Minecraft (LATEST: Weeping Angels Doctor Who Mod!) [Archive]

Acacius Blade

Sep 7th, 2010, 10:38:18 PM

Click here to see the latest update with a video featuring the Weeping Angels mod! (http://www.sw-fans.net/forum/showpost.php?p=371488&postcount=51)

http://www.minecraft.net/

EDIT: A link to My Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/superego13itch) if you're interested in checking out my own Minecraft videos

A work colleague told me to check out this crazy-addictive game he's been playing called Minecraft. It's a really simple block-based 3D world where you destroy different types of blocks and then redistribute them around the world to create walls, floors, ceilings, houses, caves, towers, forts, anything you can think of.

Certain block are resources such as wood, coal, iron, gold etc, and you can combine them to make tools, armor, food, doors, ladders, fences, TNT. You can grow wheat to make bread to heal yourself - there's pigs, cattle, chickens running around for food. And at night, the monsters come out to play. You'll be lucky to survive your first night out in the open, so dig yourself a hole and wall it up, or build a high-up tower and wait it out. Or build a proper safehouse with stone walls, a door, torches for light, a workbench and a furnace. Then when the sun comes up, get out there and gather resources.

The world's huge and it's all yours. Check out the free browser version. The full game, although only in alpha-stage, has more features than the free one, and slightly better visuals. It's currently on offer for 9.95 Euro's to encourage people to buy it to help develop it, then the price goes up for Beta and later. But there's no more fee after that and multiplayer is in the works. Alpha-stage is testing multiplayer but to be honest I'm having a blast in single-player.

If you check it out, this guide might help. http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=19065 - but it only applies to the paid-for Alpha, not the free one. The free one really is just a taster of how it works.

Also, some good images of the game: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=10517

Alexander Bane

Sep 8th, 2010, 11:36:42 AM

Looks like a lot of fun, but for reasons unknown to me it will not accept my credit card, so I cannot purchase the alpha. The free version is pretty fun by itself, seeing as I instantly started building a huge wall to put a castle behind, but it any real gameplay other than just, you know, building stuff.

Acacius Blade

Sep 8th, 2010, 04:51:44 PM

Yeah, the free 'classic' version is limited. I started by digging a square room into the side of some rock, and I'm just now tunneling upwards to add more floors. And I now have glass windows (thanks to some sand, coal and a furnace) so I have a better view of all those nasties lurking outside at night.

Darth Turbogeek

Sep 22nd, 2010, 06:34:22 PM

Dear Lord this game is Minecrack. It's so silly and yet so addictive!

Acacius Blade

Sep 23rd, 2010, 01:28:50 PM

The first section of my bridge is complete, I've started work on a new castle at the foot of a large mountain that overhangs awesomely. I'm going to tunnel into it from the castle and build a fortress Ironforge-style. Then have more bridges branching off to other areas of the world.

I've got a nice tree garden for wood-farming, with a mine below it for gathering stone, as well as coal and ore when I find it. Gonna make wooden stairs as I dig down too.

Darth Turbogeek

Sep 23rd, 2010, 07:13:10 PM

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSBOOM

Holy shit that scared me and now I have to rebuild my shelter -_-

This game is exactly what I've been wantign for ages - somethign easy to get into, yu dont have pointless grinding, it's free form and it continually surprises you

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS shit gotta run!

Acacius Blade

Sep 24th, 2010, 10:46:25 AM

The first night is the worst. After that it's not so bad. I just hope Notch adds more content to keep it challenging.

Dasquian Belargic

Sep 24th, 2010, 10:47:43 AM

Can you combine stuff in the free version?

Acacius Blade

Sep 25th, 2010, 09:48:46 AM

I think crafting is only available in the full version. All you can do in the free version is place and destroy blocks, and you have unlimited blocks and destroying blocks is instant. It the full game, different blocks take longer to break down, eg stone takes ages to break by hand and gives nothing, but it takes a few hits with a pick-axe and gives you some stone to use in crafting/building.

Alexander Bane

Sep 30th, 2010, 11:21:34 AM

I dug down to the bedrock and was hoping for something akin to running into a balrog. Nothing very scary down there it turns out. Building a tower on a cliff edge. Wooo.

Dasquian Belargic

Sep 30th, 2010, 02:36:46 PM

I built a safe room inside this secluded overhang, went away to chop wood and then couldn't find my way back to my safe room. Had to restart my game.

:B

Acacius Blade

Oct 16th, 2010, 07:08:51 AM

Just reinstalled it last night after formatting the other week (new motherboard required reinstalling Windows). I managed to locate the location of the save data so backed up before I formatted - only just decided to get back onto it.

I downloaded a texture upgrade package that it quite good. There's a patch needed to make it work with the game. You can find the texture pack (and link to the patch) here:

http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=21302

My castle is built - just need to complete the top floor of the tower. I'm building a sort of 'keep' entrance at the top, and thats gonna have a bridge going into the mountain where I'm gonna just go crazy with tunnels and stairwells and halls and stuff. Then a fortress on top of the mountain perhaps, and a mineshaft with tunnels going beneath the ocean.

Acacius Blade

Nov 2nd, 2010, 09:27:26 AM

I need to get some screenshots up of my world. It's looking pretty cool!

I've built a boathouse near to my manor, with a bridge going over to it for night-time access. There's two wooden piers for boats to come in to. And a little ways out is a sandy island that I've semi-hollowed out and built a crafting bench, furnace and storage chest. Beneath the sand I uncovered stone so I've been mining in a sort of square/circular staircase. I know that mining straight down and using ladders would seem easier, but this looks cooler even if you can't see all the way down. I may eventually mine out the middle so it's a stone staircase going around the sides of the mine shaft.

And further out again from the manor in the same direction (sort of) I've built a tower as high as it can go - around 10-15 blocka bove the cloudline. Need to finish the roof and wooden walkway at the top of it. The base of the tower is slightly larger with three doorways, one of which leads to a garden/backyard with a two-block high wall with a 1-block high wooden fence along the top of it. Inside there's the usual storage chests, crafting bench and furnace. Since this is quite some distance away, it'd be awesome to link it to my other sites with a tunnel but that'd take an extreme amount of luck or indeed an extreme amount of planning and measuring to ensure I link the sites correctly. If I tunnel from one to the other there's a danger of tunneling up into the ocean and flooding yhe tunnel. LOL!

Acacius Blade

Nov 14th, 2010, 11:56:19 AM

Dasquian Belargic

Nov 14th, 2010, 01:24:56 PM

Sweet digs, Peter - and I like the Dark Portal!

Though I did have a little trouble hearing your narration over the in-game music.

Acacius Blade

Nov 14th, 2010, 01:33:57 PM

Yeah Jenny, I know. I need to play with the sound settings for next time. A tutorial said that I don't need to lower the game sound, but rather the capture sound. I'll give it another try tonight perhaps. Took about an hour to compile the video into MPEG-4 and convert from 1080p to 720p. Then about 40 minutes-ish to upload to Youtube - so along with making the video it's about a 2 hour job for 10 minutes footage. Pretty good.

I've become addicted to X's minecraft video's and it's made me want to do my own. So I wanna start a Youtube channel, which will feature a lot of Minecraft stuff, as well as other games. Might even record some of our L4D sessions - if it picks up out vent chatter that'd be awesome!

Acacius Blade

Nov 24th, 2010, 03:59:05 AM

http://www.youtube.com/user/superego13itch#p/c/1BECAFD0D7BBD044

A 3-video playlist I did yesterday. Audio commentary is much better on this one as I borrowed a friends USB microphone to record my voice. I've been looking at some stuff online and am considering a podcasting kit from Behringer, on Amazon for around £55. Gonna check out my local Maplins as well since they have a lot of audio stuff. At least I know it was the mic and not my PC that was making it sound crap.

Let me know what you think of the video, as well as the sound of the commentary. I know there's a constant noise even when I'm not speaking - I assume thats just the microphone picking up noise such as my PC's fans/HD, ambient noise in the room such as the boiler etc. The podcasting kit I'm looking at includes a microphone that only picks up audio if it's quite close - a review on Amazon says the mic needs to be 10-15cm away from your mouth to pick it up. As negative as that review is, I suppose it's a good thing as well depending on how you look at it - no extraneous noise would be recorded.

Yog

Nov 24th, 2010, 11:27:51 AM

hahaha, you got lost in your own dungeon.. :p

Lilaena De'Ville

Nov 24th, 2010, 11:59:48 AM

That is very impressive, Peter. I played Minecraft for a day and I think I dug a hole, lol.

Acacius Blade

Nov 24th, 2010, 12:29:28 PM

Heh, thanks Holly. I'm loving it. I've seen a video of a guy who built the Enterprise to scale. While I have a more active social life than that, I'd be up for trying something Star Wars-oriented - but it wouldn't be to scale. I might try an AT-AT walker.

hahaha, you got lost in your own dungeon.. :p

That's always happening to me. Everywhere looks so similar once you're underground. I really need to start using signs.

Acacius Blade

Nov 25th, 2010, 03:35:57 PM

I'd really appreciate it if you guys left comments etc - it all increases the likelihood of the video's showing up in searches and whatnot.

Dasquian Belargic

Nov 25th, 2010, 03:49:24 PM

I did some 'Like'-ing for you Peter :)

Acacius Blade

Nov 25th, 2010, 04:54:36 PM

Yay! Much appreciated Jenny :)

Lilaena De'Ville

Nov 26th, 2010, 06:34:47 PM

Like-d and commented :)

Acacius Blade

Nov 26th, 2010, 08:23:10 PM

Thanks Holly!

Acacius Blade

Dec 1st, 2010, 06:58:53 AM

Yay! My podcasting kit arrived today so I'll be checking it out when I get home from work. New video's coming soon :)

I'll probably do a tour update as one video before I start doing brand new stuff with live commentary. Recording and then doing the audio commentary afterwards as I re-watch it doesn't really appeal to me - too much editing and not as fun.

Acacius Blade

Dec 1st, 2010, 09:41:54 PM

Just tested out the new kit my doing a sort of tutorial on how to build a decent house as quickly as possible at the start of the game before nightfall. The audio quality on my commentary is way better with this microphone. Even better than the one my friend lent me. I'm very pleased with my purchase. The video will be uploaded by tomorrow morning.

Bruce Wayne

Dec 2nd, 2010, 12:47:06 AM

Building a House - Tutorial 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMGGqjJTcwA)
Building a House - Tutorial 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqkPr03F0YM)

[HD] 720p Resolution is available on them. The commentary was recorded using my brand new Behringer Podcastudio kit that I'm well chuffed with!

Acacius Blade

Dec 27th, 2010, 06:02:24 PM

Part 4 of my tour with an overview of the few updates/additions I've made to my world - as well as a few scares!

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Acacius Blade

Dec 29th, 2010, 08:30:51 AM

So I was recording another Minecraft session. I had am hour of footage with game audio in Fraps and the commentary was in Audacity. I stopped recording as my mum was back and coming upstairs and I didn't want it to pick her up on the audio - plus it was a good place to stop anyway. F12 to stop Fraps and then a click into Audacity to stop the recording in there. CRASH report!!! The commentary was lost! Nooooooo!!!!!

A quick search online and I discovered that it would all be in the temp folder in 10-second chunks. An hour of audio split into 360 sections! I really shouldn't complain since I haven't lost an hours work but still - pasting together those files to reconstruct my commentary is gonna be a pain. I wanna get ut dine ASAP and merge it with the game audio so I can get it all compiled and uploaded to Youtube before I go away for New Year tomorrow! Hurrah!

Acacius Blade

Jan 2nd, 2011, 06:17:07 PM

I've included a link at the top of the thread to my Youtube channel for convenience. It'd be great if you guys checke dit out and shared your thoughts on my videos. And the first official episod eof my Minecraft Adventures is uploaded - slightly over an hour, split into 7 parts. If you do decide to check it out I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Acacius Blade

Jan 16th, 2011, 01:13:49 PM

Episode 2 is now uploaded. Friggin' skeletons! This was an intense play session!

Atreyu

Jan 26th, 2011, 05:17:27 PM

Yahtzee at Zero Punctuation has just done a review of this game:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2680-Minecraft

Captain Untouchable

Jan 27th, 2011, 01:08:19 PM

Yahtzee at Zero Punctuation has just done a review of this game:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2680-Minecraft

Blast, beaten to the punch!

Remember, kids: Minecraft is a responsible parent. Here's $5.

:mischief

Captain Untouchable

Jan 30th, 2011, 02:38:09 PM

<img src="http://i53.tinypic.com/2ef3i0w.jpg" width="500">

So true. :cry

Dasquian Belargic

Feb 20th, 2011, 11:02:48 AM

I loaded up Minecraft for the first time in aaages today and used your 'first night' tutorial to make myself a little house :D Thanks Peter!

Peter McCoy

Feb 21st, 2011, 09:02:17 AM

Awesome! To quote the WoW goblins: Glad I could help!

I haven't played Minecraft in over a week. Gonna be recording a new episode tonight or tomorrow. Been playing on a server with some friends over Hamachi which has been fun, albeit problematic during peak times due to my internet service.

Captain Untouchable

Feb 21st, 2011, 01:19:01 PM

How are things getting on over at the server, Peter? Keep meaning to log in for another visit, but I keep running out of weekend. :(

Peter McCoy

Feb 21st, 2011, 04:22:04 PM

Haven't played it in over a week so I don't know.

Peter McCoy

Mar 14th, 2011, 10:02:23 AM

I'll be getting stuck into Minecraft again this week after not playing for so long.

Got my mind on a couple of mods that I wanna try out as well. If the three I'm interested in work together, I may start a new world for the next episode of my Let's Play series.

Droo

Mar 14th, 2011, 10:48:50 AM

Will you be bangin' seven gram rocks, because that's how you roll?

Peter McCoy

Mar 14th, 2011, 12:30:17 PM

Aye. And I mine well into the night without worrying about zombies and creepers - I've got tiger blood!

Peter McCoy

Mar 15th, 2011, 10:06:40 AM

Well one of the mods worked fine - MineColony. It allows you to build a chest that spawns either a miner, lumberjack or farmer who works for you, depositing resources in his chest. You can even have a deliveryman who visits waypoints and collects the goods from the gatherers chests and puts them in a designated warehouse chest for you - he'll even take replacement picks, axes and hoes that you leave in the warehouse to their respective users.

It was working fine. So then I installed the plane mod and the game wouldn't even load up. So tonight I'll try it with just the plane mod to see if its a compatibility issue. If I get the plane mod working I'll have to start stocking up on black and white wool blocks so I can build an awesome runway and airport.

Dasquian Belargic

Jul 31st, 2011, 03:58:22 AM

Dasquian Belargic

Aug 2nd, 2011, 04:42:54 PM

Lilaena De'Ville

Aug 2nd, 2011, 07:56:20 PM

That. is pretty awesome. :)

Darth Turbogeek

Aug 3rd, 2011, 02:57:08 AM

The new additions are very impressive. And you know what's annoying? Find a great cave, dig dig dig and you hit water! Whole place got flooded. That said, I have this awesome new pool in my palace I'm building

Peter McCoy

Aug 3rd, 2011, 08:41:14 AM

I can't see how the whole thing flooded - water only flows from a source block so it's easy to stem the flow. Plus once it hits something the water will only flow for 7 blocks straight.

Personally I'd love it if it actually did flood a room. It'd be cool if there was a mechanic in place where for every few seconds the entire floor is covered in water and there's a flow coming into it, the water level rises by a fraction of a block in height until it's a full block, then it carries on like that. That really would add an element of danger when digging. It'd make things such as that dam necessary. The game mechanics as they currently are mean that if they removed that dam block by block, the water would just stay there - a wall of water flowing down, rathern than rush forth like water actually does if a dam breaks.

What'd be incredible is if they improved the water physics so that pressure affected it. Imagine a breach in the lowest point of the dam, causing a jet of water to spew out! Please, someone mod that in!

Peter McCoy

Aug 3rd, 2011, 08:45:00 AM

Also, for now the only blocks affected by gravity are liquids (water and lava will flow) and sand/gravel which falls down to whatever solid surface is beneath it. I'd love it if all blocks had weight.

Right now, if you build using cobblestone in a straight line a few blocks off the ground, it will stay there as a bridge. It'd be cool if you could only build out so many blocks before it collapsed due to its weight. Then you'd need to factor in support structures like my own bridge - they're purely cosmetic but I'd prefer it if they were needed as part of the physics engine. Then you can have traps such as TNT set around the support structures - blow them up and the bridge itself comes crashing down instead of just floating in place.

Peter McCoy

Sep 8th, 2011, 07:41:46 PM

Acacius Blade

Oct 14th, 2011, 07:29:08 PM

Captain Untouchable

Oct 14th, 2011, 09:08:47 PM

Oh god, that's terrifying. :ohno

Peter McCoy

Oct 15th, 2011, 01:02:47 AM

They're supposed to be quite rare, like a 30% chance to spawn compared to other mobs. But in the Yogscast mod spotlight on it, there's dozens coming from all directions, its hilarious.

The mod has its flaws - if you're looking through glass you can see them move since you're not counted as "seeing" them through the glass. And you sometimes notice them just around corners moving, or jumping just high enough to be seen over a 2-block-high wall. Despite that, I still wanna check the mod out for myself. When we do our blogging/vlogging online Minecraft tomfoolery we should try building our own City of the Dead for them to stalk around in.