How long does it take you to get through the tech tree?

[danielngtiger]

the seed moonsandmoonsand

Out of curiosity, is that "moon sand," or "moons and"?

OT:If I'm playing to get through the tech tree, without much automation, the ten hours estimate seems pretty good, but as discussed, the seed/materials found can affect this.

The seed is exactly as I posted it: moonsandmoonsand

I'm thinking of making a lil video of my current world and posting it here. Thoughts? If not, I'll at the very least construct an imgur gallery-esque collection and give you the link. I've tried to make it aesthetically pleasing and practical. I don't yet know when I'll get round to it though :L

LOL, sorry I didn't phrase my question better, I was asking which you were thinking of when you typed it in.

[Blazara]

Ah I see,

The seed is not my own, I remember seeing it somewhere on this very forum if my memory serves me correctly. :)

[rhacer]

The other option is to just move to another location when you don't like your current one for whatever reason.

That's what I've been doing for the past year and it's worked out fine. I still come across the newb structures I built, and even though they look like ass, now I have a sentimental attachment to them anyways.

Its made my world much more interesting to "live" in.

This is why I chose to only semi-destroy my initial building in my current world. As I was learning the BTW tech tree I had several starts and mis-steps. I took my tools to those buildings and partially destroyed them, making them look run-down and abandoned.

[TheAnarchitect]

You know, if you're THAT ocd you should probably opt for non-legit play as opposed to doing everything legal.

I messed with world edit only on the update from 1.0 to 1.1, because I wanted to rid myself of those horrid chunk cliffs, and get oil to spawn closer to my base. I test technical stuff in creative to make sure it works, but would never use it for final builds. I also tried TMI, but quickly uninstalled it. There's two reasons I prefer Legit play.

First, if all I wanted to do was make cool buildings, Minecraft isn't how I would do it. I'd want a program that had higher resolution, more textures, the ability to create angles and curves, the whole shebang. In other words, I'd use a 3D drafting program such as Sketchup.

Second and more importantly in context, design is about constraints. Making due with the resources I can easily gather is part of what makes the design process in minecraft fun. I see people's builds where they've used thousands of diamond blocks, and they look like crap because they didn't have to show any restraint or think critically about what the best material choice is. In a lot of ways, it's like Flower's approach to game design. Just like most modders for minecraft implement a shit-ton of poorly thought out "cool" features, most builders in minecraft build massive, gaudy constructs they think are "Awesome." The stuff that really interests me are the small, carefully thought out builds where every block is vital and nothing in wasted. I believe that kind of attention to detail is far easier to achieve when every single block you placed had to be ripped from the environment by hand, and it's easy to get carried away when you can have whatever you want with a couple of clicks. I think this is true in real life as well, and that most modern architects have gotten carried away with easy computer-generated plans and industrial building technologies.

[FlowerChild]

Second and more importantly in context, design is about constraints.

Sniff...I so want to give you a big old hug right now :)

[TheAnarchitect]

Hey, the feeling is mutual. Notch created a game that lets me play architect in my spare time, and working with your mod and listening to you rant about game design has reminded me why I like designing things in the first place. If I ever manage to get back into design professionally, it will be partially because this game saved my skills and motivation from atrophy.

[FlowerChild]

Hey, the feeling is mutual. Notch created a game that lets me play architect in my spare time, and working with your mod and listening to you rant about game design has reminded me why I like designing things in the first place. If I ever manage to get back into design professionally, it will be partially because this game saved my skills and motivation from atrophy.

That's awesome man! It's gratifying to serve as a source of some inspiration to be sure :)

For me, I'm just happy when people "get" my whole thing about constraints breeding creativity. It's a concept that seems counter-intuitive to most as I think our natural tendency is to try and remove constraints from problems we are faced with in life to make them easier to resolve. The thing is, in a "reality" like a game, unlike real life, constraints can be more or less effectively removed entirely, which to my mind, leaves you with nothing to do and with nothing to act as a spark for creativity or problems to find creative solutions for.

It gets a bit annoying as a game designer, as people are always going with their natural impulses and asking you to remove constraints, which effectively would kill their own fun in the long run.

Anyways, was just happy to see someone voice a similar opinion and an all too rare appreciation for constraints :)

[Mrchaim]

While constraints breed creativity, and this is very true... I mean, seriously, it is, speaking as someone who does graphic design and likes to paint and the ilk

They're equally capable of murdering it. I'm sure for a lot of people, the constraints of needing to acquire a bunch of x material result in cool and interesting designs. Heck, i've ended up with some interesting ones when i have been playing legitimately. But a lot of the time, i simply end up with a bunch of rather ugly shacks... because why am i going to bother about creativity? There's a goal, this is the most efficent design, done, on to the next thing. A winnar is me. *cough*

This is patently the wrong way to play minecraft in a lot of respects, as there's not actually a win condition as such - But it's how i tend to approach games. I'm a highly competitive chap, and standing around accumulating resources so i can actually go out and experiment with designs and see what works drives me nuts, and literally saps the fun out of the game. I'll do legitimate play-throughs every month or so, mainly to help ensure i've got a good sense of what it actually takes in game to do something, but i spend the majority of my time using creative to experiment with machinery designs these days.

See, for me, the default mine-craft restraints aren't very interesting at all, other than as an aesthetic challenge. Mining is mind-numbing, the combat is boring/unfunto someone who likes a diet of monster hunter and devil may cry - Sort of why i like steel armor and weapons, since they handly remove the chore like aspects theree. But i do like the ability to interact with a world that's rendered in a resolution of 1m bricks, and the aesthetic challenges this provides when it comes to reshaping the terrain or creating buildings (Unlike Anartiect, i disagree - part of the joy in making buildings in minecraft is dealing with the visual constraints, at least for me)

But the ones that stem out of the structure of better of wolves - Now those are interesting - Figuring out how to compact down grinder designs, or making a saw factory... this, to me, is fun and interesting. How much of my base can i link together to minimize player effort and maximize automation?

Heck, using creative last night i was able successfully create a new and rather compact design for a combined grinding, filtering and soul urn production station. It's not that i couldn't do this in a normal game, it's that i derive more fun from going "oooh, what happens if i do this?" than "Hmm, i wonder if i can even affoard to do this". I'm planning to modify the design after this post to incorpate an automated hemp facility feeding into the top of it as well.

Perhaps a better way to put it is that the itches i scratch in minecraft are very different to the itches i scratch with Eve Online, another game that's heavy on consequences and resource management - Which are in turn different from the itches i might scratch while playing the aforementioned Devil May Cry, or while playing an FPS or the ilk

Anyway, hopefully this provides an interesting alternative take on why some people might use creative, yet still play with better than wolves

[Joeyjoebob]

10 hours? No way! It takes me about 3 hours to get the initial hemp to make the windmill, then about 2 hours more to get to steel. That's when I start on automation, and such, but that's the current end of the tech tree, right? I may be misunderstanding the question.

[FlowerChild]

10 hours? No way! It takes me about 3 hours to get the initial hemp to make the windmill, then about 2 hours more to get to steel. That's when I start on automation, and such, but that's the current end of the tech tree, right? I may be misunderstanding the question.

It's not a race.

[TheAnarchitect]

It's a concept that seems counter-intuitive to most as I think our natural tendency is to try and remove constraints from problems we are faced with in life to make them easier to resolve.

The thing is, I think this is also true in real life. Psychologically, our brains have a tendency to become accustomed to constantly present circumstances, and remember outliers. It's why almost everyone believes that the world is a more dangerous place today than in the past, even though the statistics show we're safer than ever. If you apply this reasoning to happiness, you'll soon figure out that if you have constant access to something you enjoy, you'll start to enjoy it less. Conversely, the less you deal with crap, the worse you are at handling it.

The entirely counter-intuitive conclusion is that our typical instinct to seek pleasure and avoid pain is entirely counterproductive, if our goal is to maximize experienced happiness.

Flowerchild, have you read Jane McGonigal's "Reality is Broken" ? I think as a Game designer, you'd really appreciate it. In it she defines a game as something like "voluntarily adopting a set of unnecessary obstacles to achieving a goal"

[FlowerChild]

The thing is, I think this is also true in real life. Psychologically, our brains have a tendency to become accustomed to constantly present circumstances, and remember outliers. It's why almost everyone believes that the world is a more dangerous place today than in the past, even though the statistics show we're safer than ever.

Erm, not sure about that man. Yes, in terms of health care, crime, what have you, we are probably safer, yes. However, we've also been living under the constant threat of global annihilation for around 75 years or so, and I think that has done a fair amount to mess with our collective psychology. I think it's a distinctly unnatural state to not only be worried about your own existence (which is fairly natural), but that the species itself (and your progeny along with it) may cease to exist at any moment.

We've gotten used to it of course, but I think that constant background threat does much to influence people's sensation of not being safe. There's of course all the other factors that go into that as well such as the constant media bombardment we undergo bringing the miseries of every human being on the planet into our living rooms on a regular basis, on a totally unprecedented scale, and both the state and corporate propaganda that we're regularly subjected to, again at a level and with a skill not seen before, and playing on our every fear to make a buck or gain power.

Anyways, I just think there are so many contributing factors that to pin people feeling unsafe on any particular single factor would be extremely difficult.

Flowerchild, have you read Jane McGonigal's "Reality is Broken" ? I think as a Game designer, you'd really appreciate it. In it she defines a game as something like "voluntarily adopting a set of unnecessary obstacles to achieving a goal"

Nope, haven't read it. Sounds interesting though.

[TheAnarchitect]

Maybe, maybe not. The scope of our awareness has changed. But a villager in northern europe in 1200 AD was really only aware of a small portion of the world, and to him that's all there was. And he lived with the daily knowledge that at any moment, a shit-ton of Norsemen could show up in longboats and put his entire world to the torch. I'm not entirely sold on the idea that our MAD world is psychologically unique.

But it's a throwaway example that may have been needlessly political because the perception of public safety is a highly political topic. Move to strike it from the record.

[Joeyjoebob]

It's not a race.

Not a race? Well if you think about it, it really could be, as it's just me competing against my past times. I try to make the beginning last as short as possible so I can start on the fun stuff. I took a while the first few times around because I was just learning the ropes, but I shaved off a lot of time through learned efficiency. Of course the downside is that I tend to neglect the aesthetic aspects until later, and as a result my world becomes infested with oddly-shaped huts and mechanical monstrosities.

I was only replying the way I did because I found it surprising that everyone else took so long to do something that I did rather quickly, apparently. Sorry if I came across as a bit boastful.

[TheAnarchitect]

It will be a race if we ever have multiplayer.

I know because just as I get my first windmill up someone with steel armor and Weapons is going to kill me and search my corpse for loose diamonds.

[Joeyjoebob]

It will be a race if we ever have multiplayer.

I know because just as I get my first windmill up someone with steel armor and Weapons is going to kill me and search my corpse for loose diamonds.

Now I can't wait for an Anarchy BTW game.

[Itamarcu]

It will be a race if we ever have multiplayer.

I know because just as I get my first windmill up someone with steel armor and Weapons is going to kill me and search my corpse for loose diamonds.

You forgot to mention the fact he'll cover up your base with cement, booby-trap the entrance, and fill your entire nether area with blood trees.
Oh, and cubify your pet.

[FlowerChild]

Believe me, the thought has definitely occurred to me that building a wind mill will be like putting up a big "kill me" sign in anarchy play :)

I suspect people will probably build them in temporary locations just to get enough siding to build themselves a water wheel, then scurry back off into their burrows.

[Itamarcu]

Believe me, the thought has definitely occurred to me that building a wind mill will be like putting up a big "kill me" sign in anarchy play :)

I suspect people will probably build them in temporary locations just to get enough siding to build themselves a water wheel, then scurry back off into their burrows.

Actually, it would be quite awesome to build a windmill in a ravine, and use lenses + dispensers with arrows to keep enemies at bay.

[Stormweaver]

Honestly, come BTW SMP I'm either going to make an under-Ocean base 30k blocks from spawn, or tape down my shift key and wait for the first telltale signs of blood trees or [removed] in the nether to give me a nice base to tech up at...till I steal the important bits and leave.

Windmills will be cake for a lot of players though, given that they're only 13x13, and work in the nether regardless of how enclosed they are. In fact, the nether's likely going to be the safest place to be once bloodwood starts spreading. Just have to remember to put off switches on things to avoid excess noise.

[Ethinolicbob]

Yeah machinery noise is something that i would not have thought of in an anarchy world. nothing says "Come get me!" like banging of machinery.
I think I will probably just stockpile, hide and booby-trap resources until I could steal a waterwheel and then start construction of machinery

[walker_boh_65]

It's not a race.

It is if you win. ;)

[TheAnarchitect]

I actually have a completely different strategy in mind. I plan on being completely open about where I am. Hell, I may just set up next to spawn. After all, what's the point of all that pretty architecture if no one can see it? No, when multiplayer comes I am inviting you all over for tea and cakes.

[SterlingRed]

I actually have a completely different strategy in mind. I plan on being completely open about where I am. Hell, I may just set up next to spawn. After all, what's the point of all that pretty architecture if no one can see it? No, when multiplayer comes I am inviting you all over for tea and cakes.

Your tea and cakes would be paid for with mining charges in anarchy.

[TheAnarchitect]

Nope. Everyone assumes that because you CAN be a dick to each other in anarchy, that you somehow HAVE to be a dick to each other in Anarchy.