Computer - finally

It finally arrived last night and just in time too, I needed to use it to remotely land the space shuttle, yes it's that awesome!

So after the prep work of getting all of the needed software and drivers on to it I was able to fire it up and see how it could play Minecraft. Interestingly enough I was only getting about 150+ FPS when playing at far draw distance, I really was expecting more, but I guess that is still pretty darn good. I also loaded up Oblivion so that I could see what it looks like at max settings, but as of yet haven't actually played it.

Getting back to MC, I have the family server up and running. Last night my brother and I messed around with that, just doing some odds and ends to see that it was working. After he got off I decided that I would go strip mining for diamonds so that I could get my portal and obsidian generator going. I was able to get the portal up and I think it looks badass. Little dark in the picture, but that's kind of for effect anyway. Reminded me of a moongate in Ultima.

The only problem with the portal is that on the Nether side it formed right in the middle of a river of lava! I tried to build up a little wall around it so that it could be safe, but instead I turned that river from flowing around the portal to flowing onto the portal. I'll have to go back in there and clean that mess up my next time in, maybe I'll record that...

Speaking of recording I made my first LP test video. It's only 30 seconds long as I was using the trial Fraps just to see if I could do it. Now that I know how to do it, I can get to making my little series this weekend. Hopefully it won't suck, probably will, but I'll try to make it entertaining.

Here is a link to test video if anyone wants to watch the test video, it's not really worth watching though.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Ickabodxx?feature=mhee

Getting excited

So my computer has finally shipped and I'll have it tomorrow evening. Probably won't get to play on it too much since I'll need to get some stuff installed on it, but I'm sure I'll stay up late just to spend time with my new addition.

My goal is to start up a lets play starting next week. I'll start recording episodes and see how they go before posting anything, basically I'll have like 5 in the can before I start posting them so that I can stay ahead of the game a little once I really get rolling. That's also only if I think they are good, well decent, well worth 10 minutes of someones time to watch for some lunch time entertainment. I'm going to play my version of hardcore where I can't die or else I'm forced to portal myself to some random location, I'm debating on using millenarie, I probably should because it adds a nice little distraction, so I think I will. Only problem is if the game is updated and the mod isn't, but I should be safe since 1.8 is supposed to be the next update.

Speaking of 1.8 that is my real goal, once that starts up I'm going to start season 2 of the LP so that I learn it as I play it on the videos, that should make it fresh. No mods once 1.8 is live though.

The other thing that I'll be doing is running the server for my son and my brother. That's just going to be a build server since my son can't handle mobs at this point. I'm thinking what I'll do there is build a little town with stores for all of the resources and a nice railway to go between locations. I'm going to need a goal on that server to keep me busy while I play with my son. Most of my time will probably be spent helping him, but I'll toss in a building or two to keep spurring his interest and creativity. Not sure what my brother will be doing, but hopefully he'll play with us a bit.

Man it seems like I've been waiting forever for this computer to show up and the chance to finally play some real MC again. I'll probably be so rusty that I'll get killed instantly, oh well good times!!!

Fianl Week?

The problem with not having a computer to play MC on is that I don't even have anything good to post on here anymore. Sure it's not like anything I said was interesting before, but it was for myself a distraction from the humdrum of reality. Thankfully I should have my computer by the end of this week, it's built at least so that's a start, now for FedEx to lose it it for me.

It finally came to a breaking point this weekend, I couldn't take it anymore and I ended up firing up a world of MC for myself. After spending a good deal of time working with my son on his world, I just had to mess around with some stuff to see how it worked.

The first thing that I decided to do was work on strip mining, ok now that doesn't sound like any fun, but I wanted to test a couple ways of doing it to see what was the most successful way of doing it. Pretty much it is the 3 block line every 2 lines that I did, served me well, found like 20+ diamonds so I'll call it a hit. But my goal when playing for real is not to strip mine, I was playing on peaceful here since I don't trust the computer not to lag when a Creeper finds me. The highlight of this little project was a 10 diamond vein, that's the largest that I have ever found.

The next thing that I thought that I would try was some work with pistons. I'm thinking that once I get going for real on the LP series that I'm going to need to not look like a total idiot and know a thing or two about using pistons. I have some of the basics down but I was left with one serious problem, I don't have any slime. According to the wiki there is supposed to be slime on peaceful, but in all of that digging that I did in my search for diamonds, I haven't seen a single one. Square little bastards!

My final project for yesterday evening was a failed attempt at an obsidian generator. Ok it was kind of a crappy effort to begin with so it quickly became a cobblestone generator. And it's a kick ass cobblestone generator if I must say so myself. I'm not really sure how everyone else makes them, but mine was so awesome that all I need to do is hold down the mouse button and it automatically breaks it down and collects it with 0 downtime, and completely safe, as long as no cows try to push you into the lava part. The way it works is that I set up a small stream to flow into where the lava flows out, they hit and form the cobblestone. The cool part is that the stream continues under where the cobble is formed so the broken rock then keeps flowing in the stream. The stream takes a 90 degree turn and I stand in it breaking the cobble while it flows right to me to get collected. Then as a final touch I made the generator housing the cobble and the lava out of obsidian so that no matter how long the mouse was chopping there was no way for it to break the obsidian behind it, thus breaking the wall and letting the lava out. Then I covered the lava in glass to give light at night and save on needless obsidian.

I'm sure that everyone has already made a cobble generator at some point, but it was my first and I thought it was cool. The next thing that I'm going to do with it is set up a rail line that will send the cobble to a point some distance away so that I could make a giant stone castle if I desired and not have to carry the stone all the way there. Sure it's not really needed, but it will be fun to make a real use for a rail line. I love rail lines, I just can never think of anything cool and useful to do with them.

Another Week

At some point I'll get to talk about Minecraft again, that is once my computer finally shows up. The company told me that it will be shipped by the end of this week. So I have been without a "real" computer for about a month now, hopefully I'll get a birthday gift and it will ship tomorrow, that would be nice.

In the meantime, my son has been playing Minecraft on the old Alienware and he's gotten pretty good at it. His goal this weekend has to build a huge tower, and with a little help he was able to make one that reached up to the clouds from just above sea level. I gave him a little help with it, but for the most part he was able to do it himself, even the jumping up a single layer of blocks at a time about 50 blocks up without dieing, and he doesn't know about the shift key, that's pretty impressive I think.

Hopefully by next week though my son's world will be abandoned as we fire up the family server. I'm not sure that he really gets what it means when I tell him that he and I along with Uncle Crash will all be able to play together, he replied, "But Uncle **** is on vacation?" Ah youth, but hey he is 4, forgive him for not understanding how the internet really works.

Until next week (hopefully) And I am going to do the Let's Play of my single player exploits, not sure if it will be entertaining, but I think LP's are cool so I have to try and do one myself.

Still waiting

I'm getting excited, I should have my new computer by next weekend, finally some Minecraft again. Over the last couple of weeks I've been playing Terraria, it's good, but it's just not as good as Minecraft, in my opinion. I think the thing that sets it apart is the first person perspective. In Terraria, you can see the danger coming a mile away, except for those damn worms, or the danger doesn't have as much of an impact. In Minecraft the danger is usually hidden, waiting to jump out at you and kill you when you least expect it. The first person perspective also puts it right there in your face.

That's not to say that Terraria isn't a fun game, it is, and I'm really glad to see that Notch has decided to take some notes from it and implement them in MC, I can't wait to see what the villages and NPC's are like.

Next week I'm going to try and start a Let's Play series, I'll download Fraps and enter the 21st century. I don't know if my videos will be worth a crap, but I've really been wanting to try it so it's finally time. Might as well make the most out of my super computer since I'll have it. One nice thing to look forward to, I'm 36 years old so you won't be hearing some high pitched 13 year old on the mic in mine, that has to be some sort of plus. =) I'll probably just be boring as hell though since I NEVER die in MC. And no I'm not doing some no torch crap, at least not initially, maybe if it goes well, I'll do that in season 2.

Kind of screwed

So if anyone is reading this that was directed from the let's play directory, I'm kind of on hold for a while. I found out that my new computer won't be showing up at home until July 8th so I won't be playing any Minecraft until then. I do have a older computer that my brother gave to my son, and while it's great for a 4 year old, the computer itself is more than twice that age so it's not really possible to play MC at the level of quality that I have come to expect. Make no mistake while MC might not look like much, it's a beast to the wrong computer, to play on my son's computer we have to set the graphics to fast and the draw distance to short, otherwise the game will shut down. So really it's a good time to take a break from MC, no reason to get burned out on it playing in "crappy" mode.

In the meantime I'll probably be playing some Terraria (if that runs on there) or I'll GASP fall back to my Xbox some more, I mean I do need to finish Portal at least. On the bright side it doesn't look like Notch is anywhere closer to releasing 1.7 so maybe the timing will be just right and that will come out on the 4th, mods will get updated and then presto I have a new power machine to play it on. Hey I can dream can't I.

So if anyone has been reading this on an ongoing basis, thanks for reading. I'm not done writing nor done playing MC, but I won't have any good tales to write about MC for at least a couple weeks.

New Computer & Portal

Well that wasn't going to last long, there is no way that I'm going to go without my computer for more than a couple days. So yesterday afternoon after my other post about not having a computer I went ahead and bought a new one.

Here are the basics:

6 core 3.3GHz AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition
16GB DDR3-1866 RAM
2 Radeon HD 6850 2GB GDDR5
120 GB SSD with 450MB/s read
600 GB 10,000 rpm
2 TB 7200 rpm

I'm hoping that will run Minecraft ok. =)

I also have a feeling that should do well with Skyrim.

So after buying a new computer, what is the first thing I do (hasn't delivered yet)? I get on my xbox and download Portal since I've never played it. Yes Portal 1, it's supposed to be one of the best games evar! So ok I'll give it a spin, for $15 ($20 since I had to buy M$ points, Damn you Bill Gates). After about an hour I'm on puzzle 16, seriously you can fly through that game if you have any idea how the portals work. Considering that I have seen plenty of the game in motion I had a pretty good idea of what I was doing, but it still was tricky at times to see how the puzzles worked. By the 16th puzzle with the turrets, that was when things got interesting. I'm not really sure how to progress through the level quite yet. It doesn't feel impossible by any means, but it wasn't an automatic, go to A then B then C, so that was pretty cool.

What got me though was that the turrets kept freaking me out when one would see me behind glass (I'm thinking it's unbreakable, not totally sure yet though). I mean the game is kind of creepy to begin with, Glados talking to you the whole time and pretty much nothing else, it's a very isolated feeling. So as I'm working out the turrets my son comes walking in the media room and scares the crap out of me. It's 10:30 at night and behind me I hear the door opening up, freaked me out. Keep in mind I'm playing this game in a media room with a 9 foot projector TV and surround sound, so any noise or movement in the room really gets my attention fast.

Great way to play though, I really like playing up there on my Xbox. I've done it with the computer a couple times (raiding in WoW and stuff) but it just doesn't seem to work the same. I'll have to play some MC up there with the new computer. And yes I could play MC on the xbox once that comes, but really I'm a PC guy, and I'm not sure how MC will be on the xbox, but who knows.