THE QUESTION (YOU MIGHT RECALL MY MENTIONING IT A MOMENT AGO)
A little while ago (relative to me writing this), Markus "Notch" Persson put forth a strangely self-fulfilling question:
As you will soon see, I gave this way too much thought.
Loaded questions have a funny way of guiding us in our thinking. If someone were to ask, "Do you hate it when creepers barge in and blow up your house, which you spent hours working on?", most of us would nod in agreement. Now, what if we took that question, and changed up the wording a little bit? "Don't you hate it when you forget to put down enough torches for lighting, and a monster spawns in your house?" is a very different choice of words for what is essentially the same situation. You still have a creeper-sized hole in the ground where your house used to be, but the tone is completely different. The first question aggressively blames the creeper, and the second one places mild fault on the builder instead. So, I suppose there is some benefit in being able to identify loaded questions to avoid entire articles being extracted from a simple yes or no after all.
Of course, we're not done here. Let's do some science, courtesy of MinecraftTeachr, Dan200, E-Line Media, the California Institute of Technology, and last but not least, some avid supporters at Google!
No, I'm not putting a link for Google here. We all know where it is already.
QUANTUM MINECRAFT OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE SCIENCE
If you haven't heard recently, Google is seriously considering the current generation of Minecraft players for tomorrow's quantum computer scientists. "How is that even possible," I ask myself, noticing no one else in the room? It goes a little something like this:
SCIENCE. This stuff isn't for the faint of heart, so skip to the next section if you aren't ready to have your MIND BLOWN. I'm not even kidding here.
qCraft is, in short, a mod that brings the principles of quantum physics to the world of Minecraft. One example might include a block that changes what type of block it is, depending on whether you're looking at it or not, whether you're looking at it from a specific angle, or based on seemingly random and arbitrary criteria you have zero control over. MinecraftTeachr gives us a pretty good summary of the mod:
We’ve done our best to create something that we hope will be fun to experiment, build and play with while also introducing players to the fascinating and (in the context of the macro-world we inhabit) counter intuitive way that quantum entities interact.
qCraft is not a simulation of quantum physics ... but it does provide ‘analogies’ that attempt to show how quantum behaviors are different from everyday experience.
In addition to individual players, we hope that parents and educators who want to introduce quantum physics concepts to curious kids will find it useful.
Honestly, all the stuff this mod does cannot possibly be summarized here. If you like exploring new and largely untapped areas of quantum physics, this mod will keep you busy for months, if not more. I've had a chance to mess around in it a bit for the last few days (mostly making really cruel creeper-filled traps that activate when my friends looked at them), and it seems like I trip over new discoveries with increasing frequency, often when I'm not looking for them. (Yes yes, I know...bad joke.)
If you want to know more about the mod, you can check out qCraft on their site, and play it yourself. It can be played either stand-alone, through the FTB Unleashed modpack, through Tekkit, or through Hexxit. Keep in mind, if you want to play it as a stand-alone mod, you will need Forge 1.5.2 installed.
Good luck, and don't break the universe!
THIS WEEK IS ABOUT YOU
It seems like no two people can agree on this; we all love Minecraft, but we don't all love it for the same reasons. Some of us play it heavily modded, treating the game like a foundation for other mediums. Others use it to create vast works of art - architectural, pixelated, and otherwise - and still others dive into the game exactly as Survival gives it to us, with all the First Nights and creeper ambushes that come with that. Even in this respect, not everyone agrees on whether the game is best played alone, with a small group of friends, or with a massive group of players.
There ultimately is no "right" way to play the game, and that is part of the beauty of it. I know how I like to play Minecraft, but what about you? What are your favorite game modes? Do you play alone, or with friends? Vanilla, or modded? Maybe you play in a completely unexpected way that no one considered, coming up with challenges and entertainment that no one else has thought up yet?
Let's hear about how you play the game!
Minecraft as an educational tool is certainly useful. As a quick example, think some "basic math" questions.
Example: Least common multiple: How many wood blocks do you need to make fences, with no waste; you have to compare the blocks to sticks (produces 8) and the sticks to fences (consumes 6).
Or, how many wood blocks do you need to fence a square that is 16 meters on a side (one chunk), with the fences on the 16 length sides (i.e, inside the chunk)?
As an introduction to applied math, minecraft is a great tool. As someone that loves math, that's the first thing that I noticed. I'm sure that there's other uses in education as well.
So hardcore multiplayer with Smart Moving is how I enjoy playing the most. Sorry, that mod is essential to my play and has been since its inception. I'm almost disappointed the dev team hasn't at least incorporated crawling and swimming into the vanilla model, but its not like they aren't bringing something cool in its place.
I'm tempted to try qCraft, but it's going to take me a while to figure out how to deal with Forge, not sure whether I should go through Magic Launcher or not.
I use creative mode mostly for experimentation and testing circuits, for "real" play it's survival, hard difficulty.
Since the zombie hordes came in, most of my experience comes from hanging out on the 3-high roof of my current lair and smacking zombies and the occasional skelly, lately with dogs ready to finish them off. (I do have to shoot a few creepers, since they now can explode when I'm up there.)
I used to actually go out at night and hunt monsters, but that just isn't practical anymore -- the first bunch of zombies turns into a horde that makes everything else irrelevant (when they're not playing meat shields for creepers!).
I like to build a full set of farms, but in my latest world I skipped pigs as useless; I do have a pair of horses, but haven't used them much, because they seem kind of hazardous. (I just built them a nice stable, though.) Also, I haven't found any jungle, so no cats. Doing a lot of enchanting and repair -- just used up my first anvil.
I seriously loathe the Nether -- the first time I seriously explored it, I had to build an insane bridge to a Fortress, and eventually had to switch to peaceful mode to finish that. I never really got into the Nether in my last game, and am only now starting with it in my current game, with a certain amount of dread. The Nether has two big problems for me: The Netherrack texture that blurs edges and hides drops, and the ^&)%^)$ Ghasts shooting at me out of nowhere, which makes me crazy. For a while I was using the LAR texture pack, which has a sane texture for netherrack, but again, that's not up to the snapshots.
I pretty much never play in hardcore though... The reason for that is i'm worried I will get good stuff and make cool things and then I die. :/
I also love to rp on it sometimes!
When in Singleplayer mode, I have around six different profiles with different mods on them like SPC, Zombe's modpack, and Map Making Tools (I'm a map maker). In each one of these I have a couple mods which are more general, like OptiFine and TooManyItems. I am also enjoying all of the new snapshots!
Just so you know, cr.eternalcracked.com is the Hunger Games server I play on most often.
I host a vanilla survival server for a trusted group of family members and friends. My builds tend to be small yet lovingly detailed. We build and adventure together when we can, but often we're each building alone. Just knowing that a friend might drop by to see what I built is fun. Also, I put my hoarding habits to good use, supplying my fellowcitizens' building projects.
I sometimes try out alternative gameplay styles within vanilla:
As for mods, I employ two world-gen mods (Highlands and Algaecraft) which spice up the world a little with new and interesting settings, scenery, blocks and plants, and about five or six others that add small background functions, like Archimedes' Ships and Enchanting Plus. I also have or plan to have a couple worlds each for several total-conversion mods like Thaumcraft or Bio-Spheres, which alter the play experience so much that they're more like separate games than Minecraft mods, and a couple of creative worlds for testing out new buildings or devices, or building grand structures.