By Quintin Smith on September 17th, 2010 at 3:33 pm.
We call this one “Express Elevator to Hell”.
This instalment of Mine The Gap is brought to you by dokus’ RPG texture pack. Find the collected Mine The Gap right here.
I signed off last time wondering what was next for me, now I’d become a Hero and built a Hero Home. Traditionally, this is where a MineCraft player might undertake some epic, ambitious project, like creating a colossal twelve story bust of Steve Buscemi or something. Me? I’m a simpler man, with simpler desires.
Those desires take me deep underground, right to the very bottom of Stupid Cave, where I start digging a hole. And keep digging a hole. And keep digging. It’s one of the rules in MineCraft that to avoid disaster you should never dig vertically either down or up, but I am a man on a mission and as such I ask myself one simple question: What would Duke Nukem do? If he needed to dig a hole, he’d dig a fucking hole. I add ladder segments and torches as I go, resulting in the image heading this post.
Soon I reach that undulating layer of inpenetrable bedrock that marks the very bottom of every MineCraft world. Here, I begin digging sideways. And JESUS CHRIST
I instinctively dodge backwards from the lava I’ve unearthed before hitting the screenshot key. Oh, my God! Lava!
With sweaty terror chewing at my thoughts, I watch the lava come nosing out of its crevice-
And start oozing down the passage towards me.
At this point I have no idea what I’m doing, what I’ve done or what I’m going to do about it. I am a trembling berk with no plans and no clue. As it happens, that’s not a problem. The lava uses the same physics as MineCraft’s water, so it conveniently drains away into nothing before it floods the passage.
So I guess deep mining is pretty dangerous! But I can’t turn back. I haven’t yet found what I’m looking for. But it isn’t long before I do. Cutting a new tunnel directly away from the lava pocket, I find a rich cache of that mysterious, precious substance- Redstone.
You know how in movies where an organisation is excavating some alien artifact or priceless relic from the ground, they always dig a huge chamber around the artifact and fill it with floodlights? I totally get that now. I can’t yet get Redstone from this ore because you need at iron pickaxe to do that, but I can’t resist hollowing out all the rock around it. It feels respectful. My precious Redstone. My treasure. My baby. Now, let’s go find some iron.
Oh for fucks sake. More Redstone? So it turns out you can’t move for Redstone down here. Now I feel like a prick for surrounding that last bit of ore with torches like it was the Ark of the Covenant or something. Nevermind.
Right! Iron. Good. I take it up to the forge and smelt that bad boy.
You’re probably wondering why I need Redstone so badly. Patience! All will be revealed shortly.
I take the iron, craft an iron pickaxe out of it, head back down and tear into that Redstone ore like a kid unwrapping presents on what he knows to be his very last Christmas Day. With pure Redstone in hand, I can craft the item that I desire more than anything.
A compass. Rather than pointing North, MineCraft’s compass points towards your spawn point, meaning I can finally go on a proper adventure without having to worry about finding my way home.
Because I’m not really interested in any more building, or crafting myself a suit of diamond armour or anything like that. I want an adventure. I want to go on a proper trek in this randomised world of mine, and I want to come back alive with a pack full of souveniers. That’s my plan.
I leave Stupid Cave to find a huge herd of seven pigs lazing around the entrance. I take this as sign of good luck, and quickly dispatch them for their delicious bacon. There’s not much preparing left for me to do before I can leave. I’ll need to close up Hero Home, though.
Done! Now, let’s take stock:
10 pieces of jerky? 4 ladder segments? Iron sword? Pick? Back-up pick? Ratty tuxedo? Compass? Flint and tinder? Sorted. Probably.
Probably not actually sorted at all. Probably my corpse will be being picked over by skeletons within the hour.
Let’s go!
This is where my adventure begins. Morning, on a misty beach. I deploy my crafting table, whittle myself a tiny boat and set sail.
My goodness. This is something, isn’t it?
Land ho! I bring my vessel to a stop and go splashing out into this new world.
My first discovery is a problem straight out of a puzzle game. Iron ore, trapped under flowing water. Lucky I brought a supply of handy rocks!
I love MineCraft. There, I said it.
I spend the night in a little bunker I dig into an exposed cliff face. Feeling creative (boredom will do this to you) I give my shelter a second storey and knock some of the rocks away to create a wide viewing balcony.
It’s about 3am when I hear a loud, disgusting hiss that turns my blood to mayonnaise. What the fuck was that?
Cautiously, I remove the loosest part of my balcony to get a better look at what’s below.
JESUS SHITCHRIST! AUUUGH–
It takes me a few seconds to see that the spider can’t actually reach me. It just keeps jumping upwards, unable to land an attack. With nerves of molten steel I time a sword attack, hitting the spider when it reaches the highest point of its jump. Pow! It comes back and tries again. Pow! And again! Pow! And with that the spider’s corpse goes bouncing away into the night, leaving behind some string. String! If I get a little more, I can make a bow.
The next morning I find the impossible. A cave which already has torches in it! A special cave, to be sure. A spooky moan sound effect even plays as enter. The torches, however, lead me to a quick dead-end. I realise that this is, in fact, a cave I’ve explored before. This isn’t a strange and distant land at all. It’s just a foggy day on a place I’ve already been.
I leave the cave with a serious wound to my ego, so of course what I really need right at this moment is to stumble across another massive spider. Which is exactly what happens. As of yet it doesn’t seem to have seen me. I begin backing away very carefully. So carefully, in fact, that the rest of the world fades out of my comprehension and I end up walking backwards off a cliff. A very, very, very sheer cliff. After watching stone walls flit past me for more than a second, I’m convinced I’ll die upon landing. I don’t.
The fall just really, really hurts. Ow. I look up from the stones at my feet to see what it was I just fell down.
What the fuck. I’m at the bottom of the abyss! I’m the worst hero ever, but this is awesome! It’s like a setpiece that drops you into the first dungeon in an RPG.
Tragically, it turns out that the cave at the bottom of this pit closes into a dead end within 20 feet, leaving me with no choice but to climb back up.
Looking back down, the beauty of the hole has been somewhat disfigured by my ad-hoc staircase. Nevermind.
I continue on my way, and soon experience the chugging that tells you MineCraft is generating entirely new tracts of world. At last, I am exploring. And I find all kinds of stuff.
An excellent waterfall, first of all. Why couldn’t I have built my house above a waterfall?
I climb to the top of the waterfall, of course.
Then I go down, down inside a cave with a load of zombies at the bottom. Brr.
And onwards to a forest, with the biggest tree I’ve ever seen.
I climb to the top of the tree, of course. Most of being a professional explorer is climbing things, you know.
Fording a river, I find myself in a craggy, mountainous land, with a floating island in the centre. I don’t climb to the top of this, as it looks like too much hassle.
The cliffs in this place really are something else. I decide to climb one.
Beautiful. God, this fog! It’s been foggy for three days now! Does MineCraft even have fog? On a whim I check the options and find that my render distance is set to “Normal”. I change it to “Far”.
Cue facepalm. Still, the draw distance / fog made things genuinely atmospheric for a spell there.
Jogging onwards I drop down from this mountain, crest a second and gasp at what I see. I’ve discovered the promised land.
Click for bigger. Please, click for bigger.
A grand mountain looming over a tidy valley, sprinkled with trees and threaded through with waterfalls and caves. I’m speechless. I want to build a village here. I want to build a life here.
Why aren’t there more games about exploring? I’m not talking learning the corners and shortcuts of some dull “open” world here. I’m talking about games which let you pick your way through a world that’s every bit as secretive, hostile and surprising as our own. I’m talking about letting the player get lost. I’m talking about making a world so tactile, so absorbing and so believable that an exciting discovery can be as simple as a big-ass tree.
We need more of this. Because this? This is brilliance. MineCraft is brilliance in such a simple, raw form that developers the world over should be smashing their heads on desks with a force usually reserved for heading footballs, simply because they didn’t do this first.
It took going on today’s expedition for me to realise it, but after a dozen hours I’ve already gotten more out of MineCraft than I get from most commercial games, so I’m just going to tell you straight up: You want to buy this game. It’s already fantastic, it’s still a long way from finished, it’s only €10 and once you’ve bought it, all future versions of MineCraft will be yours for free.
Notch? I salute you. I know I’m late to the party here, but I’m going to go ahead and add my voice to the crowd. You are doing incredible, important work here. You’re everything that makes the PC indie scene great. For the love of God man, keep it up.
17/09/2010 at 15:33 Choca says:
Damn you to hell, I just bought this.
See you in forever.
17/09/2010 at 20:38 Choca says:
Been playing for a bit.
I have made my very own Stupid Cave only I hadn’t found any coal after a whole first day of mining and had to only partially blockade my cave entrance to keep a bit of light inside.
My mining is then interrupted by splashy noises and I shiver : it’s only a damn cow jumping around in the pond outside. This game is terrifying
The sun finally appears again and I open my cave “doors” to go out in a quest for coal only to return empty handed a few hours later… and to get ambushed by a damn spider which had entered my cave while I was away. Don’t let your doors open.
Second night in the cave and I get almost killed by a cave-in (they weren’t kidding when they said never dig up) which opened up my cave’s ceiling to an opportunist zombie who killed me quite easily.
This is intense.
18/09/2010 at 11:24 Chaz says:
Yep, I caved in and bought it yesterday too. Was only going to play it for half an hour to get a taster and ended up being glued to it for 4 hours straight, I didn’t get around to eating my dinner until 11.30pm.
What got me is how creepy and tense it can get, even though it’s a world made out of blocks and crude blocky creatures. I put in a nice big windowed front on my cave home so that I could look out over the landscape and one night whilst I was crafting away at my table I heard a taping noise at the window and turned around to see the horrible green face of a creeper staring back at me. I nearly jumped out of my chair with fright. Also it’s amazing how claustrophobic the mining can make you feel, especially when you go right deep down, and what is an already eerie experience is made all the more chilling by the occasional spooky noises.
17/09/2010 at 15:39 radomaj says:
This is lovely, but Journey of Saga is lovelier. So, umm… Could you go back to that and write some more?
Sidenote: that Andrew Bird song you used is rather earwormy.
17/09/2010 at 16:10 Quintin Smith says:
Monday! New Journey of Saga! You heard it here first!
17/09/2010 at 16:38 jeremypeel says:
WOOP
17/09/2010 at 16:47 Jimbo says:
Lies! I heard it via twitter first! :D
17/09/2010 at 21:47 gerafin says:
Excellent! Been waiting with bated breath :)
18/09/2010 at 00:47 RagingLion says:
This is very excellent news.
17/09/2010 at 15:40 benjamin says:
Fine….FINE! I give up. I’m buying this. I hope your satisfied.
Bye bye life. Hello, Minecraft. Let’s do this shall we?
17/09/2010 at 15:41 Schaulustiger says:
This series is slowly becoming an ode to Minecraft and I’m perfectly fine with it.
Also, Quinns, on your last day, visit the unofficial RPS server and claim the iron ore we deposited in a chest for you. It’s well deserved. (and change your render distance to “normal” before you do, otherwise multiplayer will crash a lot)
17/09/2010 at 15:57 midi says:
What are the server details for this? Would love to jump in with you guys.
17/09/2010 at 16:12 Jeremy says:
Yeah, I second that. I love the single player bits, but I can only imagine jumping in with other folks would be an awesome thing. Also, I’m assuming their would be no griefing, or at least not malicious griefing.
17/09/2010 at 16:13 Taillefer says:
Ohh, an RPS server (albeit unofficial)? How does it work, does everybody spawn in a location near to each other? Or am I over-estimating the size of the World?
I haven’t bought it yet, because it’s exactly the sort of game I’ll commit too much time to, but I may join you on there soon.
17/09/2010 at 16:51 Norskov says:
There’s a thread in the forum with the details.
@Taillefer
There’s a common spawnpoint for new players and if you die, but I’m fairly sure you’re invincible at the moment.
17/09/2010 at 18:26 JB says:
@Jeremy – The unoffical RPS server is indeed awesome. The only griefing I know of wasn’t even griefing. There have been the odd fire and/or flood. Other than that it’s Minetopia.
Oh and Quinns, Schaulustiger is right. You need to come and get your iron. Just don’t forget the drawdistance.
17/09/2010 at 15:44 Deanb says:
Hahaha. Awesome when I got to the bit about ‘does Minecraft have fog? oh it’s in the settings’.
I thought you’d put on the fog for story effect when you set off ‘from a misty beach’.
Been fun reading this.
I also add my voice to the crowd.
17/09/2010 at 15:45 midi says:
This is comfortably one of the very best series of game articles I have read in a very very long time. I would gladly have paid the 10€ just to read these articles never mind buy the game itself. This weekend will be my first foray proper into Minecraft and I cannot wait. So excited. You are a legend Notch.
17/09/2010 at 15:46 ErikM says:
A friend of mine persuaded me to buy this. Since started playing I have made a house in the sky. A railroead connecting the house in the sky to an island in the sky, where I built a castle. Quite a wonderful experience!
17/09/2010 at 15:47 l1ddl3monkey says:
Fog – press F to turn it off and on
17/09/2010 at 16:20 pakoito says:
And so my FPS problem dissapeared. If it stays stable at 20 I’m buyin this fo sho’
17/09/2010 at 16:24 pakoito says:
Any other mighty morphin power hotkey I should be aware of to improve performance?
17/09/2010 at 16:57 dantokk says:
If your computer has a “Turbo” button on the case try pressing that :)
17/09/2010 at 17:15 Tei says:
Speed settings:
– Change graphics quality from “Fancy” to “Normal”.
– Viewdistance to tiny.
– Playing in a normal world (no winter one). I have not tested it, but I suppose the winter theme is more taxing.
For some netbooks, theres some overclock tools, is easy to multiply x2 the power of these GPU’s.
17/09/2010 at 17:22 pakoito says:
@dantokk
OMG! 100->133Mhz!!! I feel like super old.
17/09/2010 at 18:16 Casimir's Blake says:
F does more than that, it cycles through the draw distances. “Fancy” graphics is also a bit of a hog, so try turning that off.
17/09/2010 at 15:50 groovychainsaw says:
I’m going to have to buy this now, aren’t I? Reminds me of the best thing about world of warcraft; that feeling when you enter a new area, and you have no idea whats going to happen (top story – falling into ungoro crater at level 30 and running away from trexs for about an hour…).
But this, this is a whole game designed around that feeling. As you say Quinns, why has no-one else done exploration as game before?
17/09/2010 at 16:02 Ian says:
There’s probably a lot who’d sneer, but I’d agree. Certainly when I first started playing WoW everything seemed enormous and exciting. Dun Morogh: My first love.
Anyway, I rather fear I’m going to end up buying this, possibly this weekend, when I ALREADY HAVE TOO MANY GAMES TO PLAY.
17/09/2010 at 19:13 Durkonkell says:
I remember discovering Ironforge for the first time. I was quite content to wander about Majestic Dun Morogh when I discovered a path up a mountain. This path terminated in a giant doorway and through there was this huuuuge city – the dwarvern city and realm of Ironforge.
I spoke to one of the guards and curiously clicked on the option about the Tram. “Ooh, the tram, the tram. When I were a lad we got about the old-fashioned way, clinging for dear life to the back of a gryphon! But if you’re dead set on using the new-fangled tram abomination, ye can find it in the Gnomish Quarter”.
A tram journey under the sea later and I step out to find myself in a completely new and equally magnificent city, Stormwind.
/target website
/cast Debit Card
(Oh, and I thought the bit about Gryphons was just flavour text. Imagine my astonishment when I discovered that you could actually fly from place to place on a Gryphon…)
17/09/2010 at 15:51 Dominic White says:
Just a reminder to all readers that Minecraft development has slowed a bit as of late.
The reason for this? Notch is assembling a studio. Soon, development should kick into Ludicrous Speed, as he’ll be able to delegate things like ‘running the site’ and ‘doing PR’ and even ‘drawing sprites/textures’ to other people more suited to these jobs, so he can focus on what he does best.
What does Notch do best? Coding like a freakish robot demon from the future, adding new content and things to see every week.
17/09/2010 at 15:51 OptionalJoystick says:
I wanted to ask- and here seems as appropriate a place as any- what with the Paypal thing going on, if I buy the game now will Notch ever actually see the money?
17/09/2010 at 16:28 Sam C. says:
@OptionalJoystick:
He’s worked out a “compromise” where Paypal keeps a certain percentage of the money in his account locked up as reserve, but he can at least now withdraw money. At least, that’s how I understood it.
17/09/2010 at 16:43 Dominic White says:
To elaborate, Paypal take 5% of Notch’s takings and put it into reserve. After three months, he gets the reserve as well.
It’s not ideal, but it’s not a major problem either.
17/09/2010 at 17:00 Matthew Minix says:
It was fixed. PayPal is holding on to 5% of the money for 2 months, all else can be transferred out of PayPal
17/09/2010 at 17:04 OptionalJoystick says:
Ah, great. Thanks! I can hear my future self is damning you already.
17/09/2010 at 15:53 Dave says:
I really agree about the exploring thing. One of the reasons I still have a lot of love for Homeworld, all these years later, is it gives you a little tiny bit of that. The “what the hell is THAT?!” feeling. Only in a few stages, the ones that aren’t taken up by fighting model swaps of your own ships, but its definitely there; the awe of the unknown. What other games have that?
Minecraft has this in spades of course. You build up your cozy little base (for myself, having bought it two days ago after reading the first of these write-ups, a lovely little hobbit hole half-way up a hill, looking out over a small lake, with a massive staircase leading down to my mines, and a ladder leading up to the top of the hill where I’ve built a two story house next to my beacon) and then you VENTURE FORTH, into the unknown (just as you’ve described here) and it’s different and scary and if you die you’re never going to be able to find your way back to get your stuff again and oh shit it’s getting dark, what’s that noise….it’s wonderful.
17/09/2010 at 15:54 Emphursis says:
I was going to say press F for fog distance, until I saw that you had noticed the option xD
Also, to those who say ‘never mine down’, you are idiots. What’s the worst that can happen? You fall in some lava? Oh well, you can get everything back in a few minutes!
17/09/2010 at 17:37 Dys says:
Actually, I’d say the worst that can happen is falling into the endless lilac void beneath the world.
Death either way, but the fall has an extra tang of despair.
17/09/2010 at 18:10 Sardaukar says:
Except the lava will melt all your items. Like the time I carefully, slowly, extracted a bit of diamond secluded in a pocket of the stuff; I messed up at the end and my confined dig area turned into a deep fryer. Including all the diamonds from that dig.
17/09/2010 at 18:49 DJ Phantoon says:
Anyone who scoffs at the rule to never dig straight down obviously has never lost a diamond… yet.
17/09/2010 at 15:55 Freud says:
I tell myself I’ll buy this when it is closer to being finished. Which may be a somewhat flawed strategy. Then again, I have this backlog of games I need to get through so it doesn’t hurt me that my first visit in Minecraftland will be more polished.
17/09/2010 at 15:56 JuJuCam says:
I’m having trouble installing texture packs. I’m using IZArc, finding the appropriate minecraft.jar, extracting the texture pack and compressing it into the jar.
After doing it apparently correctly according to every guide I’ve seen, running minecraft.exe results in the screen freezing at “Done Loading” with the loading bar about 5% shy of the end. Googling around reveals that this is a symptom of a corrupt minecraft.jar file with no advice related to fixing the damn texture pack!
Any advice? I’ve attempted every permutation of the install I could think of and have reached wits end. The RPG texture pack looks lovely and I’d love to see my world through those eyes…
17/09/2010 at 16:06 Dave says:
I can offer nothing but sympathy, as I had the exact same problem…
17/09/2010 at 16:11 JuJuCam says:
Turns out IZArc has some issue completing this operation properly, 7-zip managed it without a hitch.
28/10/2010 at 22:05 Nuker says:
could try manual install… search your install drive for .minecraft and use WinRAR to open it
17/09/2010 at 16:00 Dosh says:
I love Minecraft, but I hope to see more and more “stuff” to play with, because for the moment I found pretty much everyone is playing the same way and discovering the same scenarios again and again. Well this is the case for many games around (most) but with something randomly generated I hope to find a little more.
Let’s add a few more interactions, monsters, vehicles, growing vegetation, secrets and tools and it will be perfect :D
17/09/2010 at 18:27 Casimir's Blake says:
Yeah agreed with this. But in previous threads I and others have stated the gameplay, as-is, is somewhat “bare”. It’s good, really good, but once Notch knuckles down with the company started (follow his blog!), we can expect more good stuff… biomes, villages, and some random-prefab “stuff” are all going to make up for this lack of content.
The fact that Notch is openly and honestly using the money he’s earning towards continued development only reaffirms my feelings that Minecraft was and still is money well spent.
17/09/2010 at 20:37 Dozer says:
The vegetation already is growing – well the cactus and trees do anyway.
I don’t think this game will ever be ‘finished’. I reckon, the more Notch adds, the more Notch will find he can and wants to add after it, and it will eventually reach a point where he just has to stop working on Minecraft in order to move onto the Next Thing. Hopefully some time in the future :-)
17/09/2010 at 16:01 Fumarole says:
I fear buying this will cause me to never finish my backlog of games nor see my girl ever again. So why am I about to check my disposable account balance to see if I am about to buy this game? Damn you, Quinns.
17/09/2010 at 16:05 Fetthesten says:
For me, Minecraft is about exploration and building, of course – but mostly, it’s about destruction. It’s about discovering the most beautiful, natural-looking, serene valley, and then scarring it beyond recognition as I strip the land bare. Plains, forests, even mountains – I tear all that shit down and put up my own terrible creations, because I feel like it. Minecraft can be an evil game, but then again most Minecraft players are pretty evil in return.
And yeah, Quinns played for five days and didn’t even undertake an insane, sanity-crushing construction project. Mine is a floating castle, built on an island I made myself. I’ve been at it on and off for weeks and I’m not even half done yet.
17/09/2010 at 17:52 sfury says:
Enjoy your evil rule while you can, Sauron, one day me and the Ents will come to avenge the fallen!
18/09/2010 at 19:41 pepper says:
I have actually built my own castle. including underground routes to outposts, lookouts, a harbour with a ever ready ship for me to set sail with, and my own freakin garders were I GROW ENTS. And then kill them for there sweet delicious wood. Although trees appear to grow higher when there environment is high. I have a 20 block tower next to it, and a 5 block wall, and it always tries to have the canopy grow over it. So, if you want big trees. build a walled garden.
17/09/2010 at 16:06 Reapy says:
I wish you could translate over the dwarf fort adventure mode into a minecraft view. The one thing minecraft lacks for exploration is ‘stuff’. The dfort world gen makes a pretty interesting piece of world, and if you could render the thing in simple 3d like this, wow the game would be addicting.
For a long while I’ve wanted an explore game, after I realized that the closest you get now a days are your first week or two with a brand new mmo. For the exploration to work, you need an element of danger, and a difficulty to get where you want to go. I would love to see more challenging climbing mechanics in games, the need to gather supplies before you venture out, and the ability to scrounge them up as you go. I’d also like some pretty crazy natural life with a few simple mechanics, and set behaviors, and bam, you got this awesome world to explore.
Anyway, I hope that minecraft’s success will convince more people there is money to be made via exploration/discovery style games.
17/09/2010 at 16:22 lhzr says:
like this? http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64473.0
17/09/2010 at 16:34 James G says:
You mean like some DF to Minecraft converter utility?
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64473.0
If only there were such a thing.
17/09/2010 at 18:14 Reapy says:
I saw that and my head exploded appropriately, but at most this is just another viewer for dfort. The minecraft world is really simple and made for building and exploring. While the exploration in minecraft is technically unlimited, in reality you will only see various configurations of the base blocks, and one of 4 monsters. Now the varying landscape is pretty awesome and might keep it going forever, but at some point it will become boring to find another random cave with some water and lava in it and a few zombies.
Anyway, so yeah, exploration game as described above, would be good, and hope that dfort + minecraft keep laying the tracks for this genera to get refined and perfected.
17/09/2010 at 19:51 Casimir's Blake says:
Give it time. There will surely be more to do in Minecraft as development continues. I’m hoping Notch will add some form of scripting eventually… I can’t be the only one that would like to see 3D ZZT! :)
17/09/2010 at 16:06 Tusque d'Ivoire says:
I bought minecraft at the time of your second mine the gap post, and after a few feeble attempts at creating a home, which i never found again after i died, i have now found a very beautiful big cave in a cliff next to a waterfall with a nice lawn and a lake in front, and a cloud-piercing beacon on top so i’ll always find it again.
however, it seems to be incredibly difficult to find any kind of ore except coal. i have found neither redstone nor any other metals, which is frustrating, because i kinda don’t think i’ll be able to explore without being properly equipped.
I completely love these articles quinns! please keep playing and writing! i’m dying to see what you do with your redstone. it seems the possibilities are endless, even if the whole thing gets complicated fast. (I mean this: http://minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_circuits )
17/09/2010 at 16:29 Jeremy says:
Best thing to do is stock up on materials, then create some containers to store it all in. Then just take a few things you can afford to lose, go as deep into a cave as possible until you can find some iron. If you die, no big deal, you can always make more stone picks and swords. Once you find some iron, you can get things rollin in no time.
17/09/2010 at 17:24 MWoody says:
Note that minerals increase in value as you go down, with diamond almost always found close to bedrock. So if you’re just cruising around outside looking at exposed cliff faces, you’re probably only going to find coal and maaaybe the occasional speck of iron.
If you want the good stuff, you gotta dig.
17/09/2010 at 23:47 Tusque d'Ivoire says:
I listened to your advice and dug, dug, dug like a madman. it is a long way down to bedrock, and a pain to get all the way up again, and i can’t be asked to build stairs either. However, i found some iron, and a fair bit of redstone afterwards.
I then abandoned my main mine shaft and started digging in the farthest corner of my home cave (which has a nice hobbitty entrance). i dropped into another huuuge cave system with an underground waterfall and lake and even a little pool of lava. I do NOT think i’ve seen all of it, it’s like swiss cheese down there. swiss cheese AFTER the mice.
Now my plan is to connect my castle in the sky with my underground kingdom. Yea, i did a little more building than exploring… and i need to figure out how this redstone triggering stuff works.
17/09/2010 at 16:09 RiptoR says:
Sigh, there goes my free time… (bought the game, couldn’t resist any longer)
17/09/2010 at 16:09 Jacques says:
I find myself agreeing completely with this, though oddly I’m yet to try out Minecraft (even though I’ve purchased it, go figure). It’s what keeps me playing Love, and it’s what keeps me going back to Morrowind.
One of my fondest moments in Love thus far was coming across an AI character that didn’t automatically try to kill me, sure, he pointed his gun at me, but only because I did the same. As soon as I switched away from my gun, he popped out a pair of binoculars and started scouting around (probably for my settlement).
17/09/2010 at 16:10 Dzamir says:
Remember that you can always play on multiplayer with other ppl (my server is full of cool things and a money system, you can connect to it using dzamir.is-a-geek.com as IP address)
17/09/2010 at 16:13 Blargh. says:
You sir, should be a salesperson. I’d buy anything after perfected a 4-day pitch like this.
Quintin Smith, Speedboad salesman.
17/09/2010 at 16:13 Tei says:
Think about this.
The map of Minecraft is to all effect infinite.
Like our own universe.
We built a small setlement that we call home.
Like our own planet.
There are A LOT out here to explore.
The happyness that you feel playing minecraft, will one day be the same happyness of the human race exploring new planets and stars. This beatifull thing that I feel playng minecraft, one day will be shared by the whole human race.
Thats it, I said it.
17/09/2010 at 16:46 Langetc says:
I hope you’re right Tei. I really, really do.
But I have the sneaking suspicion that instead of creating rockets to fly to the stars, mankind’s greatest minds will spend their time playing minecraft.
17/09/2010 at 18:29 Berzee says:
The difference here being no permadeath when you fall in the lava. =)
17/09/2010 at 18:42 Harlander says:
No problem, langetc: just use the Minecraft to 3D printer interface and they can launch their curiously boxy rockets to the far reaches of space
17/09/2010 at 19:22 Laneford says:
I love Tei.
17/09/2010 at 20:39 Huggster says:
I agree with Tei.
And I love him too.
17/09/2010 at 23:26 Rob says:
Funny you should mention that, Harlander: one of the ideas Notch mentioned on his Twitter feed after visiting Valve was that Minecraft could have multiple planets.
(argh, I accidentally posted this in the wrong place at first)
17/09/2010 at 16:14 oceanclub says:
One thing that annoys me is that I can never find any diamonds. I have tonnes of redstone which I haven’t used yet, always run out of iron (starting to put in a minecart system to take me from my main base to what I’ve term “Fort Alpha” so far), but not one sodding diamond, grr.
P.
17/09/2010 at 16:33 JonFitt says:
I have been playing for a few days now and have not yet found one diamond.
I have lots of redstone, but not nearly enough iron to start building train tracks. 6 blocks of iron per piece? You’re having a laugh!
17/09/2010 at 17:04 oceanclub says:
“6 blocks of iron per piece?”
Ah no, it’s not that bad – 6 ingots of iron gives you _16_ pieces of track.
P.
17/09/2010 at 17:06 JonFitt says:
Oh that’s not too bad. I haven’t managed to gather 6 ingots without spending them on picks and swords yet.
17/09/2010 at 17:19 oceanclub says:
Yeah, I’m going to hold back on making iron picks; you only need them for gold, redstone, etc anyway. Might as well just carry a whole bunch of cheap stone ones.
17/09/2010 at 17:24 Polysynchronicity says:
You get 16 units of track per crafting. So that’s 0.375 iron per track piece.
17/09/2010 at 17:26 MWoody says:
I generally switch to iron almost immediately. Keep in mind that as you go up the tool quality ladder, they both dig faster AND last longer. Ultimately, that means you’ll probably find more iron faster with an iron pick.
17/09/2010 at 17:51 JonFitt says:
I wish the iron seams were bigger. It would be great to have a bigger pay-off when you do find one. I’ve usually only found 3-4 blocks in a seam.
17/09/2010 at 18:59 MWoody says:
Keep in mind that, unless I’m seriously mistaken, veins found on open cave faces will almost always be partial. I believe the system builds the rock, veins and all, and then carves the caves out of it. This hypothesis is supported by my solid-rock mining seeming to turn up 5+ block veins, while cave-diving averages around 2-3.
17/09/2010 at 20:21 JonFitt says:
I always dig my own mine, I’m too scared of caves :-S
Ever since I found a mob spawner in a shallow cave near my mine entrance I’ve given them a wide berth!
17/09/2010 at 16:19 Hippo says:
Awesome. Just make sure you know how to actually get to this place once you die and respawn, before building all sorts of stuff here…
17/09/2010 at 16:36 JonFitt says:
That’s why I desperately want some sort of bedroll or bed item which acts as a “spawn to closest one” respawn location.
There’s not much point in building anything large far away (as far as I can see), because one death and you might never get back there.
17/09/2010 at 16:37 JonFitt says:
Ok exchange: “not much point” for: “lots of potential frustration in”
There is always a point.
17/09/2010 at 17:13 Vague-rant says:
Just leave a trail of torches. About as far apart as you can barely see. Then trying to get to base in the middle of the night.
17/09/2010 at 17:51 Moth Bones says:
Arf. I am so bad at this game. When I die I can rarely find my way back to anywhere I’ve been, so there are lots of chests of stuff and wee hideyholes mouldering somewhere. I simply cannot find any sense of direction in the game.
17/09/2010 at 18:19 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
Moth: The sun and moon rise in the East, and they set in the West. The clouds constantly drift North.
However, underground it is very easy to lose one’s sense of direction.
17/09/2010 at 21:43 psyk says:
There is a spawn changer
17/09/2010 at 22:54 JonFitt says:
The spawn changer is a game file hack though and not an in game object.
17/09/2010 at 16:21 Taillefer says:
Few games beat the Gothic series for exploration. And, although probably the weakest as a game, Gothic 3′s world is outstanding for any would-be adventurer. Full of secret caves, hidden treasures, along with areas of breathtaking beauty in a living world where you can observe the wildlife roaming free. And, of course, there’s the incredible danger.
17/09/2010 at 16:22 Zinpafo says:
Those articles are very well done, so well done that i have willing to give a try to a demo of this to see if this can be interesting for my taste.
Looking at the minecraft website, apparently there is no demo but a free (and certainly very limited) version of this, but is there an offline version of that “classic/free” version or is it online only despite the “single player” wording ?
Additionally, in the instruction i read
“WASD to move”
Hmm, is it possible to remap the keys, WASD is certainly good for qwerty, but not really for exotic keyboard scheme like mine.
Anyways, nice AAR, keep them coming.
17/09/2010 at 18:05 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
It asks you for a login, but if the login fails (due to no internet connection, or wrong username/password) then you get the option to play offline.
18/09/2010 at 00:00 Telke says:
There’s also an alternative, unofficial client for the Classic/Creative version – google World of Minecraft Client – it’s done a main minecraft community site.
17/09/2010 at 16:23 anonymous17 says:
Enjoying these Quinns.
Thanks for highlighting a game that both deserves this attention and points to some interesting new ground.
17/09/2010 at 16:26 jokewood says:
I don’t know how you guys do it. I’ll hear a game like minecraft getting love all over the internet and be fairly nonplussed, then you guys do a piece about it and suddenly I MUST HAVE THAT GAME.
excellent stuff, Quinns. I’ve had a big banana grin on my face for all 4 pieces.
17/09/2010 at 18:10 sfury says:
I’ve also given up, took me a long Slashdot thread that pointed me to Minecraft LP videos to see what the hype is about …and Quinns’ excellent series coming right after that – I cannot hold any longer (even though I’m not around my gaming PC and will be on a pretty weak one for at least month on).
I’m just curious how many MILLIONS has Notch made in the last week or so – he said 600 000 euros were for about three weeks sales, and that was before the ginormous threads and exposure he got on many gaming and news sites (check out the before-mentioned slashdot story – 700+ comments, WOW! http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/09/10/1713217/PayPal-Withholding-Indie-Game-Devs-euro600000-Account ) – who knows how many new players this converted?
Now that’s the organic way of starting a unique game project and growing it (and a company, albeit unintended), not APB’s and other companies’ ludicrous money and time-wasting up-front in a “sure to get your money back investment project”.
17/09/2010 at 18:35 JB says:
@sfury – And of course, there’s now a Penny Arcade comic series. Well, at least 2 comics.
17/09/2010 at 16:27 Dodgy Geezer says:
I read somewhere (maybe on Notch’s blog) that the Paypal thing has been resolved. His new business dude is also investigating alternatives.
17/09/2010 at 16:32 K says:
Not if your stuff falls into the lava too.
17/09/2010 at 16:37 SF Legend says:
Have you already decided what texture packs to try next? This one looks quite nice, even though it hasn’t been updated in a while
17/09/2010 at 17:08 oceanclub says:
Hmm, I might give that Zelda one a try alright. I’ve tried two textures pack before but didn’t like them – they were just _too_ fussy, and it was hard to tell at a glance which tools were which and, also, what they were made of.
P.
17/09/2010 at 16:37 AukonDK says:
Waiting for Paypal to sort out my account, gah! Need this!
The combination of this and the multistrip Penny Arcade is gonna flood Notch’s servers and pockets!
17/09/2010 at 16:39 laikapants says:
Will Iron Quinns be maybe hopefully interviewing Notch sometime in the next decade? It’d be extra excellent to be sure.
17/09/2010 at 16:43 Quintin Smith says:
I think Notch is very busy right now. It’s not that I reckon he’d turn an interview down, I just don’t want to distract him from his work and/or new studio.
17/09/2010 at 16:48 Ian says:
Admit it Quinns, you fear rejection.
17/09/2010 at 16:51 laikapants says:
@Swimming in Iron Quinns: Excellent point as he was stressing about maybe not getting to do the Friday Update (due to now canceled meetings) in an earlier blog post. All the same I hope to see a RPS Notch Interview someday.
17/09/2010 at 16:43 theSAiNT says:
It’s strange, I really enjoy living the world of minecraft through these diaries and am certainly looking forward to the next installment, yet I have very little urge to play the game myself. I do understand the thrill of exploration and discovery, and it was what made the tedious grind of leveling a character in WoW more than just bearable. However, I just don’t see myself sinking that much time into ‘just’ an exploratory game.
The only thing that really holds my attention is competitive multiplayer. Back to SC2 for me.
17/09/2010 at 20:42 Huggster says:
Don’t mock until you try it, I felt the same.
Come on – its not expensive.
17/09/2010 at 16:46 Gosh says:
RP games were the players set the rules are very rare and the best games out there. a couple i can think of is stranded/darkrp for garrysmod, sahrani/chernarus/takistan life for the arma series and this game. it will be wonderful hosting an RP server once the multiplayer portion is stable and everything works :)
keep up the adventures mr smith.
17/09/2010 at 16:52 SuperBladesman says:
I’ve really enjoyed this serial of articles so far – not looking forward to them ending.
I’ve also bought (and am thoroughly enjoying) Minecraft on the back of it. Nice work Quinns (and Notch!)
17/09/2010 at 16:53 Robert says:
\o/
As a sidenote, just visited Notch’ Tumblr. My god what a cesspool of filth, the comments I mean. I don’t even know where to begin.
Just visit this for feedback Notch. We are civilized Gentlepersons!
17/09/2010 at 20:44 Huggster says:
The tumblr posts are puerile, disastrous and gross – he should probably just disable the whole lot TBH.
*sigh*
17/09/2010 at 16:54 Matt Varney says:
I believe that the only thing that spawns above sea level is coal. Below sea level iron and gold will show up. Redstone and Diamond I believe are only within ~5 blocks of bedrock.
17/09/2010 at 16:59 JonFitt says:
I have found bedrock in one area and then continued down 100s of block to the side. So my question is:
Is “bedrock level” a rough level below the surface, or some rough floor to the whole world?
It would seem to be the former.
Anyone know of a guide to the strata?
17/09/2010 at 17:18 psyk says:
Don’t think so, while strip mining a mountain next to my spawn I looked over at another mountain and there is at least 10 blocks of iron and 5 of coal half way up the side.
17/09/2010 at 17:24 Matthew Minix says:
Diamond and Redstone spawn in the bottom 17 levels. Lava spawns are about 20x more likely in the bottom 10, so the safest+profitable area to mine is between 10 and 17
17/09/2010 at 17:39 psyk says:
Ahhh was gravel :D
17/09/2010 at 17:48 JonFitt says:
I hit lava last night. I hit it while mining the ceiling out! But rather than flooding my mine, it was just good entertainment.
My first response was to quickly retreat and throw down a barrier and hope that it didn’t overflow. However it doesn’t flow too far, and you can dump cobblestone over lava tiles to block them. So in the end I just manipulated it back into the ceiling (note to self, put a warning sign up).
So in summary, it’s fun, and not that bad if you don’t touch it. Dig deep!
17/09/2010 at 18:02 Grubblik says:
There is a guide to strata somewhere on the minecraft forum, I’ll see if I can find it. As a quick guide however I have found that 10-12 levels above bedrock is a good level to mine, I seem to get lots of Ore, Coal & Redstone around here… occasional gold too but that tends to be deeper along with redstone.
Gah, sorry guys, can’t find the topic, my search-fu has that friday feeling :(
17/09/2010 at 18:03 Grubblik says:
*along with diamonds, damn the missing edit!!
17/09/2010 at 16:55 Altemore says:
Now I want RPS to do a feature like this on LOVE. I’ve been hoping for more coverage of that, as it seems to have evolved a fair bit, and remains ridiculously fascinating.
17/09/2010 at 17:10 Jacques says:
Seconded. Though it may be a bit harder, as Love requires collaboration.
17/09/2010 at 22:00 Altemore says:
Well, the barman diary seemed to work out fine even though it was a multiplayer thing. I think LOVE is the same kind of game in that it’s conductive of these completely unique personal experiences, say, the wind picking up in the early morning fog, the sun rising as your village’s forcefield comes on along with the myriad of blue power lines. Ahhh, sweet love…. Really ought to get into that again, haven’t played since beta/alpha, whatever it was.
18/09/2010 at 09:34 Jacques says:
It’s worth coming back, lots of new features since alpha/beta.
17/09/2010 at 16:55 Malibu Stacey says:
You found magma & your first thought wasn’t “how do I flood the world with this stuff using a single lever?”
You should be ashamed of yourself Quinns.
17/09/2010 at 16:57 Ryan says:
Lava actually destroys items, so when you die in it your inventory is gone.
17/09/2010 at 16:57 FunkyLlama says:
Is there any chance of Minecraft running acceptably on a netbook?
17/09/2010 at 17:36 Matthew Minix says:
Is the netbook from the future?
17/09/2010 at 20:09 Casimir's Blake says:
Llama, look for my posts in previous Mine The Gaps.
Short answer: If a CULV Celeron Core 2 derivative isn’t enough – and it isn’t – Atom CPUs certainly aren’t enough either.
17/09/2010 at 20:46 Huggster says:
I second this – its a killer. I can play it on my desktop PC at work (ssh … not anymore) at about 2 – 9 FPS.
17/09/2010 at 21:38 EthZee says:
I am running it on a Dell laptop from 2005, with a 1.7ghz processor and integrated graphics. It can be pretty jerky at times, though, and you usually need fog distance to be Normal at best. And i’m running it at a 1024×768 resolution.
Which reminds me – can you run this full-screen?
18/09/2010 at 05:05 Casimir's Blake says:
F11 = fullscreen.
17/09/2010 at 17:06 psyk says:
Went digging around the beach by my spawn and found a cave with a few spiders and a couple of creepers no biggie after burying the creepers with sand the real exploring begins and this cave system is massive only explored a fraction of the passage ways and then disaster I fallI down a hole land on a ledge and see a spider and some creepers so drop I drop some sand to kill the creepers then fall offthe ledge (doh) on to the sand pile and this happens hxxp://img340.imageshack.us/img340/333/13166160.jpg.
Can you get spider spawners? because Ive killed a few and more keep arriving.
17/09/2010 at 17:08 psyk says:
No ( . ) at the end of the image url
17/09/2010 at 18:33 psyk says:
It was a spider spawner buried behind half a gravel wall on the other side of a river, time retreat and kill some pigs.
17/09/2010 at 18:46 DJ Phantoon says:
Surround it with torches. Horizontally, that is. Don’t need to use more than 8, only 8 available spots. They’ll stop spawning at that point, and then you can recover their loot.
17/09/2010 at 20:09 psyk says:
MMM I just kept killing the spiders and moving closer, they stopped spawning after awhile. Got a record from one of the chests but i got distracted by another huge cave network that was connected to the last one and am now dead :D Now to find that chest again.
17/09/2010 at 20:30 psyk says:
Thanks for the tip by the way.
Wow no wonder I keep digging in to new cave systems hxxp://img691.imageshack.us/img691/4503/map2obliquecaveday.png
hxxp://img828.imageshack.us/img828/7579/map2obliquedaya.png
am somewhere underneath the mountain with 3 yellow dots on top :D
17/09/2010 at 21:37 JonFitt says:
I just whacked the first spawner I came across until it died.
I guess surrounding it is just if you want to keep it to spawn mobs for testing traps?
17/09/2010 at 17:09 Face says:
Question: I don’t have a ‘real’ graphics card at the moment, just whatever it was that came standard with my laptop. In the free version of Minecraft Classic available on the Minecraft site the game runs smoothly on the second-to-most-restrictive fog setting. I can see for 30 blocks and there’s no sky. (Amusingly, this is about how far I can see in Morrowind as well.) I’m thinking in the full game, playing Survival mode, with creatures running around, my computer isn’t going to cut it. Right? The full version is not somehow more optimized for my non-gaming PC?
I think I know the answer, I’m just despondently grasping at straws. NOT forking over the extra $100 for a dedicated graphics card for my laptop, because it was SUPPOSED TO BE for work, was one of the worst decisions I’ve made in the last two years. Don’t be like me, kids! Buy graphics, buy early, buy often.
17/09/2010 at 17:36 Nallen says:
I think it’s more on your CPU actually. In the browser based classic version I made the largest map size and put maximum draw distance on and saw the fps go as low as 9…which is about 1/3rd what I get on Crysis maxed lol.
I’d be very interested to hear if things are any smoother on the Alpha version, or if this is an engine/tech type limitation that can only be solved with MOAR MEGAHURTZ (I have an i7 920).
17/09/2010 at 20:30 Casimir's Blake says:
Search for my posts in the last Mine The Gaps. It’s a Java engine, so it’s quite CPU bound. Fairly recent Intel GPUs are enough to run the game to a playable level.
17/09/2010 at 17:22 BAReFOOt says:
I know a game like this that looks better, is even more free, and a lot of fun. And it’s a lot older. You know what it’s called? REALITY!
Honestly. Go ride you bike with the purpose of exploring things! Talk to people as if they were NPCs (= Talk to whoever you want, no matter if you never saw him/her before, no matter the looks or whatever. Without all the false, socially conditioned, fear.) You’ll have so many great experiences, you’ll become addicted!
I do that, and it’s awesome! I found a blue rusting bus in the middle of nowhere, in a forest next to a clearance where nobody possibly could have droven it to in the last couple of decades! I found awesomely cool downhill tracks. I chatted up hot girls, made new friends, etc.
Reality rules! If you allow it to.
17/09/2010 at 17:28 theSAiNT says:
http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=19
QFT
17/09/2010 at 17:31 Ian says:
@ Barefoot: A completely original thought that has never been expressed by people ad infinitum.
Kudos.
17/09/2010 at 17:34 Lambchops says:
Funnily enough reality and playing a game aren’t mutually exclusive last time I checked.
17/09/2010 at 17:40 Matthew Minix says:
Why are you here?
17/09/2010 at 17:42 psyk says:
Last time I checked out real life you couldn’t make a floating house of gold or fall half way down a mountain and survive or dig miles underground with out some sort of supports.
17/09/2010 at 19:19 Berzee says:
Mining: as fun as videogames.
http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/archivesmonth/2003/archweek_images/VT/Coal_Miner_1_large.jpg
17/09/2010 at 20:24 jaheira says:
Hmmm. Real life has got better graphics than Minecraft, he’s right. I just looked out the window and there’s some awesome Ambient Occlusion going on. Pretty high resolution on the textures as well. If only I could find a way to turn off that fog.
17/09/2010 at 17:23 RadioactiveMan says:
I am a proud new convert to the Church of Minecraft. The combination of Quinn’s search for Iron, reading about the RPS multiplayer server, and the excellent Minecraft Lets Play by SeaNanners (http://www.youtube.com/user/SeaNanners#p/a/33B2523A0F571466/0/ANgI2o_Jinc) finally broke my will to resist. I may never finish Racettear now, but… I find that to be acceptable for the time being.
I’ll share my own first experience, because it was simply amazing for me: I awoke in this new world to a scenic little sand trap next to the beach, with some tree-covered hills nearby. Climbing the nearest hill, I could see in the distance a tall mountain. Wandering over to this mountain, I found meager ammounts of coal around the base of the cliffs. So, trees and coal? Sorted. Back to the first hill I had climbed, where I built a little underground house in sight of my sand trap, with the mountain behind me. I spent the next hour enlarging my new home- staying inside mostly, as there was constant scary-sounding noises above me. When I ventured out during the day, I would find arrows all over the place (skeletons?). This encouraged me to stay inside and begin a mine.
I dug and dug, and dug some more. I put in little steps to make the main path easier to tread. I found coal and some gold, but overall was not that impressed. I found some dirt underground, which I thought might be a good sign, but nothing came of it. Eventually, I tired of mining and built a room in which to store all the stone I was accumulating. It was almost midnight and so with the room complete I decided to call it a day. At this point, I was fairly nonplussed with Minecraft- alot of digging and not much return. 5 out of 10.
Then, as I was squaring up the room (its gotta be square) I heard something, very very quietly. Putting down my chest, I moved to the corner of the room. It was Louder. It sounded like… water? I began digging down, and the sound got louder. Forgetting the time, I kept going. All of a sudden, the square of rock I was hitting broke, and the pieces disappeared into an inky abyss. The water sound was loud. I couldn’ t see the bottom, and from my two-square-wide shaft, I saw no way to extend a ladder down. I dug horizontally and then down again, and managed to emerge on the banks of a giant underground river- WOW! Express route into the depths? Whynot!
Selecting my torches, I hopped in. I followed the watercourse down to a large waterfall that deposited me into a giant room. This room.. was simply beyond what I expected to ever see in a game. The walls were chaotically honeycombed with blocks and protrusions and passages. This was no simple cave, with only limited exploration opportunities. This was an underground labyrinth! Wandering around, I found a second chamber, equally large, directly below the first. My footing suddenly felt very fragile. This lower room was chock full of gold, coal, and redstone. Huzzah! Then, there in the distance, I saw a faint light. What was this? Wandering over cautiously, I came upon a massive lava lake! With a waterfall visible across the lake in the distance. WOW!!
At this point I was pretty excited. I put torches everywhere, to try and make sense of all this space (hopelessly). Things really came to a head when I returned to the central waterfall room. Walking near water, I accidentally stepped into and through the waterfall- on the back side was another massive dark room! Just at this moment, some creepy music started, and I freaked out a little bit. Its 2 in the morning, I’ve just found a gigantic room, and I have only a dozen torches left. I’ve been underground for hours, and have no idea how to scale the waterfall and get back into my mine tunnel. I decided to run for it. Someone here on RPS mentioned Shawshank-style escapes: This is what I attempted- a narrow one square wide tunnel that went up and up. After nearly being crushed by gravel several times, and using the last of my torches, I finally struck dirt, and then, daylight! I emerged knowing I would be lost in a strange location, but at least I would be able to see grass, and trees. Much to my surprise, however, upon turning I saw the very same mountain that I had begun my adventures next to! After hours underground exploration, and frantic upward digging, I had emerged within sight of the only landmark I had in the entire world! Amazing! I built a celebratory stone monolith to mark my exit point, and then realized night was falling. I ran back towards my safe little house, with a goofy grin on my face, as the sun set ahead of me and spiders emerged from the trees behind.
TLDR: I’m hooked!
17/09/2010 at 17:27 Polysynchronicity says:
Bloody hell that texture pack looks awful. Give me the original any day!
17/09/2010 at 17:27 samosir says:
If you fall into lava, you die and everything in your inventory melts and disappears. Another thing that can happen if you dig straight down is that you could fall into a cave and get hurt from fall damage.
17/09/2010 at 17:27 Anonymous says:
I just vomited a bit.
17/09/2010 at 17:27 Lambchops says:
Nice articl again Quinns. I hope you’re on commission! if there was a “what convinced you to buy Minecraft” question on a survey I’m sure it would feature your name a few times.
What’s suprised me about this game is that exploring is just as fun underground as it is in the rather lovely overworld. I feared at first that the underground would be a drap wasteland existing only for tediously mining resources but i’ve probably spent just as time exploring the extensive cave system connecting to my home as I have above ground. This suits me fine as it means that just wandering around the caves nets me enough resources to do a few experiments with minetracks (at least a simple small slope from my house to a lake near my spawn pipe where I’m planning to build a wee monument) and some building without having to just mine a huge striaght strip to get tons of resources to build (which i would start getting bored of quickly).
Short version, there’s something here for everyone; whether you’re planning on building something stupidly amazing or just like a wander.
17/09/2010 at 20:49 Huggster says:
It has echoes of Ultima Underworld – therefore IT ROCKS
17/09/2010 at 17:28 MonkeyMonster says:
There lieth the bones of a man who foolishly dug beneath him over lava :D
17/09/2010 at 17:35 Will Tomas says:
I’m currently without a proper PC, and only have my Dell Mini 9 netbook for company (with all the usual small processor/Intel GMA 950 etc) but held off getting this because it’s been suggested that the size of the world means it wouldn’t run. However, if Minecraft could run on a netbook I’d be all over it. Has anyone had any success? Would it be remotely playable?
17/09/2010 at 17:40 Polysynchronicity says:
Try the free version to get an idea of how it runs. The graphics aren’t really more intensive on the paid, infinite-map version, but as your map gets bigger memory will be more of an issue, and CPU usage spikes whenever you get close to the edge and it has to generate more terrain for you.
Right now I am playing it on a pentium D with 4gb ram, and although I have no issues graphics-wise I do get occasional slowdown when exploring outwards and it takes ~5-10 seconds when I load my 30mb map (it takes a while and a good bit of wandering for the map to get that big though).
17/09/2010 at 19:56 Will Tomas says:
Success! It works on a netbook! There goes all my free time…
Actually, with the fog on and the graphics set to fast, it’s only had one or two frame-skipping moments, and nothing that serious. It’s not only playable, but actually really good. So anyone wanting it for a netbook, buy it!
17/09/2010 at 20:39 Casimir's Blake says:
Will, that’s interesting to know. I’d have to take back what I said about Atom’s then. But perhaps also it’s down to what you or I would term playable. I have a laptop with a CPU and GPU that are certainly more capable than the hardware of a Mini 9, but perhaps it’s the resolution? At 1280×800, all lowest graphics, I rarely achieved more than 15fps when outside and it simply wasn’t fun.
17/09/2010 at 21:59 Will Tomas says:
I think it probably is the resolution. I’m playing it maximised-windowed, and my resolution is 1024×600, as per my netbook screen. I seem to find (having had experience trying to play games supposedly over the spec limit on it) that resolution is by far and away the biggest thing for making something playable. So my guess would be that you’re pushing it too much.
It seems to depend on how long I’ve been playing, but I wouldn’t be playing it if it stuttered. Basically I can play it with fog and only get stutter where there is a lot onscreen, and even then, with the fog it is fine. The only problems happen if I take the fog off (which I do occasionally to see how far from home I am) then try and run around. It’s been very fluid generally though.
17/09/2010 at 17:50 Bob says:
How do I put lava in a bucket? So I can put it in the furnace :-/
17/09/2010 at 18:02 Rich says:
Make a bucket and ‘use’ it on the lava. Same as water I guess.
17/09/2010 at 18:05 Bob says:
I tried that, but nothing. So tried getting closer and went up in flames, cue a minute of me bunny hopping around in a panic :-(
17/09/2010 at 18:08 Robert says:
You have to do it on ‘still’ water (and lava I guess), so the non-streaming kind.
17/09/2010 at 18:10 Shamanic Miner says:
The lava or water has to a source block, these won’t have a flow animation.
I also burned myself trying the same thing.
17/09/2010 at 18:27 SheffieldSteel says:
You are using an iron bucket right? ‘Cos the wood, it is no good.
17/09/2010 at 18:55 Bob says:
I was trying it on the flowing type, doh!
17/09/2010 at 18:00 Rich says:
I’m loving using this map renderer to generate isometric maps of the world. It can obviously plot the surface, but also caves (in some colour code I don’t understand), pools of lava, and the location of certain blocks, e.g. gold deposits*. It’s like a geological survey.
*Turns out minerals are pretty evenly spread throughout the world. I was kind of hoping to see deep long seems I could follow.
17/09/2010 at 18:43 JB says:
Rich, try rendering your map in only mossy cobblestone. The number of dungeons is staggering.
17/09/2010 at 20:49 Casimir's Blake says:
The trick for finding dungeons is to render block type 48 only. Also do this oblique-angled, and layer it on top of a standard oblique-angled day render… gives a nice way to find dungeons. :)
18/09/2010 at 10:14 Rich says:
Ah, I wondered what those very square caves where.
17/09/2010 at 18:18 Mart says:
You had me at “fun”! Cha-ching!
Are you somehow getting commission for driving so many to prepurchase it? (I kid… I kid…)
17/09/2010 at 18:21 Bassism says:
Quinns, now that you’ve finished up experiencing the single player side of Minecraft, you really owe it to yourself to come visit the RPS server. Not only are there a lot of talented people doing really cool things, but it’s a rather different experience again from single player, and again the sort of thing that should define PC gaming.
Plus we have a never-ending supply of iron for you!
17/09/2010 at 18:33 Rich says:
Can you actually craft things on the multi-player? I tried chopping down a tree three or four times and it kept popping back, without giving me any wood.
17/09/2010 at 18:41 Tei says:
Yea, everything works in SMP. Some things are a bit buggy… doors, furnaces (to be maybe fixed this friday), and reddust based logic gates. Everything you will se on the unofficial RPS minecraft server is done by hand exactly like playing SP in peacefull mode.
17/09/2010 at 18:44 JB says:
The lag causes the blocks to reappear for a few seconds a lot of the time. If you wait, the block will disappear again (properly this time) and you will get the resources.
17/09/2010 at 22:24 El Stevo says:
@ Tei
How did you guys smelt all the sand for the huge glass structures is the furnaces don’t work?
18/09/2010 at 00:04 PK says:
If you tried breaking a block near the spawn on the SMP server, they always rebuild. Just move a short distance away and you should be fine. That is, unless the server owner designates classes such as guest/builder/admin etc. Guests rarely have the option to break/build.
17/09/2010 at 18:32 MrWolf says:
The screenshot of the Promised Land made my cry in a manner exactly like that of a little girl.
20/09/2010 at 14:05 JellyfishGreen says:
In other gaming news, the soundtrack from “Victoria” was released today. The sample of “The New World” was a good backdrop for Quinn’s explorations.
composer’s page http://www.andreaswaldetoft.com/?page_id=544
17/09/2010 at 18:34 Guardian-X says:
Quinns, your new permanent assignment at RPS is to live in the world of Minecraft. These types of write-ups bring much cheer to my day.
17/09/2010 at 19:03 Supertonic says:
Minecraft is beautiful. Genuinely beautiful. I can’t praise it highly enough. Buy it. For the tiny amount you’ll pay you’ll more than get your money’s worth of entertainment, a truly unique experience. It’s awesome.
17/09/2010 at 19:17 Matt says:
Iron Quin, your entries convinced me to buy the game. I signed up on their website and purchased it earlier today – looking forward to giving it a play over the weekend.
Thank you for these articles! They’ve been a great way to get a feel for the game.
17/09/2010 at 19:18 Supertonic says:
PS yes I’m gay for Minecraft.
17/09/2010 at 20:19 Rox says:
The dangers of digging down are many. The obvious thing is finding yourself swimming in a pool of lava. But you may also end up dropping into an enormous cave, tall enough to kill you from the fall. If you do survive, it may happen that said cave has proven to be unusually capable of spawning monsters and you find yourself surrounded by 12 creepers. Even something like falling into an underground river can be hazardous when you lose track of where you came from in the moment of disorientation as it carries you away into the darkness.
But yes, the worst thing that can happen is that you fall into lava. Why? Because if any pickup touches lava, it burns and disappears. All your tools, all your armor, all your food, and any iron/gold/diamond you found on your way down will disappear forever in the blink of an eye. You won’t get anything back if you die in lava.
17/09/2010 at 20:23 psyk says:
Quin have you been clearing the dirt and gravel out of the caves you’ve visited? am finding a lot doing that.
17/09/2010 at 20:33 JonFitt says:
Just went to Notch’s blog to see what’s coming, and had the misfortune of reading the comments!
Phew, what a bunch of self-important a-holes!
Apparently, free updates throughout alpha is code for “I get to scream at you like an angry football fan when you don’t produce things”.
17/09/2010 at 21:26 psyk says:
I just had to check it out, wish I hadn’t, people are so so sad.
17/09/2010 at 20:43 Baltech says:
Seriously, I read the first part of this series, I bought Minecraft and now I’m completely addicted. Thank you very much. This is the very finest game I have ever played. Until now I’ve spend so much time digging myself a mine that could compare to Moria. I built myself a castle with a wizard’s tower and a massive wall at a lake, including a moat. I’ve always wanted a moat. But now I just want to go exploring, seeing what’s out there.
Damn, this is just the alpha. What will this game be when it reaches its full potential? Ye gods, there is just so much hours in a day!
17/09/2010 at 20:47 Wandered In says:
You are now one of my heroes, Tei. That was genuinely beautiful.
Sagan would be proud (and maybe a minecraft fan)
17/09/2010 at 20:54 brio says:
I actually found today a really huge cave with two boxes and a fire on the ground which i didnt place there. i could not yet open the boxes, cause as soon as i touched the green ground around them, zombies spawned and killed me. Didnt found back to the cave yet….
17/09/2010 at 21:05 psyk says:
You found a dungeon :D mine had spiders :(
17/09/2010 at 21:15 Tranderas says:
Actually there’s quite a few different ways to play as the game is now. You can go exploring without bothering to build your own house, for the sake of exploring; you can build a house and act like it’s your castle, including rooms for guests, farms to raise your own food, guest houses, etc etc etc. You can use InvEdit to edit blocks into your inventory and make your own fantastic place- an entire world your own way. Or you can do like the video on the Minecraft home page and build a roller coaster. You can do all of this with or without the monsters to make the experience truly unique for you.
There’s so many ways to play Minecraft, and all of them are fun. Besides, even having more than one way to play gives it more variety than many full-release games- at 1/4 the price.
17/09/2010 at 21:31 psyk says:
Anyone know what the saddle looking item is used on?
17/09/2010 at 21:35 JonFitt says:
Piggy Rodeo!
17/09/2010 at 21:34 Berzee says:
@psyk: it’s the pigs, finn!
17/09/2010 at 21:39 psyk says:
:D Right straight back down the mine to retrieve the saddle
17/09/2010 at 21:40 Devan says:
Quintin, if you ever do get around to interviewing Notch, can I request that you throw in some questions about his development process, especially when he was a one-man-show. I’m very curious how he manages his own time and adds features so quickly while still keeping the game from losing its focus or becoming imbalanced or “out of tune”. Did he plan everything out beforehand, or does he make it up as he goes along?
It’s perplexing. He’s either very organized, very lucky, or just plain brilliant.
18/09/2010 at 10:33 Rich says:
Oh, if only Dwarf Fortress had the same kind of clearly thought out development.
Actually besides my moaning, it’s interesting to compare the different way they’ve grown.
17/09/2010 at 21:47 noobnob says:
Oh screw waiting, I’m reactivating my credit card and buying this game ASAP.
17/09/2010 at 22:08 Anonymous says:
“Why aren’t there more games about exploring? I’m not talking learning the corners and shortcuts of some dull “open” world here. I’m talking about games which let you pick your way through a world that’s every bit as secretive, hostile and surprising as our own. I’m talking about letting the player get lost. I’m talking about making a world so tactile, so absorbing and so believable that an exciting discovery can be as simple as a big-ass tree.”
This is how I felt about the MMO Vanguard. Sure, the gameplay isn’t as good as some other games out there, but it does give you this wonderful feeling of being a pioneer in a new land. There are some zones in the game that are almost completely devoid of monsters (at least there were a few years ago, when I last played). Of course, I played a marathon session on the day it came out and the server would tell me when I was the first person to discover a zone, which added to the mystique and enchantment of exploration. But I’m sure it’s fun in any case.
18/09/2010 at 20:07 Tei says:
Vanguard has some excellent exploring.
For explorers:
Roll sorcer, can levitate, be invisible and other tricks that are invaluable wen you will cross are of high level mobs that can onehit you. Make a dark elf, because his continent is awesome. Level a some levels, and then go to the south exploring the whole continent.
AMAZING.
I did that at release, wen almost everything was new and others players where just leveling, so I was alone and maybe the first to visit these areas.
17/09/2010 at 22:10 ab says:
Noctis 3 anyone?
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_54/325-Footprints-in-Moondust
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis
Other devs beat him to it..and made an entire universe for exploration..for free too..
17/09/2010 at 22:30 FernandoDante says:
I don’t really get this point of this game…
So you go around exploring and collecting stuff. That’s it?
And is everyone collectively ignoring how unbelievably ugly this game is?
17/09/2010 at 22:37 FernandoDante says:
Oh, I just realized this is an “INDIE” game.
17/09/2010 at 22:40 Dominic White says:
You explore, you build, you fight, you struggle to survive at night as the armies of the undead rise to destroy everything you hold dear.
Also, why you gotta be such a dick?
17/09/2010 at 22:43 FernandoDante says:
I did sound like a dick, didn’t I?
But I still don’t see the deal.
18/09/2010 at 00:56 Frye says:
@Fernando:
I’m just guessing here, but:
The simplicity of the graphics could well be the price you pay for being able to change the landscape. Not many games allow you to do this. Graphics hardware does not like geometry (in video memory) to be changed all the time. Typically stuff that changes shape often is stored in regular memory.
RPS: There could be a nice article in hardware limitations stifling creativity. If only i could write.
18/09/2010 at 02:32 jaheira says:
Fracture managed it. On five year old hardware.
18/09/2010 at 09:49 Dominic White says:
Fracture also had a development budget of millions, and a development team of dozens. Also, at standard european prices, it cost 7 times what Minecraft currently does.
It was also rather naff.
18/09/2010 at 10:21 Huggster says:
Never slate how ugly a game is. Some of my favourite gaming memories were on Spectrum 48k and Atari ST.
It a completely dynamic world you can mould – like red faction but constructive rather than destructive.
Its also reminds us of Ultima Underworld – I need to say no more after that.
18/09/2010 at 10:40 Rich says:
You can forgo ultra-shiny graphics if the gameplay is really good. Try to go the other way and you end up with MW2. There are things you can do in this game that no other game allows. For that I’m willing to overlook the… stylised graphics.
It being ‘INDIE’ only matters because, up to relatively recently, he was a one man team.
17/09/2010 at 22:30 latterman says:
One day i decided to leave my glorious castle i had built and ventured forth into the blocky horizon. Packed with tools, armor and weapons made of iron i wandered day and night, in awe of the wonders i saw. One day the sun rose and showed one of the most beautiful natural structures i’d witnessed so far. I made some steps take to see it in its full extent. And fell straight into a pit. With lava at the end. I died, and all my posessions burnt with me. And my savegame corrupted (because i tried to savescum, bad idea)
Now it’s everything from scratch again and i don’t mind it a bit.
17/09/2010 at 22:38 cxseven says:
Something that would make this game even more awesome would be reasonably intelligent NPCs… say DWARVES? Notch already made a pretty good game with swarming NPCs called “Breaking the Tower” ( http://www.mojang.com/notch/ld12/breaking/ ).
To control them, how about being able to “hijack” individual dwarves on your team and thereby guide their activities..
I wish this thing were open source!
18/09/2010 at 20:04 Tei says:
WAIT… Notch did “Breaking the Tower”??? .. .I love that small game!
17/09/2010 at 22:54 Haywood Jablomi says:
Meh, I tried it out.
The servers are too crowded, the older players are totally overpowered, and most of the NPCs are assholes. It’s mostly just pointless grinding and there’s no respawn.
17/09/2010 at 22:56 Haywood Jablomi says:
Oops. That was supposed to be an answer to the Game of Life. Minecraft is a better alternative any day.
17/09/2010 at 23:06 AsubstanceD says:
If one is friends with the pigs, is there other delicious and less murderous methods of sustenance?
17/09/2010 at 23:17 floven1 says:
there is mushroom soup.
one mushroom of each type above a bowl
a bowl is three wood planks in a U shape
17/09/2010 at 23:17 TimA says:
Yes! Mushroom soup and bread, which you must grow the wheat for. I’m not aware of any others.
This series is simply wonderful, thanks.
17/09/2010 at 23:08 floven1 says:
saturdays update will probably help with falling off edges :)
i soooooo hope he implements either biomes or scuba gear
17/09/2010 at 23:10 floven1 says:
i say scuba gear because i have an underwater house in every world i play
17/09/2010 at 23:24 Rob says:
Funny you should mention that, Harlander: one of the ideas Notch mentioned on his Twitter feed after visiting Valve was that Minecraft could have multiple planets.
17/09/2010 at 23:27 Rob says:
Argh, I fail at replying to comments correctly. >.<
18/09/2010 at 00:07 RiptoR says:
There are some very sweet map/savegame editors available on the MC forums.
My first world was covered in snow, and after a couple of hours I got tired of seeing mostly white things. So I used MineEdit to turn of the falling snow (which covers up everything in snow pretty fast), and then I used MCEdit to remove all snow from the ground (MineEdit’s replace function is bugged and fucks up the world).
Now I have a greener world in which I enjoy using good looking texture packs more.
18/09/2010 at 10:45 Rich says:
I don’t mind the snow. I live on an island and can walk to the mainland. Also, I spend most of my time in my mine.
18/09/2010 at 00:41 benjamin says:
I checked the Minecraft website earlier today and found that 5000+ people had bought it in the last 24 hours. Well done Mr Quinn, well done.
18/09/2010 at 00:48 Barrow says:
If anyone is interested in helping me test it out, I set up a dedicated Minecraft server for RPS readers. Just select “Multiplayer” and enter “barrow.gotdns.org” as the address.
Can’t promise it won’t be laggy until I’ve had a chance to test it a bit, but anyone who wants to join is welcome.
18/09/2010 at 04:02 Skinlo says:
Apart from the weird issue of not being able to cut the trees below a certain altitude, all good! :)
18/09/2010 at 01:44 Kael_ says:
“I would love to see more challenging climbing mechanics in games, the need to gather supplies before you venture out, and the ability to scrounge them up as you go. ”
Kinda like Monster Hunter? ;)
See you in Minecraft,
-Kael
18/09/2010 at 02:03 Anonymous says:
Heya. Since you said that you’ve read a few comments down here before, I thought I might throw in some more of that sage-like wisdom you’re looking for.
In a video you posted, and from a screenshot in this… Blog-thing, I see you’re still attacking things like spiders and pigs with flint and pickaxes. Well, don’t. If you use a tool or weapon for something it isn’t built for, it will degrade twice as quickly as it would otherwise. For example, you could poke a spider with a sword 50 times before the sword breaks. But you can only break 25 pieces of stone or dirt with the sword before it breaks, since it isn’t made for mining or shoveling. (Note, these numbers are just used as an example, and are not accurate representations of the durability of any kinds of tools/weapons.) Likewise, you can poke a pig 25 times with a pickaxe, but it might be smarter to mine away 50 pieces of rock/ore with it. I hope this helps with your tool conservation in the future. Oh, and don’t forget: Shovels are useful for clearing out large amounts of dirt in a fairly short amount of time- pickaxes, not so much.
18/09/2010 at 02:21 Ardela says:
If you’re going to buy it anyway, why not buy it now instead of paying twice as much for it later? You get all the updates and everything else for free anyway.
18/09/2010 at 02:29 Lipedal says:
“Why aren’t there more games about exploring?”
And this is when a chill runs through my spine. This single phrase is the point of my whole game design work – which, as of day, hasn’t started yet. The fact is, I’m just some brazilian student who left a Computer Science college and now studies Graphic Design in the hope of someday making games. It sadens me to know that I will probably end up working at some advergames or edutainment agency – that is, IF I ever get to work with game design -, but while that doesn’t happen, I blow the dust off my blog now and then, writing some ideas, considerations and discussions about game design and it’s state of art.
“So what? I don’t read Portuguese”, you’re saying. Yeah, probably, but I’m just trying to give some feedback on this amazing Mine The Gap series, which totally caught my attention while running through google reader. I congratulate you, sir, and totally agree that exploration should be a more recurrent theme in game design.
I dream of playing (and I dream of make it sometime during my life) a game where you’re a photographer in Rio de Janeiro (I don’t know RJ yet, shame on me) and have the right to explore everywhere, finding stuff and being amazed, a kind of a Beyond Good and Evil meets GTA. Say it, back in 2004, you too picked up a car and went to explore the wild parts of San Andreas, just to have a walk. No enemies, no time limits, only you and the unknown. And what about a Pokémon Snap meets Jurassic Park 2 minus the army, having to survive in a wild island full of different types of dinossaurs and, maybe, “catch ‘em all”? Imagine this with some fancy graphics and a good job in inducing immersion. But no, while that doesn’t happen you can play Call of Duty: Black Ops, just to visit Vietnam for the eleventh time and spend some time killing people.
I recently saw some beautiful pics of some game to come, maybe The Witcher 2 or some yet-to-be-released MMORPG: it had AMAZING sceneries. Beautiful, brilliant, floating-mountain-like. And then we will play it and run past the amazing scenery, which will serve as support for some urgent mission of “getting from here to there killing them in the run” – or, if it is a MMORPG, “killing 25 of them”. It’s like an artistic, beautiful, well-crafted glass of wine, full of it, and you get it down in one gulp and say “more!”, barely seeing the glass in the process. People tend to do this. Maybe it’s just natural, as long as it had wine on it. Maybe if you put this same person in a closed, sunlit room, alone with the empty glass, they will actually look at it. And it will be beautiful. As you said by Day Two of Mine The Gap – and I readily wrote down -, “Sunlight! I find myself somewhat stunned. It’s incredible how evocative games can be when they model nature, then make you rely on it.”
Some more minor, easier-to-achieve dream: a 2D game simmulating a travel in a cruise ship, with rooms and pools and bars and secret passages to the kitchen, where your only objective is to enjoy the ride while it lasts (20 minutes? 40 minutes?) and see what’s your final outcome. You can end the game rich, accompanied by a beatiful, spritey woman, and tanned, while your roommate’s character ends it bearded, punched and with dreadlocks. And then you will want to play it again just to try different things, just by exploring.
One last one: you and a friend get together in the same PC (had this idea after playing indie game Dungeons of Fayte) and play Bob and Jack, two desert farmers who one day note that’s not a life worth living and decide to go on an adventure (much like your Iron Quinns did). Their house is in the middle of nowhere, so your first decision is whether to start exploring north, south, east or west (much like Notch did). 2D, top-down, all pixelatey, WASD and keyboard arrows; a few screens later Bob and Jack see grass, and then vegetation, and then other adventurers or middle-of-nowhere-living people and they interact with each other in forms that will (much like The Game About a Cruise Ship will do) affect the final outcome of the game – simple things like Bob ended it married while Jack got a nice red shirt (much like Dungeons of Fayte did). I believe a scenery like this will most certainly astonish the players with the simpler of discoveries. Learning to jump and to roll – being it useful or not – would be treated as the most heroic of the achievements. Finding a dog, who would follow the couple and bark now and then, would be a most simpatic outcome change. Believe it or not, one of my annotations about this game idea (entitled En Passant for now, which is not portuguese) states “uma das telas pode ter uma árvore muito grande, talvez ocupando mais de uma tela”, which stands for “one of the screens could have one very huge tree, maybe occupying more than one screen”, which would astonish the players much like you did.
Treat this wall of text as an personal parenthesis to that italic “Why” of yours that sent a chill down my spine. I feel happy for discovering MineCraft this week and owning it now, but happier to see an opinion like that in a cool website like RPS. When some good exploration games start to come out some time from now I will tell to my friends “there was a guy called Notch, a hero called Quinns and a beautiful blocky valley…”
This is my first wall of text written in english, it probably have stuff written wrong, but I hope someone get to read it all. Oh, and if any of you is an indie game designer, feel free to take any of these ideas, implement it and send me a copy – or to ask for help, of course. Oh, and put “Sup, Lipedal!” hidden somewhere in the credits just so I can show to my friends and say “haha, see?!” :D
18/09/2010 at 04:06 Skinlo says:
Nice post, no major errors, just a few bits of grammar and spelling :)
Good ideas, I do feel that most games nowadays force you to move forward, always looking for the next thing. Sometimes I want to just slow down, and actually look at the world.
18/09/2010 at 09:13 Quintin Smith says:
Yeah, what Skinlo said. Nice post, man!
It’s a really interesting thought experiment to imagine what certain big games would be like if they were designed without any combat whatsoever in mind. There’s totally an article in that, actually.
18/09/2010 at 10:39 Huggster says:
Well I will be honest with you – Metro 2033 would have been even better with no combat. I played the whole game as stealth exploration, slowly taking in the atmosphere, and really enjoyed it.
I also played Amnesia exactly the same way (slowly and cautiously), and did not die once. It was perfect with no combat. I don’t think I ever saw one of those “things” up close, therefore the “threat of the unknown” was held up throughout the runtime.
This goes back years – Ultima 7 for me was an exploration game, I could not care less for the combat. I just enjoyed finding all the little “set pieces” around the map which told their own stories. Bioshock – again I walked through rapture slowly and absorbed the atmosphere. What would Bioshock have been like as a real survival horror, and you had no weapons? A masterpiece? Probably.
A game with no player directed violence is a risk not many designers and developers are willing to make. There is one instance in Penumbra: BP where you do a violent act – and by jove does it make you feel something, how the result of your intervention doing a violent act should REALLY make you feel.
19/09/2010 at 07:56 Lipedal says:
You guys totally got my point. Unfortunately, I’m one of these impatient guys who goes for the wine if there’s a glass full of it, moves forward towards the “objective” and slays the 25 baddies without enjoying the scenery for more than some seconds, even if that’s against my taste (congratulations for your willpower, Huggster). Maybe that’s why I want more games that have exploration at its core, and maybe that’s why I spent my saturday at Minecraft. Damn you.
But an article on this! Didn’t know that one, I’ll look for it.
18/09/2010 at 02:34 Lipedal says:
Oh crap, just saw the first error. Where’s the “edit comment and get back dignity” button when I need it?
18/09/2010 at 03:03 Ardela says:
Meh, this was in reply to someone else. Apparently I am not awake enough yet.
18/09/2010 at 03:22 ET says:
A wonderful game for explorers, you said?
That’s it, I’m buying the game. I trust your opinion on what pleases niche gamers, RPS!
(See you in forever, btw.)
18/09/2010 at 04:11 deriuqer says:
“I’m talking about letting the player get lost.”
Is your love of getting lost why you immediately built a beacon and started mining for compass components? :P
18/09/2010 at 05:39 Bloodshot says:
No, you’re wrong. 1: If you fall into lava, your stuff will burn
2:If you mine straight down, when you go to get your stuff you will need to fall quite a bit, possibly killing yourself
3:If you fall into a cave, again, you’ll take fall damage, again, and could get killed. By monsters too.
4: Why not just dig in a 2*1 to prevent all of this?
18/09/2010 at 05:42 Bloodshot says:
Ah, damn, I missed the reply button, didn’t I? Well, I was replying to the guy who said the people who say mining straight down are idiots.
18/09/2010 at 06:19 Kaebaron says:
Thank you for reminding me why I fell in love with this game in the first place.
18/09/2010 at 06:45 ZamFear says:
Gave in and bought. Dug down into the void beneath the world, so that’s where my trash is going :D
Do snowballs do any damage? I had some fun harassing a cow with them, but it didn’t seem to accomplish anything.
Also watched a chicken set itself on fire. I was burning the branches off a tree, and the chicken came out of nowhere, and jumped right into the conflagration. Stupid chicken.
18/09/2010 at 09:22 Fo0dNippl3 says:
After reading this, I kind of want Notch to add naturally occurring fog because the whole “misty morning beach” thing was really cool.
18/09/2010 at 12:46 Batolemaeus says:
I’d like you to consider this:
Spiders. Fog.
Fog Spiders.
Do you still want fog?
18/09/2010 at 10:20 Jo-Remi Madsen says:
This is a excellenty written journal of an exciting Mine Craft adventure. I found myself wanting to read more about Iron Quintin’s travels.
Notch, keep up the development! Quintin, keep up the adventure!
18/09/2010 at 10:34 Lizard man says:
Best thing is that Notch is adding an update today :D
This right here got me wanting to play the game again and for that, I salute you.
Now I am off to prepare my weekly sacrifice of 10 pigs in Notch’s honor, and possibly build a giant statue.
18/09/2010 at 15:38 Torgen says:
I’ve been collecting wool to build a giant wool statue to the Derp Sheep God. =)
18/09/2010 at 18:37 Lucas says:
FWIW, I think you should play with the default textures for the purposes of a first-time-out experiences blog like this. Minecraft is its own game, with its own style, and really great looking landscapes. It’s a disservice to Minecraft and the potential playerbase to paint it like The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past (the default is more natural looking). Mod whatever you want for your own playtime, or make a separate RPS post of the better looking texture packs (the 3D Dot Hero style is quite appealing).
18/09/2010 at 19:09 Elusive Pastry says:
Chalk me up as yet another sale due solely to Quinns’ most excellent write-up. I was up past 4am playing last night, damn him!
19/09/2010 at 01:34 Corg says:
This is awesome, can’ t wait for more! Game is great too!
19/09/2010 at 07:26 Captain_Donut says:
Use Win Rar i have now got 7 different texture packed versions of minecraft and sometimes deleting the notepad file from the texture pack when added to the jar file helps also if you have changed the jar file not the exe file you have to use that to run the game. If you get the folder named … then don’t copy it other this folder seemed to bring you to the folder the file you opened is in.
19/09/2010 at 19:34 Nick says:
Several hours into the game, after exploring and building up my home area a bit (castle walls/tower was what I went for), I found my walls assaulted by a silent green explody monster. I saw him from atop my tower hopping at the walls below, dangerously close to the doorway leading inside.
I did not possess a bow, or any other ranged weapon. So I thought, how am I do deal with this threat? If I engaged him, he would explode and take out half of my carefully-built tower — the craters pock-marking the rest of my island were testament enough to that.
So I began dropping sand blocks on him. I dropped one; it landed on next to him. I dropped another; it filled the other space at his feet, pinning him against the wall. I dropped two more, completely encasing him in sand. He suffocated and died.
I must have this game.
19/09/2010 at 22:46 Darkdobe says:
The nice thing about Creepers is that they can be killed even with swords, so long as you don’t let them to get -too- close (At which point they go boom)! Never would have thought of your sandy death method, however! I usually just grit my teeth and go in swinging.
19/09/2010 at 22:44 Darkdobe says:
Bought this game after the first installment. Holy hell – I’ve been unable to stop. I’ve started hollowing out an entire mountain to create myself a fortress, and when I get sidetracked (often) I go digging downwards into my off-site pit of doom. So far I’ve tunneled down what feels like a kilometer, discovered several natural caves, a dungeon, and at last lava!!
Suffice to say this is a glorious, glorious game everyone needs.
Admittedly, after I got tired of zombies and creepers (goddamn creepers) spawning -inside- my enormous fortress, I’ve been playing the game on peaceful while building, and cranking it up to hard when I go on my deep mining cave exploration expeditions.
If anyone’s interested to see the results of some dozen hours fooling around, the world file is here.
http://www.easy-share.com/1912337501/WorldX.rar
Just place it inside your C:\Users\USER\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves
As a full folder, and replace the X with a number that ain’t already taken.
The above is useful for anyone who needs to find and share their own saved worlds!
If you do give it a whirl, you ought to spawn somewhere inside the fortress or the mine (don’t recall which). The spawn point itself is a ways off, but I’ve laid out a trail of torches from the spawn to my mountain fort.
20/09/2010 at 12:33 H says:
I’ve been addicted to Minecraft for the last month.
The article is great but you should now try SMP. (Survival Multiplayer) its everything (mostly) in the single player but online-MP. It can be a bit tough getting on popular servers etc but you could always setup your own local-MP.
Hearing a skeleton shooting an arrow in the dark is the most terrifying thing i have experienced in a game ever. I don’t know why but it makes me jump EVERY time.
20/09/2010 at 22:55 bradur says:
You made me cry (of joy) with your words of Minecraft in the end. I love the game too 8).
20/09/2010 at 23:20 Hmm-Hmm. says:
The reason I resist buying this is somewhat similar to why I haven’t gotten Dwarf Fortress. I have the feeling I’ll not do much of anything. Or that I’ll grow bored rather quickly.
But with every post you edge me a little bit further towards the ‘do-buy (one day)’ point.