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Next time, use the damn quote tags, that's what they're for. And it's MY blog and my post.

Really? The 'day' part of a MineCraft day is 10 minutes long. It took you longer than 10 minutes to figure out you had to hold the mouse button down???

Perhaps someone was just wandering around and looking, not knowing how long the day was because...you know, they were a NEW player? Or perhaps they were looking for a good flat open spot to build a dirt hut. Or a million other reasons for someone to not play Minecraft "perfectly" like the goddamned a "Stop Having Fun Because we want it to be harder" hardcore Minecrafters the FIRST time they booted it up.

Um, NO- that wasn't aimed at newbs. And the very fact you thought it was is laughable.

Actually it was, paraphrased from blog posts for supposed "noobs". I found blog posts and the forums before the wiki. Did you ever think that might happen?

Try the MineCraft wiki, which I know you know exists, because you mentioned it.

Yes, I know... But that information should be available in the game. Why not have a tutorial? In fact, the Xbox version DOES have a tutorial, that Mojang seems unable to put into the PC version.

There's a whole section for newbs: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials#Newcomers that has simple advice like the default keys for movement and actions, including "Click and hold the left mouse button to break down (or mine) blocks. This is how you collect resources from the environment. Rapid clicking does not work, even though it may seem to."

That should be the first thing a new player sees in the game! They shouldn't have to go to an outside source, that's a cop-out by lazy developers.

So... basically the guy's an idiot.

Yeah? You're the guy who can't figure out that people might start playing it differently because they might not know things already.

Um, not quite. A map needs paper and a compass. (Makes sense). The compass needs a single piece of redstone dust.
And what's the point, anyway?

Because in other modern games the map is built in from the start. In some games it's right there on the main screen! Yes, having to craft a map is realistic... but it's a world with exploding creepers, skeletons on spiders....too much realism is a bad thing. The fact that you actually have to make multiple maps because they have limits is even worse. It's 2013... I do NOT want to have to go back to the dark ages of game mapping especially in a 3D game.

The Horror!!!!

Because Modern games have these things called mini-maps which means I can actually play the game while using them because the reality of RL map use isn't a fun gameplay mechanic. Maps work the way they do in Minecraft because of "Stop Having Fun Guys" who want everything to be "hardcore"

And while I can mod minecraft to have one, it should be built in (though with the ability to not use it if one wants to be hardcore)
Modding also is something for the hardcore, not the millioins of Grandma's that supposedly bought the game.

Nope- they are in Abandoned Mineshafts, not strongholds. Oh, and some villagers have them for trade, too. Did this guy actually play the game?

Ooh, getting a tiny detail wrong means I didn't play the game? Don't be a jerk.

Nope- many players pack light and keep moving.

If by many you mean the "The game needs be more difficult, it's too easy" guys on the Minecraft forum, then yes.

So play on peaceful. I think he means that regaining health 'uses' some of your 'hunger' bar. Which is completely logical and consistent, so i don't know why he's bitching. He can play in Creative if he doesn't want hunger, and Peaceful i

Maybe more than you think :)

In terms of graphics, it wouldn't be so hard to make surfaces a little bit more varied. Why the blockiness in Minecraft? Why not give people roundish and triangular things to play around with too?

If you don't want to play the game, that's perfectly OK. Not every game is everyone's cup of tea.
But you could at least look at it before passing judgement.

There are far more shapes in Minecraft than just blocks. In fact of all the items, blocks are a minority.

Look at the bottom of this wiki page: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Items
Each and every one of those things is a non-block shape!
Or here for larger icons of items (including blocks):
http://www.alymma.com/minecraft_icons/

Slimeballs and snowballs are spheres, tools look roughly the shape of the tool they represent, food is pretty much all irregular shaped except for the cake, which is not only a lie but a circle!

Only the world itself is subdivided into a grid of blocks, and even then it's far from "one grid square, one item/block"

In fact it's not that much different from any other game, except where in most games each voxel is a single pixel and you are limited in the total number of pixels allowed in the game world, a Minecraft voxel represents 1 meter cubed of world space and uses a stacking addressing scheme so as to be infinite yet your save files do not grow insanely huge.

Mindcraft has the old time Lego feel with a new toys and you never run out of blocks! Fir more info take a look at this Wiki

Pssst don't tell any one we do not want to lose the privilege, but down load the game, and when it asks for a login, unplug your rj45 and It will let you try the game. If you like it PLEASE pay the one time fee for unlimited play. Since unplugging the net ( wait I am being shot at, a sec... ) everytime you want to play is a bother.

Fortunately it was an RTS so we could get away with fixed-point.

Does it really vary by genre? For a game world the size of Liechtenstein, a 32-bit fixed-point length gives precision down to 10 microns or so. And even in a vast open world, you start to get glitches like the far lands in Minecraft if you stray more than 12.5 million units from the origin.

That image is hilariously petty and out of date. Minecraft has gotten a ton of updates over the last year http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Version_history

It's apparently a port of Minecraft Pocket Edition, which is already on Android and iOS. No idea as to the programming language, but I fully imagine it's something with less of a footprint than a full-sized JVM.

However, the ability to understand what those heavy lifting modules/programs do will be the difference between mastery and mediocrity within the field.

For example, much of what everyone sees and does on a day to day basis is governed by first and second order differential equations (a medium to medium-advanced mathematics field). While very few people go think about differential equations while in stop and go traffic, heating up food, or any number of other tasks - an understanding of the math lets people realize why following distance is so important or how come the pan/barbeque heats up the way it does.

It's true that there are very few fields which use higher level math (especially of varying types) on a day to day basis, but the foundation to understanding most technical fields is rooted in the higher level math - including programming. Basic math can be important too. Besides, the really fun hot-and-sexy types of programming jobs do need the math.

(Can you explain how a computer works? From the starting-point of electric potential, band-gaps, and logic operations? Most people can't, and indeed don't need to, but a mastery of the subject does need it (so throw in chemistry and physics). If you want an easy way to learn low level computing, pick up Minecraft and play around with red torches :)

Not for long... http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Xbox_360_Edition

A server-side Lua interface is planned for Minecraft, but it's not actually out yet, and even after it comes out, nothing will be client-side. See here. Everything now is done in Java, usually with Bukkit on the server and Spout on the client.

the wiki clearly states how to make assembly code gates. how to extend using repeaters etc... and 16 year olds usually have a large amount of free time.
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_Circuits
using an addon might make it easier but i have seen people waste more time.

Basically logic gates

Minecraft is a sandbox type game where you can build stuff out of the environment. It has no scripting or math functions built in, nor does it really have any sort of logic gates built in. However, it does something called "redstone dust" which you can use as wires. The wiki explains more, but you can hand-craft logic gates out of it: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_Dust

It isn't quite infinite distances in Minecraft, even if effectively it is. When the software starts to have number overflows (exceeding maxint distances and such) the generation code gets screwy and produces some weird terrain that is all but impassible. There are some players who have either "warped" out to those distances just to see what would happen or have taken the time and effort to get out to those parts of the map just to see what it could be.

See also the Far Lands article on the game wiki that even has some snapshots of what happens in those distant areas.

Except for issues dealing with altitude, it is possible to have 1:1 scale maps of entire continents like Europe or North America put into Minecraft. I have played on a 1:16 scale Mercator map of the whole Earth (it is a huge map file). With the new map format, it is possible to include biome data as well. That was something missing from the map that I saw as the biome info was arbitrary and misplaced on the earlier versions of Minecraft. As I said, while not infinite, it is effectively so or at least as large as even a fairly huge group of people would want to have.

Blark. The active chunk circumference is apparently 21x21, not 16x16: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Chunks

It's not exactly robotics, but for about $20, my kid is learning a lot about electronics Minecraft through building redstone circuits:
http://www.minecraft.net/
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_Circuits
"Redstone circuitry is a feature introduced in Alpha which allows for intricate Redstone wire based mechanisms to be created by players. Redstone circuitry is similar to digital electronics (based on boolean algebra) in real life. t's also possible to use pistons in redstone circuits. "

You can even build stuff like elevators and music players.

Warning: Minecraft can be pretty addictive-seeming. Be sure to get your vitamin D, maybe get a treadmill workstation, and take regular breaks...
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Minecraft is a sandbox game if you want it to be, but be sure to pay attention to the current direction of Mojang's development. Ever since Terraria came out, Mojang has been heavily focused on the action-rpg aspects of the game. Most of the game's mechanics that give it a sandbox feel are riddled with bugs (see piston bugs and redstone bugs), and have been since their implementation.

I wish I would have paid more attention to the direction the game was headed. I probably still would have bought it, but I wouldn't have been so disappointed when redstone and pistons get neglected while pig faces are given an extra 5 polygons. (Not just any polygons, mind you. Textured polygons).

Most of what I enjoy about Minecraft came from mods the community has made, which Mojang has made no attempt to support. Almost all mods that exist now are made using obfuscated code that is reverse engineered by the Minecraft Coder Pack team *every single update*. I was under the impression that Mojang was going to implement a modding api to support modders, but now that I read about it, it seems they're offering a license agreement and access to their full source code (not an api at all, which means compatibility between mods will still be a problem).

Moral of the story: put more thought than I did into buying games which are in the alpha/beta stages :)

*pours a little out for the sandbox game Minecraft could have been*

Minecraft is a sandbox game if you want it to be, but be sure to pay attention to the current direction of Mojang's development. Ever since Terraria came out, Mojang has been heavily focused on the action-rpg aspects of the game. Most of the game's mechanics that give it a sandbox feel are riddled with bugs (see piston bugs and redstone bugs), and have been since their implementation.

I wish I would have paid more attention to the direction the game was headed. I probably still would have bought it, but I wouldn't have been so disappointed when redstone and pistons get neglected while pig faces are given an extra 5 polygons. (Not just any polygons, mind you. Textured polygons).

Most of what I enjoy about Minecraft came from mods the community has made, which Mojang has made no attempt to support. Almost all mods that exist now are made using obfuscated code that is reverse engineered by the Minecraft Coder Pack team *every single update*. I was under the impression that Mojang was going to implement a modding api to support modders, but now that I read about it, it seems they're offering a license agreement and access to their full source code (not an api at all, which means compatibility between mods will still be a problem).

Moral of the story: put more thought than I did into buying games which are in the alpha/beta stages :)

*pours a little out for the sandbox game Minecraft could have been*

Here's the Minecraft wiki article about it. See also this one. The benefits are more prominent in multiplayer, where only affected sections of the map need to be loaded or saved. At large sizes, this sort of planning is quite indispensable, even if it looks dumb at smaller sizes. If it really bugs you that much, though, you could try updating this mod to support the newest version of Minecraft.

Here's the Minecraft wiki article about it. See also this one. The benefits are more prominent in multiplayer, where only affected sections of the map need to be loaded or saved. At large sizes, this sort of planning is quite indispensable, even if it looks dumb at smaller sizes. If it really bugs you that much, though, you could try updating this mod to support the newest version of Minecraft.

Well Minecraft has the option to play offline, forever. I failed to find that feature on Steam when I was locked out of Civ5 which I had purchased on DVD!

The stand alone client only requires an internet connection for the first time run and for automatic updates. After that the game can be played offline with ease.

http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Stand_alone_client

Always looking for things to motivate my young aspiring computer-game-designer offspring. When I was their age (8) I wasn't really exposed to computers all that much, but did already have exposure to Logo. Any good sites online that might provide some experience similar to that? The only one I know of is Lightbot.

The wife and kids are heavily into Minecraft at the moment, and I'm hoping to get them into building more redstone circuits. (unfortunately, minecrafwiki's realstone circuits seem to be down at the moment). I'm pretty tickled by the whole concept of constructing complex circuits the size of buildings out of basic NOT-gate building blocks, which has kinda been a running joke in IC logic design classes forever.

What are other good programming games / intros to expose them to?

You can create circuits of redstone, and "and", "or" and "not"-gates. http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_circuits This is what I refer to.

Each file contains the block and entity information for a 'chunk' which is a 16x16 128 block high area.

The file format is already a tree.

My main single player world is currently 128 megs large, around 40,000 chunks. If you were to make that a single file, a single crash could wipe out the entire thing.

As it stands, if a single file gets corrupted, you simply regenerate that section and keep going. It isn't that odd an idea.

There is a mineral called redstone in the game that can be placed like circuitry, albeit with a 15-block activation distance. Redstone torches act like NOT gates, but can be combined into more complex logic gates.

Youtube is now littered with demos, but I think this is one of the better ones: Working 16-bit computer built inside Minecraft.

There's no question that the research done originally for the purposes of space exploration has benefited humanity in other areas. The question is whether the money spent on it would have resulted in greater good if spent elsewhere. The answer to that question is relevant to the decision where to spend the money in the present and future. Not that I'm saying the two situtations are the same, but: A country could decide to dig the world deepest hole, and that effort would probably result in a number of benefits and accomplishments (besides the hole): lower unemployment, interesting archeology, high durability shovels, redstone. It's still probably not the best investment.

minecraft allows for unlimited power for the circuits using redstone wires. there was flow logic before redstone using falling sand, however, these types of circuits require you to refill the source of the flow (sand), every time you wanted a new computation done.