[AN: This is resulting from a private chat where we speculated about Ango’s gaming habits. Sweet fluffy Young Ango fic ahoy]

Sky. The sun was a square, and so was the moon, far below. Taako blinked, and the world was made of cubes that were seemingly made of smaller squares. Standing across from him was a humanoid figure made out of squares and rectangular prisms, that only vaguely looked like his little Angel. Except they were the same height.

The mountains were made of cubes. The trees were made of cubes. Even the animals were blocky. The plants were… weirdly flat.

“Sweetie?” said Taako. “What the fuck?”

“This is Fantasy Minecraft, sir. A virtual experience in a tetrahedral world.”

“Explain that to me again like I’m a kid your actual age, please?”

Ango giggled. “Everything’s made of blocks, Papa. We get materials, make things with them, and build stuff.”

Taako felt vaguely disappointed. “That’s it?”

Another blocky humanoid figure popped in. All black, with a skull instead of a face. Well. A skull made of squares. They stood very still for a moment and then looked around. “What… is this?” said Krav’s voice.

“Hi, babe,” cooed Taako. “World’s made of cubes. Can you dig it?”

“We’ll be doing a lot of digging, Papa,” said Ango. “But first, let’s go over the controls.”

It was a very educational handful of hours, in which Taako and Krav learned how to punch trees, make certain tools, then use those tools to break and gather other blocks.

Krav, a few millennia older than anyone else, repeatedly failed to understand anything. “Why’s my scythe called a ‘hoe’?”

“It is a hoe, sir. Use it on the ground to make ploughed ground.”

“It just turned back into dirt!”

“That’s because you have to plough within four blocks of water, sir.”

“It’s not working, love…”

“Da-a-a-ad… you’re trying to plough sand!”

Taako, meanwhile, had discovered that he could knock down grass, and was in the process of discovering that the blocky chickens wanted the seeds in his hand. “Someone get these fucking ducks away from me!”

Krav gave up on trying to plough the sand and attempted to reap some chickens. “I’ll save you, my Dove.”

“Papa… Da-a-ad… It’s okay. Chickens are harmless.”

There was some raucous squawking, puffs of smoke, and scattered chicken meat and feathers. 

“Your toime ‘as come, miscreants,” said Krav. “Oi. Where’d me scythe go?”

Ango could have helped. Theoretically. He was far too busy laughing his little seven-year-old lungs out. “Oh my gosh,” he kept repeating.

They would later learn that they were lucky they were playing on Peaceful.

[TAZ prompts remaining: 7]

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Challenge #01568-D107: I Play to Relax, Damnit!

There was, after all, mad science to be done. Although it was only really mildly deranged science. – @recklessprudence

Curses filled the air. Since Amy wasn’t one to curse, Tess left her bread in progress to investigate. “What’s going on?”

“Therapy,” said Amy. “I got recommended this… Minecraft… as a means to relax, but… this stupid stuff doesn’t have any logic to it.”

Tess finished drying her hands so she could lean on Amy’s shoulder. Peering at the window, she read, “Redstone?”

Continue Reading

Challenge #00584 - A209: Don’t Speak

Challenge: No dialogue. Any ‘verse

What struck her at first was the alienness of the world. Even before she had to ponder how she got here or what ‘normal’ was supposed to be.

Everything had right-angles to it. The things that were not cubes of… stuff… were flat, two dimensional objects, things that looked like paper props from a tinkertoy town, or moving creatures also seemingly made of cubes.

But it was real. She was there. And she wanted to live.

First things needed for survival. Water. Food. Shelter. Sanity. In that order. The last of those was already dodgy, if her perception of the landscape was any indication.

The water by the beach seemed to be fresh. At least… it didn’t taste of salt. It didn’t even taste of water. She could build a bivouac out of branches… if the branches didn’t vanish in a shower of green particles when she tried to grab them.

The trees did not fall, but parts of their trunks became -of course!- cubes of tree trunk when she punched them into oblivion. She woodpecked a handful of trees into oblivion and found by chance that she could turn trunks into planks, and planks into sticks.

Planks arranged in a simple two-by-two square made a workbench, which gave her a three-by-three space to arrange things. Sticks and planks together made all sorts of things.

Wood was useful. Essential in this strange world.

Very strange world. Oak trees dropped apples. Grass dropped wheat seed and, after a few false tries, she had a house and a farm.

She could have spent a lifetime without encountering the Silent Things. They were tall, and green, and in form and function, they were giant dicks. They seemingly existed to sneak up on her and blow things up.

A wide moat and death-trap combo did for them. And they seemed to vanish after midday. Off to whatever dark pit they preferred when they weren’t being pains in the butt.

There were many hazards to this strange world. And many things to do.

At night, she would watch the monsters gather and perish in her trap. All but the tall and dark ones, who could teleport away from water.

She learned not to look directly at them.

To keep herself sane… or what passed for sane… she turned her hand to creating things out of the landscape. Carving a castle out of a mountain. Creating a wondrously beautiful garden. Building a railway to her varied resources.

It wasn’t so bad. Once you got used to handling the enormous dicks.

Pretty much like the life before…

[Muse food remaining: 50. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Someone who is expert in Minecraft and/or redstone please help me. In creative mode, this piston does this. In survival mode, it also does this.

Is it something I did? Is it my computer?  What am I doing wrong? By all accounts, this setup should work… but ‘should’ is not 'does’.

Threat of the MathMagician update

Because I had to make the associated texture pack 1.3 compatible, I had to change the file around.

The updated version can be found here.

Share and enjoy.

Threat of the MathMagician [OR: Are you smarter than an Australian 5th-grader?]

Here it is! The link is to the zip file and should instantly download. If it doesn’t, try right-clicking and select “save linked file as”.

This zip file contains information other than the map folder, which is clearly labeled. It was intended for teachers to use in classes, so teacher information is in its own folder. If you plan on using this as a single player, you don’t really need to bother with the teacher’s folder. Just worry about the map and the in-game text.

The trivia is trivia. You can go through that if you want to.

I am looking for beta players, especially when it comes do getting the highest possible score. If you must make a youtube video, please try to keep out the swears, as the game environment was made for 10-11YO’s. Oh, and send me a link, I’d love to see it :)

Reviewers: Be kind. It’s my first map and the first time I’ve even tried to make a map.

Install instructions [Assumes you have Minecraft]

Windows

1) Download the Map from mediafire.com (Link Given)
2) Put the .zip file on your desktop (or somewhere where you can easily find it again.)
3) Press Start, and type in %appdata%. Click into Roaming. *XP - Press Start, Run, then %appdata%. Click into Roaming.
4) Go into .minecraft/saves. 
5) Unzip the file Folder and place the unzipped map folder into the saves folder.
6) Play and Enjoy!

Mac

1) Download the map from mediafire.com (Link Given)
2) Put the .zip file on your desktop (or somewhere where you can easily find it again.)
3) Go into: Finder/Application Support/minecraft/saves.
4) Unzip the file Folder and place the unzipped map folder into the saves folder.
5) Play and Enjoy!

Multiplayer

1) Download the map from mediafire.com (Link Given)
2) Put the .zip file on your desktop (or somewhere where you can easily find it again.)
3) Go into your minecraft server directory.
4) Rename the current world folder with something relevant to that map. e.g “MathMagician”.
5) Paste the map folder into the minecraft server directory.
6) Rename the folder to world.
7) Run the Server and Play!

I FINISHED!

I wrapped up the adventure map. I put the final punctuation mark in the last in-game text file.

I’ve written the teacher’s supplements.

I’ve transformed the map from Creative to Survival.

I’ve included the map, the texts, the supplements, the specialised texture pack and some bits of trivia, and put it all into a 43MB package on a stick drive that is currently residing with my house keys.

Tomorrow, I deliver the whole benighted package!

The day after tomorrow….

MWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA(coughcoughcough)

The day after tomorrow, I shall be sharing a 14.3MB zip file containing all of the above with the entire world. I’ll be giving all my loyal fans the URL to download.

And now that it’s all done…

I don’t know what to do with myself. There’s only so much housework to do before it becomes mundane maintenance. I could throw myself back at my writing and see what happens, I suppose. I could learn how to handle Meteor and make Realm of the InterNutter a free app or something. Apps are apparently in.

This whole thing is a huge personal accomplishment. I spent months of my time making this map, engineering traps, building set pieces and, more often than not, breaking something I’d been trying to make the heck down and starting all over again.

My personal deadline was September. I’m over the moon to have finished by July.

So when this comes out on Tuesday(My Tuesday, possibly your Monday), have a go at it. Post some videos. Have fun.

And let me know what you think. Feedback is important to me.

What I’ve been doing all this time.

I have spent the last couple of months intensively building a map. Which I have now finished.

These are a few, choice pix of what I’ve been up to.

My map is called Threat of the MathMagician and will be released on the interwebs real soon now. I have to deliver a copy to Mayhem’s teacher, first, and then it’s out into the world.

I plan on giving a copy to Minecraftedu and mailing a copy directly to the Yogscast, under the challenge of, “Are you smarter than an Australian 5th-grader?”

Look out, Simon and Lewis.

A few highlights from my completed rooms.

I will share new rooms as they happen.

I had to do an ice-based jumping puzzle because they’re almost obligatory in Minecraft adventure maps.

…of course, if the player melts or breaks the ice, the whole set-up is ruined… And monsters float.

Progress at last!

After one computer broke down, got replaced with another [Best. Easter present. EVAR!], had the data transferred, re-set up Minecraft, had that holiday in Thailand, and figured out how to install an old save… I’m back in business.

Hu-freakin’-zah.

I know, last time I posted about this, I swore I’d never talk about the sewer level again, but whilst I was making the area level, some mob tripped the circuitry off and fried my processors in the first place. Laborious process above later, I discovered that well over half of my crap dispensers didn’t contain any crap. So along with re-setting the circuitry, picking up the dispensed crap and topping up the dispensers, I had to go around and make sure every last dispenser was full of crap. Fun.

I have since done quite a bit since then, including finally surpassing the point at which I forced myself to re-make the goddamn math puzzle room set.

Why didn’t I just keep building upwards? Why?

Well, the beta rooms have neater circuitry now that I understand redstone a mite better. I included some lanterns as a “wrongness” indicator in the early rooms and got downright mean to my poor players in later levels.

I don’t recall there being an original perimeter room, but now there is one. Hooray.

And, since my kind, loving relatives threw out the one piece of paper I needed to finish the dang adventure map, I now have a good excuse to completely destroy the alpha draft rooms.

Theraputalicious.

I leave the ceiling for last, since it’s the floor of the next level. All the better to prevent dynamite-style cheating, my dear.