Posts Tagged ‘Minecraft’

Domino found and linked me this video (thanks!) – all I have to say is that if you love Minecraft and you love swords, check this out. Radness…

This is a video compilation of our Minecraft 1.1 survivor multiplayer server. We decided to begin creating these in order to have a placemarker for every large Minecraft update, document each server, and get all the raw video off our hard drives (in this case, 27 GBs).

This is the first time I’ve attempted using a mod to film video; this particular one is called Camera Studio. It works very well, even using only a few functions of those available.

This was recorded off of the second tge server. We didn’t have a separate build server then and so kept this server around for quite some time. Minecraft was still very new and magical for us: there were no beds, no creative mode and we were not yet running Zombe’s mod, so no flying either. Making this water ride required a lot of sneaking over an edge so as not to fall off. I did end up falling off often and since the sections were separate, it required making a dirt or sand scaffold back to top.

Water rides like this stopped working when vertical boat speed in water was changed in Beta 1.6. The same mechanic was used to make water elevators which supposedly can still be made, but they don’t quite work the same as before.

For at least a year, we’ve been trying to figure out how to get Minecraft to show up in Steam’s friend list. The problem was that adding the exe normally as a non-Steam game resulted in a green “now playing” for a few seconds before returning the user’s status back to the blue “Online”. We have finally discovered a method, using both the Minecraft exe and the jar file, and have documented it below.

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IMPORTANT

• This issue affects users with Java 64-bit installed on their PC.
• Do not use this walkthrough if you are running only Java 32-bit – it will actually give you this issue. Add the exe normally as a non-Steam game, i.e. stop at step 2 below.
• This is not for getting the in-game overlay to work properly. Steam overlay just does not like Minecraft; it will usually not function at all and may even lock up or crash your game.

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1. Downloading the Minecraft exe and jar files

• Go to the Minecraft download page here.
• Download Minecraft.exe in the “Minecraft for Windows” section.
• Click the small link “Show all platforms” under the “Minecraft for Windows” section.
• Download minecraft.jar in the “Minecraft for Linux / Other” section.
• Move the two files into the folder you want to run Minecraft from.

2. Adding Minecraft to your Steam games library

• Open your Steam library.
• Click “ADD A GAME…” in the bottom left of the window.
• Click “Add a Non-Steam Game…”
• Click “BROWSE…” and locate the folder with the two files.
• Click on Minecraft.exe and press Open. Minecraft should now be checked in the Add a Game window.
• Click “ADD SELECTED PROGRAMS”. Minecraft should now be in your Games list.

3. Using the jar file to launch Minecraft and fixing the icon

• Scroll down the Games list and locate Minecraft.
• Right-click Minecraft and click Properties.
• Click “CHOOSE ICON…” at the top.
• Click Minecraft.exe and press OPEN. The icon should now have a shortcut arrow.
• Under Target, change “…\Minecraft.exe” to “…\minecraft.jar” and click CLOSE.

You can now play Minecraft through Steam and show your friends what awesome game you are enjoying.

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Troubleshooting

• If you get stuck at the white Mojang screen, navigate to “C:\Users\[account name]\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\bin” and delete the jinput.jar file. (AppData is a hidden folder.)
• Double-check the Java version you have installed on your PC. Stop at step 2 if you only have Java 32-bit. Follow the entire walkthrough if you have Java 32 AND 64-bit OR if you have only Java 64-bit installed.
• Use Internet Explorer (bleh) 64-bit to download Java. We have had issues in the past using Javas downloaded with Firefox and Chrome.
• Make sure that you have downloaded the files for the correct platforms.
• Make sure the two files are in the same folder.
• Make sure when adding a non-Steam game, to choose the exe and not the jar file.
• Make sure to choose the icon first before changing the target.

Testing

• Internet Explorer 9, 32 and 64-bit, to download Java.
• Java, Version 6 Update 30, 32 and 64-bit.
• Java 32-bit only, Java 32 and 64-bit concurrently, and Java 64-bit only, with the exe and exe+jar files.
• Windows 7 OS, 64-bit.

Last updated on April 17, 2012.

That’s survival multiplayer servers.

We have been playing Minecraft almost daily since Beta 1.8 was released: through 1.8.1, pre-release 1, pr2, pr3, pr4, and pr5. Never in all that time (almost two months) have we seen wolves except when first creating the world – and even that was rare. After that first login, wolves are just gone.

We have flown around those maps* extensively looking specifically for wolves and, while seeing regular spawns of other animals, did not find a single one.

I’ve found very little evidence of anyone else having this issue: exactly two hits on the entire internet. One asks for conformation of any wolf sightings in SMP and the other is an attempt to verify animal spawn and despawn rates, including some interesting wolf code.

Creating a GetSatisfaction problem topic seems like a waste – once an issue is off the font page, it’s almost impossible to find. Or perhaps my topic was too wordy or not inflammatory enough.

I’m not sure if this is an isolated issue or if Mojang has any idea about it or it’s just that no one else in the world plays multiplayer, but I suppose that’s what mods are for.

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* At the time, all of the tge servers were vanilla/non-modded.

Another Minecraft bug where rain pours down inside a cave.

Making our last Team Fortress 2 video dump (leftover, random clips) became rather boring because… well, I don’t play it anymore and they’re not that interesting. So instead, I have created this short Minecraft video featuring Domino and Pigmen and loud music.

I think the original idea was to make a flat platform deck out of trees. But when I was finished with it, it just didn’t match with the house I was building beside it. So I set it ablaze. The deck, that is, not the house.