MineCraft - Strike the Earth, Punch a Tree, Die Horribly!

[Dignified Pauper]

Edit: Free time is over, time to pay again... Creative is still available though!

Do you like Legos? Construction? Heart Container health bars? SPELUNKING!?

If so, do I have a game for you. Minecraft is a sandbox game where, you, the ever humbled lone miner in a strange new world, dig, chop, and build your own safe-haven from the dark denizens of the night!

You've peaked my interest, go on...?

In Minecraft, you start by punching trees to gather logs. Turn this log into lumber. And then, turn that lumber into sticks and craft yourself a mighty wooden axe to chop down... well... more logs! From there, craft yourself a flimsy wooden pick axe and strike the Earth on your quest for stone, caves, gold, and DIAMONDS! Upgrade from your old wooden tools to stone, then steel, then gold, and finally diamond tools.

Wait, wait wait... Crafting!?

Oh yes. You see, all the materials you find are useful. Firstly, they become blocks, like legos, and you can use them for various purposes from crafting, to smelting glass from sand, to building yourself a monument of greatness. The sheer scope is only limited by your imagination and how big you can dream in pixels.

Craft shovels, torches, hoes, picks, ladders, columns, swords, and more!

Swords? Why would I need a sword!?

Why, to defend yourself from the monstrous denizens of the night. You see, during the day, the most harm you might come across are harmless sheep, from which you can get cloth. Maybe a cow, or a pig. Nothing too dangerous. Every now and then, you might find a creeper (who drops gunpowder... and pack another surprise) and spiders. However, if you're the adventurous type who doesn't hide in their small, meager home they've built for themselves, you might want to venture out at night and battle zombies and skeletons! They die in the sunlight, so you're safe at day though, if you're a pansy. Oh... there are also dungeons deep underground with spawners. And lava... and underground rivers.

How big are the worlds?

Vertically? You can only go up so far into the sky, and only so far down before you hit bedrock. Bedrock is unbreakable, unless you have lots of TNT. If you do get through it, you open up a hole to the endless void. But you can go very far down, and very far up.

Horizontally? Limitless. The game uses procedural generation to develop further horizontally as you explore. You can just keep going, and going and going and going and going. Seriously, it's infinite..

What sort of things can I construct?

Anything and everything. Gravity is kind of funny, and you can make floating blocks. Want some examples? HERE!

(SPOILER)



My own hidden cathedral

and some other masterpieces include:

Someone has built a city called RAPTURE underwater! Some of you might know of it!




and from inside


And, one of my personal favorites that I helped out with: Goonie Bay!

YouTube - GoonieBay



Helped out with? You mean this is collaborative?

Well, there are three modes.

Creative/Classic, which is free, and no monsters. You can just build build build to your hearts desire with no fear.

The other two modes require purchasing Alpha, which is totally worth it. You can play the game in your browser, or by downloading the client, which is simple, because it's an .exe and java file. since it is in Alpha, the game is 9.99 EU or 13.something USD.

Survival is the single player mode that I detailed earlier.

Multiplayer, which is what I've been playing a lot on right now, is survival, but broken. Unlimited health, and some of the mechanics of survival don't work, but it's a minor detail. Servers are all hosted by private players, so if we wanted to coordinate anything, one of us would need to host a server, but totally worth it. Updates come out on Friday/Saturday to enhance and add stuff as well as fix things. The creator has made this his sole job, and has made over a million so far in just Alpha. Seriously, the game is the .

I hate paying for stuff.

I hate you and your disgust for capitalism. When it finally gets out of Alpha, the price will double. Seriously, you're an idiot if you don't at least try out creative.

Well, let me try creative and see what I think.

CERTAINLY!! You can either click the minecraft logo or just click here: Minecraft.

you also might want to browse through the Minepedia.

GO MY BROTHERS! STRIKE THE EARTH AND BUILD THE WORLD! Investigate more info and, seriously, please play the creative web browser one and post your constructions.

The game is sort of as though you are playing the part of the Dwarf from Dwarf Fortress. It's that good. However, it does not yet have all the stuff Dwarf Fortress has, but it's very early stages yet.

edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv-FORwG2oo just watch and enjoy.

[Shoeberto]

I was going to post about the free weekend. I might actually buy this after my next paycheck. It's pretty amazing and inspirational as far as completely independent games go.

Also this.

[Dignified Pauper]

ShoeBerto! He knows the score. Seriously, play this while it is free and become smurfing addicted! When you download the client, just put anything in with no password when it asks. No way to register while it is free. DO IT!

[Old Manus]

I've had it for a while. I created this huge tunnel network place, but never managed to find any of this fabled 'ore' besides endless amounts of what I can only guess is gravel. I sort of prefer the free multiplayer version.

[Yeargdribble]

I finally decided to break down and buy it... but wouldn't you know it was exactly one day too late. I've been on the free-play for the weekend and my wife and I are completely addicted. It's annoying playing with no sound though. I can't wait until the servers are back up and I can drop 10 euros on the full deal.

I suspect I'm gonna start playing it at work during my down time in addition to playing it all the time at home.

[Meat Puppet]

I paid so I can be Duke Nukem, but I’ve played classic mostly so I can build giant swastikas. One time I surrounded some guy’s church in a swastika-cube. A bit of a clichéd method of trolling, I know, but it’s better than just building lines of junk everywhere.

[Yeargdribble]

So I'm uncertain of how multiplayer works. I assume it's just building and such. Is there a way that I could host a survival game and have my wife join it? Are there any option for just us to play together because that would be an awesome way to ruin our lives and we'd love it.

[Jiro]

This game just took the past 7 hours of my life.

[Dignified Pauper]

So I'm uncertain of how multiplayer works. I assume it's just building and such. Is there a way that I could host a survival game and have my wife join it? Are there any option for just us to play together because that would be an awesome way to ruin our lives and we'd love it.

You have to host or find a server. If you host a server, then it would just be you two playing. The stuff to host a server is available minecraft.net.

[Shoeberto]

So I'm uncertain of how multiplayer works. I assume it's just building and such. Is there a way that I could host a survival game and have my wife join it? Are there any option for just us to play together because that would be an awesome way to ruin our lives and we'd love it.

Fairly certain you can just run the server on one of your machines and both connect to its IP, like most games, and then the two of you could play together. Not sure about the specifics of hosting Minecraft games, but that's the general case for most multiplayer PC games with dedicated servers.

[o_O]

I have been waiting for the server to get back up so I can buy this and now it WON'T LET ME REGISTER SAFSDGDSHFJLASDFKSDAF. D:

I have a fortress that needs expanding!

[Samuraid]

If you haven't bought the game yet, do so now (as soon as Notch fixes the server).

[Markus. D]

I agree with wowfony's suggestion to make an F2P version with Cash Shop, the developer would make a KILLING.

[Mirage]

So I'm uncertain of how multiplayer works. I assume it's just building and such. Is there a way that I could host a survival game and have my wife join it? Are there any option for just us to play together because that would be an awesome way to ruin our lives and we'd love it.

There is no survival multiplayer yet. If you host a multiplayer game now, you'll both be invincible and so will all the mobs (apparently you can kill them with fire, even if you can't burn to death yourself). Therefore, mobs are turned off in multiplayer games, as they'd jsut be annoying when you can't sword them to death. Me and my friends are still having a bunch of fun even if we can't kill crap though :>.

[Yeargdribble]

Well, last week I got my wife started playing. Yesterday she played for 14 hours nearly straight. She's beyond addicted.

We've messed around a little in MP. I think we could handle no monsters for the short term, but there are a lot of other glitches that are annoying like trees that can't be cut down and pieces of land that can't be removed (they just respawn as soon as removed). Also, items will sometimes disappear and/or reappear randomly. This particularly bothersome with chests even though it's rarity.

We'll just continue on our individual worlds for now I think. Hopefully when SMP gets ironed out we'll play more together. She's doing plenty fine being addicted to SP and it's great to share ideas for one anothers' creations. She always has ideas I hadn't really thought of.