How to add indefinite fire on Minecraft...
September 19, 2010 6:35 AM Subscribe

"All you do is put it in the center here like this and then set a fire to it. And not always but most - uh oh." (Minecraft SLYT via Reddit)
posted by stringbean (380 comments total) 70 users marked this as a favorite

That's how the world will end.
posted by mygoditsbob at 6:54 AM on September 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

Reminds me of the wooden home that I built halfway up a mountain, featuring a lava spring right in the middle of it. It was lovely. The fact that it had turned into a bonfire about one time in every three that I returned home after some mining kinda made it more awesome.
posted by dudekiller at 6:57 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

and in the game!
posted by dudekiller at 6:58 AM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

I hope I would remain as calm and good natured about having a similar event happening in the real world, but I think my reaction would be more one of "HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK! FIRE FIRE FIRE!"
posted by hippybear at 7:00 AM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

Here's what you do: in a new tab open the link from the post immediately after this one (http://www.oldorientmuseum.com/) while watching this video inline. The other page has a sort of atmospheric, smoky jazz song that autoplays, and when it mixes with this video, well, it's serendipitously delicious.
posted by dirtdirt at 7:00 AM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

I liked the part where he tried to put it out with CUBES OF LIQUID WATER.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 7:22 AM on September 19, 2010 [30 favorites]

I don't even know where to begin with Minecraft. I've been playing it for hours for several weeks now, mostly online with the MefightClub gang (see here). It's a fantastic game.

It's also terribly buggy and this weekend there's been a total meltdown of the login server system. The good news is that the developer has made the game free for everyone until he fixes it. Great time to try it out.
posted by Nelson at 7:39 AM on September 19, 2010

This is a great video to show why Minecraft is so great. It's hard to explain, but the total sense of agency and freedom (including burning your house down by accident) is a sensation that I haven't experienced with a game since Morrowind.
posted by codacorolla at 7:46 AM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

Oh God minecraft is down. I had planned to spend my Sunday afternoon building in classic mode and this video just makes me want to do it more and I can't! Welp, guess it's time to try out alpha during the free to play period.
posted by LeeJay at 7:48 AM on September 19, 2010

The cubes of water had me howling with laughter to be honest.
posted by dabitch at 7:49 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

hippybear, I would be more concerned about how suddenly pixellated my world had become, but to each his own I guess.
posted by indubitable at 7:57 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

indubitable: here, lick this stamp.
posted by hippybear at 7:58 AM on September 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

That should do the trick.

I found this while I was trying to find the picture.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:01 AM on September 19, 2010

This is no monkey riding on a pig.
posted by briank at 8:07 AM on September 19, 2010 [7 favorites]

If you dig deep enough you can hear zombies moaning through the rock. You dig towards it and find a dungeon with a zombie spawner. If you can neutralize the spawner (torches help) you can loot the chest. Inside the chest, if you're lucky, is a saddle. You can put the saddle on a pig and ride it. All you need is a monkey skin.
posted by Nelson at 8:16 AM on September 19, 2010 [21 favorites]

Don't know if this had been mentioned yet, but Minecraft is free to play right now. Just download it, and put whatever you want as the username and password. He broke his authentication server yesterday, so it's free until he fixes it.

Spoiler: You will buy it anyway.
--
The experience of playing it is really kind of unique.

The game doesn't hold your hand, it doesn't explain. It doesn't even use words. You're basically adam in the garden of eden. You're alone in paradise, a formless void, and everything is up to you to name, to understand, to control. Everything is new and surprising.

You identify 'trees', 'mountains', 'coal', 'chickens'. The game doesn't tell you that's what they are, you just understand it, through functionality. You categorize things, you build a model of the world. Wood is common, it grows, you can build big things with it, or small things. It's 'soft', and degrades quickly with use. Stone is hard, and can be used to build things, and small things that last longer than wood. 'Iron' needs stone tools to mine, but it lasts longer, and needs fire to 'forge', and so on. You're doing science, you're discovering, you're naming things.

As you build, 'a mountain' becomes 'the mountain', and maybe if you're creative, 'Snow Peak' or "Mount Two-Horns" or something. A makeshift shelter becomes a home, then a castle, then "Death Valley Fortress". You carve paths that become roads and bridges and highways. Caves become mines, become chambers, become art museums and libraries. Grassy fields become farms, rivers become irrigation, and so on.

And while you build, you also destroy. Forests are depopulated, mountains are annihilated, the habitat of zombies, creepers and spiders slowly pushed further away by the expanding walls, fences and torches. Then before you know it, the hills have been leveled, the valleys raised, and you've built a city with golden rooftops and a throne made of diamonds and a light house you can see from miles away.

But all the mystery and danger in the world is gone, no minerals left to mine, and there's no place near by to explore. So what do you do? You pack up as much shit as you can carry, you get on a boat and go where the ocean takes you. Never to see your home again.

That's minecraft.
posted by empath at 8:21 AM on September 19, 2010 [101 favorites]

(Btw, he was selling 7,000 copies a day after Penny Arcade and Rock Paper Shotgun both mentioned it last week -- in case math isn't your strong point, that's > $70,000. Pretty good for one guy.)
posted by empath at 8:24 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

My current favorite Minecraft video
posted by codacorolla at 8:37 AM on September 19, 2010 [44 favorites]

Is that Masaokis? Sounds sort of like him.
posted by carsonb at 8:44 AM on September 19, 2010

The game doesn't hold your hand, it doesn't explain. It doesn't even use words. You're basically adam in the garden of eden. You're alone in paradise, a formless void, and everything is up to you to name, to understand, to control. Everything is new and surprising.

This sounds like just what I've been looking for since I finished Stranded. I still want to just go back to my cabin and hang out with the monkeys. I'll check it out!
posted by The Light Fantastic at 8:52 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

It sounds like an awesome video game and the reviews and videos are hilarious and wonderful. But then I imagine myself playing it for hours. Hours and hours and hours and at the end of it I haven't done anything real. Seems like that time spent in the workshop would be at least as rewarding if not moreso.

Well, you know yourself best, but for me it's like playing solitaire or sudoko or the crossword. It's like having a rock garden, or reading trashy fiction. Something that entertains the mind without taxing it too much, giving you time to decompress and reflect.

It can suck you in, but it can also be productive (in a certain sense).
posted by codacorolla at 8:52 AM on September 19, 2010 [4 favorites]

I just can't get enough of the quiet, polite panic of this guy. It's like we're important houseguests and he's trying to maintain a civil, cheerful facade for us in spite of it all.
posted by naju at 8:56 AM on September 19, 2010 [30 favorites]

Just a note, if you're playing Alpha single player (as I just started to do during the free-to-play period) you can switch it to "Peaceful" mode and there will be no monsters and no dying (unless you fall from a very great height or drown or something like that.) Just pure exploring, mining and crafting. So much fun!
posted by LeeJay at 9:04 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress and Eve Online are three games I cannot afford to play (timewise...) But I love to read/ about them as there are always fantastic things happening in those games. How weird do you think i look when colleagues step by my cubicle to find me looking at a dwarf fortress videos?...
posted by CitoyenK at 9:07 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Hilarious.
posted by adamdschneider at 9:22 AM on September 19, 2010

the habitat of zombies, creepers and spiders

Waitwaitwait. There are zombies in this game? I remember trying the free version a while back and thought, okay, you dig around and build stuff, or something, doesn't seem like much of a "game" but okay, I can see how people like to build things. But there are monsters? I may need to rethink this.
posted by Gator at 9:24 AM on September 19, 2010

(Btw, he was selling 7,000 copies a day after Penny Arcade and Rock Paper Shotgun both mentioned it last week -- in case math isn't your strong point, that's > $70,000. Pretty good for one guy.)

From what I gather he's been clearing 40k a day for a couple of months now. If/When he gets it on Steam it will probably outsell Civ5 or some shit.

Game Publishers take note
posted by fullerine at 9:29 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Gator: "But there are monsters? I may need to rethink this."

Yes, at night the zombies come.
posted by subbes at 9:32 AM on September 19, 2010

Yeah, the version that's been around for a while and which was as I understand it pretty much just pure Build Stuff Out Of Blocks is now called "Classic", and Notch has been working on a new single- and multi-player version of the game currently called "Alpha".

And the survive-in-a-harsh-world nature of the Alpha is really extra compelling. You're still probably building neat stuff, yes, but only out of the raw material you actually harvest with your bare hands or with tools you've fashioned from previously collected materials. And when night falls, the zombies and creepers and spiders and skeletons come out, so god help you if you haven't found somewhere to hide. Or god help you if you mine too aggressively and blunder on something bad down in the depths.

The multiplayer version of that is lagging behind the singleplayer in terms of feature set, so while there can be monsters in multi they're buggy and unkillable at the moment, and a bunch of other details that make the singleplayer survival experience tense and immersive (like, seriously, way more immersive than you'd imagine at a glance, I haven't been this sucked in by a game in a while) is either buggy or missing so far. That said, collaborating to build crazy stuff in multiplayer is so goddam fun in its own right in a sort of co-op lego way that I haven't played any singleplayer in days.

I love this game.
posted by cortex at 9:36 AM on September 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

My current favorite Minecraft video.
posted by m0nm0n at 9:42 AM on September 19, 2010 [10 favorites]

I've been playing for about a week. The best comment I read about the game so far is that it's like a LEGO mmo, but more fun than the actual LEGO mmo.

I feel like I've already got my 9 euros of fun out of it and I'm stoked that it should just get better from here on out. I hope Notch survives the transition from small fry to BIG TIME.
posted by johnstein at 9:55 AM on September 19, 2010

This is at least the third Minecraft-related post on Mefi in the last few weeks. And no one has complained. That should tell you something.
posted by crawl at 9:57 AM on September 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

. a bunch of other details that make the singleplayer survival experience tense and immersive (like, seriously, way more immersive than you'd imagine at a glance, I haven't been this sucked in by a game in a while.

I think a lot of it is not being able to save whenever you want to (for those who think that quick saving is something that must be in every single game).
posted by empath at 9:57 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Well, why didn't somebody say there were monsters and zombies? Once I get out from under some courses for work, I think I may just sign up.
posted by never used baby shoes at 10:30 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

I don't even know what Minecraft is but this is hysterical. Thanks.
posted by scalefree at 10:40 AM on September 19, 2010

Saw this on reddit last night before bed and I couldn't stop laughing. I still have a weird feeling it's staged. Is it common to have a little pool inside the house? To be carrying buckets like that?

His "errmmm. ehh... uh..." muted reaction was awesome, but I agree w/hippybear that my reaction would be much more freaked.

I loved the Jump video too (that's one of the cooler ones I've seen. Can you actually trigger music in game like that? Or was that added after the fact in video editing?)

Anybody try Love? Procedural MMO of basebuilding (not an RPG) very stylized... Another passion coded by one man. I'm curious about both these games, but I tend to end up not liking such things in the end even though the fascinate the fuck outta me.

But yeah -- I had to repost this everywhere, I literally was just Lolling for a good 10 minutes...
posted by symbioid at 10:46 AM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

Didn't paypal block his account because he was making too much money too fast?
posted by symbioid at 10:47 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Everything's better with a chagrined Irish guy just barely swearing as he gently and patiently describes how to do something that destroys untold days of work.
posted by maudlin at 10:47 AM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

symbioid: "Saw this on reddit last night before bed and I couldn't stop laughing. I still have a weird feeling it's staged. Is it common to have a little pool inside the house? To be carrying buckets like that? "

Yes. Buckets with water are a must because you never know when you're going to need one after falling into a pool of lava.
posted by Memo at 10:50 AM on September 19, 2010

Didn't paypal block his account because he was making too much money too fast?

Sounds like something they'd do (they blocked IFDS9's account during the Russian Girls incident for the same reason, if I recall correctly, and we all remember the SomethingAwful fiasco). WHYYYYYY isn't there a fabulous alternative to PayPal that everybody can hurry up and embrace?
posted by Gator at 10:53 AM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

I stumbled on the free alpha demo this weekend completely on accident. I've been curious, so I went to the main Minecraft page on Friday, the first time I've ever loaded said page. So I downloaded it and installed it.

That game is sheer concentrated evil. I have no idea how people manage to build houses. There are so many dumb ways to die in the first few nights even with the game in "peaceful" mode, and the game will happily let you discover all of them.

Meanwhile you're supposed to be banging fucking rocks and sticks together and discovering fire and shit. Protip: It helps a lot if one of those rocks happens to be coal.

Oh God, urge to launch game rising. No, please no. I hope he fixes his validation server soon and I can't play anymore.
posted by loquacious at 10:55 AM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

Saw this on reddit last night before bed and I couldn't stop laughing. I still have a weird feeling it's staged. Is it common to have a little pool inside the house? To be carrying buckets like that?

Oh heck yeah. Minecraft tends to be a very "because it was there" experience in terms of building your house, at least the first couple times—the toolset is fairly limited, so creating decor is a matter of combining the small set of elements in the game in interesting ways.

I have a matching set of pools, of water and lava, in the foyer of my current single-player fortress.

Buckets are handy stuff, they're how you move water and lava around in the first place, so if you're doing any sort of active building chances are you've got one or two handy. If you're doing serious pool work you might have four or five in your quickslots, even.

that's not to say it's impossible that this "oops, I started a fire thing" could be staged, but the only thing that might ring fake about it is the convenience of having recorded and been so calmly, charmingly taken aback by the whole thing. But a lot of people are FRAPSing away at this game lately, so it's also hardly implausible that this is exactly what it's presented as: somebody trying to give a quick tour of their house and a tutorial on eternal-flame fireplace building and it just went amusing wrong.

I started a forest fire the other day by accident. Fortunately it was my own forest and it doesn't take too long to grow new trees, but fire is definitely a danger in the game. Most folks build stuff out of stone, not wood.

I loved the Jump video too (that's one of the cooler ones I've seen. Can you actually trigger music in game like that? Or was that added after the fact in video editing?)

That was editing of some sort, yeah. There IS a record player you can build, and rare records you can find for it by killing certain monsters I guess, but I'm fairly certain those only play original music and in any case there was no record fiddling in that dance party that I saw.
posted by cortex at 10:55 AM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

There IS a record player you can build, and rare records you can find for it by killing certain monsters I guess

What what, what!?

The logical extension to this is that somewhere out there someone has built a computer, a Cisco switch and a fiber optic WAN, and somewhere there's a server. And they've downloaded Minecraft to that computer... and they're banging rocks together... trying to make torches.
posted by loquacious at 11:02 AM on September 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

I started a forest fire the other day by accident. Fortunately it was my own forest and it doesn't take too long to grow new trees, but fire is definitely a danger in the game. Most folks build stuff out of stone, not wood.

That's a real life lesson, actually. Spokane, WA basically burned to the ground early in its life, and when it was rebuilt they chose brick and stone instead of lumber. For a long time, the whole place was a gridded-out tent city while they rebuilt.

Apparently this wasn't an uncommon happening in the settlement of the West. I guess it's not that uncommon in the virtual realms we're settling, either.
posted by hippybear at 11:03 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

You may be interested to note that logic gates exist within the game already. Here's one of several youtube demoes of basic gates.

No one, to my knowledge, has built a Turing machine yet.
posted by cortex at 11:09 AM on September 19, 2010 [5 favorites]

I was curious about the game and looked it up on YouTube. This set of (currently 10) videos on how to survive your first night(s) in the game made me buy it. You enter the game with nothing and have to really rush to survive the night, building a little hole in a hill and lighting it to fend off the things in the darkness (unless you're playing in "Peaceful" mode, then no monsters). It's primal in that way and follows the path of human ingenuity. Start living in a cave with a torch and some basic supplies and from there start building a fortified building. Then you can get inventive and even terraform the landscape if you want to. I find the monsters add an edge to things to keep you on your toes: if you dig too deep into the dark or forget to put up enough torches, then the monsters come.

As for being inventive, well, there's the roller coasters that you can make, sure. You could also build a container out of glass blocks, trap lava in it and use it to grow plants in your underground home.
You could build an undersea base.
Or you could build the earth.
Me, I'm just hollowing out a mountain to build a castle from the inside out. Get this game. It's like digital Lego!
posted by Zack_Replica at 11:11 AM on September 19, 2010 [15 favorites]

Light up enemies to 1000 degrees! Warning, fire spreads.

On that topic, if you can't wait for Bioshock: Infinite you can visit Columbia in Minecraft.
posted by Nelson at 11:14 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yes, at night the zombies come.

Mostly.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:15 AM on September 19, 2010 [11 favorites]

Dear the Internets:

Enclosed please find the remains of my spare time. I hope you will find a better use for it than I. You seem to have a knack for soaking up great gobs of it. Thank you for the porn, for the pictures of cats, and for the opportunity to troll bumpkins on local newspaper forums. Most of all, thank you for games. From the crushingly dull drip of pure evil lag that is EVE Online to the hermetic mysteries of Dwarf Fortress to the exhilarating blank canvas of Minecraft, you excel at creating opportunities for me to happily fidget my life away. So when they find my desiccated, cat-gnawed corpse beneath a landslide of Dr. Pepper cans and overflowing ashtrays, know that it really wasn't your fault. I just couldn't quit you.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:16 AM on September 19, 2010 [24 favorites]

Cortex: Here's an entire 16 bit adding machine.

Whiskey, tango, foxtrot - over?
posted by loquacious at 11:19 AM on September 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

No one, to my knowledge, has built a Turing machine yet.

And to be clear, the keyword there is "yet". People are definitely doing work on this front. Here's a functioning memory array.
posted by cortex at 11:21 AM on September 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

And here's a guy trying to blast himself into orbit, and here's a guy who apparently just discovered LSD. If history is any guide the integrated circuit should be along any moment now.
posted by loquacious at 11:28 AM on September 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

No one, to my knowledge, has built a Turing machine yet.

The official forums seem to be down, but someone was working on one at one point.

Here's what I can find on youtube, though:

4bit RAM

Ticker Display

Clock

Seven Segment Display
posted by empath at 11:29 AM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty charitable about video game walkthroughs (of which there are entirely too many) but this was the most boring thing I've ever seen in my life. I guess I'm the only one who feels that way, though.
posted by koeselitz at 11:40 AM on September 19, 2010

Double rainbow.
posted by gwint at 11:49 AM on September 19, 2010

Of course should you like peanut butter in your chocolate, there is a dwarf fortress to minecraft exporter.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 11:49 AM on September 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

Between this and CIV 5 I'm going to basically vanish off the face of the earth this Winter.
posted by The Whelk at 11:49 AM on September 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

I'm pretty charitable about video game walkthroughs (of which there are entirely too many) but this was the most boring thing I've ever seen in my life.

Unlike most videogame walkthroughs, there's nothing to walk through here really, in the sense of puzzles to solve, or enemies to beat. It's just emergent gameplay through simple systems, and thus somewhat unpredictable. It's funny because it's an attempted walkthrough that went horribly wrong.
posted by empath at 11:54 AM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

Something really similar to this happened on my multiplayer server. It went something like this.

Charly: Hey, how do I move lava around.

Me: With a bucket.

Me: Wait, why.

Charly: Oh nothing.

Wickity: Man, I hope Charly never finds out about flint and steel.

Charly: What? Brb.

*five minutes later*

Charly: Woops.

Me: What woops.

Charly: My treehouse.

A few minutes later...
posted by empath at 12:00 PM on September 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

Was this in SMP? Fire seems a bit jumpier in multiplayer than singleplayer, to me.
posted by paisley henosis at 12:02 PM on September 19, 2010

The Whelk: Between this and CIV 5 I'm going to basically vanish off the face of the earth this Winter.

And then in February or so, Portal 2! Hooray for hermitude!
posted by paisley henosis at 12:03 PM on September 19, 2010

Okay, I gave in and downloaded it.

I decided to see what would happen if you just dug straight down forever.

QUICK! Everybody dig upward!
posted by The Whelk at 12:16 PM on September 19, 2010

The Whelk: QUICK! Everybody dig upward!

Digging up is really easy, you just dig a ramp 2 blocks tall.
posted by paisley henosis at 12:19 PM on September 19, 2010

Now I am wandering around and since the Wiki is down, I'm just ...trying various combinations of improbable things.
posted by The Whelk at 12:26 PM on September 19, 2010

I hit the tree with the flower why?
posted by The Whelk at 12:30 PM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Holy god, minecraft is following me. For the last week, ever since I rediscovered this game and purchased it, everywhere I turn is minecraft. Long hours of play and short hours of minecraft filled dreams become stranger when I suddenly am seeing it pop up everywhere I go online. I might be going insane.

This game, even as unfinished as it is, is the most compact form of awesome I have ever spent money on. Even if Notch stopped updating right now I feel that I got more than my money's worth. Hell, I've paid $60 for games that I get so much less out of.

After spending several nights sealed into a tiny hole on the beach, listening to things moan outside and try to get to me, when I first discovered coal and learned how to make light? Oh man. The rush of accomplishment and joy of discovery was just unreal. I no longer had to fear the night. I no longer had to sit shivering in the dark, waiting for day to come and incinerate the hordes of undead trying to devour me. I could abandon the surface, and make a new, well-lit, life underground. Exactly how ancient man must have felt after discovering fire (Shush).

What started as a hole in a seaside hill turned into a network of tunnels and rooms, with well lit entrances wherever I happened to pop out onto the dreaded surface. My technological discoveries continued, as did my education on mining and being devoured by nonsense that had no fucking business being in my tunnels, like seriously, where the fuck did that even come from? Then I grew ambitious.

Deep underground chambers turned into an elaborate home. Naturally lit from the shaft I painstakingly created up to the surface. Underground arboretums and fields, due to more massively deep skylight systems and imported grass. A tunnel that punctured the floor of the ocean, turned from disaster to a glass tower to the ocean's surface, and then followed by bridges to distant islands.

Last night I had finished my plan to carve off a chunk of island, monsterproof it with the help of a million torches, and begin to build a nice above ground home. I would finally reclaim the surface, leaving behind my underground kingdom and returning to the warmth of the sun. Of course, I couldn't leave some things to chance. I carved a chunk of this island back to sheer cliffs, ensuring that monsters from the neighboring island couldnt devour me in my sleep. Life would be good.

What the shit is this? A current? What? Holy shit, I'm actually being sucked in. Oh no. In my attempt to shave back this island, I apparently broke in to a cavern of some sort, which now has the might of the ocean rushing into it. Wait, strike that. In light of my quarter mile fall down a waterfall of my own making, I'm going to revise that to "shaft". Soooo...huh. I guess I'm in a natural cave of sorts? Well, seeing how the way out is far, far, far above me (and currently has millions of gallons of water angrily rushing into it) I suspect getting out is going to suck. So I explore...

...what turns out to be the largest goddamn natural cave complex man has ever seen. I thankfully had the remains of a forest along with me, and there was no end of coal in these caverns. I did not long for light. Which is good, because somewhere around the 300th torch mark I began to suspect I was lost. But so much treasure all around me! More iron than I've seen in my life. Gold! Redstone! Is that..huh. Obsidian! Well, cant even mine that without a pick made of...holy crap, is that diamond? Clearly, if I ever managed to get out of here I was going to need to find a way to come back and tap the natural resources I had discovered. I think just around this corner will take me back to where I came from...I think.

I realized that, not intending to do anything dangerous, I had far too many rare and valuable resources on me when I plunged into adventure. It was imperative that I get back out. Caverns full of monsters, and ambush by a giant slime, and underground oceans of magma conspired against me. I didn't survive those those cold and dark hole-dwelling days just to die now. I am resourceful! I begin to contemplate starting a new life here, and one day perhaps rediscovering the surface. I push on, and when I later take that last gasp of waster and reemerge into the ocean, I feel GOOD. Adventure! Discovery! The feeling of being underground and oh so alone, but excited about what might be around the next corner. I mentally make plans to return and claim the riches of the earth. THIS is what minecraft is all about! This is the way games should be!

THIS is apparently why I'm still awake at five in the morning.

Shit.
posted by Stunt at 12:57 PM on September 19, 2010 [76 favorites]

I hit the tree with the flower why?

Watch this.
posted by empath at 1:01 PM on September 19, 2010 [4 favorites]

Minecrafting with Nessassin

Minecrafting with Nessassin: Renewed Confidence
posted by boo_radley at 1:27 PM on September 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

Here's an entire 16 bit adding machine.

Jesus. Speaking of Civ, you know those moments, when you come rumbling through the jungle in your tank, and get attacked by some hapless phalanx? Yeah, looks like I'll enjoy Minecraft, but I'll be the one with the spear.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 4:29 PM on September 19, 2010

I went in knowing NOTHING and while it was fun, I was a bit bored. The walkthroughs really helped in a "oh wait I have to do X first, oh"

I'd play it once without any forknowledge then hit up the FAQs.
posted by The Whelk at 4:38 PM on September 19, 2010

Hours and hours and hours and at the end of it I haven't done anything real. Seems like that time spent in the workshop would be at least as rewarding if not moreso.

Cute. What are your thoughts on Buddhist sand painting?

/ electrons in silicon : dyed sand :: video games : sand mandala
posted by PsychoKick at 5:11 PM on September 19, 2010 [4 favorites]

Yeah, wandering in and fucking around is an okay time if you like a sort of ontological mystery feel to your gaming. In a sense it's a puzzle game without spoilers, but the puzzle is rather brutal: what combinations of things do things? Try EVERYTHING.

Notch has talked about wanting to improve the internal guidance of the game—not necessarily just delivering a spoilery tutorial on stuff like crafting, but providing some sort of daisy-chain of clues on how to craft your way through the heirarchy of available recipes. It'll be nicer for brand new players when that happens, because you'll be able to do discovery of new things in the game at a reasonable step-wise pace and without having to look externally for guidance.
posted by cortex at 5:12 PM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Eh... I looked up crafting recipes almost immediately. There're no clues, as mentioned above, so it would just be trying a lot of stuff, which seems frustrating to me. If he starts including recipes for new items then I might stay off the wikis.
posted by codacorolla at 5:16 PM on September 19, 2010

you know a mouse-over telling you what each material is would help TONS.
posted by The Whelk at 5:29 PM on September 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

I need to check out this game. The descriptions make it sound amazing. I bet it's PC only right?
posted by AzzaMcKazza at 5:49 PM on September 19, 2010

It's java, runs on everything.
posted by empath at 5:51 PM on September 19, 2010

Yeah, it's the fastest, most stable, best thing ever made in Java, as far as I can tell.

I paid for Minecraft because I could see the potential there... notch is constantly making improvements, adding new things, and for a fairly buggy early-alpha, it's still an amazing amount of fun, so I wanted to get in early, and see how it grows.

I like fantasizing about things that might be added. Imagine if you could find berry seeds, and plant them to grow on fences. Hell, they could group up walls even. And then what if you could harvest the berries? And what if you could use them in crafting?

Wood
---
Berries
---
Glass

Bam, bottles of wine for your dinner table!

One day, maybe...
posted by Jimbob at 5:56 PM on September 19, 2010

Whoa. I don't play computer games ever, really, but I love watching people play them. I'm now on the seventeenth video of "X's Adventures in Minecraft" and I want them to go on forever.
posted by hot soup girl at 6:00 PM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

When I try to dig or mine or cut down trees my little blocky fist just keeps hitting over and over and nothing happens. I got some flowers though.
posted by Bonzai at 6:07 PM on September 19, 2010

Hold the mouse button down, don't keep clicking.
posted by empath at 6:09 PM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Minecraft: The Trailer
posted by empath at 6:12 PM on September 19, 2010 [5 favorites]

It is night. I am hiding in a hollowed-out treetop, because I hear unsettling things about what happens after sunset. Somewhere, someone is building a logic circuit out of something called "redstone", while I figure out how to make basic hand tools. But for the moment I am safe, and content.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:20 PM on September 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

It's funny how people like toys that are structured to provide a preformed experience of something open-ended and limitless.
posted by eeeeeez at 6:27 PM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

It's funny how people like to be snarky about things they haven't tried.

I can't think of another toy that comes close in terms of people building things the creator never intended or conceived. Lego, I suppose. Nothing in the computer games arena though.

What about it do you consider "preformed", and/or not open-ended or limitless?
posted by freebird at 6:34 PM on September 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

Correction: it's some kind of tall spire, with trees on top, that I now harvest. I can see a zombie far below in the moonlight (there's a moon!!). It doesn't seem to be interested in the cow. Back to work...
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:36 PM on September 19, 2010

I actually woke up my toddler last night by hollering in my sleep. I was dreaming about running up a cubic cliff face trail trying to get to the top to build something important before a green pillar looking zombie blew the landscape out from under me. I think the dream was about politics but I'm not sure.
posted by freebird at 6:48 PM on September 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

That would be a creeper.
posted by empath at 6:49 PM on September 19, 2010

It's funny how people like to be snarky about things they haven't tried.

Didn't really mean it as a put-down. I find it truly interesting that "play" requires a make-believe fence and that within that fence the experience should be as limitless as possible so as to appear genuine. You need the fence or it isn't play.

I thought about wording my comment differently so it would appear less snarky, but I decided that it was more forceful in its current rendition, and lo, there you are :-)

What about it do you consider "preformed", and/or not open-ended or limitless?

Well, everything. The way you look at the world, the way the world looks, the way certain combinations make certain other combinations and so on.

But again, that's not a problem with the game. It is what makes the game a game.
posted by eeeeeez at 7:17 PM on September 19, 2010

Well, everything. The way you look at the world, the way the world looks, the way certain combinations make certain other combinations and so on.

Well the game has physics. In the broadest possible sense of the term. If you perform action A, and B happens, and the next time you perform action A, B also happens, then you've discovered something, you've learned something about how the world works.*

Contrast this to, for example, Second Life. There, interactions, rules, actions are essentially scripted by individual players. Which might mean you can make it do more interesting things, but it's actually kind of boring. Games like Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, hell even Conway's Game of Life are essentially simulations that establish rules, and you look for emergent properties of their rules. And for some people, there's more fun in emergent properties, than pre-programmed story lines. What if we make monsters that come out at night? What if monsters are scared of flame? How will people be able to defend themselves?

* The extra fun thing about Minecraft, at the moment, is that God (notch) occasionally changes the rules on you.
posted by Jimbob at 7:28 PM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

I tried something new with my latest map. I mined straight down until I hit bedrock (the unbreakable block that lines the bottom of the map) and then started excavating any patches of flint or dirt below 50 units or so, as this is usually a sign that a natural cave is near.

It worked.

The first time I broke through dirt and saw blackness staring back at me my heart raced a little. All of the scrabbling and aimless exploring to find cave systems before was now obsolete with this better system. I soon had a few diamond tools, a full set of iron armor, and a bow with about 50 arrows. I then found two treasure rooms in a row after not finding anything before. I was a prince! Confident, I explored the cave further, and came across a lava pool. I slowly started using flint as fill dirt to dry out a lava pool and look for diamonds.

And then I fell in.

I was dead in seconds, and it was like the past hour had almost never happened.

The fortuna's wheel never lets us have long enough on the top, it seems.

So there you go. A plot for a video game that's just as good as hard-bitten marines battling some endless enemy horde - it has a protagonist, a story arc, and even manages to give a pretty good moral.
posted by codacorolla at 9:05 PM on September 19, 2010

That same shit just happened to me. I had a bunch of redstone, gold and iron and came across one of those water + lava caves and was trying to get to diamond. I put a cobblestone bridge across the lava, walked across, cleared out an area to stand on so I could mine out the diamond, then mined the diamond in front of me. Discovering water. Which pushed me into the lava behind me, which then became cobblestone above me as I sunk beneath the flames and the water followed me in. 3 hours of mining, gone. Full set of iron armor and tools, gone. Bow and Arrow, gone.

New Rule: Before fucking with lava, put my everything valuable in a box.
posted by empath at 9:13 PM on September 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

Fair enough, eeeeeeez. I was too quick to counter-snark, and I agree that it's fascinating how imposed constraints can somehow aid creativity and freedom.

I'm still not sure about characterizing it as "pre-formed" though. The only definition of "pre-formed" game play that would include it would seem to include basically every game or toy ever, which makes the term useless doesn't it?
posted by freebird at 9:15 PM on September 19, 2010

Empath: yes. A delver's most important kit is sixteen planks. If you die, you get the fun of rediscovering your banked goods.
posted by boo_radley at 9:24 PM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

A delver's most important kit is sixteen planks. If you die, you get the fun of rediscovering your banked goods.

Man, that's a pretty decent idea.

Though my approach (in single, at least, where it matters) has been to just become a meticulous, deliberate motherfucker in my mining, doing depth-first left-bearing searches of cave systems, blocking off spent passages with cobble when done with a dead-end, overbuilding around lava, getting really good at backwheeling and blocking surprise flows, listening for, fusing off and blowing up creepers from a safe distance (or just arrowing them if I've got the ammo), hauling food to keep my health up, and when the worst does happen (i.e. a fuckin' creeper gets the drop on me at a bad moment) I just run back down along the open passages to find where I was in plenty of time to recoup.
posted by cortex at 9:51 PM on September 19, 2010

I apparently encountered an exploding zombie a little while ago. At least, it was a greenish humanoid figure that attacked me, but when I tried to nail it with my sword there was a big boom and it was gone and there was a crater full of dirt cubes in its place. Okey-dokey.

Yeah, that's currently my preferred method of mining, since the first one that exploded in my presence blew some interesting things from the rock I hadn't seen before (coal and flint, I think). I've spent the last few "days" making my spire/fortress easy to get into for me and hard for anything else. I have been killed a couple of times by archer zombies, though.

Thought I would be happy enough experimenting with crafting on my own, but as soon as I discovered that orientation of the crafting items has an effect, that idea lost a bit of its shine. The wiki is still down so I'm still figuring out how to do very basic stuff.

And I decided to go explore a rather deep cave in the afternoon, got lost, and lost my fucking shit looking for the way out, convinced it must be dusk (it wasn't). Egads, the virtual claustrophobia.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 9:54 PM on September 19, 2010

Two simple rules for cave exploring will stop you from getting lost:

1) Always put torches on the same side of the wall as you explore new areas. If you always put them on the right, then following hallways with torches on the left will get you home. Mark off 'finished' tunnels with torches on the ground or cobblestone.

2) Never drop down into a chasm without making yourself stairs back up as you go.
posted by empath at 10:00 PM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh, the wiki is back up.

Wow -- that is fantastic. I don't think I'd have come up with many of those recipes without a glance at the list to see the sense behind structuring the ingredients that way, but I like it. Maybe now that I've got that I'll go back to experimenting.

Very, very cool. I'm hooked.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:01 PM on September 19, 2010

Completely hooked. Found a few dungeon spawners in this massive CAVE SYSTEM OF DOOM that really got me peeved. I'm gonna crack the lid on their whole little world, though... Just need to mine out this 68x57x23 cube to expose the majority of the system. That's only 84,456 cubes or so.

(this is a cry for help)
posted by Ryvar at 10:27 PM on September 19, 2010

It seems a lot like Little Big Planet, but with simpler graphics and less backstory.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:31 PM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Too bad this doesn't happen with WoW.

"And I stood there shivering in my pajamas
And watched the whole world go up in flames
And when it was all over
I said to myself
" Is that all there is to a fire ? "
Is that all there is?"
posted by markkraft at 10:42 PM on September 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

"Ah, Grognor! At last! We have built a magnificent fortress of evil, that will spawn great evil legions from the depths, that will sweep across this land like a mighty deluge! All Xeraxis will bow before ou..."

"Hey? Who's that guy with that block of wood?!"
posted by markkraft at 10:48 PM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Omg. I took a few nasty turns in my original world and decided to start anew. The first few times I mucked around I saw other lands much like my own: an arctic Utah, basically. Now I try again, and I'm on a tropical island with... bamboo?? I love this game.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:08 PM on September 19, 2010

I am pretty sure I have put in more hours playing Minecraft this past week than I put in at work, and I worked a regular week. This game needs to go back in time and kill itself and never have taken all of my attention.
posted by komara at 12:30 AM on September 20, 2010

empath: 2) Never drop down into a chasm without making yourself stairs back up as you go.

Or you can travel with a bunch of gravel, a.k.a. the explorer's portable elevator. Drop gravel down the chasm until you can safely drop down onto the gravel column. Mine it and descend gently, putting torches on the wall as you go (also works with sand). To go back up, jump up while looking down, putting down gravel blocks under you (you can use any block for this, but I prefer gravel or sand in case I fall down and have to start over again). It's not as elegant as making yourself stairs, but it takes a helluvalot shorter time to do.
posted by Kattullus at 5:14 AM on September 20, 2010 [4 favorites]

I do stairs because i like to be able to run away quickly if i need to.
posted by empath at 5:32 AM on September 20, 2010

I was sold by Stunt's post and downloaded this game at lunchtime. I just looked up and it was dark.

I reckon I've been looking for my main fort for about three hours.
posted by notionoriety at 6:27 AM on September 20, 2010

I've just tried this out, and have already been scared by a sheep jumping on me. I managed to fight it off with some bamboo though, lol.

Is there any way I could get this to work using a SNES controller? I have one for the SNES emulator I use and I'd find the controls WAY easier to use.
posted by Solomon at 6:57 AM on September 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

I am currently tunneling in a straight line under the sea. Is this a bad/pointless idea?
posted by Gator at 8:37 AM on September 20, 2010

It turns out that you can, but it's not very good. There are too many controls for the SNES controller to easily handle. Shame, as it's much easier that way.
posted by Solomon at 8:59 AM on September 20, 2010

It is an AWESOME idea, and let no one tell you otherwise. How else are you supposed to pop up and have a tunnel straight to a new land? Or, more likely, flood your tunnel, which in turn causes you to defeat nature and build a tower sticking out of the ocean there. Which you can then use to create a bridge to a new land!

I endorse all manner of tunnel
posted by Stunt at 9:00 AM on September 20, 2010 [3 favorites]

I am currently tunneling in a straight line under the sea. Is this a bad/pointless idea?

I am here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

'No,' says the man in Washington, 'it belongs to the poor.'
'No,' says the man in the Vatican, 'it belongs to God.'
'No,' says the man in Moscow, 'it belongs to everyone.'

I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...

A TUNNEL UNDER THE SEA.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:11 AM on September 20, 2010 [14 favorites]

I'd like to dig... under the sea... in an Octopu...

OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD... IS THAT CTHULU????????
posted by symbioid at 9:25 AM on September 20, 2010

I played this over the weekend for the first time. Girlfriend left to hang out with friends in the early afternoon, and when she came back I was still playing.

Her: "I thought you would be doing homework while I was gone."
Me: "Huh?"
Her: "Grad school, remember? What are you doing?"
Me: "Digging."
Her: "We need to go food shopping."
Me: "Sure sure. Be there in a minute."

This fills a deep-seated need that I have deep within me to pointlessly dig holes. Now I won't get in trouble from mom for putting a big divot in the back yard.
posted by backseatpilot at 10:46 AM on September 20, 2010 [2 favorites]

Oh god, so i finally downloaded the thing last night, was up till 3 in the morning. Dammit.

Fortuantely my paypal account is bollocksed up so whenever it is pay-to-play again I will be safe from it. Unless it goes on Steam...
posted by Artw at 11:36 AM on September 20, 2010

I have mentally skipped over every mention of Minecraft so far, but this FPP made me think "hmm, I guess I'd better find out what this is." And now I know, with complete certainty, that if I download and install this game I will be arrested for child neglect within the month. So no Minecraft for me.
posted by davejay at 11:56 AM on September 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

BioShock Infinite's Columbia city gets Minecrafted
posted by Artw at 12:15 PM on September 20, 2010

And now I know, with complete certainty, that if I download and install this game I will be arrested for child neglect within the month. So no Minecraft for me.

Fortunatly putting the thing on a phone would be an impossible task, otherwise I'd be doomed.
posted by Artw at 12:19 PM on September 20, 2010

Minecraft and Inception
BYERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNN
posted by boo_radley at 12:33 PM on September 20, 2010 [2 favorites]

Want to see your world and buildings from above? Get Cartograph, MTS (.NET) or Overviewer (Python).
Want to change how Minecraft looks? Get The Painterly (Texture) Pack.
Want to explore pre-generated themed dungeons with treasure? Get MCMapper.
Like the idea of exploring floating islands? Get Skylands.
posted by Memo at 12:35 PM on September 20, 2010 [11 favorites]

Artw: considering that Minecraft only takes a couple hundred megs of RAM to run, and looking at what Epic has pulled off in porting the Unreal engine to the iPhone, I'm pretty sure the iPhone 4 could handle it. It would slaughter battery life, but I'm fairly certain that with a little bit of optimization (it's a massive grid of uniform convex hulls) you could get it running as it currently stands with a medium draw distance.

Once notch starts putting in the falling physics stuff he's been blogging about, then maybe that wouldn't be the case.
posted by Ryvar at 12:49 PM on September 20, 2010

Penny Arcade's ongoing adventures in Minecraft (in comic form):

Part One: "Oh no. I'm in some real fucking trouble here." (blog post)

Part Two: "Dear Diary. Zombies are real." (blog post)
posted by Rhaomi at 12:52 PM on September 20, 2010 [5 favorites]

Ryvar: "y stands with a medium draw distance.

Once notch starts putting in the falling physics stuff he's been blogging about, then maybe that wouldn't be the case."

I haven't dug around in decompiled source at all, but I've heard that notch's code has a ton of room for improvements in all sorts of areas. I hope he can hire a graphics programmer to help out, although maybe finding one with java experience is a long shot, I dunno.

The only thing I want from the engine is for physics to be a little more -- well -- physicier. I don't want to unleash a roof of lava on my head simply because the engine hasn't yet checked to see if ought to fall .
posted by boo_radley at 1:41 PM on September 20, 2010

It is against The Rules to put Minecraft on the iPhone. If they do that I'll just go ahead and move my shit under a bridge, because I will be homeless shortly after getting fired from work for playing Minecraft and thinking, "That's fine, now I have more free time to play Minecraft."
posted by komara at 2:44 PM on September 20, 2010 [3 favorites]

I don't think there's be a hope in hell of it working within the 3G, 3GS or iPads memory. iPhone 4 might have move of a chance.

Of course, it being Java it's the Android users who are truly at risk.

Can you imagine if this thing had made it big ten years ago? People might actually give a damn about Java on the desktop.
posted by Artw at 2:53 PM on September 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

I don't want to play this because it will consume my life in ways that WoW could only dream of.

Crap.

Just downloaded it.
posted by Fezboy! at 3:00 PM on September 20, 2010

This is a beautiful game.
posted by naju at 3:09 PM on September 20, 2010 [6 favorites]

You can build artillery?
posted by Artw at 3:14 PM on September 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

Minecraft on Google Trends

Coincidentally, a graph of my productivity over recent weeks follows the exact opposite pattern. Strange.
posted by Acey at 3:16 PM on September 20, 2010

So far my looooong straight-line tunnel has not emerged anywhere, though at one point I heard beast sounds, got curious, dug upwards, and built a ladder to the surface so I could see what I was tunneling under. Turns out the new country looks just like the old one. Oh well. I was kind of hoping for, I don't know, regional cuisine or something. But at least I haven't dug out into the actual ocean and drowned myself.
posted by Gator at 3:18 PM on September 20, 2010

Minecraft on Google Trends

With that in mind the whole Paypal WTF thing is perhaps a bit more forgivable.
posted by Artw at 3:23 PM on September 20, 2010

Gator: "Oh well. I was kind of hoping for, I don't know, regional cuisine or something. But at least I haven't dug out into the actual ocean and drowned myself."

Biomes are coming very soon!
posted by Memo at 3:26 PM on September 20, 2010

Oh well. I was kind of hoping for, I don't know, regional cuisine or something.

Varying biomes across the face of the map is a biggie on Notch's TODO list. Take heart, it is coming.
posted by cortex at 3:26 PM on September 20, 2010

After reading the Penny Arcade comics, I have only one thing to say: Dear AskMe, my kids have been taken from me due to neglect, how can I get them back without giving up Minecraft?
posted by davejay at 3:26 PM on September 20, 2010

My withered husk curses this thread from the future.
posted by Aquaman at 3:38 PM on September 20, 2010 [2 favorites]

odinsdream: "Does sound not work on the OSX version?"

Sound is broken for new players due to the server problems. The official forum is temporarily down but here's the google cache of a thread with the fix.
posted by Memo at 4:47 PM on September 20, 2010

Got startled off a mountaintop and fell to my death. Free at last, free at last!
posted by Gator at 5:51 PM on September 20, 2010

Yep, took a bit of work to get the sound running, but it's so important that you do, both for atmosphere and for the audio warnings of creatures nearby (and eerily, on the other side of rock while you dig).

Things have sure changed since my first go-round. It just hadn't occurred to me that resources I could break apart with my hands, albeit slowly, would yield something different or more useful with tools -- after all, it's letting me break it apart, isn't it? Yeah, you can imagine stunted my progress until I figured that much out. (torches? I was marking places with flowers fer chrissake).

I will say this: you never appreciate a sword like you do after you've beaten a pig into ham with your fists.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 5:56 PM on September 20, 2010 [6 favorites]

I am waiting for my boss to leave so that I can realise the tunnels that are whirling in my head. This shall not end well.
posted by notionoriety at 5:57 PM on September 20, 2010

Also: I found some mossy cobblestones, two chests containing what I suspect is gunpowder and some pig saddles (!), and a cube of caged fire which spawns infinite skeleton archers -- in the daytime, near torches, whenever, all the time. I must have been killed a dozen times trying to wall that monstrosity away.

I couldn't wall the whole area away. There were ores nearby...

On preview: notionoriety -- I didn't realize how firmly this thing had captured my mind until I went down into the basement to fetch something...
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:00 PM on September 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

Also, while the music is pleasant and calming, I need something to match the intensity of just having broken through an ore cube into some sprawling, black abyss of caverns...

"The Keep" Soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. Definitely.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:15 PM on September 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

I didn't realize how firmly this thing had captured my mind until I went down into the basement to fetch something...

Oh jesus yes. I walked into my garage last night to pour another pint and was positively unnerved by the appalling lack of light present. At least nothing out there hisses. Or blows up. I don't think rebuilding the side of my garage would be more difficult than what I am accustomed to, and I probably can just skimp and use sand.
posted by Stunt at 6:21 PM on September 20, 2010

Errr, I think it WOULD be more difficult than what I'm accustomed to. That one.
posted by Stunt at 6:22 PM on September 20, 2010

Okay. I've now watched all forty-five episodes of "X's Adventures in Minecraft". WHAT DO I WATCH NOW?
posted by hot soup girl at 7:43 PM on September 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

You can watch someone attempt the video in the FPP, but this time with a working sprinkler system.
posted by codacorolla at 8:09 PM on September 20, 2010 [3 favorites]

Ahem... "working"
posted by codacorolla at 8:11 PM on September 20, 2010

codacorolla: "You can watch someone attempt the video in the FPP, but this time with a working sprinkler system."

LOL... herpderp indeed... LOL
posted by symbioid at 9:39 PM on September 20, 2010

"Oh, god, it doesn't work."

X-D
posted by adamdschneider at 9:39 PM on September 20, 2010

MetaFilter: I didn't realize how firmly this thing had captured my mind until I went down into the basement to fetch something...
posted by hippybear at 10:32 PM on September 20, 2010

You know, I bet someone could make a really badass House of Leaves map. I can see it now: Using one of those third-party editors, start with a blank slate and build out a level grassy platform near the world ceiling. Then at the center construct a largish two-story suburban house. From the front door, subtly sink the ground floor room by room so the back room's back wall is fully underground, then build out a long passage of pure obsidian. Use one of those dungeon generator algorithms to populate that level with an endless branching obsidian maze. At some point nearby, mine out a stupendously large Great Hall, with a spiral staircase twirling down into the inky void... only to make landing at a lower level filled with yet another assortment of endless mazelike rooms and passages. Maybe leave some of the walls hollow and fill them with the mobs that make the most disquieting sounds. And a minotaur. But I think that's a job for Notch.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:39 PM on September 20, 2010 [6 favorites]

Yes, because I don't experience quite enough towering existential dread while exploring a cave system already.
posted by dudekiller at 1:38 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Constructing a bit too close to the sea can have interesting results, especially when there is a sudden fall of sand and then water starts pouring down into a huge chasm that's just formed, and you go o the surface and see that your house now has a waterfall through it where the entire ocean is draining into god knows where.
posted by Artw at 2:55 AM on September 21, 2010

Don't have time to read rest of thread, playing Minecraft. Except to say, I got very pissed off dying on ladders. I've always hated ladders in FPS type games because some arbitrary key always seems to be both the "climb" key and the "plummet to your doom" key, especially so on the downclimb. So I'd always get heaps of health power ups and practice, practice, practice.

Yet the "lose everything" model here doesn't lend itself to that. So I thought I'd google to see how others were dealing with the ladders. I found (on the xkcd forum no less) a comment that pretty much summed up my problem.

Ladders have never ever felt right for me in any 3d game ever. Getting stuck to a vertical surface with no clear way of knowing what random move will make you plummet to your death is not my idea of fun. And climbing DOWN ladders is usually even worse.

Exactly, dude! The poster? Some joker called notch. WTF notch?
posted by GeckoDundee at 5:08 AM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

Yeah, there's really no reason to make ladders so difficult. You don't randomly trip over your feet and fall over when you walk in a 3D game, why should you randomly fall off ladders? Still, I haven't had too much trouble with ladders in Minecraft. In fact, I've found that when you make ladders, you can skip a block in between each ladder segment and still climb them.

|=|
[B]
|=|
[B]
|=|

posted by Jimbob at 5:13 AM on September 21, 2010

I've never had problems with ladders, really. Except for the time i tried to make a horizontal row of them.
posted by empath at 5:21 AM on September 21, 2010

Also, Rhaomi, you're a genius. I'm trying to figure out a way to make the inside larger than the outside now.
posted by empath at 5:22 AM on September 21, 2010

Hmm...I haven't had many problems with ladders in Minecraft so far (well, except when I'm running down a twisty underground staircase quickly and forget that I switched to ladders, and suddenly plummet down a 40-foot shaft that appears without warning). Climbing up them's easy if you look up and hold forward, because you can use the mouse to steer you into the middle of the ladder.

Climbing down's even easier - reach the top of the ladder, turn round, and tap backwards to drop into the hole. Then don't touch the movement keys, and you'll slide gently down.
posted by ZsigE at 5:23 AM on September 21, 2010

empath: "I'm trying to figure out a way to make the inside larger than the outside now."

I was worried about that, too. But if people can make working Portals (!), then surely a little dimensional weirdness should be a breeze.
posted by Rhaomi at 6:54 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Climbing down's even easier - reach the top of the ladder, turn round, and tap backwards to drop into the hole.

You don't need to turn around.
posted by empath at 7:09 AM on September 21, 2010

The free weekend is a blessing and a curse.....
posted by inigo2 at 7:11 AM on September 21, 2010

Thanks, Jimbob, but that only works when I'm going up the ladder. Despite ZsigE and empath's advice, I can't get confident with the downclimb, and with so much at stake, well...

Also. Islands, how the heck do they work? I've sailed (well, there's no sail, but, you know) a fair bit and it just gets me lost. Keep the land mass on one side and you end up nowhere. I even watched out for whether the sun set on the other side, but I'm lost.

Are there several spawn points? And as someone said, the mobs spawncamp wicked fierce.
posted by GeckoDundee at 7:24 AM on September 21, 2010

Oh, and while I might d/l the painterly mod, I'm happy to wait for the finished product. But floating in a boat at night and looking up at the stars and clouds is a very special experience that I can imagine getting even better on release.
posted by GeckoDundee at 7:30 AM on September 21, 2010

Helpful navigation tip #1: the clouds always go north. The sun and moon and stars cycle due east across the sky, as well—Minecraft appears to be an equator world of some sort.

Helpful navigation tip #2: build a compass. It always points, not to north, but to the world's spawn point. I suspect that Notch is secretly trying to make polar coordinates popular with the youth of today.

Danger-free ladder: build your ladder in a one-block-wide borehole. You can't help but stick to it that way, no falling off in a bad twitchy moment. Just slow, peaceful descents when you're not actively ascending. I'm not in love with the ladders in Minecraft, but in this sense they are reliable.
posted by cortex at 8:13 AM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

It always points, not to north, but to the world's spawn point.

Interesting. So even after you set your home somewhere else, it still just points to the world's spawn point? (Or do I not understand what you're saying because I didn't get much sleep last night because of this freaking game.)
posted by inigo2 at 8:21 AM on September 21, 2010

Since we are swapping Minecraft stories, I want to throw in one of my own. I was exploring deep in one of this game's wondrous cave formations, tottering along and humming to myself while I put torches here and there. I do not explore caves quickly, but "terraform" as I go along, putting in stairs and generally making navigation easier a.)so that I know where I've been and b.)so that I can flee easily should the need arise.

I moved into a dark area, stuck a torch to the wall and turned back toward the now-lit passage. In a perfect horror-movie moment, staring back down at me were these two fellows.* (In the picture I've actually stumbled back slightly in shock).

I guess they weren't sure how to proceed, because they just stood there. I slowly backed away, not taking my eyes off them, and for a moment at least there was peace between us.

THEN: ACTION SCENE COMMENCES WHERE I TAKE THOSE JERKS DOWN

* For those unfamiliar with the game, these are "Creepers" - they are ugly, move completely silently, and love to run up to the player, hiss and then explode violently. There are videos above which demonstrate this vividly.
posted by Monster_Zero at 8:24 AM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

I believe it always points to global spawn. The /sethome function is part of the third-party hey0 mod, not something native to Minecraft, so the native compass ought not to even know about such things.

Ah, thanks. Makes sense. I still don't get some of this stuff. Couldn't figure out how to do the forge stuff; not sure if I was exhausted, or just dumb. Guess I'll find out tonight (ugh).
posted by inigo2 at 8:26 AM on September 21, 2010

Aaaaargh, creepers.
posted by adamdschneider at 9:07 AM on September 21, 2010

In a perfect horror-movie moment...

This game is really good at those. The other day I was removing dirt to try and find where zombie noises were coming from. I removed the right block, and there was a 1 square opening that let me see the top of about 4 zombie's heads moving back and forth. And then I hear "twang" and get sniped by an invisible skeleton.
posted by codacorolla at 9:22 AM on September 21, 2010

"Oh whoops there is lava behind there" makes for some good non-monster panics.
posted by Artw at 9:28 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Last night, I logged on to the MFC Aporkalypse mp server to get actually started on my big project. I was all gung ho to go!

But then I spawned into my mine... where I had logged out just after unearthing a huge patch of obsidian on top of lava. So I mined it. That took forever. Then I thought, oh, I had another patch of obsidian I wanted to mine, let me go back there. So I did. Then I was trying to find my way back to one specific place to pick up some iron ore, and I ran into a waterfall that I had sort of ignored. And it was huge, so I jumped into it and swam to the bottom - where there were diamonds!

So I excavated a bit. Then a bit more, then I built a path up to the top again. Then I excavated to bedrock underneath the waterfall, making it fall much further. Then I made the walkways wider and added torches. Then I added a platform to dive off into the waterfall from. And then I made a secret diamond mine at the top of bedrock at the foot of the waterfall, and then.... it was 12:30am and I'd been playing for five hours. And I didn't even place a single block on my project building...
posted by gemmy at 12:14 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Appetite: Whetted.
Minecraft: Won't update more than 79%.

Damn.
posted by Lucien Dark at 1:20 PM on September 21, 2010

I need to stop reading this thread. These stories have made my urge to play this game pretty overwhelming, but it seems like such a bad idea for my life and personal relationships. If I were still in college I'd probably gladly fail a couple of courses for this though.
posted by pziemba at 1:27 PM on September 21, 2010

You should give it a shot. While it's free, you know? I'm sure you'll be able to only do it once.
posted by inigo2 at 1:31 PM on September 21, 2010

Just build a small fort at first, maybe a little mine out back. I'm sure you'll be able to stop.
posted by Artw at 1:34 PM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

Make sure you dig some coal, so you can light some torches to stay safe that first night.
posted by inigo2 at 1:44 PM on September 21, 2010

...and before long you've built a forge, smelted some ore and you're on to the hard stuff.
posted by Artw at 1:47 PM on September 21, 2010

Your house would look a lot better with glass windows. Just sayin'.
posted by inigo2 at 2:00 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Why just a house? You should build some walls.
posted by graventy at 3:12 PM on September 21, 2010

Here's a Quick Start that provides just enough info to prevent wasting your first day of play, and also instructions for installing sound.
posted by five fresh fish at 3:31 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I do get a bit annoyed with the UI in terms of left vs right click.

And how do I pick up the workbench again when I'm done???
posted by symbioid at 3:52 PM on September 21, 2010

sometimes the workbench flies into my hand when I throw it down and want it to stay put, and other times, it refused to be picked up when i WANT it. WTF?
posted by symbioid at 3:53 PM on September 21, 2010

Just punch it into submission.
posted by graventy at 3:59 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

In a perfect horror-movie moment...

This game is really good at those.

Word. This time through (I can't help it; I love beginnings. Had the same problem with Civ) seems like some switch on the initial build was set to "suspense/horror" cause it's around every turn. First spawn, morning of day #1, I find myself on a tropical beach. I look over and there's a cobblestone pit. How strange. I wander over. In the pit are three raised blocks of sand. Ok. So I go uncover one. RRRRAAAAAHHHH! It's a caged flame. Right there. First thing I find. I'm so startled I have trouble getting it covered again, even though I'm perfectly safe with all the daylight flooding in. So now I'm on a mission: find coal before dark, because this mofo *will* be surrounded by torches to prevent spawns. Nothing else is acceptable. (and it is. Just a stone pit on the beach, with an otherwise innocuous cube of sand surrounded rather ominously by four torches)

Under the other two raised blocks: treasure chests. So the first materials I get (aside from, temporarily, the sand blocks) are redstone dust, iron ingots, three buckets, and a pig saddle. What a difference a build makes.

Later, I'm running through this huge cavern complex, throwing down torches to prevent spawns (I love that mechanic; it makes the ordeal that much more anxious and frenetic), when I realize I've put down my last torch and there's still yawning blackness in at least two more directions. Whoops. Erm, carrying plenty of wood. Didn't I see some coal back there? So back I go. Sure enough, in the floor in the corner of this one room. Monster sounds loud -- I need those torches! (you can see where this is going). Coal falls away below, and without missing a beat, an arrow whizzes up through the new opening and buries itself in the wall next to me.

And is it just me, or is the thing you find yourself short of come nightfall always wood? I swear, forestry by moonlight has become my second job. *Clink, clink, clink* ggrrrraaa. *watch silhouette zombiewalk by in the moonlight* *Clink, clink, clink...*
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 4:24 PM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

Symboid - Hitting Q tosses something away, so if you hit that it will toss down the workbench unbuilt, which will probably pop back into your inventory. Also, to pick it up again once it's been installed and used, just destroy it.
posted by Stunt at 4:24 PM on September 21, 2010

I have to add: I'm incredibly envious of anyone's first play-through. It's still exhilarating, but nothing compares to the confusion and fear and joy of discovery of setting foot in your first minecraft world, whatever its attributes.

Even if Notch stopped updating right now I feel that I got more than my money's worth.

I have no fear of an end to updates; quite the opposite. I'm afraid of transformational changes. You know what I saw suggested on one of the forums today? Guns. Something like that would be it. I'd hang up my hat right there (and play the earlier version indefinitely, if possible).
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 5:09 PM on September 21, 2010

[Two days later...]

You just had to mention the zombies, didn't you empath. Curse you.
posted by Gator at 5:16 PM on September 21, 2010

The free weekend just ended. I wonder how many new people are going to buy the game now.
posted by Memo at 5:29 PM on September 21, 2010

All of them.
posted by komara at 5:49 PM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

Seriously, notch just posted on Twitter about how sales were piling up. He thought it was a PayPal problem, turned out to be his problem, but regardless, people are buying in droves.
posted by komara at 5:50 PM on September 21, 2010

Ooh, the site is back up, and I registered, and it crashed.

That's the Java I know and love...
posted by Artw at 5:53 PM on September 21, 2010

Tried to register but the system is glutted. Will try again, but something tells me the traffic isn't going to die down.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:03 PM on September 21, 2010

Noooooooooooooooooo

-withdrawrals-

/falls to ground and writhes.
posted by Artw at 6:04 PM on September 21, 2010

Durn Bronzefist: "I have no fear of an end to updates; quite the opposite. I'm afraid of transformational changes. You know what I saw suggested on one of the forums today? Guns. Something like that would be it. I'd hang up my hat right there (and play the earlier version indefinitely, if possible)."

The rumored change that bugs me is making torch life finite. They're a pretty integral part of gameplay, and it seems like it would be a huge drag to have to go around replacing all the lights in your fort all the time (especially if you use torches to mark more distant locations for later exploration). Not to mention it would be impossible to keep your space monster-free once it got big enough.

On the other hand, I do see the aesthetic appeal of trying to manage too big of a home base. Neglect your duties long enough, and the cheery Northern Addition with a sunset view turns into the abandoned wing of the First National Zombie Hospital and Creeper Asylum.
posted by Rhaomi at 6:24 PM on September 21, 2010 [5 favorites]

After playing the free version all weekend, I hammered the purchase button on Minecraft.net's wheezing server like a junkie rat with a cruelly intermittent food lever.

It finally paid out after about 45 minutes and delivered the goods.

See you all in Spring.
posted by Aquaman at 7:12 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah, out of the changes that notch has mentioned eventually wanting to put in, the torch thing is pretty much the only one that didn't excite me. I figure adding in a harder to craft permanent light source and making torches have some kind of finite duration would be a solution I could be pretty happy with.

All light being temporary though...do not want. I suppose I would adjust to it, but that would definitely change the game's dynamic some. Which, who knows, might even work out for the best. I think I'll avoid hating on changes that haven't even happened yet.

please don't take my light
posted by Stunt at 7:37 PM on September 21, 2010

I think the idea is to have one kind of torch for temporary exploration (caves) and something like a lantern for your home. The game gets a bit too easy after you get torches everywhere and you have no reason to explore. Plus infinite torches aren't very realistic, anyway.

Though i'd be happy with having a torch i can just carry around :)
posted by empath at 7:49 PM on September 21, 2010

He's selling about 20 copies a minute based on his stats page.

That's 1200 an hour, or 30,000 copies a day.

I wonder if he can keep that up.

He's sold 4,000 just since the server went back up.
posted by empath at 7:58 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

30k copies a day? That's a lot of euros.

I'll have to check out what updates Notch has actually mentioned. I was trying to take the forum suggestions with a heaping tablespoon of salt. Finite torch light, hrm. Would be fine if it weren't for it being the anti-spawn mechanism of the game. If there were only one kind of torch, I wonder what kind of lifespan we're talking about. A day? That could be ok. Though it would certainly affect strategy when exploring deep caverns. I'd also start worrying about running out of coal. Maybe keep redstone torches infinite?

And... I've just glimpsed my first diamond ore. Woohoo!
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 8:25 PM on September 21, 2010

He's earning, what, €300000 a day? FFS!
posted by five fresh fish at 8:36 PM on September 21, 2010

I am currently stuck at the login screen. All I want is to play some single player before bed! Good thing Civ V is almost done downloading.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:43 PM on September 21, 2010

At least minecraft will run well on my GeForce 6600. I just dl'd the demo of civ 5, and it ... runs... about as well as expected when the card is below minimum requirements.

(protip: never buy a cheap halfbreed (by this I mean, AGP + PCIe, IDE+SATA, etc...) mobo (I'm looking at you ASROCK) on the cheap for "upgradability" -- and always make sure that PCIe isn't 1x. *sigh*)
posted by symbioid at 8:52 PM on September 21, 2010

You can destroy the caged fire if you bash it often enough, just like any other non-bedrock block. Speaking of bedrock, any of you folk tunneled to the other side of the sky yet? Also, what I wish notch would get on would be better fluid dynamics. I spent a long time setting up an epic flood, only for it to turn into not much of anything.
posted by Kattullus at 9:49 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I hear you, Kattalus. I spent far more time fooling around with a manufactured waterfall and stream/boat launch than actual adventuring/mining this evening. Weird patterns with adding/taking away water spout cubes.

And... I have a half-heart of health, doing its anxious little dance, and no food. Did I mention I never make it out of the deeps with booty? This would be the first time, and I'm moving things a little distance, confirming the route, putting down a chest, and moving stuff to it from the last one. Even a slight fall will kill me (and I'll never find this bloody hole again). No idea what I'll do with all this redstone dust, though. There seemed to be tons of it compared to, say, diamond.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:08 PM on September 21, 2010

I see videos of people making LED signboards in Minecraft, and here I am delighted to have invented a pointy stick. I've never felt so Neolithic before.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:37 PM on September 21, 2010 [6 favorites]

Yeah, no kidding. Redstone kind of sits in one of my chests, collecting dust. I built my own logic gates for complex machines in LittleBigPlanet, for for some reason I haven't really jumped into trying to use redstone much. In part because it feels really intimidating, and in part because I don't have much to DO with it. I mean, I can open doors, blow up TNT, and...that's all that comes to mind. Short of people building EE stuff because they can, I havent seen a ton of use for it.

Not that it isn't totally rad. I fully support magic powder that lets you build complicated circuits. Neat. I'm just hoping for more stuff I can control with it eventually. Give me gates that can open to allow water/lava through? Oh man I'll be drawing red lines all over the damned place.
posted by Stunt at 12:24 AM on September 22, 2010

Notch mentioned working on flood gates.

If only water worked quasi-realistically.
posted by empath at 5:28 AM on September 22, 2010

Notch mentioned working on flood gates.

And at that point, you could start building locks. For some reason I've always been fascinated with them. That'd be cool.
posted by inigo2 at 7:19 AM on September 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm fine with the water if it never gets changed. Took a bit of working with, but I figured out the rules it behaves by and learned to take advantage of that to do things. If it were changed there would definitely need to be accompanying changes though, I would think. Its flow behavior prevents 100% flooded structures underground and such. Although, I have to say if equipment for being underwater and deepwater monsters were eventually added I could totally get behind permaflooded areas!

Then again, trees float in the air after I punch them to pieces, so I think I can live with water being wacky. Certain charm to things. heh.
posted by Stunt at 8:38 AM on September 22, 2010

Although, I have to say if equipment for being underwater and deepwater monsters were eventually added I could totally get behind permaflooded areas!

Oh, that sounds awesome. Exploring dangerous underwater caverns? Entire submerged cities? Yes please.
posted by naju at 8:55 AM on September 22, 2010

I see videos of people making LED signboards in Minecraft, and here I am delighted to have invented a pointy stick. I've never felt so Neolithic before.

I know, I almost wet myself when I realized I could make a pickaxe using rock instead of wood. This game is like Infinite Jest, but made out of cubes.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:16 AM on September 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

Pickaxes themselves (wooden ones) were the tech breakthrough for me. I think I spent a week in the dark, not being able to acquire coal (I could see it -- but I smash the block and... nothing). Knowing what I know now about monster spawning, I don't know how I survived. A lot of frantic running around in my little mountaintop abode, I tell you what.

Managed to make it back (5 days' journey, including getting lost twice) with my hoard of redstone dust and a handful of diamonds. Now, yeah... what to do with the redstone? Seems like the longevity issue -- for those of us not into circuit-crafting -- is tied to this. Finite torches but infinite redstone torches, redstone diving rebreathers, etc, etc.. I like the architecture component of the game, but it doesn't hold my interest long before I want to start over and scrabble for coal, explore new caverns, etc.. Journeying across the sea isn't all that practical if you don't amend the build data to change your spawn point...
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:04 AM on September 22, 2010

Notch mentioned working on flood gates.

Would a redstone-remote-triggered door work for water?
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:07 AM on September 22, 2010

Good use for redstone: make a compass. Needle points towards your spawn. Keep it in your hotbar.
posted by marble at 3:33 PM on September 22, 2010 [2 favorites]

Here's how much I like this: I used PayPal for the first time in YEARS to buy the damn thing just now. And I don't use PayPal. Ever. For anything. But I just couldn't not buy Minecraft.

Day one I waste too much time gathering lumber, and dusk is upon me when I spy a seam of coal high up an escarpment. I frantically mine it out and shortly after dark manage to get myself sealed in a lit cave three-quarters of the way up the mountain. Hoo. OK. The next few days pass uneventfully, as I methodically mine out the middle of the mountain. Glass windows give me a three-quarter view of my surroundings. My aerie is now only accessible by a ladder, which is ringed at three-block distances by a maze of stone walls. My fortress is pretty much impregnable. I mine clear through to the other side of the mountain, expecting to find a sheer drop. But no, it's a mountain valley, a tree-dotted dell between two peaks. Excellent: lumber without climbing! I toss up some walls and fences, build some steps into what is now my back door. I create a skylight, turning my cave into a sunny, glassed-in atrium. Very cozy. Futzing around at the crafting table one night, I discover books, then bookshelves. Stylish!

Now what? I'm rich in stone and lumber, needing coal and still looking for iron. So. Down it is. In the center of my mountain fortress, I begin to dig.

I know the ladder up to my front door is fifteen blocks high, so I dig twenty-five blocks straight down to be under the main landmass. Picking a direction at random, I tunnel away, excavating areas of coal and iron as I find them. I quickly learn to always carry lumber: never run out of candles! I burn through stone picks. In one direction I hit water. I wall it off, mark the spot. The opposite end of my exploratory shaft breaks through into what appears to be a rather small cavern. But there are iron deposits. I light the cavern, mine out the iron. An underground stream flows through the darkness. Does that mean more mineral deposits?

I've yet to se anything beyond iron. I've yet to see a zombie, much less fight one, though one of the first things I did with my first batch of iron ingots was to craft a sword.

In need of lumber, I head back to home base.

...and that's where things stand. I've probably sunk fifteen hours into this game. And I've barely scratched the surface. So much awaits. What's in the caverns? I think I'll get rid of all this stone by building a ziggurat atop my home mountain, so that I'll be able to see it from afar. How do I make armor? I need more iron....

I really do believe that this is the game I've been waiting to play my whole life.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:54 PM on September 22, 2010 [9 favorites]

I love the compass! But I have 120+ little piles of redstone dust. I guess I'm going to make some mood lighting. :)

I'm curious if the people enthralled by this game (counting myself among them) will still feel that way a month or two from now. A lot of my subjective experience of the game early on was based on a lack of comprehension of "the rules". The world seemed incredibly dangerous and mysterious (I'm avoiding spoilers here). It seems far less so now. Starting over still doesn't feel "safe", and it's still fascinating to explore a new landscape, but (largely) post-danger architecture play only holds me for so long, and then I want to start over.

But then, hey, there are future updates, and multiplayer. And this ($12, largely solo-dev) game made me regret not discovering it at the beginning of the weekend, rather than spending time on a ($60, big budget blockbuster) game, RDR. That's a flat out incredible achievement.

It's funny to look back at the previous minecraft threads (which I'd missed) and see the distinct lack of enthusiasm at the time.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 4:27 PM on September 22, 2010

I've continued to play my existing "free weekend" game up to now by simply not closing the .exe this whole time, but I should probably stop now and (sigh...) buy the actual game. I spent a lot of time building a three-story tower, arranging pork chops and spare weapons in strategically-placed chests, stashing redstone, gold, diamonds, and iron, and tunneling from one hidey-hole to another for when I get caught out in the dark, but if I keep this up it's going to be all the more aggravating when Java (or my PC) inevitably crashes and I lose everything. So, even though I really shouldn't be spending money on frivolities right now, I guess I'm going to bite the bullet.

Seriously, empath, CURSE YOU for mentioning zombies.
posted by Gator at 5:23 PM on September 22, 2010

And having registered... I've lost sound again. And other people seem to have, too. However, someone posted this fix and it worked! So thought I'd post it here:

Instructions:
1. Start Minecraft and load a world.
2. Hold F3 and press S.
3. Sound could come back.
You must have the sounds downloaded in your resource folder already.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:37 PM on September 22, 2010

Sound also disappears if it has net connection but can't fetch resources. Disable the net and sound comes back.

I finally figured out armor! I need to start writing craft patterns down.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:22 PM on September 22, 2010

What would really benefit minecraft is a forums system that doesn't reveal spoilers. Not discovering things on my own feels like cheating.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:24 PM on September 22, 2010

Well, you'd have to define what a spoiler is, of course. Given role of discovery in this game, even of basic elements and mechanisms, just about any piece of information could be considered a spoiler. But you could have an explicit "no crafting recipes" rule, if that's what you mean. Honestly, I don't think the forums are rife with them, because there's a limited number of known recipes, and they're all in the wiki. I don't think people are trading armour designs; there would be no point.

Here's a (game mechanism) spoiler for you, but one there's no reason not to know (search engine still down on the forums; I can't imagine nobody asking this question) -- if you build a completed house around your spawn point, it moves the spawn point. I tried it with a completely sealed house, house with an open door, house with a gap, house with a missing wall, and eventually a house with no roof (aka: a wall). The last design eventually worked (with or without a door). So if you want to wall in your spawn point for safety, you can certainly do that. What you can't do is add a (complete) roof. I suspect you may be able to leave as little as a single cube open to the sky (but not a glass skylight) and still be able to use the spawn, but I got tired of experimenting at that point. I had an ideal little house on the beach, with a shallow bit of digging resulting in entry to an amazing natural cavern right on my doorstep, but my attempts to house in my spawn point were met with frustration again and again. Now I think I can just build it tall so nothing climbs atop and leave a gap for your spirit to rocket down from the heavens.

Brought to you courtesy of a dozen watery graves. (creepily, there was only a shallow sandy-bottomed pool nearby, so I had to claw my way down. *shudder*)
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 8:37 PM on September 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

That's interesting, Durn, and saves me time, because I'd just been thinking about fortifying my spawn point and building a lighted walkway to my nearby mountain fortress.

How high can a spider jump? And what's the blast radius of a creeper? Hmmmmmmm....
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:32 AM on September 23, 2010

Stupid lack of sound... (F3 trick didn't work for me..)

Of course, that didn't stop me from playing. A spider jumping down on you from above, when you don't even have the warning squeaks? Yeah, that'll make you jump.
posted by inigo2 at 6:24 AM on September 23, 2010

Did you download a resources folder with sound files? I noticed that before the original fix (getting that folder), I had a "resources" folder, but it was empty. The F3 + S thing doesn't work without the files on hand.

BOP: You’d probably want to confirm this before putting much work into it, and possibly losing your existing spawn point (though it doesn’t move far), but it seems to me when I was trying things out that level changes didn’t affect it – so if you don't want a confining wall towering above you en route to your fortress, you should be able to have a raised walkway with a nice view. If that isn’t the case, you could of course maintain the level and throw up a spiral staircase to same. But I did raise the point by about three layers and it stayed put.

Man, creepers just love to blow up the entrance to my home. And there must be a spider spawn somewhere nearby, cause it’s night of the living spiders out there. For an added bit of horror, I was walking past my front door (ignoring the usual monster sounds) when I was struck and knocked back – I looked to my (wooden) door to see a green face in the windows and an arm reaching through. grrraaaahh Don’t know if that was a glitch or if they can normally do that.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:43 AM on September 23, 2010

Did you download a resources folder with sound files? I noticed that before the original fix (getting that folder), I had a "resources" folder, but it was empty. The F3 + S thing doesn't work without the files on hand.

Yep. The resources folder in .minecraft has all the files. Hopefully it's fixed tonight. (Well, hopefully my computer melts and I can never play again. Because that would be better for my health and sanity, I think.)
posted by inigo2 at 6:50 AM on September 23, 2010

And... I have myself an architectural goal! I was thinking that with glass blocks I could do a decent recreation of the National Art Gallery (lit red at night – redstone torches?). I’d forgotten all about this critter out front. Now I definitely have to build it. (obsidian for the beastie, natch).

On preview: sorry to hear that, inigo2. Haven't come across other fixes. It's really not the same without sound, unfortunately.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:58 AM on September 23, 2010

Oh man I've been playing this without the sound and enjoying it, but it never really pulled me in.

The sound completely changes that, the audio-cues are great.
posted by The Whelk at 7:10 AM on September 23, 2010

Well, according to the dev blog, sound is back. Sweeeeet.
posted by inigo2 at 7:21 AM on September 23, 2010

I've had sound this whole time, somehow. I must be special.
posted by Gator at 8:15 AM on September 23, 2010

Shit, Gator, have a look outside. Maybe the zombies are outside your house.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 9:08 AM on September 23, 2010

Indeed. The sound broke last night, and I had just amassed a huge load of iron ore and coal. I jumped down into a hole to grab redstone ore (first time I ever saw one!) and was promptly pushed by something I didn't hear into a lava pit.
posted by backseatpilot at 9:33 AM on September 23, 2010

Maybe the zombies are outside your house.

And they brought along a pianist!
posted by Gator at 9:54 AM on September 23, 2010 [2 favorites]

Man, creepers just love to blow up the entrance to my home.

I got so tired of that I dug a tunnel beneath my home, under the river next door, and up out the top of the nearest hill, making a little lookout, the only purpose of which is to scope out how many creepers are lurking outside my front door.

(Now I just need enough iron ore to build a mine cart track to get back and forth in the tunnel...Zoom!)
posted by straight at 9:59 AM on September 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

It is pretty amusing to glance over from my furnace/workshop area to the front door, all homey with its window panes inset, and see blank-faced creepers shuffling back and forth in front of it all LET US IN.

It also makes me want to stick a ladder through the roof to where I've mounted a GIANT ROOFTOP BALLISTA and strike those fuckers down with a single humongous bolt to each. (four or five arrows from my little bow is nowhere near as satisfying)

And they brought along a pianist!

Incidentally, the whole (adding) music thing for me didn't work out. The game works really well mostly silently. The only track from The Keep, despite thematic similarities, that I like listening to while I play is "Deadly Silver Crosses" (other times I just hit up SomaFM), but I shut it off as soon as there's a tense moment and I need to concentrate. Both the missus and dog are not impressed by the extent to which I need to seal myself in my own dark cave to tend to my virtual creations.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:15 AM on September 23, 2010

I can't decide if I should purchase the game or nuke it from orbit and DNS-block the site. I'm laying cheese slice for my sandwich and I feel like I'm doing craftwork. Gah!
posted by five fresh fish at 2:53 PM on September 23, 2010 [2 favorites]

I can't decide if I should be pissed or SUPER-PISSED that the Classic version returned with all of my saves deleted.
posted by Rhaomi at 2:57 PM on September 23, 2010

This ballista, how would one obtain one?
posted by Artw at 3:31 PM on September 23, 2010

Now that I've helped get a bunch of my friends into this game, I feel like someone needs to make one of those 'annoying noise' devices that you hide to prank someone.

Only use the zombie noise from Minecraft.
posted by graventy at 5:10 PM on September 23, 2010

Okay, I'm gonna post the best technique for mining that I picked up from reddit.

Dig straight down to bedrock (well, not straight down, obviously).

When you hit bedrock, go back up 10 levels.

Dig out a largish chamber at that level (at least 6 on a side, and 5 blocks high.

On each wall, Start digging out 2 tunnels, 2 blocks high and 1 wide (just large enough to fit in) and 2 blocks apart ( so you won't miss any ore between them).

Then above them, build 2 more tunnels, catty-cornered to those.

Then just dig those tunnels straight ahead until you get bored, basically.

That'll cover a huge amount of stone in the height of the map that has maximum iron, gold, redstone and diamonds without much chance of hitting lava.

In less than an hour of digging that way, I got:

80 iron, 350 redstone, 15 diamond, 35 gold and enough coal that I stopped digging it out, and also hit a huge cave complex, which i barely explored.
posted by empath at 7:33 PM on September 23, 2010 [7 favorites]

Okay, I'm gonna post the best technique for mining that I picked up from reddit.

True. Although the way I usually do it is to dig until bedrock, and then go back up until you find a dirt vein and clear it out. Dirt usually signals a phase shift from solid ground to cave system, so you can sort of game it... especially so if you hear monster noises as you're digging.

The only problem is that understanding the game's terrain generation at such a basic level really takes the challenge out of the game. Which is why I hope that biomes are the next big single player update that Notch implements.
posted by codacorolla at 9:08 PM on September 23, 2010

The only problem is that understanding the game's terrain generation at such a basic level really takes the challenge out of the game. Which is why I hope that biomes are the next big single player update that Notch implements.

Well, what I'd like is actually more opportunities for geology. By that I mean, certain terrain or block types in a certain pattern would signal that certain other block types would be nearby. Also, more regional dispersion of resources, so certain biomes have more of a certain type of mineral, which would give an excuse to travel further. Like, maybe diamonds are more common under mountains of a certain height, and maybe gold is only in 'jungle' biomes, etc. Same with food and animals, etc..
posted by empath at 9:13 PM on September 23, 2010 [3 favorites]

Oh, if you're into optimizing mining you can get a lot nerdier.
posted by Nelson at 10:19 AM on September 24, 2010 [2 favorites]

I keep hitting this point where in (I'm still playing Alpha) I have a nice mine and hidey-hole and I'm exploring and building and I just kinda loose interest cause I'm not finding anything ...super cool and the tedium of digging just gets to me. Having more surprises and fun (which may be in multiplayer? I didn't try it). Just more objects and devices and ...interaction maybe? would help me get over this "what the hell am I doing here?" slog.

That being said, as an Alpha, it has amazing potential.

More sound cues that you're getting closer to things would be neat, cause the sound cues are really good and play up the exploration/survival horror thing.
posted by The Whelk at 10:45 AM on September 24, 2010

Actually the thing I find myself doing is starting and re-starting worlds cause I think I got a crap world.
posted by The Whelk at 10:49 AM on September 24, 2010

To whoever was worried about the proposed finite torch change: Notch has said that he fully intends to put that in, but when that happens all your current torches will turn into the new 'perma-torch' type (probably made from glass and redstone, but that's me theorycrafting) and the old recipe will be for finite torches instead.
posted by flatluigi at 3:21 PM on September 24, 2010

That would be nice, since I currently have more redstone than I know what to do with. I put a ring of red torches all around the top of my tower, but I don't have much interest in circuitry at the moment so the rest of it's collecting dust along with all my extra pork chops.
posted by Gator at 3:47 PM on September 24, 2010

So who is going to start the metafilter multiplayer server?
posted by Bonzai at 5:15 PM on September 24, 2010

There's actually something of that sort going on already, Bonzai. If you're not familiar with Mefightclub, you might want to take a peek at this metatalk thread.
posted by cortex at 5:53 PM on September 24, 2010 [1 favorite]

Man, I wanted to get to a nearby island, but didn't realize I could actually swim, so I decided to excavate me a Chunnel, but I waaay overshot where I was heading for and sort of wandered off from where I emerged, and now I don't know where I am but I don't want to die because I've accumulated some neat stuff and now it's cold and a little scary and I'm pretty sure the zombies and skeletons are on to me and all I know is my house is somewhere west and possibly south of me.

Best game ever.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:44 PM on September 24, 2010

Alvy if you have any red dust make a compass. If you don't have any red dust start digging.
posted by Bonzai at 10:52 PM on September 24, 2010

Funny story: Five minures after posting that I got cocky and picked a fight with a spider which I probably shouldn't have, got killed, respawned, decided to stay close at home and work a little more on my basement excavation project. Now I've got the red dust compass and am trying to figure out how to get lost again so I can retrieve all the stuff the spider made me drop.

BEST GAME EVAR.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:51 PM on September 24, 2010

Whoah, how had I not noticed the 3d anaglyph option? Craziness.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:57 PM on September 24, 2010

Now I've got the red dust compass and am trying to figure out how to get lost again so I can retrieve all the stuff the spider made me drop.

That stuff is gone, sorry. Drops disappear after a few minutes. For an idea of how long it takes, mine a piece of stone (or break up some dirt) and leave the little harvestable cube floating there. Eventually it won't be there anymore. That's about how long you have after you get killed to get back to your stuff.
posted by komara at 7:58 AM on September 25, 2010

Rats!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:15 AM on September 25, 2010

Lesson learned: the proper response to a sudden shellacking is to streak naked back to your place of death to redeem yourself.
posted by cortex at 9:16 AM on September 25, 2010

That's how I lost my full set of diamond tools, which I'd been so excited to have made.
posted by Artw at 9:41 AM on September 25, 2010

Skylights! Green house! Falling Water!
posted by The Whelk at 9:45 AM on September 25, 2010

Apropos of nothing, I'm finding it oddly satisfying to create huge fields of obsidian by diverting underground streams into giant stretches of lava and watching them solidify. (A lot more satisfying than mining said obsidian. What a slog.)
posted by Gator at 11:29 AM on September 25, 2010

Doors. The doors are the answer. Three-cube high walls, and doors.

Also, I hate spiders. And green men. The zombies, not so much.
posted by five fresh fish at 2:02 PM on September 25, 2010

Gods, that is perfect.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:25 AM on September 26, 2010 [2 favorites]

Er.... just came to update my last comment in this thread:

Crossbows. Bastard zombies have crossbows. Who the hell gave the zombies crossbows? I've respawned more times than salmon by now.
posted by koeselitz at 12:36 PM on September 26, 2010

No, the skeletons have the crossbows. Zombies don't have anything.

Also, the skeletons can ride the spiders. Seriously.
posted by flatluigi at 9:31 PM on September 26, 2010 [3 favorites]

I think I should have thought it through more carefully before I saddled and rode the pig.

Or at least paid attention to where it was heading.

Because now I'm lost.

And it's getting dark.

Damn I freaking LOVE this game.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:37 PM on September 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

I have stuff to do.

I should not be even thinking about it.

But if I just played the game for half an hour or so I could really sort out that lower gallery of my mine and get all the staircases in order.
posted by Artw at 10:40 PM on September 26, 2010

I have now discovered multiplayer, and it is EATING MY LIFE. Had a look around the MeFight Club server, marvelled at the gigantic constructions near the spawn point that must have taken forever to produce, and finally decided to wander off until I found an untouched area to develop. So I walked east, and just kept walking (and swimming, where necessary).

It took an entire in-game day to find untouched land. And after a while developing my corner of it, I found certain things which strongly suggested it wasn't all that untouched after all. But anyway, I dug myself a small home, found a good place to start mining, remodelled the natural harbour a little and planted a tree farm. And things were happy.

And then I decided that I needed to find the extent of the land I was on. It looked like I was on an island, so the obvious thing to do was to build a boat and sail around it. So, boat built, I sailed boldly out of my harbour, turned right, and headed off along the coast.

I sailed almost constantly for two whole in-game days. In that time, I found two large natural caverns visible from the coast, saw islands in the distance, caught brief glimpses of buildings on top of distant hills, and slowly became more and more convinced that I wasn't circumnavigating an island at all, but rather an entire continent. By the time I got bored (and really needed to go to bed), I finally realised three things:

1. I was utterly, completely lost.
2. The map is unbelievably enormous.
3. This game is amazing.
posted by ZsigE at 5:35 AM on September 27, 2010

The map is unbelievably enormous.

It's effectively infinite. It will keep generate new land as you walk.
posted by empath at 5:39 AM on September 27, 2010

I feel like you should have a setting for "infinite world / finite world" So easy to get lost.

Oh, had my first Minecraft related dream last night.
posted by The Whelk at 5:46 AM on September 27, 2010

I'd love to see Notch provide maybe an Island Continent setting, yeah. Make the world bounded on all sides by deep, deep ocean to create natural boundaries for development.

And then, maybe, maaaaybe, spawn another island far off in the distance if someone sails long enough. But I want a subsistence thing in place by then, so you need to load up a chest on your boat with food to not starve during exploration.

And I don't think I've managed to not have a minecraft dream most nights for the last few weeks.
posted by cortex at 6:52 AM on September 27, 2010

I mean, if there was some way to make the world finite and "round", so if you walk in one direction, eventually you'll end up where you started. That could be neat.
posted by inigo2 at 8:40 AM on September 27, 2010

What are youy talking about? An infinite world with no invisible walls! That's living the dream!
posted by Artw at 9:26 AM on September 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

Seems like an easy way to grief (everyone simultaneously) on MP will be to just pick a direction and walk for 20 days of game time, forcing the world file to expand well beyond what the players are actually using.

I, too, checked out the MeFi server last night and was staggered. I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe.

And yes, the minecraft dreams must stop.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:19 AM on September 27, 2010

Does the world file expand until edits are made?
posted by Artw at 10:27 AM on September 27, 2010

The world file sizes are pretty tiny, most single player maps are a few megs, even the biggest MP maps are only like 150-200 megs.

The server only loads the parts of the map where someone is standing, as far as I know.
posted by empath at 10:34 AM on September 27, 2010

Interesting. Maybe no problem then.

I just checked out some of the evolving server world maps and noted that there was a rather lengthy arm out in one direction that led me to believe that someone had simply taken to exploring far off in that direction. But maybe that was an active path of development; I couldn't tell.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:53 AM on September 27, 2010

Just as in "simply", not recently. I don't know how to generate those maps, so I've only looked at ones others have created at various stages of development.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:57 AM on September 27, 2010

Per Notch, maximum world size is supposed to be "up to a maximum of eight times the surface area of the earth;" that description there is from six months and many revisions ago, but from what I can tell around the web that technical limit is still built into Minecraft in Alpha.

If anyone runs up against that limit, I'd like to know about it. Of course, if you do, I don't imagine you still bother with petty things like communicating with other human beings any more.

I'm already contemplating locking myself in my room for the next few weeks myself.
posted by koeselitz at 11:11 AM on September 27, 2010 [2 favorites]

Now that's interesting. I could see how that might lead Stavros to his "modest proposal".
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:16 AM on September 27, 2010 [2 favorites]

Ah – more info on world size / technical limitations here:

Minecraft infdev introduced a new data storage challenge while under development: Terrain generated in infdev has the potential to be almost 235 petabytes, which is 240,640 terabytes, in size when stored in memory, due to the sheer size of the map (several times the surface area of the Earth). Therefore, to reduce file size and memory usage, Notch decided to split the terrain into 16 x 16 x 128 chunks and store them on disk when not visible. In addition, terrain is only generated when it is within the drawing distance of the player's camera, significantly reducing save size, since most players will only be able to search a tiny fraction of the map in a reasonable time frame.

Hmm.
posted by koeselitz at 11:17 AM on September 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

A nice multiuser feature would be having X amount of landmass around one's spawn point be "owned" by oneself. Enough area to build a really nice castle and farm, say. Other players could visit, but not destroy one's constructions nor mine for resources. Put and end to griefing.

A buffer space between spawn points could then be a shared resource.
posted by five fresh fish at 1:02 PM on September 27, 2010

So that would look like a series of gated communities with strip-mines down to the adminium in between?
posted by Artw at 1:54 PM on September 27, 2010

A nice multiuser feature would be having X amount of landmass around one's spawn point be "owned" by oneself.

See, no. That would be called "Second Life", and it would be a vast wasteland of pixellated brothels, and people yelling at others to get off their lawn. If any "economy" comes to Minecraft, it should be a naturally emerging one, rather than one imposed from above. Already, we have people who trade items, who do work for others. We also have thieves and terrorists, but that's what makes it so interesting.

It does suck when someone ruins your house. But you know what? I'll bet my first born that Notch implements earthquakes or meteor strikes or tsunamis within a year, so manybe it just has to be considered past of the experience.
posted by Jimbob at 2:05 PM on September 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

His to-do list has 'land claim flags' in it.

If I were doing it, I'd make it something at least slightly resource intensive (redstone or gold plus wool plus wood, maybe) that has limited range and degrades over time.
posted by empath at 2:13 PM on September 27, 2010

I wonder what tools will craft an HOA..
posted by inigo2 at 3:07 PM on September 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

Other players could visit, but not destroy one's constructions nor mine for resources. Put and end to griefing.

There's talk of community-building along with the kind of free-ranging countryside revelry we're seeing now, but I would hope that an anti-griefing measure would not dictate either.

Additionally, there is going to be the effect of incoming survival mode on the nature of building and cooperation, though I prefer the idea mentioned that we could have a peaceful world separate from a survival world, so the fanciful structures can remain along with, if not alongside, the more defensible ones.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 3:22 PM on September 27, 2010

Er - I haven't tried the multiplayer version yet (although I probably will in the next few days) – is griefing really a problem in Minecraft?
posted by koeselitz at 3:32 PM on September 27, 2010

is griefing really a problem in Minecraft?

Well, I could log onto a public server, set fire to one guy's house, fill someone's mine with lava, fill another with water, collapse someone's bridge, set fire to any chests I find, and log off by the time my coffee's brewed. Hell, it's possible for a n00b to do some of this stuff accidentally through careless experimentation. It happens, and the Metafilter server hasn't been immune, although it hasn't been as griefed as much as others. Maybe vandalism is a better word.
posted by Jimbob at 4:05 PM on September 27, 2010

Ah, I didn't know servers were public. I've never actually... er... played a video game over the internet with people, so these sort of aren't things I just happen to know. Interesting to find out.
posted by koeselitz at 7:02 PM on September 27, 2010

Yeah, at the moment all you need to know to connect to a server is it's address. There are some modified servers available that do things like put new users in "tourist mode", where they can't break anything, so maybe that's all that would be required.
posted by Jimbob at 7:30 PM on September 27, 2010

This is a pretty long thread so apologies if this is a repeat, but:
OMG
posted by juv3nal at 9:26 PM on September 27, 2010 [6 favorites]

HOLY FUCK, THAT'S INSANE
posted by koeselitz at 11:43 PM on September 27, 2010

Holy SHIT.

The video started and I was thinking "okay, so he's freebuilding, no need for resources etc, so that obviously alters my scale for impressed and HOLY FUCK is that actually...wow.

Just...wha.

Further reinforces my belief that everyone plays this game for their own reasons, some of which are vaaastly different than mine. I mean, I just got done building in little sites and easter eggs (using an inventory editor to give me resources and the freedom to do whatever) into a clean save, with the intent of passing it off to a friend after. There's only a half dozen or so things within a reasonable finding distance from the starting point, although one of them was an astoundingly epic amount of work. It was fun, and hopefully he has fun playing it.

That though? Yeeeaaahhh...I'm no long as impressed with my project.
posted by Stunt at 12:31 AM on September 28, 2010

juv3nal: "This is a pretty long thread so apologies if this is a repeat, but:
OMG"

Arthur's senses bobbed and spun as, traveling at the immense speed he knew the minecart attained, they climbed slowly through the open air, leaving the gateway through which they had passed an invisible pinprick in the shimmering Moiré-patterned wall behind them.

The wall.

The wall defied the imagination -- seduced it and defeated it. The wall was so paralyzingly vast and sheer that its top, bottom, and sides passed away beyond the reach of his video card. The mere shock of vertigo could kill a mob.

"Welcome," said Slartibotfast as the tiny speck that was the minecart, traveling now at three times the speed of a frightened pig, crept imperceptibly forward into the mind-boggling space, "welcome," he said, "to our factory floor."

Arthur stared about him in a kind of wonderful horror. Ranged away before them, at distances he could neither judge nor even guess at, were a series of curious suspensions, delicate traceries of metal and light hung about shadowy spherical shapes that hung in the space.

A flash of light arced through the structure and revealed in stark relief the patterns that were formed on the dark sphere within. Patterns that Arthur knew, rough blobby shapes that were as familiar to him as the shapes of words, part of the furniture of his mind. For a few seconds he sat in stunned silence as the images rushed around his mind and tried to find somewhere to settle down and make sense.

The flash came again, and this time there could be no doubt.

"The Enterprise..." whispered Arthur.

posted by Rhaomi at 12:59 AM on September 28, 2010 [2 favorites]

I discovered a few holes in the bottom of my world. Unfortunately, in my excitement I pitched out my diamond pick, instead of a hunk of cobblestone. Oops.

After my next respawn (I'll inevitably fall in the damn lava again, panicking from an unexpected attack) I'll have to remember to run to the hole and jump out.

With any luck, it's full of stars.
posted by five fresh fish at 1:15 AM on September 28, 2010

One thing I just noticed - when you try to use an in-world object like the workbench, the game will "use" whatever's currently in your hand as well as activating the object. So, for example, if you have a bucket of lava in your hand and you try to open the furnace to fill it, you will pour hot lava all over yourself and your house.
posted by backseatpilot at 5:02 AM on September 28, 2010 [2 favorites]

Btw, Runecraft is highly worth putting on a multiplayer server, if only for the Hidden Passage rune, which lets you build a door of any width out of any material, which can also act as a floodgate.
posted by empath at 5:56 AM on September 28, 2010

I discovered a few holes in the bottom of my world. Unfortunately, in my excitement I pitched out my diamond pick, instead of a hunk of cobblestone. Oops.

Call it an appeasement of the gods. Minecraft doesn't have a diegetic religious culture yet, and that sort of journey+sacrifice in the face of the yawning horror of infinity is as good a start as any. Maybe I'll start in on an adaptation of Genesis to meter-cubed resolution.
posted by cortex at 6:27 AM on September 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think the book of genesis is very, very applicable to minecraft, personally, as I wrote before in another thread.

I was reading Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works" recently and he wrote about how we're genetically programmed to enjoy certain environments, open grasslands, caves, flowers, animals, the promise of new worlds.

Minecraft really taps into something primal. At a very deep level, it feels like the world we're meant to live in.
posted by empath at 10:42 AM on September 28, 2010 [3 favorites]

Minecraft really taps into something primal.

So I've noticed. It's not that it's pleasing and addictive, but that it's these things in ways I cannot fully explain. Screen caps give me warm fuzzies. It's odd and slightly disconcerting.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:07 AM on September 28, 2010 [4 favorites]

After my next respawn (I'll inevitably fall in the damn lava again, panicking from an unexpected attack) I'll have to remember to run to the hole and jump out.

You should. I did! And took a video of it... It hurt.
posted by gemmy at 2:47 PM on September 28, 2010

I am displeased that you don't just end up dropping out of the sky 128 blocks up somewhere on the map.
posted by Artw at 3:13 PM on September 28, 2010

Huh. It does not appear to have actually hurt you at all, though it certainly sounded like you were getting hurt.
posted by Gator at 3:22 PM on September 28, 2010

Multiplayer you can't get hurt right now
posted by inigo2 at 3:24 PM on September 28, 2010

Gator: One of the things broken in SMP right now is damage. You won't get hurt; mobs won't get hurt.
posted by flatluigi at 3:24 PM on September 28, 2010

Oh, I haven't looked at multiplayer yet. I'm easily put out by griefing and would probably not enjoy SMP much as long are there aren't any measures in place to prevent it.
posted by Gator at 3:35 PM on September 28, 2010

i just want to say "damn you metafilter!" for breaking my three year stretch of avoiding compulsive gaming and extended time at a PC

I would have posted earlier, but I've been exploring procedurally generated worlds the whole time... Like, I can always post, but I have to explore NOW

this is bad.
posted by MysticMCJ at 8:27 AM on September 29, 2010 [3 favorites]

I tried logging into the MeFightClub server and was admiring the pants selection near the sandcastle when Minecraft crashed. Tried again, crashed again. Oh well. That's a shame, cuz there was lotsa neat stuff to see.

What I'd like to see implemented: telescopes. Also, combine a boat w/ a powered minecart: powerboat. And if I can power a minecart with a furnace, how about letting me power a suit of armor to make a robot?

But how would you program the robot? Hmmm. If I could shrink the logic gates made with switches and redstone dust, then use those to issue simple commands....

That's it. This game has driven me insane. Textbook grandiosity. Throttle back, revert to original plan: build a 1:1 scale model of the Parthenon. Entirely out of glass.....
posted by BitterOldPunk at 2:49 AM on September 30, 2010 [1 favorite]

If you want to check out the MeFightClub server, make sure your view distance is set to Normal, not Far. The amount of stuff at spawn will crash Minecraft otherwise. And there is a nice Parthenon replica (stone, though!) not far from spawn. :)
posted by gemmy at 4:15 AM on September 30, 2010

So I built a 1x1 jump-tower to the top of the sky and took a look around. And realized just how little I'd actually explored my world. What felt like a good surface explore really was not.

I thought I'd be safe jumping into water. Alas, the water was either too shallow, or as in real life terminal velocity impact is like hitting cement. Ouchies.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:37 AM on September 30, 2010

Well, I can't be doing that again.

Was up late working on a little underwater glass lair, inspired by a much more elaborate affair on the MeFi server, when a computer snag I won't bother getting into resulted in the loss of it. All of it. Crushed, despite the late hour, I set out to recreate the thing, and finally tumbled into bed much too late.

On sub-four hours' sleep I get a bit dysfunctional. At two hours I get delusional.
Mrs. Bronzefist's attempts to discuss sharing a bus into work this morning were met with concerned talk about "the cave-in" and "the lava. THE LAVA." Time for a break.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 3:32 PM on September 30, 2010 [3 favorites]

So I go a-meandering and find an interesting cave complex. A good ways in I discover sand blocks suspended from the ceiling. "Strange," thinks I, "Sand can't do that."

There's a good coal seam there, so I go mine it.

Second coal block in I find that I am, indeed, correct. Sand blocks can't do that, and I die in a massive cave-in.

When will I learn to listen to my "Hey, that might be dangerous" voice?
posted by five fresh fish at 10:44 PM on September 30, 2010 [1 favorite]

Last night a friend of mine tried to OD on Minecraft.

I know what you're thinking, only those 8-bit junkie gamer addicts on the wrong side of town would ever use Minecraft, and only the worst of them would ever overdose. Well, I'm here to tell you that's not true. This guy is straight middle class, a project manager at a business here in my city. He's got a loving family and an awesome girlfriend, and he's a responsible pet owner. Aside from his Minecraft addiction he's in good health. I tell you all this so you understand this isn't just a problem that plagues the gamer community but reaches into the lives of those near us.

We got the message yesterday afternoon around 6PM that he was on the server again. He'd been clean for a week, on "vacation" which we knew was a pretty unsubtle code for rehab. Still, we were proud of him for checking himself in. There was no intervention that led to this, he did it of his own volition. We thought maybe he was clean, but like I said - last night by 6PM he was on the server, and hard. Straight to the diamond shovel and the strip mining.

As far as we can tell he ate dinner at his desk while on the game. Some people have looked over the logs - while at some point he asked some of his fellow addicts for help, for the most part he was there enjoying himself. We tried to pull him away, but it just wasn't working. They say that the junkies in the throes of a bad Minecraft bender can exhibit superhuman strength, and I think it's true. My friend works a standard 8-5 job, and yet last night he was still up at 3:30AM working on some underground cavern, pickaxe flying, chests filling up with cobblestone. His eyes had a dull and waxy look to them, like nothing I'd ever seen. Physically he was staring at the screen but I think his eyes were seeing out through the bedrock at the bottom of the world.

Finally he disconnected and crashed out senseless on his bed. I'm afraid he's going to do it again tonight, and it's Friday. We're headed into the weekend, and I'm worried about my friend. I'm worried hours are going to be lost, and unhealthy "meals" are going to be eaten, and interpersonal relationships are going to be ignored. This game is taking over my friend's life. Last night was the closest to an overdose that I've ever seen, and it didn't seem to make a difference. He doesn't seem to care.

I ...

...

... I think you know that this "friend" I'm talking about is me.

I'm a Minecraft addict. I need help. Please don't judge me. Just remember that if it could happen to me it could happen to anyone.
posted by komara at 9:00 AM on October 1, 2010 [9 favorites]

*film rolls*

[ Male Narrator ] Know your Minecraft fiend. Your life may depend on it.

You will not be able to see his eyes, because of tea-Shades...

but his knuckles will be white from inner tension.

And his pants will be crusted with semen

from constantly jacking off when he can't find a diamond vein.

He will stagger and babble when questioned.

He will not respect your badge.

The Minecraft fiend fears nothing.

He will attack for no reason, with any weapon at his command, including yours.

Any officer apprehending a suspected Minecraft addict should use all necessary force immediately.

One stitch in time on him will usually save nine...
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 9:23 AM on October 1, 2010 [1 favorite]

Alternatively:

We had two diamond picks, seventy-five torches, five roasted pork chops, a salt shaker half full of redstone, a whole galaxy of multi-colored mushrooms... Also a crafting bench, a portable chest, an iron sword, a stack of raw lumber, and two dozen ladders.

*DUKE, eyes darting madly as he hears what sounds like the MOANS OF ZOMBIES returning, grabs an assortment along with another six-pack of pork chops - slams the chest shut and dives back into the mine cart.*

Not that we needed all that for the trip to the admin layer, but once you get locked into a serious minecraft collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 9:23 AM on October 1, 2010 [3 favorites]

We can't stop here, this is creeper country!
posted by adamdschneider at 10:23 AM on October 1, 2010 [6 favorites]

He's starting a studio...
4 confirmed hires

I’m sorry about the lack of updates.

Most my time these days is taken up by meetings and lawyers, accountants, banks, potential partners, potential employees, and the occasional interview. The few hours I do have to develop the game every now and then are mostly spent on looking into bugs and replying to emails.

All this non-development work will result in a much nicer working environment, with talented people helping out with development, an actual office, and a much better way to deal with support issues, bug reports and feature requests.

It’s a good thing I didn’t know how much work setting up a company would be when I started doing it..

The status right now is that we’re up to four people confirmed, and we’re talking to several people. We almost got an office, but they wanted us to sign up for three years, which seems a bit like a gamble for a startup. So we’re still looking for an office.

I know some people feel let down by the lack of updates. I’m sorry.

But I am working. Hard. =)

Also a podcast interview with him at indiegames.com
posted by symbioid at 7:38 PM on October 1, 2010 [1 favorite]

Me and a friend (Man Dancer on MeFi, though he never posts or comments) made a Nature Reserve together on the Rock Paper Shotgun MineCraft server (IP: 85.236.100.199:25565). That was a lot of fun. We sailed east until we found unspoiled land, what turned out to be a large promontory off another continent, and circled it with signs that say:

Nature Reserve
Do not build
Do not mine
Do not destroy

Of course, when we came back the next day some guys had built a lighthouse on one of the beaches. They had also made a torchlit path along the seashore, so they seemed like great guys to us. And a lighthouse is a perfectly sensible thing to have. So we stuck this sign on:

Authorized
under 1975
Marine Safety
Act

And then we went around tidying up our signage, naming some sites (Cave of the Walking Dead, Invisible Waterfall, Waterfall Cavern) and sticking up a few signs that say:

Nature's beauty
must be
preserved

Our next goals are to put in gravel hiking paths that take the visitor to some of the more scenic sites in the Nature Reserve. This may be my favorite project ever in a game. Especially doing it with a friend. Building castles and the like doesn't excite me, but preserving nature's beauty... that's a must.
posted by Kattullus at 1:32 AM on October 3, 2010 [5 favorites]

That is just absolutely fantastic.

I cannot express how much I love that everyone finds their own enjoyment in this game. Just reading people's exploits is exciting, just because they're so excited about it themselves. I'm busy hollowing out a mountain to compliment the fortress I'm building on top of it...but a nature preserve? That's genius. I absolutely cannot wait until SMP is up to par with the single player build. Oh boy.
posted by Stunt at 1:55 AM on October 3, 2010

We sailed east until we found unspoiled land

That's it. That's why I find this game so compelling. Just reading that induced a pleasurable shiver. Exploration. Setting out into the unknown. Into a shapeable world of simple rules with complex outcomes. With a flint and steel, a diamond pickaxe, a compass, and a heap of torches. I guess I'm a total dork, because I find that prospect utterly exhilarating.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:59 AM on October 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

Now I want to put Burmashave signs everywhere.
posted by empath at 5:14 AM on October 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

It's a damn good thing I never took up mining as an occupation. I wouldn't have survived a week. I'm astounded by the number of dumb ways I've killed myself.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:19 AM on October 3, 2010

Oh geez. Some people came in and ruined the Nature Reserve. Mined it, built a castle, chopped down trees without planting saplings in their stead.

Jesus Christ, it's not like there wasn't plenty of empty land all around. We'd were really far away from the spawnpoint and there were miles of untouched land between the Nature Reserve and the nearest built up land. And hell, each Minecraft world is for all intents and purposes infinite.

Man Dancer and I had gotten a third friend to come help. We were in the middle of naming various landscape features and exploring caverns and putting in ladders and torches to make them easy to get around in. Then some people showed up and just starting treating it as terra nullius even though everything was clearly marked (goddamnit). I had left Minecraft and the internet when Man Dancer called me to tell me what had happened. I can't log onto the server to inspect the damage, but from his descriptions it sounds awful. It's probably best I can't get into the server because I might just resort to acts of ecoterrorism. Goddamn, I'm pissed off.
posted by Kattullus at 7:02 PM on October 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'd say ecoterrorism makes a fine new narrative for your server trouble. Anything from planting rogue trees everywhere to the terrible, destructive power of lava + water to make nearly impenetrable obsidian. This land is cursed.

People talk about the lack of ownership and controls as a big problem of multiplayer Minecraft, but I think it's kind of fascinating. My happiest moments so far have been unintended synergy when someone modifies something I built or when I get to make an appreciated alteration of my own.

I've been mostly playing single player lately. I just figured out enough about redstone to build a tower with blinking lights.
posted by Nelson at 7:32 PM on October 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

I just figured out enough about redstone to build a tower with blinking lights .

That is so awesome.
posted by adamdschneider at 10:28 PM on October 3, 2010

Another one I'm not sure if it's a repeat or not, but:
someone put together the equivalent of 15 kilotons in minecraft tnt and set it off. No video, unfortunately, though understandable if you read what happened.
There are other explosion vids though, one of which may even rival the 15kt one in size, but it's hard to tell.
posted by juv3nal at 1:20 AM on October 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

I might just resort to acts of ecoterrorism.

I love emergent narratives.
posted by The Whelk at 4:42 AM on October 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Climbing and descending cliffs using 'water ropes'. Crazy.
posted by Happy Dave at 4:58 AM on October 4, 2010

yeah, i really dislike the water physics, it's so glitchy. I wonder if Notch is going to fix that or the cart boosters.
posted by empath at 5:48 AM on October 4, 2010

Can't find it now, but pretty sure Notch said (in a tweet, maybe?) that he wasn't going to spend too much time improving water. Implied it was an effort-vs-reward issue.
posted by inigo2 at 6:32 AM on October 4, 2010

New update announced.
posted by empath at 11:25 AM on October 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

BUM BUM BAAAAAAAAH!
posted by The Whelk at 11:29 AM on October 4, 2010

Holy shit I just got through to the Metafilter Server.

It's like some magical dreamland!
posted by The Whelk at 11:35 AM on October 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Hard for a game to make "Walking around looking at things" seem fun.
posted by The Whelk at 11:37 AM on October 4, 2010

Apologies if you've already seen this: Boo! Coming October 31!

(Yes, I posted that in all three open Minecraft threads. Yes, I feel like it was justified :-) )
posted by Artw at 11:38 AM on October 4, 2010

Floaty islands and huge hands and then you walk to Hyrule. Man Multiplayer adds a bunch.
posted by The Whelk at 11:43 AM on October 4, 2010

After swimming from Hyrule I watched the sun hit the Eye of Sauron before heading into the underground city.....
posted by The Whelk at 12:17 PM on October 4, 2010

I hope he doesn't fix the fire bug right away - I have a high tower with a burning block in it to light my way home. Also, if it's true about converting existing torches to the non-extinguishing type, it's time to start putting torches everywhere.
posted by backseatpilot at 12:42 PM on October 4, 2010

How transferable are maps when you update the client?
posted by Artw at 2:00 PM on October 4, 2010

Biomes is gonna be a pretty big change, but generally updates like that tend to only affecdt newly explored land.
posted by empath at 2:04 PM on October 4, 2010

"Pumpkins can also be worn as totally useless helmets."

I dont know why, but that makes me very happy.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:02 PM on October 4, 2010

Wowza, that's a hell of an update. I like the seven-league-boots version of fast travel. Seems a little haphazard (a good thing, I think). Not sure about deeper/brighter, though deeper/more dangerous would be cool (cave biome and deep earth biome?). Awesome.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 3:18 PM on October 4, 2010

I was reading Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works" recently and he wrote about how we're genetically programmed to enjoy certain environments, open grasslands, caves, flowers, animals, the promise of new worlds.

I knew I would play this game forever after watching the stars move through the sky, and seeing the sun rise.
posted by lekvar at 4:10 PM on October 4, 2010

RE: The MefightClub server - I have no idea what I would build. How could you top the vast underwater garden fortress or the Mighty Pig-Rider Collussous?
posted by The Whelk at 4:29 PM on October 4, 2010

RE: The MefightClub server - I have no idea what I would build. How could you top the vast underwater garden fortress or the Mighty Pig-Rider Collussous?

It took me a while to grasp that it is not a competition. You can find joy in building, and if you want to share you can, and if you don't you don't. It's fine either way. I've seen tiny buildings that wowed me with their simplicity and I've seen soaring structures that took my breath away. I've seen monstrous piles called "castles" that looked like health hazards. Everyone wants to make something, so why not do it there?

I like building real-world-ish stuff, other people like surreal fantastic structures, other people like reproducing TIE fighters or men growing out of the tops of mountains.

Just come build with us. Whatever it is, someone will like it - if you even build it somewhere that they'll see it.
posted by komara at 4:44 PM on October 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Prior to the wind-walking patch, though, how far are you walking out from spawn to find some spare land? And that's the surface -- where can you go to mine??
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 4:51 PM on October 4, 2010

Whelkonia will be small but mine.
posted by The Whelk at 4:57 PM on October 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

Prior to the wind-walking patch, though, how far are you walking out from spawn to find some spare land? And that's the surface -- where can you go to mine??

On Aporkalypse? I'd say you could find a totally empty area within one game-day (~20 min). Plus, the admin (toomuchpete) has set up a /warp frontier command so that you can get away from everyone as fast as you want. The frontier may move from time to time so that it doesn't get overcrowded as well.

Some people have strictly surface dwellings that are positioned because of the lay of the land. Not every person digs beneath their home. I think the general rule on Aporkalypse is "if you, in the course of mining, bust into someone else's mine feel free to look around but do not modify things" - and that's a pretty easy rule to follow.

On the rare occasion I've hit someone's mine (okay, the only occasion) I followed it up to the top - remember, kids, torches on your left as you descend, on your right as you return - and found the sign that the owner put there and said, "Hey, I broke into your cave" and we discussed it and all was right with the world.
posted by komara at 5:28 PM on October 4, 2010

Whelkonia is currently a tree-farm hilltop somewhere in the frontier
posted by The Whelk at 5:35 PM on October 4, 2010

Man Dancer, another friend and I have started on a nature preserve on the MeFightclub server. It's called Big Floaty National Park, after one of the floating islands that exist in this one part of it (all are non-constructed, as far as we can tell). So far what we've done is put signs around an area of land. We might embiggen it later, once we've fully developed this particular bit of the world.
posted by Kattullus at 12:12 AM on October 5, 2010

the admin (toomuchpete) has set up a /warp frontier command so that you can get away from everyone as fast as you want.

I saw that in the command list but I wasn't sure how to make it work. I mean, I could warp out and start on a home/object d'art/eyesore, but how would I ever find it again from the spawn point...?
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 7:12 AM on October 5, 2010

/warp frontier sends you to the edge of the frontier
/sethome sets a point you can always get back to by typing /home
/spawn brings you back to the spawn point, of course.
posted by The Whelk at 7:27 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Home points? Cool. That changes everything.

(though I kind of don't want to mess with it in the single player version -- I kind of like having to make do with a fixed spawn point, mark and reinforce it, create a nearby shelter, etc.)
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 7:34 AM on October 5, 2010

I've been trying to get on the server for awhile now. Either the map is not there and I fall continuously through space, or I end up on a small "island" at the spawn, maybe 20x20, with nothing beyond. Either way, I get disconnected after about two minutes. I have no idea what's going on, and I can't see any of these cool things everyone is talking about.
posted by backseatpilot at 7:36 AM on October 5, 2010

Durn -- don't think the /sethome stuff works at all on single player, so not a problem :) I think it's actually a server mod that allows for that stuff. (Unless I'm wrong.)
posted by inigo2 at 8:21 AM on October 5, 2010

It's been a forum topic for awhile -- how to plug a new set point in through file replacement or alteration, but it's not something I'd want to mess with for the reasons I stated. If it became a standard feature of single player I suppose I'd use it because it would feel stupid to self-impose this static spawn point as a feature, but I'm happy living without it. Multiplayer is a different story strictly due to real estate (as pleasant as it is to turn up at a common spawn point and see the signs and structures, so there I'm happy that a "home point" has been differentiated from the spawn point -- great thinking, there).

backseatpilot -- maybe the MeFi server has just become as flooded as the RPS server had, though I don't recall descriptions like that from RPS commenters -- just that they couldn't get on. I think they were limiting it to 20 people, which is pretty tiny for something as popular as minecraft across the RPS population. I remember thinking that a similar limit on MeFi might be reached pretty quickly as well.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 8:26 AM on October 5, 2010

Aporkalypse tops out at 25 users and we hit that last night. toomuchpete stopped in to ask how server lag was, we said it was fine, and he said that 25 was probably a great cap for the server then.
posted by komara at 9:16 AM on October 5, 2010

I wonder what's going on, then. /spawn and /home don't seem to do anything, and any chat messages I type don't echo locally. Weird.
posted by backseatpilot at 9:22 AM on October 5, 2010

notch has mentioned adding a craftable spawnpoint in the future.
posted by empath at 9:55 AM on October 5, 2010

Craftable might be a cool way to do it. Make it expensive. Notch has indicated some interest in in-game "magic", so maybe some redstone-inlaid gold symbol thing. If I can have a new spawn point every time I want to mine some new ridge, it becomes practically nonexistent for game purposes and I think that's a shame. Make it expensive, a semi-rare relocation device, and I could get behind that for sure.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 9:59 AM on October 5, 2010

Someone's already written a pretty awesome in game magic system called Runecraft. I have it installed on my server and it let's you do pretty great stuff like enchant gold weapons, make hidden doors and fly around, even change the time of day.
posted by empath at 10:17 AM on October 5, 2010

What does an enchanted weapon do?
posted by Gator at 10:20 AM on October 5, 2010

TWENTY BLOCKS, SAME AS IN SPAWN
posted by cortex at 10:22 AM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

Different ones do different things. Videos that demonstrate most of the runes are here.

List of runes and how to make them are here.

Hidden passage is by far my favorite. You can make a 'gate' out of stacked fences that disappears when you click on it.
posted by empath at 10:30 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Wowza. Well, I suppose in a much more magical game, spawn points, teleport, etc., could all be commonplace and fit right in. Though I've been skeptical of Notch's "magical" intentions, not because I don't think it would make for a cohesive experience, just that it would be so different than the "natural" one I'm used to.

You know, the one with the zombies, and creepers, and flaming spinning monster spawners...
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:17 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

After talking with co-workers and playing the classic version last night, I made the terrible mistake of paying for the premium version a couple of hours ago.

At work.

Where I can't use it.

Interesting fact; the desire to do something badly enough can actually stop time. Because my watch claims that three hours have passed, yet observation suggests that I've been sitting here for the better part of a year for the end of work to come today.

Damn it. This thread hasn't helped whatsoever either. In fact, it's actually made it much, much worse.

*checks clock*

Damn it!
posted by quin at 2:34 PM on October 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

There, there, quin. To tide you over, check out this phenomenal isometric rendering of the Penny Arcade Minecraft server. [VIA REDDIT AS PER THE NOOB]
posted by Gator at 2:43 PM on October 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

Wow. That's a lot of development.

This upcoming update has really spurred me on to extend my creations in one world instead of starting over. I want a glorious kingdom in place when the torches start to go dim and the monsters really start taking over, to become a gloriously decadent ruin.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 3:10 PM on October 6, 2010

I know, right? And the Penny Arcade fans are a notoriously creative bunch. You've got the Eye of Sauron, the machine from Contact, an AT-AT, Free Willy, a full underwater city (right next to Free Willy), Space Invaders, and a whole bunch of gamergeek stuff that is way above my paygrade from a nerd standpoint, all in one world.
posted by Gator at 3:18 PM on October 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Gator: "There, there, quin. To tide you over, check out this phenomenal isometric rendering of the Penny Arcade Minecraft server.

Well, that crashed the shit out of my browser.
posted by Happy Dave at 3:22 PM on October 6, 2010

Oh man, that's a gorgeous underwater city. That's something I'm trying to work on, myself, but not that kind of scale nor that pretty so far. Wow.

And here's the bit that just blew my mind: I'm gonna try and try until I get on to that server, and I'm going to GO IN THERE AND LOOK AROUND.

Man I love this game.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 7:32 AM on October 7, 2010

That Penny-Arcade server looks fantastic. I'd think Youtube would be full of videos giving tours of the place, but I can't find any. Anyone got links to some videos from that world?
posted by straight at 9:44 AM on October 8, 2010

Here's a tour of Rapture, the underwater city. I kind of get the impression that the PA fans are a rather insular bunch, but I dunno.
posted by Gator at 9:54 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

Whoa. I just found my first neighbors near Whelkonia since I started flooding the valley. That huge rock formation? That's no rock formation. I'm far away enough to not accidentally ruin their set up, but man, a waterfall, a castle structure - people should leave more signs, i wanna know who's moving in.

(Whelkonia is past the Frontier, an obnoxiously forested, extremely well-lit hill top in an increasingly flooded valley. I wanted something that almost looked natural but obviously couldn't be.)
posted by The Whelk at 10:15 AM on October 8, 2010

The address for the penny arcade server was posted in the Something Awful minecraft thread if you want to dig around for it. They're trying to keep it secret, so I don't want to just throw it out there.
posted by empath at 10:59 AM on October 8, 2010

Well I snappy got bored of exploring cave systems. Now I've got chests full of resources, so it's time to make fun with trains and switches.
posted by five fresh fish at 2:56 AM on October 17, 2010

Snappy = finally.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:40 AM on October 17, 2010

Turns out Big Floaty Park is my neighbor!
posted by The Whelk at 8:52 AM on October 17, 2010

Well, The Whelk, we put in a road to the north side of the park, so if you can get there then you can come visit the Second Continent with no worries.
posted by komara at 1:17 PM on October 17, 2010

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