Minecraft: The End

Between the Torchlight 2 beta and Island Forge, I haven't had much time to play Minecraft lately. I went back in to take a look at the build so far, and I've found myself not very inspired to continue for two main reasons. The area I'm in is absolutely riddled with caves, including two huge ravines that criss-cross beneath my build site. Digging has become more a chore than fun, as everywhere I go there are vast empty spaces leading to gravity induced death. The other problem is I decided to change up how / what I was doing about half-way through the process, and it's taking more rebuilding than I anticipated to get something interesting going. At this point I've decided to shutter this build and start on a new project with a little more planning. I thought I'd share a few images from what I ended up with, as it doesn't totally suck.

Homicide: Who is John Doe?

This is part two of a solo play RPG I'm doing using the Mythic GM Emulator. The first part can be found here.

When we left, our main character Evan Stacy and his partner Jeff Long were just leaving the crime scene, but with no statement of intent as to where they were headed next (the next scene). The game context looked like this:

Chaos: 6
Characters

• Jeff Long, Evan's partner on the force
• Jeff's troubled relative in Indianapolis
• Evan's Rabbi on the force
• Evan's family
• Evan's wife
• Evan's professional contact
• The victim, an adult male
• The anonymous tipster
• The forensics team
• The shooter
• The rental office staff

Threads

• Who killed the victim
• Jeff has a relative in trouble
• Evan is on the road to divorce
• Rental records for the murder scene are missing

You may notice I added three entries, a thread for resolving who actually shot the victim, Jeff's troubled relative, and a character entry for the rental office staff. The first was so obvious I just forgot to write it down. The second I overlooked, and the third wasn't explicitly mentioned, but it was implied by the facts we uncovered last time. I also expanded the forensics team to include all the police at crime scene, Now, on with the show!

Homicide: Life on the Blog

As promised, back to the tabletop for some RPG goodness. I've been toying with the Mythic GM Emulator off and on for several years as a tool for solo play, a mechanic for throwing curve balls at players during play, and as a creative aid for world-building. I've decided to run a solo game here both to demonstrate how Mythic works, and to scratch an itch to play a solo game. This is the setup post.

Island Forge: Island Forging

Island Forge is an indie developed MMO adventure game / editor. I've already written an article focused on initial impressions and the game side of things, this time I'm going to talk more about the editor. After logging in to Island Forge, one of your options is the Islands tab. Through this interface you can create an island of your own and start the editor. The initial editor window looks like this:

Basic editor - click to embiggen

Playing With Island Forge

Island Forge is an indie-developed MMORPG that allows players to travel across player-created islands slaying monsters and pursuing quests and stories. The game is currently in beta test mode and the developer is looking for feedback, so I spent some time this weekend playing. Here are the results.

Minecraft - Then and Now

I played Minecraft off and on over the weekend, and fell into my usual trap of poking around on various projects with no specific goal. I tend to get distracted when I play this game, and this leads to me starting too many projects and not finishing them. Sunday I decided to clean up some loose ends.

Minecraft: Walls

This is a short one. I've been working on a wall design for the perimeter of my base of operations. These are the two best efforts (so far). What do you think? Both these images are huge, so click to enbiggen.

Stone topped

Wood topped

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Minecraft: Dig It

I've been playing a bit of Minecraft off and on over the last couple days, mostly working in and around home base, finishing off the greenhouse (really!), and doing some other construction. I've decided on a pretty organic building strategy. Using the hill as a base and expanding from there. There have been a few changes.

Minecraft: Build Mode

• Greenhouse: Check
• Wolf named Sarge: Check
• Giant torch beacon: Check
• Base blown up by a creeper: Check

Minecraft: Day Five and More

I've spent the last couple days grinding on a new layout for my other web site (the beta site is here if you care), and I'm ready to do some Minecraft. I think the one day per post format is a bit too restrictive, since I find myself pausing play to write or take screenshots fairly often. From now on I think I'll just play a while and write what happens.

Side note: I put up an index page, which I'll try to keep up to date as I write new entries for this series.

Minecraft: Day Three/Four - Greenhouse

After a night of consolidating the junk I picked up on day two, the sun comes up on another beautiful day in Minecraft. Unfortunately I can't see it, there's a hill in the way. Instead I get to listen to burning zombies and skeletons. Time to start work on my greenhouse.

Minecraft: Day Two - Hunger Games

After waiting out the first night in my little hovel, it's time to face day two! During the night I added a little more space to my hole in the wall shelter and put together a few more tools, including a sword and some extra torches. Today I need to find some food. Since I don't have any string, I can't fish or make a bow, and I'm not sure I want to start growing wheat just yet, so I'll probably try and kill some cows, pigs or chickens for meat. We'll see what the day brings (other than a creeper hovering outside the door).

Minecraft: Let's Play - Day One

A new day in Minecraft. It's been several months and a couple patches since I've played any significant amount,  so I thought I'd start a fresh game and share the experience. If you don't know what Minecraft is, I put together a brief starter guide a while back. Enough chatter, let's get digging!