Weekend Discussion

The holiday season is upon us. You know how I know? It takes me 40 minutes to find a parking spot whenever I go to a store of any kind. Recently, I went on a Blu-ray buying tear. It all got kick started with Amazon.ca selling the Planet of the Apes: 40th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray box set for $30. Since then, I've been snapping up deals all over the place.

But, $30? Come on! That's a great price to see the rise and fall of those damn dirty apes... and that movie series.

  • Alice O'Connor: I probably shan't play anything this weekend other than my own special digital coal, which I'll be making for naughty children at a game jam.
  • Brian Leahy: This weekend I'm going to attempt to finish Assassin's Creed 2, play more GT5 and Forza 3, Halo: Reach multiplayer, and perhaps even a bit of NFS: Hot Pursuit... of course, all of this has to happen along with jumping back into World of Warcraft for our upcoming Cataclysm coverage. Yikes!
  • Garnett Lee: More Gran Turismo 5, Dead Nation, and trying to resist being lured back into World of Warcraft.
  • Xav de Matos: I'm focusing my attention on wrapping up a few games I started, including God of War 3, Mafia 2, and Sniper: Ghost Warrior. And then it's a battle for my time between Gran Turismo 5 and Forza Motorsport 3.
  • Jeff Mattas: [Vacationing.]
  • Ozzie Mejia: Got my Black Friday shipment, so it's time to crack open Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

Xav de Matos was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
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    December 4, 2010 8:00 AM

    [deleted]

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      December 4, 2010 8:01 AM

      [deleted]

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        December 4, 2010 9:29 AM

        The labels on shadowdanes server are messed up on the render (position wise).

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        December 5, 2010 9:35 AM

        Just had one of those shits that come out of your ass like a can of whip creame

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          December 5, 2010 9:36 AM

          as i reply under server render, classic

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      December 4, 2010 8:02 AM

      [deleted]

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      December 4, 2010 8:03 AM

      First post of the chatty Eric; you've done good, real good. This place doesn't need me anymore.

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      December 4, 2010 8:04 AM

      does this game still look like ass? it was fun but started giving me eye cancer.

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      December 4, 2010 8:58 AM

      creepers declared war on spawn @shadowdanes - they attacked us from all sides!

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      December 4, 2010 9:32 AM

      I should take a break. Getting a bit burnt out, kinda.

      I need to find the right game style, and the right people to play with.

      Single player: Great fun, challenging, get's the adrenaline going. Very few bugs, no duping, no teleporting. It's hard. Was playing quite a bit yesterday, got scared a few times.

      PVE/Multiplayer: Duping is rampant, even on new servers, it seems. If someone wanted to play 'hardcore' with me, then we could just follow our own rules, and stay away from the dupers.

      PVP: Not complete enough to get into it too much. Vanilla game is really missing stuff, and even Towny still needs work.

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        December 4, 2010 9:40 AM

        [deleted]

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          December 4, 2010 9:43 AM

          Well there was the dupers right by spawn, they have quit now.

          I was more talking about Shadowdane's, but it's hard to say exactly how much is duped, since the Biome terrain mod made larger deposits than normal, so someone could find a lot of diamonds.

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            December 4, 2010 9:44 AM

            Bad grammar.

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            December 4, 2010 9:45 AM

            [deleted]

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              December 4, 2010 9:51 AM

              Also, it's interesting logging onto Merc1 and looking at peoples stuff, some people have tons of TNT and other things that look duped.

              Maybe the admins gave it to them, I don't know.

              Still, I figure once a duper, always a duper...at least until the bug is fixed.

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                December 4, 2010 10:39 AM

                i haven't duped anything, which explains why my place isn;t nearly done lol :(

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                  December 4, 2010 10:41 AM

                  On Merc1? I have (legit heh) supplies if you need something.

                  All my clay is real, I wonder if people think I duped it?

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                December 4, 2010 10:42 AM

                [deleted]

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                  December 4, 2010 10:52 AM

                  Well, there is "a lot", then there is a chest with stacks of 64. You won't find that much naturally, I think we can agree on that.

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                  December 4, 2010 1:21 PM

                  Creepers don't seem to "wander into" my place anymore, as much as "spawning right outside the light range of torches I just placed and then proceed to explode behind me".

                  In other news, I need to find a place to build that I can actually build on (Shadowdane's server). For some reason, I can no longer remove tree blocks where I am. But of course creepers can still destroy --at their leisure- what I've already built.

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                  December 4, 2010 9:34 PM

                  You're right. Our town had a collection of 40 gun powder before I built the trap system. Now 1 out of 5 times that I go to the collection room there is a stack of 5-8 gun powder. It adds up quickly.

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                  December 5, 2010 9:16 AM

                  I was talking about Merc server, no monsters. People were definitely duping (or giving stuff by admins).

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            December 4, 2010 3:33 PM

            So that's why I've been finding so much? Damn!

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      December 4, 2010 10:55 AM

      A PVP trap thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1012&t=98900

      Maybe foo, ramasule, other people who build stuff like this could post their traps, or just get ideas from the thread.

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        December 4, 2010 11:26 AM

        I've already built lots aroudn teh server
        More complex than that as well.

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          December 4, 2010 11:26 AM

          Just got the tnt today to arm them.

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        December 4, 2010 7:43 PM

        Reptile builds these all over my server. they are FUN!!

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      December 4, 2010 11:10 AM

      foo1. was there a rollback? I lost at least an hours work that 7hrs ago was there.

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        December 4, 2010 11:33 AM

        [deleted]

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        December 4, 2010 12:17 PM

        [deleted]

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          December 4, 2010 12:21 PM

          so everything during my prime play time, explains it.

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            December 4, 2010 12:33 PM

            I cant help you rebuild if your not online

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            December 4, 2010 3:37 PM

            Amika, I was there working too... lost a LOT of blocks :(

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          December 4, 2010 1:10 PM

          :(

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          December 4, 2010 9:39 PM

          I rebuilt my house to where it was. I still need to make the bridge I had made.

          The main issue I had is that my inventory was still the same as if I had completed the buildings. I had used up stacks of material, but had nothing to show for it.

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      December 4, 2010 12:30 PM

      I hate my Java crashes. It gets to about 1 GB (?) of memory usage, then hard locks.

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        December 4, 2010 12:40 PM

        Multisync fire ahoy!

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        December 4, 2010 1:01 PM

        Yeah, that thing was friggin impressive.

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        December 4, 2010 1:09 PM

        Server down? :(

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          December 4, 2010 1:10 PM

          burnt down :(

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            December 4, 2010 1:13 PM

            You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you. God damn you all to hell!

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          December 4, 2010 2:05 PM

          i managed to remote in and restart it... if it dies again though, I might not be somewhere were I can restart it from. Not to mention I might be too drunk! lol

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            December 4, 2010 2:16 PM

            Still down from my end of the intertubes.

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              December 4, 2010 2:20 PM

              Still dead for me.

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              December 4, 2010 2:23 PM

              fuck it died again... um I hopefully got this script right, it should auto-restart if the server gets another Unhandled Exception.

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                December 4, 2010 2:41 PM

                It continues to crash. :(

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                  December 4, 2010 2:52 PM

                  yah i noticed it sends me an email everytime it restarts the server... no idea what is causing this to crash. But it should restart everytime it crashes now.

                  I'm hoping its the Biome Mod and the update this guy is working on fixes this!

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        December 4, 2010 1:11 PM

        lol damn

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        December 4, 2010 1:26 PM

        Light it up, yo!

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        December 4, 2010 2:33 PM

        I can't login to your sever :( Keeps timing out

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      December 4, 2010 1:12 PM

      hah check your sources, I won't be majorly back in the game until next Wed

      I may pop in to check some things out this evening, though.

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      December 4, 2010 2:02 PM

      Clay, the map mod is Zan's minimap: http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=24572578

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      December 4, 2010 3:01 PM

      Do we all play some where else now? I havent played much SMP since before the halloween update, but I joined merc's a few times this past week and it's been empty. also are boats broke?

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        December 4, 2010 3:05 PM

        yah most people are on foo's or Shadowdane's -- a few on m0rfus from time to time I think.

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      December 4, 2010 3:35 PM

      [deleted]

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        December 4, 2010 4:54 PM

        It was bound to happen sooner or later.

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      December 4, 2010 4:06 PM

      I got the Minimap + HD mods working, but this Misa texture pack is bad.

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      December 4, 2010 4:57 PM

      Congrats to EricZBA first one to find and and solve one of my puzzles.
      I hope your reward was worth it!

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      December 4, 2010 9:24 PM

      foo1 down 10:24 mst

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      December 4, 2010 9:37 PM

      Paging Shadowdane... your server has been booting everyone off every 2 minutes for the last few hours.

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        December 5, 2010 1:18 AM

        It stopped shortly after this.

        I surmise it was due to a specific user, someone must have been doing something that was prone to crashing with this mix of mods. Not sure if anyone was exploring or not, feels like the server slows down bad when the terrain generator is running.

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          December 5, 2010 7:10 AM

          was it happening before I got on last night? because i just logged on now, I'm the only one on and still getting dropped frequently. is it me!? :(

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            December 5, 2010 7:50 AM

            It seems to be pretty random but seems to be related to when players join the server... I'm going to turn off all the hey0 plugins and see if it continues.

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      December 4, 2010 11:54 PM

      FOO1 IS BACK UP, GUYS!

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      December 5, 2010 2:02 AM

      who was trying to clear the northern continent of dirt on merc1? this might have helped: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=93886

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        December 5, 2010 2:11 AM

        Great videos.

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        December 5, 2010 5:50 AM

        lol what the fuck, some people have the most random ideas for mods.

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        December 5, 2010 7:45 AM

        Damn, only the edited version of Spiderbait's "Black Betty" is available on the Zune Marketplace...

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        December 5, 2010 7:52 AM

        I love the second video on that page. Those massive caverns created by the second set of explosions rock.

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      December 5, 2010 3:21 AM

      Is foo1 still having problems?

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        December 5, 2010 4:31 AM

        [deleted]

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        December 5, 2010 6:01 AM

        just emailed foo about it

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          December 5, 2010 5:24 PM

          Oops. I thought I emailed foo last night but accidentally sent it to a different person with the same name. He is going to be a bit confused...

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      December 5, 2010 4:51 AM

      check out what I found

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      December 5, 2010 6:23 AM

      need some inspiration, I want to do something with circuits

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      December 5, 2010 7:01 AM

      [deleted]

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      December 5, 2010 7:39 AM

      Wooo, 700000 sales now! What's the closest Mersenne prime to 700000?
      http://twitter.com/notch/status/11426646825377792

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      December 5, 2010 7:52 AM

      I did the +lbl thing, nothing showed up on the map - do I need to put it on the surface or something?

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      December 5, 2010 8:04 AM

      Shadowdane, what happens if you uninstall the Biome mod? I know it'd make for ugly landscape, but is it possible? I mean the currently generated chunks would stay, and new ones (from exploration) would be the default terrain generation.

      I don't know, maybe make a backup of the server and try it? Can't be any worse than what's happening now, heh. If things get messed up you can just restore.

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        December 5, 2010 10:35 AM

        I'm pretty sure he said the game would actually fuck up all the terrain that currently exists as well. Or rather, would fuck it up as soon as there was someone to view it.

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      December 5, 2010 8:12 AM

      I did it last night.

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      December 5, 2010 8:28 AM

      Seemed to crash during a save, that time.

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      December 5, 2010 8:45 AM

      If I'm reading this right, Hey0 has had a bunch of updates in the last couple days?

      http://hudson.lukegb.com/job/Minecraft_Mod/ (from http://forum.hey0.net/showthread.php?tid=1433 )

      Last version I know of was 130, now it's up to 153?

      I guess the problem is that other plugins/mods might not work with 153. Still, it might fix some of the crash bugs, or something?

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      December 5, 2010 8:59 AM

      First Shack post ever!!!! At least as far as I can remember...been a ShacKlurker since 1999. I am posting so I can play Minecraft on foo1 -- need permissions...Help!

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      December 5, 2010 9:44 AM

      Can infinite water be 2 deep, or only 1 deep?

      I made a nice little moat, 2 deep, with no flowing water. I thought it was infinite, so I took a thing from a middle block...but it messed up and now it's flowing.

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        December 5, 2010 10:02 AM

        [deleted]

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          December 5, 2010 10:34 AM

          Then I don't know why it turned from still to flowing when I took some out. :(

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            December 5, 2010 11:44 AM

            miscommunication is all. You can create a pool at one, then go deeper like foo says. But once it's deeper you can't take without the flow. Can only take from 1 deep and keep it still

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      December 5, 2010 9:57 AM

      Shadowdane's Server -- Crashing is being caused by new tree growth! So don't plant saplings!

      Apparently its a bug in the BiomeTerrain mod... when ever a custom tree would spawn the server would crash.

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      December 5, 2010 9:58 AM

      Anyone else getting 502 Bad Gateway on most minecraftforum.net threads?

      http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1012&t=72952

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      December 5, 2010 10:03 AM

      2nd post! woot! Can someone on foo1 add my son. His account is Mister Zurkon. Thanks in advance!

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      December 5, 2010 10:26 AM

      multisync told it to crash, and it did. What a jerk!

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        December 5, 2010 10:34 AM

        yea i'm done with this shit for a bit. maybe i'll download tha shadow broker dlc

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          December 5, 2010 10:37 AM

          Well he's updating the mod, hopefully that fixes it.

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      December 5, 2010 10:39 AM

      [deleted]

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      December 5, 2010 10:50 AM

      if you want to create 2+ deep infinite water, what's the process?

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      December 5, 2010 11:58 AM

      note to self: Do not modify blocks near wooden pressure plates.

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      December 5, 2010 12:00 PM

      there needs to be a difficulty past "Hard" that greatly increases the world mob spawn rate. hard is okay but i can go entire night cycles only seeing maybe one mob

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        December 5, 2010 12:01 PM

        hell, creepers are the only mobs that are worth worrying about. anything you can kill with melee without it ever touching you (i.e. every mob except creepers) is too easy. just carry a sword with you and you'll never die. even if a spider leaps at you, you can just hit it before it gets to you. also i think on the "harder than hard" difficulty, all of the mobs should run faster than you

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          December 5, 2010 12:03 PM

          and on "harder than hard" all mobs would be present and continually spawning both day and night. no burning to death at dawn. spiders would be aggressive both day and night.

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            December 5, 2010 12:05 PM

            So you're looking to just play a completely different and not at all fun game then?

            Because at least in MP (which is all I play), there's plenty of mobs, zombies have absurd melee range, and dying to mobs is pretty easy to do. And the combat in the game is so wonky that "more challenge" isn't something it needs.

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              December 5, 2010 12:11 PM

              that's why this would be an additional, totally optional difficulty level. i do builder-only shit on mercfox1, this is my singleplayer game. i'd assume the difference on MP is bugginess and that singleplayer is how it's intended to work. a zombie will fuck me up pretty much instantly if i fuck up, but from what i can tell my melee range is further than theirs are. if i time it right, he won't even touch me, and it takes 5 swings to take him down.

              i'm not sure how changing the spawn rates is a completely different game, though.

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                December 5, 2010 12:18 PM

                it's important to note that on single player, all swings always hit correctly. i've never had a problem with hits not registering. that may account for a significant difference between SP and MP combat. it's not really wonky at all on SP

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                  December 5, 2010 6:27 PM

                  Okay, I haven't really touched SP at all. I just assumed it had the same mechanics.

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                    December 5, 2010 6:28 PM

                    Most of the differences at the moment is likely because Notch is fine-tuning netcode

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                      December 5, 2010 6:40 PM

                      I'm not sure fine-tuning is the word I'd use.

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                        December 5, 2010 6:50 PM

                        Well it's clearly doing something, otherwise there'd be no damage in SMP :P

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                December 5, 2010 2:52 PM

                Build yourself a diamond sword and mobs only take a couple of hits, which is even better

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              December 5, 2010 2:28 PM

              How does giving the player an increased ability to tweak game settings to their liking create a "completely different" game?

              In SoF2, Raven had scaled difficulty levels. As soon as you tweaked any of the various difficulty settings, the difficulty changed to "custom".

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            December 5, 2010 12:11 PM

            I think there are mods to do what you want, not sure if they are single player or multiplayer though. I want things more difficult, but not exactly how you are talking.

            I see plenty of monsters on the surface, but hardly any underground.

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              December 5, 2010 12:13 PM

              really i just want some more game modes in general. with multiple game save slots available it would be fun for some changes of pace

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          December 5, 2010 12:16 PM

          [deleted]

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        December 5, 2010 12:08 PM

        you apparently haven't seen outside the walls of my castle. I've usually got 2-3 spiders, 3-4 creepers, a couple zombies and a could skeletons

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          December 5, 2010 12:14 PM

          is that SP or MP? i wonder if the spawn rates differ. i'm playing on single player

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            December 5, 2010 2:54 PM

            The spawn rates seem drastically different in MP. I've got about 50% odds on it being Notch raising the difficulty for MP, and 50% on him accidentally leaving debug options on

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              December 5, 2010 5:52 PM

              the more people in the area the more monsters will spawn... if I'm pretty much alone i don't get many monsters spawning. If there are a few people around its definitely more!

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      December 5, 2010 12:01 PM

      LOL, i dont think its possible to have MOAR trees on fire.

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      December 5, 2010 2:12 PM

      Where hath my kingdome mates gone

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      December 5, 2010 4:46 PM

      http://forum.hey0.net/showthread.php?tid=1634

      ...modifies how creepers behave.

      -> under a certain altitude (default : 55), they will blow up as usual, not making mines any safer
      -> above this altitude, they will deal configurable area damage, then disappear, mimic-ing an explosion, without the world being damaged.


      Maddog would like that, probably.

      Maybe set it to 62 or something, then we could have surface transport (without it getting blown up), yet otherwise things wouldn't be too different.

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        December 5, 2010 5:18 PM

        And then shut down foo1 and move back to mercfox

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          December 5, 2010 9:58 PM

          it would be a good way to get mobs on merc1 with its preexisting ~creative~ stuff.

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            December 5, 2010 10:00 PM

            Huh, interesting idea. Although I'm sure there is some construction of 'cool stuff' underground, so not everything would be safe, but maybe everything that you can see on the render.

            I'd play on it, be fun to see how things are with our built up bases.

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        December 5, 2010 5:36 PM

        Interesting.

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        December 5, 2010 5:46 PM

        boring

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          December 5, 2010 5:47 PM

          boring

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          December 5, 2010 5:57 PM

          Well, I've said it before, the problem is nothing really spawns in 'mines', and often there is nothing in natural caves, either. So yeah.

          Not the right way to fix the 'problem'.

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            December 5, 2010 6:06 PM

            [deleted]

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              December 5, 2010 6:16 PM

              especially when you get near spawners

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              December 5, 2010 6:18 PM

              yup same here... i got killed by a horde of zombies in a cave

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              December 5, 2010 6:30 PM

              I've found stuff in natural caves, but never anywhere near what spawns outside.

              And in mines, I don't think I've ever seen anything spawn as long as you leave torches (and why wouldn't you?)

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                December 5, 2010 6:35 PM

                [deleted]

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                December 5, 2010 6:54 PM

                I think the 'less monsters in caves thing' is due to the way Notch's monster spawning code works. Notch has changed this since the boo update, but read this for an idea of the rough framework: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=40917

                Note 1) and 6) in the main spawn loop.

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                  December 5, 2010 7:23 PM

                  I get 502 Bad Gateway on that (and most, but not all, minecraftforum threads). It's weird.

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                December 5, 2010 11:03 PM

                fewer monsters in caves because caves are smaller than the surface, with fewer blocks for monsters to randomly spawn on. That said, I run into toms of them in my singleplayer world. Streams of zombies, creepers and skeletons that just don't quit in caves.

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              December 5, 2010 6:50 PM

              Meeeee too. Usually if I die, it's in a natural cave.

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      December 5, 2010 5:17 PM

      Wow I found a really cool, huge mesa, with an aboveground cave under it. It's hard to explain, but we got the 3 admins up here to see it heh.

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        December 5, 2010 6:58 PM

        I just took the new gate to it. It's amazing...but full of undead.

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          December 5, 2010 7:22 PM

          Yeah...I don't think it'll look as cool with a bunch of lights in it, though. :(

          So it's a literal tourist trap!

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      December 5, 2010 6:51 PM

      So, are Ice Blocks basically like glass at this point? What makes them melt?

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      December 6, 2010 12:41 AM

      Shadowdane: Snow on your server:
      http://shadowdane.shackspace.com/Minecraft/ShackDC-Gmap/index.html?x=500&y=72&z=3980&zoom=7

      multisync found it, it can exist, it just appears to be exceptionally rare.

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        December 6, 2010 1:01 AM

        He ran for hours looking for snow, didn't he? Yet he passed it fairly close to the beginning...

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      December 6, 2010 4:00 AM

      What's with the big gapping hole out front of Endor? What happened to all of the pretty snow and ice? WTF IS GOING ON HERE?

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        December 6, 2010 5:06 AM

        Blame ramasule for that one. He was testing anti-personnel traps. I told him to clean it up! Keep teleporting him into the mob trap until he does!

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      December 6, 2010 4:26 AM

      Still unable to play :( Motherboard is fucked + no money...

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