Let's Play Minecraft!

Hi guys,

by now, you probably have heard of this new game called Minecraft which has been having a big push of "publicity" recently. I have been playing MC for about 3 weeks now and have also started a "Let's Play" series on this game. If you are curious about it and want to learn more and see it in action, aswell as learning about the basics of the game, then I encourage you to go ahead and watch a bit. You are welcome to post C&C.

Episode 1
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k0ya2PNaDk
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ml0e_DhP64

Episode 2
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITFfHI4eSJk
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss5munIwlAo
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvBBIg0NhIU

Let me know what you think, and/or your opinions and/or screenshots/videos about your minecraft world too!

Wow, best/ most interesting game I've seen in a long time! I couldn't stop watching...
Your videos are well done but I would have liked to see a zombie!

That looks so cool. I'll have to buy it soon. Nice videos. I imagine what I've learned from them will be very helpful when I start with the game, and I found them quite entertaining.

Jibb

Nice videos, i've heard about that video before (and i saw people working on a remake with unity).

But i've never looked too much into it, it kinda sounded boring. But watching your videos, it makes me want to play it too

I think i will get a copy too, its nice they offer it for 50% off when its still alpha.

Can you actually invite people to your worlds? I saw a video before where many people where in one world.

I totally don't get what people like so much about this game. I mean it really has some interesting approaches like being able to "build" stuff by combining certain objects you can gather to create things like doors. I see no point in the game itself though...

I now managed to watch over 10 minutes of the "episode 1" and I'm even questioning the fun in this game more than before. It felt like most of the time was spent to create a nice "home" which just means taking away cubes until the room has a "nice shape". Then you run around the world, get on an island, make a huge pile tower on it, go back and take everything in your "home" away in order to move to the island. WTF!?

That you felt you had to use a fast forward function speaks volumes. I mean people usually moan when there are lots of distances to travel in RPGs and stupid collect quests to solve - this game seems to be made of nothing more than exactly that...

Maybe there's some top secret fun hidden you only get when playing but despite some interesting elements it still looks to me that this game is made of boredom. Is it already the time where I have to say "I'm too old for this"? I hope not!

An Epic Battle it is then for Episode 3!



The game has a Multiplayer mode, in which you can import your own world if you are hosting a server, but currently MP is still very buggy, but also a lot of fun if you do it with friends and/or nice people who are not griefers and try to destroy everything you build



Let me guess You never built sandcastles as a kid or made a pillow fortress, right?

I did - just as I did play with Lego and build a "huge" several m² sized castle made of paperboard packings to crawl through with everything like windows & stuff not speaking of other stuff like doing some work on a model railroad...

I never did that though because a huge green "penis" might hop in the next second in order to explode...

This game focuses too much around actual work in order to be really fun. It's amazing though that the game sucked you into it - I mean not only makes it you work but it even seems it can annoy you with no negative result. At least when looking at the final part of episode 2 (I was curious if anything happens there besides reorganizing cubes under quite an expenditure of time) you stopped your actual "creational work" in order to kill off animals getting on your nerves due to their annoying sounds. I guess that's quite a compliment for the game designer: You make people work rather than play, annoy them and still they play your game...

It might have been really cool when it would just have been about the combination of certain parts and not being first person only (as putting things together would have a better flow when not always being tied to a first person shooter mechanism)...

In all fairness, this first 2 episodes focus on building and mining because I just couldn't decide where I wanted my "base" to be. The real fun begins when you start exploring caves and dungeons deep underground.

Alternatively, I guess your playing style, you can also set the difficulty to peaceful and concentrate fully on building a castle or a giant pyramid.

Press F5 for third person

Watch some other videos, like videos from davidr69yt who also has a minecraft let's play, where there is a lot more action as he is a more combat/adventure oriented player than me.

But anyway, other people have different tastes and there really is no point on my trying to convince you to play Minecraft, if you like it, then you'll get around to play it, if not, then that is your choice

hm... in almost all games you have to do work. mostly extremely boring work actually. i am not much of a gamer anymore but recently out of curiosity i played bioshock a bit and i found it horrible. sure, the story is a bit more interesting than in other shooters and the art deco style was kind of nice but playing it was like being forced to do extremely boring work. go there, look for the key for this door, look for the key for that door, repeat 100 times,... even the original doom was more fun to me. most games bore me to death nowadays.

projects like minecraft look more interesting to me. i think i like playgrounds more than actual games. it kind of makes an unfinished impression though. btw. does anyone know dwarf fortress? it's supposed to be great but it looks a bit intimidating. http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ (there also are graphical clients i think.)

Sure some games include tasks that are sort of repetitive or boring. The difference is that those games tell a story, create an atmosphere and things like that. A "playground" is a pretty good description I guess as the game just drops you there and that's it. Not that being able to "build" your own objects (even if most of it is just about poorly textured cubes) is no fun at all. The disadvantage in my opinion is that it puts too much focus on the work needed to achieve that. In the end that's nothing new because games like Sim City, Civilization or Theme Park also had those elements of building things up. In the end there always was this dull feeling where you've reached a point where it pretty much is pointless to go on as you won't get anything more from a gaming perspective but just a bigger / wider / prettier graphical presentation of whatever you've build / done...

The difference to Minecraft in my opinion is that the fun factor which makes you do the work is totally removed leading you to that end point where there's no real point in continuing even faster...


Yes I know it but I didn't make it very far. Its design sort of is related to that of minecraft with way more interaction and the need of reaction though. I've seen some people playing this and it has its charme but it's a hell of complexity in my point of view. You have to know pretty much everything the game offers in order to react right and must get a knowledge of how laying out your world works best...

People also told me that you should scrap any visualisation despite the classic ASCII look. Quite interesting game but just as you I got initimidated pretty soon...

...but while playing bioshock i always thought: "bah... now i have to run around in those stupid corridors again for 2 hours before i see how the story continues." i think i would have prefered a good movie about it.

Well would you prefer some reaction tests in corridor fights of Bioshock the game or watching Bioshock directed by Uwe Boll?

Seems to have been a good choice not to buy Bioshock. I wasn't that much impressed by what I saw from it and now am even less...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaMTedT6P0I
This is a really nice fan-made trailer for Minecraft.

And here's a pretty cool article hinting towards how successful Minecraft is:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.231499-PayPal-Freezes-750K-in-MineCraft-Devs-Account

And then this is just hilarious
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjSWPxJxNs&feature=player_embedded

Jibb

Very cool gameconcept.

The reason why minecraft is so popular is probably
the simple idea for everyone to be able to build cool 3D objects, use them and show it to others.
The other are the athmosphere and exploration.

There are a lot of possibilities to build up on that,
Also by adding more mission-based objectives into it.
Like: "Next Mission: inspect the cave in the north-east and
fine the diamonds" Or: "Stay at position x,y for one night, and
fight off the monsters"

...
I've spent several hours on my Minecraft world, upgraded my items and my character with diamond tools and weapons and I collected tons of red-dust.
Then I accidently fell in lava, I got out of it with 4 hearts (and armor) left but I still died.
Now everything, my inventory was completely full, is gone... THAT is frustrating as hell.

I played it in the browser for about an hour and I am now going to buy it, also because I think if you want support for your indie game you have to buy others aswell. And i like the graphic, the sound and so on

That guy who develops it made probably a million Euros within the last months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft
Its quite a success story.

For sure! He has stats on his site.
http://www.minecraft.net/stats.jsp

At 10 Euros a pop, he's made 2 566 780 Euros on that game, 65 140 of which was in the last 24 hours (at time of writing). Lately it has been accelerating. Yesterday he had made more than 80k in the previous 24 hours, but a lot of server downtime last night probably affected the night's sales.

Also, he developed it for about a week before it was publicly available in its first form (albeit free and much simpler).

In regards to that 600k at the end of the Wikipedia article that Paypal had frozen -- people were wondering why he left so much in his Paypal account, but he responded was emptying it every week, and sales had just spiked.

Where's our community's success story like that!?

Jibb

he gets massive amounts of pr at the moment. it gets featured everywhere (slashdot, arstechnica,...). the paypal story sucks.

do you think a game like that could be done with gamestudio with some tricks? there would be entity overload. it's written in java and to me it doesn't look like it uses opengl but a software renderer.

This is a very custom rendering procedure.
I doubt gamestudio could handle these amount of blocks
with the starndard system.
Would need a custom renderer and scene-system.

Bought the game too
I rather throw the money at an indys success story, than
to a lame commercial studio.

Poor guy, in Sweden he has to probably give 50% of the income back to the goverment.

Me too, eventhough he has earned enough to life for ages

Ive read he makes currently around 250.000€ dayly (presales)!
And the Game is not even Beta yet.
That would beat even any AAA Title sales I know of.
(remember he has almost no costs to repay)

This is epic.

I bought it too, its a fascinating game! don't know why but i can't stop mining ^^.

The graphics can give you a headache though, more hi-res textures could be helpful there.

You can download texture packs from the forums, the game supports textures up to 512*512, but I like the original textures, have a kind of 8bit-y vibe

just got the game. and i have no idea why...


... but it's entirely made of awesome and win. ENTIRELY.

his blog is interesting:
http://notch.tumblr.com/page/3
"Piracy will win in the long run. It has to. The alternative is too scary."

edit:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/mine-the-gap/

I am so jealous...I mean, it is not Alpha but he could stop making games after this one, he is done with money...

No, he isn't. 250k a day isn't much, like damocles pointed out, he must pay high taxes(?!) to his government.
However, with this little money, you just can't stop working. This might work for the next few years, but after this?

Sure, his life is currently the wet dream of every hobby programmer, but he didn't do any remarkable.
Beside that, I fucking love minecraft.

if he has a reasonable lifestyle then of course he could retire. even after all the taxes he still could invest in flats or something like that if he doesn't like to work on anything anymore.

Yeeaaah, I remember what happend to the last ones that invested in flats

I guess there are an army of consultants, lawers, new friends, maggots and girls waiting
to take a bite from his endevors.

what do you mean? i don't mean gambling with realties. just buying some flats and renting them out or something like that. maybe there are better ways (i am no expert on this since i don't have that amount of money anyway ) but with almost 1 million € (turnover of about 2.6 million so far and lets say taxes are about 70% in sweden - i don't know - it's supposed to be a high tax country) you certainly don't have to work anymore if you don't want to.

Why shouldn't it be possible with gamestudio?
How much blocks are visible at once? What's your guess?
Calculating visibility of such equal sided blocks should be easy.
The blocks don't need to be an entity at all, a simple array with position vector and texture number is sufficient.
Bunchs of blocks in the distance could be visualized by a single model with its vertices placed by vec_for_vertex.
The blocks around the player are represented by a set of - let's say - 50 blocks that are placed like you would place gras in a common level.

Is this not realistic?

the question is how many entities gamestudio can handle. i made a test a few years ago and it didn't seem to be a very high number. after several thousand it slowed down too much and it didn't seem to have anything to do with visibility but simply traversing all the entitites each frame. probably performance has improved in the meantime.

so i would try to do it with a huge three dimensional array with the block info and use a fixed number of entities that move with the camera and display the array data by switching textures. depending on the amount of entities the view distance would be limited.

someone could do an experiment. it shouldn't take very long to do a basic prototype.

edit:
hm... but 100x100x100 blocks is 1 million entities already. i think you can forget it. this needs some custom drawing routines like a voxel engine.

This simple engine can make some awsome looks

How many blocks are visible in this view?
I don't think that you need to show 100x100x100 at once, ever...

Just f.i. you could draw such a tree which consists if several blocks draw as one entity because it doesn't vary before the player destroys a block of it, then you can collide the vertices of the destroyed block into one the origin of the model thus making it invisible...

Well, most times the outside works is much bigger visually.



I guess you can see about 200x200 blocks.
(the blocks below the surface are not rendered)

about 40.000 blocks, with 480.000 triangles making them up.

For that you need a special rendering procedure.

If i recall correctly, I once read in the blog that he uses a simple voxel engine to access block positions in the view and then renders only the visible blocks.

I'm pretty sure, with some tinkering, you could achieve the same in A7/8. Even the Minecraft engine drops FPS when there are a lot of blocks to render.

Just out of curiosity I gave it a try, 100x100 blocks - Dual 2.0Ghz Notebook @1680x1050: 27fps.


(click to enlarge)

that is entirely within reason, can you try some simple 64x64 texture on them, see how much FPS that drops, alternatively, COULD a shader be faster instead of using skins? I don't know enough about shaders to make that call, but it might be worth knowing from a shader expert.

edit: also in minecraft, textures aren't filtered and shading is disabled and instead calculated externally from light sources, day of time, etc, and then lightens or brightens the blocks accordingly, so that could also save some render power. Try disabling texture filtering and default shading, see how much that would help the fps

I've just tried it with a 64x64 texture, I get an increase by 1 frame. Could/ should be related to my computer.

EDIT: Runs now at 31fps (with texture) which I think is quite okay.
I don't think that Minecraft runs faster than 30fps on my computer.

BTW when no block is visible, I get 250fps. But I will stop to hijack this thread now.

Bring on model instancing in A8, I reckon. Then we'd be able to get a similar looking thing going with high performance, no worries!

Anyway, today I bought Minecraft and it is so good! My first night was really intense because I had no idea what I was doing, and basically ended up hiding behind some fences with my back towards a cliff staring down a zombie all night. Took me 3 days to get my first torch

Does anyone know if Redstone is meant to always drop redstone dust? Because I found some Redstone Ore and it didn't drop anything.

Jibb

AFAIK it should. You need iron or diamond axe to get it though.

Ah k. I wonder if I had an iron axe yet at that point... it took a ridiculously long time to break the ore. I'm going to dig around that spot and try find some more.

Cheers.

Jibb

One last post, I couldn't resist:


(click to enlarge)

A 80x80 map, fog starts at 40 (you can see a hole I dug in the center of the screen).


(click to enlarge)

You can dig holes just like in Minecraft (but worse, of course). The framerate is okay.

I'm impressed! The entities don't each run their own coroutine (action/function with while-wait(1)), do they?

Jibb

EDIT: Btw, Thanks Inestical. That was exactly the problem. Got my red dust now

Thanks!

"The entities don't each run their own coroutine, do they?"

No, as you can see in the debug panel, there are only 3 functions running.
I'm currently working on the automatic lighting of blocks in caves but it's time to go to bed...

Of course... I should've noticed that. Still, great work. I think the Minecraft wiki has some info on how he did it. It seems to me that lighting changes are done gradually, as well. Like, a few blocks each frame, or something like that.

Awesome stuff.

Jibb

Someone tried a minecraft clone in Unity too, it's called cubelands and can be purchased as well but as far as i know it doesnt support stuff like water or crafting yet.

Though the graphic is nice.

And i if i remember correctly, they group cubes of the same type to a new one, by creating meshes at run time. So there are only a few drawcalls actually and its pretty fast.

As a game designer i am also interested in trying something like minecraft (i mean to program it)

I would be more interested about the landscape generator though. I wonder how he gets the nice mountains and cave systems. I also read that the new generator (that create stunning mountains and structures) was actually a bug, he just kept it cause it looks better.

superku, looks nice but did you just place a few thousand static entities or can you run around already (farther than 80 blocks)? can you tell us some more details about how you did it? how did you do the visibility check so that only the surface blocks are visible?

(btw. as far as i know mipmap filtering is good for performance. not bad.)


damn, i have so many minecraft inspired ideas for games now but unfortunately i would have to do my own engine for most of them and i don't have much experience in that.

edit:
http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=59174
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=569123
actually this "creating meshes for voxel chunks" stuff doesn't sound that difficult. hm... i think this even would be possible with gamestudio since it offers access to meshes. it doesn't really offer a way to do texture assignment to faces but probably this could be worked around with some tricks.

Soo... here is my current minecraft home:

http://cl.ly/aa6cccf00c1368600845
(I put my house on the highest mountain)

http://cl.ly/4f74d99d8dffe8520063
(The same from top of my house)

http://cl.ly/44b7d5e4536c717ff0b2
(My private mine. Goes from the top of the mountain down to the end of the world)

http://cl.ly/6326233011ed00b085d3
(The ground of my mine)

http://cl.ly/3ccf6721f40c08b46def
(Aaand, more from the ground of the mine)

I don't see any sense in this game. The description on Minecrafts Wiki says:

"Gameplay in Minecraft consists mainly of adding and destroying blocks on a map surrounded by water on all sides."

There are no goals, quests or anything. I guess the game is only interesting because of the technique and will get boring as well as Second Life did.

So far it's only a 80x80x40 map with static entities.


At first I only create the top surface, then in another loop I fill visible holes (by checking an array).

The same scene as above renders now at 84fps (same speed without mipmapping). I reduce the entity count by merging nearby cubes of the same height.


(click to enlarge)

Now you can build/ place cubes, too, see the "tree" on the right-hand site of the picture.

EDIT: BTW nice home, Sid! I've created a home on a floating island, too, but it sucked to gather resources.

I totaly understand why this is so popular: people LOVE to create. no matter what. the less limitations the better! and minecraft (though i got bored quite fast by it) is a very well made sandbox for ideas. It cant beat my gamestudio- so i rather stick with that - but i can see why people like it.

I think redoing minecraft now is a waste of time. its out, the big guys will milk that cow and soon the gameworld will be flooded with games like that.

BUT: i think there is something that could be learned from this game type. Something that could be implemented into different games as well.

Adding problems or tasks to games and offering possibilities instead of sollutions can be quite interesting.
Imagine a rpg where the attacking hordes of orcs will be fought by self made catapults and wooden walls. If you place them wrong - you fuddlie up.


games should offer as much interactivity as possible. and mc offers a lot of it.
i hope to see mc will have a huge impact on upcoming games.

yes, it wouldn't make sense to make a minecraft clone now but what makes minecraft great could be applied to many other game ideas.

"There are no goals, quests or anything. I guess the game is only interesting because of the technique and will get boring as well as Second Life did."

Well, Garrys Mod has also no goals and it is just great (while I would not buy Minecraft..)

I did not plan to copy the whole game, I've just wanted to give it a try with gamestudio('s rendering).
I've posted the result in the "Projects" forum.
http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=342592&#Post342592

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but this was what I hoped to see.
Just out of curiosity.
BTW, Damocles, stunning screenshots.

When you play minecraft, keep the following in mind: You will never ever be better than this guy; http://wimp.com/minecraftenterprise/

It is a nice game, played it some years ago when it was still alpha, but I grew bored of it quite fast. I think it has been preceded by eyezmaze's growcube game, e.g. the idea of blockworlds isn't new, this game just caught the attention of the more mainstream casual gamers/internet users. Dwarffortress is way more extended to do build/explore stuff, but also more for the abstract fetishists .

Dwarffortress is great, but a bit complex ^^

... WAT.

this is my experiment.

128x128x128 blocks, 8x8x8 entities, ~20fps. if i move to the middle of the scene i get 50-100 fps.

my graphics card is quite slow (radeon 5400) and i guess with this random distribution almost no faces can be removed. with a typical landscape a lot less faces would be necessary but i don't know how yet how to generate landscapes.

edit:
i forgot to mention that this is a7 since a8 seems to have a bug with setting meshes. maybe a8 would be a bit faster?

i got the game. does current multiplayer thing work? alot of people has the game i see, we could try stuff together.

Im running a server for testing under

Edit: (outdated)

Probably not for long, but you can try to join

(you cant build directly at the spawn area, move over the lake)

@ventilator: can you briefly explain how blocks and entities are separated here, and how it affects the framerate? Normaly I'd make a block as an entity, but apparently you have 16*16*16 blocks in an entity .

sorry ma server is quite slow, but i started gain

hey, I cant connect to you now, it crashes, but I were on your server before...still trying it

char voxels[128][128][128];

i store the voxels like that and then i create 8x8x8 entities that contain 16x16x16 blocks in their mesh.

http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=342595#Post342595
the mesh gets generated like in this example. by checking the voxel data it's easy to just create faces for the actual surface area.

later if editing gets added it's only necessary to recreate the mesh of the entity you are located in. not the whole world. so it should be fast enough.

from what i have read on the ogre and gamedev forums this is very similar to how the minecraft engine works.

it still would be a lot of work though. i don't know how to calculate landscapes (i would have to look into noise functions and such things), a8 seems to have a bug with ent_setmesh() and it's a bit stupid that you can't freely assign textures to faces in the engine. as a workaround you have to prepare a dummy model in med that already contains all the needed block textures and has each of them applied to at least one face. only then the attribute buffer works if you substitute the mesh.

My internet is way too slow, maybe one of you guys can start one, but with 2 players it worked fine at first

http://www.minecraft.net/play.jsp?server=ca03632299eff1c9f1b81899d0ba75ce

There is my server.

EDIT: Now it works!

cannot connect.

maybe you need to forward ports?

The survival mode Alpha server is here:

http://minecraft.net/download.jsp

in server.properties you can select monsters to true

@Superku: Server is down for me

Try again!

i reopened mine, so you can use it as chat to set up a new server

Sorry Guys, instead of other people I am now getting directly into singleplayer when choosing multiplayer^^

It doesn't work for me anymore... >:

Server is lost i suppose.

If anyone has a good uploadspeed, he could serve a permanant SURVIVAL server.
Mine woked with just 2 player quite fine. But me network here is too lame.

You can download the survival surver here:
http://www.minecraft.net/download.jsp
(Multiplayer alpha server software)

created a surival server:
0.0.0.0
:dead

dont know how it will perform though
my downspeed is fast (8 megabytes per second) but upload speed is very slow 128kb / second.

edit: it was good enough i think..

Superku: Haha check your world out!

Ok guys, I am out, 1 am and my internet is telling me "i can break up the connection every second..muhahaha" and is breaking up my connection every 10secs. Have fun and lets to this more often

That's some pretty advanced stuff, ventilator. What do you aim for?

Ventilator, could it be done with ent_buffers?

Jibb

i don't know what can be done with ent_buffers. it confuses me. is it possible to change the buffer size with it?

superku, i don't aim for anything. it was just a quick experiment to see if it would be possible to do as big worlds as in minecraft in gamestudio. i still think that it probably would be possible since with a real landscape there would be a lot less to draw as with a random block distribution. it should be really fast even with much bigger worlds than 128x128x128. it would be interesting to know the world limits of minicraft.

I heard the area generatable is 4 time larger than the equivalent area on earth that is possible to geenerate.

He uses procedural Terrain generation, so there is not limit.
New parts / revisited will be generated on the fly.
I guess he only saves blocks/elements that where altered after the
terrain generation procedure, this limits the amount of
data that has to be saved.

To have the same block-elumination in gamestudio, you would need
to be able to alter each of the 6 block sides brightness
seperately.

that shouldn't be a big problem. i think you could do a simple shader that applies vertex colors that get stored in one of the many uv-sets.

hm... i think procedural world generation is really worth looking into for indie developers who don't have an army of graphic artists. everything could be done procedurally. terrain, plants, buildings, cities,...

EDIT DOWN
Someone wants to join?

This video is great:

Shows a guy whol build a binary computer using the minecraft physics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGkkyKZVzug&feature=player_embedded

I was wondering the same thing. It looks to me like we could make whatever we want with ent_buffers, if only there was a way to change the size.

Jibb

OMG! Das ist einfach nur verdammt geiler scheiß!

Sigh.. How do you know you're in gamedev forum?

Every new game that is awesome is either replicated or the main point of discussion is HOW it's done.

There are't many games that have this impact though.

Its like looking in the fresh start of a new gengre,
thats pretty wicked.

Must have been similar when Quake, Halflife or Diablo cam out.

(or Bejeweld, Zuma, Diner Dash in the casual sector )

Why is nobody opening a new server?

I can't, windows always says in cmd that java is unknown, even after reinstalling all this shit....

Give me the needed 10€ and I will host one 24/7

I've "dug a little deeper" into the rendering method of minecraft and it seems to be very simple. It uses OpenGL. Here is a screenshot where I made the grass texture transparent. Simply change the alpha channel of parts of the terrain.png in the minecraft.jar archive.



There seems to be no advanced occlusion culling. The Game seems to render every block face that is potentially visible, meaning that the "grid place" (aka voxel) it is facing is empty or is glass.
Its pretty similar to Superkus meinkraft, except that meinkraft renders the whole block, not only the face that is possibly visible. The lightning system is said to be a little more complex, don't know much about it yet. I'd like to hear how Superku did his, although his is currently block based, not face based likes minecrafts.

The game world is divided into 16 x 16 (x128 depth) chunks, the nearest are rendered, depending on your view range setting. I don't see why it is not possible to do this with Gamestudio, you'd only need some clever coding. I'm very temped to try something similar multiplayer-only with better griefer-protection mechanisms. Not sure about this yet...

FYI: It's not possible to achieve same FPS and featureset as in MineCraft, as Acknex is generic engine

I don't know much about rendering actually, so i am always wondering how you can prevent objects to render behind other meshes.

BTW i actually have a 24/7 server running but i don't wanna share it right now, i'm still building up stuff and writing some tools to help me with my server (like a backup script but i've already finished that).

I'll probably make the server public soon, just don't wanna do it right now to keep griefers away.

i didn't know that java applets can use opengl. i guess that's why you have to accept this security certificate.

i think it's possible.

the rendering really is quite simple like schokokeks said. there is no advanced occlusion culling or visibility calculation going on. there is no need for it. you just can't use an entity per block but have to use bigger chunks and create your own meshes (for example 16x16x16 blocks are one entity like in my experiment). that's how minecraft does it. in the debug display you even always can see "mesh of 4 chunks updated" or something like that.

edit:
the disadvantage of superku's method is that you never know how many entities you will need. the entity handling would get quite complicated if you want to achieve big worlds and in worst case too many entities could be required.

What if you make presets of 16x16x16 blocks, as a single model, and turn on and off different blocks using vmasks?
You would technically render less models, but can have 16 times bigger area's... (or optimize your area 16 times faster?)

hmmm..

what do you mean with vmasks? using a shader somehow to disable/enable the cubes?

i don't know if this would be better than simply creating the mesh of the 16x16x16 entity. i also don't know how your idea would behave with collision detection. with ent_setmesh() the collision detection data is supposed to get updated too. if this really works then is a different question. there have been some bugs in this regard previously.

I would not use the standard collision detection.
Its easy to make a custom procedure for that, with
such simple shapes.

and with such simple grid.

yes, but in case you want to use a physics engine it could make sense to use the physics engine's collision system.

I have set up a MC Server on my server at 46.4.226.210

Join if you want to, but if griefing starts, the server goes down instantly.

Now THAT allows some great griefing!

I get a connection timeout on your IP, Micheal. Are you sure that the IP is right and the ports are open?

Sorry, I tried a quick play with some friends, and the server locked up, now I have to wait until a tech makes a manual reboot...

edit: server back up!

Push

Good work guys, what a pity that I've went offline =/

It's really fun!

I just discovered "Cartographer", it creates a cool map of your world

My World

I was lucky to get a snow level \o/

The tower of doom is my current project, it takes quite a lot of time. The map is from yesterday so i actually build more of it already. It has to round layers (and the top will be different) and it will have small floating towers on the side.

The 2 layers are quite useful, i can use them as secret passages for hidden rooms, and i want to use them to place redstone wires to control doors, alarmsystems, trap, etc.

We have the power to create, to make things alive and do build what we want...and we have also git the power to blast EVERYHTING OFF WITH A SUPER BOOMBASTIC EXPLOSION THAT KICKS ASSES!!!


Quite a funny evening

Here some more impressions at night.

I use a custom Texture pack for the game.

What I said

Hey Damocles, what texture pack do you use? Looks very good.

Looks like "Doku's RPG Texture Pack", i use the same, its epic (textures are 512x512, but the water/lava doesnt move)

Yes, its theat Doku's RPG Texture Pack,
But I have edited the water, tree and grass textures to look nicer.

Since the texture uses a higher resolution, minecraft seems not
to toggle thoug the water frames.

Hier die Terrain textur aus Dokus RPG,
mit einigen Änderungen:

Einfach in die Minecraft.jar kopieren.

www.wasteland.at/terrain.png




And the Server IP again: 46.4.226.210

just wanted to show you this awesome colossus built by superku

^^ Fantastic! Keep us updated!

Is it down?

still up

I just tried to write an Voxel system in Unity, i have to give SophieH credits for helping with the mesh creating and grouping.

But you can see a 256x256x256 grid, splitted into 16x16x16 chunks.

Runs at ~40 fps on my laptop. Only visible faces are getting created.

Wow, I'm eager to see how this evolves.
Do you plan to build something similar to Superku's test?

Yes i do.
In fact the girl who helped me, she already created a bomb gun that rips the surface apart like crazy, looks like a bunch of creepers had a party. And its really fast to destroy many chunks at once.

I already got single block placing/deleting down. Texturing actually works already too (i use the 512x512 doku rpg texture as atlas map to save drawcalls), but they only use the same tile right now, still have to change it according to their tile ID.

We will see how fast this is with all the code going into it. But once i've got something playable, i'll post a webplayer link.

Are you posting your progress in the Unity forums, where we can follow it? Or, does this happen all private?

Moar!

Railroad bridge. Destination: second continent; "Lands of New Hope".


Exploring the seas, the third continent! It looked epic.


This is my backyard.


My little storage room.


My little fortress (mind the pig).



Michael's awesome boat.

@Pappenheimer, no this is all private and i just posted it here, haven't posted it on the Unity forum yet.

EDIT:
Also added textures, and the tiles already know what texture to use depending on position and stuff:



I am working on the collision right now, then i will show you a webbuild ^^.

@ Joozey, awesome shots That ship is awesome, i wanted to do one too.

Building railroads is kinda useless, they are buggy in SMP

I know, I'm waiting for the day now that tracks work .
But at least they guide the way through awesome landscapes! (and it was a nice challenge to make it sub-oceanic. Also great work there on unity .

BTW, would Ulillillia appreciate this game?
It kinda reminds me to his projects.

it's too unrealistic from the physics aspect, he probably would write the developer an angry letter and give him the correct formulas already scaled to minecraft sizes (keeping in mind that minecraft can have 4x the surface of earth in world sizes, and that everything in this world is formed out of blocks which in turn would affect aerodynamics) and include a quick code for improved waterflow that is both realistic and 10x faster than the current algorithm.

Okay here is a webplayer of the current version.



Link to Webplayer

NOTE: It will be laggy at the beginning to generate the level, later on i will do that in a loading screen. So when you try placing cubes at the beginning, it takes a few seconds to display them, cause ive limited my current version so it can only update < 10 chunks at a time.

The physic and collision is crappy too, just added something simple so i can play around with it.

Controls:
- WASD: Movement
- Left click: Place current block type
- Right click: remove block
- R: toggle between blocks (no visual indicator yet)
- F: Create a big sphere of the current block type
- B: Bomb away some blocks (this is fun 8D)

The red transparent cube shows the field you would remove.
The blue transparent cube shows the field where you place a new block.

Have fun and would be nice to know your framerate (especially with that Bloom, DOF and SSAO :P)

Wow that is absolutely awesome! Great work!
Runs very smooth, even with so many thousand blocks visible.
Looks very nice, too! :>

Thanks, glad you like it and that it runs smooth

But i am still wondering how you can create a really huge world like in minecraft, i've heard the space is 3 times bigger than the earth.

I can create a field of a size 512x512x128 without problem (though the framerate will slowly die, its under 30 then, depending on how far i can see).

But if i go bigger, i get OutOfMemory exceptions. So i am wondering how they do it in minecraft, hmm.


EDIT: hmm i was just thinking. Since i can't create a bigger array at runtime (due to memory problems), i think i need to generate the level as textfile and save it. This one can be as big as it wants to be.

And then ingame, i will cut out the surrounding worldchunks from that file, like 128x128x128 blocks or whatever and only use those sub-world arrays for the current one. When i am about to leave a field, i will re-load the map with the new coordinations (i've noticed how minecraft almost stops at certain map points, i bet they re-calculate the current map too).

This could work, i dunno. What do you guys think? Do you have any idea?

The world in minecraft is not simply a big 3D array of all
blocks.
The game uses a procedural generator to create the
surface on the fly.
This way you can create an infinitively big world, without
using up much memory.

Only the part wich was altered by the player in any way
has to be stored. (the delta / the difference)

So step 1: generate the terrain given the procedural formula
for the current region
step 2: alter the world by the stored changes (the actual 3D array that has to be saved)

Only do that for the visible regions.
When leaving the region, update the new regions,
and trash the non visible regions.

------

To increase the framerate:

You can esily create a visibility list:

To determine if a block needs to be rendered, you can use
a simple method:

For each block in the "chunk" section:

Look if the block has a solid block on EACH of
its 6 sides.
if yes, mark the block invisible.
It cant be seen from anywhere.

Glass/Water/empty blocks are not treated as solid blocks.
(You can even test this in minecraft when setting
the grass texture transparent)

awesome! and with realtime shadows...


captain kiyaku already does that. even i already did it in my experiment. it wouldn't make sense to generate faces that never can be seen.


yes, using a big array is no good idea. better store the voxels directly with the mesh chunks and write some dynamic chunk manager. then you also can more easily create new chunks if the player moves towards the current boundaries of the world.


but with a world as big as the surface of the earth i wonder about floating point precision issues. probably the player somehow would have to be moved to the coordinate origin again after a while to avoid problems. without him noticing.

Yes i've already only render faces that are actually visible (have no surrounding block).

Hm but my problem is to understand how you access the voxels if you don't store them into something. The objects itself have no colliders so i couldn't just trace for them.

Or maybe i should give new created 16x16x16 chunks a big cube collider and only if i do something to it (if i actually scan it and want to build or destroy), i will take its position into the array so i only store actually changed objects?

Hm i dont know.

what i meant is that i wouldn't store the voxels in a big array for the whole world but in many separate 16x16x16 arrays with the chunks. at the beginning the world gets filled with a certain amount of chunks around the player and if the player moves more chunks get added dynamically. the landscape gets generated procedurally on the fly (but i don't have a clue about this yet) and if the player changes something then some flag gets set for the chunk. if you want to save the level then only the parameters for the procedural world generation and the chunks with manual changes need to be saved.

Ahh okay, so you give every chunk its own voxel array which will contain the 16x16x16 blocks of itself. And then i only have to keep track of where a chunk is and access its own voxel array to know what happened when i save or recreate the models (to only render visible faces).

I guess that can work. Then the big chunk array for the manager would only be 4096 times smaller than the whole voxel array which i won't need anymore so i can create a much bigger world.

yes, i would try to do it kind of like that. maybe i will also continue my experiments with gamestudio once the next beta with the mesh fixes gets released.

edit:
i also immediately thought of ulillillia when i first saw minecraft. maybe he wouldn't like some details like the scary monsters though.

Really nice work!
Runs ok on my old laptop (2.2 GHz, 3 GB RAM, GeForce 8600M GT). When adding hills and caves it gets somewhat laggy.

Perhaps you can even implement Minecraft's lighting style? I don't know how to do that, though. According to Notch "it adds no performance penalty per frame, and a small one every time a tile changes". Perhaps it's a bit tricky.

by the way... i think with the same approach you could very easily do a voxel terrain system like the c4 engine features. you just would have to use something like the marching cubes algorithm instead of simply creating block faces from the voxels.

And the Server IP again: 46.4.226.210

Its not tricky.
Its very easy. You just have to change the lightning if something in the level changes.
Since the sun shines only in -z direction you can just update the "pillar" were a block was added/removed.
And you just have to update the upper 2 blocks, because all blocks underneath those two are and will stay dark.
EDIT: And i think minecraft only changes the ambient value. Since this is the easiest way of doing that.

Nice work!
I would change it so that the creating of new blocks is in minecraft-style. I find it very hard to create blocks where I want them with the two things (cube and surface) showing at the same time.

less talking and replicating and more Joining the server!

46.4.226.210

!

http://notch.tumblr.com/

Nice, but I think it sucks that torches have a limited lifetime.

Yes but lanterns probably look fabulous

More features for multiplayer. Fuck Yeah!

Watch this: http://www.cubelands.com/

A cheap copy of the Minecraft Classic mode

oh my, torches die. whoey, that rhymes.

kinda frightening, though.

Cant wait for the new update, i hope they finally add damage to SMP, that would be awesome.

BTW cubelands is made with Unity too but yeah it's just like the Classic mode, building as much as you want.

I tried to change my way to save the world chunks but i still have trouble when there is a huge world, everytime a new chunks need to load it lags for 1-2 seconds which kinda sucks, and when then world is too large, i get massive frame drops (more than before). So i guess i still have to find a different way to create larger worlds, accessing the chunks without storing them slows down the game too much. I might stick with the worlds i can create right now (512x512x128) for a while and just add new features.

If i really want to go on with that project, i think i would try a more RPG style than minecraft with earning exp to level up and more monsters with different levels too.

I have 2 new Episodes of my Let's Play, by the way, to get back on topic for a while

Episode 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-kQFQaci58

Episode 4:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPH-5n7C8fE
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-npaghAlN8

Great, i was waiting for new episodes!

BTW it would be great if you would do some SMP episodes as well

I guess this is what I imagine as Minecraft's multiplayer...

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/550285

Not yet cause you can't die in multiplayer :<

And again, the server ip: 46.4.226.210

What the crap? What happened to the server . It's a) very laggy and b) I'm in a very strange landscape D:

Well Oh my god, stop exploring like Spanish conquistadores. Everytime you go somewhere, the server keeps the region in memory indefinitely until the next reboot. I know it's a lot of fun, but in the interest of cooperation with other players, it would be nice if you could just stick to the 5000m² you have for now.

We did not go anywhere, I haven't left town at all. I just spawned at a random place in the middle of nowhere.

EDIT:
Obviously the /home point has been moved. I read this can be caused by someone exploring very far, replacing the spawn point to a new region. The same happens with weather conditions (e.g. could change the entire world from snow to grass).

So either the server had a hickup and altered the spawn point or someone explored too far. There was an artificially made burning pillar at the strange place, so someone has been there before.

Sorry, I didn't know about that. Anyway.

I'm taking down the server temporarily to fix the spawn-point issue and to do some other minor tweaks. Hopefully it will be back up soon.

Server is back up. I installed a Server Mod, so for all the new commands type /help in the chat.

IP: 46.4.226.210

Have Fun!

EDIT: here's an essential map of the main playing area:



And here is the full map (2 MB warning!) http://images.xware-cg.com/minecraft/custom-map-normal-daynight.png

Lol, that's awesome!
I guess the odd place was twice as far as the Lands of New Hope .

Here are some awesome ingenious minecart systems I found, very impressive and useful (if they would only work in mp ):

About boosters, automatic boarding and pausing at stations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayhg-yizLUI

Harvest/Supply systems:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC3d75qGBiA

Slime powered minecarts! xD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwXTQHlACE8

This is impressive:

Wew indeed. Pity all those torches will die soon .

He will make these Lanterns instead.
makes sense in Survival, so using permanent light takes
more effort.

Its probably going to be some metal-coal crafting.

I actually doubt that many of these screens where
made without the help of an importer script.
Like the wire-frame enterprise. Its looks totally like
a 3D model imported to the block-format.

Yeah I too think they use a program, one that builds the level from pixel images. The enterprise dude has scheme images that he cleans up, layers them and let them read. But that's mainly the framework of course. The inside he does manually. Like the water, trees, candles here.

@Michael, could you create an Iso map of your world? That would be awesome!


I've been working on the minecraft clone for a while, but i don't want to keep hijacking this thread so if anyone is interested, i will post updates on my blog (just subscribe to the RSS feed)

www.svenparoth.com

http://images.xware-cg.com/minecraft/iso.png (3.8 MB)

there you go!

Speaking of Megabuilds, I just started my own one on the server. JustSid helped me to lay out the foundation of the circle after I drew out the shape (which by the way is friggin hard while you are IN the AIR!), it's supposed to be a perfect circle, but I messed up in one of the quadrants, and then I just didnt have the nerve to correct it, so it'll have to do.

Anyway, stage 1 is complete, now i'm working on stage 2 which will still be unimpressive, but it will get better over time

here are some pics:

Progress:

Awesome what you are doing there!

Noooo! What happend to the server? I'm only getting time-outs here..

The Hosting provider decided to do a unannounced maintenance shutdown, have to wait until they're done.

EDIT: Back up 46.4.226.210

Argh... not again!

Server was shutdown again, back in approx. 1 Hour

Noes!

Well, why I am so far away of the rest (relatively seen):
Once upon a time, we decided to cross the ocean. And there I settled down and build the house that's there now. And then we (or at least I) figured that the further we go the more memory we consume. But I was already there, so that was a bit of a bug.

Why I am so far for ingame reasons: yay long railroad trips! Sort of the same reason as why we have a huge biocircle hovering in the landscape now.

Servers back up btw

Sorry for bumping this thread all the time

46.4.226.210

Bumping the hell out of the thread.
Keep in mind, the server ip is: 46.4.226.210

Minecraft is currently under a DDOS attack.
Probably takes some time for Notch to fix that.
Until then we cant login.

The last few times I've joined the server always responded with "Unknown Command" (or the like) when I was typing in "/help" or something else. What's wrong?

Probably due to the fact that you can't connect to the Minecraft account server. So the server doesn't recognize your name properly and does not give you permission to any commands.

Just a guess though.

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/games/0,1518,723939,00.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVFTmqXFLX8

looks like minecraft works again. at least I'm currently on the server.

edit:
Just had a crash:
- What I did:
- - teleport using /home

- Crash Message:

In a hilarious twist, the Minecraft server was down because - wait for it - the fans were angry about the updateschedule.

Kotaku's article


This makes me speechless, almost. Really? That's the dumbest reason by far anyone could ever have for this.


The great RockPaperShotgun links to this, which I haven't read yet. But it's RockPaperShotgun, so I trust their links. Probably a good article.

Probably just some guy claiming to have intiated the DDOS.

Anyone could write such a statement.

BUMPING THE FUCKING HELL OUT OF THIS THREAD!

@Xarthor, I have that crash thrice a session, if not more .

One important information regarding the MC server at 46.4.226.210

I am moving to a new apartment tomorrow and I am not sure when I will get telephone and Internet there, so:

I just restarted the Server, so it is in a fresh state.
Until I have internet back I ask a few things of you, not because it's server rules, but out of courtesy to your fellow players:

1. Don't go exploring, every-time you go into a region that no one was before, the whole chunks around it are loaded into server memory and will stay there indefinitely until the next server restart, which slows down the server.

2. Don't experiment with TNT, water or lava (if you KNOW what you are doing go ahead, but no experiments please. All three of them are extremely resource heavy when used.

3. No more damn minecart tracks. It not only bugs players because they get a disconnect every time they are near someone who places them, it also isn't really healthy for the server at the moment.

4. No other stupidities.

I won't be there to restart the server or fix problems, so try to play nice while I'm away.

Some hours left for the October update, Whohoo

I'm kinda disappointed in notch, he sometimes is an lazy a**.

Still no dmg and no mine carts in SMP and he said something like "this has to wait until beta", whenever he defines his games as "beta".

So yeah, not really excited about the new update, that was the only thing i wanted. I guess i will just keep watching Lets Play instead of playing it

But i knew this would happen when he started to spam Super Meat Boy tweets

Well setting up a company, doing financials and interviews doesnt leave much programming time.

I can understand why development is on halt or slowdown.

We are having a launch party on the official Gamestudio TS Server, join us if you want: justsid.dyndns.org

(A minecraft server running the new update will also be available under this host once it is out).

Okay, update is out now.
Server is running!

My client automatically updated itself (pumpkin blocks yeah!) but now I cannot connect to 46.4.226.210 anymore (outdated client, lol rather outdated server I guess).
Any new server up and running?

I have a server running, justsid.dyndns.org
I won't play with you, because I'm cleaning up my room. If there is a problem or if you have a question, do this via ICQ so I can see it (448484004)

I will OP everyone, but don't expect me to do this asap but with some delay (as I said, I don't look the whole time on the screen).

PS: I have an upstream of 100 kb/s and the TS Server is running too using ~20kb/s. So if its starts to lag, better start kicking other players

Edit: By the way, this is _not_ an nether world but a normal world. The start is near a forrest biome
Edit2: Here is a screen of the world:

Was nice but now I get a "connection refused".

I just bought Minecraft (well, yesterday) and I have to say, I love it!

Even if you think it is not a good game, you need to remember: It IS good! JustSid convinced me to buy it, and that was good.

Uhh... the often announced halloween update is indeed disappointing.



That is exaclty what I thought. He should just fix those two important issues before adding biomes, a hell, new enemies and so on.

I guess the MP Stuff is much more demanding to get it working
correct and syncronous. (especially the damage by mobs)

Its a very unsecure Peer-to-Peer like MP, to keep the update-speed high. Not a tight server syncronization.
(Players send their local position to all others directly)

When he adds too many new features, it will get even harder
to implement in SMP.

Yes that's why he should fix those things first.

And i still think he is lazy. Sure he created a buisness now, but maybe he can spend some of his 5 million euro on people who actually do financing and all that crap so he can concentrate on programming (he isn't hiring additional programmers for minecraft, he wants to be the only one on that project, which i totally understand and i would do the same so thats fine).

But you need to follow his twitter a bit, he doesn't seem to work too much. He kept posting about Super Meat Boy and Civ5 before (that's the reason why there were no update for many weeks).

As far as i know the SMP had damage working before, i saw some videos where people acually got damage (but healed fast again, maybe it was set on Peaceful? But i also saw people dying in SMP) so i dunno why he has so many problems to fix this. I know how multiplayer programming can suck, i've done quite a lot too, but as mentioned before by you, he should spend more time on fixing those bugs before adding new stuff.

I don't really play single player a lot, so i hope his "beta" will come soon.

I do give him bonus points for his biomes though, looks really nice. Hell is rather disappointing IMO. If you look for a challenge then it's fine, but the new block types are ugly and kinda useless (maybe the goldbrick is good for underwater lighting though).

"@notch aka Markus Persson
Now: a hundred attempts to beat dark world Dr Fetus, then resignation and Dead Rising 2."

Hard working indeed

Well at least it doesn't sound like he is spending his money on crap hehe.

I updated the server to the newest version, feel free to join:

46.4.226.210

Connection not working...

The Physical server crashed. Due to this there have been some mayor tectonic shifts, but all the essentials are still there. The floating paradise has suffered some structural integrity damage, but looks more awesome now. We also have a pig infestation problem.

On the upside, we have snow biomes now.

Omg, it has landed on my new Godzilla... luckily, I didn't get so far, yet.

can you reinstall the last save? Its very very fractured now.

there is no "last save". The last backup I made is a long ago.

Maybe we should create a new world? I know that some of you put really hard work in their creations, but the world just sucks at the moment.
Michael could run a backup cronjob every day so we avoid these fucked up worlds in the future.

Just made one LP episode today too 8D Dunno if i will continue with it, we will see, depends on how many people will actually view it.

Was kinda nervous though 8D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v13MVObtN9E

There should be at least one older backup.
Or start a new world then.

But right now its just a lot of canyons.

Ahh, Michael now tries to hide his cannon experiments, by telling us that minecraft messed things up...

Started a new world, hope that satisfies everyone.

i created some sort of tree house somewhere then i figured i got lost so i /spawned then i could not find it back. Though i built a very high 1x1 sand tower in front of it.

I also created two sand towers (I can still find them), one at a cave and one at my bridge.

But there is another tower made of different things (really really high), don't know how owns it.

As absolutely no-one seems to be able to follow a simple "please do not wander far off" request. I have now enforced this with a plugin.

Until you learn otherwise, the maximal walking distance is limited to 750 blocks from the spawn point.

46.4.226.210 down?
Getting a time-out since yesterday evening.

Back Up and updated.

46.4.226.210

a small and cute little bump. Just to keep the thread up so that I don't need to search for the IP everytime.

well the new server updated killed it, just before we wanted to play a round of spleef

have to wait until mods are compatible again

The server is running again, but with an unofficial patch for hMod. So I have made a backup of the map just in case. So don't be surprised if something goes wrong.

Anyway, you can play again: 46.4.226.210

EDIT: And as a bonus, a screenshot of our newest addition, the Ullillilia Memorial Arena (For playing Spleef!)

http://images.xware-cg.com/minecraft/SNAG-0367.png

A short video of a Spleef match in our Ullillilia Memorial Arena:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMrvuP_dGP4

Funny, how about making a capture the flag version, using a flower or mushroom.
Goal is to get tho others flower, and place it firt on your baseslot

bump

aaaand one more bump, since i own minecraft now, too.

I've downloaded and installed my first (HD) texture pack, but the compass and the clock do not work.
Downloaded here: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?t=31331
Is it normal that they don't work with texture packs?

Btw. happy birthday, Rei!


EDIT: There are no mobs, too. What's wrong?

You need the HDTexture Fix if you are using tex bigger than 16x16p per tile

@superku if you play on the server and dont see monsters but still get attacked by them, make sure you've set your difficulty to something else than Peaceful.

So I was working on modifying my texture pack to use somebody's shader mod, and it uses 2 maps for its specular shaders: the normal map (with z-values on the alpha channel for parallax occlusion) and a specular texture map containing color values to be reflected at any given pixel.

This is f***ing brilliant, and with some major bugs looks great; I wonder if it's possible to do any kind of parallax occlusion in 3dGS 7...?

Edit: terminology, it's late at night.