Minecraft! (single player dwarf fortress)

I love the title on this thread!

A co-worker wants to help her 8-year-old play with a friend across town and is balking at a $9.99/month rate she saw somewhere. Are there any good, cheap options open to parents like her? I didn’t bother asking her about versions or Vanilla vs. modded.

If you can leave a PC running, you can very easily run your own server. Which means your coworker could easily have their child’s friend connecting to it.

It does potentially require someone confident enough to read a FAQ on how to make their router route the traffic to the pc running the server, but that’s it. It takes very little time.

I guess the console versions are another option you can easily play with a friend.

Wendelius

Thanks!

I have a feeling that’s more than she’d be willing to take on alone. She wasn’t even clear on what a router was when I tested those waters. Hmm.

You can find server hosting in the $3-$5 range pretty easily.

Fired up a new instance of Minecraft over the weekend using Resonant Rise 4 via the AT Launcher. Works great, but I have a few questions I was hoping someone might help me with:

  1. What version of BDCraft (or PureBDCraft) is compatible with Resonant Rise 4? My game was crashing during launch attempts with that texture pack in place so I pulled it.
  2. Where’s the best place to go for detailed info about crafting/building? Particularly Industrialcraft2. Resources for the magic system/items would also be great. I found an outdated wiki, a semi-active subreddit and a scattering of youtubes but nothing great yet.
  3. In an old Let’s Play, I saw someone build an enormous quarry by setting up a large frame of transponders to define the horizontal demensions. The device would rack back and and forth across the top of an area and remove one level at a time inside it. It did not resemble the Void Miner at all. It felt more like a Buildcraft or Industrialcraft thing than Env. Tech. (Edit: Finally found info on the BuildCraft version here and I think it was ported to IC2 based on this. Just have to verify in-game.)

Related to #2 above, I mastered some of the IC basics but can’t figure out how pumps and item pipes actually work (or is it not the item pipe that I should be using for transferring items/water/lava?). Tried using a pump with first a geothermal generator, then just water, and finally with item sorting and wasn’t successful.

Does Resonant Rise have any internal documentation? I’ve seen a few item descriptions, but not many and I’ve seen zero info within the game interface about how to set up these items.

Got it! The quarry, anyway. It’s now known as a Miner, which covers a pretty small area (I think 9x9). I knew of it but didn’t notice the Advanced Miner, which starts at 33x33 and can be upgraded to cover a 65x65 area. That’s what I wanted to make. Expensive to make but it accomplishes a lot and looks fairly simple to operate.

Resonant Rise is super, by the way. Building and crafting is so so much smoother than anything I’ve experienced in Minecraft to date. The only thing is you’re kinda on your own to figure out what all the thousands of items actually are.

Still no idea on the texture pack or material/item piping thing.

On question 2, you’re already on it, YouTube is where it’s at. Don’t forget whatever forums are available for a mod or modpack.

If you don’t play mod packs often, it’s actually easier to track down the specific modpack of a good Let’s Play series and load that older or less modded version.

I mostly play FTB packs and those seem to have more followers and thus more videos to look up things.

Whats the modpack liike, @barstein?

Bear in mind that I’ve only put in a dozen or so hours or so, over last weekend. Also should mention that although I have hundreds of hours in MC vanilla and MC slightly modded, until now I’ve only spent a few dozen or so trying out various FTB/AT modpacks over the past couple of years.

Generally, this pack strikes me as being very well-balanced, considering that it includes 245 mods, and I get the impression, judging from youtubes and such, that it’s matured and improved quite a bit between version 1 and 4. The other modpacks I tried weighed too heavily in one design direction or another, or were limited by maintainer compromises. Personally, I’m really appreciating having easy access to such a vast amount of very optional content while still able to create the play experience that I’m looking for without being too distracted by other unwanted mods/features. (Of course, at the moment I’m still mostly using just IndustrialCraft2, haven’t dabbled in the magic stuff yet.)

Sorry, it’s a broad question; what in particular were you wondering about the modpack, @Skipper?

Regarding YouTube series, this is the one that inspired me to dig into Minecraft again recently: Sipsco Dirt Factory, with Sips and Sjin (2013). In that I think they were using Tekkit at the time, which bears many similarities to IndustrialCraft2 (and, I think, to BuildCraft). Sips and Sjin are total clowns, but they’re fun to listen to and I learned a lot about advanced systems in Minecraft through them.

Those guys have put out a TON of series/episodes on a bunch of different channels, including the above, and have used a variety of modpacks. This episode from a different series is my absolute favorite at the moment:

You know, I’m chuckling right now with the title of this thread.

The link between Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress is tenous at best, and if anything, Minecraft is more known for the multiplayer.

Just getting a feel for what type of pack it was. The ones on the launcher all seem a little different in subtle ways. I’ve had so much more fun with modded Minecraft than vanilla over time, and for a while had a server that my nephews played on as well as one gaming buddy. I’ve also played on some public and private mod servers. So much fun.

I tend to do the same things when exploring new mod packs:
Get a feel for how mining works (what’s been added, where ores are at based on level or biome)
Find out which ore processing I’m going to use to start
Find out what food system I need to use
Get a weapon and armor
Look at basic power generation

I’ve used IC2 in the past but I’m trying to remember the history there. I think there was some drama over either it for the piping/circuits it used. A lot of people hate the wrench as a tool. A lot more think automation and ore processing are better in other mods. I’ve never had a problem with it. I prefer Thermal Expansion over IC2 though.

A lot of threads here start the same way. People aren’t sure what a game actually is, but they start a thread on them searching for more people playing it. Then it just sticks and people remember it for the title.

[quote=“TurinTur, post:4818, topic:60133, full:true”]… if anything, Minecraft is more known for the multiplayer.
[/quote]
WTF.5

Same. The first thing I do after exploring the map a bit is check out the basics (same list of things). If things are too crazy different or feel poorly implemented/balanced, I shy away and try something else.

I really like the look and feel of IC2 machines and I like how power and electricity works. I managed to figure out how to set up a bunch of solar arrays connected to a couple of Batboxes (tier 1 energy storage), which in turn send power to a level 1 transformer, then a level 2 transformer, then to an MFE (tier 2 energy storage), and finally to an array of Batboxes that connect to my machines.

Haven’t tried Thermal Expansion yet, sorry, but it’s included in the Resonant Rise modpack.

Also not sure about ore/item processing yet, still trying to figure out how pumping and piping works in IC2.

I dislike the IC2 wrench as well because it feels gimicky, but the Electric Wrench upgrade helps a lot (just have to recharge it periodically).

As for the rest of the pack, I still have a lot to explore. Once I master ore/item processing and mass mining, I’ll start checking out magic. And bees.

…in comparison with Dwarf Fortress.

Maybe he meant single character? Probably discussed somewhere in the thread.

It is funny. As this thread is seven years old, it seems the Dwarf Fortress itch has definitely had a few scratches since then. don’t think we are done yet. But man, Minecraft is one for the history books, that is for sure.

So the issue folks had with the wrench tool was that it would sometimes destroy your IC2 machines. I’m assuming that’s been fixed but there ya go. You mentioning all the effort of IC2 just reminded me why I shifted to thermal expansion. There are some great intros to it on YouTube, but once you get over the hurdle of the interface for the machines, it becomes really nice with how you can completely customize inputs and outputs, etc. If I recall correctly, they were easier to build as well, which explains the initial popularity. Players always take the path of least resistance. :)

And bees, geez that mod is like going down a rabbit hole. So much to it and things to do with it. Between that and Thaumcraft, I find it amazing that people can think out super detailed and amazing mod addons like those.

I have to be careful reading this thread, it will lead to me starting up a new instance. :)

Also, for comparison I usually play FTB Ultimate.

Industrial Craft fell out of favor with me a long time ago. I initially liked it because it made a lot of things much easier. Then the devs were like, “lets put in a lot of stupid rules to fuck with the player” and I stopped using it. My favorite “Industrial” mod is mechanism which is sadly not commonly part of mod packs, followed by Thermal Expansion.

If anyone here is interested in making mods, I have two mod ideas for you. A simple one, and a grand one.

The simple mod: A simple tool like the survey makers from build craft. Only these have a little UI to configure them. You can place one on the ground and have highlight a grid for you on the ground. You could set it to mark every N blocks up to a distance of X blocks.

This way if you wanted to place something every 10 blocks it would be easy to see each 10th block. Each of these blocks should have a 3d + symbol placed in them and have a column of light or something to highlight them. This is because terrain is not flat, and so if you go up a kill you can still see the Nth block out and then you can dig down to find the + symbol to know you are on the same level as the original marker.

Finally add some basic shape so instead of a grid, if you wanted to highlight the blocks in a circle of radius R, you could easily do that as well. Maybe as spheres and columns too.


The grand mod idea. Start with Something like FTP Infinity pack, and add magical crops to it, because you are going to need a huge amount of resources for this.

The idea is that you are going to help turn a small village into a giant metropolis. The village will grow through many tiers. Like small village -> medium village -> … --> Large Town --> … --> Large city, etc…

Each tier of town requires a certain number of resources every day. So the first tier village might want 10 carrots, 10 potatoes, 10 coal / charcoal and 10 wood per day. If it gets it, it then it will upgrade to a medium village which might want 40 of the previous items and 3 more food types and a small supply of iron for example.

Then even later on, they might want more finished goods. In addition to basic foods, they might want TV dinners which require tin trays and other prepared foods.

Each tier requires more of everything from the previous tier plus a few new items. There should be a UI to tell you all this. The delivery mechanism should simple be some kind of block you can piple things into.

Each tier the village grows physically larger. The goal is to get to the top tier city.