Minecraft for the Xbox 360
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, 4J Studio‘s ported version of Minecraft, came out on Wednesday, and apparently broke the Day 1 sales records for the Xbox LIVE arcade and becoming profitable within the first hour! Tim won a copy of the game, so he finally had a go.. watching him encounter zombies and creepers was amusing 🙂
I planned to have just a quick go, to compare it against the PC version which I’ve sunk many, many hours into. As usual, I spent my first night up on a pole.. I’ve never been keen on the hole in the ground method! Once I had some resources gathered, it was on to the crafting..
There have been a few changes to crafting, making it a lot easier to use! The system allows you to navigate through categories and then just click on the item you want to make.. and as long as you have the ingredients to hand, the item will appear in your inventory.
Sparta-Holes
Minecraft is now in beta, with working health and mobs in multiplayer! Finally, we can kill creepers!
This meant a new map on our server, and new bases to build. We quickly had a nice new starting area, but then came across a massive hole in the map which we dubbed the sparta-hole, after one we created ourselves back on our old map. This one, however, was an unwanted hole where several chunks of the map had failed to render. At first we blamed the newly created map, and started again.. but then others appeared on the new map too.
These holes don’t appear for everyone, so sometimes you get to see a friend walking around in the air, with no mind to the infinite hole beneath their feet..
Although weird, logging back in fixes it, so it’s not too much of a problem. You can also use it to spot diamonds, but these forays into the depths have sometimes led to death by lava, maybe through taking too little care as you feel like you can see what you’re doing.
Aside from the Sparta-Holes, we have some rather nice bases going up.. our house has a rather nice fishing ledge and a dock, as well as underground mines. I rather like our lounge, with the roaring fire 🙂
Pictures still don’t work in multiplayer.. despite the one on the wall here, which was only visible directly after placing it, and sadly only to me. Portals to the Nether and associated fast-travel are also still not working in multiplayer.. I’m looking forward to them when they do arrive! 🙂
Minecraft
After watching friends playing at i40, I was tempted to give Minecraft another go.
I wasn’t too keen on buying a game which might only add to the pile of unplayed games here.. however, if I spent a full weekend playing, then it would have covered the fairly low cost. While I was debating whether to get it or not, Minecraft had become rather popular.. too popular for their servers, which fell over! In a fairly brilliant move, Notch, creator of the game, decided to give Minecraft a free weekend.
Can’t argue with free.. and if the game was still interesting after playing, then it’d get a sale.
So during the free weekend, I spent rather a lot of time on a multiplayer server with friends.. after lots of messing around with the teleport command, I was exiled from the mainland and so began building my own base out of sand.
Of course, I teleported my friends away when they came to look.. the whole point of exile is that you’re on your own 😉
My base was eventually dubbed “The Kitchen”, with somebody placing a little wooden sign on an outside wall.
Multiplayer, like the rest of the game, is still a work in progress.. for instance, health hasn’t been fully implemented. This means you can’t die, but also means you can’t kill zombies.
Damn.. just as I figured out how to create weapons too!
The server also became prone to crashes.. I don’t think it’ll be too long before an update fixes this though, as updates are frequent.
As we’ve not been able to get on the multiplayer server, I started another world at work.
Here, health is implemented, and I’ve been blown up by Creepers a good few times but also killed a good few zombies with my wooden sword 🙂
I also made a dodgy sandcastle, right next to my spawn point. I’m building a bigger, better base, and have linked the buildings up with ‘safe’ fenced off, well-lit areas. Monsters only spawn where it’s dark 🙂
I’m standing on what will eventually be my main building.
Yes, there are a lot of torches. I like my light! 🙂