Sorry i haven't posted for a while, just been busy with school/this amazing game. Yes, Minecraft. I'm feeling a bit lazy right now/it's hard to explain the premises, so i'll just post a excerpt from the wiki:
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LoginQuoteMinecraft is a sandbox game which allows players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. It is currently in development by Markus Persson, aka "Notch". The gameplay is inspired by Dwarf Fortress, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Dungeon Keeper, and especially Infiniminer. Minecraft features two separate game modes, each focusing on the core mechanic in a different way: Survival mode and Creative mode. Creative mode is solely a building simulator, playable in single or multiplayer mode. Survival mode adds monsters as well as many other features.
QuoteAlpha is the only version of Minecraft which is currently being updated, and is only available to users who have purchased the game. Currently only featuring a survival mode (although with single and multiplayer variants) Alpha requires that the player use the building and mining mechanics as a method of protection from hostile monsters, and as a way to uncover useful ores in the ground. Alpha also includes limits on the number of blocks that can be held by the player, using an inventory system, and requires that all blocks be mined first rather than giving the player an unlimited supply as in Classic's creative mode. Different blocks can be crafted into items such as chests, minecarts and tracks, and buckets. There are also plants and animals, which can be farmed and hunted for other resources. The player has an inventory in which to hold blocks and items, as well as a health meter. Health can be restored upon eating certain items and is lost from long falls or attacks by monsters. Upon death, the player respawns at their original spawn point with an empty inventory, though items can be recovered if the player reaches the point of death before they disappear.
Alpha also places a heavy emphasis on creativity. Players must devise methods of building functional and navigable structures that can withstand the nightly assault from various monsters. The player's short reach and short jumping ability forces players to plan structures carefully, lest they trap themselves or fall to their death during construction. More advanced players can create complex traps and mechanisms using the game physics as well as primitive electrical circuits and logic gates.
Alpha allows for an effectively infinite horizontal playing surface, though limits exist on vertical movement both up and down. The game world is procedurally generated as the player explores it, with the full size possible stretching out to be nearly eight times the surface area of the Earth before running into technical limits.[3] Alpha can be played either with a stand-alone client or in a browser, and in either single or multiplayer mode (which is still under heavy development). Minecraft Alpha is expected to move out of alpha status into beta soon, along with a name change.
This is a good video series that's helpful for beginners:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANgI2o_Jinc#ws (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANgI2o_Jinc#ws)
While the graphics are indeed primitive, it really only adds to the charm of the game, and kinda takes older gamers back to the NES/Doom days. You really get a sense of accomplishment after you've built your first fort/find a huge underground cavern system. Plus, at the price of 9.99 EU (13.00 US) you can't beat it. I'll post some screens of my current fort soon.
*edit* Sorry, guess I should have posted a link to the actual website: minecraft.net (http://minecraft.net)
resized pics / Art
Thanks for the introduction, sam :) Having watched the vid I can see how this may be addictive (I like the creating tools and digging/building stuff thing). The graphics are erm, sufficient to recognise stuff :-D
No problem Art ;). Unfortunately there's no demo, but Classic mode is online and free, but feels nothing like the paid for version.
As promised, here's screens from my current fort:
The front of my fort.
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LoginInside, in the item room/main floor.
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LoginThe boat launch.
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LoginUnderground tree farm.
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LoginInside my temporary empty house.
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LoginView from my lookout tower.
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LoginThe huge cave system connected to my Fort.
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LoginLast but not least, an outside view of this beautiful mountain range that's by my fort.
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LoginThis game is too fun :P.
resized pics / Art
Yeah, I've seen this mentioned around before, and I would either find it boring or a complete drain on my spare time, so it's dangerous both ways!
if only the graphics were more polished.. it would sure be a game I'd consider potentially addicitive :)
There are various texture packs people have released that make the textures more pleasing to the eye. For instance I just installed the Painterly Pack(http://painterlypack.net/ (http://painterlypack.net/)) today, which also has the option on the website of editing what type of textures you want included. I get where your coming from though.
:)
Imagine if it looked as good as FC2...... :o
heh, that'd be fun.. imagine you'd start up digging holes and building your own fort on the other side of the street facing a GP ;D
Eh the graphics don't bother me much. Guess it's because I grew up with older games (Nes/Snes/Dos). If it had good graphics the mechanics would have to be totally different since blocks would look funny. Just wouldn't be the same IMO.
I don't know, it might be cool to have it look as good as FC2 - it could still w@&k the same way, just instead of digging out a block, you just make a hole in the ground.
Of course, it then wouldn't be the tiny download that it is, I gave it a try since the payment system was offline for a while, it was free for a couple days. You can still play it offline anyway, so no problem there. I can see how this would be a serious time sink. I've come up with some ideas that I'm sure have occured to others and I see from looking on the web some do exist / are possible.
For instance, there is lava if you dig far enough in the right places.
The cave systems are huge and cover the whole map pretty much. If you dig down from the ocean/water into a cave, the water flows into but doesn't fill it up (darn).
Anyone see a winter world yet? Just started a new one and it was snowing - never saw anything like that in any of the screen shots I see around. The water is frozen over and everything is covered in snow.
Can you build a tower so high you touch the clouds???
There are a couple of overview map programs that will read your world fie and give you a map to go by, something that I really needed.
OK, now I just need to fight the urge to play it all the time.
I've seen winter worlds however never really tried playing with one since it kinda kills my fps (not sure why), but yes you can build into the clouds however not very high after that since there's a vertical limit, but not horizontal. It's weird how excited i get whenever i find caves though, guess it's unique in that matter as you never know what the world around you will contain since it's always random. I'm currently playing on a private server with some guys and we've built quite a few cool things like a huge soccer stadium.
Probably the snowflakes falling in winter is what kills your framerate.
As to caves, there are a lot more than I ever expected. Here's the Cartographer output of the snow world I have, it's a small map:
[smg id=2587]
And here's the cave system:
[smg id=2586]
???
??? :-X
Talk about a necro-post! I dug this topic up to see when I actually started playing this game, over four years ago now, dang. Things have come a long way in Minecraft, both for the game and myself. I now run my own server that is heavily modded with over 190 mods. All sorts of things are possible in Minecraft now. Here's a quick video I made of the last day we had on our old map before doing a reset with a new mod pack:
Minecraft Boss Fights on the Obsidian Abyss server (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsyPVF24TlM#ws)
How do I embed videos again? There's no button for youtube. Ah, now I remember.. I just copy paste the YT URL and make sure the https doesn't have an S. Thanks, Art :)
nice one, D_B :) As it seems, you remembered how to embed videos. Just edit your own post to see what you did to get it right. :-()
@#$%& tourists, they're here and using up all the local bandwidth again. I'll have to wait until some ungodly hour to be able to watch that clip.
Just like the good old days... :D
An interesting game D_B. Those boss fights were pretty frantic.
Out of curiosity are you now stuck on Mars until you can gather the materials and build a rocket to return to your point of origin? Or is it that you can select your position with a reset?
Thanks for the tip on the video Art, I knew I would remember how to do it eventually!
I feel your pain, Fragger, as you can see from the video, if you ever get to watch it, my connection was especially poor that night.
Mandru, the way you're supposed to get back is to take the rocket and launch pad from your lander, then refuel it and use it to get back home. You can see me take the rocket and launch pad out of the lander at about 2:40 in the video. But I didn't have to use it to get back as we had another mod loaded which allows you to set teleport locations that I used to get back. I also set up a portal to connect to the network on other worlds to use just in case, but I didn't show me building that in the video.
The new mod pack we are using required a completely new world, and a fresh start for everyone from scratch, so all of that is gone. Well, it's backed up but the only way to run it again would be to load the old mod pack, which is also backed up, but I will probably never do that. We had been in that world for long enough that we all had super powerful armor, weapons and extended health so that under normal circumstances we were practically invincible. On that last fight with the fire guardian, I was lagging so much I took a lot of damage just because I couldn't tell where anything was when it was really in that spot. Normally you have 20 hit points of health, I had used mods in such a way that I had 240 hit points by that time.
you should use your office (the nice internet there) for playing and your home for working. :-D
Yeah, well, *ahem* .... I have been known to sneak a game at w@&k now and then.... Minecraft is easy to conceal, but something like FC4 would be a bit hard to explain, lol.
:laugh: :-X
I remember seeing software that would install a "boss" key for just such emergencies. It;s about the only time I like the word "boss" applied to something.
At my w@&k, they don't even allow people to use internet. We do have access to intranet, which is an internal, heavily secured network, but real internet is only available for people how somehow are obliged to have internet access. Like nurses, or managers.
In fact the organization is just scared people will mistreat the liberty and may violate the privacy of our 'customers' or use internet for their own personal goals.
That way of thinking is so 2007 ::)
Anyway, they can ;literally control everything people may do on their worker accounts, so abuse is easy to encounter. And the internet speed and general system behaviour is so crappy (we still run on winXP 8-X) that no one would ever try to do anything stupid with it. You can't even watch youtube films, because the graphics or internet explorer can't handle the complexity :angel:
I'm lucky to be a manager so I do have normal internet access, but the performance is so shitty, that would it be like that at home I would either throw the puter out of the window, or change my provider. Probably both :-D
Lol Binn, exact opposite here, everyone has internet access and most of the time a youtube video is playing on someone's computer. But we are a small company and it's easy to keep track of who is doing what.
I've found that having open internet access actually increases productivity because people remain sharp rather than burn out. Sure, people will do personal things, but it is no different than a coffee break. After all, everyone has a job to do in a timely way so it all balances out.
Totally agree PZ. I think my 'company' is a bit control-freaky :-D
Yeah, that's pretty much how we are, spending five or ten minutes watching a youtube video to decompress a bit is accepted, but of course, spending all day at the expense of getting w@&k done wouldn't fly.
:-D
We do have internet at w@&k for everyone but there are filters in place that will not allow to connect to anything that contains "game" for instance. So I can't access this site from w@&k.
Seems European then, the need to control employees liberty on the net. I guess we're just old fashioned :-\\
Quote from: Art Blade on December 11, 2014, 11:04:34 AM
:-D
We do have internet at w@&k for everyone but there are filters in place that will not allow to connect to anything that contains "game" for instance. So I can't access this site from w@&k.
Maybe we could change the name of our organization to www.openworldwork.org (http://www.openworldwork.org)
QuoteServer not found...
????
Blocked maybe? :-D
We'd need to change the names in our navigation as well....
Assassin's Creed w@&k
Far Cry w@&k
Full w@&k boards...
Quote from: PZ on December 11, 2014, 02:38:39 PM
We'd need to change the names in our navigation as well....
Assassin's Creed w@&k
Far Cry w@&k
Full w@&k boards...
You'd probably receive kudos at your workplace for visiting a site so dedicated to w@&k. :-()
you're crazy bordering insane. I love it. :-()
:-D
I like the way your mind "works", PZ :-D
I guess whether unlimited internet access is good or bad in a workplace depends on the nature of the business, and how many people are employed there. I once worked for an office-supply company called Corporate Express (the Americans here may know of it, it is in fact an American company which caters to businesses only, not to the general public). I was in IT and worked in desktop support, mainframe maintenance and general troubleshooting in the HQ's IT department. There were two immense warehouses attached and my colleagues and I were also responsible for maintaining the computers and related hardware in those. There was a staff of over 300 in the main Admin building - admin, finance, sales, accounting, promotions, telemarketing, and numerous other departments. EVERY new employee who came to w@&k in CE's offices, in any capacity, would be given full internet access with no security limitations in place, other than the newbie having to sign a document which essentially stated "I promise not to use the net for anything other than w@&k-related purposes" or words to that effect.
Big mistake.
i
Whenever an office employee received a new PC, I or one of my colleagues would consult with the recipient, asking them if there were any files on their old HDDs that they wanted to save, and if so, we would ask the user to identify them so that we could copy them to their allocated mainframe directory (everybody got one, which was where they were supposed to keep their job-specific files). We would then swap the new hardware over, then copy the files from their original C: drive from their temporary storage on the mainframe back over to their new C:. We would take their old PC away and store it in our tech room for a month, just in case there were in fact some files on the user's old HDD that they'd forgotten about and which they needed, so that we could get it back for them. After that, we would either keep the old machine for spare parts, convert it into a dumb terminal or "diskless" machine as a possible replacement for any malfunctioning packing-desk PCs in the warehouse (quicker to just replace those than try to fix them), or we'd chuck them out. In any case, we would have to examine the HDDs of them to make sure there were no lingering user files, or in some cases sensitive company files, remaining on the drives.
It was when we examined these HDDs that we'd find some of the stuff that users had downloaded and tried to hide by creating directories with cryptic names to store them in, usually tucked away in the Windows System directory or some similar place where they thought nobody would ever look (hello, we're in IT - to us, these stick out like dog's balls). Porn was the least of it. If we found girly photos and the like we'd just ignore it and have a laugh over it, but if we found something serious like child porn we'd be on these people in a flash. In the three years I worked there, I busted two guys for that particular offense - they were not only sacked but the police were notified, and in at least one of those cases, charges were pressed (I never heard what happened with the other). I also found stuff which was not so serious like S&M and other fetish imagery, and things that could be quite stomach-turning, like photos of people shitting in each others' mouths, necrophilia, bestial sex, collections of gory photos, and other lovely imagery. One woman had an extensive collection of penis pictures which must have entailed dozens of hours of browsing and downloading. All of it courtesy of CE's lax internet usage policy.
But what really annoyed me was on occasion, an employee would download something like an entire movie (quite illegally) and then would call us up and complain about the net access being slow ::) I would also sometimes answer a support call from someone who would be having a problem with some stupid game they'd downloaded, or some other dumbass time-waster like MOPy fish (a virtual goldfish maintenance simulator, similar to a Tamagotchi). I would take one look, say something like, "You've got to be kidding - stop wasting my time" and walk away.
Two things I learned from that experience. There are some pretty warped minds out there, and some people can't be trusted with unregulated company-supplied internet access.
There's a bit of a difference in that company and mine, where we have about 20 people working total. Only about a third of them have PCs as the rest are on the printing presses (I w@&k for a printing company btw) and they mostly just use their phones hooked into the company wifi. Mostly when there's downtime, a person will have a web page up or youtube, but the biggest offender for downloading girly photos? My boss, lol. The biggest use I see is mostly people checking sports scores.
A dirty mind is a joy forever. But indeed, that's way off limits what you describe Fragger. :o
Over-regulating and controlling is the other extreme. It my workplace general access gets so slow sometimes, I can hardly type. When I look at what I'm typing, I see what I typed a second ago. Now that's irritating. >:(
There is nothing worse than micromanaging. My mantra has always been to hire good people and then get out of their way so they can do their job.
In my experience, the supervisor who micromanages does a poor job because they are too busy doing the jobs of the people they hire.
I've always liked that mantra of yours ^-^ And your observation is spot on, too. :-X :)
^-^