1861

It really doesn’t take that long to lay scaffolding. I had two different types: glass and dirt. Glass is better to visualize what you’re doing (it doesn’t get in the way as much when viewing from a distance), but dirt is much, much faster to remove. Just as I’m typing this, I think wool would be a very good scaffolding if you’re not building with flammable materials, as you can burn it away with one strike of the flint.

I did the dragon near the main drag, FWIW and I had to build lots of scaffolding to build it. The climbs back up were wasting far more time than scaffolding construction costs.

Of course, now with the SHFT key that makes creeping over edges so much easier, I wonder if falling is that common? Are you using the SHFT key and still falling? (I haven’t build anything tall in a while).

1862

I use to play Minecraft with that mindset. So I can understand it.

Maybe fall damage can be disabled with a attribute, and based on groups, so there can be a group of “pure builders” that are not affected fall damage.

If anything, I think a lot of people share your style, so the game will support it one way or another…

1863

The Skycanal is a 6 block wide glass and marble water filled canal up 4 blocks below maximum height. It runs from Spawn to the SW corner of the map, and took two of us days to make.

Shift is used for the initial pathfinding, there’s no other way to lay out anything into midair. It’s been essential for many of my builds. With constructions that are huge you need to maximize efficiency laying down additional blocks, so you run backwards down the initial path, clicking down and to the right and lay the adjoining block. This way you can build at run speed. You fall off a lot, hence the many laddered towers along its length. Even with these ladders in place falling off still means a run to the nearest ladder. Safely building scaffolding below it would be a construction bigger than anything on the server, and would dwarf the effort required for the canal. The area the canal leads to is built on plateaus, all up to maximum height allowed, and most of it involved lots of falling.

I made my many towers by first laying an outline down at ground level. You can run round it in circles and spiral your way up, but it’s not very quick. Quickest is to look down, keep your finger on jump and click blocks in, making a stack of blocks right up as high as you can. Drop down to the next, repeat. I like to use that method for larger walls too. I use scaffolding all the time, it was particularly essential for the Roman aqueduct. Under hanging constructions and inaccessible features require it. Even then, I still fall off a lot.

A technical solution would be nice and I’m sure it’s coming soon. It’s not a showstopper.

1864

I think Notch still intends to add Creative mode back in, which would be better for large-scale construction (back to not worrying about damage, at least), it’s just not his focus right now so we’ve had to ‘fake it’ in Survival mode. And if people want to do creative stuff in single-player, there are mods that add things like the ability to fly, to make maneuvering easier.

It does mean that when he does get around to it, we’ll have to decide if we really want a Creative server or a Survival server, though. Maybe the cross-server portals will be in place by then…

Edit: Neutralized another spider spawner over lunch and ran into my first invisible enemy, so it’s not just the ‘peaceful’ setting. There’s another update out now that’s supposed to fix a bunch of the monster-related problems, though.

1865

On the topic of scaffolding, I think bloodstone is the new “dirt.” It’s insanely quick to destroy and harvest, even with a stone pick.

1866

I’m guessing a server mod will be created that adds the ability to make certain people invincible. If I see something like that I’ll probably set it up, so the survivalists can die and us creatives can be happy.

1867

According to Notch’s Twitter, he’s planning on adding a server flag to disable falling damage, at least.

1868

Logged in last night after having not played for while… as soon as I logged in dead. I tried fighting back but that’s impossible because of lag, it seems impossible to avoid being hit. Definitely needs more work and personal spawn points are needed.

On another note, it’s very cool seeing all the new stuff in person.

1869

I also was instant killed on log in and lost all my stuff. I respawned in the void but /home worked. I tried walking back to the frontier but lag spiders which were impossible to fight effectively made short work of me. The server is down or something now…

1870

I was just on the server a little while ago, but yeah, it’s stuck logging in now. Probably authentication trouble again as minecraft.net isn’t responding.

Anyway, creepers are doubly annoying in SMP. Timing with them has always been tricky, but with network lag it seems almost impossible to engage them at close range and avoid an explosion, even with a block separating us. And bows don’t work, so you can’t take them down from a distance, either.

1871

1872

Well go on then, he needs a push!

1873

Awesome.

1874

New update today-

Bug fix list:

  • Swords and other weapons now deal damage properly
  • Added proper hurt animations and sounds to mobs and players
  • Fixed dead players logging in as invisible ghosts
  • Made arrows visible and deal damage
  • Hoes now produce proper seeds
  • Creepers make noises and animate before exploding
  • Explosions animate properly
  • No more infinite free arrows
  • Server logging now appends to server.log rather than overwriting it
  • Buttons and levers (and a few other blocks probably, it’s a general solution) animate properly
  • Fixed minecarts (and pigs!) moving twice as fast as they should when ridden.
  • The join server screen now remembers the last entered ip
  • Increased chunk saving frequency on the server
  • Leaving sneak mode no longer triggers a million sounds
  • You can now see sneaking players
  • Names of sneaking players aren’t visible through walls, and are visible a much shorter distance
  • Snowballs!!

I’ll monitor for bugs for a while, then head home!

[edit:]

Server 0.2.6_01 no longer gives everyone 64 snowballs on connecting

[edit:]

Server 0.2.6_02 and client 1.2.4_01 now spawn other monsters than ONLY CREEPERS EVERYWHERE

* The join server screen now remembers the last entered ip

YAY!

1875

Introduce some exciting game

1876

REPORTED

1877

There’s sneaking? Is that just the crouch/walk mode?

1878

Yeah, the shift-move.

1879

He… these images of creepers in a minecart always crack me up :-D
I lurk on the minecraft subbredit where you get this type of awesome images daily :-D

1880

And another update today with SMP fixes:

  • Fixed a rather bad memory leak bug in the server (entity position updates accumulated in orphaned player objects)
  • Riding carts and boats now works properly when you travel long distances.
  • Harvesting crops no longer yields fake seeds
  • Removed /home (sorry!)
  • Snowballs again!

Would be nice if large-scale minecart subways are finally actually workable now, especially with the removal of /home.