Minecraft

plavonica wrote:

I would like to recommend optifine for our new players. It helps with fps issues and allows a good many options as well. Like connected textures, makes glass look amazing.

As for texture packs I would recommend starting with Sphax.

If we could do it, we should make Sphax the server texture pack, but that would require anyone logging onto the server to download or have it already. It would be cool if it was an option you could just choose if you want it or not but it would be available for everyone.

Yeah, part of the fun in the original PC Minecraft was discovering new recipes. Kinda weird that they just give you all of that in the 360 version.

I'm not sure how I feel about the new biome changes. I like the huge oceans. (Of course, I'd like them a lot more if there was some way to build a ship as a travelling base or something, so exploring them was more of an adventure than an endurance challenge...)

IMAGE(https://d1y0oqfyli6x95.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/overviewMap_new.png)

How do you guys find villages or dungeons?

Gremlin wrote:

I'm not sure how I feel about the new biome changes. I like the huge oceans. (Of course, I'd like them a lot more if there was some way to build a ship as a travelling base or something, so exploring them was more of an adventure than an endurance challenge...)

This is the latest version where he removed the small island areas. Note the scale here... the map is 32k blocks wide, and those oceans are still ~3000 blocks wide. They are huge.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/JCiyCTG.jpg)

Thinking about it some more, my main objection is that the huge oceans and continents added some structure to the map on a larger level. Granted, this is a huge map but it's still fairly random. Might be less so zoomed in. I just like to have a deeper logic to the map rather than the homogenous diffusion we used to have, where things changed so much over short distances that exploring didn't mean as much. The large biomes added some of that back in, so we'll see how I feel about it when it comes out.

And I guess if I still don't like it, I can just rebuild it the way I want it.

I'm not getting a strong sense of order from that map. It would be lovely to be able take a whiteboard marker and respond to the request "identify the major continents on this map".

Perhaps I'm just being old-fashioned, and there's no need for Minecraft worlds to be "earth-like".

I actually think that would be kind of cool, too... if not continents, then at least huge islands or something.

I haven't been following Minecraft that closely, but the big problem with map generation was that each world was locked into its original algorithm, so that updates didn't allow it to generate new terrain features. If that hasn't been fixed yet, I'd call that much higher priority. If servers could stay up with the same world, across multiple versions, without losing new features, that would be much better than algorithm tweaks.

I'm still pretty annoyed about the huge amount of work everyone did building that transport network about, um, I guess it was a couple years back. It was all wasted, because we couldn't keep that world, and have the new stuff, too. Mostly destroyed my interest in the game. I like to work on infrastructure, and what's the point if it's all going to go away soon, yanno?

Malor wrote:

I actually think that would be kind of cool, too... if not continents, then at least huge islands or something.

I haven't been following Minecraft that closely, but the big problem with map generation was that each world was locked into its original algorithm, so that updates didn't allow it to generate new terrain features. If that hasn't been fixed yet, I'd call that much higher priority. If servers could stay up with the same world, across multiple versions, without losing new features, that would be much better than algorithm tweaks.

I'm still pretty annoyed about the huge amount of work everyone did building that transport network about, um, I guess it was a couple years back. It was all wasted, because we couldn't keep that world, and have the new stuff, too. Mostly destroyed my interest in the game. I like to work on infrastructure, and what's the point if it's all going to go away soon, yanno?

It's the journey not the destination. For me the fun is in building that kind of stuff and exploring the unknown wilderness. That was a great world that we put a ton of work into but it was time to move on and start fresh.

I can feel the pain there. You're talking about transportation networks and infrastructure, so I'm assuming this stuff is large scale. Therefore, what I'm about to suggest might not apply...

MCEdit can work well for importing older creations into new worlds. My wife built a truly beautiful house in an earlier version, but I wanted to try a new world. We were able to drop the house into a new (actually nicer) location in the new world with MCEdit. For "infrastructure" sized projects this might not apply but if you really wanted it, you could possibly:

- Generate a new world
- MCEdit the entire old world onto it
- Profit

I can see that MCEdit might choke trying to do this, but I think there are Python libraries getting around for Minecraft map manipulation too.

Yes! For me, that's entirely true. I love the "Minecraft Mandala" effect of a new world. I understand though that others would like to preserve their greatest creations, and I'd like to help them out if possible.

But, if we could have gotten new features by just installing a new version, there wouldn't have been any particular need to throw away the old world -- just expand the borders, and voila, new stuff.

Like I said, I like to work on infrastructure, and it's a lousy time investment if everything's going to disappear within a few months to a year.

I used to feel that way. But so much changes in Minecraft. Either the mechanisms don't work the same and things break, or new features get added that make old mechanisms obsolete. I'd rather rebuild infrastructure in a new world than tear it down and rebuild in the same old world.

Besides, the game gets pretty boring once you are established. It really is about the journey in this game.

I was just coming to post this.

I'm totally going to build my house, where my house is!

omnipherous wrote:

I was just coming to post this.

I'm totally going to build my house, where my house is! :-D

I'm totally going to build a portal to hell where my tube station was!

I'm slowly getting to grips with redstone circuits and have made a few automated systems. My latest attempt is involving minecart stations (just two, at this stage) and I have successfully managed to create a set up whereby:

There are three lines in each station. If somebody rides in on Line 1, and jumps out, leaving their cart there, then the next cart will switch to line 2, the next will switch to line 3 if 1 and 2 are 'full'. So, relatively simple track switch powered by detector rail. Fine.

My next personally-inflicted challenge is to have an 'overflow' rail as well. That is, if Line 1 - 3 are all occupied, the next cart is pushed to Line 4, which will dump the occupant out onto the station platform, and collect the minecart. This has also been successful, but ideally I would like the collected carts to be shipped back to the departure point, ready to be dispensed-on-demand.

My problem is, getting the carts collected in a cart-with-chest, and then sent down the line when full, to then drop it's full load at the other end of the track, and be returned ready to collect more 'overflow'

Hopefully that made at least some sense to somebody. In all seriousness, I hope someone can help as I'm losing sleep thinking about how to get this working. It is irritating that a comparator can only work with a detector rail, and not a powered rail, as even when the minecart-with-chest becomes full, the comparator lights up, but the cart just sits there. I though about rigging up a piston that would trigger when the cart was full, pushing it off the detector rail and onto a powered rail, but that didn't have the desired effect..

Anyone know what the hell I'm trying to do and have attempted/succeeded at similar in the past?

Even telling me it isn't possible would help loads, especially my sanity. It's getting to the point now that I've tried so many different ways, I can't remember what I've tried and my brain overloads.

Anyone fancy helping me out and getting back into things before 1.7 officially drops?

The people who know circuits best, imho, are Xeknos and Gaald. They're the champs. The best I can do is make a push-button auto harvest farm.

Ahh, auto harvest was my first system - worked well, just a shame there's no auto-replant

I'm about to have another play about in creative mode to see if I can work it out before I try and get something going on my SMP server. Hopefully one of those guys you mentioned will have so time to spare my little brain

omnipherous wrote:

Ahh, auto harvest was my first system - worked well, just a shame there's no auto-replant

I'm about to have another play about in creative mode to see if I can work it out before I try and get something going on my SMP server. Hopefully one of those guys you mentioned will have so time to spare my little brain :P

Auto harvest pumpkins and sugar... that will get you pumpkin pies and both of those don't require replanting. Of course you need eggs too, but that isn't too much of a pain with hoppers now.

I will try to do this on our next world instead of messing with carrots and wheat.

It's been so long I doubt I would be much help and I never worked with comparators. However when I did work with redstone circuits Youtube was an awesome resource. I would just type in what I was looking to do and invariably came up with a search that got me exactly what I was looking for.

That's what I've been doing, to get this far (with a little tweak here and there to match my needs), but nothing quite dealt with things for my curent challenge.

I found this:

Which certainly suggests that is exactly what I am looking for, however, there is one stage that I jsut can't get working at all (perhaps a change in redstone mechanics since the video was made??) The piston barrier section, that halts the cart from returning until the chest is empty... well, the piston that fires up, does so, but the adjoining horizontal piston does not fire, as it does in the video - therefore the rest of the circuit does not complete, so the final 'blocker' piston doesn't fire and the cart comes rolling on back to the start..

Maybe it's just too much to ask and I should just be happy with what I have managed so far

EDIT: After playing some more, I've almost got it, just the last leg of the t-flip-flop doesn't trigger, so when the cart+chest is full, it doesn't create enough of a signal through the comparator to flip the flop and undo the piston barricade.. The video (i'm not sure how they made it work) doesn't show the correct configuration, as the comments all relate to..

I usually find if a circuit isn't behaving the way it's supposed to, it's usually because the circuit is getting short circuited somewhere by something. Usually by a block that I didn't realize is being powered by something else. For example I know in the past glass blocks wouldn't transmit power to circuits where otherwise non glass blocks would and it would totally screw over my design if I wasn't using the glass block.

I actually found an alternative collector that is much more compact and simple. I just need to combine the two now and I'll be unstoppable! Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but at least the folks on my server can be lazy with minecarts and it'll all be done for them! And they won't care one jot... but inside, I'll feel victorious...

I stopped in to leave a note about my latest Minecraft project, saw there was a new GWJ 1.7.2 world, logged in, did a little community farming and mining, and was about to start exploring for a place to call home, when I remembered I actually came to the forum for a reason that didn't include 2 hours lost in Minecraft. It was a close call!

Some of you may remember I do tech work for a university, and I've hosted a couple Minecraft research projects and hosted servers for various groups, including the Minecraft Teachers Google group started by Joel Levin, the creator of MinecraftEdu.

I've made enough contacts that I got hooked up with the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub out of UC Irvine and their Connected Learning webinar series. We're going to be running a month-long series of webinars, play sessions, and discussions about Minecraft in Education.

If you teach, or work in education, or you're just curious about Minecraft as a learning environment, we'll be talking to some interesting educators over the course of the month. The calendar section in the previous link has the dates for the webinars and the play sessions, and we'll likely have servers open over the course of the month where people can join, play, and hopefully learn more about using Minecraft in the classroom.

sithload wrote:

If you teach, or work in education, or you're just curious about Minecraft as a learning environment, we'll be talking to some interesting educators over the course of the month. The calendar section in the previous link has the dates for the webinars and the play sessions, and we'll likely have servers open over the course of the month where people can join, play, and hopefully learn more about using Minecraft in the classroom.

My agency purchased a MinecraftEDU license a few weeks ago and we started a Google Community to gauge interest for some kind of hosting/training setup for our client districts. Just shared your link with that group. Thanks!

I've only recently been asked by a friend to teach her Minecraft so that she can connect with a student. I will totally send her this link!

This is well timed, because I'm actually writing my senior project on Minecraft and education. I will have to check that out.

I'm glad it's helpful! That's why I was posting, I thought there might be some people around here who were either using Minecraft in the classroom or knew people doing so.

There's a Minecraft Teachers Google group for questions about MinecraftEdu specifically and Minecraft overall, and there's a Google+ community called Minecraft in Education that gets a number of posts, but not the in-depth conversations you'll find at the Google group.

Xeknos, if you want to ping me about anything regarding Minecraft and education, I'm happy to share if it helps your project. And Wordsmythe, there's a MinecraftEdu tutorial server floating around where new players (educators) can join to learn about how to play and how to build things useful for the classroom. If your friend is interested (or you and your friend), let me know and I'll talk to them about whitelisting you.

The server is run by Stephen Elford (EduElfie); you may have seen some of his YouTube videos floating around.

I'm at Minecon. It is crazy. I'm interested in tw Block by Block stuff, which is a joint venture between the UN--yes, that UN--and FyreUK, a group who does intricate building. Elevator pitch: they're developing public-space plans using Minecraft as te prototyping engine. Plazas. Play areas. All kinds o' stuff, in Rwanda and elsewhere around the world.