Minecraft Thread
Moderators: Bob the Hamster, marionline, SDHawk
- Newbie Newtype
- Reigning Smash Champion
- Posts: 1873
- Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2007 9:44 pm
Looked through some old screenshots (from 2013!) and WOW has Wallachia sprouted from nothin! Weird how much has changed and how much has stayed the same. Hell, the old screenshots don't even upload right.
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- NOW: More well-adjusted, but stsill holding the high ground.
- 2016-12-09_17.44.14.png (68.21 KiB) Viewed 4485 times
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- THEN: A desperate young man on the edge, talking to a rooster.
- 2013-10-27_14.49.02.png (226.32 KiB) Viewed 1714 times
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- NOW: Whatever I was standing on doesn't even exist! Walls have been erected, hills have been illuminated and a humble stone cabin has been replaced by an entire village!
- 2016-12-09_21.44.05.png (257.34 KiB) Viewed 4485 times
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- THEN: To the left, The Cobblemason' Union. A sharp eye will see a flower in a window on main street and a chicken. In the middle is a glass topped bridge to ??, and to the right, some brave pioneer has erected a stone cabin.
- 2013-03-16_21.51.21.png (839.72 KiB) Viewed 1720 times
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- And WTF is this to the south-east(?) of town? The Fortress of Solitude?
- 2016-12-09_13.03.37.png (198.51 KiB) Viewed 1722 times
Last edited by Gizmog on Sat Dec 10, 2016 3:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
- Bob the Hamster
- Lord of the Slimes
- Posts: 7658
- Joined: Tue Oct 16, 2007 2:34 pm
- Location: Hamster Republic (Ontario Enclave)
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Weird you mention it! When I was walking home from the fortress of solitude lookin thing (which was itself a result of visiting this Igloo site I had just read about) and found a house of yours along some kind of a trail. It had a tunnel in the basement and I figured better to go through a nice tunnel than get peppered by skeletons. When I got into Wallachia (that wonderful mushroomed basement) I recognized an old tunnel of my brothers and slipped off that way to the Temple of Tunes and whatnot and home.Bob the Hamster wrote:I am waiting for somebody to find the mob grinder I built near Wallachia.there is actually a hidden rail that leads there
I went back lookin for it now that you mentioned it, and it turned out in that same basement, not too terribly far from where I left, was a railcar line. I followed it out to a lovely home and village and was wondering "Is this it? Is this the Mob Spawner?" just as some spiders fell down onto a swooping minecart rail thing. It was indeed the spawner! I'm going to borrow a bit of gunpowder to refill the dispenser at Wallachia's Littlest House. Not sure how the damned thing works, but it does seem to work faster than the one I have near Sandminton, which is mostly just a big hole with water that floods out and knocks 'em over a cliff.
I noticed there's a second spawner started over there. Depending on how ambitious I get, and how violently you oppose, I might fetch some iron from one of my stashes to make some hoppers and try to finish the second side over there to double the productivity. It was a wonderful hunt, and I found the tunnel in the last place I'd ever think to look.
EDIT: Warning to anyone who finds James secret mob spawner! It spawns a ton of endermen who teleport around. Bring precautions! And keep an eye on 'em, they love to jam the works of the spawner and one of 'em even stole part of the minecart track. I think I was able to make repairs, but it's a madhouse out there and you should definitely watch your back.
EDIT EDIT: I labelled two villagers in Wallachia. One of them is a fisherman who had been trapped in Wallachia's Smallest House. I traded him something and he was so happy he slipped free and ran for the nearest villager. I tried to put him back but was unsuccesful. If anyone knows what that was about, I'm sorry!
The second guy is possibly my favorite villager ever. He sells pies! And cakes! And he lets you trade potatoes, carrots, wheat and pumpkins for emeralds. He prints money! Keep your eye out for him and don't let anything untowards happen to him.
Last edited by Gizmog on Mon Dec 12, 2016 8:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
God damnit, starting to remember why I quit playing this game. Apparently, all my trading with the villagers has made them horny enough to reproduce. That would be okay, except we now have enough villagers to trigger the dumbest mechanic in the game: [url=http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Zombie_siege]Zombie Sieges.[/ur]
The too long, didn't read here is this: If you have more than 20 villagers, every night has a 1/10 chance of dropping up to 20 zombies into town. And unlike regular mob spawns, these zombies can appear in water, in light, in doors, ANYWHERE. And like any zombie, their goal is to kill our villagers.
There's a few reasons this is slimy and even more reasons why this is stupid. A slimy part is that zombie AI has been improved a few times while villager AI has not. A slimier part is that the only defense they have is the player, who might not even know it's happening until it's way too late, and iron golems. A village of 20 would have *one* iron golem and that iron golem wouldn't stand much chance against the worst case 20 zombies, or even most of the middling cases. Their attack has so much knockback it'd likely just fling the zombies into groups who were otherwise unassailable.
The slimiest part is that it takes an already finnicky and relatively worthless part of the game (villages) and makes it a nightmare. If you manage to get enough walls and lights down to protect your village, and if your village starts to succeed, what do you win? The chance to trade 24 iron bars for 3 emeralds, all the better to buy a shovel with! And in return, you can never rest easy again because anywhere within your safe zone could spawn a slime ton of zombies who'll mob you to death and take your stuff and kill your town! Zombies can equip armor and weapons for some reason, villagers can't.
Now it's interesting, becuase I love slime liks this in Terraria. But the big difference is that Terraria warns you in no uncertain terms "A goblin invasion is coming!" giving you time to prepare. Further, the NPCs in Terraria are more distinct in functionality. If they kill your guide, you get a new guide with a different name not too long after, no harm done. Minecraft doesn't give you any warning, barely gives you any option to defend and all of your villagers are people you've given exorbitant amount of resources to. Losing a regular villager is a loss of everything you invested to discover his trades and losing a good trading villager is hours of Russian Roulette to try to get a new one of equal worth.
It's my biggest problem with Minecraft, really. They got all these big crazy ideas but they *HATE* telling you anything directly (I thought the new map stuff they talked about for this update was finally a turnaround to that). They also hate giving you anything and make everything a pain in the slime. Look at the Lingering Potions you can only get from the Ender Dragon, and only by bottling his attack. Go fight the end boss for a thing you'll only get to use maybe once or twice! And what to use it on? The end boss? Oh wait, we already killed THAT!
What about the decorative heads for banners/fireworks? All you have to do is get a creeper struck by lightning (Not easy on its own!) and then lure another monster nearby and get it killed by that creepers suicide attack. All that work and what do you get? 3 fancy fireworks!
My ultimate point I guess, is this. This thread's been runnin for five and a half years, these boys have made billions of dollars and they're still makin damn weird decisions. I hadn't even realized it till someone in IRC pointed it out the other day, but there's still no in-game means of finding recipes.
I still like the game (especially fishing, which is wacky because fish is basically the worst food in the game, because it's so easy to get. see the above points about they hate to give you anything) but it's probably the best example in the world of why you need a design document of some kind to keep your game focused. And it's made billions of dollars, so it's a great example too of how you don't need to be perfect or know what you're doing to hit it big.
The too long, didn't read here is this: If you have more than 20 villagers, every night has a 1/10 chance of dropping up to 20 zombies into town. And unlike regular mob spawns, these zombies can appear in water, in light, in doors, ANYWHERE. And like any zombie, their goal is to kill our villagers.
There's a few reasons this is slimy and even more reasons why this is stupid. A slimy part is that zombie AI has been improved a few times while villager AI has not. A slimier part is that the only defense they have is the player, who might not even know it's happening until it's way too late, and iron golems. A village of 20 would have *one* iron golem and that iron golem wouldn't stand much chance against the worst case 20 zombies, or even most of the middling cases. Their attack has so much knockback it'd likely just fling the zombies into groups who were otherwise unassailable.
The slimiest part is that it takes an already finnicky and relatively worthless part of the game (villages) and makes it a nightmare. If you manage to get enough walls and lights down to protect your village, and if your village starts to succeed, what do you win? The chance to trade 24 iron bars for 3 emeralds, all the better to buy a shovel with! And in return, you can never rest easy again because anywhere within your safe zone could spawn a slime ton of zombies who'll mob you to death and take your stuff and kill your town! Zombies can equip armor and weapons for some reason, villagers can't.
Now it's interesting, becuase I love slime liks this in Terraria. But the big difference is that Terraria warns you in no uncertain terms "A goblin invasion is coming!" giving you time to prepare. Further, the NPCs in Terraria are more distinct in functionality. If they kill your guide, you get a new guide with a different name not too long after, no harm done. Minecraft doesn't give you any warning, barely gives you any option to defend and all of your villagers are people you've given exorbitant amount of resources to. Losing a regular villager is a loss of everything you invested to discover his trades and losing a good trading villager is hours of Russian Roulette to try to get a new one of equal worth.
It's my biggest problem with Minecraft, really. They got all these big crazy ideas but they *HATE* telling you anything directly (I thought the new map stuff they talked about for this update was finally a turnaround to that). They also hate giving you anything and make everything a pain in the slime. Look at the Lingering Potions you can only get from the Ender Dragon, and only by bottling his attack. Go fight the end boss for a thing you'll only get to use maybe once or twice! And what to use it on? The end boss? Oh wait, we already killed THAT!
What about the decorative heads for banners/fireworks? All you have to do is get a creeper struck by lightning (Not easy on its own!) and then lure another monster nearby and get it killed by that creepers suicide attack. All that work and what do you get? 3 fancy fireworks!
My ultimate point I guess, is this. This thread's been runnin for five and a half years, these boys have made billions of dollars and they're still makin damn weird decisions. I hadn't even realized it till someone in IRC pointed it out the other day, but there's still no in-game means of finding recipes.
I still like the game (especially fishing, which is wacky because fish is basically the worst food in the game, because it's so easy to get. see the above points about they hate to give you anything) but it's probably the best example in the world of why you need a design document of some kind to keep your game focused. And it's made billions of dollars, so it's a great example too of how you don't need to be perfect or know what you're doing to hit it big.
- Bob the Hamster
- Lord of the Slimes
- Posts: 7658
- Joined: Tue Oct 16, 2007 2:34 pm
- Location: Hamster Republic (Ontario Enclave)
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Yeah, there is so much that seems poorly thought out or just thrown together.
I didn't realize that Zombie sieges ignored light levels. I wonder if that is new? I never saw it happen back when I was hanging around in Wallachia, and we had tons of villagers even then (but maybe I was too far away from whatever point was considered the village "center")
This article http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorial ... ge_defense has some good ideas, like hiding pairs of villagers in sealed breeding compartments to re-populate the village.
Player-made Iron Golems and Snow-Golems would probably help too.
Oh, and you are totally welcome to do what you like at the Mob Spawner. I was indeed planning to build a second column of spawn platforms, and you are quite welcome to try and finish the other one.
And help yourself to any and all resources down in the collection chamber.
My main purpose was to collect a ton of gunpowder to make a few stacks of TNT to blast out a giant cave under Hamster Mesa.
Also, now that Bone Blocks are craftable from bone-meal, all those skeleton bones could make for an interesting build.
I didn't realize that Zombie sieges ignored light levels. I wonder if that is new? I never saw it happen back when I was hanging around in Wallachia, and we had tons of villagers even then (but maybe I was too far away from whatever point was considered the village "center")
This article http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorial ... ge_defense has some good ideas, like hiding pairs of villagers in sealed breeding compartments to re-populate the village.
Player-made Iron Golems and Snow-Golems would probably help too.
Oh, and you are totally welcome to do what you like at the Mob Spawner. I was indeed planning to build a second column of spawn platforms, and you are quite welcome to try and finish the other one.
And help yourself to any and all resources down in the collection chamber.
My main purpose was to collect a ton of gunpowder to make a few stacks of TNT to blast out a giant cave under Hamster Mesa.
Also, now that Bone Blocks are craftable from bone-meal, all those skeleton bones could make for an interesting build.