MineCraft

[Pauld]

MineCraft is a difficult game to explain as it isnt even finished yet (still in alpha). The game basically is a world which is 8 times bigger the earth! which is made entirely out of blocks, you start off with nothing to your name and you have to scavenge for wood by punching trees to eventually make an pickaxe or axe http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Crafting The things you can make at the moment which you upgrade to stone and so on.You basically are just looking for the best things possible (at the moment that is diamond which is extremely rare) as there is not much of a story at the moment.

The developer Notch is creating what is in single player but moving it all to multilayer and he updates often with a secret Friday update every week to keep the players happy. There are also monsters for instance creepers which explode on impact and animals like sheep which you punch for wool and pigs for pork and so on .There are other cool features such as dynamic water and lava but I think it would just be better to show you this fan made trailer and if you are really interested you should search it on Youtube as there are thousands of fan made videos.

some other links:
http://minecraft.net
http://notch.tumblr.com

Video:

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while in alpha it costs around £10, the price will be raised when its entered beta and raised again when released so act quickly.
There is also a free creative mode which is fun but not a good representative of the actual game which you can try on the MineCraft link above.


Please dont judge the game from the video and graphics, its more gameplay orientated which believe me will have bashing away blocks for hours and hours.

[Celery]

It's more a toy than a game. The only thing you do is get materials so that you can build something. But if you don't voluntarily want to build anything out of blocks (since there's no gameplay element to demand it), it's a bit of a waste.

[GoOB]

I thought we were way past needing an element of "winning" in modern games. I for one consider MineCraft to be one of the most beautiful games ever produced, perhaps not visually, but certainly in spirit. Getting a few friends (or strangers for that matter) together and building new worlds filled with skyscrapers, castles and what have you is an amazing experience. The gameplay element is simply exercising creativity, and in case of multiplayer, cooperation.

The beauty of the game lies in it's openness, calling it more toy than game is neglecting the fact that games can, and sometimes are just plain, undemanding fun. But each to their own, I guess.

[Sith]

It's more a toy than a game. The only thing you do is get materials so that you can build something. But if you don't voluntarily want to build anything out of blocks (since there's no gameplay element to demand it), it's a bit of a waste.

There's something of a gameplay drive in place actually. Night time brings out the zombies, skeletons, spiders and the likes. You need to build yourself some shelter to fend them off.

http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/1015419613_NYok6-L.jpg

But that's also my biggest criticism of the game. While this basic survival element is present, it's not putting any pressure on the player beyond the need for four basic walls around you. You're not driven to build a strong fortress, deadly defenses and elaborate traps in order to hold off increasingly threatning hordes of monsters. There will be no zombies clawing through doors or dragons bombarding your walls. After those four walls, built of whatever resource you gathered first, all that's driving you is some light exploration and an unhealthy dose of OCD-fueled construction work.

Don't get me wrong, I'm OCD enough to potentially waste half a lifetime on this thing, and I understand the need for it to remain a friendly sandbox game for the masses. But part of me also wants to embrace that sense of fright, fighting the odds and barely surviving every time the sun goes down. The hurried constructs put up in those precious daylight hours all get imbued with the strongest sense of purpose. Watching the blocky sun set from atop your fortified tower with lava moat is a whole lot more rewarding if every one of those blocks was heavily contested.


For those of you completely puzzled by all of this low-res block lovin', I can highly recommend watching this playthrough with commentary. The guy's doing the complete opposite of a clean "tutorial" playthrough, but it's easily the best showcase of the game's potential I've come across. It's 10 parts (and counting), so be sure to check out the rest of the vids:

ANgI2o_Jinc


Oh, and this things recently got turned into the next big nerd-hype online, so I guess I should include it as well:

kn2-d5a3r94

[Celery]

I thought we were way past needing an element of "winning" in modern games.

If you despise motivation and competition that are inherent in games, that's fine. But in order for Minecraft to be a game, it should at the very least give goals and scenarios for the player to play, not just a sandbox hoping that the player doesn't need motivation to do things that he's not required to do. Toy is the closest definition because a toy itself doesnt motivate you to do anything, you just play around and make up your own entertainment with it if you're so inclined.

[Myshaak]

But that's also my biggest criticism of the game. While this basic survival element is present, it's not putting any pressure on the player beyond the need for four basic walls around you. You're not driven to build a strong fortress, deadly defenses and elaborate traps in order to hold off increasingly threatning hordes of monsters. There will be no zombies clawing through doors or dragons bombarding your walls. After those four walls, built of whatever resource you gathered first, all that's driving you is some light exploration and an unhealthy dose of OCD-fueled construction work.



Is it just me or was that a Dwarf Fortress player speaking? :)

And if you (all) don't know what Dwarf Fortress is, start googling! It's the most complex game... ever. Comparing it to any other civilization-type-strategy game would be like comparing VBS2 to Wolfenstein 3D.

The MineCraft concept is similar, except in DF the world is actually living... and remember, losing is fun (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Fun)! It is actually a game's motto, since you can never win - you build your fortress until you lose, usually some bizzare way (suicidal blood-raging dwarves hitting each other with torn limbs of other dwarves and unintentional flooding of your underground fortress with magma..... a series of events that were started just by one small dwarf, who had to vent his frustration on another dwarf's kitten).

[Pauld]

Considering the game is still in early alpha stage it has bundles of potental to become one those game that you dont quite understand but you will never forget,
A few weeks ago when MineCraft wasnt really noticed until word got round and the attention it got made his small server unable to cope with the demand crashed the server so he took the oppunity to let people experiene the game for free for a weekend, on the monday once the server went back online, by 24hrs he had 14k+ registerd users and more buying the game, just look at the stats and you see how much attention its still getting Minecraft Stats (http://minecraft.net/stats.jsp)

[IceBreakr]

Kinda reminds me of good old Carrier Command/Elite feeling, but more down to earth Ultima-Underworld like ;)

[Zipper5]

Ah good ol' Seananners. He's awesome. :D

My brother bought Minecraft and has been playing it like crazy. It seems to be a very impressive idea, and is being executed quite originally. I look forward to seeing how it evolves. And oh god, that Enterprise model is awesome looking!

[da12thMonkey]

My brother, student bum that he is plays it. He tried to spark my interest in it, knowing that I'm in to making 3D stuff for games and that, but it sounded a bit boring to me (and I really could do without such distractions at the moment).

He did show me this video that made me lol though.

LnjSWPxJxNs

[ProfTournesol]

Brrrr... it looks worse than Castle Wolfenstein did :D

[GoOB]

If you despise motivation and competition that are inherent in games, that's fine.


Where did the word despise come into it? I just think of MineCraft as a game that does not need to be any more motivating than it is - A part of a relatively recent shift towards allowing (or forcing, depending upon how you look at it) players to take part in creating their own unique experiences with and through games.

The goal is to exercise your creativity, alone or together with others. If that is not motivating for you, then fair enough. I am quite certain that many MineCraft players would not find the premise of ARMA 2 motivating, myself not included of course.

And I don't know if I agree with you that competition is an inherent part of all games, there are quite a few well established games that are played to just waste time and provide entertainment. Some of them a lot less motivating than MineCraft ;)

[CW001]

Adventure mode ees comingk soon :cool:
I think it's an excellent game, building mines n stuff is fuuuuuun!

[IceBreakr]

If I did my calculations correct the authors recieved somewhere around 2,5 million EUR for a game thats currenlty in alpha state? And each new day he gets around 11K new buyers with around 120,000 EUR? :) kudos... hopefully with that kind of money coming in the game will reach beta one day :)

[Sanctuary]

The impressive success of this game is interesting, as it proves that priority to gameplay before graphics is not a lost cause even in these times of "fast food gaming".
Same as with Dwarf Fortress for which the developer recieve lots of monthly donations and has an impressive following community, it's beyond "niche" now.

I played a bit with the free Minecraft release the author made during the week his server was overloaded (mostly influenced by those amazing sets of AAR (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/mine-the-gap/) from RPS) , it's really fun for a bit, not yet as interesting for me as Dwarf Fortress that inspired it, but there's a lot of potential.
Especially in the exploration of the massive caves system you can discover when digging randomly.

I guess the major interest for now is online from what i read.

Maybe in a few months depending on how Minecraft evolves with the developers plans i may be tempted to buy it.

[Leopardi]

The point of the game is to play on servers, where people form their own communities and start building villages, sell land etc. Everything is possible, perfect sandbox.

[Shadow.D. ^BOB^]

LMAO Monkey, I dont think i would ever play this. But looking at the couple of videos posted here that house must have taken ages to build. Just to see it all go up in flames was brilliant.... Got some proper weird looks from the girlfriend as i watched that nearly pissing myself laughing.

[mikebart]

I think I could get seriously hooked into this quite easily, so i think ill stay clear of it. Its such a simple idea but i can see how it could become very addictive, apparently the creator banks $350k a day!

[JW Custom]

He did show me this video that made me lol though.


LMFAO :laugh:

[Jelliz]

Downloaded it on friday, started a little bit, took a break, made some coffee, started it up again, and now its monday.

Addictive game, i mean, REALLY addictive. :shine:

[Nicholas]

I've been playing Minecraft a lot lately. I got a new texture pack called Soartex Fanver (http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/824150-64x125-soartex-fanver-now-w-youtube-seen-on-gamechap-12w22a/) that is amazing.

I started a new game today and I managed to find a village. I am in the process of repairing it and making it look better. Once that has been done, I will build a wall around it for better protection. There are also some awesome ravines and caves nearby that I enjoy exploring.

My House
http://i47.tinypic.com/2evtaom.jpg

Cave Entrance
http://i48.tinypic.com/s60sj8.jpg

Village
http://i46.tinypic.com/1z6qrtl.jpg

Ravine
http://i48.tinypic.com/1z4ajyr.jpg

The seed for this map is 2561162890733972796. The village that I'm at is located at X: 208 Y: 880.

[Flash Thunder]

Yeah me and my friends got a server already dumped 50 hours into it.

Fun indeed.

[Matthewkunx]

Ooo Minecraft. Fun blocky goodness~

[MadDogX]

Spent soooo much time on this game. My server is even still running, although no one is using it at the moment - we stopped playing around six months ago. At our peak time, there were about ten of us though, exploring, building stuff, going hunting etc. Fun times.

What stopped me personally playing it was the lack of... emergent gameplay, I guess? I felt that the world was too "static", not much happened without player intervention. The villages are a good start, but I would have loved to see roaming groups of NPCs that actually do things. For example come to your village to either trade or attack, hunt animals, fight wars against each other etc. Giants would also have been nice... something actually dangerous roaming the world. Stuff like that.

Unfortunately the Minecraft community at large was apparently against such things, judging by the shit storm caused by something as minor as Endermen occasionally moving blocks. God forbid something unexpected actually might happen. :rolleyes:

[Nicholas]

Completed the wall around the village.

http://i48.tinypic.com/15i0mmc.jpg

Got some sheep as well. :p

http://i47.tinypic.com/155nyfp.jpg

---------- Post added at 08:03 ---------- Previous post was at 07:59 ----------

I never really played Minecraft much during the "Minecraft Craze". In fact, I never really played it at all until recently. Although, I purchased it long ago when it was first out, but just never got around to playing it. So I haven't gotten bored of it yet. I'm a little late to the party. (Party's over) :p

[Hellfire257]

Anyone played Tekkit?

[Sickboy]

Unfortunately the Minecraft community at large was apparently against such things, judging by the shit storm caused by something as minor as Endermen occasionally moving blocks. God forbid something unexpected actually might happen. Nobody who made a mod then that settles this area? IIRC there are such mods, but it's been a while for me too!

[Hellfire257]

Oh there are mods aplenty, take a look at Bukkit for that sort of thing. You can have waves of creepers/zombies/whatever coming at you. I haven't tried it, but I imagine it would be...hectic! :D

[Slatts]

Anyone played Tekkit?

yea we have it on our server...God forbid the nuclear reactor blowing up

[GRS]

All my good creations died with the servers they were on but I still play SP quite a bit. Very fun game.

[DMarkwick]

I get regular crashes now since a recent update. I can somewhat delay that crash by fiddling with the memory allocated to Java, but even with 1gb+ it crashes regularly. Guess I will wait for the next update.

[Nicholas]

Try the "Force Update" option or reinstall Java.

[Nicholas]

I died after falling into a lava pit. :( The diamonds were a trap!

Started over, this time using Creative Mode to build myself a house. I switched it to Survival once I finished my house. Been doing pretty good so far. I have an underground farm and I am breeding cattle.


The Farm
http://i50.tinypic.com/f559py.jpg

Cattle & Calves
http://i50.tinypic.com/2dv0sc7.jpg

[Flash Thunder]

Damn that's an awesome texture pack.

1.3 needs to come out, so I don't have to worry about falling into a chunk error. :(

[MadDogX]

Damn that's an awesome texture pack.

1.3 needs to come out, so I don't have to worry about falling into a chunk error. :(
You can't actually fall into a chunk error though, can you? In my experience (trying to jump into one :D) you just hover in mid air, bobbing up and down.

[Flash Thunder]

You can't actually fall into a chunk error though, can you? In my experience (trying to jump into one :D) you just hover in mid air, bobbing up and down.

Figuratively yes.

Damn thing was in the ocean and somehow didn't see it and was trapped in it. Lost diamonds and all my XP too was mighty angry.

@<hidden> if you don't already get 64bit java game runs super smooth for me and try force update or go to older version of Java.

[Sickboy]

64-bit java vm if your system supports it, and increase the heap size.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/760904-java-heap-size-increase-ram-works/

[Nicholas]

Thanks Sickboy.

[[FRL]Myke]

Just bought Minecraft for my son (5) and he's keen to play MP. So i've set up a little server for him and now looking for players who wouldn't mind to play with a 5 year old boy. Server settings are peaceful of course, creative mode is on. Send me a PM to apply to this request. ;)