[Lichtieforlife]

New update is mint! Now you can get unlimeted resources, fly and destroy blocks in one hit!

[MattBairn]

Lichtieforlife, on 14 September 2011 - 16:07, said:

New update is mint! Now you can get unlimeted resources, fly and destroy blocks in one hit!

Just downloaded it this morning. Not booted it up yet but I did notice theyre bringing in an XP system

[MattBairn]

Ive spent hours building the ship that I work on. Its about half way done just now. Its far too addictive!

[Just a bairn]

Coming to an Xbox Live Arcade near you

[Mr Hahn]

I have a version on my iphone too. It doesn't save though so you have to start again every time

[MattBairn]

I recently downloaded some maps. Escapecraft is a great idea, but needs some basic changes to the game mechanic to allow it to work better.
Broville is ok.


Ive also just about finished a scaled version of the Ship that I work on. Its taken me AGES!

[McKee]

Been playing a cracked alpha in the past few days. If I buy the full, official version, all future updates are free aren't they?

[forameus]

I don't want to get this. I don't. I really don't.



I kind of do though. I think it would be the sort of thing I'd really get into, but therein lies the problem - having recently got back into FM12, and then having Skyrim to finish, and Oblivion to start, can I really take on another game that's like crack

[McKee]

It's excellent, you should buy it. I've began building a replica of Cappielow park. In the dessert. Next to a big lake and and NPC village. With a massive overhead rail system, going from spawn point, to built-into-huge-cliff face-base, to pyramid base.

Bliss.

edit: you should check out some of the time lapse minecraft videos on youtube. Absolutely amazing. Never seen anything like it in gaming.

This post has been edited by McKee: 07 February 2012 - 17:19

[Ric]

* bump *

If you played Minecraft before, when was the last time you booted it up? Some of the mods and texture packs available for it are excellent and the core game itself is coming on very nicely indeed with version 1.2.5 (the one I am on just now) a world away (no pun intended) from just a year ago. For those who haven't played it, the answer is why not? You are missing out on something pretty damned cool.



One reason I'm bumping this thread to highlight two things; a mod and a texture.

The texture I've been using recently is BDPurecraft SPhax, which has different levels of definition but can go up to 512x512 (for those unsure what I am talking about, the higher the number the better the resolution) however even the basic 64x resolution textures look bloody lovely. The look is totally cartoony and add a really nice feel to the world as the default Minecraft texture while nice and retro gets a little bit dull after a while.

Link: http://bdcraft.net/

You can see that this texture pack and especially in conjunction with the shaders mod (although that is not necessary for the textures to work - it looks great on it's own) it can look pretty bloody awesome as this video testifies...




The mod I'd like to highlight is the rather amazing TFCraft which takes the basic world of Minecraft and adds a level of complexity that is quite simply incredible in comparison. In the vanilla form, Minecraft wood is just wood, there are a couple of different types but in essence they have the same properties and can be crafted in the same way. TBCraft takes that and changes with adding about 10 different species of wood, all with their own different properties such as how long they will burn, how difficult they are to chop down and the like. The same goes for things like stones and ores. Previously you just had stone, earth, shale, sand and the different ores like coal, gold, diamond and iron. This one again has been expanded massively to about 20 different ones and once more each different ore has it's own property and utilisation. Now along with expanding the materials within the world, TBCraft also adds a level of realism to the game. A simple example would be getting sticks (which are used as handles for objects). Previously in Minecraft you would get some wood, create some planks then from those planks make sticks. That doesn't really make sense as sticks in themselves are a more basic item than a plank. In TBCraft when you need to chop away at the foliage to get your sticks, certainly a more realistic situation. That is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of realism though. The creation of fires and cooking food has been changed to be more realistic, creating things like charcoal (needed for forges to make metals from ore) is also no longer as simple as finding some coal in the ground. No, you now how to make charcoal in the way early man did, you let wood burn for a long time in a closed environment. I could go on but the following video gives a far better demonstration as to what the changes are. For those who haven't seen a mod demonstration video before the guy showing it is using creative mode so can call up all sorts of things at the touch of a button, most people play survival (certainly the most enjoyable version of the game) where you don't have an infinite supply of things at the click of a button.

[Mr Hahn]

I fired this up recently and started using a new texture pack called sphax purebdcraft.



The texture pack in that video certainly looks interesting though. Might give it a shot. The new jungle biome certainly can give the worlds a new dimension.

[Ric]

Mr Hahn, on 27 April 2012 - 12:42, said:

I fired this up recently and started using a new texture pack called sphax purebdcraft.

That was the SPhax one in the first video. The only addition was of the Unbelievable Shaders mod, something that can easily be added, you can find the download and installation instructions here..

http://www.minecraft...c-shadows-more/

I did try to install it on mine but it also needs Optifine which helps bump up your FPS (as Minecraft is a Java app it's as slow as a week in jail in comparison to a native assembler of C/C++ app). Because my Minecraft was already patched the Optifine seemed to throw a wobbly although unpatching it was very easy. You can find Optifine here...

http://www.minecraft...aa-af-and-more/



Sadly, and as far as I am aware the only texture pack you can use for TFCraft is it's native one, due to the number of extra textures it needs in comparison to the vanilla Minecraft. I am sure as TFCraft makes it's way out of beta (and it's certainly playable now) we will see texture packs being extended. TFCraft looks amazing, although I've not actually played it myself yet.

[Mr Hahn]

Ric, on 27 April 2012 - 13:19, said:

That was the SPhax one in the first video. The only addition was of the Unbelievable Shaders mod, something that can easily be added, you can find the download and installation instructions here..

http://www.minecraft...c-shadows-more/

I did try to install it on mine but it also needs Optifine which helps bump up your FPS (as Minecraft is a Java app it's as slow as a week in jail in comparison to a native assembler of C/C++ app). Because my Minecraft was already patched the Optifine seemed to throw a wobbly although unpatching it was very easy. You can find Optifine here...

http://www.minecraft...aa-af-and-more/



Sadly, and as far as I am aware the only texture pack you can use for TFCraft is it's native one, due to the number of extra textures it needs in comparison to the vanilla Minecraft. I am sure as TFCraft makes it's way out of beta (and it's certainly playable now) we will see texture packs being extended. TFCraft looks amazing, although I've not actually played it myself yet.

Ah apologies, didn't see that there.
Is this the full thing per chance:


Looks so good.

[capo]

Any tips on getting it to run on better on a 32-bit machine? I'm having to run it on normal render, minimal particles, no clouds, fast graphics and no smooth lighting just to get it on a relatively smooth run. And that's on Max FPS, with 100% allocated memory. Definitely feels like I'm missing a lot the on the visual aspect of the game, I can't get any of the amazing views from the top of mountains.


Someone should fire up a PnB server.

[Ric]

Mr Hahn, on 27 April 2012 - 15:09, said:

Looks so good.

Yeh, it does look lovely. I am going to remove my installation of MC and do a fresh one try and get the Optifine installed, then apply the Unbelievable Shaders mod then the SPhax textures. I was running the x64 resolution but even then it was pretty lush, if I can get the shaders mod on the go I think it'll look ridiculously good in comparison to the default textures.

I might wait a little before installing the TFCraft as it conflicts with so many mods and textures (not in a bad way, it just expands the game so much that you wouldn't expect previous made mods to know about what TFC needs).

capo, on 27 April 2012 - 15:28, said:

Any tips on getting it to run on better on a 32-bit machine? I'm having to run it on normal render, minimal particles, no clouds, fast graphics and no smooth lighting just to get it on a relatively smooth run.

I had lots of problems with this, although the default install now seems to fun pretty fine on

Certainly I would recommend updating to the latest Java Runtime. You can get it from here.. http://www.oracle.co...ad-1591157.html

You can find out what version you are on by opening a command line shell ([start]->[run] .. type cmd.exe [press return]) then typing in java -version [press return], if it's less than 1.7 then yours is out of date.

Secondly what version of minecraft are you running? Pre v1 releases tended to be a bit laggy at times. I am running 1.2.5. You can find out by running Minecraft, the version is displayed at the bottom left hand corner of the title page.

The latest graphics card drivers are always a good idea but this isn't a game that relies on up to date shader routines. You could also look into the Optifine mod for MC. I have to say I had no luck getting it installed last time but I'm going to give it a shot tonight and I'll let you know how well that works. The Optifine link can be found in one of my previous posts.

However with just the latest JRE (1.7) and MC (1.2.5), I have these setting in the graphics section...



...and I am able to play this without lags or spikes and I am by no means on a powerful machine (2Gb Duo Core laptop with an old ATI onboard graphics card).

If that is still causing you problems then it could be that you need to do a bit of management behind the scenes. First and easiest option is to set the Java process to being high priority. With the game running, open the task manager ([alt]+[ctrl]+[del] or right click on an empty are of the taskbar and you'll see an option for it) click the [processes] tab, locate the JavaW.exe process, right click, select [priority]>[high] then [ok] the warning that pops up. That should certainly give it a kick.

If you want a bit more power then you could chose one of the gaming apps that shut down the services and clears memory. I've used several of these before such like GameXP and Game Booster and it's the latter I use for when I play PES on this laptop. Now in essence most of these utils are doing the same thing. Flushing memory leaks, killing services that aren't needed and the like so it's a matter of finding out which one you prefer rather than me recommending one in particular. The improvement on your system is also going to depend on what is currently running in the background. If you have an old XP system that's had apps installed and uninstalled and the like over years and you like to have things running in the background like MSN, Skype and other things that just sit in your system tray sapping resources then you should see a significant improvement. If you are a bit of a process nazi and have a slimmed down windows 7 that normally runs like a greased weasel along a pipe then the improvement will be negligible.

Interesting setting more memory for the process doesn't actually help it as much as you would think. The JRE needs about 256Kb in order to do it's job right so giving it loads more doesn't increase performance in an incremental fashion. The other thing to remember is that Java is a bit of a dog, it's not intended for arcade games and it shows, so while the game itself looks very simple it's not (think of all the work going on in the background to control everything you see) and it's hampered by running on Java.

[Ric]

Slight update, I have installed Optifine and it does improve the performance, it was also very easy to do using MagicLauncher, previously I had tried to manually do it. There are instructions to be found here... http://www.minecraft...aa-af-and-more/

(scroll down past the download options, the the "Installation" section).

[Ric]

So I got the Optifine mod, the Unbelievable Textures and the SPhax Texture Pack running on a fresh install of MC and while it does look bloody lovely it runs like an utter dog. Now it's fair to say my laptop is not the best and certainly a lot less powerful than a standard gaming rig so it's not that surprising. The one thing I would say though is that it looks bloody gorgeous, it's just a shame it runs at about 10 FPS and that's using all my tricks to get it to go as fast as I can.

So for me, just now, I will remove the shaders as I think that's what is slowing it down as on it's own with the Optifine mod it was running fine.

This post has been edited by Ric: 27 April 2012 - 18:47

[MattBairn]

Ric, on 27 April 2012 - 10:58, said:

* bump *

If you played Minecraft before, when was the last time you booted it up? Some of the mods and texture packs available for it are excellent and the core game itself is coming on very nicely indeed with version 1.2.5 (the one I am on just now) a world away (no pun intended) from just a year ago. For those who haven't played it, the answer is why not? You are missing out on something pretty damned cool.



One reason I'm bumping this thread to highlight two things; a mod and a texture.

The texture I've been using recently is BDPurecraft SPhax, which has different levels of definition but can go up to 512x512 (for those unsure what I am talking about, the higher the number the better the resolution) however even the basic 64x resolution textures look bloody lovely. The look is totally cartoony and add a really nice feel to the world as the default Minecraft texture while nice and retro gets a little bit dull after a while.

Link: http://bdcraft.net/

You can see that this texture pack and especially in conjunction with the shaders mod (although that is not necessary for the textures to work - it looks great on it's own) it can look pretty bloody awesome as this video testifies...




The mod I'd like to highlight is the rather amazing TFCraft which takes the basic world of Minecraft and adds a level of complexity that is quite simply incredible in comparison. In the vanilla form, Minecraft wood is just wood, there are a couple of different types but in essence they have the same properties and can be crafted in the same way. TBCraft takes that and changes with adding about 10 different species of wood, all with their own different properties such as how long they will burn, how difficult they are to chop down and the like. The same goes for things like stones and ores. Previously you just had stone, earth, shale, sand and the different ores like coal, gold, diamond and iron. This one again has been expanded massively to about 20 different ones and once more each different ore has it's own property and utilisation. Now along with expanding the materials within the world, TBCraft also adds a level of realism to the game. A simple example would be getting sticks (which are used as handles for objects). Previously in Minecraft you would get some wood, create some planks then from those planks make sticks. That doesn't really make sense as sticks in themselves are a more basic item than a plank. In TBCraft when you need to chop away at the foliage to get your sticks, certainly a more realistic situation. That is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of realism though. The creation of fires and cooking food has been changed to be more realistic, creating things like charcoal (needed for forges to make metals from ore) is also no longer as simple as finding some coal in the ground. No, you now how to make charcoal in the way early man did, you let wood burn for a long time in a closed environment. I could go on but the following video gives a far better demonstration as to what the changes are. For those who haven't seen a mod demonstration video before the guy showing it is using creative mode so can call up all sorts of things at the touch of a button, most people play survival (certainly the most enjoyable version of the game) where you don't have an infinite supply of things at the click of a button.

That looks/sounds fantastic!

If the game keeps progressing at the rate it is, its going to be utterly phenomenal in another few years.