In an effort to provide structure where some may need it, I have been working at designing a walk-through guide for Minecraft and it's mods. My main motivation is my own state of being overwhelmed by all that can be done in this game especially if you pick up a mod-pack or otherwise add mods manually to the vanilla game. I also find it enjoyable to take all the various goals one could set and attempt to find an optimal way to order them so that they come together in a more or less linear way that is, perhaps, greater than the sum of its parts.
When I was a kid and played with Legos I would find it fun to first build the kit according to the directions. Eventually I would branch out and attempt to improve the design of the original object or even just strike out into some new idea and work it and rework it, etc... I find myself wanting to take the same approach here, but there are no simple instructions for how to play the game through. Now I know that this is one of the main virtues of this so-called "sandbox" game but I know that for me and I'm sure others out there, it would be a blessing to have a road map to follow for one's initial experiences. Especially if you consider how many hours one could spend in Minecraft worlds, it would be reassuring to know that one has a guide to help enhance the experience.
As a relative noob, I claim no authority or expertise. I am simply hoping to fill a need for myself and maybe get some support or assistance from others. My initial attempt at this was to play the Technic Pack mod pack and design a walk-through with all the mods at once. I decided to organize the walk-through in phases with overall goals as follows:
Phase I: Finding a home site: Learn to survive and explore the countryside until you find a really nice place to establish a protected environment to develop farms and other creeper-free projects.
Phase II: Building the home site: Create a "crafting" tower which houses an inventory room and a mineshaft and is surrounded by farms and early factories
Phase III: Go to the Nether and bring back glowstone. Start making things that you can make with glowstone back at the home site: sorting system, enchantment table, etc.
There were to be more phases but I have been inspired to rethink this approach after the seeming death of the Technic Pack and my move over to Direwolf20's Feed The Beast modpack. I realized that I was taking very big bites at organizing my experience of the game doing all the mods all at once. This time I am breaking things down into more managable chunks. I wanted to share this scheme with others in the event that they knew of previous work done or would like to contribute.
To breakout the process of designing a walk-through for Minecraft I first considered the vanilla game. Minecraft unmodded offers a wide assortment of activities as follows:
Most of the mods for Minecraft focus on one or a few of these aspects. Minecraft offers breadth whereas the mods offer depth. As such I found it useful to tackle creating a walk-through for Minecraft by breaking down the game into separate "roadmaps" along the lines of the above categories. I have created a first draft of an Adventuring roadmap that orders actions from hunting & gathering basic resources (like Wood) to going on an expedition to the Nether to venturing to The End and killing the Ender Dragon.
A roadmap should explain a way in which a player can move from start to finish through a variety of activities to progress in ability in a way to prepare them for the next step until they can finally conquer the most difficult challenges. Some activities need only be performed once while others are performed repeatedly. A roadmap should help the player by guiding them in both ways. To organize the repeated activities along with the one time goals I came up with the following structure:
1. Projects: one time goals that are accomplished in an order from less to more difficult
2. Repeated Activities: goals that may be repeated on a regular basis or as needed depending on how the game is playing out
To order the repeated activities I conceived of the following structure:
1. Rounds: I renamed phases rounds because I did not want to assign a particular flavor to the group of goals, I just wanted to think of the player as choosing a number of goals for the next "round" and then completing them along with certain repeated activities as needed
2. Projects (from Roadmaps): At the start of each round the player would review what the next projects are in each roadmap and decide if he or she wants to complete them.
3. Repeated activities: At the end of each round the player would complete any repeated activities as "required" or needed or desired
I will follow up with an example of the roadmap I made for the vanilla Minecraft Adventuring component to demonstrate how all this would work.
When I was a kid and played with Legos I would find it fun to first build the kit according to the directions. Eventually I would branch out and attempt to improve the design of the original object or even just strike out into some new idea and work it and rework it, etc... I find myself wanting to take the same approach here, but there are no simple instructions for how to play the game through. Now I know that this is one of the main virtues of this so-called "sandbox" game but I know that for me and I'm sure others out there, it would be a blessing to have a road map to follow for one's initial experiences. Especially if you consider how many hours one could spend in Minecraft worlds, it would be reassuring to know that one has a guide to help enhance the experience.
As a relative noob, I claim no authority or expertise. I am simply hoping to fill a need for myself and maybe get some support or assistance from others. My initial attempt at this was to play the Technic Pack mod pack and design a walk-through with all the mods at once. I decided to organize the walk-through in phases with overall goals as follows:
Phase I: Finding a home site: Learn to survive and explore the countryside until you find a really nice place to establish a protected environment to develop farms and other creeper-free projects.
Phase II: Building the home site: Create a "crafting" tower which houses an inventory room and a mineshaft and is surrounded by farms and early factories
Phase III: Go to the Nether and bring back glowstone. Start making things that you can make with glowstone back at the home site: sorting system, enchantment table, etc.
There were to be more phases but I have been inspired to rethink this approach after the seeming death of the Technic Pack and my move over to Direwolf20's Feed The Beast modpack. I realized that I was taking very big bites at organizing my experience of the game doing all the mods all at once. This time I am breaking things down into more managable chunks. I wanted to share this scheme with others in the event that they knew of previous work done or would like to contribute.
To breakout the process of designing a walk-through for Minecraft I first considered the vanilla game. Minecraft unmodded offers a wide assortment of activities as follows:
Adventuring
Automation
Architecture
Farming/Quarrying
Magic
Trade/Villages
Transportation
Most of the mods for Minecraft focus on one or a few of these aspects. Minecraft offers breadth whereas the mods offer depth. As such I found it useful to tackle creating a walk-through for Minecraft by breaking down the game into separate "roadmaps" along the lines of the above categories. I have created a first draft of an Adventuring roadmap that orders actions from hunting & gathering basic resources (like Wood) to going on an expedition to the Nether to venturing to The End and killing the Ender Dragon.
A roadmap should explain a way in which a player can move from start to finish through a variety of activities to progress in ability in a way to prepare them for the next step until they can finally conquer the most difficult challenges. Some activities need only be performed once while others are performed repeatedly. A roadmap should help the player by guiding them in both ways. To organize the repeated activities along with the one time goals I came up with the following structure:
1. Projects: one time goals that are accomplished in an order from less to more difficult
2. Repeated Activities: goals that may be repeated on a regular basis or as needed depending on how the game is playing out
To order the repeated activities I conceived of the following structure:
1. Rounds: I renamed phases rounds because I did not want to assign a particular flavor to the group of goals, I just wanted to think of the player as choosing a number of goals for the next "round" and then completing them along with certain repeated activities as needed
2. Projects (from Roadmaps): At the start of each round the player would review what the next projects are in each roadmap and decide if he or she wants to complete them.
3. Repeated activities: At the end of each round the player would complete any repeated activities as "required" or needed or desired
I will follow up with an example of the roadmap I made for the vanilla Minecraft Adventuring component to demonstrate how all this would work.