Have any of you played Minecraft? I've been playing the development version for about 2 weeks now non-stop. It's like a mix between a roguelike, Elder scrolls, and a lego set. It's still very early in development, but if you're looking for something fun, check it out.

P.S, if any of you are playing the Indev version, let me know and I'll post my savefile.

Yeah, I tried it a while ago, but back then it had nothing more than removing and placing blocks. This looks really promising! Do you need to purchase it to play the version you are playing?
[edit]
Trying out indev now, this seems cool!

Looks cute. I dig the blocky presentation; that's right up my alley.

Same. Looks like an interesting game.

It's not quite up my alley but it's a ways down my tunnel.

I bought it (cheap anyway), to try the indev version. Pretty fun! Works crap on mac though (cant save), so kind of useless as a time waster at work :/ I did manage to build a pretty neat tower before digging down into lava and dying

I'll give it a proper shot when I get home. Seems fun! Can't wait for it to become an actual game

I noticed he has like 4500 purchases! wow. He should be able to live on that for a while. Always fun when Swedish game developers succeed

You paid money to buy an alpha product? ... wow

That looks really awesome! Unfortunately:

I'm at j0rb (just testing to see how it loads and whether it would work) and it's possible I don't have the right version of Java installed. I don't know. Maybe I'll have better luck when I try at home.

I'd be willing to pay to support the development of this game though. Not retail price for a mainstream game ($30 - $60), but somewhere between $2 and $10 in its current state.

That's strange. I can load and save here on my mac. In both safari and firefox. (osx 10.6 if that matters)

I have been a paying player for a week or two. Love it, even if some of the bugs can be a bit problematic. But it's alpha and they are usually fixed within a day or two.

Interesting project. Unfortunatelly it wouldn't load here.

I figured I'd pay to try to indev version (considering it means I allegedly get to play all subsequent versions, addons, expansions, etc., at no extra cost). Came to about CAD$15, but I think that's fair if all goes well.

Hopefully I can get it actually running at home. The indev version throws the same exception here at j0rb.

Apologies for the off topic post, but are you guys in some kind of cult together or something?

I reckon you are onto something there, me reckons they are Cthulhu devotees.

"That which is not dead, yet can eternal lie."

Hai guyze wats going on in this thred?

(In case you didn't know, my avatar is a squid's eye)

X-G, your avatar is missing, but everyones works.

The game looks good btw, except it looks too much like run and jump Zelda style gameplay with the ability to break rocks, which works for about 5 minutes but I cant imagine constantly breaking open walls as fun.

Turn on animated avatars in your settings, you nincompoop.

I had to go to http://www.allegro.cc/cc/forums-settings and set "Avatar Display" to "Show all avatars" to see it.

mEmO and Jonatan: congratulations! The council has approved your memberships, pending your avatar upgrades.

Actually, I'm just a sucker for silly trends and when I saw my post followed two squid avatars in a row, I had to change mine.

It would be kind of awesome if everyone on the forum had a squid (or squid-like) avatar... It might be a bit of a mindfuck for newcomers

Your response will be answered by a registered squid in the order that it was received...

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Mine works too ? tehehahaha I have a picture and I do not show them (mostly for surfing without problem at work, It's incredible how people think you are working when there are no avatar in a forum.

I'm pleased to announce that Minecraft does seem to be running at home.

** EDIT **

Am I expected to just experiment with materials to craft stuff? I hate that kind of game... The tutorial seems grayed out.

Holy crap! What are the system requirements for this game? I tried to play, only to get 100% CPU usage, and at some point, Chrome asking to close Java (once it can ask however)

I'm in.

source: http://420.thrashbarg.net/mcnaughton-fine-art-one-nation-under-god-parody-jesus-cthulhu-blood-monsters.jpg

At first I thought the cave was randomly generated, but then the guy started digging. So is that the gist of what you do? Do you have to dig out the entire world, or are parts of the cave already existent?

The levels are randomly generated (Or at least "generated"...). There are some voids underground that exist for you to discover, but they're relatively small from what I've seen (albeit I haven't gone deep).

I just read what you said and I yawned!

why not make a game about the residents of washington dc digging themselves out of 6 feet of snow, that would be funny. Then they could use John Deere brand snowmobiles and clean up the streets. Infact google street view might be useful after all.

Or how about a game with rabbits trying to steal a farmers carrots by digging from underneath?

I just found a huge underground cave filled with monsters, gems and lava

Of course, this game is under construction, so there's not that much to do yet. I'm hoping for some role-playing/roguelike elements (stats, advancement, a goal)

The game sort of reminds me of vagrant story. Most of it takes place in a cave or some dungeon with semi-random encounters and bosses. I heard it never went beyond expectations after it was released. Im just wondering how a walk through would be made for a game thats randomly generated, it would make conversation rather dull when no one could relate any battles to someone else playing the same game because half of it is different for each player.

Take a look at this: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Crafting

@mEmO: Thank you so much! I tried searching Google and their forums, but I couldn't find anything useful... Following the advice of a YouTube video, I managed to craft sticks or something once, but I couldn't get it to work again... The Wiki article looks like it will help a LOT.

No, seriously, you guys are paying $10 for a game that isn't finished? And it's written in Java? Plants vs. Zombies was like $10. Left 4 Dead was $10 on sale. World of Warcraft is free (for the first month or two). ... Am I missing something?

It's more of a sale price actually. Once the game is finished, it's supposed to be $20. Once it hits beta, it will be between the current and final price from what I read. I haven't bought it myself as the computer I would like to play it on can't play it.

decepto, welcome to the brother squid-hood.
Billybob, I can't try it here at work but it looks like the single-player is free.

The free versions (including multiplayer it seems) is an older version. You don't have the menu shown in the video, so you can't make new stuff.

...and for $15 you can get a finished used copy of vagrant story which is a lot more advanced than micecraft will ever be even if they spend 5 more years developing it.

There was a gameboy advance game a while back with simcity type gameplay and you could mine, create new machines and technologies from materials, and conquer new areas with those resources, this game would only be different in a way if it was an RPG, which for 10 dollars does not look too promising (for that genre). I think its a rip off.

yes I did say micecraft!

I'm happy to have made a contribution to one of the more noteworthy threads in Allegro.cc history

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I think you're underestimating this game by comparing it to a gameboy title or Vagrant Story. Can you create Turing Machines in Vagrant Story?

Nope, but how would that make the game interesting. I can only imagine that giving the game a puzzle aspect which is something every rpg has.

Can you create Turing machines in Minecraft!?

I'm pretty sure that some games have an abacus like Myst maybe. I dunno.

Minecraft ate my entire night last night. Literally, I stayed up until seven this morning.

EDIT:

I also can't get my inventory to open in Survival mode. All the other controls work fine.

Yeah! Browse through the minecraft forums. People are building all sorts of contraptions. With the different block mechanics, it's possible to create all the basic logic gates.

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I can't figure out how to use the workbench, so I can only make sticks and torches (and I can't get the torches to work ).

The latest build also seems to be unstable. Apparently that will be fixed "today or tomorrow" though.

Bam: You use the torches by equiping it and clicking the right button. You place it on a wall.

You also use the work bench by right-clicking on it.

Ah, you have to drop them and then "use" them. Thanks.

This is like first person Dwarf Fortress with quite a bit less depth to it. And yes, you can create Turing machines in Dwarf Fortress

Is there a way to heal yourself? I tried to box myself in a "cave" over night with the 2 torches you start with (because monsters spawn in darkness), but like suddenly this crazy green thing BURST THROUGH THE WALL and attacked me. It died somehow (I don't know how I could have killed it with a flower), but it left me with like 2 1/2 hearts (out of about 8 or 10) remaining and I have yet to figure out how to restore health...

If you read the crafting tutorial more carefully, you would know how

I just realized that you don't need to build stairs to go upward. You can just jump and place blocks below you, if you get the timing right. Or you can just look straight down and hold the jump and build button at the same time.

Is there anyway to use the arrows in the free survival mode?

Press tab?

OK, so I've managed to craft the basic wood based tools and managed to survive the night by tearing the walls of the spawn house down and building a smaller fortress on the roof with my stairs semi-disabled. However, the baddies are still alive when daybreak comes and I finally wonder outside... And I can't kill them all... They're too fast and destroy me... What do I do?!?!

Also, do you need to "level up" before making better tools? I've tried making tools out of the walls of the spawn point, but I can't... It sure looks like what they're made of... Maybe it's just the wrong material.

That could come in handy for climbing up into my fortress and easily disabling the stairs.

Can you get technologically sophisticated and make a machine gun?

Eventually, but that will probably take a while...

Actually, Sam figured it out.. I was indeed using the wrong stone. I can make stone weapons, but they still don't seem to help. A bow and arrow might, but they require a lot of material between them and I don't think arrows are reusable.

However, the advantage of being above ground like I am is that I can see the baddies. So I jumped off the other side of my floating fortress and ran until I presume they were removed from the map and destroyed.

Then I found some kind of ore. I also found red mushrooms, but in the process lost about half my health from fall damage... I then barely made it back to my fortress by nightfall... I need to find a brown mushroom before I can heal myself...

Sweet, now the bad guys burn to death when the sun comes up. Also, if you throw sand into fire, it creates glass blocks!

I'll drink to that!

why cant you guys record those parts on a video and youtube that instead of that boring intro?

I had a go at the survival mode.

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{"name":"600494","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/9\/4936d9f92f066b77274dacf8e45b124d.png","w":854,"h":480,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/9\/4936d9f92f066b77274dacf8e45b124d"}Somehow, a pig got into my fortress.

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{"name":"600496","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/d\/5d611e7895f6728cc4e6dc7d88a81e84.png","w":854,"h":480,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/d\/5d611e7895f6728cc4e6dc7d88a81e84"}I can has labyrinth?

I ended up digging a staircase quite deep, then I went somewhere and dug upwards... When I reached the surface, a green monster dropped on me and I died.

I think black and white was quite similar to this game, no?

Screenshots of my mine in its current state:

I built the tower mainly as a means of protection. I started with just a small shelter off the ground to protect me during the night, but found the arrows could easily reach me if I wandered outside, even onto the roof. After much daytime work (and very long, boring nights), I began mining, and after much mining, I built the tower. The tower serves two functional purposes: it allows me to wander outside day or night without being vulnerable to attack, and it makes it much easier to find my way back when I'm wandering around outside. The first few times I went outside I found myself lost and barely making it back before nightfall.

I stumbled upon the cavern and it's proven very rich of ores (much more rich than the main mine shaft, I'm sorry to say). It's been a bit of a struggle keeping it lit enough to keep baddies away though. It's shape was largely influenced by the natural shape and position of ores so it's currently a mess, which means I need a lot more torches to keep it lit. Fortunately, I've recently discovered more coal deposits which should keep me going a while longer.

I've had both sheep and pigs appearing in my allegedly sealed mine as well. I think it's a glitch. A pretty harmless one that offers you easy to get raw materials though.

I've occasionally had baddies also appear in my mine though. I'm not sure if they're glitching or if there's a hole somewhere...

...And with 3ds max its possible to render 3d worlds that look good and are also just as pointless.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the whole point of videogames to provide fun and entertainment? If it's fun for some people, then it isn't pointless.

If game design was that simple then a camel could poop and that would be fun to play with.

Hey, if it floats your boat, then why not.

Indev just updated, and now one can generate "paradise" or "forest" themed maps as well. I love the forest one. The first thing I had to do, was to kill a pig to get some flint and steel, and then burn the place to the ground! I spent a night in a quickly built dirt bunker watching the glow, and the occasional mob running out from the flames.

And this is played by a considerable number of people, and they obviously enjoy it... What is the point you are trying to make verthex?

100k+ registered players, ~300 online at any one time, 4800 purchases, about 40-110 purchases per day. I believe the developer has this as his full-time job. I would certainly call that a success.

Wtf? Do you have steel pigs there?

Also, screenshots or it didn't happen.

Well, I guess I've played a lot more games in my life and maybe thats why I dont find that game appealing. Obviously todays internet commercialization allows for a much larger market reach and that is one reason why games are easier to sell compared to 10 years ago.

But it is good to see someone develop something that people like.

Any "mob" you kill might drop a random amount of gunpowder, flint and steel, strings or nothing. So no. No steel pigs.

And I don't have any screenshots. I regret that I didn't think of taking some.

This is gaming today!

Backhanded compliment of the week. I'm tempted to try it just because of that now ...

depends on what genre you're into also, although I would love to see those mobs in photos, maybe that would make me interested.

Anyone play Rune?

I find that a lot of the fun is in the simplicity. A good break from all the "standard" games that are coming out nowadays.

I'm hoping it doesn't go beta (and price goes up) before I have a chance to try it on a computer that should be able to handle it.

The thing that turns me off is that exactly, the resolution is something like it was made around the time of Doom with raster graphics for blocks. Is there any news about hi-res graphics instead of just that.

I think it's meant to look like that.

They could make a low-res and a high-res game option, one with textures for high res.

The game is a physics one. The blocks are 100% intentional. Essentially, the world is a 3-D bitmap and the art-style follows suit. I think the art is inherently "cute" looking, which works well with the game because most people design cute structures such as castles and dungeons.

Moreover, the guy making it used to be a game developer and now he quit his job and is going the indie route. So he's a good programmer but not a good artist, so he chose to make a game that plays to his strengths and doesn't require much of his weak talents.

I'm routing for him and I hope he succeeds in his dream! I love basic games likes this. Try Clonk Rage for a very advanced 2-D version of this.

What physics?

Me too, although I play games for the game not because the brand name "X" made it.

What "brand" are you referring to? Indie? It's not a brand, it simply means that the developer is not being payed in advance by a publisher, and that he has complete creative control over his product. If this was not an indie game, we certainly would not be playing it right now, since it would not be released to the public yet.

I don't really care much about pretty, high resolution graphics. I often play ascii-based roguelikes, simply because they have very deep, interesting and emergent gameplay. This game is not quite there yet, but I think it will be. And it improves almost daily. In the few days since I bought the game, it has gotten a day/night cycle (with undead mobs catching fire during the day), two new level generators and tweaks to the aforementioned day/night cycle based on feedback from the community.

What does that even mean? It sounds like you are talking about shovelware for the Wii.

I just bought the game. Mostly for the fun of watching it develop. I know I'll be bored with it in a day or two, so that normally would not be worth $14USD. Looking at the dev blog, though, and the thriving community, I know I will be coming back often to try new features. So I guess I am paying to watch sausage be made. How odd.

At first, it struck me as odd to pay to watch someone develop a game. My conclusion is that the difference between watching this guy make Minecraft, and you guys make Allegro games, is that his progress is much faster. I'm paying money for my impatience

It's Java? Now I can certainly forget playing it due to system requirements... It looks promising, but I think the minimalistic approach is,as it is now, still far from a 'cutesy' style. Rather, it looks 'hacky'. I can appreciate the approach the developer has taken, though. I never buy PC games, though.
<--Note the tasteless avatar change

No, I've just played many many games over many many years. There have been only a few that have stood out, and right the rest seemed like shovelware but it wasnt just the Wii. Mostly snes and some playstation games.

I've played a lot of prereleased squaresoft games. In fact I may still have the disk for final fantasy 8.

Get to work, slacker.

Too right as well. It's not the developers fault that so many American's have SDTV. SDTV should be classed in the same way as IE6 is now.

If people can afford a PS3 or 360, they can afford a decent TV. If they did that, we wouldn't have the ridiculous Microsoft requirement to not put anything important in the outer third of the screen of an xbox game.

You keep saying that, as if it has any bearing. And this is on a game developer forum, where I'm sure the majority of people would say the same.

yes, who hasn't played lots and lots of games? I have done it for over 20 years now...

I bought Minecraft today. The new survival mode is hard! I'm getting mauled left and right trying to play an Inland-style Hell level. Granted, I don't really know what I'm doing yet--especially with crafting--but man, I feel like a weakling being destroyed by... little skeletons.

On the other hand, I took my starting house and stole the torches and immediately made stairs up to the top of my house and build castle walls around it. And then I connecting walkways across two trees. If I actually had some arrows I'd be rocking my enemies. I have no such equipment, yet, however.

I can't read the paypal page, so I can't buy it.

The floating levels are cool as crap too.

Click the foreign word on the upper right and switch to English.

I know

I sincerely wonder if this guy developing this game will just run with all of your money and never finish the game instead.

I guess I'll refer you to game theory and explain my viewpoint on that level. Basically every game has a point, if there was no point then there would be no game, the point of the game and how it is achieved is called gameplay. If the gameplay sucks whats the point? In between the point of playing a game and using strategy to achieve certain goals comes a story line, which most modern games require because even the game with best of graphics and characters just looks really dull without one.

Minecraft has (as most of you have shown) very little of what I would like in a game as I just outlined above. Does that answer your question....

All that is subjective. I think the basic idea and gameplay is fun, and has a lot of potential. Potential is the keyword here. It is not done (but I obviously think it will be one day).

And games can work fine without a narrative or even a goal (and just emergent behavior and self-created goals) - just look at the sims, one of the worlds most successful game franchises (I don't really like those games, but still a valid point). Sure, they may not be (in game theory terms) a "game", but that matters very little. Prisoners Dilema is a "game" according to game theory, and it's not very enjoyable.

I'm not saying you have to like it, but unless you are very narrow minded, you must realize why a lot of people do.

Anyone have tips for keeping track of their mines? I dug down from my castle and started finding a bunch of different caverns. There are so many caverns, it is now impossible for me to navigate my mine I even had to dig a shaft straight up and out to make my escape from the caverns, because I couldn't find my way back.

Plus, all of these caverns are dark, so now monsters are leaking into my castle I'd light them all up if I could, but their number and scope seem endless!

Oh well, at least my farm is doing well.

Billybob: You know for what PC gamers in the times of Dungeon Master used square paper and pencil?

Why would he? Judging by the number of sales, he seems to have sufficient funds to live for a year or more without having to otherwise work. He's basically free to continue developing this game. That sounds like a dream life to me.

I can't find it now, but I remember reading a post from Notch (the developer) saying that he would ultimately like to add a story and goals, etc.

I kept my mine small enough to light up. Once you find coal and learn to craft torches, you're golden. I now have huge caverns and they're all decently lit so I generally don't have to worry about monsters. You also have enough time to learn your way through them so for the most part you can navigate by torch light and memory.

I did manage to dig into a natural cave that happens to lead outside, so I currently have a lot of trouble with baddies there, but I plan to seal up the exits when I find time.

Bring a few hundred torches and you'll be fine Just run around placing them all over.

As for finding.... yeah, that can be quite hard. I sometimes place "markers" out of wood or dirt to point me back towards the exit. Like an 9x9 "T" in the ground, the narrow end towards the cave exit.

I also like to fully explore/excavate a single cave before I move on.

What makes free-form games like Minecraft so appealing to such a large playerbase is the ability to set, pursue and achieve your own goals within the confines of the game rules. For a player who enjoys this style of gaming, the gameplay of Minecraft is more or less perfect. It allows for a huge, almost endless set of possible goals, while the basic game mechanics are very simple and concrete.

You must also not forget the community factor. Minecraft has a very active and imaginative playerbase. On the forums there are a plethora of players creating challenges, ideas, new game modes and content for the game. In the long run, this has proven to be more important to the longevity of a game than the size of the game itself. Just consider Hal-Life, Warcraft 3 or any other of the popular modable games. The player-created content and challenges is what keeps them going, not the original gameplay.

So it all boils down to what kind of entertainment you seek. If you want 800 minutes of narrated, high-poly, vertex-shaded interactive storytelling then sure; games such as this isn't for you. But if you want to play a sandbox (quite litterally) game, with the possibility to pursue your own goals without being forced down this path or the other, then it is perfect. But don't go on claiming that the gameplay sucks, period. You might as well claim that pie is better than cake.

[edit]
Woha, apparently I'm slow. Serves me well for making dinner while writing a post.

I keep getting killed.

Aren't the mobs all supposed to die in sunlight? I ended up getting swarmed at high noon once.

<quote>I keep getting killed<quote>
Yeah, saving often is a must. This game can be quite harsh at times. You could try setting the difficulty to "peaceful" for a while, though, until you have some defences built.

The worst ones catch on fire. They take 30s or so to die after that. Spiders and explodie green men don't catch on fire, so you have to kill those yourself.

After a few tries, I just sealed myself into the starting house during nights, and during the day worked on building a huge dirt castle around the house. Dig, dig, dig. Build, build, build. Once it was complete, no baddies could get in. Then I went and grabbed some materials for torches and began mining during the nights. I also built an aqueduct to get water into the castle for my farm.

Suppose, just suppose for a minute, you worked that hard in real life... Wouldn't you be rich or something?

It has water physics? Cool

I tried it; neat ideas but I couldn't figure out how to make stuff more advanced than blocks. I'm playing the free version, mind you ...

I have two different starting strategies. One is to just start mining on an island near the edge of the map (mobs don't seem to bother me out there), the other is to start mining from inside the starting house after sealing myself in. Spend the first day gathering wood and a little coal, then pile some dirt in the door and dig down for materials.

In the free version you can't make stuff more advanced than blocks.

I agree. What physics is this?
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I was building a nice fortress and as I was building the obligatory stairwell, creepers appeared out of nowhere and ambused me. My fortress was sealed so I think that they spawned on top of the fortress.

Where are the screenshots of your forts?

I'm working on my stronghold now. I've got a pretty big cavern carved out from mining rock, and I'm almost ready to start laying the foundations of the actual stronghold.

I'll let you see after I've gotten enough gold to pave the floor.

My initial strategy after gathering some raw materials from the surface and sealing myself in my outpost was to dig straight down. So long as I kept the torches with me, all ground was lit and enemies don't spawn above ground. I essentially just kept digging down. I did that until I found some coal and then I made stairs, wrapping around the sides, back up to the surface.

I was attacked by three creepers. I forgot to close off my temporary shelter for the night. I survived, but they wrecked the shelter and chased me down into my mine, where they did severe damage.

Repairs cost me nearly a whole day.

Health isn't saved in the files, so when you load a game you have full health. A nice trick, but it kind of detracts from the experience. "Oh, I'm about to die. Save/load. "

Then again, I've found it nearly impossible to restore health normally, so the save/load bug is probably a good thing for now.

Its good to have some tolerance. Even the best games don't portray physics to complete accuracy! It should be good enough to enhance the gameplay.

That picture reminds me of the "Valley of Corrupted Gravity" from The Legend of Dragoon.

EDIT:

Incase anyones interested, it took 100 developers and over 3 years to make The Legend of Dragoon. Its in the jewel case.

Once I got a small farm going I had no health problems. Just harvest and replant regularly, then craft the harvested wheat into bread. Heals 2.5 hearts.

I'm still playing the Survival mode but I keep dying or decide that my fortress is too boring. I thought that monsters couldn't swim so I built my entrance by the water, but I was wrong on that account. Now I want to build my fortress underground by the lava caverns, but I usually get ambushed by respawning enemies that knock me into the lava.

I'm now working on the third floor of the keep of my stronghold. I'll have screenies tomorrow.

Next up is leveling the surrounding terrain. I've got a little TNT, but it's going to be a pain to bring down all that dirt. Then outer walls with towers. It's gonna be awesome.

But for now, bed.

If you dig to the bottom of the map, any tile which is indestructible will be converted to lava when you save/load. I don't know if this is a bug or intentional, but it is a neat trick to use. If you create an island in the lava, with a shaft leading to the surface, you should be quite immune to mobs. Just light the entire area with torches, and you have yourself the beginning of a nice little underground base. Just remember to save often while working on it; I've been killed more times than I'd like to mention while working on my dungeon.

I built a farm many, many days ago, but it takes forever to get it going. I can only add one or two more plants after each harvest. Plus the animals started spawning inside my castle while I was underground, and obviously they went and destroyed my crops.

The point is, yea you could eventually get a farm going, but it would take so long that you (or at least I) would likely die before it was finished.

I think death shouldn't mean game over, but rather it should respawn you without any of the stuff you were carrying. That way there's a penalty, but you it isn't totally game over. Plus, fix the save/load cheat

They can't swim down, so build your entrance underwater.

It took me about ten minutes to set up a plot of forty plants. And some trees.

I just spent a few hours building a sand castle, planting trees, and building a huge ship. It's got cargo holds and everything. I can't decide if this the waste of a day or just plain badass. (I had to cut a tree down for every 16 blocks of wood or so!)

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I need to find a bunch of sheep so I can finish the sails. Otherwise, the ship is legit. My sand castle could use some more work, however. It's somewhat ugly, and I have visions of a very tall tower. Perhaps a castle lighthouse!

Unfortunately, I picked "paradise" mode I believe so it's always daylight. Not having to worry about monsters is lonely sometimes. However, I considered breaking up my boat a little and removing the torches so that it becomes a "haunted" ship.

Please set the ship on fire. And post screen shots. Please.

Ditto

I wanna see if the flames will be huge blocks too!

I really want to see that puppy go up in flames Mostly cause I'm a sick bastard like that.

Badass.

How did you get enough seeds to do it? I only get like 1 seed for 10 tilled earth.

Here is my awesome new diamond sword:

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Everything dies in one or two hits, and so far it hasn't broken yet. I found some more diamonds during a recent mining spree, so I should have diamond swords for quite awhile.

I didn't know wood went on fire
By accident i started a fire near a window of my wooden cottage, during the night.
The fire quickly spread to the outside and before i could realize what was going on the whole house was on fire! I quickly retreated in the mines i had built underneath, caving me in and waiting for the sunrise.

Unluckily it was quite dark (i still haven't found a single piece of coal...) so i eventually got bored and decided to go back up.

Where once had been my house, just fires, ashes and dead monsters (and loot )... i started rebuilding, this time in stone. Alas not all of the monsters were dead and i was gravely damaged by the past fire; left with 2 hearts i was attacked by a foe, and killed.

You can put out the flames by clicking on them. I forget if it's left or right click, but it'll put out one of the flames. If you're fast enough you can save your house next time.

Inside the hull!
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This game is going to be simply amazing when multiplayer is added. Imagine fighting off skeletons with flaming arrows burning down your little village! One of you is running around putting out the flames while the other is fighting them off...

Yeah I cant wait Both co-op and adversial will be fun. Apparently armor (with actual effects) will be added sometime this week, and after that... possibly... Multplayer for indev version. Woo

EDIT: And really awesome ship!

That ship is kickass. Puts my incomplete castle to shame.

Here's what I have been doing for some hours now. I've been digging downwards! And there's a little something at the bottom as well. The map file is here if anyone wants to see how deep the rabbit hole goes...
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what happens if you fall down the hole?

I found what was at the bottom of the hole...

By the way, where are all your pickaxes?

Is that a big capital C in the right hand corner?

It's a flint and striking stone.

So does anyone know when the exact date will be for this game to come out with one a few patchs, which Im sure will exist!

As promised, screen shots!

I haven't finished yet, but I'm close.

I started by carving out a mine during the nighttimes, collecting materials while staying safe from mobs. The result?

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This is about half of the total volume of my mine, but the rest is pre-existing caves that I ran into while digging.

During the daytimes I dug out a big pit, so that my stronghold would be founded on solid rocks.

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I ended up with a lot of dirt.

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Time to lay in the foundations!

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And lay in the first floor.

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I did some work on the interior, too. Here's the main entrance hall.

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I decided to use wood blocks in the interior walls to help break up the visual monotony of all stone walls. I think it worked out pretty good.

Here's what it looks like now.

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The towers ended up looking really weird, so I'm altering them right now. I'll post a shot of the finished keep once I'm done (which may or may not be tonight).

Off to the right in the last screenshot you can see the starting hut, which I modified a bit so that I could stand on top at night safely. The entrance to it is also on the top now. The stairs in the screenshot of the mine lead up to the starting hut.

While digging out the foundation of the keep I opened up a back way into the mine. Now I can go from my keep to the hut safely by traveling underground, which is useful because I have several full chests of materials in the hut.

I wish I had some way of capturing video from my screen, I'd do a video tour.

Video tour would be nice, that last pic is starting to seem worthy of a castle. Any inside photos?

EDIT:NM just saw the 3rd pic.

Cool! F11 is fullscreen mode.

I'm amazed by how much this guy has done since this year began! Look through his blog! Before 2010, there was no fire effects, day/night cycle was last week, there was no floating island levels or anything like that. Liquid processing was this year. Crafting. Tool health. Dialog screens. Mob pathfinding. Fully fuctional bows. Farming. Asynchronous lighting code. Paradise and woods themes. Various optimizations and bug fixes as well.

In one day, according to his blog, 100 people bought the game; 38,000 were playing creative mode; 6,500 survival; 15,000 indev. 4,800 have bought it so far. This game is seeing more players than many Call of Duty multiplayer modes. Single modes, sure, but this is an unfinished alpha of an indie game! *

Rough math ($14 a copy) means $67,200 before PayPal fees so far. It's not a lot to live on (across who knows how many years) but sales are pretty impressive! I'd be curious to see how many tens of thousands of copies the Clonk Series and Spidweb Software games have sold over the years (two other modern shareware/indie companies I can think of). I e-mailed both those associated companies requesting figures after I wrote this post. I wonder if I'll get some comparisons.

*correction: That was 38,000, 6,500, ... games started in the last 24-hours not at one time (which would seem more reasonable).

Is there any free video capture software available?

The one and only one Im sure everyone here knows about but I forgot the name, maybe someone will tell you soon. But its slow as hell and you need to keep your resolution to 320X200, unless you have a quad core..

Hypercam? Last time I used that my computer choked and died, giving me a framerate of about two per second. That was on my old computer, I'm not sure how my new one would fair.

camstudio, now i remember.

Ah, camstudio. I just downloaded hypercam. For some reason it closed Firefox, and cost me about twenty unsaved minutes of work (because I'm dumb and don't save my game when I go do other stuff for a minute).

But Hypercam works fairly well on this computer.

Im curious, what are your specs in terms of cpu and memory. I assume that software needs a beefed up graphics card also.

Here's a large selection of video capture stuff

http://download.cnet.com/windows/video-capture-software/

I've got a 2.1GHz Pentium dual core processor, with (I think) four gigs of memory. The graphics card is low end for this generation of computers, but I'm not sure of the exact specs of it.

I've noticed that the playback of Hypercam is a bit faster than the recorded events on screen.

I second camstudio.

Btw where do you find coal?? I still haven't been able to make a torch!
And since not all monsters die in the morning i still get killed at times when i get out of my bunker... any suggestions?

You must be skipping too many frames and your framerate in the recorded video is actually less than the image your recording.

Theres belarc profiler but its not important, I assume its mostly cpu and memory anyways.

You'll find it scattered randomly about places with lots of stone. You'll just have to look around a bunch.

Does it look like the gunpowder, only darker?

Hypercam is working for me. My test video ended up being a tour of what I've built so far. I'll see about getting it posted in the next hour or so.

Yeah, I lowered the framerate and it fixed the problem.

Dig through stone enough and you'll find some. If you're lucky you can find a deposit or two poking out from a cliff face.

Make a sword and kill them? That's what I've been doing. I'm getting a lot of flint and steel.

That's what i try to do, but spiders manage to hit me and some guys just explode.

[edit]Found some coal... i also found some golden ore, it takes 15 seconds to mine a block!

Ahh geez... Last night I spent upwards of an hour and a half making an awesome winding flight of stairs from the bottom of the farthest reaching cavern connected to my mines. I was planning on making it extrude from the surface into an awesome tower-like fort, however it turns out that the location was actually under neath the ocean! So as soon as I broke through the last layer of dirt a never ending torrent of water came and flooded the entire cave and most of the tunnels I made connected to other caves... I was able to escape to the surface by swimming up through the ocean though.

Luckily I saved before starting the staircase. My new idea is to remake the staircase, but have it surrounded by glass walls from the bottom of the ocean to the surface of the ocean. From there I would make a nice bridge to land, or possible an under ocean tunnel with a glass roof.

Also, I'm glad I made all that armor for myself even though it didn't serve a purpose when I made it The developer blog talks about some neat improvements coming (armor being one of them)

Make a couple good pickaxes.

By the way, sweet effing castle and hut

This video turned out to be eight minutes long. It could probably be half the length, but I wandered a bit and kept looking at stuff that on reflection didn't need to be looked at (did you really need to see the ceiling of the basement of my keep? Twice?)

Comments from me pop up in the upper left-hand corner throughout the video, explaining certain things and so on.

Minecraft Tour

I'm not sure how to embed a video, and I'm too lazy to look it up right now.

I know, I have no idea either. The help stub doesn't help much either.

The castle looks awesome. It would be cool if you could make old school weapons like cannons and catapults with firebombs. I could then imagine being able to damage those same structures of the enemy and then the game would finally have some complexity besides killing random things for resources.

I just surround the url with square brackets.

Use the source (of the web page), Beavis!

Damn, I want to play this game so badly... It's sad that I don't have the means(can't use Paypal) to pay it.

Nice decoration Neil, the wood walls look great. Also, I've seen this game supports another type of blocks that are not squares, but are rectangles. Do you guys have a wide variety of different heighted blocks? Would be awesome for making some more complex buildings

If you know someone who can use PayPal, give them the money and have them buy it for you. The site lets you buy premium for other users.

Neil Black: Damn, my castle will never be awesome like that

EDIT: Maybe I'll build a village out of wood and light it on fire. That'd be awesome.

Try enclosing mobs in wood and lighting that on fire I wonder if they'd die.

YAY! Notch just released working armor and third-person view:

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Sweet.

Disaster! I was out trying to fix up my farm and I noticed an odd orange glow through the window of my keep. FIRE!

By the time I got over there almost all of the wood in the keep had been burned away. I'm not sure how the fire started. I did make some iron bars in the basement, but I don't see how fire could spread to blocks six or seven spaces up.

Rebuilding will take some time, but luckily I've got a few trees growing for wood.

The devastation

That's really what you get for building a fortress out of wood... I mean, the most readily available resource in Minecraft is regular stone. Build with that and you shouldn't need to worry about these kinds of things. I think the only thing to currently worry about with stone is explosives, which I think everything is susceptible to (I wonder if certain blocks can withstand explosives...).

A lesson that Final Fantasy VII taught me the hard way (numerous times): save often. I have over 100 save files from Minecraft. I save pretty much anytime I do anything, whether it be walking across the map or digging up some ore. I don't want to have to do it again. I want to progress with my story, not replay it (well, I replay it when I'm not satisfied with how it played out, but I tend to be a little obsessive about certain details).

A pure stone keep is hard to walk around in. My eyes have trouble distinguishing between passageways. I am looking for alternate materials, but I want something visually distinct from plain stone.

Use the half stone steps for a different material that's still made out of stone. They stack on top of each other to make a solid block, but are a different shade and texture from regular stone.

I'm curious what started the fire? Flaming mobs can't set things on fire ... how odd.

By the way, I keep a list of 10 rolling saves. I have the files sorted by Date Modified, so I save to the oldest one and load from the earliest one. Piece of cake.

EDIT: Although, I did like your use of wood in the keep. It looked really nice. 'Tis a shame.

I'll probably go with wood again, and just be more careful with fire.

Yay! Beefy computer can play this game now! And what a frame rate!

You are a victim of the fire glitch... The game sometimes randomly starts a fire heh

I think that'd be an awesome feature. Seriously, I was just thinking about it today.

By the way, it seems Notch added auto-leaf death. So after you chop down a tree, the leaves automatically die out and leave behind saplings. No more spending endless hours killing leaves and collecting those things.

I just bought the game, is there any site with instructions on how to create tools and such? I'm sure I missed it somewhere, but I just cant find anything...

Vanneto: minecraft wiki, link is lying somewhere in this thread.

Wow, I'm amazed how little was needed to start a mass addiction to this game on this forum I'm also amazed how something simple as this has such emergent gameplay. When I was looking at Neil's video tour I was feeling a great urge to explore those mines. Something I've never felt since I've played Gothic (which I do right now again ).

In this thread, or search the wiki for "crafting"

And what OICW said

Oh, don't be fooled. I myself haven't played it, because for some reason it won't load in the browser. But still I'm amazed.

That Gothic game looks awesome, I cant even compare it to this game. I've tried playing Silent Hunter 3 but that game is a mega load in my system so I need an upgrade, its 5 years old too. I might be able to play Gothic and that's 2001.

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Planescape Torment I have a copy somewhere. There was a brief time I've played it, but generally I'm not a big fan of DnD rules (they look much more like a tactical combat simulator than anything else) and I don't quite like aesthetics of Baldur's Gate - the environment kinda irritated me. However Planescape fascinated me with the premise, but then came something else and the game was forgotten.

That was the time when every company made an awesome game almost every week from 1997 till somewhere up to 2002. Not consoles though, only PC, and then the market turned into a copy of every other game with better graphics but nothing original, sort of like Hollywood.

I still remember getting Blade Runner the day it came out but I didn't have the specs to play it till 3 years later!

Black Isle started on 1996 and was closed on 2003. Mmm... I wonder what's your favourite game company Verthex Still, as much as I love PST(Chris Avellone is a kickass lead designer), I must insist that you stop trying to derail the thread about Minecraft.

How curious. I always had one save in FF games. I don't know if there was enough C&C(Choices & consequences) around to play the game differently. I tend to do far more saves in CRPGs.

@Neil: Is gold too hard to find? I think some gold walls would look great if you can get enough blocks. Otherwise, I second the idea of putting two step blocks for filling the hole.

I was fooling around yesterday with the free version, and I had made a cool base for a tower, like walls with a pit between them. Sadly, when I entered the base, a horde of spiders spawned inside, and killed me really fast.

Don't look at me, it was OICW that started talking about Gothic and I became more interested in that topic since it was awesome.

It has been for me. In the video tour you'll see me open up a chest at one point, and if you look closely you'll see that it has eleven gold bars in it. That's all the gold I've found.

Quite the contrary for me, i'm full of gold, but no steel yet

But mining gold without steel takes ages

Exactly!

I haven't been using metals to craft tools thus far (well, I've been using steel for arrows and swords, but I avoid confrontation). I have a LOT of stone so I just make 5 pickaxes out of stone at a time. The time to make new tools is negligible compared to the time it takes to find metal ore. Gold and diamond take a while to mine with stone, but everything else I've encountered are almost as fast as steel in my experience.

Will the issue with not being able to save on mac be fixed do you think? Or is it an inherent error between Mac OS X and Java itself? I wanna play godamnit!

The slots don't work in Windows either, at least not for me. If you click on the button at the bottom of the save screen though (something relating to files) then it prompts you with a file dialog to save to a file under your own control. This does work in Windows, but I can't speak for Mac.

Neither of the options work for Mac. Quite irritating, since there is not much point playing if you can't save your progress.

Are you sure it's not just a browser thing? I can't see why a Java applet would care unless it was written with platform dependence. The host operating system or browser might restrict access though.

Sometimes when I want to save the whole damn browser freezes, hope this get fixed. It only happens in 1/10 cases but its till annoying after half an hours work goes to hell.

I have tried the game in Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari with no luck. Probably not a browser thing. And I'm using the latest version of Java as far as I know. The save slots don't work. I save but when I look again I see nothing really gets saved. When I try to save as a file, the button doesn't do anything, no dialog box shows up.

I thought you said Java was mainstream, now Oracle will have fix that bug to keep it going.

So no bugs == mainstream?? And it could still be a fault of the implementation of the application.

I did say that it was mainstream. Still is.

Heh, that's pretty cool you all are playing notch/Markus Perrsons game. I've been remarking on that guys genius for years now:

http://www.javagaming.org/index.php/topic,14995.msg119142.html#msg119142

He's a great guy, no one deserves accolades and success more than him!

nonnus29! \o/

Does anyone know why my pigs arent dropping mushrooms or anything that can heal me? Do you have to kill them in a special way?

Am I the only one who is confused as to why people are paying for this?

How much money is this guy making? Are just game developers buying it?

Well, the site says:

Each at 10€. That means he made 51190 EUR or 69070 USD.

EDIT: One more idiot just bought the game!

I have over 128 metal bars, after crafting a full set of armor and I make 4 pickaxes at a time. I always find more iron than I consumed making the pickaxes before the last pickaxe is destroyed. Diamonds are still really rare for me so is gold for the most part... I believe I have over 50 bars...

However now that the full health on load bug has been fixed I need to start farming, and from my experience the hoe always seems to break really quickly, even the metal ones. I guess I could try finding brown mushrooms (I have a ton of red ones), but they don't seem to drop or spawn for me anymore...

If you're really pressed for hearts, you can always lower the difficulty to peaceful and regenerate quickly.

Because it's fun. It's one of those games that really lets you do anything on a very basic level (ala Clonk Planet) and since they're so few and far inbetween people really latch onto them. Games where you can put a little piece of your creative self into are very fun--especially if it's something visual you can show off. I've personally put over 200 hours into playing and designing new objects and levels for Clonk Planet back in the day.

Also, the idea of supporting a small indie developer with shareware makes you feel good about yourself because you're directly supporting an aspiring artist.

Are you also confused as to why people would rather play Guitar Hero than learn to play an actual guitar?

To my knowledge pigs (all mobs) don't drop mushrooms. You have to find them growing. Predominantly, underground in existing caverns (especially the brown ones).

Yes, my last save is deep underground at the bottom of the map... It's not fully lit... I discovered natural caverns while digging in my mine that are exposed to the outside. They just go on and on. I tried to light them as I made my way through them, but didn't do a good enough job... There's just so many ways in. Now I'm trapped down deep and every time I try to escape I get ambushed by like 5 mobs. And now that the save/load health trick doesn't work, I'm starting out with 50% health and have no supplies to consume to restore it. I tried digging a tight stair way upwards last night (so long as I don't enter any more caverns I should be safe until I get to the surface), but I think ended up getting distracted and not saving...

Yes.

Hey, it beats FarmVille.

Ditto, that was my first thought when I read that by Dustin. My Facebook account is usually clogged up with people playing that game and I still have no idea why its "News".

Nice! Pigs now drop porkchops!

That will definitely help out with the health issue, for me anyways. I guess bamccaig is still kind of screwed unless a pig happens to spawn underground.

Also, by his description of the furnace for smelting it seems like smelting will take a significantly longer time...

I already smelted ~20 blocks of Gold ore. It doesnt take too long.

It's more of a passive action now. I have 4 smelters working

EDIT:
I just had a depressing bug :/
I have a pretty big mine shaft (7x7x30, 1470 blocks), going straight down to the "end of the world". I saved, and when I later loaded, it was filled with lava and I died instantly.

That actually sounds pretty cool.

I like waking up in the morning, or doing work during the day, and noticing my Google Reader notifying me of a new Notch post. I go read it, find that some amazing new feature has been added and then go explore it for awhile. It's like the feelings I get when I order a package online. There's the anticipation of it coming, not exactly sure when it will arrive, but sure it will come soon. Then DING the UPS guy is here! OH BOY! I get the packy inside, rip it apart like Christmas morn' and enjoy whatever it is I bought.

Only difference is, Minecraft was cheaper than ordering stuff from NewEgg.

It was noted earlier in the thread that when you load a game, all unbreakable blocks (like those at the bottom of the world) turn into lava.

Why did that happen? Were your stone blocks (ones that you placed) assimilated into lava?

Ah. crap.

I will have to edit my starting position somehow...
EDIT:
Ok, Omen erased the contents of my chests, and i didnt have a backup heh.

It was time to start over and build a proper house anyway

I've started rebuilding. The disaster has set back my plans for some more cool stuff, but I'll get there.

I've got over 128 bars of gold and a few more bits of diamond left. The gold has been rather easy to find, about the same as steel (or is it copper smelted into steel!?). Tons of coal. Mushrooms are the rare things in my current map. Odd, but true.

My village is going well. A couple of standard wood houses, a large two-floor fancy mansion, a sea-side guard tower, a wooden dock, a stone-glass bridge that goes to an island, and an underwater viewing cave.

The underwater viewing cave was a PITA to make. It's terribly difficult working underwater, because you can't see anything if you go too deep. Digging from inside the cave itself is like playing Russian Roulette. Each time I break a block I might get flooded and drown

I really want to make a fountain for the village, but sea-level is four blocks below it and I haven't found any water source above ground

I hope you make another video when you do make more cool stuff. Perhaps not as long this time, though.

Someone should suggest a water pump! \o/

EDIT: Just thought I would show a little of my world.

Oh yeah, that first video was way too long.

I've got something wrong... I can't mine gold. I've got a stone pickaxe, it takes a long time to mine it and then it doesn't drop any gold!

Use an iron pickaxe to mine gold.

He should still be getting the gold.

Also, is anyone else experiencing slowdowns recently?

EDIT:

Minecraft seems to be using up half a gig of memory on my computer, is that normal?

Goodness gracious, I'm using 740mb so far.

I restarted Minecraft and it seems to be hovering around 350Mb right now. But it's bloating Firefox's memory usage some as well. Before I restarted Minecraft, both java.exe and firefox.exe were at ~450Mb, when I closed Minecraft java.exe disappeared and Firefox dropped down to about 50Mb.

He's going to add seasons! That's going to be awesome!

I read he's barely able to hold himself back from implementing multiplayer.

And I realized this game is actually nearly on it's way to become something like http://cantr.net/ in 3D.

85 people have bought the game since yesterday. Thats 850€ in a day. I keep repeating it, but I still cant fathom it. 850€ in a day. Awesome.

Minus Paypal charges and taxes of course... If he takes it out as salary, he would probably get about 50% of that (not counting the paypal charges).

Still, not bad

Try this game.
Tax Time!

The reason why

Steel is AMAZING!!!

WTF.

I'm split. It's certainly in bad taste because it just happened on the other hand, I love that we live in a world free enough to create games like that and explore worlds/feelings/ideologies other than our own.

Test version of infinite maps is up. What do you think? I think it's going to be awesome!

When is Multiplayer Survival supposed to end (when you play it)? When all players are dead?

It ends when people don't want to play any more.
I think I read somewhere that he wants to add some sort of goals, but I think the main idea is to survive while digging and building. Like Dwarf Fortress.

Well, when you die, you die. So rejoin as a new character, essentially.

He was talking about respawning semi-recently. He doesn't want an experience system, but he wants there to be a severe penalty for dying. At the very least you lose everything on your character.

Infinite maps seem really nice, especially if there is some sort of multiplayer freebuild (maybe the server could limit how far you go). I've really gotten into minecraft lately, since I was gifted by someone on the IRC channel. I made a giant 3 block wide wall with windows protecting my fort . I'll post pics if anyone wants to see it.

Pics are always awesome.

I started a new game since I made the wood ship. It's on an island map where I took a random baby island and left it very normal looking but if you get close enough it immediately turns into a trench mine. The mine has a little base and goes super deep into catacombs. Then I went island, built a castle into a mountainside, then continued to expand it. Dug another catacomb. And then started work on a huge watch tower with a moat and turned the castle into half of a church. I'm having way to much fun with this!

Does gold have any purpose? And where do you find diamonds?

You find diamonds the same way you find any other ore, somewhere deep underground. As far as I know gold has no other purpouse besides being pretty.

Gold is extremely useful as a metal that doesn't corrode easily. Check out the high end PCI card connectors and stereo plugs. It's also the most mallable metal, gold leaf used to be common for advertising.

I've always been a platinum freak myself, the more uses the industry has the more it gains value. Even more so than gold because its required for high temperature such as rockets and jets.

Heres minecaft going back to 1984

I think you missed the title of this thread.

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^ Allegro.cc. Somebody should make a game of that... Trying to get the train back on track... Or make a video generator based on real threads. OR an engine that does both.

Really weird glitch. I started a new game and spawned really high up in the air, and then fell to my death.

Carries the thread with superhuman strength
(Edit: But didn't have to, thanks to Neil Black)

Has anyone found the pyramids in infdev? I have been running around for a long time, but can't find them. Starting to believe it's a hoax, but there's a lot of people on the minecraft forum that has posted pictures of them.

Addendum:
Also, the spawn-in-the-air bug is well known. The game can't decide where to put you and the house, because all locations it tried to use wasn't good enough, so it gives up, puts you in the air and wishes you the best of luck...

It would be nice if it at least said so...

...Errm...Good luck! <spawn/>

Just a suggestion. Using allegro.cc threads would make the game extremely hard to play. I think something easier should be implemented for easy mode.

Little bit late on my screenshot reply since I got sick . It's a little hard to see at night but it's still visible.

The view from outside. There is a torch behind every outside window so that the inside of the wall is lit.
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View from the interior of the fortress. Torches on the wall provide light to keep the creepers away.
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Inside the wall. The windows are arranged in such a way that you can't see through the wall, which provides protection of the inside from arrows.
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The view from on top of the wall. I plan on using this for shooting baddies with arrows, however I have yet to get string from a spider.
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Under my fort there is a massive series of caverns that I used to get all the stone for the wall. It has to have taken at least 500 blocks.

Nice, thick, and juicy walls

You can get string from any "mob", including pigs and sheep (at least, you could when I last played).

I think I might write a MineCraft clone in C++.

You and about a thousand other people, or at least me too.

I might even gpl it.

It has begun!

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The looting system was changed. Only spiders drop string now.

Goodluck!

Nick, make it a full 1st person Dungeon Keeper game. But now you can dig in various directions!

Minecraft is based on an open source game called Infiniminer^[1][2], written in XNA. You might be able to save yourself some thinking if you start by porting that to C++ (albeit, you might instead want to learn from and improve upon the design). At the very least, you might want to take a look at it.

Eww.

Anyway, I wish the free version had some more cool stuff. I'm debating if it's worth paying for or not at this point.

It's not expensive. You will get access to a lot of cool stuff. But also a lot of bugs, and at times the game can be unplayable because of them.

I think it's well worth the money, I'm having way to much fun with it.

I've spend more than $14 on DVDs that suck. My reasoning was half game and the other half supporting a man and his dream of being an indie programmer. I've read some of his forum posts and he's rather brilliant.