Minecraft

Tic Tac Toe, Three in a row!

Man, I even hate me for that.

In yesterdays post I mentioned Minecraft. You may be wondering what exactly Minecraft is. Minecraft is a highly addictive indie game. I bought it during alpha, and it is now in beta. The game takes place in a randomly generated world. Everything in the world is built out of cubes.




The world might look something like this.

 
By day, the world is peaceful. You see trees, lakes, and many animals walking around.

A pig. Other friendly animals like chickens, cows, and sheep exist.

Then, before you know it, the sun begins to sink below the horizon. All of a sudden, It's getting very, very dark. You hear a noise behind you, only to discover that the darkness has brought along monsters with it.

Your goal in Minecraft is simple. Survive. To do that, you will need two things: Shelter, and light.

Let's see what we can do for shelter. In Minecraft, hitting a block will slowly break down the block until you get the block in your inventory. If you punch a tree, you will get a block of wood. then by using a crafting grid, you can get four blocks of planks.

 Two planks yield four sticks. Sticks can be used to make torches, and tool handles. If you put four blocks of planks into the crafting grid, you get a workbench. This unlocks a three by three crafting grid, which will allow you to build tools and weapons.

The possibilities only grow from there. Killing giant spiders will get you string, which is a key ingredient in bows. Skeletons, likewise, drop arrows. Zombies, for some reason, drop feathers.

The most infamous enemy in Minecraft is the enigmatic "Creeper"



Yeah. I don't know.

Basically, the creeper makes absolutely no noise, until it's right next to you. Then it explodes. But, If you manage to kill it, you get gunpowder, which can be used to make TNT.
Soon, players work through the night mining underground for precious gems, in a mineshaft directly connected to their under ground greenhouse, which is in their giant castle. The possibilities are endless.

Plus, there's multiplayer, which still has bugs, but is a really fun experience. Not to mention mods, and a huge online community. In short: Go. Get. Minecraft.

I'm going to see the Trans Siberian Orchestra tomorrow, so there will probably be a post about that. I'm really enjoying blogging. I'll try to update as often as possible, but a week from today I'm back in school, so it may be a bit harder to post.

Review: Tron

Okay, so I didn't expect to be posting again so soon, but I saw Tron today, and thought that it was nerdy enough to talk about here.

Review: Tron

When I first saw the preview for Tron, I was thinking it would be a cheap sequel to an old movie. Then, one of my friends, who is a big fan of daft punk (you know who you are), said he wanted to see it because of the music. Eventually, when I saw the movie novel in a store, I decided that my friend might be right. (After all, he was one of the ones who introduced me to Minecraft, but that's another story.)

Long story short, I ended up buying it, read it all in one day, and then I got mad because it cut off before the end.

So basically, I had to see the movie.

I'm not going to spoil anything for anyone but basically, here's how it breaks up:

-I loved all the mission impossible style gadgetry at the beginning.

-I hated all the sci-fi technobabble, because, as someone who actually knows what quantum teleportation is, I can tell you that THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS!

-My biggest problem with the movie:

A brief list of technology in Tron:

-Some way of transporting organic matter into a virtual reality. Not just controlling a character with your mind, actually being inside the game. (You just lost)

-Fully functioning AIs that act like humans in every way.

-A way to bring programs into the real world.

And yet it NEVER occurred to ANYBODY to add more colors then black, blue, and orange?!

The good news is the 3d. What used to be just a gimmick to make things pop out at you is now used to make the movie more realistic, by adding depth.

Speaking of 3d, has anyone heard about the new 3d DS coming out soon? Supposedly they're working on one. The good news is that if they do it right, you won't need glasses to see the 3d effect. The reason you need glasses for movies and 3d TV is because you aren't always looking at it from the same angle.

With a handheld system, though, you'll pretty much always be looking at it from the same angle. So, they can integrate the red/blue (or possibly purple/green) into the screen itself.  ♪ This is a triumph ♪

I was going to talk about coding and a book about coding, but it's getting late, and this post is getting long, so I'll save it for another day.

Unrelated Awesome link: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/ The Hilarious blog that inspired me to give blogging a shot.

Final Note: If you've seen Tron, what did you think? What do you think about the 3d DS? What else should I talk about? Please answer in the comments.

My first (and possibly last) post

Hey everyone anyone who's reading this, this is just a blog I made out of boredom (2:30 is when I get my best ideas). Like most of my projects, I can't guarantee that this will update regularly. Or ever. In fact, I can almost guarantee the opposite.

Why, you may ask?

(That's me by the way.)

You have no idea how long that took to make. And neither do I. Time flies when you're drawing stick figures in ms paint.

Anyway, (One hour later) I thought I'd clear up three important questions:

What's your name, What's your quest, and What's your favorite color?

If you get that reference you get a cookie.

The real questions:

Who are you?

I'm just a guy with a computer. I make computer games as a hobby.

I don't have a job, because I'm still in school, but I would ideally like to do something in the indie video game industry.

Besides programming, I do a little of lots of other things. Mostly nerdy things.

What's this blog for?

This blog will be where I chronicle all of my nerdy creative brainwaves. Hence the name. (Read: I couldn't come up with anything better.)

Expect to see a lot of games, reviews (Read: rants), drawings, and maybe some stories.

In addition, I might use this place as a way to spread the news of awesome things around the net.

In fact, I'll link to something now: http://www.awesomepedia.org/

I found it a while back on ichc, and the name caught my eye. You should go check it out, It's hilarious. (I also kinda copied the drawing style.)