Meh, creative.

What impresses me is how modular some servers are.  I was playing on one where they had multiple 'survival games' maps (Hunger Games), a well done Team Fortress mod, and a Star Wars mod that let you play the assault on Hoth Base.  You accessed the different maps by going through portals, it was pretty much load one game and play three or four different games.

Contrabulous Flabtraption: I'm still trying to understand the Minecraft appeal. Is virtual legos and apt description?

Virtual legos with occasionally suicide bombers showing up to destroy your creations.

Have you ever tried the game? They have a free demo.

Contrabulous Flabtraption: I'm still trying to understand the Minecraft appeal. Is virtual legos and apt description?

If you have any kind of mental disorder where repetitive actions are pleasing, Creative Mode is basically the world's greatest crack fix for you.  However what really makes it shine is that underneath the virtual legos is basically a giant SDK.  It has all kind of console commands you can use to do things (Bethesda) and what you can't do with console or write via your own code, you can "program" into the game using redstone.  Redstone is basically virtual breadboard, where you can wire a light to a switch without knowing much.  However if you get good with it you can do almost anything.  People have made entire computers inside of Minecraft using Redstone.

I'm burnt out on minecraft. I run a server and keeping up with the constant updates is a major hassle.

Minecraft is definitely fun, and these kinds of things are impressive from a design viewpoint. However, I always stop and wonder "geez, with the time this guy spent building a palace in Minecraft he probably could have upgraded his actual home in real life".

Whatever floats your boat I guess. God knows I've "wasted" a number of hours building crap.

Contrabulous Flabtraption: I'm still trying to understand the Minecraft appeal. Is virtual legos and apt description?

Pretty much, it's a sandbox.  IMO it's most fun with friends and in "survival" mode - meaning at night and in dark places all sorts of things come out that want to eat you or blow up what you've built.  In those cases it's fun work with your friends to build a shelter, which is usually just a hole in the ground, and eventually turn it into a fortress.  Once we finish that I usually get bored and stop playing for awhile, but the game is always waiting for a fresh start with a new map and a new, grander project.

There are mods that can increase some more variables that I haven't really tried but sound fun - things that make the sun eventually make life above-ground impossible, so you have to spend the first few days trying to gather everything you can to help you and your team survive below ground indefinitely.  There's even some big ol overhaul that adds things like nuclear power and all sorts of mechanical and electrical devices, including a red-matter device that will eventually destroy the entire world if set off, as these guys find out.

Lastly there are graphics and texture mods that help keep it feeling recent/current gen, and make the landscape pretty gorgeous.

http://www.blockscape.com/v2/

Waiting for this to be finished.

I used to help run a MUD in the early 90s. It was a non-combat puzzle-driven MUD kind-of like Zork with multiple players. I spent hours upon hours designing and building quests that involved mazes, puzzles, etc.

Building mazes was tough because you were only allotted a specific amount of objects to build with, and a 5x5 maze would consist of 25 rooms, plus each of the direction exits leading out of the room (N, S, E, and W.) So you had to get creative. We'd create 2 rooms with all four directional exits leading to the other room, and then lock permissions on the exit based on where you were in the "maze."  The locks would look something like Lock N=(X1y1&x1y2&x1y3&x1y4&x3y3&x4y1&x4y2&x4y3&x5y2&x5y3&x5y4). Therefore, you could only go "North" if there wasn't a "wall" in the way as defined by the "maze." They get much worse if you wanted to put in multiple levels, have locked doors that required keys, and so on. Some of the locks would get to be 10 or 15 lines long on the screen.

Anyhow, here we are 20+ years later and I look back on those days and think, "Holy CRAP did I not make good use of my time." A friend of mine flunked out of college because he was addicted to those stupid games and even broke into the Science and Engineering building to hijack one of the DEC VAX systems to play all night. All that time I could have spent doing something useful. Was it fun? I guess. People liked playing the games I wrote. But I was a psych major. In no way was that helping me.

Anyhow... when I hear about these things in minecraft I think someone is going to wake up 20+ years from now and say "WTF was I DOING with my life?!"

nocturnal001: Minecraft is definitely fun, and these kinds of things are impressive from a design viewpoint. However, I always stop and wonder "geez, with the time this guy spent building a palace in Minecraft he probably could have upgraded his actual home in real life".

Whatever floats your boat I guess. God knows I've "wasted" a number of hours building crap.

Time, yes.  Money to do so?  Probably not.

nekom: Contrabulous Flabtraption: I'm still trying to understand the Minecraft appeal. Is virtual legos and apt description?

That's a pretty apt description for creative mode, actually. There are things like redstone circuits, so maybe it's more like one of the advanced Technic sets (do they still make those?) and there are also farming/animal breeding mechanics.

Survival mode, on the other hand, well have a look around youtube for one of the many tutorials on surviving the first day, and you'll see what the appeal is.

/it's not for everyone

cooperative survival mode with mods to crank the zombie/monster spawning way up are a blast.

or playing nomadic rules, never stay anywhere more than a few in-game days, carrying only what fits in your inventory, that's a fun challenge.

or just going nuts building. the wife and i play a small family server, and our eldest sometimes joins in. rules are, survival mode, 90% of resources must be manually harvested. the addition of things like funnels and whatnot REALLY took a lot of the labor out of processing certain goods for vanilla games. if you run bukkit, something like buildcraft essentially frees you to build whilst the robot quarries mine enormous quantities of materials and the foundries turn out tools left and right.  my wife calls buildcraft uber-easy mode tho, so we're not running it. still gotta make stuff by hand.

I love that you can create factory farms for monsters. The collection has gotten a lot more efficient now too.

Contrabulous Flabtraption: I'm still trying to understand the Minecraft appeal. Is virtual legos and apt description?

Creative Mode is.

In survival mode you have to dig through an infinite world to find or create the legos you want. Not starve and not get eaten by the zombies (or killed by other nasty things that show up)

It's really an ingenius game.

My roommate is a 320+ lb. fat, lazy, video game addict.  Minecraft is one of the main games he plays, often times spending 8+ hours playing, taking breaks only to eat and to shiat in my bathroom because he's too lazy to use the stairs.  He also loves lego's.  Go figure.  Maybe once every six month's he'll get them out and play with those instead of video games for an hour or two at a time.  At one point in time (over a decade ago) he was in school for drafting and/or architecture.  He dropped out because he's lazy and a quitter.  Rarely do I ever seem him actually finish or complete a video game (unless it's on normal difficulty).  A few months ago I read an article about Lego's Mindstorm V3 and how you could have 'robot' up and running within 15-20 minutes of opening the box.  At the time he was saving up for the WiiU.  I brought up the idea that he could buy the Mindstorm set and use that as a way to get an intro into robotics programming.  Months later he's still on the same spot on the couch...for up to 14 hours at a time, if he doesn't have to work, playing Minecraft and occasionally other 'waste of your time' games like the new Monster Hunter.  He doesn't even play survival mode or multiplayer.  Just creative mode where he doesn't even try and learn how to use switches or redstones or whatever.

"Anyhow... when I hear about these things in minecraft I think someone is going to wake up 20+ years from now and say "WTF was I DOING with my life?!" "

This is really all I can think to myself when I see my roommate.  What the hell is he gonna do 20 years from now when he's over 50, probably over 400 lbs. (if not dead), and probably no longer has a job at, go figure, Gamestop.

How much better would a person be or would this world be if Minecraft players used that dedicated obsessiveness to improve themselves or their real life surroundings instead?

Gnaglor: How much better would a person be or would this world be if Minecraft players people generalize others used that dedicated obsessiveness to improve themselves or their real life surroundings instead?
 FTFY
You know, instead of biatching about what everyone else is doing.

cfreak: Between this thread and the other, I've spent maybe 20 minutes in the real world, showing a valid viewpoint of something that I experience every day.  Scales of economy I'd say.

Cytokine Storm: There's even some big ol overhaul that adds things like nuclear power and all sorts of mechanical and electrical devices, including a red-matter device that will eventually destroy the entire world if set off, as these guys find out.

OMG, that was one of the most hilarious things I've seen in a long time.

ha-ha-guy: Meh, creative.

What impresses me is how modular some servers are.  I was playing on one where they had multiple 'survival games' maps (Hunger Games), a well done Team Fortress mod, and a Star Wars mod that let you play the assault on Hoth Base.  You accessed the different maps by going through portals, it was pretty much load one game and play three or four different games.

For Sith's sake, tell me where this server is. My son will get a kick out of the Star Wars one.

Real live is so much more impressive

All my complaining is funny since craftbukkit just updated the server today it seems.

If you wanna hop into my most empty server EIP

Gnaglor: My roommate is a 320+ lb. fat, lazy, video game addict.  Minecraft is one of the main games he plays, often times spending 8+ hours playing, taking breaks only to eat and to shiat in my bathroom because he's too lazy to use the stairs.  He also loves lego's.  Go figure.  Maybe once every six month's he'll get them out and play with those instead of video games for an hour or two at a time.  At one point in time (over a decade ago) he was in school for drafting and/or architecture.  He dropped out because he's lazy and a quitter.  Rarely do I ever seem him actually finish or complete a video game (unless it's on normal difficulty).  A few months ago I read an article about Lego's Mindstorm V3 and how you could have 'robot' up and running within 15-20 minutes of opening the box.  At the time he was saving up for the WiiU.  I brought up the idea that he could buy the Mindstorm set and use that as a way to get an intro into robotics programming.  Months later he's still on the same spot on the couch...for up to 14 hours at a time, if he doesn't have to work, playing Minecraft and occasionally other 'waste of your time' games like the new Monster Hunter.  He doesn't even play survival mode or multiplayer.  Just creative mode where he doesn't even try and learn how to use switches or redstones or whatever.

"Anyhow... when I hear about these things in minecraft I think someone is going to wake up 20+ years from now and say "WTF was I DOING with my life?!" "

This is really all I can think to myself when I see my roommate.  What the hell is he gonna do 20 years from now when he's over 50, probably over 400 lbs. (if not dead), and probably no longer has a job at, go figure, Gamestop.

How much better would a person be or would this world be if Minecraft players used that dedicated obsessiveness to improve themselves or their real life surroundings instead?

This dude really, really hates his roommate.  Imagine if the people who spend so much time biatching about their roommates and perusing Fark spent their time improving themselves or their real life surroundings.  This world would be imperceptibly better.

My GOD these nerds need to get a girlfriend. or a job.


/Recently spent 12 straight hours on terraria.

Minecraft is a bit of a gateway drug.  My kid is now starting to make websites and her own programs.

Gnaglor: My roommate is a 320+ lb. fat, lazy, video game addict.

It might not be kind, but all I can think about when I read this post is that you're somebody who isn't successful enough to get this thing you hate out of your life.

jesdynf: It might not be kind, but all I can think about when I read this post is that you're somebody who isn't successful enough to get this thing you hate out of your life.

Yeah, i wasn't going to say anything, but since it's been dragged out in the open i'll add that it's also classic projection. Makes him feel better about his own lack of accomplishments by hating the roomie for it.

And when it comes down to it, they both will be forgotten just as fast after they die. Even if the entire thing spurs him on to achieve greatness, that too will just give him maybe an extra generation or two of acknowledgement before he's also erased and forgotten. Ultimately what he's chasing is personal satisfaction, before death. But what if the roomie is already satisfied with his life?

jagermech: http://www.blockscape.com/v2/

Waiting for this to be finished.

That actually looks pretty awesome!

ha-ha-guy: Meh, creative.

That's why I build most of my projects on a PvE server, like HMS Trafalgar.

(This was done last summer before the introduction of item frames)

I am continually amazed by the amount of free time that some people seem to have.

/And yet, here I am, doing this.

Contrabulous Flabtraption: I'm still trying to understand the Minecraft appeal. Is virtual legos and apt description?

I don't quite get it myself. It's sort of a blocky version of Second Life sans furries?

rikkards: Yesterday I found like 40 gold and 20 diamonds but no copper and I need the copper to make a 3 more LV Solar Arrays to then upgrade to a MV Solar Array. I do miss the Transmutation table.

Is it possible that you are in an old chunk that was generated by the vanilla map gen and not tekkit one? That would explain the lack of copper.

rikkards: Egoy3k: rikkards: Yesterday I found like 40 gold and 20 diamonds but no copper and I need the copper to make a 3 more LV Solar Arrays to then upgrade to a MV Solar Array. I do miss the Transmutation table.

Is it possible that you are in an old chunk that was generated by the vanilla map gen and not tekkit one? That would explain the lack of copper.

No, the server was setup with Tekkit lite right away before the map was even started. I was getting Copper earlier and all of a sudden it's like it dried up.

resource generation IS really randomized.

and if you're drift-mining it's really easy to miss materials if you take a detour. strip mining is only practical if you have automation but it does catch EVERYTHING.

one project my wife and i did on our server was a drift mine that did ok, not fantastic. we'd installed the mod that made it so TNT didn't destroy any blocks, and i basically cheerfully planted TNT throughout the drift mine, chained to a detonator on the surface. when we blew the mess we basically had an enormous chunk-sized hole in the map that went down to bedrock.

the fun part of the csb was that in our drift mining efforts we hadn't been obsessively efficient with layout and had missed a LOT of materials.

the main problem with TNT for thorough mining is the fact that the ground is non-homogenous, and it's easy to have blowouts if you hit gravel/dirt/etc.

makes for dandy site-leveling tho. something primally satisfying about placing charges all over something and triggering a big chain that leave behind something that looks like a god took a straight razor to it.