Help from Youtube # 1

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Caroluna

I have a hard time with tutorial videos because they usually go over things too fast.

…but what if I just watch a ton of videos and see what I can pick up from each one? Rather than trying to understand a single one 100%.

So here is the first of a series of MC Edit tutorial videos. The author of this video said that he mostly uses MC Edit to copy and paste, to speed up the building process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5prqSiiWF4

About half-way through the vid, he demonstrated the “clone tool” — and got it to make something very similar to my disk steps!!!

When you set up the clone tool, there’s a place you can enter numbers. These determine where you place the clone of the second object relative to the first one, and how many of them do you want to make.

It doesn’t look like you could use this setting to make a spiral staircase, but certainly a “normal” one.

Thank you Lildudeoncampus for a helpful video!

MC Edit is frustrating

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Caroluna

I love how MC Edit lets me build geodesic domes. The same general technique lets you make oval shapes, lens shapes, and even disks.

However, I still haven’t mastered how to place things. Usually I just slap it down and say “close enough”. I make sure to save a backup of the world in case the new structure is really ugly.

Last night I tried to make a staircase out of disk-shaped platforms (rather than rectangular steps). I was able to place the center of each disk, more or less. But I couldn’t get the up / down location. The way I understand to do it is to use the mousewheel. So I placed a step, moved the mousewheel one click, placed another step…

In MC Edit it looked pretty good. The steps are circled in red.

But here’s how it looked in Minecraft. Not what I intended at all.

I suppose I could make traditional steps linking the disk-shaped platforms. But the platforms aren’t an equal distance from each other. I find that aesthetically offensive.

I think I’ll go back to the previous version of this world (with out the MC Edit edits) and try again. This time I’ll view the platforms from all different angles before I hit “save”.

OH HOW I WISH SOMEONE WOULD MAKE A PROGRAM WHERE YOU COULD ACTUALLY TYPE IN COORDINATE NUMBERS!!!

Something like this — where the centers of the disks would be at these points

The disk starts out on the ground level, and with each new disk it goes up one (like normal steps) and over one.

There would have to be some sort of “translation of origin” thing going on, because I’m doing everything in relation to a point 0,0,0 and the actual Minecraft coordinates are

I really don’t want to work with numbers like 343, 188, 201 — I would prefer 6, 0, 0.

So the coordinates would need to be changed from X,Y, Z to X-prime, Y-prime and Z-prime.

Meanwhile, Zeeprime might be a good name for the alien civilization that is trying to build these disk-shaped steps. Note they are taking a path from a verdant, jungle area over to a rocky area that is full of caves.

Clearly the Zeeprimes need a more advanced technology. Unless they have, like, REALLY LONG LEGS and can easily get up stairs that are spaced like that. Really long legs and a lousy sense of aesthetics. Ugh.

Gorgeous, inspiring art

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Caroluna

I’ve been collecting pictures of buildings and landscapes that seem like they ought to be in a Minecraft world. I was just visiting the blog io9 and read about this artist today.

The World Where Everything’s an Iceberg: 90% Is Under the Surface

Created by artist Gediminas Pranckevicius, these are only a few of his excellent digital paintings. (Seriously, go check out some of his character concepts, they’re excellent.) But they all seem to play on the same theme, and could very well depict one world. A hidden one.

Here is the artist’s website. You will be amazed.

Notch and the Saber Toothed Tiger

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Caroluna

What if you bought a tiny, adorable kitten

And it grew and grew, getting harder and harder to handle, adding more and more stress to your life…

…and finally it started to attack you?

What would you do? I know in that situation I would research the options, and then (sadly) turn the creature over to an organization that was able to handle it. Maybe a zoo or a museum.

After hearing the news yesterday about Notch selling Mojang to Microsoft, I was very upset — and as I often do when I’m upset, I stayed up late reading about it. I’m sure that I still don’t understand the story very well, but I certainly feel differently than I did when I first got the news.

One of the things I read was Notch’s statement here

http://notch.net/

It’s worth reading in its entirety. My heart went out to him. Notch’s statement concludes “It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity”.

One of the things Notch mentions that influenced his decision was the following video. It tells the story of another game designer, Phil Fish. The video talks about how, although Fish was sort of a mixed bag as a person (and who of us isn’t?), the internet attacked him, chewed him up and spit him out in little pieces. It turned him into a symbol, then attacked the symbol.

This video is a sad but fascinating commentary on internet culture. I can see why Notch was moved by it. It also makes me hope that I never, never, never achieve internet fame.

By the way, if you’re wondering what is that that strange looking cat in the middle — it is a Pallas’ cat, described here:
http://www.factzoo.com/mammals/pallas-cat-manul-thickest-fur-wild-mountain.html

Minecraft’s company was just sold to Microsoft

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Caroluna

https://mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-being-bought-by-microsoft/

Yes, the deal is real. Mojang is being bought by Microsoft.

The article continues…

It was reassuring to see how many of your opinions mirrored those of the Mojangstas when we heard the news. Change is scary, and this is a big change for all of us. It’s going to be good though. Everything is going to be OK. <3

Please remember that the future of Minecraft and you – the community – are extremely important to everyone involved. If you take one thing away from this post, let it be that.

One of the cool things about Minecraft is that the program is open-source, which means that you are legally allowed to modify it (though not to sell your modifications).

Would Microsoft allow this to continue???

Will this affect the Minecraft editing programs, such as WorldPainter, Avanti and MC Edit?

I have a bad feeling about this.

My Favorite Minecraft Video

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Caroluna

Screencap from my favorite Minecraft vid

And here’s the video!
“I had a dream last night…I built a universe”

No more Lego scientist ladies???

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Caroluna

I was disappointed to read that the Lego company does not intend to continue its Lady Scientist series, or even, to make any more of the original set. This set sold out in about two weeks. Here’s the article where I read the sad news!

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/09/12/hey-lego-bring-back-the-women-scientists/

That’s such a shame. I was really looking forward to a Lego entomologist, botanist, or ornithologist. The Lego company is really missing out by not continuing this series. A lot of adults enjoyed playing with them too!

Picture found here

So how does this tie into Minecraft, you might ask? Well…to me, Minecraft is like a form of digital Legos (except you don’t step on them in your bare feet on the way to the bathroom at 3 am).

Minecraft has kept the broad appeal that Legos used to have. If you want pink and purple and pastel colors, there’s now stained glass panels and colored clay. If you want to blow things up (or get blown up) there’s lots of ways to do that. You can built fortresses — or cute homes with a fence and flowers in front — or magnificent cathedrals — or geodesic domes. You can farm, and raise animals. You can make complicated things with circuits. And if you like banging your head on the keyboard while learning new editing software — there are hours and hours of fun for you!

So — great job, Notch for inventing Minecraft! and props to the folks at Mojang, who keep adding cool features! And thanks to all you out there who write the editing programs, develop mods, create new “skins” for characters, run servers, build adventure maps, make videos — so that Minecraft can appeal to such a broad spectrum of people.

One Quadrillion?!

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Caroluna

A while ago, I accidentally created a world where the mountains were so tall that you can’t add any more blocks. It was way above the cloud layer…

Try as you might, you can’t place any blocks on this plateau — it gives you an error message. But, in Creative Mode, you can still fly above this! So I gave it a try. I flew so high that I lost all sight of the ground. At this point even though it was night, the sun re-appeared (was I seeing around the planet???)

Using the F3 key, I displayed the X, Y and Z coordinates. Y is the altitude. It seemed to take forever, but I finally got above 1000 meters. I kept expecting something terrible to happen (would it crash my computer?) so I got scared and gave up.

So — how high up can you fly in Creative Mode? Using our handy-dandy Google, I found this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwvw72NxaeY

The short answer is, you can go 1 quadrillion meters. One quadrillion and one, and you get an error message. I’m not positive but I think the error is so severe that you can never enter that world again! The guy in the video used the “teleport” command, which I don’t have, so I’m not going to try it.

One quadrillion can also be written in exponential notation as 10 to the 15th power.

Just for scale, one AU (astronomical unit) is a measly 1.5 times 10 to the 12th power. (One AU is approximately the distance from the Earth to the Sun.) So in Minecraft, you can fly about a thousand times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. This is waaaaaay past Pluto, which is an average of 40 AU away.

A lightyear is 9.5 times 10 to the 15th power. That means the Minecraft sky extends about A TENTH OF A LIGHTYEAR away from the world’s surface.

Won’t be able to reach any stars. According to this article, the closest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri, at 4.5 lightyears away.

Of course, in the Minecraft world, there could be stars much closer than that, who knows?

Creator of the Earthsea books receives award

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Caroluna

Found this at the blog The Marysue —

Neil Gaiman to Present Ursula K. Le Guin With Lifetime Achievement Award

Among the nation’s most revered writers of science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin’s fully imagined worlds challenge readers to consider profound philosophical and existential questions about gender, race, the environment, and society. Her boldly experimental and critically acclaimed novels, short stories, and children’s books, written in elegant prose, are popular with millions of readers around the world.

I would like to build a Minecraft world that is a collection of far-flung islands. I got this idea from Ursula Le Guin’s series of Earthsea books — I loved spending time in the world she envisioned, and want to have my own parallel universe version.