Mythruna

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A couple shots of my Genetics lab and some friends house/pathway to it.

I was flying with my "Person Person Holder" PPH.

New update on pathway.

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VIDEO UPLOADED. Shows Mythruna/My lab!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpcDg467QKc&feature=youtu.be (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpcDg467QKc&feature=youtu.be)

New Observatory. Not much but at least I made something. I'd rather call this a lab than a "Genetics lab".

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And now is the night we take a look at the creepy face on this moon.
(http://i.imgur.com/FqMAH.png)

FYI: F3 completely removes all HUD elements.  Nice for screen shots.

That looks nice, I think I should come check it out.

I think it would be cool if some people worked together so that we could have some meaningful roads on the server.

That was the nice thing about a lot of the original building when the server first started.  People were pretty good about building roads to everything.

...then the griefers descended and I think most of the new developments are happy to toil in unconnected obscurity. :)

Someday I need to figure out a way to make ungriefable roads.

How about this: /trust (player). When you trust a player to not grief his/her blocks cannot be destroyed except by admins. A trusted player could place down these roads :D.

It's not so much about the permission to build roads (at some point soon building roads could even be automatic) but the ability to recognize them as roads and give them special protection.  Right now protection is only based on square properties.

Aww, I don't like automatic  :'( . I'd like to build the roads  ;D .

I didn't say it had to be... just that it could be.

when generated towns and cities appear, there will also be generated roads and paths.

Yay my watertower

Ok now, Get rid of the tag you have below the one with the flying clothes, i'm 13 and I don't want to see whatever perverted fantasy going on in your tags  >:( . Besides I doubt Paul wants his kids watching this while he's on the forums.

Edit: Lol Flying clothes but seriously get rid of it or can you paul :P. It's totally inappropriate since kids play on these forums.

Uhh, Future? That didn't help. :( It's not really funny, that new one is worse..

Back on topic: I'm going to make a floating island with a ladder going up it for it to be more noticeable/cool.

@Future, I have removed the second gif as that was pretty over the top.

Please everyone remember that this is a public forum where people from all ages and cultures hang out.  Some stuff is obviously inappropriate.

Thank you Paul, now I don't feel sickened inside everytime I scroll through here  :'(

Edit: Changed the pathway, they now have magical light holders! (3 new images)

Yay Minecraft updated to 1.2.2. 256 map height, New AI for mobs, jungles and much much more :D. 256 YEA.

Those lights look cool, I'll probably steal your ideas now  ;)

Those are nice.  They would be perfect for flames, too.

LOL im sorry i didnt even realise that u where ofended by that first one when i added that next one which a friend showed me. lol sorry it was just coinsidental that it hapened at the same time :S

Yay.  Getting Rickrolled by all your posts is way funnier now anyway. :)

I stared at that for what seemed like years, mesmerized. Then suddenly, everything - EVERYTHING - made sense!
 :P

lol play i spy with my little eye for my treehouse i built  :O

I fownd it! I could only find it at night. Sneaky lil' treehouse.

minecraft is now at 1.2.3., as far as i know. free of lag even on my computers.

Yeah, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.  I could spend the next six months optimizing and still be left with a game that's just a minecraft clone... and potentially have to redo the optimization later anyway as code changes.  Or I can wait until post-alpha where I already have a game that can stand on its own and earn some money for development.

I know there are some easy paths to optimization but my strategy so far has been to get to alpha first.  To the best of my ability, I want to make sure that the game doesn't get slower after alpha (sucks when you buy a game that you can't play a few months later).  Optimizing too early adds a ton of risk to that plan.

And anyway, please don't judge performance just by the spawn town on the network server.  I get 200 FPS every where else in the world and only 30-40 FPS in spawn town.  That area is a wreck and I will be moving the spawn point soon because of it.

Maybe you could make a pre-purchase state? I'm sure most of us here would like to buy it  ;) . Never drop the game mid-way through the making of it, i've seen "Minecraft clones" be dropped and it didn't turn out good. It was still in a crappy state and wasn't much fun. NEVAR do that    :)

What do you mean by a pre-purchase state?  You can already donate which essentially pre-purchases the game when/if it comes out.

Alpha will be the point where I draw a line in the sand and say "You must buy the game to play the full version."  And when I say that, I want to have at least a general idea that the game is only going to get faster after that.  Right now, I know I have a bunch of easy performance wins but they may end up perfectly offsetting the physics, animation, AI systems.  So if I add them now then we are on some kind of performance roller coaster and everyone complains with every new release. :)  I'd rather try to keep performance basically the same from release to release until I can really start optimizing post-alpha.

It may seem a bit harsh, but maybe make build rights on your public server a Donor only option?

I've half-considered it.  Or making property grants a donator only perk.

In the end, though, I will be setting up a second game mode server.  That one will probably be donators-only.

In which case, I care a little less about restricting the current public server.  And while my grief-hate burns with the fury of a thousand suns, the rampant griefing has helped me fix a lot of bugs I might otherwise not have found.  Even the nice players who do more innocent things like auto-clickers have found some issues.  So I actually derive some benefit from everyone being able to build.

I understand the optimization/alpha level tradeoff. I think you should optimize later. I have read as much of your posts as I can but...

What are some concrete timelines/deadlines that you aim to meet? What I am looking for is something like this (just random example):

07/01/12 - NPC interactions will be underway

09/01/12 - Stop adding physics and just tweak what is there

12/01/12 - alpha stage

I know I know I know that this is difficult and always subject to change but you ARE in a race. You may not see it that way but your vision (even though it is yours originally) - is shared by a few throughout the community. You have one helluva great start but a progressive forward thinking outlook must be had at all times. I just wish there was some way to market this to get you real money so you can dedicate more time and manpower.

Every time I make date commitments, I end up missing them by a mile.

I hope that a basic AI will take me a month.  You may want to double that estimate.

Also, my whiteboard is fully overloaded with various less-than-specific to-do items that I need to clear off a bit.

And... I want to hook up the game client to the central server so that the donators can use their master login if they want to (and eventually get some in-game perks).

I was trying to hit alpha by July but that was a very aggressive milestone meant to keep me motiviated.  And that's looking a little less likely and largely depends on how my wife's surgery goes on Thursday.

The real problem with schedules is that it kind of forces me into a "less productive" box.  My output is 200% of normal when I'm really inspired by something so sometimes I take a tangent because I know getting that done now will be faster than doing it later.

This next week I will be away from my main computer and working from the laptop.  This hobbled state may force me to work on things a little differently than I normally would.  This often leads to a few leaps in areas that would otherwise be dealt with later... though I have a bunch of material on AI that I'm really looking to dive into and I won't be hounded by the whiteboard looking at me over my shoulder. :)  I think this next week will be AI prototyping, more music creation, and concept art work... since there will be times when I have idle hands and can bring a sketch book but not a computer.

What I am about to say should come only as one of the highest comments a gamer can give:

You sound like Notch lol

But seriously I mean that as a compliment. I've followed him oh a long time and he works off inspiration too. Its a good thing. The best of ideas come to life when one works off inspiration. And yes I agree that time lines are easily underestimated. Almost all of Mojangs dates were rediculously under-judged.

Well if you are talking alpha sometime this year than I am even all-the-more confident that your creation will reach a state that will grab serious attention (and money which is the goal). I'm just trying to get a feel for how developement is coming along. I'm new here so I haven't been through any updates yet. Thanks for answering questions - the community will never forget that.

btw who makes the music? I must say the night time crickets and sound effects are great.

Yeah, alpha sometime this year I hope.

And don't get me wrong, I stay productive even when I'm not inspired... otherwise I wouldn't have much of a career :-/.  But when I have the chance to work at 2x speed on something, I tend to jump on it. :)

That's half the point of the to-do list on the whiteboard.  A constant grab-bag of things to work on when I'm feeling less than 100% inspired.

So far I've been making the music that has appeared in the videos... which are like early forms of some of the music that will be in game.  I also have a composer who has offered and the guy who runs GameToker has a bunch he wants to send my way.  Music-wise, I want to establish some specific themes first before incorporating other peoples' music.

re: sound effects, I purchased the sound effects from a site and then remastered them to fit my needs... and then spent lots of time tweaking the ambient settings to get them just right. :)

cool. music/sound effects (imho) are of grave importance to a game like this. I mean it is part of what makes you feel submersed.

I totally agree.

:p steric you post and talk so much on the forums ahhahahaha i cant keep up i dont know which coment to reply to XD but yea when even  im playing skyrim and the musics playing and it sudenly changes and you know theres a dragon lurking about which can make you scared and adds to the suspence. so yea what im saying i think is that the music and effects are important to captivate your audience :]

Alright, time to hop on board the train of "back on topic" since I haven't updated my lab in a month or two, I shall make up for it and add a special... I'll keep it a secret until It's done ;)

VIDEO HAS BEEN ADDED! It's at the very bottom of the front page post. Take a look! (Music that fits with it too) Compressed the file to 32 mb's from 800. Less quality, but great compression. I used Windows Movie Maker for Windows XP.

I like the video.  Your lab is really nice... really gets the imagination going on how these things could be applied in a sci-fi setting.

Moonkey, don't know if you follow Mythruna on Facebook or Twitter, but I just posted your video link there. :)

Thanks! No I don't, but I look there every 1 or 2 days  ;D

Maybe u can add that only the player that put that block can destroy it but there is a problem grifiers can still cover roads whit there blocks so ur gonna have to add road properity or smth

That would be an impossible amount of data to keep track of and as you've said, doesn't really solve the problem.

The only thing u can do is to put that others cant destroy blocks that other players made but grifiers can still put there blocks on to the other players blocks which maybe if u can put that players can put 3 blocks in heigh where the other players did

To do that I would have to keep track of the origin of every block.  That's a HUGE amount of data... it's just not feasible.

Will upload a new pic soon. It is a watch tower. :)

ye kinda guesed it. btw how can i cr8 my own server

The simple explanation:
Download the stand-alone server.
Unzip it.
Run it.

There are some other things you can do to make yourself admin and stuff... I think someone posted about this once... if not then it deserves a separate thread so I can just point people to it in the future.

okay tnx

I remember playing Lan with my little brother. He laughed at the characters :)

Alright, Updated. Pictures of my Observatory! Taking a look into the skies is always an adventure.