Benie's Games Blog

Another, better question is.. why do I want it? Simple answer; the Bandwagon that has hit the Minecraft Forums’ Mapping & Modding section.
One such mod is the “Fus Ro Dah” mod, which adds the shout seen in the preview video. You can use it to push mobs, hostile or non away from you. And it seems to be commonly used to push them off cliffs.

Another, really cool mod is adding more dragons to Minecraft. According to this video (studdering as it is), they seem to behave better than the Enderdragon (as in they don’t burn holes through your map).

And then there’s these two amazing parodies of the preview trainer, done in Minecraft.

So anyway, I’ve been watching this series of walkthroughs of Skyrim to see if it’s really worth the hype I’ve been seeing for the past month. And I like what I see, especially the epic “avoid the dragon” scenes. Yet, something still baffles me. Why are the Imperial Empire, the enemies now? Yet they were the good guys in TES4 Oblivion. Apparently the answer is there’s a civil war going on, due to the “return” of the dragons.

Another question. Freeplay? The answer is yes. Just like TES4.

As you can clearly see though from the walkthrough, this like The Elder Scrolls 4, is an entirely new game. It’s 200 years in the future, so it’s unlikely the player character from the last game still lives. Yet the way the opening scenes of Skyrim are nearly similar to Oblivion.
As in, you are a prisoner in both. And you’re “freed” in both, and escape in both. Except in Skyrim, you gotta team up to survive which I do like.
Plus, the Imperial Army are after you. Well, that’s always bad.

The cool parts I liked about the walkthrough so far, is probably the new Level Up screen. Clicking on a constellation zooms you into the star tree. That is really cool. That to me makes me think it might be worth $60. And also, the 3D map. A major upgrade from TES4’s flat map.
Plus, the graphics are amazing. They’re Crysis’like. And, you can go pretty much anywhere and do anything once you escaped the dragon attack.

The wiki explains a bit more. Again, more spoilers. But it mentions the player character finds out s/he can speak Draconic after you manage to slay a dragon for the first time and take its soul. So Fus Ro Dah is “Unrelenting Force” in Draconic. Also, you have 22 other dragon-like powers, or “Thu’um” in Draconic.

I’ve seen videos of when a dragon charges up its attack, you will be able to understand what it’s saying. You see the dragon saying “Yol…” before breathing fire on you.

Even the fucking music, is in Draconic. Is this game epic or WHAT?!?!
The wiki adds on that there’s ‘infinite’ (yes, I said.. infinite) dragons in the world, each with their own attacks and abilities. And they attack in random.. NOT scripted times.

Now, I’m seeing why it’s worth $60 (as a dragon fanatic standpoint).

As you can see, the blog’s back up. While it was down last night, I was writing a blog post in a .txt file for when it comes back up.

Last night, I was typing this blog post as if I was taking pen to paper, with an old ink pen and using candlelight as light. This is what will happen if this shit with SOPA and PIPA gets passed in Congress. Angry took the site down last night to protest, and I was typing this into a .txt file for when he brings it back up, which he has.
First of all, you might be asking… “Benie, why are you posting this in your Games blog, when it’s not game-related?” Think of the end of online gaming. Hell.. maybe gaming all together. I mentioned about SOPA before, but I think it’s been several years since it was last discussed. I don’t have my blog infront of me to tell you exactly how long, at this moment. Now that I do, I’ll try to find that info.

PIPA is the Senate’s “backup plan” if SOPA fails in the House, which is more serious due to it being in the Senate. Now, I ask you, are you going to sit there and read this blog (aka .txt file) and do nothing afterwards, and let the Government walk all over us? Yes, sometimes even to me it feels kinda pointless when it feels Congress is just going to do whatever the fuck they feel. But, this is also messing with our fragile US economy.. and I won’t stand for that.

So what are you waiting for? RISE UP and tell Congress, FUCK NO to SOPA and PIPA! You have rights as an American citizen. You voted these assholes in. They’re supposed work for you, not against you! Show them you’re the boss and sign petitions! Congress will vote on both on the 24th. We cannot allow them to pass! The internet belongs to US! Not them!

A good way is to go like sites like americancensorship.org, which is a non-profit organization with thousands, if not millions of anti-SOPA/PIPA supporters.
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Anyway, back to the real reason this blog exists. As the, how you say, preparations to shut down minecraft.net, and the login server begin, mod authors have been busy coding their lives away updating their mods to 1.1.0.

Yesterday, alot of mods got updated. Infact, all of my critically-needed mods have been updated… except for the Zeppelin mod. Which is the reason I made an airport. However, I may have a substitute for that until blakmajik, the author of the Zeppelin mod, updates it.
It’s called “Flan’s Planes mod”. It’s mainly, scripted planes. Some biplanes, and others old WWI and II war planes.
There’s also this “Dragon Mounts” mod, that gives the Dragon Egg from the The End, a use. A right click turns it into a ridable Enderdragon, with amazing animations.
The only thing I don’t like about it, you can’t make it walk when landed. The author is aware of this and has it as a planned feature.

Today, I was shocked and amazed that the Minecraft Forums were still up. But this allowed me to get the correct download I needed to make Railcraft work (grabbed the wrong ModLoaderMP Client).
So far, the update has gone smoothly. As I type this (and this time in my blog), I’m preparing to test Railcraft. Then I gotta move my maps over to 1.1.0.
Funny, how they call this version 1.1, when 1.1 has been done and gone a long time ago. There was 1.1 Alpha, and 1.1 Beta.

Anyway, I also downloaded some other mods. Like this Team Fortress 2 Sentry mod. It. is. awesome. It doesn’t even give targeted creatures a chance to get near it. I tried spawning 50 Creepers though SPC, and one Level 3 sentry took them all down in under a minute. Impressive.
This will be useful for Line Defense of keeping animals off my tracks. Especially when Mo’ Creatures gets updated.

EDIT: Zeppelin mod got updated to 1.1.0 as I was finishing testing! No fixes, just an update.

I feel like jumping for joy here!
Finally, I have a reason to use BuildCraft. Anyway, I just happen to be on the thread of NEI, and noticed someone talking about a mod called EnderChest.
I went to check it out, and my eyes bugged out when I read “You can store all the mine carts for your railway stations in the one chest and have them accessible from any station.”

This is similar to a feature the author of Railcraft is planning, but isn’t going to be in the next update. And sure enough, IT IS! 😀 It uses BuildCraft to pump carts between dispensers (and the EnderChest). But the fact it has a global inventory, the carts inside will be available in every station in the system! No more “run out of carts” issue! I’m so fucking happy!

I’m redoing my Cart Call/Storage system with this, and thankfully I don’t have to redesign the stations to get it. BuildCraft’s pipes and engines fit right into where the Advanced Loader/Unloader area was.
The only modifications I’m having to do, is for the INNER LOOP LINE’s stations; Making sure a second wire connected to the first, doesn’t activate anything I don’t want it to when the signal goes through it.

And one of the best things about EnderChest, say I wanted to make a transit system in the Nether, or in the Twilight Forest, the chests’ contents go through dimensions! Too bad carts themselves can’t go through portals.

Due to having to do this by hand, since MCEdit doesn’t like mods too much, I’ve been fooling around with the pump block, draining underground water wells. But anyway, as for the EnderChest, I finally got back to work and I think I’m nearly done redoing the automated systems with BuildCraft, and the EnderChest.

In 1.1.0 update news, ModLoader and Forge have finally been updated. I’m still waiting for several mods before I update. And as usual, Mo’ Creatures is taking its sweet time to be updated. Humans+ is no exception. Both are major mods, with authors that like to laugh at “WAH WAH UPDATE NOW PLOX!!” people for a week or two before updating.
Railcraft, poor Covert’s all alone making the mod. Fortunately, the Minecart Compatibility Layer is now a part of Forge. So that’s one less download I’ll need to do.

Since the 1.1.0 update, and the Superflat map option, and noticing when it does it, it places the ground near the Bedrock level, I tried to recreate this in 1.0.0.
Well, it works, but I’m getting the Bedrock Dim/Fog treatment that was introduced in 1.8 Beta. It goes away when I get to Block Level 30.

So anyway, I had an idea to put my old Mynecraft maps onto it. Since the early days of Alpha I’ve been unable to. But I never tried it as a Flat Map. And sure enough, it works!
You see, normally the grass base is sitting at Level 60, with a max height at 128, and all of my Mynecraft maps have a max ceiling of 255. By digging down, I’ve “increased” the height to 252, which allowed even the tallest skyscraper in city_portal_hub to fit.

I then connected river, and residential. No longer do I have to use portals to connect the maps (in Classic, infinite maps don’t exist). Here’s the ingame results;

I’m going to be using the mod Steve’s Carts, as “cars” (even though there are car mods). Putting minecart tracks everywhere.
The two interstates make me want to dump the entire idea of a transit system and go with a highway system, the fact I can link the maps together. But I’m unsure at this time. Dumping the transit system idea would also dump Railcraft.
Ok, I’ll take that back. I forgot how “nice” the author is when I told him I couldn’t get out of the Driving Cart. He was all “Well I’m not having an issue. If I’m not, I’m not going to fix it. So fuck you.”

I found a Car Mod. It’s simple, and it works. So I get to say fuck you to Steve’s Carts and uninstall it.

An update of what has been a few months since I came back to Minecraft (which is a record). Not really looking forward to it.
Fortunately, that “Hey, do you wanna update?” thing is there, so I can delightfully say “NO” to it ’till all the mods I use, are. But already on the minecraft forums’ Mapping and Modding section, the “UPDATE TO 1.1 NOW!!!” posts are popping up.
I used to be like that. Not anymore, though. Now that I have an option if I want to update or not.

Here’s a list of updates I find interesting;
-There’s now things called Spawn Eggs. Where you can spawn pigs, Creepers, and even Enderdragons, without having to use Single Player Commands. Creative mode only.
-gm_flatgrass from G-Mod, “comes” to Minecraft, in the form of New World options. The new “Superflat” world option. Bring on the test maps!
-Sheep grow their wool back, but they also eat Grass blocks which turn them into Dirt.
-New Biome transitions. Swampland biomes blend in nicely with other biomes now.
-Ladders had their player collision detection removed. I had a small issue with this while in the Aether yesterday. Had a Trap Door over a Ladder (having your base underground is Zephyr-proof).

Unfortunately, two things I wanted to see did not come to this update. One is being able to set the height of a new map. And the other is the long-awaited Mod API. So that means, we’re still going to be using minecraft.jar to install mods.
They have a reason the API wasn’t included; they’re still working on it.

They mention future updates, of making NPC Villages more interesting. Having wars between villages, and questing. For me, the only use they have is a reason to slap a station down in the name of the W2TS.

Another thing not listed is the so called “bug fixes”. I have no idea why they aren’t.

Though, I still can’t get over the fact Notch isn’t working on Minecraft anymore. It just doesn’t feel right. Here I go to his blog, and nothing about Minecraft. That was my first stop of knowing what to watch out for in my days of /infdev/, Alpha, and Beta. Now, the minecraft forums is where you go. It really doesn’t feel right.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you what I’ve been able to successfully do since my days on my Mynecraft server in Minecraft Classic.
But finally, I pulled it off, due to a program called Woolify. It turns pictures into sprites, that you can make in Minecraft by using the colored Wool blocks.
In Minecraft Classic, this was one of the popular things you can do in the game. Some still do this, but I’ve never attempted since I failed horribly.

Until NOW! Here’s what I’ve been trying to make;
Isn’t he handsome? But I’ll tell you this. Woolify isn’t perfect, and it didn’t really do the scales right. And the left eye looks weird.
I hope to fix these in the future. Still, this is my first. And it definitely won’t be the last.

Something that has always separated G-Mod and Minecraft, is blocks can’t fly like a plane or a ship or whatever. You have to settle with a Minecart or a Boat for mobility.

Well.. NO MORE! 😀 Thanks to this amazing mod called “Zeppelin”, what you build, will FLY! Yes, FLYING blocks! Not hovering. Flying. Actual moving blocks!
Want a flying ship? You can have it! Want a blimp? You can fly it! Just place an Airship Controller inside what you want to fly, select it, and boom!
And this thing is a WIP too, so expect bugs. And so far I’ve found four;
1. Controls are screwy. No, you can’t do barrel rolls (though that would be epic). You can however stop in mid-air.
2. Building big things and expecting them to fly, causes alot of lag. To counteract this, lower your video settings.
3. MCEdit-placed blocks will not fly. You have to enable fly mode, then manually replace non-fly blocks with fly blocks to make them work.
4. Landing next to something at the same or higher block level as what you’re flying, and you go off of flying mode and back on, will cause that structure to fly with it.

Still, this is truly an amazing mod, and a must-have for fun-lovers.

As the title says, I finally took a foot infront of the other, and used two Tunnel Borers from Railcraft to carve the paths the line would go.
I finally reached where the Residential station would be made. Surveyed the area and just tried to lay down a road. That turned into another road. And another road. And soon I had a small rural neighborhood. Most of the houses seem to fit into the forest scenery with a bit of tweaking. It actually looks alot better than I thought it would. And “driving” through the forest is lovely.

I then extended the line to my house, and made the connection. Added a fountain infront of the house. Been playing around with High Speed rails. So tedious. One powered High Speed Transition Rail can give a person whiplash with the sudden break of the sound barrier (that’s what it feels like. It’s a sudden WOOSH).

Yet, instead of extending the RED and BLUE lines to get to the INNER LOOP LINE which still hasn’t been made yet, I’ve been trying to play with other mods. I want more places to go to instead of the same random biome crap. More dimensions. I want a reason I made the Portal Room under my house, that isn’t just for portals to the Nether and The End.
There was one mod I had my eye on for a bit; the Twilight Forest. A slightly-darkened, enchanted forest.
Had trouble getting the thing in, due to BlockID conflicts. Two blocks from the Twilight Forest were being used by the RedPower2 Core, so I changed them to 200 and 201, and that finally got it working and I made another room for the portal.

The new dimension is pretty nice, but.. it just gets old when you’ve seen the same stronghold and same huge tree 25+ times. Plus, I don’t like the constant dark. I wanted MORE! MORE dimensions!
There’s a highly-supported mod called The Aether. Another dimension, but in the sky. The thing is, it’s very, very buggy. As in, it feels as if it’s still in beta. So many mod incompatibilities. Yet, the gorgeous pictures hide all of that. They hide the issues behind the mod.

Another, not as supported but still cool mod is called Tropicraft. It’s unfinished, but it’s alot more stable than The Aether. The reason for the stability is, it doesn’t use .class files, and, there’s no actual dimension… yet. However, you can use the blocks to make your own tropical paradise.
Currently, the only tree is the Palm Tree, which grows in Desert biomes or wherever there’s alot of sand.

I played around with the Palm Tree sprout in the large Desert biome the Main Hub and Sundune Village are in, and they look really nice. It gives the area life.
Anyway, I hope to get back to work soon. But I got the itch to install a new .jar and get The Aether. Why am I so… bored with my transit system? I guess maybe because all the “cool” shit has already been done.
Just like for the W2TS V2.0, getting to that large Swamp biome was key.

Hopefully what Jeetol is planning will change that, and get me back in the mood. In about a week, he’s going to have a five-part mini-spotlight of Railcraft (to show how awesome it is). Maybe him attempting to do his own transit system. Can’t wait.