I just read about this game and would like to learn more about it. The evolving critters look a little cheesy, but what a great idea! I would love to see this sort of thing take place in Minecraft landscapes. It’s already fun to suddenly see a school of squid or a family group of ocelots. Wouldn’t it be amazing to see something out of the corner of your eye and think “Uh, …what the heck was THAT?!”
Flying around Sept Seven! What would those blank areas in the corners be? How would the cliff-borders look? Are the caverns interesting? And, I always love visiting flat sandy beaches and really dense jungle.
Well, the blank areas on the map were, again, those gaps in the world. I was hoping it would fill in with water. Still, I love flying above the Void, and occasionally falling in.
Yes, the cliffs were impressive. The roots of the trees go down to the very bottom of the world.
Beautiful beaches!
I’m not sure if I like the caverns. They look weird in sand. Maybe if I restricted them to certain areas. Also, they’re kind of dangerous — I was walking around at night, was taking some pictures of the moon, and fell in one.
This picture is awfully dark, but I think you get the idea. This would be nasty to get out of, if I couldn’t fly.
Yes, the water levels match perfectly! I built a little glass bridge from the island, across the Void Gap, to the surrounding ocean.
More pictures soon! This is a very nice little world, and I’ve already carved out some “camping areas”.
Using Worldpainter — on the menu “Create New World”
Type of world: round Topography: hilly Surface material: grass
Minecraft seed: ocean
…Everything else was set to the default (the normal values).
I “scraped” the green away down to the blue level, to make the undulating coastline and islands. I made the coastline flatter (I love wide beaches!) and raised up some small hills. I added some sand (in the “terrain” palette) and various percentages of Jungle (in the “Biome” palette).
Next stage — Save World As — “Sept 7”
then — Export as new Minecraft map
When you go to export, you will get a lot of choices. Most important — remember to choose CREATIVE MODE!!!… or, when you visit your new world, YOU WILL DIE. A lot. And you won’t be able to fly, either. Especially not when you’re dead.
Border: water World type: large biomes Structures: no Chest of goodies: no
Caverns: no Chasms: yes, at 50% Chasms break the surface: yes
Remove water and lava above openings: no Resources: everywhere, 50%
I left everything else the way it was already set up (default).
Note that it’s a round world, and almost all the edges of the circle are water. I selected a border of water. I figured that the water edges of the round world would blend nicely into the rectangular water border. I knew that the places where land came up to the edge of the world, that would look like a cliff.
Tomorrow — What does Sept Seven look like?
I just read this article over at Salon.com…
Over the past few weeks, the video game community has erupted into a full-blown culture war. On one side are the gaming journalists and developers, circling the wagons around feminist activist Anita Sarkeesian and feminist game developer Zoe Quinn, and on the other side are legions of self-proclaimed “gamers,” outraged that the games they love are being criticized….[snip]
… Sarkeesian has been deluged with sexist hate of all stripes, from virtually every gaming community on the Internet. It reached a peak when she actually had to leave her home following particularly detailed threats made on her by a Twitter user who knew her address and parents’ names… [snip]
The sexist gamers are the ones who feel most strongly about the issue, and are so loud about it you’d think Anita Sarkeesian had personally gone around to every male gamer’s home and smashed up their “Call of Duty” discs.
Anita Sarkeesian’s videos can be found at her YouTube channel, The Feminist Frequency. Note that some of the videos come with a warning –“This educational episode contains graphic sexual and violent game footage.”
Two videos that I especiallyenjoyed were the ones about Legos — how they were originally marketed as toys for the entire family, but gradually separated into “pink” and “blue” versions.
I think Minecraft is now what Legos used to be; there’s a whole spectrum of ways that you can play the game.
Thanks Anita Sarkeesian for your thought-provoking videos; stay safe!
Yeah yeah I know. They’re not real critters. It’s all in the Minecraft programming — some rudimentary AI (artificial intelligence) generating random behaviors. Some behaviors are common and some are more rare.
No! Who am I kidding. Of course they’re real!
So — here’s some typical squid behavior — swimming peacefully by moonlight…
…and sometimes they swim to the surface and take a look around.
Less common is for them to come up on the land. They call loudly and attract others.
REALLY loudly.
Mating takes place.
OK, fine. But … what in the world is going on here?!
The Creeper approaches the squid — then notices my presence. Now what?
I…I just…I don’t even.
In the previous experiment, I clicked the brush 15 times and then 30 times. Here I just kept clicking until it stopped growing. How would it turn out?
Well, there it is, off in the distance. I don’t think there’s any mountains on Earth that have such a steep slope. Maybe on a planet with smaller gravity it would be possible.
It was so tall (how tall was it?)… it was SOOOO tall that I couldn’t add any blocks to the top. When I tried to spawn in some creepers, they fell off and wound up randomly scattered on the sides.
Here’s an official description of altitude
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Altitude
Here’s the results of yesterday’s experiments! As you recall, I tried out a new brush in Worldpainter. Here’s how the mountains turned out in real life. Uh, in Minecraft.
Here is the mountain that was built from moving the brush around in a random way.
To me this looks like the sort of mountain that the Minecraft software generates on its own. It fits in with the landscape. Note, I spawned a few creepers in, just to give you an idea of how big it is.
Here’s one of the Custom Brushes I downloaded from the link (mentioned below).
It looks like a picture of a mountain, but black, white and gray. The paler the color, the higher the mountain.
I opened the WorldPainter program and drag’n’dropped it into the Custom Brushes folder. Now you have to close the program and re-open it. OK, now create a basic world…and try out the brush.
Notice that I have the brush intensity set to 50%. For the first mountain, I clicked with the brush 15 times. For the second one, I clicked 30 times. For the third mountain, I clicked over and over while moving the brush around, making random blobs. Now…what will this look like in Minecraft?
I opened WorldPainter today and it said there was a new version, and would I like to update? Sure, why not. It will over-write your files, it said. Fine, that sounds nice and tidy to me! Then I opened the program again, and all my “Custom Brushes” were gone. 
OK, no biggie. I’ll download some more. Next time I’ll save back-ups, too!
Here’s a nice post at the Minecraft forums, explaining “Custom Brushes” and giving some resources. There’s links to a tutorial not to mention a couple of brushes that you can download from that page.
I also searched Google Images for “geometric fabric patterns” and will try making Custom Brushes from some of those.
Here’s some pictures from the big computer clean-up yesterday!
There was a literal BUG in the computer.
Here’s the big picture…
Close-up of the processor. Check out all the dust in the fins (supposed to be drawing heat away from the processor). The “RAM sticks” are looking pretty woolly, too.
No idea what THESE tiny things are. I will ask. It looks like a miniature city to me.
