[Aptorian]

Cerveza just asked for some TNT in the Minecraft thread, and D'rek has also been asking for the stuff for a while now... I think?

We've also been spawning water and lava for a while. And I've begun spawning saplings because of the leaf decay problem.

The question is of course if anyone has any problems with TNT being put into play, and if not how much TNT should be allowed?

So far the philosophy has been that we should do our labor the old fashioned way, no cheating allowed, as much as that was possible.

For the same reason I've been thinking that water/lava spawning should be dropped if the buckets are working now.

The thing is, if we spawn TNT, how much is enough?. You could blast out vast caverns and mighty tunnels in no time flat with TNT. It sort of defeats the purpose of doing things by hand. TNT is in my opinion a whole different item than creating cloth or water for building projects.

But then the counter argument could be that once the Azath starts working, we will have enormous amounts of TNT available.

Anyone who's worked with TNT knows it is a lot of fun to play with.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 16 November 2010 - 02:58 PM

[D'rek]

I got one stack of 64 TNT when we started. It was fun and helped me start out my cavern (carved out about a 4x4 vertical column from bedrock to just under the sea with it) and then it was used up. It was fun, but I didn't have enough to truly make much of a difference in the overall project.

And I think that's sort of the way to go: give everyone 1 or 2 stacks of it, and tha's it. They can use it for fun, for experimentation, or for clearing, but no resupplies will be had so they'll have to choose carefully how to use it.

[Kanubis]

I think D'rek's got it right. Give everyone a couple of stacks. I for one don't intend to use it to save labour times, I'd just like to have a little fun with it.

I think it's ok to give the odd toy out to keep people having fun until Notch gets server-side health running and Shit Gets Real, but whole chests full - no.

[Traveller]

I've not used it so far, but I'd like a bit to use. It would certainly help when starting out a larger project, especially with the block respawning problem.

Having large quantities around sounds like a bad idea though.

[cerveza_fiesta]

My opinion is that if the game is not providing something it should, spawning is 100% legit.

I agree to stop spawning water / lava. Buckets work and it is no longer necessary. Keep spawning the cloth for now cause you can't pick up drops from sheep yet.

I don't see why we can't use TNT to blast out caverns and make projects though. If the monster spawner was working, we would have tnt galore with minimal effort. If we're building that kind of "cheat" anyway, then there's no difference in just spawning the stuff while we wait for functioning monster spawning.

Everybody on the server is doing their crafting and mining for the purposes of creation, so if it helps build and create more new, excessive things...I say go for it.

When monster spawning works again, then we can just stop spawning the stuff and spawn it through the azath instead.

Plus, if you want to build things, it's still one block at a time and we've all done our share of it. The only way to go bigger and better is to remove the tedium of one-block-at-a-time destruction. It's the entire reason notch added TNT to the game in the first place. It should be available in whatever quantity needed to finish projects.

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 16 November 2010 - 04:14 PM

[Aptorian]

But Notch made obtaining gun powder hard.

You need to kill at least three creepers to get enough gun powder for one block of TNT. Than you need to add sand.

Even using the Mob trap will only yield a stack or two of gun powder an hour max. Meanwhile you have to be there to pick it up otherwise it is wasted.

The point is that in SP you need to invest a lot of time and resources to get the TNT. It is not supposed to be available in huge quantities.

[D'rek]

Aptorian, on 16 November 2010 - 04:35 PM, said:

The point is that in SP you need to invest a lot of time and resources to get the TNT. It is not supposed to be available in huge quantities.

Which is why I think it should be a 1-time gift only. It'll be a somewhat large amount, but if it's definitively one-time-only-no-refunds-or-exchanges-etc., then people will be conservative with it almost as if they are getting only a slow supply of it (but the advantage being admins don't need to make up some slow-supply system).

[cerveza_fiesta]

yeah, I'm cool with whatever everybody wants.

I figure if you spawned some gunpowder then at least it makes it a pain to harvest the sand and make your dynamite.

Not talking about infinite supply here, just throw some in the chests at the spawn once in awhile for folks to play with. When monsters work we can all go back to normal.

I'm happy to pick away if nobody is game for the TNT spawn though. It's really just injecting something new into the game right now since we don't have the option of obtaining any the hard way or even experiencing the whole survival part of the game.

[Coco with marshmallows]

I agree with Drek - two stacks, no give backs.

[cerveza_fiesta]

what part of the game does it ruin though? Stuff still takes a long time to build / dig...it just goes marginally faster with TNT than it did without.

We're basically playing a modified version of classic right now anyway with no damage and no monsters. What harm in having some extra stuff to play with really?

[Slippery Jim]

For me I would say that 1-2 stacks per person seems fine since we can't get it ourselves.

Just be careful kids - don't blow anything up that's important!

Old Man Jim

p.s. get off my lawn

[HoosierDaddy]

Other - Apt, you should never spawn.

[Aptorian]

That's what SHE said... wait, never mind.

Anyway. I can certainly see the benefit of using TNT for excavating projects. Just think of the usefullness when I am going to begin hollowing out the bowl inside the the Sea dome. But on the other hand, I think I am going to enjoy strip mining the bowl. It is my impression that TNT destroys ores if they get caught in the blast.

[Trull's son]

I agree with D'rek. TNT would be insanely useful, both to dig out holes and to acquire materials in large quantities in a short amount of time. However, this would belittle some of the accomplishments, in my opinion. The time to build projects adds to the design and so we can appreciate the materials used and the quantity of said materials acquired by old fashioned grinding.

[cerveza_fiesta]

fair nuff.

Good arguments on the other side. You've won me over. I'm happy to have some to play with anyway.

Especially with the destroyed ores thing. I realized that after blasting away half a stack yesterday. It kills torches caught in the blast radius too.

[MorikTheEccentricMerchant]

I like the idea of having some TNT as well, but what would the effect of people using TNT be towards lag? would it slow down the server?

[Aptorian]

Not in small amounts. It's when you start detonating hundreds or even thousands of blocks of TNT at once that the server gets sad.