Long hiatus

Hi all!

   It has been a long time (for internet clocks, at least) since the last post. Anyway, for now it is unlikely that I will keep this going: lately I have been able to find a (more or less) stable job, and when I come back home I tend to find little joy in playing with the computer, specially with Minecraft. Not because of the game, but because I am tired enough to not want to "keep working" (making my own house, automatization of the place, etc...) and, if I want to play a computer game, I tend to go for simple and short ones if possible. Not to mention the gym will open up this monday, so that means, essentially, I have less than 12 free hours between monday and friday, clearly not enough to make a let's play or similar things.

   Anyway, I won't say this is the end of this project: as the title says, it is just an hiatus, and I might go back to it later, but for now that's it.

   Thanks to you all for watching the previous videos, thanks for all the likes, and thanks for your patience. I hope it was at least half as funny for you as it was for me making it, and I'm sorry I didn't got around to make that multi-dimension operation based around of traincraft. I got it all to work with the trains & zeppelin mod, but simply put, I had no free time to play it.

Summer pause

It has been ten days since the last post, so I think I should give some status update:

I've been out of town for a week, and I'm still "landing" back home, also Star Trek Online released Season 6 with the starbases (and I am an officer in two fleets, damn myself XD). That points very badly to my capability of sustaining any streaming, at least for now.

That being said, I'd like to "leak" some of future projects: I will try to make a custom map to show some of the possibilities of the train mods I use (essentially railcraft and steve's carts), adding the possibilities of the Zeppelin and trains mod, not because it adds any new stuff to the game in the core of it, but because I always liked trains (ok, my father never let me play with the train models we had, so its a little a kid's frustration :) ), and the mod adds a lot of other possibilities.

To increase the easiness of distributing this, and since my talent when merging mods is untested thanks to my lazyness, I will be using Direwolf20's let's play (season 4) setup. I will explore the needed avenues to add the trains mod, anyway. We shall see, and the trains mod is not really a priority now, since the main one should be the working of trains!

I will see to try this for September, first with some videos, and finally with the map files, but I make no promises ^^. Also, my next video (a bunch of them, really) is more than likely going to be about Star Trek and the fleet starbases.

Minecraft Let's Play season 3, Episode 68

The building of the second floor of the castle starts! Sadly, glass panels wont connect to iron stuff, so it won't look as nicer as I wanted it to, but...

Mod updates: Thaumcraft & Mystcraft

I wanted to make an entry specially for these two mods, because they have been actualized recently (Tahumcraft 3 days ago, and Mystcraft a few hours... or maybe the other way around XD), and now Mystcraft works with my game setup (I was wise enough to save a mincraft.jar without the mystcraft addon injected). Also, you will be happy to know that both mods work together: I spawned into a chessboarded biome that had like 4 Monoliths close-by.

In case you are a purist, that means a lot more possibilities for abusing the taint system... so you might not want to use it. Personally, I will exploit this stuff in the Let's Play, at least to show you all how this goes XD.

Oh, and this will be shown in Episode 18, seventeen is about me making (finally) some Thaumcraft stuff, since I realized I was able to craft the basic boots and vis/taint detectors without researching them first. No luck with the damn crystal bell, though.

Have fun!

Let's play S3: modlist

Well, since we are starting a new season (if I'm completely sincere with you... it's the third "episode one" I start to record!), I better provide a list (with links) to all the mods I will be using.

Let's start, then:

• Modloader (and audiomod)
• Minecraft Forge
• SinglePlayer Commands & Worldedit (alas, the wand crashes the game and corrupts my save. Not a problem for the Let's play, though, just for my testing purposes)
• ID Resolver (be careful when you get the 4096 mod, though, not all versions will work with Forge)
• 4096ID now has its own thread separated from Robinton's mods.
• Rei's Minimap
• Industrialcraft 1.95 (select the relevant download)
• Redpower 2 prerrelease 5 (all components)
• Buildcraft 3
• Logistic Pipes
• Additional buildcraft objects
• Additional Pipes for Buildcraft (Zeldo's Teleporting Pipes, now maintained by DaStormbringer)
• Forestry
• Railcraft
• Steve's Carts
• Equivalent Exchange (X3n0 is on a modding hiatus, but we have a 1.2.5 version)
• Thaumcraft
• Portalgun 
•  Enderstorage (previously known as Enderchest)
• Chickenbones mods: Core, NEI, and his Wireless Redstone mod
• Inventory Tweaks
• Mystcraft: I wanted to try it, and I found some trouble... trouble that I was able to solve thanks to some help into the Mystcraft's thread. The solution was to alter the mystcraft_config.txt file in the .minecraft folder, adding 3000 to the ItemID of several items there (I will reproduce the file at the end of this post). Essentially, ID Resolver is not working with Mystcraft. 
• EDIT: Mystcraft's config file as on version 0.8.4 is in the .minecraft\config folder, and has changed its layout. You will need to modify it again (and not simply to copy the previous one over it).
• Crafting Table III (added for episode 22+, remember that if you have NEI you need to download a second file which you need to inject it on the minecraft.jar file)
• More Pistons: latest version no longer requires ModloaderMP, so this mod is back!

If you are wondering why did I included Chickenbones' Wireless redstone mod instead of the one we have been using all this time, I can only say that it is a more expensive (in materials) version that also adds some interesting options, but more importantly, it is much more in line with Redpower. And I love Redpower.

As for other mods that are absent here, here are the list:

• ModloaderMP: no longer needed, and even conflicting with the latest versions of Forge.
• Optifine: besides the vanishing parts of the world (at least, graphically), it gives some trouble with some of the mods.
• Millénaire: No longer conflicts with Mystcraft, but I am having code issues that crases the game before the game's menu.
• Computercraft: Not only I didn't use it in the previous let's play despite having it installed, the Control part of Redpower already has a computer (with its own OS) that is a little more to my liking, and I'm not a programmer, thus having a mod devoted to that is a little... wasteful.
• Mo's Creatures: black screen upon loading, and I'm reticent to tinker anymore with the Minecraft.jar file. Shame we won't be seeing the expanded fauna, but I'll live.
• Tale of Kingdoms: Abandoned as of Minecraft 1.10, due to the author preparing a new "ToK 2.0"
• Better than Wolves: even with the Better than Buildcraft "addon", I can't make it run with Forge, so...

This being said, I expect Episode 1 to be released before a day. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you all in the the series!

And here are the modified contents of the file:

#Mystcraft Config File

#Tue Apr 24 14:20:50 CEST 2012

block.starfissure.id=204

block.receptacle.id=206

packet.agedata.id=135

entity.falling.id=221

options.minimumAgeId=50

block.crystal.texture=175

entity.book.id=3220

block.unstable.id=3202

block.crystal.id=3203

block.linkportal.id=3205

options.unstable=true

block.unstable.texture=167

packet.tileentity.id=136

item.notebook.id=3203

item.writingdesk.iconY=12

item.notebook.iconY=13

item.writingdesk.iconX=6

item.linkbook.iconY=13

item.notebook.iconX=5

item.linkbook.iconX=6

packet.openwindow.id=134

item.agebook.id=3200

block.bookstand.id=3200

packet.falling.id=133

item.writingdesk.id=3202

block.writingdesk.id=3201

item.linkbook.id=201

item.agebook.iconY=13

item.agebook.iconX=5

Minecraft 1.2.5 restart!

I apologize for the long delay, since I could have restarted playing a few days ago (my grandfather is now a little better than before the hip surgery, in case you are interested), but I hope it would have been worth it for you all. I will start now preparing a new series of videos with Minecraft 1.2.5 and almost all the usual set of mods, which will be (hopefully) all the usual suspects but Industrialcraft.

Why this? Well, Industrialcraft is in closed beta for Minecraft 1.2.5, but I can play with almost all the other mods using RedPower and Forestry as the placeholder for the IC2 ores (ok, I won't have uranium nearby... I can live with that XD). Anyway, I hope I will have more luck with the mods implementation than I had with my last three attempts, where I managed to crash the game everytime I attacked something in melee (as we saw in my Let's Play season 2) or the 1.2.3 attempt I made a few weeks ago, which had the problem of some stuff disappearing from my storage chests (to be precise, ores, bars, coal, and other valuables...). I'll keep you posted!

Minecraft 1.2: New map format on the pipeline!

You can find the new here, but I will quote the most relevant data in this post:

• Maximum build height has been increased to 256 (was 128)
• Empty sections of the world are not loaded into memory
• Block ids have been increased to 4096 (was 256) by adding a 4 bit data layer (similar to how meta data is stored)
• Block ordering have been changed from x/z/y to y/z/x in order to improve compression
• Packets for sending chunks have been updated (a full 128-high chunk is smaller than the old format, and a chunk with lots of empty space is much smaller)
• Biomes are saved per x/z column, which means they can be altered by tools

The next snapshot, and Minecraft 1.2, will automatically convert worlds to the new format. The files of the current format (“McRegion”) will remain in your save folder, if you need to restore them for some reason.

Also,

The 16x128x16 “Blocks”, “Data”, “SkyLight” and “BlockLight” tags are removed

A “Sections” tag has been added with up to 16 compound tags

Each section has 16x16x16 “Blocks”, “Data”, “SkyLight” and “BlockLight” tags

Each section has a “Y” integer tag saying which section it is (note that some Y positions can be skipped). 0 is at the bottom of the world and 15 is the topmost section

Each section also has a “AddBlocks” tag, which is a DataLayer byte array just like “Data”. The “AddBlocks” tag is not included in the converter since the old format never had block ids above 255. This extra tag is created whenever a block requires it, so the getTile() method needs to check if the array exists and then combine it with the default block data. In other words, blockId = (addBlock << 8) + baseId.

Each chunk has a 16×16 byte array with biome ids called “Biomes”. If this array is missing it will be filled when the game starts. The converter doesn’t include any biome sources, though (it had too many dependencies to be included).

Note that the old format is XZY and the new format is YZX (see the difference between DataLayer and OldDataLayer).

The new format uses the extension “.mca” instead of “.mcr” (the old format is kept for safety, with the level.dat backed up as “level.dat_mcr”)

What does that mean? Well, I foresee a problem with the non-vanilla Minecraft maps including new blocks (like the ones with RedPower, or Industrialcraft, or Forestry...), more than likely due to the change in ID's. Aside from that, I can happily say that a lot of mods will be played together after Minecraft 1.2... if more Sprite IDs are included, that is :S

 

Advanced Machines for MC 1.10 released!

You can get it in its forum page here. However, IT IS A BETA, still buggy. Install at your own risk, and HAVE BACKUPS of your game.

Also, Equivalent Exchange has been updated to EE2. While X3n0 states that everything should be ok, I'll try to update my version and tell you if I can't (backups, I love you xD).
EDIT: IMPORTANT Before updating to EEv2, empty your Alchemy Bags, or you will loose its content!.

Another thing, a sub-mod for Portalgun mod: The Portal 2 gels!

Finally, Railcraft 3.3.0 has been released. It works with MCForge 1.3.1+, but NOT with 1.3.2.0 (1.3.2.1 works fine).

1.10 update mods

Some of the mods around have been updated to Minecraft 1.10, so here you have some links to their pages. Please remember to backup your worlds, and to keep a copy of the minecraft.jar (personally, I keep a copy of all the .minecraft folder).

Note: I am currently updating to Minecraft 1.1 and all the mods (there are teleporting pipes for BC3x! Yay!!!) but the Let's Play will keep version 1.0.

Note 2: working of mods: Leaving aside Better than Wolves, and considering that I use NEI instead of TMI, only Mo's Creatures doesn't work with the other mods. And I spawned in the middle of an endless sea (believe me, I tried to fly around at x10 speed and found no land at all XD).

Having all this mods will mean: 28 Block ID's left, 31430 Item Id's left, and 64 sprite ID's left. And a Minecraft.jar of nearly 5.3 Mb in size...

And by the way, EQUIVALENT EXCHANGE IS OUT! Impressive job, X3n0! :)

• Minecraft Forge 1.3.0
• Optifine (I use the single core version)
• Redpower 4d (new blocks: thermopile energy generator & a crafting table with an inventory)
• Buildcraft 2.12 and 3.1.3 
• Railcraft
• Steve's Carts (not compatible with Railcraft, by the way)
• Millenaire
• Single Player Commands
• Modloader & Audiomod (Risugami's mods, to be short)
• Modloader MP (Flan's mods)
• Too Many Items
• Chickenbones' mods (includes NEI, which is another TMI with other options)
• ID Resolver
• Portalgun (check the end of the OP post)
• Rei's Minimap
• Computercraft
• WorldEdit's User Interface (to see a grid with the selected blocks)
• Wireless Redstone
• Mo's Creatures
• Better than Wolves (While I don't use this one, I link it here for those of you who do)
• Teleporting Pipes by DaStormbringer (updated Zeldo's Additional Pipes)
• Steve's Carts (now compatible with Railcraft!)
• Industrialcraft 
• Equivalent Exchange (alpha version reviewed in this video by Direwolf20)
• Minefactory Reloaded (now mantained by TehKrush after Powercrystals retirement)

Waiting to be updated:

• Tale of Kingdoms

I'll keep this post updated for the time being, and if you think I left an important one out, please tell me!

Have fun!

Portalgun mod V2 for Minecraft 1.10 released

You can check the thread here and download the new mod. Also, remember it has been recoded: some recipes have changed (now instead of using the misterious substance we use an ender pearl, for example), and there are more options in the config file.

I'm updating my Minecraft game, and remember to have backups!

Buildcraft 3.13 update

If, like me, you have notice that your wooden pipes stop working after reloading the game until you update some block near them, you are lucky: Buildcraft 3.13 solves precisely that bug (among others).

You can download Buildcraft 3.13 here (Spacetoad's webpage), and in case you want to see the changelog, here it is a direct quote:

#166 fix wooden/iron pipes input/output slots
Wooden and iron state state was not computed correctly and forgot upon reload, now fixed.

#172 fix NPE in assembly tables
Fixed a null pointer exception when openning an assembly table.

#173 fix builder stopping before end of work
When connected to a path, the builder was sometimes stopping work too early. Now fixed.

#174 enchantements losts in pipes
Enchantements are not lost anymore when transporting items in pipes.

#175 fix laser spawning
Fixed major performance issue in laser spawning.

#176 gate performances problems with signal and redstone
Fixed major performances issues with pipe gates.

#178 iron engines doesn’t support non-bucket items
Iron engine doesn’t replace all inputs by empty buckets anymore.

#177 fix glowstone in blueprints
Glowtone blocks are now required instead of glowstone dust in blueprints.

Minecraft 1.1 Released!!!

Yep, less than half an hour from the time I'm writing this, version 1.1 of Minecraft has been released. Remember, the mods will take a while to update, so don't download the game and then complain that you have no mods!

• Remember to keep a backup of your current setup before downloading the new version.
• Keep backups of your worlds before applying the new version of the mods.
• Do not go into the forums and ask for new updates, modders tend to take that the same way parents do with a child asking "how much longer" in a car trip every 20 seconds...

The changelog is (copied from Wikia):

• Bow Enchantments
• New Golden Apple recipe (Uses gold nuggets instead of gold blocks)
• New language translations.
• Slightly smoothed color transitions between biomes
• Reduced brewing time to 20 seconds
• Added spawn eggs to creative (the colors of the eggs even look like the mobs)
• Added world type options (currently only super-flat and default)
• Removed collision box from ladders
• Sheep eat grass and regain their wool again
• Fixed collision box on corner fences

Have fun, and remember, I will keep playing (and recording) the Tale of Kingdoms season 2 with Minecraft 1.0 until the end!

Advanced Machines new stuff (IC2 mod)

Hey, how are you doing? Yesterday I downloaded an updated copy of the Advanced Machines mod for Industrialcraft 2 (the one that adds the equivalent to the induction furnace machine to the macerator, extractor and compressor) and found that there were four new items. Three of them are craftable, and those are "Advanced solar panels".

Now, before you scream "Overpowered!", let me say you something: each one of these new items requires 8 solar panels of the previous echelon, plus a voltage adapter, so in the end you are changing space for adapters (the most powerful panel, the HV Advanced Solar Panel, requires 512 solar panels, and one LV, one MV and one HV adapter to be crafted. And it takes a single block of space and produces 512 EU/s). See the video :)

Blast doors

I made a remake of an old video on how to make a door with pistons using Redpower (to be specific, you need logic gates, wiring and covering plates). It can also be used to make other contraptions with the same idea (a hidden access), as I used it to make other videos. The pointers to make this kind of stuff are:

• A repeater connected to an AND gate gives you power after some time (0.4 seconds with a vanilla repeater at max delay), but will lose the power inmediately.
• A repeater connected to an OR gate gives you power inmediately, but takes some time to lose that power (again, 0.4 seconds with vanilla repeaters).
• A piston (or a sticky piston) cannot move a powered (or extended) piston, but can move an unpowered one.

Here you can see my previous video, and the other two with the same basis:

Mods updated

Ok, first goes first: Industrialcraft 2 has been ported to Minecraft 1.0. However, expect it to have bugs & problems, since it is a direct port. Also, for those of you playing SMP, this port has tons of problems (including a messed GUI crossing with the new alchemical block used to turn water-filled bottles into awesome stuff). There has been no new additions from the 1.337 version, and regarding Enchantment of IC2 items, it will be blocked (there is a function in the MCforge code that allows that).

The second thing, while Zeldo's Additional Pipes (also called Zeldo's Teleporting Pipes) have not been updated officially, he has given permission for a new guy to release a ported version for BC 2.2.7 on Minecraft 1.0, until Zeldo releases an updated version himself. You can find this updated version here.

Also, about Millenaire and some bugs: rest easy guys, I tracked the error and solved the situation. It was simply some sort of code oversight somewhere so when the ID resolver changed Millenaire's blocks IDs there were problems with the upgrade of the civilizations with custom blocks. Deleting the config file of the ID resolver and raising the priority of Millenaire to 1 solved the issue, and fortunately it only costed me a crowbar from Railcraft, all the mineral for Forestry, and some minor stuff. And I will be testing IC2 tomorrow, but I bet I will be forced to remove one mod to make room for Alblaka's work. Most likely I would remove Forestry (and increase the size of the cactus farm).

Stay tuned, and remember to backup your game before adding/upgrading anything!

Lava factory Mk IV

This is a new update for the lava production facility (for using Lava with Combustion Engines in Buildcraft) using Equivalent Exchange, Redpower 2 and Buildcraft 2. As I say in the video, I'm not using Buildcraft pipes (aside from the wooden pipes) because without Zeldo's distribution pipe I cannot control how the redstone will distribute itself in the system.

I'll give you a first episode and a peek on my next Let's Play on Friday ^^.

Redpower 2 + Quarry

First, scumbag youtube messed up everything  I was uploading yesterday thanks to "maintenance mode"...

Second, I made a quick and small video of BC's quarry with steam engines supported by Eloraam's Redpower 2 stuff. The result is quite amazing.

Now, diamond pipe Vs sorting machine: the diamond pipes don't require electric cables, can be easily chained and have a bigger "inventory", while the sorting machine allows us to do really nice stuff. I'd like the pneumatic tubes to be able to directly interact with BC pipes and machines, but I doubt that will happen.

Also, I find kinda funny the new redstone tubes because I sent Spacetoad a message some days ago when he released the video of his pipes with redstone cabling, and in that message I asked him if it was possible to add recipes with the pipes and the cables so whe were able to place a pipe with 1 to 4 cables already placed (instead of needing to place cables on already placed pipes). Of course, breaking those pipes would produce the relevant pipe and the cables, separated. Eloraam's version only has one redstone channel per pipe (but using paint we can run them adjacent without signal mixing, I think), but the tube, once broken, loses the paint, not the redstone.

Finally, I suggested to add some Equivalent Exchange support to the feeding line of the engines for this contraption, but I didn't add it in the video. No need to complicate a demo, after all ^^.

Minecraft 1.0 & Redpower 2 PR4

So I found that some hours ago Redpower 2 had been updated for Minecraft 1.0, and thus I proceeded to download and update all my usual set of mods.
Since Industrialcraft is still in 1.8.1, and will take some time to update (Alblaka's words) I will proceed to make the following stuff without IC, for the moment. In the meantime, I made a small and quick video updating the status of RP2 and TooManyItems. If you want a really complete and throrought video with recipes, shows and the like (instead of just a head's up), then I suggest to watch Direwolf20's review of RP2 pr4 in youtube.

Also, please remember that I will be really busy from Thursday to Sunday, but you will still get the two remaining episodes of Tale of Kingdoms at the promised time.

Have fun!

Industrialcraft 1.3.37

 Edit: Solar panels working, but one of the recipes for the electric furnace is broken (confirmed as bug), to be specific the one using an iron furnace with a piece of refined iron and a RE battery.

Ok, alblaka released the latest version of IC2 a few hours ago. It took me about two hours to make the video, so you might have already seen some of the details in other channels, but here it is.

With more than 70 changes, this update still is for Minecraft Beta 1.8.1, but I advice against taking it for the time being. Essentially, the Solar Panels don't work. Also, Alblaka has promised a hot hotfix in a few hours, so have some patiente.

Grab the mod at his blog as always, and rest assured that he and Eloraam had a talk about the overlapping parts between IC2 and RP2 with a satisfactory conclussion for everybody (essentially, she included some parts of BC2 and IC2 in her mod because those are needed parts for her future projects, and were quite hard not to "copy": you can't make something that moves items like a pipe does without using a pipe, or making some electrical gizmos wihtout electricity).

Also, sorry for the video being as a link instead the usual, but the video it's actually uploading, it would need another 20 minutes and it's already 1 AM here (and tomorrow is monday...). Not to mention I spent about 7-8 hours with some friends cleaning and rearranging two rooms of our club, so they can be -somehow- used despite the unfinished job made by the workers that remodeled the place.
Let's leave it with the name of "The third Fungus battle in the epic war of The Forge against the evolution of things better left unmentioned". Yeah, the club's name is "La Forja", The Forge in english.

Finally, as a little "self ad" (even considering most of you live in USA), if any of you happen to be in northern Spain these next 8, 9, 10 & 11 of december, please consider to come to the Public School Teodoro Cuesta, in Mieres (Asturias), for the RPG Convention we will be holding.
Or the next weekend (17 and 18), in Oviedo, in the Calatrava shopping center there will be an anime-related "party", with cosplay, para-para, and other stuff.

See ya!

Better than Wolves review, MC Forge 1.0.0!

Minecrat Forge for Minecraft 1.0.0 has been released! Grab it at MCForum! But keep in mind that, while MC Forge and ModLoader might be up to date, the mods themselves might not. And make backups before any actualization! That includes the mincraft.jar file! And of the big mods that use MCForge, I thing only Buildcraft has been actualized, and it's a version 2.2.6 (not 3.0, which seems to still be on beta).


So I was a little "saturated" from the let's play (frankly, I don't know what the hell I'm doing wrong, but I tend to face heavy FPS losses every now and then... maybe it's the outrageous amount of engines I use, or the huge concentration of teleporting pipes, or...), and I decided to go check some of the new parts of Better Than Wolves I had missed the last time I was able to play it with other mods. It's a pain in the ass, by the way, because the mod has to be injected inside the minecraft.jar file and uses a lot of itemIDs, but it is also a great mod, with a lot of interactions between its components ouside of machines (kinda like Buildcraft 2's interactions between the engines and the blocks).

Anyway, I was looking some awesome videos made by Battosay52 and I really wanted to make an automated pottery "factory". Well, not really automated (but changing the button for a timer would have made it fully automated) but I liked the way it looked at the end. Hell, I even installed a second .minecraft folder and I've been playing around in a clean world trying some stuff. And truth be said, Redpower 2 is a lifesaver (aah, those gems that you can only use to craft diamond-level tools... sadly, they don't seem to be hooked at BTW, unlike the Nethercoal working into an alloy furnace, but oh well...). Anyway, I'll stop the rambling and show you the final product here, in two videos. Yes, I know FlowerChild (BTW's developer) has decided to drop out from the MC Forge project.

And don't worry, tomorrow you will have your dose of Tale of Kingdoms ^^