[cerveza_fiesta]

I was just thinking how neat it would be if they could incorporate world blending somehow with the multiplayer.

Then you could take SP worlds created while you're introducing yourself to the game (or Sp worlds from Alpha), and when you're ready to play MP, you just import your chunk of land, and minecraft blends it automatically into the greater MP realm and you keep going from there. Perhaps even with the option of blending adjacent to other players or randomly blending in so you have to search for others.

You'd have to put limits on it, say a 200x200 area that you could import or something, but it would be a cool way of getting you and your buddies' SP worlds to collide with your own.

I know I posted about starting a new world, but the idea kinda makes me sick the more I think about it. All that stone I cooked up for my ultimate fortress. I can't bring myself to do it.

It's like the first time I started playing WoW, got to level 50 and my buddy started playing too. He wanted me to start a new character and go through leveling with him. I said Fuck That.



Sidenote on big cave exploration:

I saw a youtube Minecraft video titled Minecraft Jackpot or something like that, where a fellow made a huge mine, at least 20x20 straight down on top of a cavern system, so that the caverns intersected his open mineshaft all over the place. He had a long spiraling staircase around the side that allowed access to it at different points. It struck me as a nice safe way to explore a huge cavern rather than getting lost in the twists and turns. Just plough straight down through it, and safety is never too far away.

I say this because most of the bigger caverns I've encountered in my long distance travels have ended up looking super complicated at first, but a lot of the branches end up looping back around to other ones. A lot of those branches would just loop back to the main pit

My new approach that works very well is to section them off. When i go in now, I try to get to a point where I have at least 2 or 3 branches. Then wall them off, add doors on each branch and head back to the cavern entrance and do the same. This locks down everything I've previously visited. It gives a nice safe point to return to after exploring each branch and also gives a point to put my workbench, and most importantly a chest to store mined minerals. Nothing worse than getting full inventory at the bottom of a cave and losing the works by dying when you're almost at the surface. Putting a trail of lockdowns and chests along the way lets you hunt minerals while keeping the main stash completely safe. Then when a sub-lockdown and its branches are fully explored and you're ready to move back, you just empty the chest and consolidate the haul with the previous chest as you retrace steps.

It also helps a ton to toss down a sign every now and then stating that you explored a given branch of the cave. My other method is to simply fully wall-in a branch after I've finished with it. Cobblestone stands out in a cave, so you always know that a wall-in came from you.

Keeping a system to big caves is key. Random walking just gets you killed. Just keep picking right-hand branches until you get to the bottom and every so often lock down your area. Leaves a safe path to the surface and keeps the fruits of your mining labours safe, with relatively little effort on your part..

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 06 October 2010 - 06:25 PM

[Tarcanus]

That's brilliant, cf. I must just like spelunking without security since I've just managed to find another ground-level entrance to my largest cave by going to the bottom and following other branches of it back to the surface. Your method would let me stay in the depths longer in order to pick it clean. Thanks for the tips.

[champ]

yep... it is as i feared!

finally took the plunge and got the game...

got in from work at 5:30pm, thought fuck it al get the game and have a quick go see what it's like... it's now 11:05pm and i am yet to shower or eat

and what have i done in the game? nothing of substance really, i went to explore and got lost compared to the spawn point so i just killed myself, figured i know, i will build a large column of sand so i can see where the spawn point is... that then turned into a monument, which i then thought al convert it into a tower, to then think its only 2x2 and if i want to climb inside it, it will need to be 3x3 (my ocd'esque ways will not let me build it out of mixed materials, not symmetrical etc) so i destroyed it all and am about to start again...

goodbye life...

[Kanubis]

I gave in too. Managed to get a little home in a cliff-side before the second nightfall (got royally buggered on night one.) Two large mining projects on the go. Found a decent amount of coal, a bit of iron and my first little bits of gold.

One thing... if you get caught outside at night, you seem to get ganked to hell. If you carefully stow all your stuff and head out with just weaponry and some torches, the bastards are nowhere to be seen 

[cerveza_fiesta]

I have returned to my original huge cave of death (the one where I lost 15 diamonds) and am systematically locking the fucker down.

This is awesome.

[D'rek]

My stairs annoy me, they don't ever want to line up straight! Stupid stairs!

I built an enormous floating dirt island adjacent to my cylindrical house and a staircase of dirt up to it in the hopes that the grass will go up the stairs and turn the whole thing grassy. Then it'll become my wood harvesting area. For now though, it's just a giant bit of dirt (with lots of monsters spawning on it, though they never come downstairs into the house).

[Kanubis]

D'rek, I always make my tunnels and shaft at lest two blocks wide, if you then put two steps down, they'll automatically line up.

Oh, and I had a dream about Minecraft last night. After playing it for just 3 hours. I'm a bit worried about the implications of this going forward...

This post has been edited by Kanubis: 07 October 2010 - 06:26 AM

[Coco with marshmallows]

implications shmimplications. Just keep playing.

[Aptorian]

My giant mob trap is nearing completion. I'm pretty damn proud of this. I pretty much winged the whole thing and had to retrace and correct errors more than once, but the whole system is now beautifully connected and now I'm just adding water and removing torches to bring the darkness.

I'll post pictures when it is done. I hope this thing works or I'm going to be massively disappointed.

[Kanubis]

How long did you guys who have played for longer spend just mining before you got round to building stuff?

[Tapper]

Building a landmark tower starting from my subterrenean greenhouse (once I add water)/garden to mark my current home, consisting of nothing but a glass funnel on the inside (which I want to fill with lava), stairs around that, and glass and stone around that. Getting close to cloud level, but for the tower to be visible from all sides I'll have to flatten a few mountains, which is my next planned task - after I excavate until I hit the bedrock.

I also built myself a slaughter pit which can be reached from my house so I can do some wool/meat harvesting at night. I may actually expand it by adding a tunnel, to lure all the animals into a cave so I won't get shot by annoying mobs...

[Tapper]

Kanubis, on 07 October 2010 - 08:05 AM, said:

How long did you guys who have played for longer spend just mining before you got round to building stuff?

Still in that stage. I'm playing the game rather haphazardly, and don't plan a lot of stuff, just start a project when I get inspiration. There are multiple quarries/groves where I started something and never finished it.

[Aptorian]

Not that long really. You don't really need iron, redstone, diamond, etc. to build stuff, it just makes it easier. The giant tower standing over my first house is built out of my first forray into the earth. Just keep on digging and save everything, dirt, stone, gravel, coal.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Kanubis, on 07 October 2010 - 08:05 AM, said:

How long did you guys who have played for longer spend just mining before you got round to building stuff?

Just take the organic approach at first. Build into the earth rather than above the earth. Just pick a mountain, riddle it with balconies and doors out different sides, add a stairway to the mountaintop, add a mineshaft to the centre of the earth...

By the time you're done building your under-mountain, you'll have enough stone, dirt, gravel, and everything else to make a sweet fort on top of it.

Plus it's a fair bit more interesting than simply quarrying from the nearby landscape, since you're building a stash of blocks while doing fun things like searching for minerals in the depths of the earth.

EDIT: And go double or triple-wide on your tunnels. It's worth the effort aesthetically in the end and you'll have no trouble building up your cobblestone supply.

Sidenote on game perspective:

I am very very disappointed with the view from the bottom of my 7x7 mineshaft from cloud level down to indestructable bedrock. No matter how deep I went after a certain point, the top never looked farther away. I was hoping that at the bottom I'd look up and see that the skylight was just a tiny brght speck but it doesn't!

It's especially visible when descending the big ladder. When going down at a constant rate, if you look up the skylight will shrink away (as it should) and then when you reach a certain depth it begins moving right along with you and the wall blocks next to it just get compressed until they disappear.

Therefore, no matter how high-up you start and how deep you dig, the pit will always appear to be the same depth. I have draw distance set to far too....boo.

It is kinda funny on the odd occasion I lose my grip on the ladder...5 sec of straight fall time from the precipice at the top.

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 07 October 2010 - 01:57 PM

[HiddenOne]

My ongoing projects include
1. My fort is done, it only keeps the baddies away.
2. Tunnelled to bedrock/lava under my home and honeycombed the earth
3. Tunnelled to an island that connects to my fort, and to also another cave near my spawn point
4. Building lighted marker towers on the landscape so I don't get lost. I once ran from the mobs with a load from the mine all night & day, because if I died I would lose my iron, gold, etc. Never again! I will have a system of towers that are visible from anywhere. I've even tried to make arrows that point toward the fort.
5. Trying to figure out a way to get into a cave at the bottom of the bay
6. Found my first zombie spawner. Are the green-veined blocks useful?
7. Exploring new places to find goodies. It seems that natural caves are more rewarding than the ones I carve from the mountains. I keep finding impossible natural formations, like ground up in the sky.

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

HiddenOne, on 07 October 2010 - 06:59 PM, said:

My ongoing projects include
1. My fort is done, it only keeps the baddies away.
2. Tunnelled to bedrock/lava under my home and honeycombed the earth
3. Tunnelled to an island that connects to my fort, and to also another cave near my spawn point
4. Building lighted marker towers on the landscape so I don't get lost. I once ran from the mobs with a load from the mine all night & day, because if I died I would lose my iron, gold, etc. Never again! I will have a system of towers that are visible from anywhere. I've even tried to make arrows that point toward the fort.
5. Trying to figure out a way to get into a cave at the bottom of the bay
6. Found my first zombie spawner. Are the green-veined blocks useful?
7. Exploring new places to find goodies. It seems that natural caves are more rewarding than the ones I carve from the mountains. I keep finding impossible natural formations, like ground up in the sky.

Images? I wish to observe your work with my own eyes!

[Tarcanus]

HiddenOne, on 07 October 2010 - 06:59 PM, said:

My ongoing projects include
1. My fort is done, it only keeps the baddies away.
2. Tunnelled to bedrock/lava under my home and honeycombed the earth
3. Tunnelled to an island that connects to my fort, and to also another cave near my spawn point
4. Building lighted marker towers on the landscape so I don't get lost. I once ran from the mobs with a load from the mine all night & day, because if I died I would lose my iron, gold, etc. Never again! I will have a system of towers that are visible from anywhere. I've even tried to make arrows that point toward the fort.
5. Trying to figure out a way to get into a cave at the bottom of the bay
6. Found my first zombie spawner. Are the green-veined blocks useful?
7. Exploring new places to find goodies. It seems that natural caves are more rewarding than the ones I carve from the mountains. I keep finding impossible natural formations, like ground up in the sky.

Those impossible formations are part of what makes the game so great. Exploring your world only to find natural arches, huge caves, or impossible natural structure sis amazing. I can't wait until biomes are introduced and we get some crazy formations in the new locations.

[HiddenOne]

Green Pig, on 07 October 2010 - 07:01 PM, said:

Images? I wish to observe your work with my own eyes!

How does one make a screen shot of the game? I will be glad to provide you with some laughs at the expense of my stone-age level of development.
I also don't know how to post them on the forum, as I have never attempted it before. My efforts to post an avatar picture failed.

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

Alt+Print Screen while in Minecraft. Paste into Paint (or any other image editting software). Save. (Repeat for as many images as desired.)

Add reply. Under 'Attachments', click Browse and find saved photo. Click Attach This File. (Repeat for as many images as you want to post.) Images appear in 'Attachments' section.

Type reply. Click Add to post next to the relevant image when you want it to appear in your reply.

Adding images to a post - done.

This post has been edited by Green Pig: 07 October 2010 - 09:59 PM

[D'rek]

I fell through the world today. Was very surprised when I saw a blank square amongst the bedrock, so when I was done mining I tossed my stuff in a chest and jumped. Sadly you die really fast while falling and the world doesn't illustrate much from below... I wanted to see a huge underscape slowly drifting farther away.