HalcyonSpirit

Minecarts are now usable. I'm still checking for bugs with long distance travel, but intra-base railways are completely feasible now. The instructions for use are here: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Minecart_Mania! The one issue I've encountered so far is that station blocks don't seem to work properly and will always throw you in one direction no matter what you input. That will make the construction of intersections on the highway a bit more difficult, as I'll have to redstone up a different mechanism to do it. Other than that, it seems workable. Have at it, people.

So most of you know I'm making a fortress town on the server. Well, what's a fortress without a fully functional defense? Introducing the first of the fortress TNT cannons! One down... not sure how many to go. And I think I'm going to be experimenting with the firing mechanisms and construction a bit for the next few. See if I can get something a little more flexible on my own.

I don't know if you saw this yet or not, Crowbar, but hey0 has announced he will no longer be updating hMod once the replacement mod is available. And that replacement mod is... Bukkit. Also, according to the Bukkit team, hey0 was very inefficient, making servers running it much less responsive than they otherwise would have been. So maybe once the switch over is done on our server (assuming Multiplay approves it), we'll see a performance boost.

Interesting: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=120160 Basically, it's an optimizer that speeds up the loading and saving of chunks when moving around the world. Seems a little buggy for a few people at the moment, but it might help improve performance on the server even more if it works for us. Might want to look into it, or have Multiplay look into it and see if they can get it working with the servers. I have some worry about future updates breaking it, but that's not for me to decide on.

Of course I would spawn in the middle of the night with creepers and zombies coming after me and no shelter to speak of. Waiting until it's daytime...

Likewise. I've spent the past 5 years just drawing up a 10,000 year timeline in my head while not doing any actual writing of my novel. Granted, I didn't have much time to do any writing, what with college, but still... I need to get back into it.

Alright, votes were very, very sparse, so I'm voiding that round. Your submissions can be resubmitted for this month's Freeform round if you so desire. --- Happy New Year, everyone! The January 2011 Freeform competition is underway! I'm already working on my submission, so you should, too! Participation in both the submission and especially the voting periods lately have been lacking, so make it one of your 2011 resolutions to increase your participation in the competition as a whole. Everyone here will thank you for it!

Yeah, mine won't connect either. Which means Multiplay has probably taken down the server in order to swap out the hard drives. Woot.

If you have any last-minute votes, now's the time. I'm giving it until the end of today (the 1st) before calling it.

Gah, the lag makes testing redstone circuitry properly nearly impossible.

If we turn on mobs, then I want creepers, too. I want the whole package. Creepers aren't an issue when you're working on something so long as you don't let them get within 2 blocks of you without anything directly between you. They won't explode on their own. In other words, they're less of an issue than skellies, which can nail you from a distance before you can do anything at all.

I'm trying to get around it, but it would appear that the map picture file is now too large for my computer to open due to lack of memory. Or at least that's what it's telling me. Gotta see if I can free up some space on my main partition. Maybe that has something to do with it, because I can't see how there's not enough memory space to render the image unless it's relying on virtual memory.

Handheld Torch Light mod. WANT. I hope it gets updated for Beta soon!

Fine by me. A huge mod for another game I play (X3: Terran Conflict) just came out, so I'm going to be spending most of my time with that for at least a week. Onward, my fleet! The (X) universe shall know my name and fear my wrath! And then, when I'm the ruler of the universe... I'll go punch some trees again.

Unfortunately, it's not up to any of us. The server is run through Multiplay, so they're the ones that have to update everything. And in our case, they won't update until hey0's mod is also updated and everything's been tested to make sure nothing's going to kill the server.

It's not, and never has. Notch is trying to figure out a better way of implementing it for SMP, which most likely will involve the use of more than one server.

According to the Facebook page, we're now in Beta, and the website will be updated shortly. So if you haven't bought it by now... You're too late. The client has already been updated. Changelog: Only one known bug so far (that I can see on the forums), which is an issue with existing chests and inventory sometimes not allowing you to move items between the two, most often in the slots added for a double chest. Notch is working on a fix right now.

Most of my places have proper lighting. The only places that don't are unfinished rooms (like the inside of the walls of the stadium) and the undeveloped above-ground areas. I'm rather careful about lighting otherwise.

I don't have anything to do then, so I'll see if I can make it. It'd be the first listening party I've taken part in.

Playing without mobs is possible to set up in the provided settings, so I guess it's "intended" that you play the game that way, too, so obviously mobs aren't broken because you can still play the game as intended. Do you see how weak that type of argument is? "Intention" is a very vague thing the way you're using it. The way you're using it, leaves not despawning is "game breaking" because it's Notch's intention to allow you to take down the logs and easily pick up the saplings that fall to the ground due to the leaves despawning. No, that's not game breaking, that's interfering with a particular aspect of the game. So far you've not understood the difference I've been pointing out between "breaking aspects of the game" and "breaking the game." Just because you've broken an aspect of the game doesn't mean you've broken the game. Breaking the game requires the broken thing to significantly hamper your ability to do things in the game that are completely unrelated to the aspect in question. The Corrupted Blood incident Author linked is a perfect example: it affected even those that did not do the quest and prevented them (especially newer players) from doing much of anything because you couldn't do anything to deal with the problem. Mobs in Minecraft are the closest thing to that, but what you seem to not understand is that you can still deal with mobs the same way you do in SSP (lighting, walls, fighting). You just have to do them keeping in mind what the bugs do to make it more difficult, and thus it is less enjoyable. Everything else is still unaffected by the mob bugs. It's the same issue as the Ultralisk area-damage bug in Starcraft 2; you couldn't deal with Ultralisks attacking large units/buildings as "intended" because of the bug (which would make the unit's damage area larger than any building in the game, doing massive amounts of damage to anything nearby), but everything else in the game was unaffected. Annoying bug? Yes. Important to fix (especially for balance in tournament play)? Yes. Game breaking? Hell no. Especially not from a game development and testing standpoint, which is the only important factor when the game isn't even released. These bugs would not be game breaking even in the released product. Would they be unacceptable? Yes, of course, since they all contribute to a meaningful player experience, and them not working degrades the experience to an opinion-based degree. But not game breaking. First, if all known issues had to be fixed before moving onto the next phase, no game would ever make it into Beta or be released. It's impossible. Don't believe me? Well, then you should look into what game development really entails. Second, stop throwing up strawmen. I never said anything about the severity of the bugs aside from whether they are game breaking or not. I never said anything about these bugged functions "working" and thus be "okay" to have in the game (by the way, they don't completely not work, as I pointed out already, specific aspects of these aspects of the game don't work; very big difference). I never said anything about thinking things will change once it's in Beta. I never said anything about those, and yet you're implying that I have. Stop that. It makes me feel you're not actually putting any effort into thinking about what I'm actually saying, and so unless that changes, I'm not continuing this. Which I'm sure other readers of the thread will enjoy.

I never said anything about anything other than you calling these things "game-breaking," so don't start taking issue with things I've never said anything about. Your issues with the game getting popular because of mods, and that they're important for having a better experience right now? Not important to this discussion. Favorable game experience is not a factor when talking about bugs that supposedly break the game. User experience is a different issue from the game's overall playability. As for the bugs themselves, I'm not sure why you aren't getting this simple fact: if you can still generally play the game, a glitch is not "game breaking." Not being able to use a particular function to its full intended purpose is not the same thing as it breaking the game. Mobs not working well is not game breaking. They're annoying as hell to deal with because of the server-client (mis)communication, but they still function. You can play the game of mining and building (i.e. advancing in the game) with them on, even if it is frustrating. Furthermore, you're given the option to turn them off via the difficulty setting so that the building/mining experience is more favorable. Dealing with mobs is an aspect of the game separate from the other parts of the game, and mobs having issues in the ways they do right now does not directly affect being able to do other things in the rest of the game. In other words, not game breaking. It's not as if there was a bug that caused you to get swarmed by mobs no matter what setting you were on and where you were, and had no way of dealing with them to go do other stuff. If that was the case, yeah, I think that'd qualify as game breaking. Boats were toeing the line on game breaking prior to the crash issue being fixed, but still weren't game breaking (or rather, gameplay breaking) because all you had to do to keep playing the game was not use them. So all it did to the gameplay was keep you from crossing water faster. It did not affect your ability to play the game, it affected your ability to use boats. That's it. As for boats and minecarts now, they certainly aren't game breaking. Again, their ability to be used is quite diminished, but the ability to use a single aspect of the game does not affect your ability to play the core of the game. If it is less fun for you because of that, fine, but that's in the realm of user experience, not game playability. Game breaking means breaking the game. It does not mean making it less fun, or causing certain isolated problems using specific parts of the game. If any of these were actually game breaking, no one would be playing the game on multiplayer, simply because there would be no "game" within Minecraft's multiplayer mode to play. User experience is an issue that's almost universally taken up in the Beta phase, since there's less actual game breaking bugs to deal with. And as for bugs introduced by changing things (such as server-side inventory)? That happens, even in Beta. But a bug being introduced doesn't mean it's going to break the game, and if it does, you'll have a legit criticism if it is not dealt with promptly (in Beta, developers HAVE TO deal with them promptly so further user experience and functionality tweaking and polish can resume). But criticizing something before it even happens is not legitimate in the least.

Game-breaking glitches. Those? No. Game-breaking glitches are issues that cause the user to be unable to play/advance in the game due to an issue that is critical for gameplay. If you are still able to play the majority of the game, but can't take advantage of a particular aspect of it, and not being able to do so does not directly affect the other aspects of the gameplay, it is not a "game-breaking glitch," it is merely a bug that needs to be fixed at some point which causes an inconvenience of some opinion-based level. Mobs? You can have them on and be able to play. Is it frustrating? Yes, but that's due to them not working particularly well. However, the functionality is there, and there are ways you can work around the issues if you so desire to put in that effort (whether or not it would be worth it is a completely different topic unrelated to whether it breaks the game or not). Minecarts/boats? They make the game more fun, but you can play the game without them. And they only don't work in certain specific ways, you can use them for some purposes. Not having them doesn't impede you from playing the game. Admin options for servers? That's not gameplay-related, that's user interface, and that's far less of a priority when going into Beta than fixing critical bugs. Mod support? Again, user-interface. Not related to core gameplay at all. Mods are third-party, after all, there's no requirement to have mod support as standard in any game. If those are your examples of "game-breaking glitches," then you have an exceedingly low standard for breaking a game. --- In other news, I've been playing single-player a lot more, lately, and I have to say... whenever I'm in a cavern, I'm 100% on edge the entire time I'm down there. I jump when I see something in the darkness, or hear the twang! of an arrow being shot. The atmosphere... it makes it so difficult to not be nearly frightened to just go into the darkness, not knowing if there's going to be a creeper or skeleton hiding in a dark, unseen corner, waiting for you to turn your back so it can pounce.

/kill. Already exists. Kills you so you can respawn at the spawn point. Prevents it from being abused since you drop all your items at the point of activation.

It's been fixed for the most part, from what I can tell (though I've mostly been on when no one else is, so I don't know if the extra load from more players would cause issues). There is still some issues with dirt and sand when digging using the diamond shovel, as you can destroy them so fast that the server can't seem to keep up, but other than that issue it seems to be working fine. Um, no? In general, multiplayer will have some differences from single-player at the very least. This applies to Minecraft, obviously. But in Minecraft's case, there's two modes: Creative and Survival Multiplayer. There's a reason one of them has the Survival modifier on the title. It's supposed to be like the single-player game as much as possible. You don't have /home in SSP, do you? And for good reason, too. One, it would break the immersion if you had that option available. Second, and more importantly, it would completely nullify the Survival aspect of it. When you have that option, you have very little to actually fear. Die and your base is a long way from spawn? No worries, just teleport back instead of braving the world without any of your precious items. Surrounded by enemies? No worries, escape by teleporting. Set on fire? If you set your /home to standing in a block of water, you have no worries there, either. Falling down a long mineshaft to certain death upon impact? If you set your /home to the top of a body (or single column) of water that's a couple blocks deep, you have nothing to worry about if you have a decent typing speed. /home breaks the survival aspect of Survival Multiplayer. Plain and simple. If you don't want to play with the survival aspect, that's fine, there will be mods to change it to your liking, but a main aspect of Survival Multiplayer is the survival aspect, and removing /home enhances that aspect from the vanilla game.

It's simple. The game is in Alpha development right now, but it will be switching to Beta development on the 20th. If you buy it now, while it's in Alpha, you get EVERYTHING that could possibly be released in the future for free. You will not be charged for the "completed release" version of the game, and any big content expansions will be free of charge for you. If you buy it after it switches to Beta, you will still get the "completed release" version of the game for free, but anything after that, aside from bug fixes and small content additions, will require payment. (EDIT: well, may is probably more accurate, Notch hasn't indicated that he will charge for future content. This is mostly legal ass-covering right now, according to him.) Notch has not given any reason to believe there will be large content expansions in the future, so right now the only real reason to buy now instead of after it goes into Beta is the lower price. But it also gives you the security of free expansion content should it ever occur, so I would buy it now anyway.