I recently purchase minecraft. I haven't played it too much yet. I was wondering what servers you play on? I'm kind of leery about playing on some random server and will probably just play solo for now.

I don't know how many other servers are still online, but I've been running one for a while for allegro.cc and a bunch of local friends:

Vanilla MC: mc.tomasu.org
Tekkit3: mc.tomasu.org:25566

To add to what Thomas said, if you type the address of the vanilla server into your browser, you will get the world map. I haven't tried it with the tekkit server address.

No map for the tekkit server. Haven't bothered. Would have to find some way to host both on port 80... The reason the mc server and map seem to be at the same address, is mc has a default port it connects to, so you don't need to put one in.

If you're new, then a few mods might make life easier for you:

1. modloader (you need this for all other mods - it just allows them to be loaded)
2. rei's minimap (a proper map of the world)
3. optifine (loads more graphical tweaks like clear water, mipmapping, and supports HD textures - I'd recommend sphax texture)
4. too many items (for when you are playing off-line) allows you to have a better creative mode, toggle times of the day, etc)

Just google them and the search will take you to the unofficial minecraft forum.

Yeah, I need to get on Tomasu's server again, but not had any motivation to dig because everyone has built places around my place so I will have to move in order to build a massive build like I wanted. A home away from home. Been digging, but keep running into everyone's tunnels .

Wow, what an amazing server. You guys have been busy! ...

I'm so new to this, I don't know how many times I rebuild a wall due to exploding creepers.

I have a small residence in the side of a mountain for now. (says "Roy Residence" on a sign at the door ). I haven't looked up recipes yet, been fun trying to figure them out on my own.

I'll probably have to move as it isn't far away from the spawn (a hill near a beach).

Can't miss my home, it is under the huge lava spire near spawn.

Ah, yeah, I seen that, I'll have to check it out. At one point I was standing on a pyramid someone made, I littered it with torches because I was out at night with no home yet. Then I found the entrance to it and cowered inside.

I died at one spot underground, fell too far, everything I had should still be strewn about I think. I just remade it all, I haven't a clue where it was I fell.

Dropped items despawn after a few minutes. You have to be quick to get your items back after you die.

I think my lava spire isn't as impressive as my 4 story castle with farm on the old server, but didn't spawn near any high mountains. Now have to find a new place to dig because everyone has built around me and dug so my massive underground house isn't so massive due to every one's tunnels around mine . Will get on later and go exploring for a second home locale to build on.

Did my sea level to max height manic miner statue make it to the new server, or is this a different one?

Think it is a new server.....not sure though. Here is the map thus far http://mc.tomasu.org/#/-12040/64/4536/-10/0/0

Would love to have an island like this all to myself to do some kind of massive build
http://mc.tomasu.org/#/4446/64/-6278/-3/0/0

Have that one then. I've already got some structures on the smaller island to the east, but that one is unclaimed. I don't think anyone else but me has even ventured into that part of the world.

Could my son join the server, he keeps pestering me to let him join a minecraft server that is run by somebody I know so he can join in? he's only 6 but he knows the rules for minecraft multi-player and doesn't grief or encroach on land. He knows absolutely every single thing about every block type and how to make everything from electric sticky-piston doors to automated farmers and mob traps, more than I do, tbh

Okay, just the fun part will be getting to it.

Don't see what it would hurt. We would just have to censor ourselves language wise .

We've already got some pretty young kids on the server. Feel free to let him join

Thanks. I think he's already spotted his house location.

You people and your free time.

Does anyone know who padraictoomey and Ninja_Adam are?

I will give you a diamond block in game if you can tell me

Wow, I died too far far from spawn, lost everything... starting to regret buying this.

Forgot to make a bed? Also if it takes less than 5 minutes to get back to where you were, your stuff will still be there.

I made a bed, just not where I was. And I used a boat to get there so... no way I could get back, plus the sun was setting just to add to the fun. I think maybe I'll stick to programming. Maybe give that game another go another day. I guess you have to carry a bed around with you or something.

If you're going exploring, it might be wise to carry one. If you're making a new base, you SHOULD have one there, and use it before you get a chance to die.

If your stuff dropped far away from where you respawn, you actually have tons of time to get your stuff back, as the area it's in will have been unloaded from memory. The five minute limit won't be imposed until it gets loaded back again when a player enters the chunk. Just hope that nobody else happens to go there.

Just one isn't much help, as you need to carry it on you to redeploy each night. Then when you reclaim it the next morning, you have nowhere to respawn to. It's best just to be very cautious when exploring new territory. Or, do what I do and wear a full set of diamond armour with each of the various resistances on the items.

ninja_adam is my son (as is StephenWalker), did he do something naughty?

no idea about the other.

Thankfully I really haven't gotten too much done in this game. Except for some iron armor, it will be a pain to get made again as it seems like this server has been mined to death already. I dug down in a tunnel one night and ran into 3 skellys, a spider and a zombie all in the same location, lets just say it didn't turn out well for me. Thankfully at that time it was just under my dwelling so getting back down wasn't a problem. Fighting them off and escaping was... but...

It still seems like a frustrating system to me, to respawn so far, basically penalized for exploring, and I love to explore. I guess I'll have to make extra chests and store all that I don't need before hand.

well, you do spawn at your bed so as long as you know where your goods were you can find them again (plus if you have minimap installed you can set markers). There's also plenty mods that recover your goods on death or even place a marker on the screen showing where you died.

Unlikely, I just didn't recognize the name. Someone decided to have a little fun on the tekkit server. Completely destroyed to player's bases. So I checked out the server log, and there was only two names I didn't recognize, the other name got blacklisted.

That needs a server mod for SMP.

I just assumed he meant single player not just multi.

I was using the standard minecraft as tekkit is a pain in the arse when you want to swap it back and include your own mods. Would be nice to have some commands available on the standard mc like /list and /tp

Those both exist on standard if you're an OP.

Also, the tekkit launcher supports launching a vanila world. You are also able to drop new mods into the tekkit mods folder. It's really quite nice. But you have to be careful, sometimes there are risks for item id conflicts if a given mod doesn't use bukkit or forge.

how do you merge the worlds then? or are there two separate servers?

tbh, I gave up on the tekkit launcher as half the time it tells me it couldn't download and the rest of the time I got sick of constantly downloading packages.

Two separate servers.

Odd, I haven't seen that. It rarely asks to download anything.

Though at one point their server was overloaded and things were slow, or not working, but that's been fixed.

That said, I've also use "Magic Launcher" for vanila minecraft and it is rather nice. It'll auto patch your minecraft mods, and let you set up a few other things. It's also the only way I've been able to log in to my server properly when its in offline mode. Otherwise it doesn't match nicks properly, as if the vanila launcher doesn't send the nick at all if you connect offline.

I'll check that out.

What I want is a little tool where it presents me with a list of mods I have and updates the minecraft.jar and copies the relevant resource and mod folder files to the correct place (e.g. single player commands is a jar for the mod folder not to go into minecraft.jar)

The MagicLauncher handles updates to minecraft.jar, and it always does the auto-patching of mods on every startup I think, or at the very least it does it when it thinks it needs to (minecraft update, new mod added, mod removed) but I'm betting it just does it every time.

But it does let you add the mods in the gui itself, so you don't have to drop the mod into the mod folder yourself I don't think. And it detects if its a forge mod, or real mod where it has to mod the minecraft jar itself.

It worked for rei's minimap and OptiFine when I tried it out.

Well, someone suggested that I check for my goods where I died because if nobody has been in that zone, they may not have despawned, I went and checked and lo and behold they were all there, along with two skellys guarding them. But I managed to get the stuff back and built quite a few beds along the way!

I also took the time to install the mods suggested, those waypoints are helpful. Although now t hat terrain vanishing, while interesting at first, is starting to get annoying.

It seems to happen more when there are several people on.

Are you talking about missing chunks? That is quite annoying.

Yup.

I don't usually mention minecraft videos and techniques, but I've just spotted this one and it's really clever and useful: iron golem infinite iron generator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xE04Ui90sQY#!

Not missing chunks, I have seen that, disconnect/reconnect fixes that. It's the vanishing terrain and buildings, the textures disappear, like they're totally transparent, you can see under ground but still walk on the ground that is there, you just can't see it for a few moments. I may have to reset my settings and maybe add in mods one at a time to see which is doing this maybe.

If its not just a texture here or there thats missing, but a whole bunch, its probably another form of missing chunk (blocks are still there, but you can't see them, rather than nothing at all there).

I routinely get nasty texture glitches on my laptop with OptiFine installed. Sadly, OptiFine is the thing that makes the game fast enough to run on my laptop at all. But what I do get to see are completely corrupted textures, like the uv values are completely messed up (a crap load of textures are applied to a single face), parts of objects go missing, or entire objects go missing. Mostly its just chests that it happens with, but its still rather annoying.

If it's optifine than maybe I'll remove it. It gets very annoying to the point where I can't move until it redraws it normally or who knows what I could run in to or fall off of.

{"name":"606307","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/5\/55126dd5ae3903c44e7588be2d7ae357.png","w":960,"h":510,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/5\/55126dd5ae3903c44e7588be2d7ae357"}

That's what I see.

Edit: I installed a different version of Optifine and it seems to have fixed the problem. I was using the multi-core version, so I switched to the first one listed on their site. I can notice a slight difference in speed, but no graphical errors like in the above screenshot.