Minecraft?

[Pob255]

It worked fine for me, nice idea too, obsidian so creepers cannot blow it up and an automatic one way door.

What you could do is build a large platform, high in the air, above some water (make sure it's 2 squares deep)
Build it out of half slabs so mobs cannot spawn on it.

Well I've started my jungle tree house. look for the abnormally tall trees at the edge of the jungle near the village.

ok, knowing a bit of the map is a bit like cheating, but I've not gone diamond hunting and marking out the biggest patches or anything.

[mycarsavw]

Built a mud hut to survive night 1, some stairs to bedrock where I unearthed an underground ravine, played in Pob's treehouse and then had a powercut.

[Allen]

Does anyone have a problem with Minecraft being very "jittery"? It plays fine but every 30 seconds or so it will freeze for about half a second then when it unfreezes I have moved as if it wasn't (like it's running in the background but the output is frozen). When I am deep underground it freezes more often.

I've searched around for answers but the usual stuff doesn't help (lowering in game settings, starting with more RAM etc). I'm tempted to try a RAMDisk for the C:\Users\Allen\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft directory to see if that helps since I have plenty spare with just MC running, but I can't think of anything else it could be.

It got so bad last night. I was having a little tinker with the Technic Pack mentioned earlier and I was wandering around a cave and had a full inventory of Gold, Iron, Copper, Tin and shed loads of different gems and I fell into some lava just as it froze. The lava was a few blocks underneath a whole in the ground that I stopped walking by as I saw it, but the game froze and continued to move me, when it unfroze I was already on fire and couldn't get out. I was so annoyed I deleted the save file lol...

[mycarsavw]

Yup, I get it all the time with the technic pack but haven't had it at all when playing vanilla - I dropped the RAM down to 512mb using the Technic launcher and that seemed to cure it for a few minutes.

It's known as the Lag Spike Of Death (LSOD) and there's a monster thread over on minecraftforums about it in the pre-release versions (which I never experienced) here

The post 1.2.3 lag is new and there's a shorter thread here

[Allen]

Should have mentioned, I also get it in vanilla, but I haven't played vanilla for months so not sure if it's only in 1.2.x. I never had any lag before when I had my old server, despite how many huge structures and caverns were in the area.

[Pob255]

I don't get spikes, I don't think I'll have to double check, however I have had it totally grind to a near halt, single figure fps with massive input delay.
I have to close minecraft and reopen it to fix it.

I think there's a memory leak somewhere

EDIT: I only get that issue with distance set to far btw, at normal distance I seem to be fine.

[Pob255]

Well we've found a couple of spawners and I'm going to turn the skelly one into an xp farm

The design is going to be based on the one I worked out in my single player 1.1


A bit convoluted but designed for maximum effect.

I built this one above ground because I was using the craftable mob spawner mod (which lets you turn iron bars and mossy cobble stone into placeable spawners)
But this one will have to be built under ground, although I plan to keep the glass sides so you'll be able to see the mobs going through it (also handy in case of issues.)
ignore the large room to the far right that was a separate thing

It works like this:
Mob spawner is in a sealed room, one square above the floor, with is covered in flowing water to push the spawned mobs out.
Into the elevator, which lifts them up and into the top tunnel (the design is not 100% as some do get stuck at the top now and again, generally they get pushed on by the next mob, but sometimes they end up drowning.)
At the end of the top tunnel is a single bare square, next to that is a single square shaft, the bare square is needed so the mobs push each other off and don't try to jump off.
The reason for this is the drop shaft is 23 squares deep, this should leave the mobs with 1/2 a heart of life after the fall damage, if they jump then they fall 24 squares that kills them.
I still get some deaths but not many.

At the bottom is a single square hole at the mobs feet height, this allows you to punch the mobs, killing them (by punching them you don't damage a sword) get the xp and drops, but they cannot shoot you

Why don't I just put the drop after the trap? why go to the hassle of lifting them up?
Well the reason for this rather convoluted route the mobs take is due to the mechanics of mob spawners.
A mob spawner will only spawn when the following 3 rules are met.
1 - Time, a spawner will spawn once every 10 to 40 seconds, watch the spinning mob figure inside, it speeds up as it approaches spawn time
2 - the player is within 17 blocks
3 - there are no mobs from the spawner within 17 blocks.

This means more mobs will only spawn when the existing ones are 18 or more blocks away but the plays is 17 blocks or less away. (you can see the remains of my first drop shaft, it was too close so the mobs stopped spawning.

With this system the mobs are lifted as quickly as possible outside the 17block range so more can spawn and likewise they are dropped outside that 17 block range while at the same time the player standing in the room where the drop shaft ends is still within that 17 block range.
This will get the maximum number of mobs, while allowing them to build up.

One word of warning, if you go afk and just let mobs build up you can build up a lot of mobs and this is needed for xp farming if you want to start higher level enchanting .
The problem is that I found I could get so many built up it would cause massive lag on my single player game (after about 30-45min afk) if we left it long enough it might crash the server which I don't think Allen would be too happy about.

10min afk should net you around 30-60 mobs (depending on spawn rate) could be more.
At level 20 it's about 15 mobs a level I think (at 20 the xp curve seem to level off quickly)

It'll take me a couple of days to finish

PS to find the mob farm, go down my mine shaft at the foot of my tree house (as if you where going to the massive cave system) and follow the sand path
People can help me out by leaving wood and food in the chest I'd be greatful Thanks


EDIT: the craftable spawners mod is quite nice but once you find a mob spawner and get the mossy cobble stone needed to make spawners it make things a bit easy, I had loads of arrows, bones, gunpowder, feathers chickens, beef and leather (you can use the mod to make animal spawners too)

It's a good job I cannot get minecraft multiplayer working at work . . . well I probably could with some tinkering to the servers to let it through the proxy, but I know I'd get in trouble for that. esp if I spent all day playing minecraft and not working.

[Disturbedguy]

Jumped on quickly last night, but been ill so didn't really hang around.

Might try and get on tonight.

[mycarsavw]

It's a good job I cannot get minecraft multiplayer working at work . . . well I probably could with some tinkering to the servers to let it through the proxy, but I know I'd get in trouble for that. esp if I spent all day playing minecraft and not working.

<cough>

Good to see I'm not the only one who's thought about that.

Pob, 3:18am, how the hell are you managing to get up for work the next day

[Bagnaj97]

After an epic sojourn through the cave and chasm system last night I stumbled across a spider spawner, then tunneled my way out. I've built a beacon of sorts where I came out, so it shouldn't be too hard to find... Now I just need to build myself a house that's not over the tunnels (Enderman teleported into my house before ), and I need to explore the rest of the cave system. It's by far the biggest network I've seen, and so much lava that it may as well be the Nether! Final tally when I logged out last night: full iron armour and weapons, 1.5 stacks of iron ore and 6 diamond.

Oh and I've got a mumble server running if people want to use it while minecrafting, PM me if you want the details.

[Bagnaj97]

I don't get spikes, I don't think I'll have to double check, however I have had it totally grind to a near halt, single figure fps with massive input delay.
I have to close minecraft and reopen it to fix it.

I think there's a memory leak somewhere

EDIT: I only get that issue with distance set to far btw, at normal distance I seem to be fine.

When I set the distance to far there was a warning on the graphics screen about me using 32bit Java, and that 64bit was recommended. I duly downloaded the 64bit JVM and played for a couple of hours last night with no lag or jitter at all, with view distance on far.

[Raz316]

Not played online yet, but had my first proper caving experience last night I've not been able to play Minecraft properly before, as it didn't really work on the PC I had, I am so chuffed that it lived up to my expectations I formed around 3 years ago!

Started with what seemed like a standard series of tunnels, some coal here, some iron there, but the paths just kept splitting. I must have explored 12-15 dead ends before I found some lava, and then some red stone, and then some gold and finally some diamonds! Then to my horror I accidentally fell in some lava and my health started going down and down and down.. I had what felt like an age to just sit there, slumped on some stone next to the lava pool and think about my impending death "but... but... all this stuff I've got" I'm not sure if this is by design, or a pure fluke but I survived with half a heart left!

I quickly ate some roast chicken and carried on exploring. I found some sort of blue stone (can't remember it's name) and lots more gold and lava pools until eventually things started settling down again and I was back to exploring tunnels. That was until I found a massive narrow cavern underground, it was so tall and long that distance fog was obscuring the full extent of it! I make my way right to the bottom of the cavern and then it all started kicking off.

What I didn't realise was, at the top of this cavern there was actually a cliff edge where plenty of monsters had spawned. A creeper fell down and landed right in front of me. I'd never had a creeper blow up in my face before so I expected the worst again. It blew up but luckily it didn't take too much of my health. Then the skeletons and the zombies and the spiders and MORE creepers appeared and really started making things interesting. I managed to fight my way through about 30 of them, with the skeletons being by far the most irritating (even those my first encounter with an enderman was also quite terrifying).

Again I was surprised by another creeper and this time my health really took a hit. I think I had 2 hearts left and I just fled in to the dark hoping that more monsters wouldn't be around the corner. I ate my remaining roast chicken which wasn't enough to start restoring my health and then thought, ok it's time to go. I started mining the stone wall to create a stairway up (I didn't want to just build a column straight to the top), and about 5 blocks in, my pickaxe broke... my last pickaxe.

"Oh good"... at this point I thought "sod my idealisms, I'm climbing out with a tower", but naturally I had about 20 dirt blocks and that was it. Everything else I had mined 1) I wanted to keep and 2) couldn't be used as blocks anyway. It was also right about now I noticed I only had 6 torches left. It took my about 20 minutes to dig up to the top of the cavern, let alone get to the surface. I had no idea how far underground the cavern was, things weren't looking great! Luckily for me, the stone turned to dirt for a while and I was able to quickly get above the cavern and seal myself in a well lit cell while I slowly chipped away at yet more stone.

I'd manage to extend my stairway by 5 or so blocks before running back, grabbing the torch and then sealing myself in again. I literally had no idea how close I was to the surface, was it going to take me 5 minutes or an hour? I think it must have been about 10-15 minutes before I hit dirt blocks again. I mined a few of them and then for the next one, the hitting noise was different, yet familiar. It was a surface soil block! As soon as the block exploded, snow started falling down in to the top of my stairway. I pulled myself up on to the grass outside and quickly scanned the horizon for anything familiar. It's funny but silence while outside is a hell of a lot more peaceful than silence in a cave. I spotted the rock formation I had built my only house in to and trudged back home, purposely ignoring the various skeletons and creepers who again, seemed way more peaceful outside. The sun must have started rising about 2 minutes before I got to the surface and there was something very satisfying about walking home while the sun was rising. It actually felt very familiar to walking home from a mates house having been up all night drinking and chatting. I can't quite put it in to words, but I hope someone can relate to the feeling.

I made it back home, dumped everything in a chest and then called it a night. Next time I go spelunking, I'm gonna bring way more pickaxes and even though I started my last exploration with 64 candles, clearly it's not enough!

[Pob255]

If it was a long and skinny cavern but very tall then it was actually an underground chasm.
They are very dangerous, not only will mobs spawn on the side ledges but it'll often intersect tunnels too, so you can often get larger groups spawning in the tunnels then dropping down on you.

<cough>

Good to see I'm not the only one who's thought about that.

Pob, 3:18am, how the hell are you managing to get up for work the next day

not only though but tried I've got a simple batch file setting the http proxy so minecraft can update and play.
but couldn't connect to allen's server, I started doing some digging about how to get it working then came to my senses so to speak.

Interestingly, turn off the advanced opengl, lighting and particles, set the view distance to short and it actually plays ok on my work pc
Athlon XP 2400+ 2ghz, 2gb ddr1, 6200 AGP card, 1280x1024 res

[Gerrard]

Sorry to be a pain Allen, but popped on just now and couldn't do anything. Could you add "GerrardUK" please? Thanks!

[Disturbedguy]

Sorry to be a pain Allen, but popped on just now and couldn't do anything. Could you add "GerrardUK" please? Thanks!

Noop, he did say earlier to PM him your name

I did the same, pm'ed him saying I want the details, but didn't include my name, logged onto server and was like fuuuuuuu

[Gerrard]

Ah right, thought that was just for the server details.