Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft

mindat.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 82 posts

Re: The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft

#21

Post by josephorjoe »

bovermyer wrote: post #12
lordnacho wrote: post #6

For a while I would work as a coder during the day, and in the evening I would work in the mines, for my son. "Dad we need more iron ore. Dad, make sure the furnaces have coal in them." Eventually my kid worked out that you can build generators, effectively coding it in MC bricks and providing infinite resources. Probably the first time he's coded something, he just doesn't know it. This made my evenings a bit less m…

Minecarts get to be more useful when you want to travel long distances without having to touch the controls. TNT... personally, I've never found a use for it.

> Minecarts get to be more useful when you want to travel long distances without having to touch the controls.

This and you can (and should) build roller coasters.

Re: The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft

#22

Post by Chazifraz »

lordnacho wrote: post #6

For a while I would work as a coder during the day, and in the evening I would work in the mines, for my son. "Dad we need more iron ore. Dad, make sure the furnaces have coal in them." Eventually my kid worked out that you can build generators, effectively coding it in MC bricks and providing infinite resources. Probably the first time he's coded something, he just doesn't know it. This made my evenings a bit less m…

If you're using minecarts to move yourself around in Minecraft, it's certainly a terrible investment. However, when used as a tool, they are incredibly useful and an excellent investment. Minecarts can do two things that no other setup can: transport items between inventories consistently without the player's involvement, and move entities like villagers around the map. This makes minecarts a really useful tool in the later stages of the game, when you might want to use them to distribute items across an array of furnaces to be smelted or to move villagers to a central location to make trading easier.

TNT is sometimes worth the time it takes to make. Every block in Minecraft has a blast resistance, so if you're using TNT underground, you're running into stone blocks that will shrink your blast radius. On the other hand, TNT can be used on the surface of the desert to get sand quickly and profitably. It can also be used at the lower levels of the nether to blow up a bunch of blocks in the search for netherite scrap.

Re: The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft

#23

Post by grawprog »

josephorjoe wrote: post #21
bovermyer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecarts get to be more useful when you want to travel long distances without having to touch the controls. TNT... personally, I've never found a use for it.

> Minecarts get to be more useful when you want to travel long distances without having to touch the controls. This and you can (and should) build roller coasters.

>This and you can (and should) build roller coasters.

Last time I really played minecraft years ago, me an my old roommate would compete to see who could make the most epic ridiculous minecart rollercoaster track.

It was pretty fun, we'd turn entire mountains into a giant roller coaster or build floating islands or have it go down to the center of a lava cave or something.

Re: The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft

#24

Post by tialaramex »

lordnacho wrote: post #6

For a while I would work as a coder during the day, and in the evening I would work in the mines, for my son. "Dad we need more iron ore. Dad, make sure the furnaces have coal in them." Eventually my kid worked out that you can build generators, effectively coding it in MC bricks and providing infinite resources. Probably the first time he's coded something, he just doesn't know it. This made my evenings a bit less m…

To be fair as a video game it doesn't need to have working economics. It's OK if something is cool and doesn't make economic sense.

I rarely play Vanilla, but I thought it had some type of powered minecarts allowing primitive automation? Maybe some types of rails that get a redstone signal speed up carts or something like that?

In modded I take the same attitude as in programming: Don't Repeat Yourself. If I have to actually mine more than a few blocks of iron, I'm done. One of my favourite innovations of the past few years has been Hopping Bonsai Pots and subsequent iterations on that idea. Miniature tree (of whatever species) grows in the pot, when it reaches full size it is harvested and gets hoppered into a container below, then grows again. Awesome. But, not at all Vanilla.

Re: The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft

#25

Post by lukego »

lordnacho wrote: post #6

For a while I would work as a coder during the day, and in the evening I would work in the mines, for my son. "Dad we need more iron ore. Dad, make sure the furnaces have coal in them." Eventually my kid worked out that you can build generators, effectively coding it in MC bricks and providing infinite resources. Probably the first time he's coded something, he just doesn't know it. This made my evenings a bit less m…

I'm in the opposite situation. I setup a Minecraft server and outsourced the hard work to my kids. They are toiling away for a couple of hours most days building all kinds of elaborate structures. I just drop in to say a few words of appreciation and go mining in search of diamonds.

They do cajole me into hunting food for them sometimes though.

Re: The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft

#26

Post by tialaramex »

worldsayshi wrote: post #10
lordnacho wrote: post #6

For a while I would work as a coder during the day, and in the evening I would work in the mines, for my son. "Dad we need more iron ore. Dad, make sure the furnaces have coal in them." Eventually my kid worked out that you can build generators, effectively coding it in MC bricks and providing infinite resources. Probably the first time he's coded something, he just doesn't know it. This made my evenings a bit less m…

> I never understood about the game was how TNT and minecarts are supposed to work I haven't played for a long time but yeah it doesn't really make sense given that you have such a large inventory. If they added some extra difficulty level where the inventory is miniscule it might make more sense. Maybe they need to make mining slower and more rewarding per ore block as well. Has to be a mod for this?

There are mods that make the game much harder, including by cutting your inventory and limits on weight, but in my experience people are drawn to increasing the horizon rather than restricting how far you can reach.

So e.g. rather than forcing you to move more slowly (e.g. realistic walking pace, limited sprint, burden by weight) let's add moon rockets so you can go further. In fact, why stop at the moon (albeit that is where the Rats went because it's made of cheese -- in some continuities, I should really go beat that part of the pack one day)? Add space stations, ferry rockets, and eventually an interstellar drive so you can visit other solar systems.

If I put an aerial with unlimited range upgrade on the outside of a Compact Machine on the moon, and then I run the network inside that Compact Machine over a wireless link to another Compact Machine on Mars, then I can use machines on the surface of Mars, wirelessly, while stood on the (notional) far side of the Moon. Unlike the real world, Minecraft doesn't know that the latency ought to be incredibly annoying when I do that :D

"There's no wrong way to enjoy yourself". But on the whole the instinct to make it harder hasn't been as popular.

Re: The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft

#28

Post by Cycl0ps »

I went on a game hiatus in June just to see if I'd even miss them or if they were nothing but a time sink. So far there's only two games I'd really like to play, Battlefield 2042 (which hasn't released yet) and Minecraft. To my mind it is a perfect sandbox game. Solid core loop, various secondary objectives you can set, high replayability, and deep customization. There is an impressively deep level of interaction between different objects in the game, combined with the redstone logic system there's no real limit to what can be designed. It's the Lego of the digital age.

Re: The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft

#29

Post by shkkmo »

lordnacho wrote: post #6

For a while I would work as a coder during the day, and in the evening I would work in the mines, for my son. "Dad we need more iron ore. Dad, make sure the furnaces have coal in them." Eventually my kid worked out that you can build generators, effectively coding it in MC bricks and providing infinite resources. Probably the first time he's coded something, he just doesn't know it. This made my evenings a bit less m…

Rails are cheap if you setup an iron golem farm.

There is a dupe mechanic with TnT that allows you to build machines that explode stuff without consuming TnT.

Re: The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft

#30

Post by 8note »

lordnacho wrote: post #6

For a while I would work as a coder during the day, and in the evening I would work in the mines, for my son. "Dad we need more iron ore. Dad, make sure the furnaces have coal in them." Eventually my kid worked out that you can build generators, effectively coding it in MC bricks and providing infinite resources. Probably the first time he's coded something, he just doesn't know it. This made my evenings a bit less m…

Hopper minecarts pickup items really quickly, and hoppers can pull stuff out of them

For tnt, there's a duplication glitch that lets them rain down

Post reply on HN