Gamers come! A discussion of Minecraft.

[Globexanter]

For any gamers/players amongst us whom play this game or want to play it.

Minecraft is a multiplayer and single player sandbox building game, which has no overall aim except build, craft, farm...
Only in January it passed 1,000,000 purchases. For more information, you can visit the Wikipedia page here or the official website here.
If you want some images, just search Minecraft in Google Images.

Well, what is the opinion of the 10000 Islanders on this game? Personally I find it to be a very good game in many ways, allowing nearly any ages to play it if they can use a keyboard.

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

I love Minecraft, although I think I lack the patience for the grand constructions so many players create. It's been a fantastic game to have since my Xbox 360 went to the big Red Ring of Death in the sky as it's fine with my PC's somewhat limited specs, is great for pick-up-and-play, and offers virtually unlimited playability.

[Globexanter]

Even more unlimited playability if you just want to build, thanks to the magical wonder of INVedit.

Seen the new updates yet?

[Markanite]

I've never even heard of this, I'll have to go check it out

[Eist]

I played the demo, and was just moving stuff around. I know it has exploded in the 'indie world', but I don't see why. I'm a fan of games similar to this (I stay away from FPS, etc), but I really don't see the attraction.

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

[Globexanter]

Quite an accurate cartoon actually

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

God, the unexpected hiss of a creeper is truly terrifying.

[Globexanter]

"YAY! DIAMONDZ! Must-quickly-mine it... W00T! I did I, I've got dia-SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS"

[Enigmatic]

I think creepers add something very important to the game. The construction process just isn't the same unless a creeper blows up part of it.

I voted for the first option which is as close to reality as any of them. I do love the game, but I don't actually play all the time. I play all the time sporadically. By that I mean that I will have a few weeks or a month where it's the only game I play and then a few weeks or a month, or even longer, where I don't play it at all.

The best and worst thing about Minecraft is that there are no rules. You can create a world and build whatever you want. You're not constrained by some narrator or teammate or actual story telling you what to do. That's awesome. The flip side of that though is that you have no direction. If you finish a project and your imagination fails you, then there's nothing to do really. I go at the game with abandon when I have an idea in my head. I spent all of my free time for two whole days removing the sand and rock from around a dungeon I came across, building a cave around it, carving things to my liking, and putting torches and streams all through it. Then I built a waterfall nearby yesterday and I'm still not quite done with it. But I know that as soon as I run out of ideas I'll be away from the game again for a while.

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

I agree with you, Enig. I'll get bored soon after accomplishing whatever goals I've set (which can take a long time) and then end up jumping back in later, usually after an update. I've often thought I should join an actual multiplayer server.

[Globexanter]

I agree with you also Enig.

Also, if you are that bored of your Singleplayer map, get INVEdit and fill your inventory with TNT

[Enigmatic]

It's very hard to grow bored of high explosives.

I am wondering something though. Does anyone else have framerate issues? It's hard for me to play unless I have it on short or tiny and that's on fast graphics. I have heard various explanations for this. Some say it's because of multicore processors others say it's because of nVidia. Whatever it is I can't seem to do anything about it. It's the one big drawback to the game.

[Globexanter]

Unless you have a "top notch" PC, move to the other setting of Graphics (not fancy) and move to Tiny. Also, it helps if you change the priority of the process java.exe via Task Manager.

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

Minecraft has occasionaly slowed down on me, but I've always solved it by quitting and restarting the program. I'm no tech wiz, but I think it's Java's fault. I have an older machine (Vista 32 Home Premium, Pentium Dual 1.6GHz, 2 GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce 840) and Minecraft usually runs flawlessly with Graphics set to "Fancy" and Render Distance to "Normal".

[Enigmatic]

I had changed the priority already and done a few other things to help it out, but nothing really seemed to do much. Turns out it was Java. I figured that had something to do with it anyway as I've had trouble with Java based stuff before, but actually I just needed to update Java. I thought everything was up to date, but apparently I was incorrect. I haven't tried it on fancy yet, but it's running great now. And in some respects I actually like fast better. Anyway, problem solved.

It was a good thing too. On one of my worlds I was totally lost. I had a much easier time finding my way back home with things set to far. Of course it didn't hurt that I found some redstone and made a compass.

[Globexanter]

That happened to me to :L

So, in "rage", I bombed the entire mountain area... Only to find my house was in that mountain area...

[Enigmatic]

Ouch. I took it as an challenge/adventure. Get home with all my loot without getting shot to death by skeletons or blown up by a creeper. I did it. And in the end with enough redstone to complete a few projects which I didn't have before I started out or before I tried to get home. All in all a rather profitable diversion.

[Walabamba]

Minecraft is the only thing I use my computer for other then school and NS and I absolutely love Minecraft. Literally 20 minutes ago I was in the process of building a massive multi leveled city above the trees. It's really a great game

[Globexanter]

Wow. That sounds big.
I was just making a massive Sugar Cane plantation, nearly impossible to turn it all into sugar :l

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

That's something I've always wanted to do.... build a huge, nice looking tree house mansion castle. I think I still have my rough plans for it in the drawer of my desk.

[Walabamba]

I'm building mine online with a couple of my friends.

[Enigmatic]

I carved out part of a mountain and a hill so I could build a rather tall ladder to one of my houses. The funny thing was that I missed linking the tunnel and the ladder down by a few blocks and ended up going much much farther out and farther down than I needed to. At some point I'm going to take the out tunnel until I hit open air and the down tunnel until I hit adminium.

Have any of you discovered any good seeds? I just realized that this would be a perfect place to share them. I calculated pi to thirty digits and used that for one. It's not bad, that's where the above description originates. I also have one using the phrase "lions and tigers and bears"

[Arkanglia]

I've just heard of Minecraft and what I have learned about it(google, wiki), it seems like an interesting 3D world game.

[Tsim Sha Tsui]

I always just use random seeds, although I'll throw away worlds pretty quick too until I find one I like. My latest spawn was on a beach with abundant clay (+) in a plains biome (-) near both the border of a taiga biome (+) and a lake of lava (+).

I'm a sucker for natural water (or lava) falls, and my favorite creation was a mountain fortress above a very-high natural lavafall, but after a massive creeper invasion/fiasco that left huge chunks of it gutted I ended up deleting that world.

[Walabamba]

try the 404 challenge, look up the instructions. It's hard!

Can we give seeds to each others maps because I would love to see some of the stuff you guys have done

[talafergin]

New to the forum but glad to find some Minecraft gamers here! Have spent way to much time building stuff in the game, kinda wish you could take the maps you make and put em into first person shooter games. And also i'm a sucker for natural waterfalls too, I built a castle with a natural waterfall flowing into my castles moat, kinda cool.

[Antariel]

Having heard empassioned eulogies on how awesome it is, and having got a free demo in a games magazine, I intend to play some this weekend.

And find why everyone hates creepers so much!

[Greater Palau]

I love minecraft. There's so much you can do in it and that's what makes really fun in my opinion. Some person made a rip off of it called fortress craft for the xbox 360, and compared to minecraft, it sucks pretty bad. I have it, and it's missing a lot of the components that minecraft has.

[Enigmatic]

And Minecraft isn't even a finished game.