Minecraft Adventures: Tribalfield Minecraft, the end of my era or so it seems (but not Minecraft’s)

Hi Folks, well I guess those of you who still (and I say still cause the number is dwindling) frequent the Tribalfield minecraft server much lately, I suppose after number of months, my fascination with Minecraft has finally run it’s course, this makes me quite sad as Minecraft was always the main focus of the blog (as the background would suggest) which I had created the first time the Tribalfield forum came down as I wanted somewhere to showcase my thoughts and namely screenshots I had taken of my various Minecraft creations.

I’m not exactly sure what has made me feel less and less enthusiastic about going online and creating, I think it may have been due to a number of factors;

The first would be the people the other beings that you communicate and interact with in the game, I know that now Tribalfield is not as populated as it once was and I also know that with all games having people to play and build with makes the whole experience a lot more fun and extends the longetivity, of course this does mean that you have to get along at least on the most minimal level with the other people who happen to be on the server and in a lot of cases you don’t, and then you soon have your own select few people who you like to play with. It’s this particular formula that has led to the creation of the Tribes as we know them being set up on the server and the tribal ‘claims’ set up as land only tribal members can access with (sometimes fortified) towns being set up with the adequate protective measures .

The formely named town of "Fiendfield". Thriving city of happy productive and law abiding citizens? or thieving cesspit of  crime and vandalism? You Decide!

This leads into the whole tribal claims thing, my good friend Dickdatson made quite an impressive area for himself, not to mention the aptly named “Cat Poo Mines” but he told me that he was discouraged from continuing his work on the server because of constantly being hampered by bumping into other people’s claims (namely Sherwood :D) while mining. I had also found this whole issue of claims difficult for myself, it's just annoying when your trying to mine or spread and you cant, I had a thought that we just forgo claims altogether and just have warps as with the old days, and the only difference the tribes would make is what special ability you have. I do know this is going to lead to more griefing, but frankly griefing happens anyway, even with claims if it’s not some random it’s other tribe members (or people with mod or admin power for that matter) and I think it would be more fun if you could build with anyone at anytime.  

Yes that is diamond there, and contrary to what you might think, Warpage and I managed to be civilized enough to divide the many wonderous blue treasures between us .

Of course, not everyone shares the same “we’re all buddies” relationship that I try to maintain with other players and would rather ambush their enemies and frenzily hack or bludgeon them to death with any kind of instrument possible and make off with their entire belongings both on their person and in their house while squealing with glee like crazed rodential scavengers. Instead this boiled down into some sort of political turmoil resulting in tribal wars which to be honest I found kind of odd if not laughable at first. Don’t get me wrong I don’t hate the whole tribe war thing, I do think it’s a way to make things more interesting but it’s very complicated as you can see from my post on the matter, all I could see it doing was to get people angry and cause trouble. Our chests can be locked, that’s the main thing I care about, if someone griefs my place, hey I have something to do at least by fixing it, or I can just make a whole new thing to live in. During my time on the AEF Minecraft server (or firefly as it was referred to by most of you) they had a chest locking system but no claims, and it worked, well for us it did, not so much for the people near spawn but what can you do, stuff just happens and getting angry or upset about it just makes things worse as with all games.

Another point is that a problem I’ve had with Minecraft was that I only seemed to like creating places to live for myself, a virtual dwelling and although I’m rarely part of a town (due to my inability to follow building restrictions) I tend to make my houses either on top of trees, in the sky, underground, or so heavily fortified that I don’t feel the need to build anything else around it, it’s sort of an ‘alone in the wilderness’thing that I like that being in a town doesn’t have the same feel. This wasn’t what I had always done in Minecraft though, when I first started playing singleplayer I would create whole networks of mines and mine tunnels and minecart tracks to go through them, but apart from the various structures that acted as secure ways to each natural mine that was all I had built. It wasn’t until I started rebuilding my multiplayer houses and creations in singleplayer as a way of keeping them forever that I actually had more then one major structure lying around the valley that my main house was in.

I started using the mod SingleplayerCommands as a way of making it easier to rebuild my previous creations (which were sometimes rebuilt bigger and better), although this worked it has kind of ruined my singleplayer experience a bit as I seldom want to go back to obtaining items (especially hard to find ones) myself, I guess what Zero Punctuation's Ben“Yahtzee” Croshaw says is true about how the longer it takes you to obtain the items and build what you want to build the more you love it when it’s finished. In comparison to being able to spawn anything you want similar to Half-Life 2’s Gary’s Mod it’s only takes a few hours of spawning random objects and enough TNT barrels for the ensuing explosion to crash your system before you start getting kind of bored playing an all powerful being of “summoningness”.

 

Gary's Mod, love it or hate it, another true sandbox experience

 But by far the most common problem I would think most of us have had is what to do next? when faced with the opportunity to build anything after a while with no objective in mind we end up doing nothing, walking around our already perfected structures and with no way to perfect them. It’s this harrowing experience that many of us go through in sandbox games especially the Grand Theft Auto series where once finished with the story mode and a whole virtual city at your disposal you still end up getting bored quite quickly. It's the kind of thing that seems weird that you would get to that point when you start the game and everything seems massively overwhelming at first, but what is the answer? some prefer to move on, others like myself, tend to start the whole experience again and try to pretend we're as dumb and clueless as we were when we first started, which with Minecraft is no easy feat.

GTA4, thats the story mode down, now for a different perspective, after playing the 2 expansions, going in for a third run myself

 That said though Minecraft is amazingly still in BETA it sometimes may be hard to believe that the game has already achieved this much I have always said that we would be sick of it before it was even a full version, but this is the first time I think I have seen a game realeased in this fashion and it may be an example of many more games produced by "small time" studios to come. Minecraft is a game thats viewed and played in many different ways by many different people and it's that versatility and the sandbox style which makes it so popular, it's one of those games which you are glad you tried at the encouragement of your friends.

If you asked the people who made this 'was it worth it?' I think you'd know what the answer would be

As for me I hope to see Minecraft grow to the full product it should be and will continue play from time to time as my work and commiments (not to mention to other games) allows. I'm both sad and glad to say I will definately be going back to my one of the more prominent games in my life; World of Warcraft which took up a quite large amount of time in the 3 and a half years I spent playing it. As I do need to explore the rest of the Cataclysm expansion but take comfort in the fact that although it's gotten my attention for a much longer time then Minecraft and still has quite a friendly and helpful customer service (not to mention fixing my one major account comprimise) the difference is that Minecraft is more of a "game for the people" rather then the "massive corporate product" that Blizzard has created i don't know if that makes much sense but I guess that is how you can percieve it. 

So without further ado I'd like to thank everyone I've met in my time on the Tribalfield server and hope to play with you again whether on Minecraft, another game or just chatting on facebook, I have to admit I was kind of proud to be one of the 'older' players on the server as it has been a pleasure meeting and exploring and building with all of you,

With Thanks to; (in order of appearance :), and apologies if I miss anyone)

mystic_duck, Mickle, wagapm, chaote, angrathar, Carceous, lupidoo, harro223, Kieran_Cahill, Dr_Uhhhh, Da_Seano, jabbcore,  FletcherHD, PresidentFreeman, danielstiglec, elboomer, Jorobinson, captain_pugwash, Frewer, TheFiendish, Ventelation, rawrbleh

And of course; kakashi57, laver987654321, WarpageHD, Atomic_Sandwich, DickDatson and last but not least; NorC, whose hard work and dedication are what made the server so great.

See ya round...

JDman,

p.s I would be daff not to mention The Old Republic a Star Wars MMORPG?! who can resist it could be the WoW replacement I have been looking for, but if not I will play it nonetheless as Minecraft showed and still does show, we can't be stuck to the same game our whole lives.

Damn, might have to change my blog wallpaper methinks,
JD

Tribalfield update: PvP & "Tribal Wars" in Minecraft

Life on Tribalfield is becoming quite busy, my good friend Richard Datson (aka dickdatson) has joined the server and is currently with us in the League and there has been quite an influx of new players which are more or less building up the numbers and the rivalry between the Rebel Alliance and the League Tribes, though to be honest the rivalry is mainly the animosity between certain players on the server.

I have never been a supporter of PvP (Player vs Player) in Minecraft, for the rather large fact that when you are killed, you have to respawn at the spawn point again and all of your belongings on you at the time are strewn across the place of your death and are often unable to be picked up again (which is most definately the case when dying in Lava). I recently forgot to log out of the server when walking away from my pc and subsequently was killed by a zombie and as I had been auto-dced by the server was unable to get my belongings.This made me annoyed, but only with myself, but what would it be like if another player came up and killed you and subsequently stole your belongings? would you be more or less mad? If you ask me it's a nerd rage drama waiting to happen and what if some of these players were actually server moderators? There's also some talk on our server about buildings being regenerated but not player inventory items.

Go near my items and I'll chop your f**king head off! thats right I will! arrgh! errgh!

This is one of the things I've found so unappealing of PvP in minecraft, to be honest I never PvP'd in World of Warcraft cause as far as I was concerned that was not my main interest in it and it was what I thought not what the game was about, the principle is the same with Minecraft, I enjoy building, mining and fighting monsters with other people, I don't enjoy fighting them or them fighting me though this thought of war does excite a few people as per the below from the powers that be of my tribe as evident below:


This was taken off the League's facebook page, yes we have a facebook page for the tribe

From the Office of the Council:
~ THE WAR PREPARATION ACT ~

Under this charter, which passed unanimously in the Council, 6 votes recorded out of 9 (with 3 votes not made), The League will go into a state of readiness, defined as a State in which The League can successfully conduct warfare, or defend itself, without being in a State of War.
This bill has been passed under the awareness of certain political events unfolding around the league; the annexing of SWM and TC; the regrouping of their members into RA - "The Rebel Alliance", and the analysis of their intentions according to intelligence gathered via the tribalfieldies Facebook page among other sources.
THIS BILL DOES NOT STATE WE ARE AT WAR.

WE ARE NOT AT WAR.

With this in mind, certain legislation has come into place stating:

1) War facilities must be established; an Armoury in every town, and a defence Fort in the centre of Fiendfield (a house must be removed to make way for this) an a defence Fort in Skyreach (probably the First Battalion Camp).

Blah, blah, blah, sections 2-6 etc etc

7) If war occurs, and loss of all claims is inevitable, The League must remain as an organisational body to guide us all to the formation of a new State and Claim at the soonest date after.

Thank you for reading, and may ~L~ Guide us all.

The COMPLETE BILL as passed by Council, may be made accessible to this page at a later date, at the discretion of a Council Vote.

~Wags


Well holy shizzle dizzle thats some serious shit right there


The original bill was about 1000 words, I mean well done to wagapm for putting in the effort but isn't this a making things overly complicated for a game which is made of blocks and you destroy and stack blocks and make them into other blocks? But who am I to judge, not everyone enjoys the 'we're all a happy family building and surviving together' type of play that I prefer, there are entire servers of who thrive on PvP and live for the danger of being ambushed by something much more dangerous then a creeper.

I ain't no traitor, I'm just statin' the facts yo

JD

Minecraft Creations: The Grey Tower, The League HQ

Hello again folks, well we've all been pretty busy on the tribalfield server, I've finally finished my new home aka the Grey Tower and also Laver and I have been created different things for our tribe the League, my peice was a tribe HQ which I'll go into details about later.

The Grey Tower

This is my 'house' in the new Tribalfield server created in Skyreach. As soon as you see this you probly have the idea that I had Lord of the Rings in mind but really it's only the name, I was racking my brain for ideas then had the thought of making a pillar like structure, except I wanted it to start from deep in the ground, The tower actually goes roughly level 47 right up to 125 making it quite a tall tower! though you cant really see the lower part because of all the lava, interior was a bit of a challenge because of the small space, but I put the rooms one different levels with each having a different function so it wasnt too hard, I do quite like the Nether area down the bottom with the portal and the flowing lava out the windows sides.

 

And this is the cave i mined out getting most of the cobble

 

The League HQ

While I was in the League I was asked (quite spontaneously) to create a HQ for the League Tribe, it needed to have a meeting room, a library and a reception. The design was quite out there but i think I pulled it off ok, I went for a smooth stone structure base which the bottom level would be the reception and league gallery (members and ranks dsiplay on signs, something like that) and the top would be the library. After that I enclosed a large area above the library in glass and placed floating smooth stone blocks where the tribe members would stand for a meeting and make some steps out of smooth stone and glass top get there. I think it worked quite ell allthough most of the time I didnt have a solid idea what I was doing, ah well.

Tribalfield Minecraft Server back up, Business as usual

Well it seems that my old favorite Tribalfield server is back up and running and has led to all the regulars returning (as well as some new ones). There's a few new addition, chests now cost money to place (which i assume they are now protected? and Netherworld is also active. My good friend Laver and I had previously joined the League Spirit Tribe and laver together with TheFiendish set us up at a rather interesting looking place which laver has now called Skyreach.

The Skyreach plateau

Laver's more recently built floating castle

 This place was unfortunately largely overshadowed by the spot that Tribalfield Moderator Jason1211 has found, which looked spectacular to say the least.

TheFiendish then went to set up "Fiendfield" (this was actually named by the tribe leader Mystic Duck for some reason) the LEague HQ just a bit north of Skyreach and it's doing quite well as per the below picture.

One thing Fiendfield does is have some huge borders the town border actually engulfs skyreach and is as high as the height limit. As you can also see from the picture the buildings all have some sort of order to them, this is the way Fiendish and Mystic Duck like to work as with the famous Waveham from the server a while back with rules and restrictions on what others can build in the town.

Although Laver and I are part of the League this is the reason I don't like to set up my home in organised towns as I don't like to be restricted in what I build,  you can probably see this from some of my previous creations many of which featured flowing lava that i've claimed are my "houses". I can only speak for myself but I'm pretty sure Laver feels this way too, we like to build what we want and if we have to tear up half a landmass to create a monolithic fortress that breaches the cloudline then so be it, lol.

And as such, here is a sneak peak at my latest creation, there's still a bit of work to be done though

Some ass stole my pork and my bed, same old unseen enemies

JD.

What is Minecraft? Re: Pleasant Productions Blog post from Dave J

Thanks to Dave from Pleasant Productions Blog for this post 

I suppose for the sake of the unenlightened I should explain what Minecraft (i.e. the main focus of my blog) is.The following is from the wikipedia page which I think does a good enough job in explaining, as well as a video.

Minecraft is a sandbox building^[1][2] indie video game written in Java originally by creator Markus "Notch" Persson and now by his company, Mojang, formed from the proceeds of the game. The game is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. The game has two variants – free Classic and paid Beta – where Classic is focused entirely on construction with unlimited material supply, while Beta requires players to acquire resources themselves, and contains mobs, player health, and additional features and items. The gameplay is inspired by Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, and Infiniminer.^[3][4]

The game is currently in development and Beta is the only continuously updated version of the game. Minecraft^[5][6] less than a month after reaching Beta. was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009, on the TIGSource forums, where it gained a considerable level of popularity. It has been continually updated and patched since then, and while it was still in alpha release, it garnered several hundred thousand sales and received critical notice and acclaim from many reviewers. It passed a million units sold on January 12, 2011,

 Basically I started playing as a referral from a friend and have been ever since. I think some of the best multiplayer fun you can have is playing together and making a community in mutliplayer. I think the most life changing thing about this game is that it was part of the reason I've stopped playing World of Warcraft which I assume everyone knows what is, also the fact that after three and a half years of playing things do get a bit stale. I've been focusing at the moment on rebuilding in singleplayer creations i've lost in multiplayer to server map resets and the like, but I do feel like going back to multiplayer sometime again.

To all those who's first impression of Minecraft is that "the graphics look terrible" believe me they are like that for a reason and all I ask is to try the game to see for yourself. I won't lie it's true that this can can be very addictive but only if you let it get like that, if you maintain a job and a social life then your not addicted, after all I was able to stop playing WoW all of a sudden after playing it for so long.

So thats a brief overview, I encourage everyone to at least try the game and purchase it if they do like it after all it's going cheap while still in beta at $20 and thats all u need to pay. The only thing that worries me is that once Minecraft becomes a full release we'll all be sick of it.