{"id":10781,"date":"2011-02-22T06:41:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T11:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=10781"},"modified":"2011-02-22T10:57:39","modified_gmt":"2011-02-22T15:57:39","slug":"minecraft-go-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=10781","title":{"rendered":"Minecraft: Go East"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At first I was obsessed with the peaceful sandboxy building mode of Minecraft.  When I finally got tired of that, I discovered multiplayer. Once I got out of rehab from that I played in hardcore mode.  And after a few weeks of self-destructive paranoia I discovered Nomad mode. My own Nomad games go something like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Go east. (I just like east because it&#8217;s nice running into the sunrise every morning.)\n<\/li>\n<li> You can go NE and SE if you like, but going west in order to go around mountains or sail around a land mass is a no-no.\n<\/li>\n<li>You can stop for crafting, as long as you do it in the open. (I think I technically broke this rule when I fell into the cave.)\n<\/li>\n<li>Stopping in the middle of the water and waiting for the sun to rise is RIGHT OUT.\n<\/li>\n<li>Tunneling is discouraged but not forbidden. The goal is to see the world, not tunnel under it Bugs-Bunny style.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here is a video I made of a 5-day Nomad game:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bkkNYq082_c\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bkkNYq082_c'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>Here is the resulting world map:<\/p>\n<p><table width='600'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='center'><tr><td><a href='images\/minecraft_go_east.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/minecraft_go_east_small.jpg' class='insetimage' width='600' alt='Click for gargantuan 1.5MB 12,280&#215;992 image.' title='Click for gargantuan 1.5MB 12,280&#215;992 image.'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><tr><td class='insetcaption'>Click for gargantuan 1.5MB 12,280&#215;992 image.<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>In the video comments someone suggested a castaway mode, where you confine yourself to a single island.  I haven&#8217;t thought about the rules I&#8217;d use to keep that interesting. (It would be nice if there was a way to generate the world so that you only HAD one island.) <\/p>\n<p>Nomad mode gave me an idea for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Zax#.22The_Zax.22\">Zax<\/a> mode, where you MUST travel in one cardinal direction, without deviation. This would actually be very hard, especially at first.  You couldn&#8217;t get wood unless your path led you through or near a tree.  Running into stone before you managed to get wood for your pickaxe wouldn&#8217;t technically end your game, but the resulting dig would be so tedious it would probably be better to start over anyway.  I don&#8217;t know if this mode could stay interesting, though. <\/p>\n<p>To be clear, these different &#8220;modes&#8221; of play aren&#8217;t recognized by the game. These various challenges are entirely invented by players and come about through the use of self-imposed restrictions. I&#8217;d like to see the game keep track of various stats: Different types of death, different creatures killed, items eaten, blocks placed and removed, distance traveled, etc etc etc.  <\/p>\n<p>Another idea is for it to assign titles the way Nethack does, so that you can look at your stats and see various descriptors you&#8217;ve earned.  If you&#8217;ve never killed anything, never eaten meat, and never been swimming, it would show you were a pacifist vegetarian aquaphobe.  If you&#8217;ve only eaten meat, you&#8217;ve never died, and you&#8217;ve never worn armor, you&#8217;d be a carnivorous immortal nudist. These could lead to other interesting challenges.<\/p>\n<p>I briefly considered playing Vampire mode, where you can&#8217;t go into direct sunlight.  Except, that one doesn&#8217;t seem as interesting if the game isn&#8217;t enforcing it.  Accidentally breaching your roof and getting a blast of sunlight to the face should burn the crap out of you, but if the game isn&#8217;t playing along then it sort of takes the sense of danger out of it.  I suppose you could set yourself on fire on purpose, but that&#8217;s not really the same, is it?<\/p>\n<p>This damn game. If it wasn&#8217;t for this thing I&#8217;d probably have written <em>two<\/em> books by now. Still, I can&#8217;t think of another game that&#8217;s given me this much for just $15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At first I was obsessed with the peaceful sandboxy building mode of Minecraft. When I finally got tired of that, I discovered multiplayer. Once I got out of rehab from that I played in hardcore mode. And after a few weeks of self-destructive paranoia I discovered Nomad mode. My own Nomad games go something like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}