Minecraft Rave!

January 16, 2011 6:45 AM

Notch added music blocks to minecraft last week. Predictably, people have been making awesome stuff with it: Minecraft Rave., Deadmau5's I Remember in minecraft. (original, also, Deadmau5 playing Minecraft with fans), Billie Jean, Tetris, The Theme from The Office

Bonus: Fun with Eggs. Free Cake.

posted by empath (44 comments total)

Holy crap, that rave was awesome.
posted by DU at 6:49 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oh, also:

This article mentions mefi's server.
posted by empath at 6:50 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Also, Fun with Eggs made my 5 yo twins almost fall on the floor laughing.
posted by DU at 6:57 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Holy crap, that rave was awesome.

I love how, when he's looking around, you see pigs and cows jumping in time to the music. Random, certainly, but still a nice touch.
posted by menschlich at 7:21 AM on January 16, 2011

Yeah, this update has me itching to get back on the 'porkalypse for the first time in awhile. Gotta add spooky music to my dungeon!

Free Cake is the best. The first time I watched the video, I kinda freaked the hell out.
posted by absalom at 7:25 AM on January 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

On that rave video I was waiting for a little Minecraft version of Flynn's son and Cora from Tron to come waltzing in as for some reason that was the only thing I could think of.
posted by Phantomx at 7:28 AM on January 16, 2011

Since when did minecraft get updates?!?!? I gotta get back in the game!
posted by rebent at 7:31 AM on January 16, 2011

That didn't sound like the theme from the Office to me.
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 7:50 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Minecraft has completely lost me as a player, but man it's still neat to see what people are accomplishing in it.
posted by graventy at 7:53 AM on January 16, 2011

I didn't even know about this. I stopped playing for several weeks after the disappointment of the Halloween update, but then I tentatively started playing again. Yesterday I discovered by accident that skellies drop bones now in addition to arrows. When I headed over to the Minecraft wiki, I learned that there are now squids in the game, and that you can officially dye wool in various colors through various crafting recipes, and cake, and sugar, and a few other things. Neat! None of this stuff is super-useful, but it's still fun. Now I'm wondering if these note blocks will play themselves when mobs jump on them. I'm sure cortex and the Aporkalypse gang have already built their own mega-stadium for mega-raves.
posted by Gator at 7:59 AM on January 16, 2011

Not long ago, the big releases in the software world were the latest from Adobe or Microsoft — now we are seeing a bottom-up trend that’s totally disrupting that model.

It's always funny reading things written by people completely unfamiliar with Free software.
posted by DU at 8:02 AM on January 16, 2011 [10 favorites]

Now I'm wondering if these note blocks will play themselves when mobs jump on them.

Not directly, but because they're driven by redstone it's perfectly possible to trigger them with pressure plates - and mobs can certainly set those off. Cows are forever accidentally playing the piano I built on the Temporkalypse...
posted by ZsigE at 8:17 AM on January 16, 2011

Now I'm wondering if these note blocks will play themselves when mobs jump on them.

With pressure plates, yeah.
posted by empath at 8:24 AM on January 16, 2011

This might officially count as a "Denial of Cortex" attack against MetaFilter.
posted by adipocere at 8:29 AM on January 16, 2011 [10 favorites]

Heh. I just popped in to one of my single-player worlds to do a very rough proof-of-concept on the noteblock stuff. It's neat, but I haven't played with redstone enough to really even know how to conceptualize what I'd like to build, which is a Tenori-On.
posted by cortex at 8:42 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

It would be pretty simple.

1) Build a clock (there are diagrams for that on the wiki).

2) From the clock output, build out a row of, say, 8 repeaters. Each will add 1 'click' of delay to the clock. These are the triggers for your 'beats'.

3. From each repeater, split off a bunch of redstone wires, each to an AND gate (diagrams for AND gates are on the wiki). Make sure you either don't use any repeaters for this, or you use an equal number of repeaters for every wire, so that the output from each 'beat' hits simultaneously.

4. The other input to each AND gate is a switch. These enable the notes.

5. The output for each AND gate is a note block. There's no way to 'tune' these with redstone, you have to do them all by hand.

Done.
posted by empath at 8:51 AM on January 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

It also wouldn't be that complicated to have multiple banks of outputs to switch instruments on the fly.

If you wanted to get really fancy you could add memory and have all the notes programmed with buttons instead of switches, and maybe even be able to program and save a couple of different patterns and switch between them, but that would start to rather quickly become a huge project.
posted by empath at 8:58 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Now I want to built one. I'll draw out a diagram in the redstone sim and memail it to you later.
posted by empath at 9:04 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

1) Build a clock (there are diagrams for that on the wiki).

I thought you meant like a "real" clock (moving parts and stuff) and I was pretty excited.

2) From the clock output...

Clocks have outputs? Or maybe you do mean a "real" clock, only redstone-tronic?
posted by DU at 9:28 AM on January 16, 2011

A real clock, made out of redstone. You basically just run redstone circuits in a circle. When you add enough delay, they start going off and on in a cycle.
posted by empath at 9:39 AM on January 16, 2011

Diagrams here.
posted by empath at 9:40 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Don't forget: Still Alive
posted by 7segment at 11:36 AM on January 16, 2011 [5 favorites]

I was so excited to see the squiddies when I jumped back in yesterday. It's been a while since I've played, because it seems like each successive update makes it more laggy, at least on my mac. Was not happy to see that the trend appears to have continued.

Is there something I should be doing to make Java run better? Can Java run better on a mac...? I want to play with squids and black sheep!
posted by roobot at 12:14 PM on January 16, 2011

...it seems like each successive update makes it more laggy, at least on my mac. Was not happy to see that the trend appears to have continued.

No kidding. My minecraft-obsessed son made me run a server and it immediately takes 30% of my RAM before we even start playing on it. That's 30% of 2GB as a baseline. And of course it grows over time and frequently has lags long enough to get us killed by a sudden monster attack.

Java is worse than Hitler.
posted by DU at 1:01 PM on January 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

Jesus, am I the only one who turns off "bob while walking" in preferences?
posted by odinsdream at 1:53 PM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

I like it. It makes me feel like a pimp.
posted by Gator at 2:10 PM on January 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

I run the server "nogui" so it has 0 graphics, including bobbing.
posted by DU at 2:24 PM on January 16, 2011

I'm impressed by the content of the recent update, after I had been badmouthing Mojang recently in another thread. I take some of that back. That rave video is probably one of the neatest things I've seen made with the game.

From what I understand the laggy nature of Minecraft isn't entirely from Java, but rather that Notch isn't a very good coder, and Minecraft is systematically fucked because of elemental mistakes in how it's coded, making it incredibly difficult to make changes to the code... which is why leaf decay took so long to resolve. But maybe that's being too harsh. I guess we'll see how the mod API ends up turning out.

Don't forget: Still Alive

If only I could!
posted by codacorolla at 3:08 PM on January 16, 2011

Oh goddammit I thought I was safe from Minecraft.
posted by speicus at 6:33 PM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oh goddammit I thought I was safe from Minecraft.

No one is safe.
posted by amery at 8:13 PM on January 16, 2011

Wow. It'll be interesting to see how this develops.

Any world you can build an 8-bit-CPU the size of a luxury hotel in can't be all bad.
posted by Twang at 8:22 PM on January 16, 2011

Any world you can build an 8-bit-CPU the size of a luxury hotel in can't be all bad.

We're probably only half a dozen updates away from redstone-powered colored lights. RGB display ahoy. Not to mention that floor plates and signs could be used as a rudimentary keyboard.
posted by Jimbob at 10:17 PM on January 16, 2011

Free cake is my new favoritest minecraft thing ever.
posted by eyeballkid at 9:21 AM on January 17, 2011

It's weird that you have to throw your cake on the ground before you can eat it.
posted by Gator at 10:29 AM on January 17, 2011

at least on my mac... Is there something I should be doing to make Java run better?

The Minecraft application crashes constantly on my OSX86 machine, and it ran like crap in the browser so I tried it in Parallels which works great.

It's completely hacky; using an emulated operating system to run Java smoothly, but whatever. It seems to work pretty damn well.
posted by quin at 11:41 AM on January 17, 2011

It's weird that you have to throw your cake on the ground before you can eat it.

Well you can't have your cake, and eat it too!
posted by Jimbob at 12:23 PM on January 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

I'm impressed by the content of the recent update, after I had been badmouthing Mojang recently in another thread. I take some of that back.

He let his new hire Jeb start adding stuff to the game, rather than just working on the webserver.

Why is that I know so much about the inner workings of this game company and know nothing about the day to day business of ea or Valve?
posted by empath at 12:28 PM on January 17, 2011

No one knows what the day-to-day business of EA is, including EA employees.

/ex-EA employee
posted by restless_nomad at 1:21 PM on January 17, 2011

It's taken 30 years, but we've finally managed to make a game that sounds like it was made on a Commodore 64.
posted by crunchland at 2:54 PM on January 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: Cows are forever accidentally playing the piano I built on the Temporkalypse...
posted by eriko at 3:12 PM on January 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

So I loaded up Minecraft yesterday and the pulsating yellow tagline on the main menu couldn't have been more perfect:

DRR! DRR! DRR!

posted by Rhaomi at 11:07 AM on January 19, 2011

I hate you all. I have started playing minecraft just because of this video. And now I am irrevocably, unquestionably hooked on the game!
posted by BigCalm at 3:33 PM on January 24, 2011

Yeah, empath wrecked my life too. Welcome to the club.
posted by Gator at 3:44 PM on January 24, 2011

OK, this is awesome: Zero Punctuation reviews Minecraft

My initial experience with Minecraft was, I imagine, similar to many people's. After downloading it to see what all the fuss was about, I was plunked into a Lego representation of rural New Zealand. About all I could figure out to do was punch things, so I punched some flowers. Yeah, eat that, flowers! And you too, patch of dirt! Ooh, now I can pick up the dirt and rearrange it in places! I'm going to make a little pile and leave the flower on top like a mysterious Spanish gentleman. Hey, why's it gotten so dark all of a sudden? What was that rustling sound? Why are my intestines over there now?

posted by Rhaomi at 3:26 PM on January 26, 2011