Zeph's Ultima MineCraft Textures Updated…Again!
Zeph sent me an email to let me know that he has updated his Ultima-themed texture pack for MineCraft to version 1.8b, which adds support for the latest version (1.8.1) of the smash hit indie game. It’s a neverending process, these updates; Mojang always changes something between iterations of the game, and there are always little wrinkles for modders to iron out as a result.
The updated texture pack is now available for download via the project entry here at Aiera.
I’m intrigued by MineCraft. I tried to download it once and run it but had some weird problem, maybe with registration. I think there’s a “free” version and a “paid” version, but can’t remember. Anyone out there who knows what the deal is and cares to explain it?
It also seems to have a scripting language, as I’ve heard stories of people recreating CPUs with it.
The free version is called Classic Creative. There’s a link to it on http://www.minecraft.net It’s Extremely simple and is really nothing more than a tech demo. It does give an interesting little taste of building in Minecraft, and is what originally convinced me to buy the game. The actual game which you pay for is MUCH deeper, and more about gathering resources from the ground, plants and animals, and crafting them into useful tools and food (which is necessary to survive as of the last update) while dodging various things that want to kill you. (if you have them turned on.) It’s a truly different take on games, especially from the modern fair. Basically you’re given a randomly generated world that acts upon it own physical laws, and allowed free reign as to what you do in it.
As far as the computers and such go, it’s not so much a scripting language (although the mod community is HUGE and people DO manipulate the code) as much as it’s a matter of creating circuits with a type of wiring in-game allowing the creation of simple devices that open doors or do other basic tasks, to the construction of AND/OR/NOT gates, clocks, and as you can see on various YouTube videos, fully functional calculators and computers. The first versions only had output in binary, but they’ve since developed graphical displays for them, and I know of at least one person who had a simple computer game running on one. Mostly just “move the square around the screen” but still impressive. The drawback is that these computers usually cover hundreds of thousands of square kilometers in the game world, and run VERY slowly. It is interesting however to see a computer laid out on the scale of a full size city with each of the skyscrapers containing RAM and other components.
It’s all a little beyond me, I just draw pretty pictures. XD