#sandbox gaming

[posthumanwanderings]

Final Fantasy VII: Gold Saucer - A towering amusement park built over the ruins of Old Corel, it is a world famous tourist attraction operated by Dio. Cait Sith joins the player's party during their first visit here. The Gold Saucer is divided up into seven attractions, most of which consist of minigames. [watch clips as playlist]

[themightylorax]

Hey, So Sanbox Gaming, a non-profit organization in my home province, is currently live streaming a gaming marathon for 80 hours to raise money for Easter SealsNL, whose mission is to engage, inspire, and empower by providing life-changing programs and services for children and youth with disabilities. They see the ABILITY in disABILITY. If you want to just watch the live stream or if are able to donate here is their website: http://www.sandboxgaming.org/

[cumplunger-blog]

I'm pretty convinced that Mojang changed Minecraft from "beta" to "full" for no reason other than to raise the price when they cornered the market.

(no, adding a credit roll doesn't make a game "done")

My best friend, Cass, was just playing Minecraft with me.  Last night, we found a village.  As in the world generated kind with NPC villagers.  Long story short, we wanted to make a map marker on it, but misfortune struck and my friend got killed (he lost a lot because of the stupid ~5 minute dropped item deletion btw).

That made him rage quit until today.  He decided to give it another try.  We both noticed that our main map was screwed up.

The blips for our characters were being hidden under the actual map part of the map.  That's Cass circled in the picture.  I should be visible too but I'm not.  We didn't even realize this until Cass went way too far, and went off the map, and got lost (pictured).

Cass couldn't even see himself on the map like I could in this picture.  This is what he saw:

He couldn't account for the bug because of another bug.  His hand isn't supposed to be there.  This bug, in particular, I know is over a year old.

So while he was trying to head back home on horseback, it got even more amazing.  For some reason, his game suddenly bogged down to ~1 FPS (he has a quad core 4gb processor and a Radeon HD 7700 so it's not like his computer is crap), and, blinded by this, his character was moving by itself.

Most Minecraft horseback riders know that your collision shape is still 2 blocks high when riding a horse.  Most of them also probably know about this:

You are three blocks tall while on a horse, but you can ride under 2 block tall areas, causing your head to pass through blocks. This causes suffocation damage, except when passing through non-solid blocks.

I don't know if that's actually a bug, or just a shitty mechanic.  Anyway, this happened to Cass when he was unable to control his character, and, you guessed it, he died, God knows where.  And of course, lost his saddle, enchanted bow, and maps.

All this crap, plus the fact that crafting recipes aren't self explanatory, and that there's very little tutorial for how to continue the game (except for achievements, which aren't self explanatory to find, and besides, who goes to achievements for a tutorial, and besides, it only half-assedly explains basic-needs crafts, and doesn't say fuck-all about the countless other recipes), and a giant stack of other bugs and loose ends in the game (list available upon request), convinces me that Minecraft should still have beta status.

Here's the funny twist.  Even after all this complaining, I still play and enjoy Minecraft.  I give half of the credit for that to the fact that I really really like block-based building.  I give the other half of the credit to the fact that Minecraft has hardly any competition right now.

There's Terraria, which is immensely more:

Finished-feeling

Polished

Visually appealing

Deep, mechanics-wise

Full of content

Inexpensive (Minecraft PC is $27. Terraria PC is $10, and goes on sale from time to time, because it's on Steam, which Mojang refuses to collaborate with)

but despite that, I still don't think it's making Mojang feel the heat of competition.  Probably because it's 2D, therefore, it isn't EXACTLY the same genre.

Another reason that I think Minecraft hit the goldmine (no pun intended I assure you) is because it beat everyone to the punch.  Practically, it hit an untapped market, and with promising results.  People like myself liked what they saw in the alpha. By time it reached beta stage, Mojang was consistently getting gorgeous amounts of income.  I think they realized at this point that they had the market cornered, and could relax.  I think that's the main reason why there's so much stupid crap about that game.

I really want some people who know what they're doing to make a 3D sandbox adventure game with crafting elements to wipe the floor with Minecraft so Mojang either fixes their shit or goes out of business.