It sure has been a while

Wow, I've been so busy making videos and stuff that I've kinda neglected this place. I haven't really written any new turtle scripts, so I don't have anything to publish on that front. But what I do have is a topic to talk about, and that topic is FTB Ultimate pack. There is talk of wanting to switch the server from Mindcrack to Ultimate, and I almost think we should. I'm not sure what will happen when/if we do though. If I can change the server over without having to restart the world, I might do it. If we have to start over though, there's no way.
Not every player on the server has weighed in, but I think most will be ok going along with whatever I decide. I know I'd love to get Mystcraft back, even though I barely touched it back in beta. I've looked at the mods we'd gain and lose and I'm not sure what to think. There's still no release date on Ultimate, but there's a beta version out people can try. I'd love to hear your opinions on it if you have any.

And we're back!

So Mining with Munchmo is back with a vengeance! And boy do I have some plans . . .
I'm finally going to get to work on my spawn house, and it's going to be epic! Or will it? I really don't know. I'm not a great builder, but it was suggested of me to build a Japanese style pagoda, so that's what I'm going to do. I figure a lot of people out there have made them, and there are pictures all over the internet that I can use for inspiration and guidance that I might actually be able to make one that looks decent.
Not only that, but the Nether has gotten a bit of an overhaul that I'll share with you guys soon, but I'm thinking of completely redoing the whole thing in the hopes of making it better, although it would be a lot of work. We'll just have to see how it goes.
Also, you remember my lair? Yeah, I'm done with that. I need to find a new home, and we'll be doing that together. I have an idea for what I want to make and where, but I haven't finalized anything yet so you can look forward to the adventure.

Mindcrack Public Server

I got in! For those of you who weren't lucky enough to ever make it into the Mindcrack Public Server, I've got a video uploading right now. I hope to maybe get back in at a later time, once it all dies down a little. I'm not really sure what it will be like at that point though.
Some of you might have noticed in my video something I didn't notice until after I put it together, turns out I got connected just a minute or two before they rebooted, which is what really kicked me.
For those interested, the address is mindcrack.mcprohosting.com

Daunting Project

So the newest episode of Mining with Munchmo is up now, and I've begun building a cave spider exp farm from some spawners a friend of mine found. Now, in the end, this is gonna be a good thing, the zombie spawner was great for exp, but getting it at three times the rate will be even better.
Now, the video is going to end up being 3 parts. Originally it was planned to only be 2, but I got so much footage for the first half that I ended up dividing that in two. I'll still be releasing the videos at the normal times, just means I'll be ahead a week or two.
I must say that I was procrastinating a bit on this project because I felt a bit overwhelmed with everything involved. I still feel that way a bit actually, even though all I have left is the drop-tower. Of course, I do plan on clearing the whole area around the spawners out and making it prettier too, but that's mostly just gonna be digging rocks. After the work I've done, I still may need to modify the design slightly, but so far it appears to be working ok.

National Margarita Day Fail

Boy, that was a mistake. I Just can't believe how it went from bad to worse! I guess I just got a bit cocky and it totally bottomed me out. I lost all the stuff I had, diamonds, iron, bookcases, obsidian, everything! Even if I was able to get back to where I died, there was no way I'd have made it in time. So, look forward to next episode where I go cave diving in the hopes of replacing even a fraction of what I lost.
This has taught me a valuable lesson though. I think from now on, I will place a chest at each place I sleep so that if I do die, I will at least have something to start over with. Put one of each tool, the best I can currently afford to lose.

Meandering forward!

So the votes were in and forward was the choice! This week we fight off creepers in the night as we continue walking around my vanilla server. I am beset upon by all sorts of monsters and bugs, but the lag was kept at bay!
I think restarting the server just before recording helps, although I still got hit with the weird bug where I get stuck in a spot and the one where the blocks around me change (or even disappear completely!) as I light them up.
With that video up, it's time to begin work on my next Mining with Munchmo! This time we're going to clear out the old chicken room to make way for a new farm! Silk touch is going to be even more important than ever, unless I want to try to run grass down 30 blocks, which I don't.
Wish me luck!

Zipper towers and SMP

So, I really thought this was gonna be a great idea and really easy to do, but after spending a LONG time working on it, seems that zipper towers don't work on a server?
I didn't find a good tutorial for the build till I was already halfway through with the process, even though I was doing it all wrong.
Eventually I found the right tutorial and figured out I had to start over. Even in the end I'm not sure I did it right. It looks like it should work, so either I did it right and it just won't work on SMP or I did it wrong and I have no idea where I messed up.
If you want to see the tutorial, you can find it here.

There it is

Another new Meandering is in the bag. Just got done uploading it and it is now available for your viewing pleasure. I'm not sure why, but I was suffering from a lot of lag issues, which I think I may have fixed, but I won't know until next week's episode.
In today's episode we talk about some more changes to the rules of this game. Instead of sleeping at night, I have to walk around and light up the world while fighting off monsters!
Mojang just released a new weekly snapshot! So look forward to a video about that one really soon.
Then tomorrow night I'll start recording my new series temporarily dubbed Mo' Angels, please feel free to leave me any suggestions for that one!

Let's get this party started!

So I just made my newest Mining with Munchmo public, it is up for viewing! I spend a lot more time working on my underground lair making it prettier, and so far this is just the tip of the iceberg. I've some major plans for renovation.
After widening the tunnel and getting all the clay I need (well, at the time I thought it was enough, but I realized now that I need some more) I begin to lay out the next phase of design. I need lava, and a lot of it! But before I do that, I'm going to replace that damned spinning minecart track to the surface with something nicer. Look for the next Mining with Munchmo where we'll build a zipper tower!
Now it's time for me to record another Meandering. . . Stay tuned!

Another new video is up!

Got another new video up. Episode 11 of Mining with Munchmo. In this episode I take you around the server and show off some of the recent changes and things the other players have been working on.
I implemented the PhysicalShop plugin for the players to use because I felt it would be beneficial for the players to have a decent trading system with each other. I'm not sure how much use we'll actually get out of it, but at least it gives me a way to turn all the rotten flesh I get from the zombie farm into something I can use. The values of everything I just kind of pulled out of my head, but luckily the other players seem okay with them.
Unfortunately, some of the players don't quite grasp how to use the shops yet, but I hope in time they'll figure it out. I'm trying to do my best to keep this server mostly legit while also making things a little bit easier for the kids who play on it.
Stay tuned for the next episode where I'll begin overhauling my minecart tunnel to the exp farm!

Stupid Youtube is Stupid

So, overnight I uploaded a new Mining with Munchmo video featuring another trip to the nether! But for some reason the video has been flagged as containing copyrighted material. The real problem I have is that the dispute form talks about whether I think it contains the copyrighted material, yet nowhere does it even mention what is actually being claimed as copyrighted! Something called the "Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society" has laid claim to something within the video, a video that is not even publicly available now.
It seems that within mere moments after filing the dispute, the claim is just gone now. This really seems like a malicious abuse of the system by a third party (an affiliate of the RIAA, I'm sure) to make money off other people's hard work. I understand people being upset for not getting credit for their art or losing money due to piracy, but I really don't think any third party should be allowed to claim infringement for another unless explicitly directed to do so.

Meander with me now

So, 30 Minecraft videos, wow. I'm kinda surprised at myself for that. And over only 5 months? That averages out to be more than one video a week. Obviously it hasn't been too hard, cause they're really fun to make, and I just love playing Minecraft. The hardest part is putting them together, and I still have some issues when it comes to that. I kinda wish I had a good opening, I tried putting something together once, but it really didn't work for me.
Once again, thanks to all my current subscribers, it makes me happy to know that I don't totally suck, and some people find me interesting. As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome.
Links, lists and video behind the cut.

Finishing touches

In today's thrilling conclusion we find out hero in the depths of his branch mine in search of diamonds, in the harrowing desert digging for sand and waiting patiently for zombies to spawn.
I eventually got sick of digging for diamonds so ended up going topside for the first time in ages, and realized that what looked like it should have been a snow biome actually was one. This world was first started in 1.8, which if I remember correctly didn't have any snow.
Stay tuned for my next episode where I have fun with my zombie farm and venture into the nether.
Video behind the cut.

Putting it all together

So, I'm in the process of editing the fourth episode of Meandering together. I start by taking a look around the world that's already been explored and finish filling in the map that I created previously. After that I take a nice long boat ride to a whole new area of the world. You'll get a quick look at some of the stuff that the children have built on the server. This is the first video of this series that I recorded outside of the initial livestream I did when 1.0 was released. The video turned out to be a bit longer than I would have liked, compared to the other three in the series. Turns out I got so much footage I ended up splitting it into two episodes. Unfortunately that means you'll not get a new world map from me in this post, but you'll get one next time.

Meandering E03

The third video in this series is up. Unfortunately, it turns out I somehow played for over an hour during the livestream without actually recording any video locally. To cover what you might have missed between Episode 2 and 3, read on. During that time, I had a couple people join the livestream, who eventually joined me on the server, Kschwizzle and Pawbuttox. I found a nice little village with some interesting things nearby! If you want, you can see the entirety of the broadcast on my twitch.tv channel. You might notice a distinct difference between the first and second segments of my video here. Remember that I was playing for about 3 hours straight, so my excitement and energy were kinda wearing down. After the cut you can see what's happened with the world. My son and his cousin decided they wanted to play creative, so they built a whole bunch of stuff around the spawn.

Meandering E02

Video two is up! This one takes place immediately after the first. You can see it below the cut. This was early on during my livestream, cut down to a bite sized piece. If you want, you can view the whole livestream on my twitch.tv channel. I won't be posting a copy of the world map here, because it didn't change much between these two videos.

Minecraft is released!

So, in honor of the Minecraft release, I posted a quick video showing off my BC/IC world. I had that one uploaded as the livestream of the Minecon opening ceremonies were going. Then, just as the game was released, I updated to Minecraft 1.0 and started up a new vanilla server with a fresh world and livestreamed for like 3 hours! The livestream is available in my archives at twitch.tv and I've also begun cutting up the footage into more interesting little videos as part of the new series I'm doing for youtube. As I write this blog post I'm uploading the first video. I'm going to try to make these a bit shorter than my other videos too, but we'll see how that goes. After the cut, you can see find the first part of my new youtube series and also a map of the world as I left it after the livestream.

Not liking my alternatives

So, after getting everything setup and working on my existing world in Buildcraft/Industrialcraft, things went horribly wrong. It seems that any time I place any block there's a chance it will crash my minecraft. Now, I'm not at all sure what the actual cause is/was but from looking at everything it seems it's related to buildcraft. So I posted to their sourceforge page, and have been eagerly awaiting their response. I've made sure everything is up to date, all my files match what they should be, etc. But, during my testing, I also started a new world to see if that would affect anything, and it did. At least, I think it did. So, in a new world (same seed even) it appears to work ok, I placed blocks randomly, put everything where it should be, all that stuff, and it seems to not crash, but it might also be that I don't have all the same stuff going on in the world. So I've decided I'm going to leave it with the new empty world, and give myself some starting resources (a quarry, some iron, etc) and hope the problem doesn't keep happening. I would love to keep with the existing world, but it just doesn't seem like it'll work for me.

New server up!

So, with all the playing of Industrialcraft/Buildcraft I've been doing lately, I decided it would be soooo much cooler to move my world onto the server so that all the mining and stuff would keep going while I wasn't there. It would be so nice to just setup a miner, and come back later to a chest full of goodies. The big problem is, I just finally got my first quarry setup in the SSP world I setup, so I didn't want to lose all that progress. I went through all the steps, setup the server and WHAM! crash. Buildcraft wasn't happy. I was running my SSP in 2.2.0 and the server in 2.2.1, not sure if that's the problem, but trying to move my SSP over to the server as the world there just didn't work. Java errors every time I started it up. As a test, I decided to just start a new world with the same seed. World loaded up fine, no crashes, so I jumped in it, and the world was totally different. I have a feeling that the world gen code portion of one of the mods is different enough to completely change the world. Now, in a new world, none of the crafted stuff for buildcraft is there, so it's possible that as soon as I try to get a setup going like I had in my old world, it'll just totally crash again.
As an added measure of testing, I updated my SSP game to 2.2.1 and loaded up the world and it came up just fine, so I'm at a loss as to what I should do. I did see that according to SpaceToad, 2.2.1 is still really buggy, so maybe an update or two will get it so much world will work, but I think I'd rather start over in a fresh world on the server than keep playing my existing world, and lose it to move to the server at a later date.

ETA: Wow, not sure what happened, but in the end after all the playing with everything I connected back to the server and it's the same world! Empty, yeah, but the same, which is really cool, cause I LOVE the starting place for that seed.

Coming Soon

Just want to share with you guys what I've got coming in the future. It appears they've put out a second pre-release of minecraft 1.9 so I'm going to start a survival series in hardcore mode (bugs and all) in that. Once the official release happens, I'll obviously update to that (and beyond probably). I've also got the idea of doing a couple other series. One would be survival island (maybe I should do the hardcore mode, as the survival island? It would make it even more hardcore!) I also want to do a series on a new world (SSP probably, or a private world in my SMP server) just walking, exploring the world and finding nifty new places. I think I'm going to wait to make that my official 1.9 world though. Ok, so that's what I'll do, we'll have the official 1.9 world on the server be the start of my new Meandering with Munchmo series. Keep the Mining with Munchmo series in the world in 1.8. And create a 1.9 (PR2) surival island hardcore world. What should I call that one? Any suggestions?