sandbox games, and one where you have a ton of control over the world like this is a win in my book.

I'm thinking about buying the alpha. It's cheap--ten euros (about $13 American), and if you buy the alpha, you're in it through the development process--you get the beta and the full version free down the road. Definitely seems like some very cool stuff, but I'm curious to know if anyone's played the alpha version yet.

[Wormmaster]

The game is absolutely amazing and well worth the 10€ price tag. It's given me more gaming hours than most 50€ titles.

Exploring the always randomly generating world and the vast cave systems will never get old.

EDIT: There are a plenty of Let's Plays of this game on YouTube.

is one of the more popular ones and gives a clear image what the whole game is about. Edited September 25, 2010 by Wormmaster

[Herr Matzat]

Here is a tutorial on how to build a Fireplace in your house.

[Sousa]

I've gotten through about 6 of the X videos, and it occurs to me that I may be addicted before even playing the game proper.

Bought it now--just waiting for my account to be confirmed. >_<

[KevinStorm]

Is it better than Dwarf Fortress, or similar at all?

[rocksta]

It's been compared to a 3D first person dwarf fortress but I'd say it's nothing like that really. It's tons of fun and better is really subjective but it's a solid game for a solid price. Hopefully Notch continues to work as there seems to have been another fall in updates recently.

[Sousa]

I'd love to play it, but my account still isn't approved. I went to the forum and there's an awful lot of "be patient" talk. I can't say I'm too happy about that.

[Apollo]

Yep, Minecraft is one of the most addicting games I've played in a long time. Such a simple concept, but it's executed so well and the amount of things to do/see/build is incredible. There's also a very friendly and creative fanbase out there that likes to post screencaps and videos of things they've been doing in their respective worlds, and since everything is randomized, no two worlds are the same so it's always cool to check out what other people have been up to.

I think they've been having problems with their website/servers, so that might have something to do with your account not being approved yet. To tide you over, here's a pretty sweet statue of Bender someone on Reddit made and posted.

REMEMBER MEEEEE!!!!

[Sousa]

That Bender statue would be better if it breathed fire.

But yeah, definitely looks like server problems. I've e-mailed the payment account and am hoping for a resolution this week. After that, I don't know what to do, because the community response seems to be "be patient."

[SRN]

This wouldn't happen with Dwarf Fortress, no sir.

You can even get your Bender statue to breathe fire in Dwarf Fortress. Well, spew magma at least.

[KevinStorm]

...Why doesn't the tree fall down when you harvest it? >_>

[Apollo]

This wouldn't happen with Dwarf Fortress, no sir.

You can even get your Bender statue to breathe fire in Dwarf Fortress. Well, spew magma at least.

I've been hearing a lot of raving about Dwarf Fortress, and the fact that it's free makes me very interested in giving it a whirl. The only thing is, from what I can gather the learning curve is incredibly steep, and the graphics look like gibberish to me. Is there a good tutorial anywhere out there you can recommend? Or is it easier to get into than it seems by any chance?

...Why doesn't the tree fall down when you harvest it? >_>

Yeah, the physics aren't much to write home about. I think it has to do with being able to build bridges and things like that, as well as being able to mine above you without worrying about cave-ins everywhere you go. As far as I know, the only types of blocks that fall when you remove something underneath them are sand and gravel, although that might change any week now as the game is constantly getting updated.

[KevinStorm]

This wouldn't happen with Dwarf Fortress, no sir.

You can even get your Bender statue to breathe fire in Dwarf Fortress. Well, spew magma at least.

I've been hearing a lot of raving about Dwarf Fortress, and the fact that it's free makes me very interested in giving it a whirl. The only thing is, from what I can gather the learning curve is incredibly steep, and the graphics look like gibberish to me. Is there a good tutorial anywhere out there you can recommend? Or is it easier to get into than it seems by any chance?

You can find new tilesets that replace the ASCII stuff with actual pictures. It helps quite a bit. The learning curve is very steep, and I haven't really gotten much into it myself, but SRN can link you to some good tutorials for DF.

[KevinStorm]

So I can't buy Minecraft because my bank has blocked the merchant's transactions.

[Sousa]

...Why doesn't the tree fall down when you harvest it? >_>

I actually kind of like that about it. The game has a dubious relationship with gravity for sure, but that makes it easier to build giant floating fortresses and such, so I approve.

[Sousa]

I knew I was going to love this game right around the time I created my hovering tree orchard. Next stop: hover-farming!

[THRASHER]

Minecraft is one hell of a game. The possibilities with Minecraft are endless. I would love to see everyone's creations!

[Herr Matzat]

Edited October 10, 2010 by Michael Matzat on a Plane

[Sousa]

That's pretty incredible. Obviously a lot of texture-editing to give it that nice clean look, but still great.

Here's what I've been working on. My goal with my home base so far has been to work with the land as best I can. I was given a cave-heavy world, so there's a lot to explore--I haven't had to mine for minerals since I've been able to find them just exploring what's already there. The downside? Lots of monsters.

I haven't thought of a name for my home base yet, so let's just call it Mount Vesousvius. Pics weren't taken in order; I fell off my tower and died, but then I used that to take some more shots from the ground.

Here's what it looks like on approach. Just at a glance, the me-made stuff is pretty obvious: the tower and skyway on the left side aren't going to get generated naturally. That mountain, though? I've captured it. That shit is mine now. How?

I carved out the bottom of it! Minecraft has a rather tenuous relationship with the laws of gravity, so it's pretty easy to create hovering things. Monsters can't jump up to the land on top, which is where I do most of my outdoor business. On the bottom you can see my wooden dugout, which was the first cave I set up shop in. I've been building outward since then, but I'm still exploring the caves under this mountain--and trust me, there are a lot there.

Here's a shot from the ocean near Mount Vesousvius. This one captures most of the man-made stuff I've done outside, including that huge gray holding area, that system of tracks, the waterfall, my towers, and the bridge.

Here's the underside of the floating mountain. There are some cave entrances under there, most of which I'd already found before I dug the thing out, and you can see the hub that leads back into the dugout (no part of it touches the bottom of the mountain). The drawback to this sort of design is that, while monsters don't spawn there thanks to the torches (monsters don't spawn where there's light), the torches tend to attract them, and when the sun comes up, they don't catch fire like they're supposed to because they're in the shade. What I'll likely do is set up a barrier around all sides of the mountain that the monsters can't cross and stick doors on the caves, but I'm not looking forward to it.

There's a mountain on my head! Here's a closer look at the hub. It's got a nice central location that's easy to reach if I'm being chased by monsters, and there's a ladder inside that takes me into the dugout.

Here's the entrance to the dugout--the only way to access the mountain itself. This was the very first place where I started building, and I've expanded outward since. Those outer two doors take me into the main structure, while the one in the center connects to the shaft to the top.

Here's the inside of the dugout. I'm not a big fan of the dirt walls, but they give the thing a more natural look, dirt is an easy resource to harvest, and it makes a clear distinction between the polished stone floor and the wood/glass ceiling. Lots of bookshelves and paintings in here. The neat thing about this structure is that it follows most of the natural contours of the cave as it was when I discovered it; I just evened out some of the walls and replaced the outermost layer with the texture of my choice. As you could see from the previous picture, I also carved out the dirt that was sitting above the ceiling; otherwise, the glass ceiling wouldn't function. And of course Triple H wouldn't have liked that.

Creepy shrine thing with a chest in the middle. This chest contains armor, swords, arrows, tools, and everything I need to go exploring. No, I don't know what's with the "tiny pixel ninja fights giant hand" theme I've got going on.

This door--just beyond the creepy shrine thing--takes me deeper into the caves--just beyond it is also where hub below the mountain connects. There are still a ton of mines to explore; I've just hit some areas that are absolutely crawling with monsters and haven't been able to hack my way through since I suck at first-person games.

This shaft--right next to the bookshelves--connects to the top of the mountain. It's pretty high. Let's go up there, shall we?

Oh look, you didn't have a choice. You had to go up there. Yeah. Welcome to the mountaintop--and the orchard! Wood is the easiest material to gather besides dirt in the game--trees grow from saplings, which appear sometimes when you destroy the leafy blocks that surround trees. The trunks can be harvested into logs, which can turn into more usable wooden planks and sticks for tools. Planks--as you can see--are one of my most used building material, and they also power furnaces, which lets me turn ugly cobblestone into nice polished stone, pig meat into edible health refills, and sand into glass. So I grow a lot of trees.

My papyrus farm! Papyrus can of course be refined into paper, which can be refined into books, which are used to make bookshelves. It grows pretty quickly, and anything I hack off of it can be replanted, so this could conceivably be much larger. It doesn't really need to be right now, though.

Normally I use this area to grow grain, but it's untended right now since I've been working on carving out the bottom of the mountain.

The water from the farm flows over the edge and forms those two little waterfalls you might've seen in the first picture. The waterfalls aren't very interesting right now, but I might make them flow down the mountain later on, depending on whether or not monsters can swim up them (I can!).

The orchard outside of the shaft initially hovered over nothing, but I connected it to the mountaintop once I decided to capture the whole thing. This is what it looks like underneath. Those hovering blocks you're seeing from time to time have torches on them; they were originally meant to guide me back home from the respawn point if I died at night. Now they're useless since the whole mountain is lit up all the time.

Lots else going on here, though. Those wooden twisty paths hold minecart tracks--they aren't finished yet since I don't have enough resources, but I can push my cart along them like a roller coaster. They're functional, too; they connect the orchard to that big hovering stone holding cell. The stone cell is the only thing I've built that isn't lit, and with just cause: it's designed to spawn monsters at night. My goal is to see skeletons and zombies spawn there, die when the sun goes out, and then take the minecart over to harvest what they drop, and the structure is visible from the orchard, which means I can pick off monsters that don't die in sunlight with a bow and arrow. The walls are high enough that nothing can escape, while there are ladders inside to let me climb in and out and collect the goodies (the monsters can't use ladders). You can also see the exterior to the shaft from the dugout, the waterfall, and a little bridge I built on the ground. That circle of dirt in the water is phase one of a plan to build an underwater glass bubble. Yeah. awesome.

Here's what the whole thing looks like from the ground. You can also see the source of the waterfall: my observation deck.

Here's where the waterfall empties. I put a bridge there for no really good raisin. If you look way off in the distance, you can see a smaller rock that I carved out of a nearby mountain floating there; this was what gave me the idea to claim the mountain for myself.

Straight up from the orchard is my observation tower. The trees are growing thick around it, so I might have to chop them down and replant them. Hrm.

The observation tower isn't much to look at on top, but it's the highest possible point at which I could build (well, second-highest--I could've added another layer, but then I couldn't have put torches up there. The source of the waterfall is on the right.

HOLY LIVING FUCK. I fell a lot while building this thing, and it's difficult to steer yourself toward water from this height. I might have to put a pond under it to catch me if I fall off on the non-waterfall side. You can see the roof of the dugout from here as well as the orchard on top of Mount Vesousvius.

So that's what I've built. My next plan is to start hollowing out the inside of the mountain and building a fortress in there, but I might have to go into the caves again to find more iron first so I can build more minecart tracks--my plan is a haunted house style ride. Yeah. awesome.

[Meacon Keaton]

What an incredibly cool little game. I just wish I knew what the hell I was doing, or what I was suppose to be doing.