What's the deal with Minecraft?

(Shamus Young's four phases of Minecraft)

Everyone's talking about Minecraft these days (not just me). But I'm not sure that anyone's done a better job describing this phenomenon than Shamus Young.

I don't mean the Stolen Pixels comic I excerpted above, although that's funny and accurate. He also writes a great gaming column for the Escapist. This is from his latest Experienced Points:

Minecraft is a hadoken-style rebuke to the absurd things the rest of the industry has been doing. It ignores the conventional wisdom of the industry and manages to be fun and profitable. I'm sure you've spotted Minecraft in the news by now. Minecraft is taking the indie gaming scene by storm. It's still in development and it reportedly makes over a quarter of a million dollars a day for developer Markus Persson, who is a guy and not a company. (Although rumor is that he's starting one.)

Lots of games claim to be a "sandbox game" because they'll let you do certain groups of pre-determined missions in a certain order, after you've unlocked them, as long as you've met the prerequisites. Minecraft is a real sandbox game. Dig the earth. Gather resources. Use the resources to craft tools. Build buildings. Make a house. Go all Mines of Moria and see if you can dig to the center of the earth. Grow trees. Hunt for rare minerals. Or turn on hard mode and see if you can build a fortress strong enough to withstand the zombie horde. Minecraft makes the average sandbox game look about as non-linear as Contra.

The world is made out of cubes. Everything. The hills are cubes. The trees are cubes. Even the sun and clouds seem to be made of blocks. Graphically, it gives the impression of an early 90s PC game. The chunky environment is decorated with big blocky pixels. Games have spent the last two decades trying to escape the rigid grid of Wolfenstein 3D, and suddenly a game comes along that not only operates on a huge grid, but embraces it and makes it the center of its art style. It would be effortless to make the textures sharper, but would sacrifice the look that makes the world so charming. Some people say the game looks "primitive," but as someone who has written software to run an immense simulated 3D world, I can tell you this is not a primitive world. It's just spending its computing power on something besides graphics.

But Minecraft isn't just a graphical anachronism. It's also a throwback to those anarchic days of the 90s before our current genres were solidified and developers were eager to try crazy new things. There is no big-budget game out there that even resembles Minecraft. This is a new idea. We don't get to see those very often.

Red Faction might brag that (some of) its walls are destructible. And a few other games let the player morph the terrain within certain limits. But in Minecraft the entire world is mutable. Build castles. Construct a dam. Grow trees. Build a working train. Tear down mountains. (That last one might take you a while.) There is no game more dynamic than Minecraft.

One guy, alone, has made a game which is more interesting, cheaper, and has better replay value than games that took an entire studio full of pixel-pushers and codemonkeys to produce. It's also amazingly popular despite having no marketing behind it at all. And the game is profitable even by AAA game standards. This is exactly the kind of thing you can't pull off when you're enamored of buying development houses for hundreds of millions so you can then spend tens of millions of dollars to make sequels of clones of games that were getting old a decade ago.

I will just point out that Dwarf Fortress is at least as dynamic as Minecraft, with far more options. But Dwarf Fortress has a terrible interface, a killer learning curve, and graphics that, well, hardly even justify the name (even modded with a graphics pack, "minimal" is being generous). It's a superb game, but it's not at all user-friendly.

And although Tarn Adams survives on the voluntary donations from his many fans, and is well-respected in the industry, he's very unlikely to have the kind of runaway, breakout success that Markus Persson is enjoying. Minecraft is making the kind of money that gets noticed by everyone. That has implications for the whole industry, since mainstream game developers prefer to imitate rather than innovate.

I love Dwarf Fortress, and it's already held my attention longer than Minecraft will, I suspect (much as I'm enjoying the latter game, too). But Minecraft is easy to start, while Dwarf Fortress takes some considerable work before you even begin the game. Minecraft is also beautiful, "primitive" graphics and all. Minecraft hits the sweet spot between newbie-friendly and complex.

It's not the perfect game, because there's room for all sorts of great games, diverse games. And there are many indie developers who are doing great work, sometimes in obscurity, like UnReal World and Aurora, sometimes famous in the gaming community, like Dwarf Fortress, and sometimes breaking through to a wider success, like Mount&Blade and - wildly so, these days - Minecraft.

But Minecraft is the game that's getting the acclaim right now. If you're wondering what all the fuss is about, give it a try. (Here's my beginner's guide, which might be of some help at the start.)

Minecraft (How Video Games Changed the World)

This is a brief excerpt from How Video Games Changed the World, a recent two-hour special on British TV.

I haven't seen the show and likely never will. I've heard different things about it, good and bad. But this brief clip about Minecraft was very interesting.

I've never thought of Minecraft as a children's game. But then, I don't have kids. And I've never played it multiplayer. For me, it's always been a single-player survival game. And sure, building elaborate structures is a huge part of the game, but there's elaborate and there's elaborate.

I've seen very elaborate structures, sure. And I knew that some people play in shared worlds, where they both compete and cooperate in building the most incredible things. But that's been a part of the game I've never investigated. And I never really thought about how easy it would be for children to express their creativity in Minecraft.

Now, that's not how I play Minecraft. For me, Minecraft is a survival game, where I've got to find shelter before night falls and the zombies, skeletons, and creepers come out. For me, Minecraft is also a game of exploring and digging and crafting and, yes, building, but there's always danger. I don't play it as a pure building game, and I don't play it multiplayer.

But the neat thing about Minecraft is that it's open-ended enough to be anything you want. If you just want to build, if you just want to be creative, you can set it up to do that, without worrying about any of the rest of it.

Child-friendly or not, Minecraft has had a huge impact on indie computer games. This was a game developed by a single person, with no vast corporate resources behind him, which has sold more than 33 million copes, so far, in just the last three years or so.

And although Minecraft took a great deal of inspiration from Dwarf Fortress, it's a lot easier to play and a lot more appealing to the general public. So it's probably done more than Dwarf Fortress to make crafting and building and mining cubes a part of other games, too. Certainly I see a lot of games these days which have been inspired by Minecraft, as unique as they might be otherwise.

Minecraft parody - creeper revenge

This is great, if you've played Minecraft. If not, you won't get it, I'm sure. And I don't know if I can explain it.

But note that this is the Minecraft world, more or less. That's part of the humor. The rest is all about creepers.

Creepers are monsters which are spawned in the darkness, but don't burn up in direct sunlight, like skeletons and zombies, and don't become passive during the daytime, like spiders. At any time, they can sneak up behind you and blow themselves up, killing your character and blowing a big hole in the environment - including anything you've carefully constructed.

They're the monster which Minecraft gamers love to hate. We've all experienced sudden, unexpected death from creepers. And it's not just death - after all, your character just respawns - and not just the chance of losing your entire inventory, but also the potential destruction of what you've worked hard to build.

Because Minecraft is very much a builder's game. Those buildings and sidewalks and other structures you see in the video are all constructed by the player from the basic raw materials of the world.

Imaginative players produce some very elaborate and beautiful structures in Minecraft. Did you see that streetlight? I would never have imagined building that, myself, but now that I see how it was done, it's definitely going in my next Minecraft world.

And a creeper can blow it all up in an instant. Of course, you can just build it again. You can even gather up, from the site of the explosion, the raw materials you'd used the first time, as well as your inventory items, if you can get back there from your spawn point quickly enough.

But it's still frustrating - and more than a bit funny. A moment's inattention and... BOOM!

Incidentally, Minecraft was finally released last week. Yup, all this hype, the huge fan base, the millions made by the developer - all that has happened while the game was still in development! Incredible, isn't it?

Markus Persson - "Notch" - started selling the game while it was still in alpha, so he could keep working on it. And the game's popularity is all based on word of mouth, gamers spreading the news to other gamers.

One month after reaching beta status, it had already sold a million copies. That reached 4 million copies this month, before the final game was even released. It's been a real gaming sensation and an inspiration to indie game developers everywhere.

Even though I knew all this, I was positively shocked at how many Minecraft parodies there are on YouTube. I mean, yeah, gamers love it, but... it gets this kind of notice? What's next?

Most of them are rather amateurish, of course, but you might also enjoy this one. It's clearly made by young people, but it's pretty impressive, isn't it?

___
PS. One other game-related note, if you happen to be reading this on Thanksgiving Day: GameStop (formerly Impulse, formerly Stardock) is selling Sid Meier's Civilization V today only for 75% off - just $7.49.

Note that the game runs on Steam, which I hate. That's the reason I haven't bought it before now. But I have bought a few games on Steam, when they get too cheap to pass up, and I think this will be another one. Really, this is too good to miss, don't you think?

Lost in Minecraft

There are flowers everywhere, in this biome

Version 1.8 of Minecraft was recently released, and since it's been a couple of years since I last played it, I've really been tempted to start a new game.

However, I'm already busy with Wasteland 2 and Dwarf Fortress, among other games, and I play Arma 3 with my friends several days a week. So I really couldn't start a new game of Minecraft, could I?

Or could I? I've been building an above-ground fort in Dwarf Fortress, and screenshots just don't do it justice. So I thought I might build a copy in Minecraft, just so I could show it off here.

Well, that was the idea, anyway - supposedly. But if I wanted to do that, I should have started the game in Creative mode, rather than Survival mode. And when I did install the new version, I ended up with some problems with the graphics.

Most of them are fixed now, but I'd turned the game to 'Peaceful' difficulty, so I wouldn't have to worry about monsters while I was struggling to see stuff. Meanwhile, I've been looking around for a location similar to my Dwarf Fortress embark site.

And now I'm hopelessly lost. I started next to a vast ocean, and I thought I'd take a look to the south, along the shore. So how could I get lost? But now, I can't even find the ocean, let alone my respawn point.

You see, I thought I'd circle around to the west, then go north and east again. Well, that's what I thought I was doing. But now I'm completely mixed up.

I did find a place along a river which might work for my Dwarf Fortress construction. It's grassland, rather than tropical woodland, but there are forested hills nearby. And if it's not very far above the river, at least the surface is relatively flat.

Now, there isn't any marble in Minecraft, but I figured I could make that part of the fortress out of sandstone, which is at least light in color. There's a new stone in the game which would work lots better, but I wasn't sure I could find enough diorite. And I've never played Minecraft without having a vast sand desert nearby.

Except for this time, apparently. In all my wandering, I have yet to discover a desert biome. (Again, this would be no problem at all if I'd started the game in Creative mode, since then you're given unlimited resources for building. And if I'd enabled cheats, I could have always switched to Survival mode later.)

So I still don't know what I want to do. I was already lost by the time I found that grassland site, so I just kept going. After that, I did mark my way with torches, along the rivers I traveled. (Going out, torches are on the right, so they'll be on the left coming back.) So I can probably find it again, even if I can't find my respawn point.

Bunnies, too (one right in front of me; another in the top of a tree).

Afterwards, I discovered this beautiful area just packed with flowers. Really, the screenshots don't do it justice. (Still, click on them to see the full-screen version.) There's a flat plateau nearby, too, so I could build something on that, if I wanted. But that wasn't the point of starting up Minecraft.

And I'm enjoying looking around on 'Peaceful.'  Days last only ten minutes real-time, so nights are a constant interruption if I have to contend with monsters. However, unless I have a plan in mind, there's not much point to idle wandering, either.

One thing I might do is build a gravel path straight east and west, and north and south, from that grassland area. There's a ton of gravel on that plateau, near the flowers. Well, it wouldn't last long, doing that, I know. But maybe I could keep from becoming even more lost than I am. :)

***

Speaking of Minecraft, I want to point out that Microsoft has just bought Mojang, the game's developer, for 2.5 billion dollars.

Only Mojang didn't actually develop the game. Markus 'Notch' Persson developed the game on his own. He created his small company after the game became successful.

Here's what I said about it four years ago:

According to this, Markuss Persson is selling one copy of Minecraft every three seconds. That's about $15,000 per hour - for a downloaded game, still in alpha, developed almost entirely by himself alone. Apparently, he's reached $350,000 in a single day!

Minecraft made 'Notch' Persson a millionaire. Now, it's made him a billionaire! Not bad for a one-man indie game developer, huh?

Dawn, on the other side of the plateau

And what is Microsoft getting for its billions? Well, not Persson, apparently. The developer of the game isn't staying with the company. (I don't know what he plans to do, but billionaires can do pretty much whatever they want to do, can't they?)

Four years ago, I also quoted this from an article in the Escapist:

One guy, alone, has made a game which is more interesting, cheaper, and has better replay value than games that took an entire studio full of pixel-pushers and codemonkeys to produce. It's also amazingly popular despite having no marketing behind it at all. And the game is profitable even by AAA game standards. This is exactly the kind of thing you can't pull off when you're enamored of buying development houses for hundreds of millions so you can then spend tens of millions of dollars to make sequels of clones of games that were getting old a decade ago.

Think about that. Then consider that the money managers at Microsoft are spending $2.5 billion to buy a four-year-old game that's already been wildly successful. How does this make sense?

It's not even a story-based game, so a sequel would be nonsensical. Spending millions on graphics would do nothing for Minecraft, either. The pixelated graphics are part of its charm. And they're not even buying the developer of the game!

But for big corporations, it's always about the money. With enough money, you can buy anything, right? I suppose they think that, if they're spending $2.5 billion on it, it must be a valuable property. (Either that, or they know a lot more about what they're doing than I do, which - admittedly - wouldn't be too surprising.)

I'm just glad 'Notch' Persson has made out so well. And I hope he turns around and creates another great game, just in his spare time. :)

Terraria

I've been playing the PC game Terraria recently, so I thought I'd post a bit about that. The above video is the first of a whole series on YouTube, and they got me interested enough to buy the game myself. (There are many other YouTube videos about Terraria, too, of course - here is another series I've enjoyed.)

I hesitated, because the game seems to have stolen a lot from Minecraft. Well, we knew that was going to happen, right? And this is a side-scroller, so the gameplay is quite different. Besides, I sort of like to see games borrowing from Minecraft (and Dwarf Fortress, which I've seen happen, as well), since those games contain features which I'd love to see become more common.

I also hesitated, because Terraria is available only on Steam. Frankly, Steam is my least favorite gaming platform. I particularly dislike the fact that I have to start Steam, and connect with their servers, before I can play even a single-player game. But Terraria was only $10, and I figured I'd go ahead and try it anyway.

At first, I thought I'd made a huge mistake. I'm really, really bad at this kind of game. Those videos make it look easy, and it probably is for most people - but not for me. But I did get a little better as I continued, and it is fun. Still, I think I almost prefer watching those YouTube videos of other people playing. Heh, heh.

Well, not really. I won't ever get very far in the game, but it's already been worth the money. I'm easily bored, so I tend to jump from one game to the next, without getting very far in any of them. But if it wasn't fun, I wouldn't do it.

I should, however, note a huge design flaw in Terraria: There's no way to pause the game! Isn't that crazy? Was the game made for eight-year-olds who, presumably, can play entirely without interruptions? For the rest of us, that's nearly impossible, don't you think? Heck, I'm better off than most, since I live alone. But what about when the phone rings, or when someone comes to the door?

But this is still a great game. Like Minecraft, you start on a new world in the morning, and you have to build a shelter before nightfall. So, just like Minecraft, the first thing you need to do is chop down trees to get lumber. You start with a copper axe and a copper pick (for digging through dirt and rock). And you can make everything else you need (again, like Minecraft).

In Terraria, though, you're not safe even during the day. Even when you first arrive on your new world, slimes will come from both directions. They're not actually aggressive, not if you don't hit them. But since this game is entirely two-dimensional, they will hit you - and hurt you - while they're traveling through, unless you actively avoid them.

But you need to kill some of them anyway, since you get gel from slimes, and you need gel to make torches (gel plays the role in Terraria that coal and charcoal play in Minecraft). Torches are needed for light, at night and underground, though they don't stop monsters from spawning (solid walls, placed as a background, do that). And yes, at night, zombies and demon eyes appear.

Terraria is a side-scroller, and you can move right or left along the surface of the world. But the biggest part of the world is underground. You can mine pretty much anywhere, through rock and soil, but you're better off finding a natural cavern. There are caverns extending far, far underground, and they get more dangerous the further down you go.

But there's treasure down there, too. You can find some copper and iron on the surface, but there's more underground. And there's also silver and gold. And gems. And treasure chests. And the monsters all drop loot when you kill them.

For someone as inept as I am, the neat thing about the game is that you can play at your own pace. No, there aren't any difficulty settings. But I can decide when and where to go underground, and I can decide when to leave my secure little home at night. Plus, death isn't much of a setback.

When you die, you just reappear at your spawn point (where you initially started the game, unless you've made a bed and set your spawn point elsewhere), with your entire inventory intact. You do drop half of the coins you were carrying, but you can go back and pick them up again. And if you store your more valuable coins in a chest in your house, you won't lose any of those.

Death is rather common. Well, it's a dangerous world. If you're a long way from home, you'll probably hate dying, since it will be such a long trip back. But it's not all that significant, either. And this encourages exploration. Especially when you're underground, the temptation is just to keep going a little further. That can keep you playing for hours. So maybe dying occasionally isn't so bad, especially if you need to get some sleep at night.

Terraria really is a great little game. I don't normally play side-scrollers or platformers. (That might be why I'm so bad at this.) But Terraria takes from Minecraft two features that really make a difference. The first is crafting. In both games, you can make a wide variety of furniture and equipment. And you can make homes, too. That constructive part of these games is important to me, since I get really bored just killing things.

And second, you can completely re-arrange the terrain. You can dig anywhere and put the rock and soil anywhere you want. You can completely level a mountain, or build one. You can cut down trees and plant them. Minecraft is 3D, while Terraria is more like living in an ant farm. But in both cases, that freedom to re-make the world is a really big part of the gameplay.

There's no demo of Terraria, but there are a lot of YouTube videos showing how the game works. And it's only $10, so it's not a big investment, even if you don't play it much. If you do buy it, you might need to check the Terraria Wiki sometimes (there's a link on the Terraria website, too).

But it's really not that complicated. Pressing the escape key opens up your inventory and shows you what you can make out of what you're carrying. If you click on an item in the crafting area, it will show you exactly what components it will require. And if you stand near a forge, a workbench, an anvil, or an alchemy table, you'll have even more crafting options.

You can see, in most of those videos, gamers figuring out these things. They often miss some things - for example, that a hammer can remove what an axe or a pick cannot - but that's just part of the learning process. If you get confused, just check the wiki. But you probably won't need to do that very often.

I can see why Terraria has become such a big hit. Well, Minecraft was an even bigger hit. That should tell game developers something. Meanwhile, if you like to waste a little time playing computer games, like me, you could do far worse than Terraria.

Minecraft: a beginner's guide

My clifftop home (from a later post)

Feb. 2, 2011 Edit: Since this post seems to get more hits than all of my other blog entries combined, I figured I'd add this. Minecraft is now in beta, and there's been a particularly useful addition when starting a game: charcoal. Instead of searching desperately for coal, right off the bat, you can simply mine some stone and make a furnace (eight cobblestone, leaving the center position of the crafting table empty). Then turn wood blocks into charcoal, using planks for fuel.

So I'd gather enough wood to make a crafting table and a wooden pick, then mine enough stone for a stone pick, a stone axe, and a furnace. Use the stone axe to quickly chop more wood, then let the furnace make you charcoal while you work on creating a quick shelter.

Charcoal works exactly like coal for everything in the game (as far as I can tell). And since trees are a renewable resource, and usually abundant, right from the start, this is far easier than searching for coal, especially on your first day, when you're in a race against the clock. For everything else - especially crafting recipes - note the Minecraft wiki. And this link is still pretty useful, too, though it might tell you more than you need to know, right at the start.

OK, the rest of this is still just as I wrote it back in September. And as long as you're here, take a look around. Read a few other posts, too, why don't you? :)

Yes, this game is just as addicting as I'd expected. The past two days, I've done almost nothing but play Minecraft. Well, if you read my previous post, you might have seen that coming. For only $13.66 (1/2 off right now), I highly recommend this game.

But Minecraft is still in alpha, and there are almost no instructions in the game itself. I'm obsessive enough to spend hours searching out information, but what if you just want to give it a try? There are a few basic things you really need to know. Thus, this "beginner's guide" written by me, a complete beginner.

Imagine that you're Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecked on some alien shore. You have nothing but your hands and your wits - and terrifying monsters emerge when darkness falls. When you first start the game, you're standing in a randomly-generated world (a world that continuously generates as you explore it, so you might experience slowdowns at first).

But what the game doesn't tell you - one of the things - is that you have only about ten minutes, real-time, before darkness falls. At that point, you must be under cover with a light source (torches). Monsters are generated in the darkness. If you don't have light, they can generate right alongside you (besides, it would be boring to stand around in the dark for ten minutes, doing nothing, while waiting for sunrise). And if you're not in a secure shelter, they'll come at you from wherever they do generate.

You can always set the game options to "peaceful" (when playing, hit escape - which is also the only way I've found to pause the game - and change the options at any time). But I don't recommend it, at least when you begin Minecraft. The tension of knowing that time is quickly running out really adds something to the gameplay, as does hearing the monsters growling outside your shelter at night, trying to find a way inside. You can always set it to "peaceful" later, if you want to focus on some grand building-project.

Sometimes, the game will generate a winter world, with snow falling everywhere and water turned to ice. That's what I got when I first started the game, and it's probably not how you want to start as a beginner. I was also on a small island, covered with sand, dirt, and grass, and I couldn't find any coal before night fell, so I just re-started on another world. Most worlds are green, brilliant in the sunshine, with trees and rock outcrops close to hand - just what you want to see.



That video shows you what you need to do, but let me describe it here. Right off the bat, you need wood and coal. Trees should be abundant, and you can gather wood with your bare hands (it's slower than with an axe, but you don't have an axe). Coal is relatively common, but can be hard to find when you need it immediately. You need to look at rock outcroppings, sometimes even high up cliff faces. If there's enough exposed rock nearby, there should be coal showing,... somewhere.

But first, stand still, turn in place, and get a fix on your surroundings. If necessary for a clear view, press the "f" key to cycle through fog settings. This is where you'll spawn after being killed (and you will be killed). You won't have tools with you (your inventory will be scattered around your death site - for about five minutes or so), but your buildings will be intact (and any chests full of resources you left there). So before you move, get an idea of where you're going. It's very easy to get lost in Minecraft, especially as trees grow.

At this point, I would head towards the nearest rock outcropping, stopping at the first tree to gather wood. Face the tree trunk and hold down your left mouse button until your bare hand breaks through. (If the wood doesn't immediately jump to your inventory, just move closer to it.) Continue until the entire trunk is gone - or as much of it as you can reach. (The leaves will remain, for awhile. As they decay, they'll shed saplings, which will grow into new trees.)

That video recommends collecting 11 to 15 trunk sections, but three or four would probably be enough to start. Yeah, it's a bare minimum, but you might need the extra time to find coal. And there will probably be trees there, too, so you can get more wood when you have a stone axe, if there's time before nightfall. So harvest one tree and then head to the nearest rocky area.

Coal can show up, as rock with black specks, pretty much anywhere there's stone. Stay close to your spawn point, if you can (you don't have time to travel too far, anyway), but quickly search likely locations. Don't worry about finding the best place to build your fortress. Right now, this is only about saving your butt. Once you have a shelter, you can look around and examine your surroundings at leisure (relatively speaking).

As soon as you find coal, build your workbench close at hand. Press "i" to open your inventory. At the top is a small crafting area. Left-click on your tree trunks to pick up the whole bunch at once (right-clicking will pick up only half of them) and left-click again to place them in the crafting area (right-clicking would drop them off one at a time). You'll see a rather similar graphic - for wood planks - appear in the right side of the crafting area. If you left-click on that, you'll "build" the item shown. Go ahead and left-click continuously until your tree trunks are all made into planks.

[Note: All of these crafting recipes can be found at the Minecraft wiki, as well as descriptions of the various resource blocks in the game. I made notes of all this stuff (I did mention that I was obsessive, right?), but since Minecraft plays in a window, you can always just keep the Minepedia open for reference in another window. (Hit escape to pause the game first. Or, if you alt-tab to switch windows, Minecraft will do that automatically. Yeah, since the game doesn't pause otherwise, that's a good thing.]

Once you have planks, put one in each of the four spaces of your crafting area and build yourself a workbench. Put the workbench in one of the nine spaces at the very bottom of your inventory, and escape out of the inventory. Those nine spaces, with the workbench in one of them, will appear at the bottom of your screen. Press "1" to "9" on your keyboard to select which item to hold in your hand. Then, when you're holding the workbench, right-click to place it on the ground beside you.

Now you can right-click on the workbench itself to open up a larger crafting area. You need this to make tools. Take two planks, put one above the other, and make four sticks. Then take two of the sticks, and three planks, and make a wooden pick. (Check the wiki for the crafting recipe, which will show you exactly how these items need to be positioned in the crafting area.)

Using the wooden pick is just like what you've done previously. When you make it, put it in one of the nine bottom slots, then exit the crafting area. Press the correct number key to hold it in your hand. Then face rock or coal and hold down your left mouse button. I suggest you mine three regular rock squares first and immediately make a stone pick, because that will make your work go a lot quicker than with a wooden pick (reasonably enough, huh?).

If you need to move dirt or sand, perhaps to build steps to get to the coal (jump using the spacebar), make a rock shovel, too. And a rock axe will collect wood a lot faster than your bare hands. Now all you need to do is gather some coal (and some more wood, unless you're really short of time) and dig out a small area for protection. Make torches by putting coal above a stick in your crafting area (either in your inventory or on the workbench). Then, holding them in your hand, right-click to place them on the wall or wherever you need them.

You can close off the entrance to your shelter with rock or even dirt, and then dig it out again in the morning (as the video shows, leave an opening so you can tell when the sun comes up again). Or you can build a door on your workbench using six planks. Place the door from the outside (so skeletons can't shoot through the door, and so you can fight from the inside without accidentally opening it), and  left- or right-click to open or close it. (If you ever want to move the door, take your axe and hold down the left mouse button to chop away at it - just like harvesting a tree trunk. Eventually, the unharmed door will come loose and pop into your inventory again. Go ahead and bring your workbench inside the same way.)

Night, like day, lasts about ten minutes real-time. With extra wood and coal, you can spend the time inside your well-lit shelter digging out more rock and making more tools (they will wear out with use). When the sun comes up, any undead creature that's not sheltered from it will burst into flames. But not everything that appeared overnight will be destroyed by sunlight. Starting on your second day, you'll have to keep your eyes open at all times, at least when outside your shelter.

When you're killed - almost inevitable, at some point - you'll just re-appear back at your initial starting location. That's why it's helpful to know where your shelter is, from that spot. If you're quick, you can even collect your inventory from where you died. But in any case, you won't lose anything you've built or stored in a chest.

If you'd rather build a simple wooden shelter, rather than burrow into a cliff-face that first night, check out this video clip. (You'll still need coal for torches.) But from these humble beginnings, the sky is the limit. There are all sorts of Minecraft videos on YouTube which amply demonstrate that!

If you need help, check out the Minecraft Forum. In particular, note the guides and tutorials in this post. Yeah, even I'm not obsessive enough to read all of that, not yet, anyway.

Minecraft: $15,000 per hour?

According to this, Markuss Persson is selling one copy of Minecraft every three seconds. That's about $15,000 per hour - for a downloaded game, still in alpha, developed almost entirely by himself alone. Apparently, he's reached $350,000 in a single day! No doubt that's because of my posts, huh? Heh, heh.

Note that this is nothing like mainstream games, and not just because of the blocky graphics. The game is not difficult, but it doesn't hold your hand, either. If you die, use that as a learning experience. You just respawn at your original starting place, anyway.

And there's no story. You can make your own story as you play the game. Personally, I consider it a Robinson Crusoe sort of situation: shipwrecked in a dangerous land, with nothing but your bare hands and your wits.

Mainstream game developers spend millions on fancy graphics, voice actors, and the rights to some blockbuster movie title, but independent developers tend to have the gameplay. Certainly, they often have unique gameplay, while mainstream developers would never take a chance on a new idea, even if they had one.

Will this kind of money catch their attention? Will we start seeing Minecraft clones? I guess we'll see.

Minecraft is cheap - only €9.95 (about $13.50 in U.S. dollars) right now. If you decide to try it, check out my beginner's guide. OK, there are lots of guides online, but I've embedded a YouTube video there and a few useful links to get you started.

PS. There are all sorts of Minecraft YouTube videos, of course, but I thought I'd embed this one. This isn't typical gameplay, not even close. Instead, this guy is building a working 16-bit computer in the game. Heh, heh. Wild, isn't it? I can't say I understand most of what he says, but I really admire the imagination of people like this.

Minecraft - I've got to try this!

I don't even have time to continue my Dwarf Fortress game, but I still want to play this. In fact, I just bought it. It's dirt cheap (less than $14), since it's still in alpha. And I want to support this kind of game, even if I don't have time to play it right now.

But I think I'll make time.

This is why I never finish games. I'm always finding something else I want to try. But really, between Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress - and Aurora and UnReal World, too - there are some incredible things going on with indie games that give you the freedom to do whatever you want, the freedom to create your own story.

Re. Minecraft, check out these "Mine the Gap" articles by Quintin Smith at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Fascinating, aren't they? Tell me you don't want to play the game now.

There are a lot of Minecraft videos at YouTube, but be sure to check out this one. It was supposed to be a simple demonstration of building a fireplace in your Minecraft home. However, there turned out to be a slight problem...

Funny, isn't it? I'll bet it was frustrating, too! (Note that I tried embedding it here, but apparently putting two video clips in a single post causes problems at Blogger.)

Inside my Minecraft home

OK, after posting screenshots of the setting of my latest Minecraft home, I had a request to show the inside. My pleasure! :)

But don't expect too much. I'm not particularly imaginative, and it's a small house. As I noted before, I'd intended to build a multi-story structure, but at the top of this cliff, I apparently ran into a height limit in the game. In fact, that's why my house has a flat roof, because I couldn't go even one block higher.

At any rate, this is the front door. (As always, click on the images to embiggen.) There's a small swimming pool in the foreground, and the stairs down to my wheat farm on the right. The stairs are glassed-in on the outside, which lets me look for monsters on the way down. And after first experiencing the torrential rains here, I put a roof over that, too.

This is the master bedroom - just a bed, table, and bookcases. I like a lot of light in the house (note even the glass roof), so there's not much room for paintings or other wall decorations. And although I thought about putting a wool rug on the floor, I never got around to it. Interior decorating isn't my forte.

You can see the back door in that picture, too. It opens to the south, to the bridge which leads to my animal pens. Turning, you can see the other side of the room:

This is my dining room/kitchen. Again, it's more functional than decorative. The cabinet holds my food, with the oven just beneath it. And the stairs to the basement runs along the south wall.

The basement itself is rather empty. There's a crafting area in one corner, but that's about it. Oh, that hole in the foreground contains the ladder leading, eventually, to the top of that glass-enclosed elevator to the docks, which I showed in the first bunch of pictures:

Maybe this isn't as decorative as most Minecraft homes, but it works for me. At this point, I'm more concerned with exploring. First, I want to find a deep crevasse, so I can do some mining. The only one I've found so far is not very deep or very long. But if I can find the right spot, I'll probably build a little home there, too, either hanging onto the side of the crevasse or dug a little bit into it.

I'd also like to find a large, flat area of dry ground, so I can build a more elaborate structure, perhaps a walled farming community, or a fort or something. There are only small patches of dry ground around here, and most of them are on the sides of cliffs! I need to find a continent somewhere, if I can.

Certainly, Minecraft worlds are big enough for everything. My biggest worry will be getting lost while exploring. As it is, by the time I get down a cliff, I usually find myself somewhere completely unexpected. I really need to make a map! (But for that, I need a compass, and for that, I need redstone.)

My Minecraft home

Here's my latest Minecraft home (click on the images to embiggen). It's on top of a tall cliff - in fact, I was going to build a house with several stories, but the game wouldn't let me build higher than the clouds. (That's something new, I think.)

My wheat farm is to the bottom left, and I've got a couple of animal pens to the south, on the other side of the bridge. I started this game on a previous version, when livestock continued to spawn during the game, so I'm a bit short of animals now.

And this part of my world is so full of sheer cliffs that it's hard to lead animals up here, too.

Here's the north side of my home, at night in a thunderstorm (that's why the clouds look black). I probably should have waited for a clear night to take a picture, huh?

At any rate, it shows the glass-enclosed elevator (ladder, really, though it feels like an elevator), leading down to my boat dock. In all of these pictures, you can see the moss hanging from the topmost cliff, since this whole area is filled with marshy terrain.

I wanted a world with cliffs, because I was planning from the start to build a clifftop home. But this area has almost no flat ground, and what little there is contains marsh or desert, with a lot of water everywhere. So far, I haven't found any continents.

But I haven't explored too much yet, and that's something I really need to do.

This is looking at my house from the southwest, still at night, during that same thunderstorm. As you can see, the terrain is nothing but cliffs, pretty much.

I tend to get so involved with building that I forget about exploration. And by the time I get this far, I start thinking about creating a different world. Heh, heh. Yeah, I'm always beginning games, without getting too far in them.

Incidentally, if you're thinking about playing Minecraft for the first time, you might want to check out this video tutorial. Note that there's no tutorial in the game, and this guy starts things out with the most basic stuff.

You'll still need the Minecraft wiki bookmarked, though. You can make all sorts of things in the game if you know how, but it can be frustrating to rely on trial and error. And even experienced players can't always remember everything.

Another Minecraft milestone

I mentioned Minecraft the other day, when I was talking about procedurally generated content in games (well, I've blogged about it often enough before then, too). Anyway, I thought I'd note that it's become the ninth best-selling PC game ever, with more than eight million copies sold.

Keep in mind that this is pretty much the product of one person, 'Notch' Persson, who created and distributed the game (over the internet, of course) himself. After the millions of dollars (and other currencies - Notch is Swedish) started to roll in, he started a game development company and hired a couple of people, but this was entirely his baby.

Impressive, isn't it? I don't mean my simple little Minecraft house, pictured above, but the numbers. Most independent game developers don't hit it big - certainly not this big - but it can happen.

Minecraft 1.8 tutorial - how to survive your first night

I thought I'd post this, since Minecraft version 1.8 has just been released. I haven't played this version yet, but the very beginning hasn't changed much since I first blogged about the game here. (This video isn't much different from the one I posted then, either.)

If you've never played the game, this video will get you started. He plans to continue the tutorial series, too, or you can just check the wiki whenever you've got a question.

Note that, if you do want to follow this tutorial, you can enter 2905400373399475580 as the world seed, and you'll start in the same world in the same place. Or you can leave it blank and create a random world (as he did when he created that world).

Minecraft is a great game. I haven't played it in two and a half years, I guess, so I'm really tempted to give it a go again. But right now, I've just started a new fort in Dwarf Fortress, so this is going to have to wait.

___
Note: Check out my posts about this, and other computer games, here.

Sorry, I take it all back

I used to watch some Nebraska football - in this state, it's hard to avoid - but I haven't in years. And I've always been pretty dismissive about watching sports on television.

Yes, I'd say, I can understand the interest in playing sports. But sitting and watching someone else play them? It's not just a horrible time-waster, I actually find it hard to see anything positive about it.

But just today, I realized that I've been spending more time watching other people play computer games - in YouTube videos - than I've been spending playing them myself! Suddenly, I realized that I was being a real hypocrite criticizing couch potato sports fans.

OK, you've got me. I hereby apologize for everything I've said about watching football and golf on TV. And yes, even basketball, too. Hockey? Well,... I don't know. I've got to maintain some standards, right? :)

But yeah, I've been busy lately - trying to get some yardwork done while the weather's still nice - and I haven't wanted to spend too much time reading or playing games. But somehow, I've still worked in plenty of time for watching YouTube videos. And most of them have been of gamers playing games.

For example, I've been watching Tales of Lumin as he plays Minecraft, Terraria, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I've got the first two games myself, but Lumin goes into them without knowing very much about them. It was especially fun to see him play Minecraft. He brings a lot of enthusiasm to his gameplay.

I've never played Deus Ex - neither the original game nor this sequel - and it really doesn't seem to be my kind of game. But it's still a lot of fun to watch. (Note: for this and the other games mentioned here, click on the correct "playlist" on the right side of the screen at their YouTube channel. If you start with the first video clip in a series, they will usually load in order automatically after that.)

I've also watched Jef Major ("one 'F' Jef") play a number of games, including Mount&Blade, Silent Storm: Sentinels, and It Came from the Desert. I've owned Mount&Blade for a long time, and it's lots of fun, even though I'm really, really bad at it. But watching Jef play it makes me want to play again - or, better yet, buy one of the newer sequels.

Silent Storm is a game I somehow missed when it first came out. I really wish I could find a copy of it, because I'd love to play it. But it doesn't seem to be available anywhere. (The Sentinels expansion is still being sold, but you need the original game to play it.)

And I'd never even heard of It Came from the Desert. I don't suppose I'll ever play it, but I enjoyed the playthrough.

I watched Revocane play Fort Zombie and made the mistake of thinking I might be able to play it myself. Heh, heh. Well, it was only $10, so I wasn't risking much. But it's almost unplayable for me. I'm pretty bad at games like that, and the controls are just terrible. Frankly, it was a lot more fun to watch.

I also watched him play Dwarf Fortress a little bit - and Jef Major, too. But although that's a wonderful game, it doesn't work very well on a video clip playthrough. It's just too hard to tell what's going on. That's really one I need to play myself (and I will, again - sometime).

I watched Tanit playing Combat Mission: Shockforce, which got me to buy Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy, which I do intend to blog about sometime soon. It's lots of fun! And watching Box MacLeod playing Jagged Alliance 2: Urban Chaos got me to reinstall JA2, myself. (Ah, so many games, so little time!)

Even that isn't all of them. I've been watching gameplay videos for some time now - from Paul Soares, Jr., PlumpHelmetPunk, GrimithR, and many others. What can I say? It's addicting. Almost invariably, I get enthused and either buy the game or jump back into it, if I already own it. But I seem to spend far more time watching these videos than actually playing the games myself.

So, yes, I take it all back. I guess I understand why you watch sports on TV for hour on end. Of course, those games seem kind of dull to me, when you could be playing - or even watching - Minecraft, Silent Storm, or Mount&Blade. But to each his own. :)

Minecraft and the redefinition of rape

OK, I don't want to post too many video clips today, but this one caught my attention. I posted previously about Republicans trying to redefine "rape," and I've certainly posted about the Minecraft computer game, but... combining the two subjects? That just seemed weird.

But as serious as the first topic undoubtedly is, I had to laugh at her addiction to this computer game, which I've been playing pretty obsessively myself. Yes, it is addictive, and lots of fun. And the fact is, Skepchick - Rebecca Watson - often includes humor in her excellent videos. That doesn't hurt their effectiveness, not at all.

I won't add anything to her message, not this time, except to note that this is the third anti-abortion bill Republicans have introduced since they took control of the House of Representatives, just a few weeks ago.

Despite all the talk about how Republicans have changed, and how this time they really are focused on cutting spending (not deficit reduction - even their own supporters can't believe that, I'm sure), the reality is that these are the same old Republicans with the same old "culture war" obsessions who nearly destroyed our nation during the Bush years.

It's just that they think spending cuts poll better than tax cuts for the rich and loony right-wing culture war issues. (On the other hand, they know that their base demands the latter.)

A new start in Minecraft

(click to embiggen)

Note: I enjoyed my moss-draped clifftop home (here and here), but I wanted to try something different, and I couldn't find the terrain I wanted in that Minecraft world. I'm sure the perfect spot was there somewhere, but I couldn't seem to find it. So I decided to create a new world, and after a couple of tries, I found one that really seems to fit the bill.

I don't know how I got here. I remember a raging storm, and me in my little boat, but then I came to my senses here, my clothes torn and ragged, no supplies at all, and a big gap in my memory. So be it. I've started from scratch before, and I knew I could do it again.

I decided to settle in this old flood plain. At least, that's what it looks like. There's a river to the north and some hills to the south, but in between, it's flat and heavily forested. In fact, this pine forest extends to the west as far as I've explored, so far.

To the east is a vast desert, and to the south, past the wooded hills, there seems to be a range of mountains. I don't know how far that extends. To the southeast, at the edge of the desert, there's a native village. They seem uninterested in my presence. But then, it's hard to communicate without a single language in common.

So I settled in this pine forest, all green and beautiful in the sun. There was a crust of ice on the pond, which should have given me a clue, but I was still taken by surprise at the first snowstorm. It was a real blizzard, and I was lucky to be inside when it started. The snow still hasn't melted off most places.

One of the more interesting things about this location is the vast hole in the rock just south of my farmstead. I discovered that it leads down into an expanse of caverns - and those caverns themselves are bisected by a deep crevasse. Actually, it looks deep, but I don't know how deep it really goes, because it's too dark to see very far.

And the caverns are infested with monsters. Luckily, most of them seem to be stuck on the other side of the crevasse. But I've kept my underground exploration to a minimum, so far. First things first, and I needed to concentrate on basic survival.

(the NPC village)

So I built a little shack, where I could sleep in safety, and set about building my farm. Despite the cold weather, my wheat is doing well, though I have to go to extraordinary lengths to keep even running water from freezing. And I may end up building a greenhouse for the sugar cane.

There were sheep everywhere, so wool hasn't been a problem. But I had to search to find a few cattle and chickens, and I haven't found any pigs at all. Well, the forest to the west is positively infested with wolves. I've never before seen so many wolves in one place, and maybe for that reason, there's little other life there.

But although I'll definitely miss bacon - ahhh,... bacon! - I can survive without it. And I was able to tame one of the wolves for a pet. The rest of them don't bother me, and I don't bother them.

The monsters are a worse problem, especially the creepers. I've always been rather inept at combat, and I've had a hard time preventing creepers from blowing the hell out of everything I've built here. Still, they haven't gotten me yet, and everything else can be rebuilt.

Nevertheless, I've started building a stone wall around my settlement. Maybe, someday, it will be a real fortress, a vast structure of stone to keep out all possible enemies. Heh, heh. Sure, it's only me, so I don't exactly need such a place. But as long as my crops and my livestock do OK, why not? I've got plenty of time for a hobby.

I'll explore when I get tired of stonework. I'll need to find more coal - and mine lots more stone - anyway. I must say that I'm curious about those underground caverns. I wonder how far down they go?

PS. I don't know how long I'll play this. I've got lots of different games to play. But I'll probably post more again, sometime.

Minecraft fortress

(click images to embiggen)

Note: This is the second dispatch from my latest Minecraft world. The first is here.

This is a cold land, but rich. My crops grow well, despite the occasional snowstorms. My livestock seem to need little care. So I've had a lot of time on my hands.

Too much time, probably, since I've started an absolutely massive stone fortress. It really is pretty ridiculous, isn't it? I can't even claim that it's for protection, since these walls enclose only a small part of my homestead. With the time I've spent building those vast towers, I could have enclosed the whole place with sturdy walls.

Indeed, I'm still having immense trouble with creepers. The other day, one sneaked inside my stone wall and ran up behind me. Only at the last minute did I hear it hiss, and the explosion tossed me clear across the room. Luckily, I've taken to wearing armor, even inside. But I was badly injured, even so.

And I'm still living in a shack, little more than a lean-to against the south wall, while I spend my time creating this monstrosity! It really is pretty ridiculous, don't you think? I haven't even explored this land, not very far, not further than I can see from the top of one of my towers. I've just been laying stone.

Whenever I run out of stone, I head into the caverns below for more - and for more coal, too, which is the bigger problem by far. I've got lots of trees, so I've used some wood to fire my forges, but that seems wasteful. Yes, trees are a renewable resource, while coal isn't. But I still hate to burn wood.

Besides, I need to explore the caverns, anyway. They are really extensive. Previously, I mentioned that deep crevasse that bisects the upper caverns. But I'm beginning to wonder if it's just one crevasse or two. Or more. I don't know. It gets really confusing, as those caverns twist and turn.

I've gotten to the bottom of at least one crevasse, maybe more. The problem is that I haven't been able to walk along the bottom. It's not just the obstacles, but the darkness that's a problem. I can use torches to light my way, but there are countless dark ledges above me, and those ledges can pretty much rain monsters.

Again, creepers are my biggest problem. I've had creepers drop out of the dark almost right on top of me. And I've been badly injured a few times there, too. Again, my iron armor has saved my life, but I've had far too many close calls. Frequently, I've had to stay holed up in the caverns until I recovered enough to limp on home.

For a long time, skeletons were a problem, too. I couldn't seem to find bowstring material, so an archer on a ledge or across a ravine could shoot at me with impunity. It's not that I like spiders all that much, but their webbing can be very useful. Unfortunately, spiders don't seem to be very common in this cold land.

When I got deep enough, I discovered another danger. There's lava just everywhere. Even without monsters, it would be very, very dangerous to explore the depths of these caverns. But as it is, pretty much anything could knock me off a narrow path into lava, if I'm not careful. And my armor wouldn't help me at all, then.

So I've had to be very, very careful. There are caverns stretching for miles and miles, lava and waterfalls everywhere, and multiple levels, all the way up to the surface. Even without making a misstep into lava, even without the ever-present danger of creepers and other monstrosities, I could get hopelessly lost at even a moment's inattention.

On the bright side, there are many valuable resources down there. I've found lots of coal and iron, some gold and some redstone, and even a couple of diamonds. And I've only just begun to explore the place. But it's sure been rough on my nerves!

So I think I need a break. I recently built a compass, so I should be able to explore this land without getting hopelessly lost. I think I'll take my dog and explore on the surface a bit, maybe even draw a map as I go.

I wonder what lies on the other side of the eastern desert? I wonder how far this pine forest extends to the west? I stopped at the river's edge to my north, but I could certainly craft a boat without too much trouble. And there are mountains to the south. I'll bet I could get a pretty good view from up there.

And yes, I'm sure there will be monsters, but maybe I won't have to worry that my next step will put me neck-deep into lava. And I could always try taming another wolf or two. At the very least, it will be a break, and I think I need a break. I really, really think I need a break.

UnReal World

This is the first video clip in a YouTube "let's play" of UnReal World, a survival game set in Iron Age Finland. This clip is just the introduction and character creation. Actual game-play starts in clip #2. (The whole playlist is here.)

I've only watched a couple of these - I just stumbled across these videos this morning - but I thought I'd post the first one here, because I really love this game. Note that it's one of those games being developed by one guy, who's already been working on it for years. He releases a new version every so often, kind of like Dwarf Fortress.

Well, there are many similarities to Dwarf Fortress - and to Minecraft, too - but it's still a very different game from both of them. It's a graphical rogue-like, a survival game in a very dangerous environment (especially in winter).

You'll die often, and death is permanent. But unlike most rogue-likes, it's also a game where you can build pretty much everything you need. In fact, you can start with virtually nothing and have to really struggle to survive your first day. There are plenty of dangers, but the biggest might be cold, hunger, and thirst.

Note that it's a complicated game, so I recommend checking out the wiki.

Well, this "let's play" series will give you a good idea of the gameplay. It's not a very fancy game, but it's great fun. You can download the demo for free here, and you can buy the game for as little as $3 here.

I'd love to get back into it again, myself, but I'm struggling to even find enough time for Dwarf Fortress. Unfortunately, there's never enough time for everything, is there?

One year old!

This blog is one year old today. I started it, pretty much on the spur of the moment, February 27, 2010.

FYI, here's my first post.

I never intended to specialize in anything in particular, so I never expected to get many readers. (That last part was certainly accurate.) I find so many things interesting that I've never wanted to narrow myself (one of the big problems I had in college, and with a career, too).

So how has the past year gone?

When I started this blog, I worried about having enough topics. Heh, heh. As it turned out, that's the last thing I needed to worry about! I can't even come close to writing about everything that interests me. I write too many posts as it is (although the number will lessen once winter is over), without even denting the supply of potential topics.

However, I started out with a bigger variety of posts, I think. Politics and economics were always here, but they've kind of taken over the blog. I still write book reviews - science fiction, mostly - and occasional posts about computer games or science, but not as often as when I started (or does it just seem like that?). And for the most part, I think I've said all I can say about religion - not that that's ever stopped me before.

Other things have changed, as well. I've added a Quote of the Day in the main part of my blog (it used to be along the side, where no one ever noticed it). It's not exactly a quote, but more of an excerpt where I don't add my own commentary. Well, there's a lot of good stuff on the internet, and I want to share as much of it as I can. (This also helps me find these things again, if I need them.)

I've started posting political cartoons every day, too. Well, I've always liked such things, and I think they break up the long, long mass of text that's my usual writing style. Note that I try very hard to include a link to everything I copy from elsewhere. (Unfortunately, the above graphic is an exception. It seems to be everywhere online, and I just can't find where it came from originally.)

(A guy can hope, can't he? - Pearls Before Swine)

I certainly haven't accumulated many fans. With more posts, I get a lot more hits from Google now (especially when I write about Minecraft), but I have few more regular readers than when I started. OK, that's disappointing, but I really didn't expect much different (a little different, perhaps). If I really wanted to attract more people, I'd find a niche and stick to it.

But I'm just not interested in doing that. This blog is mainly for me. It gives me a place to express myself - to rant and rave, frankly - and if you find it interesting or informative, great. If not, that's OK, too. I'd still like to hear what you like and don't like about it. Everybody can use constructive criticism. But my goal isn't, and has never been, popularity.

Good thing, huh? Heh, heh. Well, I'm not sure I even have a goal, if you want to know the truth. I'd certainly like to attract more readers, but that's not why I'm doing this. Still, as I say, I'd appreciate comments and suggestions.

(Savage Chickens)

CRPG Addict, who has a young, but very successful, blog of his own, recommends that I change my title and header, since they don't really convey the focus of my blog. Well, I've known for a long time that my title was poor. "That's interesting" is such a common phrase online that a Google search results in millions of hits (hmm,... oddly enough, my blog seems to be near the top, no matter how I do the search).

But I'm terrible with titles, I really am. I gave almost no thought to "That's interesting," but I still haven't been able to think of a better one since then. I'm just not very creative, at least not in that way (maybe not in any way). Heck, just look at the titles of my individual blog posts.

And yes, the header is really vague, but the fact remains that it's accurate. I really don't intend to specialize here. If America ever gets its head out of its butt, I might well post less about politics. And I still intend to continue posting about other things - whatever catches my interest, whatever I feel like writing about, with absolutely no limitations.

I understand that other people don't have the same interests as I do. My brother gets bored to death with my posts about computer games (and probably most everything else, I suspect), but gamers won't find enough of them to keep coming back. When I write book reviews, I sometimes get flattering comments, too, but this isn't a site devoted to such things - or devoted to anything, in particular.

(Last Kiss)

It's just a mixture, a jumble - odds and ends of almost anything mixed into a heavy dose of politics. Looking at the tags, the "labels" on my posts, I'm a bit surprised to see just how many are about politics. Yes, I've got 100 tagged as "religion" and 68 "economics," but often they're about politics too. And I've only got 59 labeled "science," 40 "computer games," 33 "skepticism," 27 "science fiction" (I don't have a general "books" category).

Of course, many of these are videos (199) or cartoons (181), at least in part. But this gives me a very general idea of what topics I've covered. (When I started, I didn't really think about how I wanted to label posts. Instead, it's just... developed, without much thought. Yeah, I suspect that was another mistake. After all, it's not easy to find something using those labels, not at all. Of course, you can just search for a keyword, but then you get every post that even mentions the word.)

Well, I'll try to find the time to actually think about what I'm doing here. Heh, heh.  I think a great deal about the posts I write, but I tend not to think about the blog in general. Maybe that's been a mistake. But I've been happy with it so far, so it can't be too much of a mistake, I guess. As I stated in my first post, this blog was for me. And really, that's still how I think of it.

Dwarf Fortress: Summitspear 251

(click image to embiggen)

This is the start of my new settlement in Dwarf Fortress, since I had to start over last week. If you're looking for a tutorial, you might check this out. The wiki is a big help, too (maybe even essential).

I'll be posting annual reports - from my dwarves' point of view - until... I stop. Yeah, no guarantees. I love the game, but I tend to get bored and move on. That's the case with all games, in fact (if you're wondering what happened to my last Minecraft game).

In the spring of 251, seven bold dwarves from the Fence of Dreaming set out to create a brand new outpost for dwarvenkind. Calling ourselves the Rhyming Towers, we confidently followed our leader, Urdim Lovedmetal, as she led us to our new home... a hot, humid jungle.

Standing there in the rain, panting from the heat, swatting flies and mosquitoes, we were all a bit dismayed. This didn't look much like a home for dwarves. Our flock of sheep hardly looked as badly out of their element as we did.

But Urdim insisted, and we had confidence in her leadership. The river to our north poured over a cliff, and the rocks below showed signs of silver and iron. And it did look defensible, if we just burrowed into the cliff-face.

But that's when Urdim surprised us again. We would dig, of course - that's what dwarves do - but we'd dig down from the top, in the middle of the jungle. And we'd create not just an underground dwarven lair, but also a sizable structure above ground, something to demonstrate to the other peoples of Ospazslzgo - humans, elves, and goblins - that we were here.

She called our new  home Kobellokum, "Summitspear." And swinging her miner's pick, she took the first bite out of the admittedly swampy, mucky jungle floor. Well, it was a start.

While Urdim dug into the earth, the rest of us unloaded our wagon, pastured the livestock, and started surveying the site. Our first priority was to dig a moat around our encampment. There were alligators nearby, and who knew what else might show up? Defense was our first concern.

But it was a miserable experience. Even in early spring, it was hot. And it rained pretty much all the time. We had to sleep on the ground - in the mud - and eat standing at the wagon. Well, we didn't expect a grand dwarven hall right from the beginning. But I must admit that we hadn't expected to be settling down in a steaming, stinking jungle, either.

By mid-summer, we'd made a good start. We'd dug the moat and put a couple of bridges over it. We couldn't raise them, not yet, but at least it let us concentrate our defenses. And we were very pleased when ten new dwarves joined us. Our first immigrants!

Truth be told, they weren't a very prepossessing bunch. Half of them were just children. And their parents were hardly more than children themselves. Poorly skilled and poorly groomed, they clearly wouldn't be missed by their former home. But at least they were willing to work.

And their leader, an older dwarf who'd led these youngsters to us, turned out to have some considerable skill at metal-crafting. That should be very useful, eventually, although it might be some time before we can take advantage of it.

In the fall, another young couple showed up, with their three children. What's with all these youngsters having kids at such a young age? Again, they were poorly skilled, but willing to work. And with 22 dwarves now - a full seven of them children - we really needed the labor.

I thought the year was going well enough - slowly, perhaps, but uneventfully - but Urdim became increasingly moody. Late in the fall, she fell into a strange mood, shutting herself up in our mason's temporary shop and refusing to speak to any of us.

As chance would have it, that was right when dwarven traders arrived, with an outpost liaison from the Fence of Dreaming. But Urdim, still in the grip of that strange mood, refused to speak with him, and the diplomat left in a huff. I hope that doesn't cause us problems later.

The caravan, at least, was willing to trade, with or without our leader. Truth be told, we didn't have much to trade them. They brought a lot of goods that we could have used, but we really hadn't had time to do much crafting, ourselves. But they seemed happy enough when they left, so I suppose it was a start.

Winter turned out to be not much different from the rest of the year - hot, humid, and buggy. But Urdim emerged from the mason's workshop with the most astonishing armor stand, made of rock salt and encircled with bands of rock salt cabochons and silver.

She called it Buzat Sanreb, the Twigs of Owning (whatever that means), and it looks as valuable as hell. Oddly enough, she's a miner, not a mason. And she's never given any indication of knowing much about masonry - still doesn't, in fact. But she's back to her normal self again. Whatever that strange mood was, it's over now.

So here we are. It's spring again. We've been here one full year. So far, everyone is healthy and happy, though our water buffalo somehow starved to death, standing in the middle of a lush jungle. The dogs had puppies, the ewes had lambs, and we've got quite a bunch of chicks and turkey poults running around.

We're doing quite well for food and drink, and we've all got decent bedrooms now - if nothing too fancy (but it sure beats sleeping in the mud!). Our dining hall is still pretty rough, too, but we've come a long way.

However, at the end of winter, we were plagued with goblin thieves. We caught four of them in traps. (I'm not sure what we're going to actually do with them.) If there were more than that, we never saw them. I don't think they were successful in stealing from us - certainly, our children are all still safe - but this is only the beginning.

Now that they know we're here, we can expect further attacks. And to be honest, our defenses are still quite limited. Our traps were set up to defend against the occasional alligator or other wild beast. Against goblins,... well, we were lucky this time. But we can't count on that. And if any archers show up, our moat really won't be much protection.

We need to build walls, but there just aren't enough of us, not yet. We need more immigrants - and adults, not children. Skilled adults, hopefully. Certainly, another mason would be really, really useful.

But we'll take what we can get. And if we don't get anybody, we'll still manage. Because we're the Rhyming Towers, and we'll do whatever it takes to make Summitspear a fortress of legend.

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Note: Part 2 is here.