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MINECRAFT
Mr Whippy - 13/1/21 at 07:37 PM

Don't play it... It's far too addictive

You have been warned.

roadrunner - 13/1/21 at 08:20 PM

My 15 year old daughter is constantly playing it
I've told her it's holding her back in life.

MikeR - 13/1/21 at 08:39 PM

My kids play it a bit. I started to play. They make houses, i go 'adventuring' exploring caves looking for coal, iron, diamond and redstone. I decided to stop .... before it was too late. Although I did create a great system with a couple of hoppers, chests and furnace to auto smelt stuff.

joneh - 14/1/21 at 08:38 AM

My boy plays it. My interest perked up when I heard you can make logic gates. A cool project would be to build a simple calculator within Minecraft, which would be a computer, within a simulation.

We're probably not too far off running complex simulations within simulations, then gets you thinking. Earth is a billion years old, and we have billions of computers capable of running basic simulations. There are billions of other planets in the galaxy. We've only had this technology over the last 50 or so years. Other planets could be millennia ahead in tech with billions of computers capable of running realistic simulations. Are we the base simulation? Or could we in fact, be a simulation, or a simulation within a simulation?

Anyway it's too early to think about that! More coffee.

nick205 - 14/1/21 at 09:13 AM

My 12 yr old son plays it across the web with school friends. ADDICTIVE is true - I've had to switch our WiFi off before to get him off his computer!

He then comes and asks for £10 game packs and other things. Whoever the publisher (is that still the right term) is knows what they're doing to make $$$.

Computer games have just never done it for me - might be because I work on a computer most of the day - when it comes to my time there's other things I'd rather be doing.

Mr Whippy - 14/1/21 at 12:51 PM

Its basically animated Lego (apparently one of the reasons everything is built from blocks as the creator had Lego in mind). The kids round here are obsessed with it and I can see why as it's a lot of fun and sometimes very creepy with jump scares out of nowhere. Last night I opened the back door on my castle (which is built into the side of a mountain), only for a creeper to walk straight in and so I'm running through the rooms trying to find somewhere for it to explode without wrecking the place....unfortunately it goes off early, takes out 2 walls, my centrepiece lava waterfall and my huge glass window, so much time spent making that

Yeah its quite a bit more fun that Lego really

nick205 - 14/1/21 at 01:11 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
Its basically animated Lego (apparently one of the reasons everything is built from blocks as the creator had Lego in mind). The kids round here are obsessed with it and I can see why as it's a lot of fun and sometimes very creepy with jump scares out of nowhere. Last night I opened the back door on my castle (which is built into the side of a mountain), only for a creeper to walk straight in and so I'm running through the rooms trying to find somewhere for it to explode without wrecking the place....unfortunately it goes off early, takes out 2 walls, my centrepiece lava waterfall and my huge glass window, so much time spent making that

Yeah its quite a bit more fun that Lego really



Now Lego had me well and truly hooked as a kid. Spent hours building elaborate Lego Technic vehicles to send careering down the stairs. Sole purpose was to see how much of the vehicle survived (how strong (well built) it was). I still have a similar love of Lego now - sadly my kids don't feel the same passion for it

steve m - 14/1/21 at 01:28 PM

Lego and mecanno were by my favourite toys when i was a kid,

Can you play Mincraft for free, as wouldnt mind having a go

steve

jps - 14/1/21 at 03:33 PM

quote:
Originally posted by steve m
Lego and mecanno were by my favourite toys when i was a kid,

Can you play Mincraft for free, as wouldnt mind having a go

steve

I think it costs a few quid, but not very expensive.

My 7 year old loves it. It's interesting watching him effectively learning to code through playing Minecraft. After he'd eventually convinced me to have a proper look at it (like Nick - I have too much other stuff on the go to play computer games!) I realised that he'd learnt about x,y,z co-ordinates and how to write commands to build stuff en masse rather than a block at a time.

He also loves Lego - we bought him the 'Lego Boost' robot set for Christmas, and he's as happy making things from that as he is building stuff on Minecraft - and there's suprising overlap in the programming elements of it.

[Edited on 14/1/21 by jps]

Mr Whippy - 14/1/21 at 04:02 PM

quote:
Originally posted by steve m
Lego and mecanno were by my favourite toys when i was a kid,

Can you play Mincraft for free, as wouldnt mind having a go

steve


I downloaded it to my phone from Google play, it was only a few quid. Then downloaded it onto the old xbox 360, that wasn't much either. I play the phone version most of the time. The kids play the xbox.

It's an odd game with no other objective than - here's a world/s go and do whatever you want. If you get stuck or don't know how to do something or need inspiration, youtube is your friend.


[Edited on 14/1/21 by Mr Whippy]

nick205 - 14/1/21 at 04:19 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
quote:
Originally posted by steve m
Lego and mecanno were by my favourite toys when i was a kid,

Can you play Mincraft for free, as wouldnt mind having a go

steve


I downloaded it to my phone from Google play, it was only a few quid. Then downloaded it onto the old xbox 360, that wasn't much either. I play the phone version most of the time. The kids play the xbox.

It's an odd game with no other objective than - here's a world/s go and do whatever you want. If you get stuck or don't know how to do something or need inspiration, youtube is your friend.


[Edited on 14/1/21 by Mr Whippy]



"youtube is your friend"

That's the truth!

I've seen my son watching youtube videos of other people playing Minecraft.

TBH kids seem to watch preety much any carp on youtube (or pootube as SWMBO and I refer to it). Granted there's some useful content on there on how to repair things, but there's bizigabytes of utter dross on there to drown that.

coyoteboy - 14/1/21 at 05:21 PM

quote:
Originally posted by roadrunner
My 15 year old daughter is constantly playing it
I've told her it's holding her back in life.


Far from it, it can be very useful and inventive. It requires ingenuity and thought to play well, I believe. I wouldn't want it to be a kid's only pass-time, but it's not to be demonised. I'd just set time limits.

As a 15 year old I'd spend 6 hour sessions into the night playing racing sims "constantly", back in the day when they were not even networked for social interaction. Didn't hold me back (plenty of friends, happy life, doctorate, solid job in an exciting engineering field).

AntonUK - 14/1/21 at 09:20 PM

Im screwed. I'm 38 and still play minecraft on PC (running a small server) and xbox.

I have too much lego too.... one day i'll grow up

bi22le - 14/1/21 at 11:28 PM

This is a well timed post. We bought it for our daughter last weekend (it costs £22 for a PC licence) because she wanted 50p to buy an outfit on Roblox, which is a whole other topic.

I have heard the Minecraft warnings, but it is cracking. My daughter kept on wandering off and getting lost etc. I sat down one night to aee what I could do. Build a map or something. 6 HOURS LATER I am a the bottom of a cave mining for bloody redstone to build a compass!!!!

Very addictive a lot of fun and far less harmful then playing Mortal Kombat like I was as a kid. Many many benefits to Minecraft.

SteveWalker - 14/1/21 at 11:51 PM

quote:
Originally posted by joneh
My boy plays it. My interest perked up when I heard you can make logic gates. A cool project would be to build a simple calculator within Minecraft, which would be a computer, within a simulation.


You're way behind the times, there are numerous computer simulations in Minecraft. Indeed, all the way back in 2011, one guy apparently made a computer simulation within Minecraft, that could run a basic 2D version of Minecraft!

Computer in Minecraft

There are far more sophisticated simulation nowadays.

joneh - 15/1/21 at 07:39 AM

quote:
Originally posted by SteveWalker
quote:
Originally posted by joneh
My boy plays it. My interest perked up when I heard you can make logic gates. A cool project would be to build a simple calculator within Minecraft, which would be a computer, within a simulation.


You're way behind the times, there are numerous computer simulations in Minecraft. Indeed, all the way back in 2011, one guy apparently made a computer simulation within Minecraft, that could run a basic 2D version of Minecraft!

Computer in Minecraft

There are far more sophisticated simulation nowadays.


Amazing. We're not real, are we?

MikeR - 15/1/21 at 08:01 AM

I used Redstone to make an elevator.

I also made a mine cart track between mine and my kids houses so we could get around quickly.

For a while lava was banned. It wasn't my fault. I built a trap into my front door. Unfortunately it had a small glitch and my son was helping me.

Let's just say, lava, my daughter's wooden house built under mine on the hill, and get collection of did isn't a good combination. We had tears, lots of tears.