Sunday 27 November 2011

Showcase - My little Minecraft 1.0 House

Most people on my server probably recognise this house, as it's er.. my house. It's a bit too small for my liking, but now it has a huge maze of basements and secret rooms it's sufficient.

There are obvious similarities between this and my old snow house, but this one was so much easier to build. Click on the images for bigger versions.

Monday 21 November 2011

New map up and running.

The new map is up and running. Those that can't connect please email me (burntcustard@gmail.com) or leave a comment. Big thanks to Iced_apple for helping me with the road :)

Alright, for some reason the spawn point is in the sea. Follow the lampposts to the road, but PLEASE try not to get it blown up. If you can't find the lights, go to x:-64 z:247.

Here's a couple of extra rules and info to do with the big long stone thing:
  • Don't build lampposts/burning netherrack things/torch shrines all along the road. Sure, have a couple next to your house, but the road doesn't need them.
  • Don't build underneath the road. I'll eventually organise (hopefully with some help) some sort of transport tunnel right under it, which will also light up the road a bit through the glass holes.
  • Don't extend the road without permission (I'll probably give it to you, but you have to ask.)
  • You CAN make your own path leading from the road to your house, wherever it may be. Just don't make your personal road as big as the main one.
  • Try to fix anything you get exploded!
Useful information about how awesome I am, and how awesome you are not (yet):
I know you think your good at Minecraft, but the server is running on hard mode. Do you know what that means? It means if you see a creeper, run for you life. It also means you'll starve TO DEATH if you get too hungry. Here are some tips for not dying every two seconds:
  • Wear amour. Without this, creepers WILL kill you in ONE hit.
  • Don't go out at night unless your ready for a fight.
  • Carry a spare sword in case yours breaks. If you don't want to do this, carry an axe instead, they are pretty good at killing stuff too.
  • Hold right mouse button to BLOCK with the sword if you see an arrow coming towards you.
  • Don't jump off high places, even if it doesn't kill you, the zombie behind the closest tree will.
  • Make a FISHING ROD and a BOW.
  • Carry a bucket of water when you're near lava.
  • Eat LOADS of food.
  • Try to breed animals.
  • Buy potions, enchanted swords/armour, and arrows when people have them for sale.
  • Work as a team. PvP is off, it's us against the monsters.
Hopefully these tips will keep you alive for a bit longer. Good luck!

Sunday 20 November 2011

Yay Minecraft 1.0!

Minecraft 1.0 is here, and I want to start a new map! The "old" MASSIVE map, is available to download here. The server will be offline until further notice. Hopefully I'll have something organised tonight but the latest it will be back up is tomorrow.

On the new map, I'm planning to have a very long road. This road will connect as many peoples houses or "bases" as possible, and have a tunnel underneath for safe travel. This might not sound amazing, but I think it will really help bring people together a bit more. If you'd like to extend the road yourself, feel free. Of course you don't have to stay near the road, you could just run off (again) and make whatever you like far away. On that note, I'd like to point out some rules of the new map, which either didn't exist on the prievious one, or that nobody listened to *grumpy face*.
  • No griefing. This includes stealing, burning, you know, nasty stuff.
  • No flying structures. This includes being supported by 1x1 towers in a corner. If you want to make something tall, give it some big supporting legs so it doesn't look retarded.
  • If you REALLY want to make a flying structure, like a UFO or balloon, prove to me your amazing at building first, AND build it miles away.
  • No building near the spawn point (at least 50 blocks) ARGH NETHERACK NO.
  • No cheating. If want lots of diamonds or whatever easily, don't use a see through texture pack, just go and play creative mode.
  • Put signs everywhere so we know what belongs to who. 
  • Don't build next to someones house without asking them first. If they're not online use the chat page of this blog and/or leave some signs up on their house.
  • You can claim spaces by puttings a fence or cobble wall around them, but you can't claim whole ravines or caves. That being said, be considerate, don't mine directly under someones house or in their mines.
One more rule, if your going to make a structure out of ONLY cobble, it better be the most beautiful, eye-meltingly good structure ever. Here's a couple I made:

Read this too.
The "official" currency on the server will be GOLD COINS (nuggets) just like FREAKING MARIO. 9 "coins" makes an ingot, and 9 ingots makes a block. Yes you can change between the 3 with a crafting table. You don't have to use this system, you can trade in sheep if you like, but I'd like to encourage everyone who wants to sell stuff regularly to put their prices in this shiny system. Here's a picture I tried to take of what the currency looks like in my texture pack. Everything kept rolling off the tabe because I have no hand eye coordination and gold is slippery.

Well done for reading this far, now for the important whitelist-related bit.
The server whitelist has gotten rather full, there's about 40 people on it. To make things simple, I'm going to REMOVE EVERYONE FROM IT DUN DUN DUUUUN. However, if you leave a comment here (or contact me by magic banana or other means), stating your in game-name, I'll check it against the current whitelist, and add you again. Simple.

If you leave a comment saying: "WTF I was removed from the whitelist, what is going on!!!1!", then you won't be added. No offence, but you should read more.

EDIT: A few people will be left on the whitelist actually, so don't comment here until you've tried to connect AFTER I've made the next blog post which will be shouting about how the server is up again.

Monday 10 October 2011

The Server

Update:
The current "temporary" map, is now our new permanent map! This changed after hearing that Minecraft 1.9 might not be released for a long time :(

The spawn protection area on this new map is huge, this is to discourage people from dying, and to stop people building near spawn (which I did actually ask everyone not do to before..)

The old map got corrupted.
I don't know how, why, if it's Mojangs or Herobrines fault, but it just won't work. If requested I will spend some time making the previous map available for download. I have also upped the number of backups kept for future maps to several days worth rather than just the last couple, in an attempt to stop things like this happening.

I have started a new map, which after some discussion, we have decided will be pure survival, just like the last one, with the same "don't steal", "don't build anything ugly", and "don't cheat" rules (which not enough people were following, but I've been polishing my ban-hammer so watch out).

This new map will be replaced when Minecraft 1.9 comes out, which should be released sometime near the 18th. This is not an excuse to cheat or do anything stupid, but it could be a reason to not play on the server for a while if your a bit grumpy. Hopefully after 1.9 the map will not have to be changed for.. a long long time.

To prove that 1.9 is going to be worth updating the map for, here's a -slightly unrelated- dragon that Notch is making:

Monday 26 September 2011

Burncustard's Automatic Egg Conversion Unit (AECU) (Broken since Minecraft 1.0)

Apparently killing baby chickens is inhumane, so this device no longer works :(
That being said, some elements of the design can still probably be used to help make other chicken farming machines.

Are you one of those people, who has eggs, to make chickens, to make eggs, to make chickens?

Yes?! Well then, I have something for you, to help control the amount of eggs you have!

No?! Well, you might want to become one of those people after seeing what I've made!

The contraption I have designed takes eggs, and in return gives you feathers and COOKED chicken meat (or edible SMEPU conversion byproduct as Hans Lemurson would say.) Please don't call the RSPCA.

Sorry about the lack of commentary in the video, I might add it and/or do a "how to" at a later date.

Cooking Conversion

The idea of shooting eggs from a dispencer, into the block above a fire, came from AmazedStream and his video on the subject. Big thanks to him for realizing this. I tried many other ways of immolating chickens, but was unsuccessful creating anything vastly different and any better.

Why fire?
Thermal Conversion Fluid (i.e. lava), kills chickens nearly instantly, and destroys anything that is dropped. Even if you try to drop items through a very thin bit of lava and then into water, they are still destroyed. Fire on the other hand, has the ability to ignite chickens, without doing a huge amount of damage at once. Chickens also try to avoid fire when possible, so the two flaming sections in my design "funnel" the chickens down onto the trapdoor.

Escapees?
Unfortunately, my design is not 100% efficient. A small amount of chickens manage to avoid ignition. I have done a large amount of testing (over 2000 eggs), and I have come to the conclusion that around 2% of chickens escape their firey fate. I'm not sure what causes this mishap, or how to solve it. Personally I don't think it's too much of a big deal, as 2% is such a low amount, and it doesn't cause any malfunctions.

Dealing with escapees
I believe that this sort of animal to meat conversion (but with pigs), may have created Pigmen. Therefore, to avoid the rapid evolution of Zombie Chickenmen - which would undoubtly be far more hostile and cunning than Pigmen - all escapees must be euthanized with ruthless efficiency. There is an access door on the back of my design which allows this to manually take place. I considered adding some sort of lava chicken remover, but I think the design is complex enough already.

Test results
Each test used 576 (an inventory full) of eggs, which if the "1 out of 8 eggs becomes a chicken" theory is to be believed, should be about 72 chickens. All meat is cooked. These results are the same as the ones shown in the video.
Run 1
Meat      = 88
Feathers  = 89
Escapees  =  2
Run 2
Meat      = 74
Feathers  = 75
Escapees  =  1
Run 3
Meat      = 73
Feathers  = 74
Escapees  =  1
Run 4
Meat      = 75
Feathers  = 75
Escapees  =  2
Totals
Eggs      = 2304
Chickens* =  288
Meat      =  310
Feathers  =  313
Escapees  =    6
Escapee%**=    1.94

*Predicted amount of chickens. Actual chicken count must be higher (310 at least) because each chicken can only drop 1 meat. This may be to do with the fact that -very- rarely, an egg can spawn 4 chickens.

** Escapee percent is based upon assuming 310 chickens appeared in the trap. Yes, the figure in the video is "wrong"; it uses the number or Predicted chickens rather than number of actual chickens.

Special thanks goes to Hans Lemurson and his thread about accumulating arrows.

Monday 14 March 2011

My Old Server

Sorry anyone who's been wanting updates to any of this, I started a server a while ago and have been a bit busy!

Here's a link to burntcustard's Town server blog.

Thursday 20 January 2011

Minecraft Diary - Episode 4 - Skeletons!

I decide that I should go WEST in my journey, not only because that way I'm more likely to go in a straight line, but also because walking towards the sunset sound cool. After climbing over an all-too-familiar hill or two, I get to a big forest. I'm glad those flint and steel maniacs from my server aren't here.
As far the the eye can see (as far as will render)
Yay! Found some mushrooms. I feel like I've got enough food to last me for my whole journey now, as long as nothing jumps on my head (or more likely , me jump on it's head by accident). After walking for a few minutes in the forest, I come across a clearing with cliff face and water oblong waterfall.
Little waterfall
I don't plan on stopping until I notice a little cave next to the waterfall which I just can't resist exploring.
Fullscreen this and it'll make more sense
Inside I see a couple of rather interesting things, a zombie, and.. cobblestone. You guys should know what this means :D After realizing I've only got 1 torch left, killing the zombie, finding the end of the tunnel, and getting some coal, I'm ready to open up the dungeon. It seems strange how quiet it is, I have no idea what could be in there, maybe it's just lava that's touched some water (I doubt that actually). I carefully mine out of one the cobble blocks and..
Stones Skeletons!
*TWANGTWANGTWANGTWANGTWANG* The skeletons go berserk all shooting at each other rather than me.  I run around madly anyway hoping that If they do shoot they won't hit me. I haven't jumped like that whilst playing Minecraft for a while. I can see at least 3 skeletons die, and the one closest to me turns around and start shooting. I run around some more than go up to him and give him a little poke and he dies. Like either someone who is quite brave (or more likely, quite stupid, you'll find out why in a second). I knock out another block and go into the dungeon.
Free bones
I hop over all of the "free" arrows and bones, picking them up and filling my inventory completely. When in a dungeon like this, it's best not to destroy the spawner, but surround it with torches so you can make a trap out of it. OH. I'm going to have to make some more torches before.. too late. One last skeleton spawns but I manage to drop what I'm going and hit him in the face several times before he can put too many arrows inside of me. I then stab I and construct a bunch of new torches in record time and run around the spawner placing them on the ground like I'm doing some sort of weird ritual.
Winnings
I drop some stuff down that I don't need then have a look at what's in the chest. Ohh lots of iron, that will come in handy. Actually, I might as well take the chest too.
Yoink!
I don't know why I was hitting that thing with bacon, it made it taste pretty odd. (The bacon not the chest, I'm not some sort of weird chest-eating-machine. A little nibble might be nice sometimes but anyway...) On my way out I notice something above the entrance, maybe they had been shooting at me after all!
Arrows
Having thought I've spent enough time in here, I walk to the cave entrance and notice it's getting dark, I guess I'll stay here tonight then. I board up the entrance with planks and a door, and also put a door on the dungeon, just in case some skeletons come to rape me in my sleep.
Night already, again.

I hope some people are finding this entertaining =] There still aren't enough pretty scenery or building pictures for me personally, but I'll probably take some soon.

Wednesday 19 January 2011

Minecraft Diary - Episode 3 - Animal Encounters

Day 3

Determined to go far, far away, I set off. First off in my journey, I see a creeper. "Hello Mr Creeper" I say kindly. He seems saddened by something.. he seems quite up for the idea of me chopping him into little pieces, so I comply.
Jumpy jumpy creepy creepy
After dealing with the creeper, I get over the hill, over some water onto another little hill. I then look back into the water and see some squids! Yay! I then continue to deal with the squids.
More Squids
I find myself in a "swamp" biome, were all the land is sea height, quite nice to walk on but not very exciting. Ohh piggies, they look tasty.
Swamp pigs and zebra tree
After dealing with those pigs, I found some cows. (Actually like 10 of them)
Cows
I bet you can't guess what I did with those cows.. I'll give you a clue, I'm now wearing them!
Wearing the cows
That picture also shows all the things I've got in my inventory, I'm really going to need to set up a base with a chest to put everything in soon. Time to continue my journey and go as far as possi... argh night time again, already. And whats that noise? AHH the chicken's back! I decide it's probably best to hide somewhere tonight, as I don't know how many hundreds of monsters there will be. I run to the closest heap of dirt and set up a little shelter in it.

Night 3

Cooking time

Day 4

With my little cave full of the delightful smell of cooked bacon - note that I eat bacon, not porkchop because I am a man - and a scented whiff of smelted iron, I head off into the day with my shiny new killing stick, confident that today I'm going to find a cool place to build by castle. I come across a cliff face which looks very tall, "maybe I'll get a good view from up there" I think to myself. I start to go through an archway and see a... what is that? Is it stone?
Surprise skeleton!
Strangely, it doesn't shoot me, maybe it actually thinks it's some stone? Anyway, on I go exploring in this wonderful new pla..
Bugger.

Going to continue the story next episode, hopefully I'm not going to manage being so stupid again.

Minecraft Diary - Episode 2 - Hostage sheep

Night 1

I run back to the beach as quick as my little squarish legs will carry me, to a nice flat spot I want to build my shelter. I haven't got that many materials so I'm forced to build quite a small, building, made up of an assortment of blocks. I'm determined to get it to look better that a square box.
Pretty moon
For some reason I don't take a picture of the completed shelter *shrugs*. Just after finishing it off, I hear a startling growl, up to this point I hadn't seen any monsters in this world, I had absolutely no idea where it was coming from. I got out of my shelter to have a quick look and..
What scares me most about this is the chicken and sheep.
Well this is.. actually not that bad, the zombie isn't running at me or anything, he looks angry though, I would be too if I'd made that much of a mess of my top. The zombie starts to chase me and I run around the shelter a bit before going inside. "I wonder where that chicken has gone" I think to myself, looking through the back window. I turn around and AHH!
Another zombie!
Obviously the chicken has called for backup! I knew I should have killed it. That sheep is still scaring me, it looks kind of sad, maybe the zombies are holding it hostage. I decide to open my door, cautiously poking the zombies with my crappy sword. I saved the sheep yay! It's starting to get light now, that was a pretty uneventful night to be honest, barely any monsters.

Day 2

Sheep and his friends go for a swim.
The sheep and his cow friends go for a swim when I get out of my house. They all look pretty grumpy. Now I needed something to do, some sort of objective. I decide upon getting lots of sandstone, because I want to build a sandstone castle. That sounds cool, and what could possibly be more fun that collecting heaps of sand?..
Collecting sand
I start out quite positive with this, but it gets really quite boring after a while.. I keep going anyway. Bored of collecting sand, I start to take down my shelter, I don't think it's really necessary due to the apparent lack of danger around here.

Night 2

I dig some more, through the night, then all of a sudden I turn round and there are a couple of zombies chasing me again, and they've already killed the sheep.
More zombies!
Whilst running, I notice I've uncovered some iron, yay! I have no idea what I'm going to use it on, but I'm sure it will be helpful. After running around a bit and killing the zombies, I get back to sand collecting.
BOOM!
WTF?! I didn't see that coming, how on earth did I only lose half a heart? Ah well, free sand. Time to dig some more.
Hole
As the sun starts to rise, I look back on what I've done during the night. I'm still surprised by the lack of monsters, but obviously I don't mind it. Four stacks (64) of sandstone, that should be enough. Now I just need somewhere to build my sand castle.. Time to go exploring!

Episode 3 coming soon, there will be a lot more pretty pictures in it I promise.

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Minecraft Diary - Episode 1

I've been inspired by Tom Francis' "Minecraft Experiment" on PC Gamer and my new texture pack, to do a sort of "lets play" with pictures. This will be much more pretty than PC Gamers version (especially if you view the pictures full screen), and I'm hoping the commentary will be just as interesting.

I'm a lot more experienced than Tom Francis was when he did his Minecraft Experiment (so will act like less of an idiot, lol), and will be playing the same "hardcore mode" that if you die, you delete that map. I am not planning on dying. I don't have an overall objective yet, maybe someone could suggest one? Oh also, each "episode" will be about one day and night, depending on how many pictures I take.

Everybody knows by now that default Minecraft isn't particularly stunning to look at, although a lot of people enjoy the "style" and/or get used to it. Somehow after a while your brain adapts and you think it is "normal" for the world to be made out of blocks (or maybe I've just been playing for too long). With my new texture pack/mods, my 1920x1200 screen and a tiny bit of image editing, I'll be persuading you that really, Minecraft can look awesome.

Day 1

Although I could keep generating new ones until I get some great scenery, I'm just going to stick with the first one I get, turns out it doesn't look too bad.
Spawn
As you can see, I've got a custom sun, sand, cacti, water, and health bar. These things aren't in the usual squarish Minecraft style, but I think they fit together with everything quite well. "This place looks quite nice" I think to myself as I look around, then I catch something in the corner of my eye. Now any Minecraft survival player with a big screen will tell you how exciting and/or important seeing something out of the corner of your eye can be, this was no exception. I'm pretty sure that pig has seen whatever it is too.
Something in the sea
I run towards the water, hoping to get a better look.. but nothing. Quite disappointed, I think about leaving it, but I was sure I saw something. Time for a swim! *Splosh*
Squids!
View this fullscreen and stand up if you can't see them. I was tempted to punch the swimming tarantulas in the face to get some poo ink, but they were too deep, I'd drown before half killing one. Maybe I'll come back when I've got a sword. And besides, their eyes were beginning to creep me out.
Scenery
After nearly hurting myself staring at the squids, getting out then walking around for a minute on the beach, I come across this. Pretty cool cliff right? Having the view distance on full is nice.. I figure out that I'm spending too long prating around and decide I need to get myself some tools.
Supplies - Wood
As any experienced Minecraftian knows, you gotta punch trees first. Now I've got wood, I'm going to make a wooden pickaxe, get some stone, then make stone tools. Although you can now make charcoal out of wood, It would still be nice to find some coal before night time too.
Supplies - Coal
Found loads of coal. Thats good. Made two stone axes by accident. Not really bad, but considerably frustrating for somebody as OCD as me. Click the picture to see the incredibly helpful advise the cow gave me, seriously I know, I was going to get it anyway. Obnoxious cow. You can see in the picture the comparison between the shiny 128x128 "painted" textures, and the default 16x16 workbench. I personally think it all looks nice. *Squeezes in another picture here - this one would make a good desktop background*
Scenery 2
I get some more wood and start thinking about where I can plonk down a little cabin, but then realise I can't see the sun. "Do I have enough time to make a cabin"? I scramble over a hill to figure out where that white blob in the sky is, and then:
Sunset
Well that's quite pretty, I do love how the sun goes orange when it sets. This isn't the best looking Minecraft world I've ever seen, but I think its close. Obviously I've only seen one billionth (or something) of the world so far, so I hope I see some more awesome things again tomorrow... wait a second.. tomorrow! It's nearly night time! No house! No food! I haven't even made any torches yet! I refuse to sit in a hole at night and cry like a petrified worm hiding from the outside world, tonight will be fun.

More coming soon!

Monday 17 January 2011

My Texture Pack

I've decided to share my Minecraft texture pack/mods. It requires a half decent computer to pull off, so hold down F3 in Minecraft and if your not getting 60+FPS then this isn't for you.

*Updates*

 - New tree (beta-snowy) leaves now work.
 - Snow matches sides without snow on much better.
 - Snow "tiles" much better.
 - Little fixes around the edges of some blocks.

This pack contains:

- The pack is mostly the BroPaint texture pack made by Rofrere. It also contains the HD texture fix by xau, and the awesome MrMMods (BetterLight/BetterGrass) by MrMessiah. Full credits are included in the pack.

 - Full set of lovely new textures, or the option to keep most of the defaults so only the scenery (and a few other things) look nice, whilst the blocks you craft keep the original "feel" of Minecraft

 - New Sun and Moon from the BroPaint pack, these look great when rising/setting.
 - New hearts/health meter from the BroPaint pack.
 - Scarier spiders, zombies and ghasts. Also less clean looking sheep.
 - New water, unfortunately it's not animated when still, but I think it still looks good.
 - Lovely sand and sandstone from Dante80s ALBION 64x Texture pack.

Does all that sound good? Well it looks even better! Get the pack here.

Screenshots (will update with more soon, also pigs don't look this crazy anymore. Click for full screen. Actually click. Especially if you have a 1920x1080 monitor so you can view full size.)

Installation Instructions:

 - Extract the archive into C:\Users\(your user name)\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft This may be slightly different depending on your operating system. "AppData" is a hidden file, so you will have to enable seeing them if you haven't already.

 - Run mcpatcher (the HD texture fix).
 - Set the Original file to \bin\minecraft-1.2_02.jar(correct at time of writing) & Output file to \bin\minecraft.jar
 - Set the Texture pack to a .zip file & check the Tile Size has changed to 128x128
 - Press Patch and after completion, close the Minecraft Patcher.
 - Run MrMPatcher.
 - Set Original and Output files like in the other patcher.
 - Highlight the Better Light and Better Grass boxes and press Patch.
 - After completion, close the patcher and play Minecraft!

 - To switch to the other texture pack included, do exactly the same again but select the other texture pack, it's really that simple!

 - To uninstall everything, delete your C:\Users\(user)\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\bin folder, then start up Minecraft and it will re-download it for you. You will not lose your save files. As you can see these are very safe mods to install.

I would like to update the pack with a few more things sometime, comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Sunday 16 January 2011

Showcase - My Log house and Stone house






As you can probably tell by those lower pictures, I've started using a new texture pack. If anybody wants details on it then just ask, it's a bit complicated to install and requires a bit more computing power to run.