The Xbox version is at 1.6.6
I don’t know why, but I found this statement very funny. 
I signed up for the beta of MineZ, a DayZ like server mod for Minecraft. Its pretty fun. You spawn with a broken sword, a water bottle and some other items, and you have to “survive” as best as you can. Your Health doesn’t regenerate like normal, and you have to manage your hunger and thirst levels. You don’t build or mine any blocks, you just scavenge, and survive the Zombie apocalypse. And the Zombie move fast and are smart, best to stay out of their way! You can also be killed by other players who might want to loot your corpse!
The Mod is in Beta now, and only available if you donate, but it will be free to play when it launches. Its Server side only, so you don’t need to download or install anything!
The 1.7.3 update (with pistons) will be available in about two weeks.
Resurrecting this thread. Is anyone playing Minecraft anymore?
I still am. I give it a few hours every night or so. Currently working on a sprawling underwater city, and I’m pretty proud of it so far. Redstone update coming soon… can’t wait for redstone blocks and quartz!
If you’re playing, what are you working on now?
On the XBox, I started a new map after the update a couple of weeks ago (seed: “FORTYTWO”). Lush, beautiful landscape with lots of waterfalls. I didn’t want to spoil the scenery, so I picked the tallest mountain (right about cloud level) and dug a roughly 20x12 pit with a single winding stair all the way down to bedrock. Along the way I encountered 4 caverns and 3 dungeons, just by digging that pit straight down. Luckily, no lava directly in my rectangle, though there is access to it from some of the caverns.
I still play off and on. I’ll get to where I play for weeks straight for hours after work and on weekends and then I’ll stop for a while.
Would anyone be interested in playing on a server (PC only, I’m afraid) if I were to start one?
One thing I’ve been wondering. When they release an update that includes new mineable resources, like quartz blocks, is there anyway for those resources to appear in a game that you’re already running? I’ve got a long-running map that I’ve devoted a lot of work to. I’d hate to abandon it just to get access to the new materials.
My 8 year old son got me into it and have been hooked since mid December. I am currently uninspired but would happily help any of you guys. That underwater city sounds cool. I don’t know how to hook up. I guess through Xbox live because that’s the version I am using. Message me if interested.
My understanding is that the world is dynamically generated: as you go to an area you’ve never been to before, they create that area from scratch. I think this means that new resources won’t appear in areas you’ve already been to, but if you go to a new area, they’ll be generated.
If you’ve already done a lot of exploring, probably the easiest way to access new materials would be via the Netherworld: go half a kilo in there, and it’s equivalent to 4 kilos in the regular world.
From what I understand, that’s not exactly true.
The world is generated in its entirety when you create it. Chunks don’t do anything until actually enter them. So when you start a new map, you may see floating sand and gravel that fall when you finally enter the chunk.
On the server I play on, they are resetting the Nether to allow it to be re-generated with quartz. It’ll still be the same Nether, but much of the Netherrack/soul sand/gravel/what have you will be replaced by quartz ore.
At least that’s what I’ve been told.
It’s never been true for the PC (don’t know about the Xbox version). In my original world from the Alpha days, when they added Lapis, or various other terrain features, all I had to do was go to the Nether, travel a ways, and then make a portal to take me out into new chunks to get the new terrain.
I don’t play much anymore, but I still watch a lot of Let’s Plays–I know people on the Mindcrack server simply went a long way in the Nether to find new chunks, no reset was necessary.
Now, because servers may have been up a long time, and already have huge expanses generated, I can see how simply regenerating may be a more attractive option than saying you have to walk 40 minutes anytime you want to search for quartz, but it’s not necessary.
The Xbox version has a fixed world size, so I think it’s generated all at once. The regular java version generates the world on the fly, and is only limited by the amount of memory available. The further you travel from your spawn point, the bigger the world becomes. At some point if you travel far enough your world can become so big that your computer will start slowing down.
I’ve been playing the 360 version a lot lately as some friends have gotten into it.
I don’t think the world in the Xbox version is generated all at once, but it’s so tiny that it doesn’t take much wandering to completely fill it out. Generally if you want some new feature you have to start a new world.
Maybe I’ll run some experiments tonight. I’ve been meaning to see what can be done with world editors for the 360 version.
I found this on the Minecraft wiki, which seems to indicate that new materials will spawn in existing maps if one moves far enough away. That’s the PC version - if my math is right (and the odds of that are admittedly not great), simply spawning into a new map on the XBox version will generate about a fifth of the world’s total blocks on the spot, so it’s pretty unlikely that there will be any fresh terrain in a world that you’ve spent much time in.
I actually just started playing this again, after taking a year+ long hiatus. Fancy that!
Right now, I’m living in a pair of crossroads under a mountain. My goal is to never break down and actually build a house in it. I’m thinking of making my world a bit more ‘wild-man’, where none of the structures are particularly civilized and most of the coolness comes from the natural landscape.
To follow up on my experiments that I did a month ago, I was correct, the 360 version doesn’t spawn the whole world at once, but since you can pretty much walk all the way around the perimeter of the world in a minecraft day, it doesn’t really make much of a difference.
Also, I found some world editing tools on the 360, but they all required a modded/hacked 360, which I don’t want to do.
Lately I’ve been playing on the PC version using an extremely impressive mod called “Millénaire”. It’s really almost a totally new game built on top of Minecraft, adding in towns from a bunch of different cultures (Japanese, Norman, Hindi, Mayan, Byzantine) that grow, fight, and trade with each other independently* of what you’re doing. There are also a bunch of storyline quests that make you get out and explore the world. Plus new weapons, food items, currency so you can trade with the villages, and ninjas.
*Almost independently. You need to be in physical proximity to a town in order for it to be active, so towns that you pass through but don’t interact with much don’t really change. Plus, they grow a lot faster if you sell them the resources they need rather than letting the AI gather them.
The only fly in the ointment that I’ve found so far is that sometimes people you need to talk to disappear for no apparent reason, but usually exiting out of the session and re-loading the save (don’t need to even get out of the game) will make them show up properly.
Yeah, I’d be down with that. Unless there is already a Minecraft server where SDMB folks tend to congregate?
That sounds pretty cool. Almost sounds like Skyrim. Would it work well co-op?
I was pretty disappointed that downgrading to a several-year-old Vista-based laptop made Minecraft essentially unplayable. There’s a lot more computing going on than I thought.