I wouldn't be surprised if Notch has updated the enemy AI to wander more.
So basically, burnov, you're seeing two different effects:
1. Enemy spawn probabilities are higher now, and since you just didn't have enough light to properly spawn bust before, you aren't properly spawn busting now - and you're noticing it, because the higher spawn rates are making a difference.
2. Enemy AI makes them range further now, and since you appear to have zero physical obstacles to mobs just randomly wandering in to your "property", they're randomly wandering in to your "property" and blowing your stuff up.
I mean really, it makes almost zero sense for mobs to avoid well-lit areas. That's where the player is, after all - they should be attracted to light, not repelled by it.
Whenever I get so lost I decide to dig straight up, I always put a chest somewhere up high with all my loot (e.g, anything better than cobblestones, coal or wood). If I die the stuff is safe and I can maybe find it again (useful treasures!), if I don't I can come back and reclaim it safely.
This is why you should never go spelunking without a large stack of logs in your inventory. Wood is really the major limiting factor to exploring - you can avoid losing health, you can gather more coal and cobblestone and steel, but you can't avoid using wood.
I like how the reason why he isn't hacking is because he didn't put diamond everywhere.
It's almost like you all believe that hackers are absolutely incapable of self-restraint.
And Mekton: why is it easier to:
1. Find some diamonds (you will definitely need more than one)
2. Fire up CheatEngine
3. Spend five minutes messing around looking for where the value is in memory
4. Freeze it and hope that direct memory editing doesn't mess things up (what happens if you put something else in that inventory slot?)
Rather than:
1. Run InvEdit
2. Give yourself diamonds
It would be fun if Notch implemented a Diablo style "hardcore" mode, where the world gets deleted if you die. I'm not sure what benefits there would be - maybe more minerals or something?
Frostbyte: I might not understand the spawning algorithm as well as I think I do, but shouldn't a series of floating platforms work? E.g, instead of having a solid floor, chop out 3 x 3 (or something) platforms with a one space gap between them. Mobs wander around quite a bit and seem to disregard falls, so I would imagine that their basic brownian motion would make them gravitate towards the bottom of the structure. You'd partially decrease the per-group spawn rate due to having less surface area on which to spawn, but you may increase the total spawn rate as there would be less filled blocks in the chunk, causing the algorithm to bail out of your initial chunk less frequently.
I did actually build a structure like this at one point (I had 2x2 platforms) but absolutely nothing spawned in it. This made me sad.
Edit: now that I think about it, an airy structure full of 1x1 platforms spaced two or three units apart vertically might produce optimal spawning behavior, since the algorithm as you described it doesn't check to make sure there's any space around the area where the mob is going to spawn. Given that the members of a mob pack are spawned in a kinda normal distribution around a central point, I think such a configuration would both make the algorithm pick a point inside of itself and, once the point is picked, encourage the algorithm to actually place mobs near it. I would go test this out if I actually knew how to edit maps, because a structure like that would be a gigantic pain to actually build by hand.
Because when you play (say) La Mulana, there's really only a few different unique things to do in the game. You have to go to this set of places which are always the same, kill this set of bosses which always have the same strategy, use this set of items in these particular ways, etcetera. The experience you get out of La Mulana is almost always the experience the author created, even if you do things in a slightly different order.
Minecraft, on the other hand, is completely different. Every game you play is unique, and the experience you get out of Minecraft is the experience the player puts in to it; thus, it's unique enough to warrant multiple LPs.
I want lanterns to not require iron. Please, please don't make me use the teeny amount of iron I'm able to find to make permanent light sources - I need it for my minecart rails!
And anyway, too many things in the game depend on steel already.
What would be cool is if a lantern was glass surrounding a torch, because glass is easy peasy to make.
And torches could make a literally larger light area - e.g, the torch square and the eight squares around it are all light level 14.
Also since items hang around for a while, you can build something like this: (top down view)
Bottom level:
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Mid level:
[]
Top level:
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Grab your stack(s) of 64 gravel blocks, stand on the mid level, target that lone cobblestone on the top level, and hold down the right mouse button. You'll place a gravel block, it'll fall through the hole in the mid level, get destroyed on the torch, maybe drop a flint. When it's out of the way, you'll automatically place another gravel block as long as you're holding down RMB and the process repeats. Once you get bored, go down to the bottom level and gather up all the flints; you have a couple of minutes before they start despawning.
I had a creeper come up a ladder at me once. He wouldn't go very far up it, but apparently it was far enough for him to explode and remove that chunk of ladder, as well as my corporeal body.
I have to ask: Will mobs spawn on any available (natural) surface? Because if you set up a mob killer that's efficient enough to keep the population beneath saturation, you could create a three dimensional volume with a significant spawnable surface area and harvest like crazy pants - or, alternatively, make a very compact and efficient harvester. I'm imagining a stack of four wide platforms with two vertical spaces between them, spread out one space apart horizontally and hanging over some mechanism to kill mobs. I might have to load up my hacked world to test this out.
I've been trying to approach trees the same sort of way, but the damn things just refuse to grow.
If you could hear them, they wouldn't be creepers now would they?
Though what I would like is if explosions were modeled somewhat more realistically. An explosion traveling through dirt, for instance, should go much further than an explosion going through solid stone - and similarly, cobblestones shouldn't hold up very well at all to an explosion, given that they're just stone chunks that are loosely held together (which would give you a reason to actually waste the fuel to create stone blocks, besides for mechanism purposes).
Glass and leaves, of course, should disintegrate if there's any sort of explosion within a ten or fifteen block radius.
Also between about 1:00 am and 3:00 am computer time, creepers should occasionally spawn in the light.
Not really, the leaves burned away but the logs are still mostly there in a neat ever-burning Wicker Man type conflagration - I'm actually leaving them there just because it looks neat. Also for some reason creepers loved spawning on top of that mountain, and I didn't want to deal with their junk right then.
Anyway, how much light do trees need? This tree has a skylight up above it and there's some torches in the area as well. How much room upward? There's about four or five blocks available directly above it. Are there any requirements off to the sides? I've fenced the area off at a distance of one block (so the tree is in the center of a nine block square).
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So basically, burnov, you're seeing two different effects:
1. Enemy spawn probabilities are higher now, and since you just didn't have enough light to properly spawn bust before, you aren't properly spawn busting now - and you're noticing it, because the higher spawn rates are making a difference.
2. Enemy AI makes them range further now, and since you appear to have zero physical obstacles to mobs just randomly wandering in to your "property", they're randomly wandering in to your "property" and blowing your stuff up.
I mean really, it makes almost zero sense for mobs to avoid well-lit areas. That's where the player is, after all - they should be attracted to light, not repelled by it.
0
This is why you should never go spelunking without a large stack of logs in your inventory. Wood is really the major limiting factor to exploring - you can avoid losing health, you can gather more coal and cobblestone and steel, but you can't avoid using wood.
0
It's almost like you all believe that hackers are absolutely incapable of self-restraint.
And Mekton: why is it easier to:
1. Find some diamonds (you will definitely need more than one)
2. Fire up CheatEngine
3. Spend five minutes messing around looking for where the value is in memory
4. Freeze it and hope that direct memory editing doesn't mess things up (what happens if you put something else in that inventory slot?)
Rather than:
1. Run InvEdit
2. Give yourself diamonds
0
0
I did actually build a structure like this at one point (I had 2x2 platforms) but absolutely nothing spawned in it. This made me sad.
Edit: now that I think about it, an airy structure full of 1x1 platforms spaced two or three units apart vertically might produce optimal spawning behavior, since the algorithm as you described it doesn't check to make sure there's any space around the area where the mob is going to spawn. Given that the members of a mob pack are spawned in a kinda normal distribution around a central point, I think such a configuration would both make the algorithm pick a point inside of itself and, once the point is picked, encourage the algorithm to actually place mobs near it. I would go test this out if I actually knew how to edit maps, because a structure like that would be a gigantic pain to actually build by hand.
0
0
Minecraft, on the other hand, is completely different. Every game you play is unique, and the experience you get out of Minecraft is the experience the player puts in to it; thus, it's unique enough to warrant multiple LPs.
0
And anyway, too many things in the game depend on steel already.
What would be cool is if a lantern was glass surrounding a torch, because glass is easy peasy to make.
And torches could make a literally larger light area - e.g, the torch square and the eight squares around it are all light level 14.
0
0
Bottom level:
[] []
[] []
[] [] []
Mid level:
[]
Top level:
[] []
[] [] []
[] []
Grab your stack(s) of 64 gravel blocks, stand on the mid level, target that lone cobblestone on the top level, and hold down the right mouse button. You'll place a gravel block, it'll fall through the hole in the mid level, get destroyed on the torch, maybe drop a flint. When it's out of the way, you'll automatically place another gravel block as long as you're holding down RMB and the process repeats. Once you get bored, go down to the bottom level and gather up all the flints; you have a couple of minutes before they start despawning.
0
0
I've been trying to approach trees the same sort of way, but the damn things just refuse to grow.
0
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Come on piggie, daddy needs hitpoints
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Mmm delicious bacon. Time for some cookin' back at the base!
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Oh sssssh....
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hhhhiiiii....
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iiii... Wait! I survived! Only half a heart, but I'm still alive! And... flying?
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DAMN YOU GRAVITY
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Though what I would like is if explosions were modeled somewhat more realistically. An explosion traveling through dirt, for instance, should go much further than an explosion going through solid stone - and similarly, cobblestones shouldn't hold up very well at all to an explosion, given that they're just stone chunks that are loosely held together (which would give you a reason to actually waste the fuel to create stone blocks, besides for mechanism purposes).
Glass and leaves, of course, should disintegrate if there's any sort of explosion within a ten or fifteen block radius.
Also between about 1:00 am and 3:00 am computer time, creepers should occasionally spawn in the light.
0
Anyway, how much light do trees need? This tree has a skylight up above it and there's some torches in the area as well. How much room upward? There's about four or five blocks available directly above it. Are there any requirements off to the sides? I've fenced the area off at a distance of one block (so the tree is in the center of a nine block square).