A Little Minecraft Project.. and a Texture Pack

A few things have changed since I first set up my Minecraft server.. I turned off the mobs, to avoid creeper-related destruction.. and updated the server to 1.8, to take advantage of proper flight.  VoxelAir is certainly better than nothing, but the flight in the 1.8 update is much nicer to use, allowing tiny, fine-controlled movements.  I also started using the creative mode, because after all, this server is for creating things 🙂

I started on a Dwarven Fortress..

The rest of the fortress is inside the mountain.. carved out with VoxelSniper, and the rest created by myself and a friend.  In just a few days we’ve built most of a city down here! 🙂

We’ve got shops, a brewery, a Tavern and a vast mine leading all the way down to the bedrock.. lit by lava 🙂

After a little poking, I installed a texture pack.. Better Armour Dokucraft.. which actually looks far better than I expected, especially on the lava.. though I’m less keen on how unmined minerals appear.

While playing around with VoxelSniper, my friend managed to add some interesting new friends to the world.. though they were most definitely not welcome inside the Fortress!

ScampLAN 2

The weekend just passed was ScampLAN 2, with a couple of friends bringing their PCs round to our house for gaming and silliness 🙂

We played a lot of Dungeon Defenders.. which I had a look at last week.  This game has really grown on me over the week..

I’ve now tried out all the characters, but the one I’ve played most has been the Huntress, who specialises in traps and ranged weapons.  I felt she was slow to get off the ground with.. the traps start off with only a few charges and are soon used up.. but after gaining many levels and improving both the traps and the character’s stats, she now feels quite powerful 🙂

When you level up, you can spend your points on stats for the character or for your towers.. I’ve spread my points out between the Huntress and her traps, but another friend has put most of his points into his Monk, making him fantastic in combat but with rather weak auras.  For the characters the three of us developed over the weekend, this worked very well, as it meant the mana could be spent on building and upgrading stronger towers and traps, without getting too close to the defense unit cap.  We got as far as the Servant’s Quarters during the weekend!

Another game we had a turn at was Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.
We tried to play this previously, but thought we might do better if we were in the same room and able to communicate a little better.  However, as in our previous attempts to play, we found barely-visible enemies were able to take us out with ease.. the game is supposed to be about realism and tactics, but if I’m approaching on my belly through trees and bushes, I don’t think it’s realistic to be shot down so quickly by people I can’t even see yet.

I also suffered from a rather random bug, which had my character float up into the air before being thrown back down again.. and of course, taking realistic fall damage.  This happened a few times, but settled down enough to complete the mission.  However, the fun was lacking for most of us, so we didn’t go back for a second mission.

In between the gaming I had a bit more of a poke around with VoxelSniper on Minecraft.
I had a failed attempt to add Zombe’s flying mod.. not quite sure what went wrong, but the game wouldn’t launch.. before I installed VoxelAir, which allows me to jump high into the air and land without damage, or hover above the ground.

You can jump rather a long way up.. and when I came down, I was surprised by the crazy number of mobs which had spawned!

I found an interesting bug with VoxelAir too.. after being killed while hovering, courtesy of a few Skeleton Archers and a lack of care, I respawned still hovering.. floating upwards in fact!  Using the “/give” command simply dropped a new feather at my feet, out of reach.. a friend also tried to give me a feather but it also landed out of reach.  In the end I used “/kill” a number of times and eventually spawned close enough to a feather for it to pick up.

Next up will be forming a nice piece of flat land for a huge project.. more later 🙂

With four people and a reasonably couch to take advantage of, there was also some console gaming.. though we found a distinct lack of co-op games allow four people on one console.  So many games boast “2-4 player co-op”, but don’t specify that this means two people on one console, and two on a second console.. annoying.  We tried Call of Duty: Black Ops.. we wanted the Nazi zombies, but only the arcade mode allowed all four of us to play.  We had a couple of runs on that, with me claiming the top spot for one run!  Red Faction: Armageddon failed us, as did Rainbow Six Vegas.. so we ended up shooting each other in Halo 3 which entertained us for a while!

Hunted: Demon’s Forge was picked up at the start of the weekend too, and we attempted some co-op in pairs.  We all found the game surprisingly hard, though Tim and Jason attempted to play without going through a tutorial first.. masochists!  I think the game would be a lot easier if you were able to carry more than one health vial each.. we also found the game punished deaths by sending us a long way back each time.  I’m looking forward to playing the game by myself at some point soon, too.

Another game which made an appearance over the weekend was Gears of War 3!
I hadn’t yet finished Gears of War 2, but the copy of #3 will be going home with Jason at the end of the week, and Tim wanted to start some co-op, so we’ve been playing through it anyway.. on hard!

So far, I’m loving it.. though noticing a few changes! The world has been destroyed by the Hammer of Dawn, and the enemies now include mutated Lambent creatures.. I’m noticing a huge change from the graphics of the original Gears of War as well, with the character models all being far more refined.  Good changes all round.. and still a great game, as far through as we’ve gotten this far! 🙂

Now VoxelSniper is working..

There are plenty of guides on how to use VoxelSniper, but I’d always rather learn by doing.. so I watched the first part of a guide on how to build a road, and then started fiddling around by myself.

Your VoxelSniper tools are an arrow.. a bog-standard arrow, nothing special.. and a piece of sulphur, maybe better known as gunpowder.  All you need to do is give these to yourself via op command: “/give $player 262” and “/give $player 289”, and then have one in your hand to start sniping!

Default values mean a brush size of 1, with material air, so you’ll only see an effect from using the arrow, which replaces the block you’re pointing at.  Changing the material allows you to see a bit more.. using the command “/v (material)”.. for me, this was “/v 57”.. then a right click with the arrow replaces your block with a diamond block, while a right click with the sulphur adds a diamond block on top of the one you were pointing at.

You can change the brush type: “/b b” for ball, or “/b d” for disc, then size: “/b (radius)”.
I went with the disc to start with..

Maybe I went a little mad with the diamonds, but they are meant to be a girl’s best friend 😉

So.. right clicking with the arrow replaces whatever is at the position you’re pointing at, while the sulphur places your material on the row above whatever you’re pointing at.  To remove anything, simply set your material to air, using “/v 0”, and click away.

I clicked a few times.. making a nice hole in the ground, through caves.. and then got carried away.
VoxelSniper lets you remove Bedrock too 😮

I lit the place up using balls of Glowstone (“/b b”, “/v 89) for this screenshot 🙂

The server handled all this very well.. I didn’t notice any lag during the excavation.
Tim was looking at the server stats.. so I decided to push it a bit, and started placing lots and lots of materials, followed by deleting even more!  Holding down the button and sweeping it caused only the slightest delay in seeing the results.. I’ve seen worse “lag” using crazy custom brushes in Photoshop!

The server barely noticed.. but I think it’s safe to say I’ll be wiping this map and starting again for any real creative work! 😀

Successful Sniping!

Over the weekend, I spent a bit of time installing a CraftBukkit server, then trying to get VoxelSniper running on it.. the first worked fine, but VoxelSniper didn’t want to know.  I went as far as to reinstall both server and plugin as it seemed not to be working, and I thought maybe I had an out of date version.

However, it turns out I may just have been using the wrong command to get at the tool..

Having watched the start a fairly simple video tutorial using the tool, I had seen the command “i arrow” being used to get an arrow.  This command, when run on my server, produced an “Unknown console command” error.  Googling around only turned up suggestions for reinstalling VoxelSniper, making sure I was running the right version, etc.

I mentioned this to a friend, who asked if it wasn’t just “give (arrow id)”.. a normal op command in Minecraft.  I hadn’t considered this as I assumed an “i arrow” arrow would be something different to the regular one, just sharing the skin.. but once I gave my friend the arrow and added him to snipers.txt, he was able to use the tool as intended!  I’m guessing “i arrow” works with some kind of mod.. something I might have realised if I’d played with more mods or thought about if I’d had more server experience.. but if you learn from your mistakes, then this is all good 🙂

I only wish I had access to play on the server from here.. and that I didn’t have to get back to work 😉

I have a Bukkit!

This post is a story about learning how to install a CraftBukkit server, and add a plugin.  Sounds simple, right?

I wanted to play with terraforming on Minecraft.. and as I have my own virtual server now, there was no reason not to try, except.. where to start?  VoxelSniper was the plugin I was directed to for terraforming, and to install that, I required a CraftBukkit server.

My prior server experience is pretty much this: connecting to the server, installing a Minecraft server, and connecting to that to see if it worked (it did).  I prefer to know what I’m doing, and why.. but it seems that anything relating to servers has a rather elitist following who go by the guideline of “If you don’t understand it, you shouldn’t be doing it”. Therefore, I ended up following this newb-friendly guide, which got me as far as installing the latest CraftBukkit download and running it.. before coming back to the question which had been bugging me from the start.

What do I have to do once I’ve installed CraftBukkit?  Move my Minecraft server into that?  Point the CraftBukkit server at my Minecraft server?  I ended up having to ask Tim to take a look 🙁

The CraftBukkit server actually contains the Minecraft server as part of itself.. something that I think could have been included on the FAQ, but maybe it doesn’t need saying to those who have more server experience.. I don’t know..

Next was to install VoxelSniper, which was less intimidating as I felt like I knew what I was doing.. install to the Plugins folder, restart CraftBukkit, and edit the snipers.txt file to list those who can have access to use the tool.

Now to see if it works..

Well.. the server launched fine.. but VoxelSniper?  I was able to get at instructions for it, but completely unable to give myself the arrow tool which was indicated.. the server just didn’t recognise the command.  More rooting around the forums..

VoxelSniper works with a slightly out of date CraftBukkit server.. #1060 rather than the “most up to date” build that I’ll have been given in the noob-friendly guide.

Re-install time.. this time doing it by myself..

It appeared to work, but when I went to reconnect, the server just gave me a Connection Error.. my Minecraft client needed backdating too.  Once that was done, I was able to connect..

However, “i arrow” still gives me an “Unknown console command” error..

Well.. giving up for now 🙁