Minecraft

I've discovered liquid hot magma!

Yeah, nothing too special but it's a first for me.

Nice mine shaft there Surprised though that you used cobblestone for your steps - I usually just carve out the underlying stone to make steps, not install new ones overtop. Also, is your exit to the overworld protected by a wall? Just curious. I almost always have my mines covered by a building, and that is usually surrounded by a wall - I'm way too paranoid

I'm playing on peaceful right now. My previous construction was lost because I was killed by zombie guys and I wanted to build without being deterred.

I use the steps mostly to have some use for all the cobblestone I mine. If you carve out stones, don't you have to jump every step? I like the stairs because you can just run up them. There's a whole lot I haven't figured out yet though.

I'm just starting to build a castle/fortress above my mine. I'll start getting into how to build doors and such soon.

I'm very open to suggestions.

I, um, found magma. The hard way.

Oooooh neat!

The start menu lets you click on the multiplayer options now. But you need an invite code to use it.

Does this mean the Alpha is in Beta?

I think the Alpha is in the Blizzard-like stage of "Friends and Family" pre-beta multiplayer testing right now. He hopes to begin a public multiplayer-survival beta in the next 2 weeks or so.

@mrwynd: Oh I didn't realize those were steps and not just cobblestone blocks. Carry on, then! Sometimes I use them, but usually in my buildings, not in mines. But hey that's just me! I usually save and use every last stone block for my massive (scale, not awesomeness) structures and walls, though. Also, I sometimes use the flat half-steps for a variety of reasons: first, they use less stone block, and second, they can be used from any angle as a step, not just from the front.

As to playing on peaceful so you can mine etc in peace - well, again, that's why I always make buildings and walls to protect my mines and shops

For suggestions on buildings: use lots of glass! And light it with magma behind glass. And use lots of different building materials to set off different parts using a variety of textures, etc. You can use wool blocks to get a nice white pattern going, and you can cook/smelt cobblestone to make it look like the naturally occuring grey stone (though I never do this, too stingy to use my coal this way). Other than that let your imagination go wild! The bigger, and crazier, and more fortress like, the better! you can never have too many levels, towers, and glass walls/floors/ceilings as far as I'm concerned

I had fun learning how the water worked on a frozen world. I ended up building a house out of ice blocks on the ice in what I assumed was one of the deeper water areas. I then built a 2x2 tube using cobblestone blocks down from inside the house to some depth(probably about 60 units deep or so, guesstimating the amount of ladder sections I used). I've now begun to venture horizontally with my mine, adding aesthetic supports with torches attached as I go. Not exactly sure what I'm going to do with it, but I forsee a great underground hall of sorts eventually.

My greatest "accomplishment" so far is building a small little trash bin. But doing it poorly so that the resultant lava flow trashed a scenic valley next to my base (talk about lowering property values).

phragged wrote:

My greatest "accomplishment" so far is building a small little trash bin. But doing it poorly so that the resultant lava flow trashed a scenic valley next to my base (talk about lowering property values).

This comment sells the game better than anything the creator could come up with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBmUO5YUPyI

Minecraft has rollercoasters now!!!

ZaneRockfist wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBmUO5YUPyI

Minecraft has rollercoasters now!!!

That is so cool.. lol

And as of today, Those roller coasters will be powered. (and there's chickens now too I guess).

No loops?

Give him a little bit. It's hard to code with a money hat that big.

Including some of the links and video posted above, there's more in Notch's Blog. I hadn't checked it for a week or so, quite a bit has happened as far as press goes.

I wonder if there would be enough interest in this game to try a group play.

Anybody game?

When the server code for Alpha goes live, I might be able to put up a GWJer instance.

My wife and I both bought this last week and cannot wait till he releases multiplayer support for alpha.

She keeps calling me an elf as every time I play as I tend to make my base of operations as organic as possible. Growing trees on top of other trees to have a giant tree fort and making the entrance to my mine only accessible by climbing the trees first. The only problem with it is that simple flint and tinder will destroy the whole thing.

I'll post some shots later.

Some weird looking thing walked up to me and exploded.

Is there an easy way to make light? Right now the game is divided between aimless wandering (being followed by cows) and standing still till it stops being dark because it's so dark I can't do anything at all.

Oh. Of course. Picks.

Dude, I'm hitting stuff with a bit of cactus right now. >_>

How to make light:

Spoiler:

Coal on top of stick to make torch. Stick from two planks on top of each other. Coal requires stone or better pick to harvest.

My fort from about a week ago.

Now that minecart ride has a return trip above ground that you can see from space. IMAGE(http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/5625/map3obliqueanglerotated.jpg)

Lobster, check out the minecraft wiki crafting page if you really want to be spoiled.

I'm spending my nights hiding behind a volcano, so I think a little spoiler may be in order.

Hints, rather than outright spoilers, but spoiler-tagging anyway:

Spoiler:

One of the first things you need is a crafting table, which gives you access to 3x3 schematics. Experiment until you find that pattern in the 2v2 area in your hands.

To make tools; think about what tools look like. You'll have figured out that wood gets turned into boards, and that boards can be used for other items directly. But boards can also be turned into sticks, and you need sticks to make tools.

Note that tools get more effective and last longer as you make them from better material, but the better the material is, the harder it is to find.

Also note that relative positions matter. Crafting isn't just a matter of loading up the right combination of ingredients. You also have to arrange them in the right pattern.

Yeah, the crafting is kind of BS. They expect you to guess way too much with too little feedback.

I fell off a cliff looking for more coal, then couldn't find my old fort even though it had a tiny little landmark next to it (like a giant floating island with a tree on it, oh and also lava pouring out of the side of the freaking mountain).

While wandering around trying to find it again I had to take shelter in an underground cavern for the night. It was a LOT bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. Once I lost sight of the outside and started setting up torches I saw waterfalls and lots of very deep pits. A path seemed to lead down into the pit around the waterfall so I tried that out, then slipped and ended up in the waterfall and at the bottom of the pit. The river went much, much deeper, but at that point monsters started appearing and I've learned that monsters love to murder me instantly.

Best 10 Euro I've spent in a long time. At first, it seemed kind of like a very simplified version of Dwarf Fortress. But the more I play, the more I think it is like playing with blocks or legos. Except the blocks all have different properties. And monsters try to eat you at night.

Having fun just building networks of hilltop strongholds.

Highly recommend checking out the crafting guide while playing for the first time.

Later on, when you can make weapons and armor, they get easier. But yes, caves can be unbelievably gigantic, and can contain all sorts of nastiness. And you lose everything when you die, and if you died to a monster, the most recent builds seem to delete the monster and all the stuff you dropped. So you want to learn to make boxes to store the rare stuff, and carry with you only whet you really need to explore.

What I usually do when I'm exploring is to put down a pair of torches, top to bottom, on exits from large caves, because it's very easy to get hopelessly turned around and lost underground. When you've got a cave the size of ten football fields with exits leading in every direction, those beacons can be a welcome sight indeed.

Outdoors at night, you can see torches a long way, so scattering some around your houses can help you get to safety quickly if you respawn at night.

I was thinking that the engine could be modified to be an interesting Dwarf Fortress visualizer.

Love this game. Enjoyed it quite a bit when I was playing the free version or creative and just going out and building caves. Now in alpha, its more challenging to do the same. However until I find some better ore, I'm going chicken out and play on peaceful so I can build up my fort and pathways. Its just a pain when digging and the spider drops on your head and bam, no more pickaxe for you.

I basically gave up on learning the crafting...since there is no way I would have figured out a lot of the stuff. So my main focus has just been building and digging.

On a side note how do you produce those fancy overhead map screenshots?

Lobster, and others, try this. When you start out, knock out part of a tree, then equip that and take the rest of the wood from the tree. Then find a hilltop. Dig out about 4 squares, then start making a stepwise descent into the top of the hill. When you hit stone, get some and equip that. Make a room. Before night falls and the bad guys come out, fill in the top of your entry area with stone that you have excavated. If you squint you can work in the dark.

When you get enough wood, make a workbench and you can make tools. Tools make life muuch easier. But for the first day, just dig in and fill the entrance with stone to keep the nasties out. Later, you can spare wood to build doors.

I also like to build down from adjacent hilltops to more easily join my underground sections. Hard to navigate underground, so building from dungeon one in the direction of dungeon two means that all you have to do is get the depth right.

Zombies seem to blow up when they die (or maybe they just blow up). Also, the build as of yesteday scatters your stuff on the ground when you die, so it can be recovered.