• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Minecraft |OT2| Punch Your Way to Your Own World

Yaweee

Member
Mikor said:
Still on 1.3 on Exano's Gafland, folks.

Sorry for not updating, theres a couple essential plugin's we're waiting on (Namely Big Brother) before we go ahead and push the update through. I'm looking for alternatives in the meantime. Sorry for the downtime, but if your on 1.3 you can still log in and play fine =)

How do I we do a version downgrade for our clients?
 

Ranger X

Member
Slimes are the easiest mob really. Slash with your sword until they are all killed. Just don't get circled or pushed in the lava (this shouldn't happen often, really.)
 

Ranger X

Member
animlboogy said:
You backseat developers need to chill out on Mojang. It was made clear that they are working on achievements, and that a lot of work was going into things besides new features. Such as actually having version control. And switching to a different development paradigm. And the whole thing about starting a new company.

This game, even at the slower pace it's been for a while since Mojang became a bigger thing, gives you toys to play with consistently. Let them get real work done and stop acting like all they've done is make wolves this entire time.

I should make it clear that I'm being kind of touchy because it seems like Minecraft people displace their love of the game into this weird blame on the developers, as if they are owed something. Beyond a vague promise of updates, we've all gotten our money's worth and then some. And not all work on a game -- especially one in beta -- is going to directly result in toys to play with. Remember the things like the new lighting system, the change in save system, the performance tweaks, the bug fixes.


I understand your point. I am a software engineer myself and working in game devellopment for 6 years already. Dangerous Dave might indeed be asking for a bit too much stuff if the situation really is what you described. I personally don't know about this so I just estimated the effort of making the wolfies.

For the sake of discussion, there's something your answer made me think about. "Beta" is a wierd term for Minecraft right now. It's an "alpha" game to me. Normally, when you're in beta phase, it means all your game elements and gameplay are done and it's now the final debugging phase. Right now, and for a while, they will totally add to the game so it's wierd to call it a "beta".
 

BooJoh

Member
DangerousDave said:
Right now, wolves are sheeps with different shape that follow you or stop following you. Nothing else. They don't attack (come on, they're not even aggro at night in wild) or support you in any way, don't get items from floor, don't bark if there is any creeper around, and you cannot take them with you underground because you will be pushed to a pit or to lava. It's a 30 minutes entertaintment.
The need to babysit your wolf is a little tedious and I've taken to leaving mine at home when I go spelunking, etc. But wolves will attack animals you attack (I don't know which monsters they do or don't attack) and wild wolves will kill sheep. I was sailing past an island yesterday and saw a pack of eight wolves gang up on a sheep.

About the new colored sheeps, is a joke. They should be able to make sheeps of other colors in half an hour, because is only a palette on a texture, and adding the spawn variables in an array.
Easy to add? Yes. But personally I'm happy to have more colors of wool that don't require dyes to obtain.

They added cookies that recover a minimum amount of life and that require an object that can only be found in chests and cannot be grown.
Yes, cookies are useless and basically there for fun.

They fixed a few small bugs, but they let some big bugs like the slimes of multiplayer.
I was under the impression the slimes bug was fixed this update. I don't play SMP though so I don't know.

About "code of archievents is in there, but deactivated", is an excuse that I can't afford to do in my job.
Obviously the achievements and stats weren't done yet, and they wanted to 1) get the beds/wolves out ASAP (I admit the beds failed pretty hard.) and 2) probably wanted to get the update out for the April Fools gag.

I wonder if I'm the only one that see an incredible lack of new updates in the last 3 months. It's shameful that a single fan can do much more in a mod that program in his spare time, for free, than the official devs that got rich with the game and promised to work fulltime in this to give us a lot of content.
Things that have been added to Minecraft in the last 3 months:

Charcoal
Note Blocks
Dyes
Squids
Birch and Pine trees
Dispenser Blocks
Lapiz Lazuli
Cake
Bones
Non-white Sheep
Increased Tool Durability
Faster Gold Tools (lol)
Sandstone
Climbing Spiders
Redstone Repeaters
Beds
Wood, Cobblestone, and Sandstone Slabs
Smooth Lighting
New Save Format
Custom Seeds
More than 5 World slots
Wolves
Cookies
Bed Spawns (not fully working yet)
Sneaking on Ladders
Cocoa Beans


In addition to all that, there have been numerous bugfixes (and new bugs! this is a beta afterall.)
 

Grinchy

Banned
Kinda random thought(about "beta"), but I will be surprised when Minecraft leaves the beta phase (even if it's not a true beta).

What would they really have to gain by calling the game complete? If it's always in "beta" form, but on sale, then they are always selling the game with the disclaimer that it may still be broken/buggy/incomplete.

They could just keep upping the price by small increments over time and casually allow their baby to grow, without the pressure that comes with having a game out that people expect to be "complete." I guess one day they will have to say the game is done, but I don't think there's any rush.
 
Well, I'm a game dev, also, and the wolf is work of 1 week 1 dev, as much, assuming that there is an artist that do the animations.

But it's not a matter of this update. It seems that in the last months they like to split the features in time, instead of making a real update. One update to make the beds. Another update to make them work as spawn in the multi. And we're waiting for a next update to make it work in singleplayer. They added slabs and stairs of wood and cobblestone, then they added the slabs of stone and sandstone... but they didn't added the stairs of stone and sandstone, that it's a 30 minutes work and will be one of the big features of an uncoming update.

I'm simply worried of what will happen if that slow pace of updates continue. They already are thinking about their next game, and the rithm of updates is becoming slower.
 

Roche

Member
Hey animl, if your available any chance we could get a new overhead image of Assland? There's a ridiculous amount of new stuff that's been built recently and it'd be cool to get an idea of where it's all at.
 
mrklaw said:
Had my first serious spelunk today. Found a small cave stuffed full of creepers and spiders right under our house. Cleared it out and found connecting tunnels. Ended up opening up in lots of directions, difficult to keep track of and easy to get lost in - some looping back on themselves. Definitely need to work on my navigation.

My son was really scared by it, telling me to stop all the time. Not sure if it was the dark caves, or the worry that i'd die and lose the diamond sword.

I was doing well until one misstep made me fall down a pit, and I came face to face with my first ever giant fucking slime. So I shot it with my bow. It then split into smaller ones which I also shot, ending up with a bunch of little ones. I vaguely remembered reading that they can't hurt you when they are small, so I relaxed a little. And they pushed me into a lava lake and I died, taking all my inventory down with me :p

Eventually went back and cleared it out, and came back with a few diamond and a decent amount of iron. Still barely enough to cover what i'd lost, but it was a lot of fun.

lol perfect definition of Minecraft right there.
 

Ranger X

Member
I wonder if there are other major optims planned in matter of performance?
Better draw distance and other stuff making the whole thing run at a higher framerate. Right now the game will drop in busy envirronements (around 30 fps) even if using NASA computers. Anyhow, just curious to know if someone heard something.
 

Suikoguy

I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
Ranger X said:
I wonder if there are other major optims planned in matter of performance?
Better draw distance and other stuff making the whole thing run at a higher framerate. Right now the game will drop in busy envirronements (around 30 fps) even if using NASA computers. Anyhow, just curious to know if someone heard something.

I guess I have a good rig as it runs great on my machine. But the game "crashes" to a black screen if I have draw distance to far...

Looking at CPU usage it at least appears to be somewhat multi-threaded, which is cool :)

Does it even touch the gpu?
 
Ranger X said:
I wonder if there are other major optims planned in matter of performance?
Better draw distance and other stuff making the whole thing run at a higher framerate. Right now the game will drop in busy envirronements (around 30 fps) even if using NASA computers. Anyhow, just curious to know if someone heard something.

To be honest, it's been running pretty shit for me since it went beta. I've had the black screen crashes that other people have reported. I've been having to run the game from a batch file using this:

java -Xms512m -Xmx768m -jar Minecraft.exe

Never had this problem with the alpha. It's a testament to how good the game is really. Any other game that gave me this shit would have been dumped ages ago.
 

parasight

Member
Living Forest is finished in MK Town! Goro's Lair is just about done.

5583089555_857ae0cd61_b.jpg

5583677362_a335c1f302_b.jpg

5583677552_b4c529983a_b.jpg

5583090833_4a3bdbf363_b.jpg

5583091093_82416dc397_b.jpg


Come visit us on AssCraft! We actually had some duels on The Pit stage we made, and it was loads of fun. Who knew Minecraft could be turned into a fighting game?
 
Downloaded that photo-realistic texture pack that was posted a few pages back, tried to load it up, and now I can't get the Minecraft to work. Any idea how I can fix this? I can't find a Minecraft folder anywhere.
 

Qwomo

Junior Member
crowphoenix said:
Downloaded that photo-realistic texture pack that was posted a few pages back, tried to load it up, and now I can't get the Minecraft to work. Any idea how I can fix this? I can't find a Minecraft folder anywhere.
Probably need to use MCPatcher or similar.
 

Zek

Contempt For Challenge
Ranger X said:
I understand your point. I am a software engineer myself and working in game devellopment for 6 years already. Dangerous Dave might indeed be asking for a bit too much stuff if the situation really is what you described. I personally don't know about this so I just estimated the effort of making the wolfies.

For the sake of discussion, there's something your answer made me think about. "Beta" is a wierd term for Minecraft right now. It's an "alpha" game to me. Normally, when you're in beta phase, it means all your game elements and gameplay are done and it's now the final debugging phase. Right now, and for a while, they will totally add to the game so it's wierd to call it a "beta".
In practice no one uses that definition for game betas. Devs can let people play the game whenever they want. If the game isn't out yet, it's in beta. If it's extremely unfinished, it's in alpha.
 

Grinchy

Banned
MK Town on Asscraft looks awesome! I really need to go check things out. When the new map is generated I'm going to have to go exploring.
 
Zek said:
In practice no one uses that definition for game betas. Devs can let people play the game whenever they want. If the game isn't out yet, it's in beta. If it's extremely unfinished, it's in alpha.

OT: This is also right. In practice a game is in beta when it's scheduled that there will be in beta and is still duable to finish the missing content and also fixing the bugs before the deadline. :p
 

Belfast

Member
BooJoh said:
The need to babysit your wolf is a little tedious and I've taken to leaving mine at home when I go spelunking, etc. But wolves will attack animals you attack (I don't know which monsters they do or don't attack) and wild wolves will kill sheep. I was sailing past an island yesterday and saw a pack of eight wolves gang up on a sheep.

Easy to add? Yes. But personally I'm happy to have more colors of wool that don't require dyes to obtain.

Yes, cookies are useless and basically there for fun.

I was under the impression the slimes bug was fixed this update. I don't play SMP though so I don't know.

Obviously the achievements and stats weren't done yet, and they wanted to 1) get the beds/wolves out ASAP (I admit the beds failed pretty hard.) and 2) probably wanted to get the update out for the April Fools gag.


Things that have been added to Minecraft in the last 3 months:

Charcoal
Note Blocks
Dyes
Squids
Birch and Pine trees
Dispenser Blocks
Lapiz Lazuli
Cake
Bones
Non-white Sheep
Increased Tool Durability
Faster Gold Tools (lol)
Sandstone
Climbing Spiders
Redstone Repeaters
Beds
Wood, Cobblestone, and Sandstone Slabs
Smooth Lighting
New Save Format
Custom Seeds
More than 5 World slots
Wolves
Cookies
Bed Spawns (not fully working yet)
Sneaking on Ladders
Cocoa Beans


In addition to all that, there have been numerous bugfixes (and new bugs! this is a beta afterall.)

But, as has been stated, a lot of that stuff just seems like it would require someone to create a new skin/simple graphic/pallette swap or tweak a few numbers in the code.
 
Belfast said:
But, as has been stated, a lot of that stuff just seems like it would require someone to create a new skin/simple graphic/pallette swap or tweak a few numbers in the code.

Yep, at least for charcoal, new material slabs, faster gold tools, cookies, bones, sandstone, increase tool durability, different texture trees, etc.

Are elements that already exist in the game and, if they are not able, in this moment of the development, to add new materials, add new receipts and assign textures to objects and blocks in a few minutes (even without messing in code, modifying some variables in a text editor), the structure of the project has to be really messy.

Also, things like not falling in stairs if sneaking is something that requires two lines of code. Literally.

And I think that is the kind of things that they should promote, right now. Instead of occlusion light, that is something that costed more, they could spend a week to spend the first two days looking what kind of new blocks, new receipts, new objects can they add, and the other three days of the week in implement all that stuff that is really easy to do because is based in existant behaviours.

That will create a lot of new gameplay options, make a great update that will keep happy everyone, and give use to a lot of items, like gold or lapiz lazuli that now are nearly useless. And in a single week.

It give the impression that they want to go for the exciting stuff that everyone love to program (tameable animals, original archievements like pig riding), but they don't like very much to do the "mechanical" work of creating new elements, new receipts, furnitures, etc.
 

Ranger X

Member
DangerousDave said:
Yep, at least for charcoal, new material slabs, faster gold tools, cookies, bones, sandstone, increase tool durability, different texture trees, etc.

Are elements that already exist in the game and, if they are not able, in this moment of the development, to add new materials, add new receipts and assign textures to objects and blocks in a few minutes (even without messing in code, modifying some variables in a text editor), the structure of the project has to be really messy.

Also, things like not falling in stairs if sneaking is something that requires two lines of code. Literally.

And I think that is the kind of things that they should promote, right now. Instead of occlusion light, that is something that costed more, they could spend a week to spend the first two days looking what kind of new blocks, new receipts, new objects can they add, and the other three days of the week in implement all that stuff that is really easy to do because is based in existant behaviours.

That will create a lot of new gameplay options, make a great update that will keep happy everyone, and give use to a lot of items, like gold or lapiz lazuli that now are nearly useless. And in a single week.

It give the impression that they want to go for the exciting stuff that everyone love to program (tameable animals, original archievements like pig riding), but they don't like very much to do the "mechanical" work of creating new elements, new receipts, furnitures, etc.


Well, I suspect the Mojang to be as indy/amateur as it gets. They probably aren't organised like a big software company + their code might not be optimal either and probably very personalised (read "complex for no reason"). It wouldn't be surprising, I would even say its normal here and understandable. Let's remind ourselves that he wasn't even having a true version system a little while ago.

I think we all want more, me included, but we gotta look at the context here and appreciate they simply continue to create stuff for the game. They probably are learning alot of things since Minecraft began and this will continue. We should try to be positive about this whole story and adjust our expectations I think. Me too I want better, bigger and more meaningful updates but I just don't think we will get much of that within 3 months.

Even real devs with $$$$, ressources, great QA, etc aren't able to update anything meaninful within 4 months... Yes Media Molecule, I look at you!!

;)
 

L00P

Member
I finally tamed my first wolf. Man, they're hard to find when you're looking for them. I could have tamed four of em when I first saw them, but I just created a new world that time and didn't have bones with me.

I must say, exploring is ten times more fun when they are following you around!
 

Blizzard

Banned
Ranger X said:
I wonder if there are other major optims planned in matter of performance?
Better draw distance and other stuff making the whole thing run at a higher framerate. Right now the game will drop in busy envirronements (around 30 fps) even if using NASA computers. Anyhow, just curious to know if someone heard something.
I really would appreciate it, since even on a decent computer (especially with the nicer lighting) the framerate does seem jerky and/or it takes time to redraw. I don't know if they have a lot of framerate optimization plans though.
 

Grinchy

Banned
My problem is that the wolves are like the elixers in RPGs that I collect but never use. I have 2 wolves sitting safely at home, because I don't want to feed them or have them die. Now I'm walking around looking for more so I can have one to walk around with. It's a sickness...
 

Belfast

Member
DangerousDave said:
Yep, at least for charcoal, new material slabs, faster gold tools, cookies, bones, sandstone, increase tool durability, different texture trees, etc.

Are elements that already exist in the game and, if they are not able, in this moment of the development, to add new materials, add new receipts and assign textures to objects and blocks in a few minutes (even without messing in code, modifying some variables in a text editor), the structure of the project has to be really messy.

Also, things like not falling in stairs if sneaking is something that requires two lines of code. Literally.

And I think that is the kind of things that they should promote, right now. Instead of occlusion light, that is something that costed more, they could spend a week to spend the first two days looking what kind of new blocks, new receipts, new objects can they add, and the other three days of the week in implement all that stuff that is really easy to do because is based in existant behaviours.

That will create a lot of new gameplay options, make a great update that will keep happy everyone, and give use to a lot of items, like gold or lapiz lazuli that now are nearly useless. And in a single week.

It give the impression that they want to go for the exciting stuff that everyone love to program (tameable animals, original archievements like pig riding), but they don't like very much to do the "mechanical" work of creating new elements, new receipts, furnitures, etc.

Indeed. But teams of equal size (and even individuals) have been modding the game for months. There's only so much they can do with the base code, evidently, but that they can work with it and produce more than Mojang itself has leads me to believe it's not *that* bad.

Graphics stuff is a breeze, though, since it's all based on pixels and simple shapes. I've dabbled in it, myself, and with a solid grasp of design, a decent texture overhaul can be completed in as little as a day (barring the obsessive nature of people to go back and tweak their own work).
 

Blizzard

Banned
Grinchy said:
My problem is that the wolves are like the elixers in RPGs that I collect but never use. I have 2 wolves sitting safely at home, because I don't want to feed them or have them die. Now I'm walking around looking for more so I can have one to walk around with. It's a sickness...
This is an awesome analogy (except that you can get more wolves in theory). I did the same thing with ethers/pp ups in pokemon, at least back in the games where you could never realiably get more, lol.
 

Branduil

Member
parasight said:
Living Forest is finished in MK Town! Goro's Lair is just about done.

5583089555_857ae0cd61_b.jpg

5583677362_a335c1f302_b.jpg

5583677552_b4c529983a_b.jpg

5583090833_4a3bdbf363_b.jpg

5583091093_82416dc397_b.jpg


Come visit us on AssCraft! We actually had some duels on The Pit stage we made, and it was loads of fun. Who knew Minecraft could be turned into a fighting game?
Did you guys spawn that glowstone?
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Belfast said:
But, as has been stated, a lot of that stuff just seems like it would require someone to create a new skin/simple graphic/pallette swap or tweak a few numbers in the code.
If you really wantnto simplify, isn't *all* dev just 'tweaking a few numbers'?

In a game like this,never ansmallntweak can ripple across the game, and so will take time to test and tune.

I agree that it seems odd they'd do cobblestone and wood stairs, but not extend that across all materials. But there seems plenty of big things added in the last 3 months to me

And if it wasboriginally hacked together, they need to spend time moving to a more controlled, extensible environment. They've already talked about making a mod API which would be a huge update IMO. They should focus on major architectural elements like that rather than small specific functional items.nasnit grows, single items will have diminishing returns
 

BooJoh

Member
I've been hard at work the last couple days sprucing up my home.

My pond and the outside of my house. It's a Hobbit-style house dug into a hill.

2011-04-03_052934.png


The entryway. I don't have any records for the jukebox yet. My workshop is to the left, living room center, and the lower deck is to the right.

2011-04-03_053308.png


The living room. I'm using a custom art file for the TV screen and the various paintings around my house.

2011-04-03_053515.png


My bedroom and my wolf. I have him custom skinned too. Wild wolves use the default textures.

2011-04-03_053600.png


My workbench. There's a forge on the other side of the room. I don't have a 3DS yet so I don't know if the AR poster works or not. If so I might get creative with some wool colors I won't use later.

2011-04-03_053432.png


The view from my lower deck.

2011-04-03_053829.png
 

Roche

Member
So a member of the Assland server Doogie, left his wolf alone while he was offline, exploiting this I decided to play a little prank on him.



Encased in a glass box with lava above one wrong move will kill it, MUHAHAHAHAHA :)
 

Tawpgun

Member
Question: How rare are wolves? I can't seem to find any.

Also, just spur of the moment things I want from minecraft right now.

1. Colored Torches. Apply dye to a torch, it it will glow that color.

2. Half-Blocks you can put on walls. It's like the half step from stone, that goes up half a block, but you can mount it on walls, like a painiting.

Just the things I thought about when I as building my Forerunner Base.
 

kinoki

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
Ranger X said:
Well, I suspect the Mojang to be as indy/amateur as it gets. They probably aren't organised like a big software company + their code might not be optimal either and probably very personalised (read "complex for no reason"). It wouldn't be surprising, I would even say its normal here and understandable. Let's remind ourselves that he wasn't even having a true version system a little while ago.

I think we all want more, me included, but we gotta look at the context here and appreciate they simply continue to create stuff for the game. They probably are learning alot of things since Minecraft began and this will continue. We should try to be positive about this whole story and adjust our expectations I think. Me too I want better, bigger and more meaningful updates but I just don't think we will get much of that within 3 months.

Even real devs with $$$$, ressources, great QA, etc aren't able to update anything meaninful within 4 months... Yes Media Molecule, I look at you!!

;)

I don't think they're all that focused on just stuffing the game with more features but rather figuring out where they see this game long-term. The words "long-term" might not even have been mentioned before this year. But he's sitting on one of the most addicting game-concepts since Tetris and he's doing what he can.

Toward the summer I think we'll see some nice updates, since summer is usually the season when the swedish indie dev species hides away in dark cellars to code and drink Jolt Cola.

(And yes, the lack of DLC and/or any kind of stuffs in LBP2 is disturbing.)

Also, I gave up on my old world and started a new one seeded from my phone number. While I miss my old mine the new one offers a completly different experience since I stumbled upon a maze of tunnels down there. And I have an indoor pool in my topside apartment and I'm setting up a farmland soon.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
is there a problem with compasses? Went out with my daughter looking for wolves. Started off heading east, but ended up deviating from that a bit. But no worried, I'd brought a compass. But it seems like its pointing at our beds? I thought that although your spawn might change when you sleep, the compass always pointed at the original spawn?

If so, we're lost :/ there should be a simple /set home command that lets you select your spawn. Too many times we'll head off on mini expeditions with beds in our inventory to sleep the night off holed up in a little dugout. But if the compass breaks its useless.

edit: ended up teleporting us back to our son's location. Wolf hasn't turned up yet, dont' know if it can handle its owner teleporting. Oddly my compass isn't pointing at my bed now. Very confusing.

any tips for long distance travel and finding your way back again would be appreciated. How far off can you see a torch from (eg if I leave a breadcrumb trail)
 
mrklaw said:
is there a problem with compasses? Went out with my daughter looking for wolves. Started off heading east, but ended up deviating from that a bit. But no worried, I'd brought a compass. But it seems like its pointing at our beds? I thought that although your spawn might change when you sleep, the compass always pointed at the original spawn?

If so, we're lost :/ there should be a simple /set home command that lets you select your spawn. Too many times we'll head off on mini expeditions with beds in our inventory to sleep the night off holed up in a little dugout. But if the compass breaks its useless.

The compass leads to the current waypoint, not the initial one. But... why are not using F3 to check the position?
 

Cranzor

Junior Member
I love the new logo. So much better than the old one. I wish I had a better computer, mine runs this like garbage.
 

Wool

Member
mrklaw said:
is there a problem with compasses? Went out with my daughter looking for wolves. Started off heading east, but ended up deviating from that a bit. But no worried, I'd brought a compass. But it seems like its pointing at our beds? I thought that although your spawn might change when you sleep, the compass always pointed at the original spawn?

If so, we're lost :/ there should be a simple /set home command that lets you select your spawn. Too many times we'll head off on mini expeditions with beds in our inventory to sleep the night off holed up in a little dugout. But if the compass breaks its useless.


I don't know if the compass has been changed, but like Dave said just look at your coordinates. Your spawn point should be very close to X=0, Z=0. If the compass does change to your bed, I don't really like that.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
doh, forgot about the coordinates. Still, it'd be nice to have a good 'in game' method of longer distance navigating.
 

Ranger X

Member
The compass is supposed to point your spawnpoint. Therefore the original spawnpoint since there's only one spawnpoint (bed aren't working in single). If you're in multiplayer then I don't know if it's different.


And a tip for when you travel far and get lost...
Have Cartographer generate a map of your seed. If ever you're lost, draw an "X" with black wool or any recogniseable block on the ground. Save and quit, generate your seed's map. Find yourself.
 
Top Bottom