#minecraft ramblings

[kozykricket]

okay i havent played vintage story MYSELF but ive seen a good bit and heard a good bit. i think its a very interesting game. i like to see games that commit to a certain gameplay vibe / direction. the cruel, gritty survival... really putting in effort even to just get decent tools. while its obviously not what id want in minecraft, i really respect it existing and i wanna try it sometime

but its also got me thinking; vintage story is like "minecraft but theres more friction" i feel like... as with most things minecraft does, im realizing that minecraft.. in General just doesnt really commit Either Direction in terms of friction. vintage story is far on the side of the friction-spectrum of "you gotta put in a lot of work, the game isnt very kind, but damn does it feel rewarding because of all that work" and its less focused on just letting you do whatever you want... and more about really having your progress feel meaningful; your house starts out pretty shabby but you can make better more fortified and pretty houses later on meanwhile, minecraft... DOES have some friction. clearly. its gotta be a survival game. but it also wants to be a game where yknow, you can do anything you want to, and its not too cruel... (except with death lmfaoo how have they not addressed that officially yet) but yknow aside from even death and stuff. i feel like minecraft is just in a bit of an inbetween spot to try and appeal to all types of people, and it works well, but i think for Me Personally? since vintage story already exists for "sandbox game with more friction and restriction" ... I'd love to see a game exist as "sandbox voxel game with little friction, where resource gathering and progression is indeed an element, but its fairly minor, just wants to let you get to doing whatever it is you want to do" which i think. is probably why i build more in terraria? aside from the fact i dont make new terraria worlds very often, theres also just such a SMALL amount of friction towards building shit. plus in 2d you dont need as much to make, say... a giant brick roof. meanwhile minecraft is kinda stingy if you wanna build with anything that isnt Dirt, a type of wood, or cobblestone

SO maybe ill try and make a simple scoped datapack that just tries to see how much can be done merely modifying loot tables (and maybe tiny bits of progression) to make the game... well... a little more frictionless. not because im a tiktok gen z kid who cant handle the idea of putting in effort to get results (at least in videogames /lh) but because it'd... be fun? and minecrafts the type of silly little game i wanna have fun building shit in? without just going in creative mode?

[foxgirltryke]

Adventuring in Minecraft gotten old?

A great way to spruce up your adventuring in minecraft in my opinion is to keep a little book & quil, or journal IRL, where you keep little notes of cool coordinates, and try to illustrate them as best you can with formatting tools in game & symbols

here's a few i found on a server i host w my friends called the funny fuckers server:

based off of this screenshot roughly:

and this tutorial by xisumavoid is how I did the last page. its very time consuming but i really like how it turned out

[kihaku-gato]

I genuinely look forward to the next cobblemon update- not even just for the next cat pokemon getting in but just for the ranch block;

I wanna have various places where my mons get to just roam like the water pokemon in a pond or plant/bug pokemon in a garden.

[kozykricket]

riddle me this. why is it that i feel terraria calamity mod overcompensates in QoL... yet i would so desperately want that level of QoL in MINECRAFT like

its weird. i understand that the average calamity player doesnt want to do much other than fighting, so the QoL lets them skip past a lot of things and makes the game generally flow a lot faster... but i wouldnt want that in vanilla terraria, because i honestly like the grind and... i dont think the game needs to compensate for it. cus like. the game already has tons of QoL and stuff. things are already nicely paced in terraria, and where there IS grind, it feels nice to me. maybe ive just spent so long with it that ive convinced myself that i love it, but i cant deny it feels lame as HELL to craft my hermes boots instead of venturing forth to gold chests

is it just that i have a much lower attention span in minecraft? that in terraria i am always actively having fun with something so i dont feel the need to speed up processes? i dunno. its just weird to me that . me when i play calamity and i inherently mine faster (yuck) but me when i play minecraft and i inherently mine faster (YES!) its also interesting how my criticisms of minecraft about like. i would not want to have to go on a stupid mangrove adventure sidequest to get increased reach from a crab claw... contradicts my enjoyment of that type of gameplay in the context of terraria i LIKE that i have to fish for certain things. in minecraft ideas im always saying "mm gimme more CHOICES for doing stuff like that, for like. getting more block reach" but in terraria when i see mods add more ways to get certain things im like bleh why. i like having to go on a fetchquest to find the item. i guess its just the mindset i go into each game with. terraria feels more like a metroidvania or roguelike in item collection and capabilities. but minecraft is hm eh my opinions on minecraft QoL are complicated. but my opinion on terraria QoL is that... its like. the dev team knows perfectly how to do QoL changes. but i think if they kept doing them again and again, they'd end up powercreeping the game. and i also... really wouldnt want to see the calamity ideas of QoL in the vanilla game. because the vanilla game is so much more than just rushing to the bosses dont let me craft an anklet of the wind with jungle spores, thanks. the design of the game is for me to go on a quest to find an anklet, not just to grind something else entirely. yes its another OPTION and options are good, but ... i dunno, OPTIONS can rub me wrong sometimes. even if theyre what i want in minecraft

[kozykricket]

Minecraft Slime Headcanon (real) (also a suggestion to replace slime chunks with a different alternative spawning place)

Ah, the Slime. one of the most peculiar creatures in the world of minecraft. Most consistently found in swamps and mangrove swamps, yet even then... said consistency relies on moon phases. Perhaps you've wondered why this is, what type of magic is involved. Well, I have potential answers here for you, in this headcanon-lore written in a semi-nature-documentary style!!! Ahem

The creation of slime is a natural process of the overworld, and it is facilitated via numerous factors, but the basis of all slime is that of mud. You may notice slimes only seem to appear in damp, muddy areas of the overworld, and this is for good reason

The process of a living slime forming, which shall be referred to as "Oozing" for sake of convenience, starts with a wet soil, aka mud! When a slime oozes out of said soil, however, their creation partially dries up said mud. This oozing could take a toll on the environment. If it happened in any less damp of an environment than a swamp, it could not continue to last as Mud, likely reverting to Clay (as seen with dripstone drying water out of mud, into clay blocks). Slimes are smart enough to know that their "oozing grounds" would hence be cut short, and thus do prefer to stick to swamps when it comes to the surface.

However, you may notice that slimes only seem to Ooze themselves into existence during the night. Why is this? Well, you see, the second key ingredient, and main facilitator of oozing, is light. But not just any light: Natural light. This is because light helps slime (the substance) stay tangible, rather than melting yet more into a puddle, reverting to the mud where it came from. The reason you don't see this process occur during the day is that too much light and heat is also bad for the formation of slimes. They need a cool environment, or else they struggle to keep their substance. Pitifully, swamps happen to be some of the most humid places during the day, so for these reasons, Slimes will only come out during a good, cold night. Interestingly, it has also been noted that as the phase of the moon changes, so too does the speed of the Oozing process. This has been discovered to be caused by the brightness of the moonlight. More light speeds up the process, and thanks to the sun not being out to dry them up with overwhelming amounts of light, slimes are born.

As you can tell, Slimes are very picky about their environment. It needs to be damp enough for them to begin to "ooze" out of a block, like water dripping out of mud... and must be cold enough, yet light enough, and even more specifically, not too bright... for them to form a tangible body.

(Now this gets into a proposal for slimes spawning in lush caves because slime chunks are weird and unintuitive) There is only one other environment than swamps that fits the bill for slimes, and that is lush caves. A seasoned adventurer may ask to themselves how the large amounts of clay remain dry in such a damp environment, one damp enough to facilitate moss growth... The reason? Just as the clay begins to form into mud, the oozing process begins, and due to the lack of immense dampness such as in swamps, the mud cannot stay as mud.

But why does the oozing process occur in lush caves? What entices slimes to attempt it here, of all places? The answer hangs from the ceiling -- that's right, glow berries! Earlier we talked about slimes needing light, but being put off by too substantial amounts of light. While moonlight fulfills this need quite well, so too do glow berries. and as glow berries shine all hours of the day, as opposed to moonlight... slimes have taken notice of these environments, despite these caves' lack of the swamps' immense dampness needed to sustain mud.

Finally, lush caves are cold, as they are underground... which checks that off the list for the oozing process.

Put simply: When a slime is oozed, (which happens due to the environmental conditions of dampness, coldness, and constant light) it counters the dampening of clay into mud. These environments walk a very fine line. Any drier and the oozing process would not begin... but any wetter, and instead of clay, lush caves would have mud as their predominent soil.

Overall, minecrafts slimes are very interesting creatures, and thats not even delving into their interdimensional cousin, the magma cube...

Thank you for reading, and if you have any notes or critiques about this Lore i literally just came up with, feel free to lmk!!

[kozykricket]

i think honestly mojang is in a cycle where they're CREATING people who are unsatisfied. when you keep adding extrinsic rewards and jingling shiny keys for people to go collect, then its like. yes those are fun! but they run out. especially when its just one or two really really well developed and thought out shiny thing every year. gonna be real if you want to go for Shiny Shiny Stuff, then you gotta go for quantity over quality in some way tbh. because ...people have become accustomed to new shiny things to collect, but then that leaves them feeling unsatisfied that there isnt MORE its like, the sniffer but on a larger scale; the sniffer having only two plants makes people disappointed that there isnt like, 15 different plants from it. the expectation is "oo yesi love this i want more!!" but if it had none in the first place, then. okay. people wouldn't have the disappointment of lack of plants they wouldnt be asking for more plants

and likewise, i dont think people would be asking for more cool things to seek out and find in minecraft, if they werent being given little bits of new adventures to go on with new shiny rewards it realistically started all the way back in 1.11 when the focus became more on exploration, but the jingling of keys began in .. hm. 1.16 or 1.17, probably. 1.16 is an exception because the nether was a nothingburger beforehand, tbh. and it doesnt leave much of the nether feeling lacking because... well, the dimension is MOSTLY covered in new stuff! by proxy of originally being nothing! but the overworld already has tons of stuff, and . being given more stuff... just. mm i cant word things correctly but. more new places to go with new things (sherds, echo shards, now resin) is like. that just makes you wish for more. and its insatiable to keep that up forever minecraft is becoming a halfbaked terraria, in terms of adding more extrinsic goals

can the game succeed past this? yeah

but i think its in an extremely awkward state of being right now

[kozykricket]

ultimately: what the heck is minecraft even trying to be at this point lmao

i love the game dont get me wrong. its still enjoyable, its not ruined or anything. its just so... confusing, in every manner of Direction that one can look at, you only find lack of direction is the game content oriented? or is it more about just doing what you want? i mean, its both. but in a weird way that doesnt blend greatly is it an exploration game? it seems to want to be one. but... its pretty bland in that aspect is survival mode meant to be "creative mode but you work for your stuff" or is it meant to be about surviving and overcoming a slightly dangerous world? what is the level of intended tedium? or any sort of baseline for the amount of content each area of the game has? i dont see consistency in it i mean,

i prefer jankiness, not striving for intuitive mechanics, and not an entire lack of tedium / cruel mechanics, but still some of them, myself but i know some prefer a cleanly polished game. one with clean mob animations, and polished content that is designed with specific intention and purpose! some prefer lots of tedium, they prefer item loss and challenge in survival mode! some prefer the game have more QoL! i myself prefer... the simplicity of a Still world, and for content to be less purposeful. wind charges i will always say are a good basis for "nonpurposeful content" they just... deal non lethal knockback. they may primarily be for boosting your own jumps, but they can be used for more than that. and i ... think tedium is also something mc is inconsistent in. is survival mode supposed to be grindy? i mean, for certain materials to build with, yeah it is. objectively its WAY easier to build a bamboo house than it is a stone brick house. and what about intuitivity? i mean, im happy for stuff like redstone to be easier for newcomers to understand, but i dont think we need new redstone things to be completely clean and very user friendly in how they work. i like the vibe of making cool things that work... out of things that are a bit hard to understand. the crafter does most of the hard work for you, by putting more items into different slots. different logic from dispensers, is a bit weird! and what of enchanting? of xp? of losing items? should survival mode be the mode where you ultimately do lose your items, and shouldnt get attached to them? i mean, that WAS minecrafts vibe. but then mending came along and contradicted it, and we've only come further in that direction. and yeah, i just dont think minecraft knows what it is. like terraria i know wants to be content oriented, with little tedium, but still lots of difficulty and... some "fun cruelty" and ofc theres also how much mc decides to go for Fantasy-Realism vs Fantasy vs Realism

[kozykricket]

am i gonna say all the new content is perfect? nah

but for a first snapshot?? its really nice

and like

honestly, even if the textures sucked ASS, or the implementation was dumb...

it still Sets a PRECEDENT. that they are willing to -change an old dumb recipe -add more flavour to existing biomes, rather than just keep adding new biomes -continue adding variants to mobs, EVEN if theyre irrelevant. i was convinced we only got wolf variants because the armadillo won and made them "relevant" but... theres nothing interesting or relevant about pigs right now. so, we're just getting pig variants Just Because i think there IS a weird sensation that comes with content thats added "just because" but i think thats bc they havent done that in quite a while. they havent just added like... simple, basic little stuff. maybe theres a middle ground to be had, with this stuff having a bit more of modern mojangs "quality feeling" (cus ill admit most Drop content has felt... very dry, and like. simple-datapacked in?? lol. as opposed to simple-modded in. like prototypes idk)

but at the same time i... would not want to wait years and years for them to give us some more decoration to the forest floors... just for their Mojang Quality Stamp of Perfection sometimes, id rather undercooked than overcooked. i can appreciate a feature thats just, there. a thing thats just, added. without great reason... without deeper thought... but now, i want one of two things from bedrock, in java, that feel relevant now: A) small flower spreading via bonemeal B) fallen trees / logs in forests (with moss carpet pls?)