More Assorted Minecraft Stuff

I've been very single minded lately.  Minecraft is very absorbing.

1.6 came out recently, bringing with it horses and blocks and scary mob changes.  Horses are fun, but they aren't the thing I was looking forward to.  No, I absolutely love getting new blocks to play with.  After all, the game is half building stuff.

Dyed hardened clay is the prettiest block yet.  I think it's my favorite in terms of appearance, although I do admit that I'm not quite sure what to do with it yet.  Carpet is exciting in terms of usefulness.  Currently, you can place it on just about anything. And it can support you even if you've placed it on something that won't.  Like... signs:

The new hay blocks are texturally interesting and easily renewable.  And I don't consider coal to be a high enough priority to mine a ton of it, but the new coal block ought to be fun.

I did find my first survival horses (as opposed to the ones I spawned in on a creative world) yesterday.  They're actually not an unreasonable distance away from my main area, which is nice.  While I have doubts they'll become my main method of transportation (considering my main house and storage and farms are all really close to default spawn), they have inspired an urge to build a "horse path" between home and my "ranch".  And when I say ranch, I really mean a fenced in area with my horses and a tiny hut to live in.

I've already got the path marked out:

 I apologize if the picture is a bit dark.  I marked the path with little torch towers, and then took a screenshot from a night rendered Overviewer map.

Speaking of which, I've been playing with making Overviewer maps.

It's been fascinating seeing where I've already explored, how insignificant my builds look compared to the landscape, etc.  I think the night renders are the most interesting, though.  I'm not the sort to just fill the landscape with torches to make it perfectly safe.  As much as I hate fighting monsters, I find it more visually appealing to only light up the important stuff.  Seeing that from above is really cool.

 Which is what gave me the idea of checking out my horse trail from above like this.  I knew the path would be windy, because I was avoiding water and tough hills, but it's impossible to tell just how much it winds while standing on it.

Actually building the path is going to be time consuming.  I really want it to be aesthetically pleasing.  Will probably end up making several passes on it - clearing the trees, laying the actual path, decorating, etc.  Make it pretty as well as functional.

The Minecraft Downgrade Project - Indev (Part 1)

It's been quite a while since I've last posted.  I've been utterly and completely sucked in by watching Minecraft LPs.  I have barely even knit or crochet anything in the last several months, though that is because of lack of inspiration and not the LPs.

Anyway, I've been thinking lately about old versions of Minecraft.  I started playing the game in Beta 1.7.3.  Recently I downgraded a copy of my Minecraft back to that version and took a walk around my very first world.  It brought back memories of many things, the most vivid of all being building a walled garden around my house and standing out in it for the first time at night.  It was that special kind of scary that's so awesome.

Doing this has made me terribly curious about old versions of Minecraft.  So.  Downgrading.  I have decided to check out assorted versions of Minecraft that I was never able to experience when new.  And I have decided to start with the very oldest version that MCNostagia supports: a version of Indev from 2-23-2010.  This is my journey, written mostly as I play:

"You spawn in a house?" I thought.  I honestly had no idea that in this version of Minecraft you are provided with a little hut.  That's handy, because I have a feeling that there is so much different that I'm going to be pretty lost.  For the record, I left the default world generation settings.

Crafting.  I find it funny that my character doesn't show up in the window.  This is probably pre skins.  It's very weird using the 'I' key to open my inventory, because I've never changed that setting from 'E' in all the time I've played.

 

This is just a shot of me testing out far render distance.  I can't really use it in the current version of the game, but it doesn't seem to lag too much with this version.  Of course, my Minecraft has always been laggy so my lag threshold is pretty high.

 

This is the first major difference I have found so far. I knew beds didn't exist yet, but doors not existing is interesting.

 

Chests exist though! And I wasn't expecting the placement weirdness. Ah, whatever. :P

 

Now that's a lighting glitch.

 

I don't actually know if monsters exist in this version of the game. Sans door, I'm sealing the entrance with a block of dirt.

 

I don't know if you can see it back there, but there's a zombie. I'm glad that this won't be a strictly peaceful endeavor like Classic is. I'm tempted to run out there and smack the zombie with my sword.

 

Oh look, a skeleton! Let's go smack him, shall we? Woah, he makes Steve sounds! Ow, I can't hit him.

 

Um... Let's hide until morning. Damn I hope they burn in the sunlight...

 

Well, that explains all the footsteps I hear outside. At least I can kill them like this.

 

What do you mean spiders can hit me through that hole?! Ah well, live and learn. Or die and learn in this case. Also teaches me to save frequently because auto-save does not exist yet. Fortunately I have a save from before the first skeleton encounter.

I think I'm going to end this post here. I'm going to keep playing with this version, because this is weirdly interesting, and try to remember to get screengrabs when interesting things happen. I wonder what the first version with "F2" support is?