Sin Of Gems

It’s been awhile!

Well folks, it certainly has been awhile since my last post. I’ve unfortunately been busy do to college, holidays, and of course just plain old family. In that time quite a few things happened and in this post I’ll be explaining some of the great things that happened.

In the past few months many things have happened, there was most recently the New Year, Thanksgiving(America), Halloween, etc etc. Of course none of that really matters, what really matters are the games that have been released and how they will affect this blog. These games include Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Minecraft and Terraria. While yes, some of these games have been out for awhile now, they have recently shaped new paths for me to follow.

The first topic I’d like to bring about is Terraria, a side-scrolling adventure game. The game is originally based off of Minecraft, however the creators decided to take a different path with it and made it more of an adventure game. While I wont go in to a summary of the game, I have to make it clear it’s not for everyone. While personally I adore the game, friends rage whenever the name is brought up. They claim that they hate it although I personally believe they judge it before playing and it gives them a bad taste when they do try it. So the game isn’t for everyone, but I do implore you to try and play it with a group of friends, especially if at least one or two have played before. That way you wont get lost, and can still enjoy the tasks ahead. I have spent over 40 hours on this game in the past two months alone and plan on spending much more time on it. This game will be influencing my blog in a few ways; I shall be posting pictures and making posts about my adventures, as well as possible giving away a free copy of the game at some point.

Battlefield 3 is easily one of my favorite games ever, I say this with pride because I’ve never been able to get so involved in a first person shooter. Yes, I did used to love Call of Duty, however as a PC gamer Infinity Ward and Activision decided to screw every PC gamer over with Modern Warfare 2, thus ruining a once glorious relationship. However this isn’t about the greedy monopoly and fired developers, it’s about the amazing Battlefield 3. Bf3 is my second experience with the developers and style of gaming, my first being Bad Company 2. Although I did try to get in to the series sooner, I just never found time. Battlefield 3 is intense and honestly gives me the first aspect in what the future of FPS-gaming should be. Regardless of what kit you prefer, having a good squad at your six is always important as one good squad can win any game, even if you are being dominated. The fact that BF3 combines major vehicle integration just adds to the awesome factor. Jets overhead, tanks, APCs, buggies all zooming by you while you and your buddies charge in, hopping over obstacles and dodging bullets. It truly gives you a rush of adrenaline, well for me it does anyway. This game has definitely taken up a good portion of my time and the reason for lack of sleep. I highly recommend this game and will be using it to influence the future of my blog. Definitely will post pictures, write some posts and will be asking for friends from tumblr and twitter to accompany me on some adventures.

Speaking of adventures, Minecraft has definitely been a big one lately. My friends and I recently got our hands on our own server. We have been building for some time now, and while no super robot from space has been built I feel we have accomplished so much. All without using admin tools or cheating. I am proud of everything that we’ve done as a group. I don’t have much to say about this, more so I have a lot to post about Minecraft, which I will be doing over the next few weeks. Oh, did I also mention we named our town Whiterun?

Speaking of Whiterun, Skyrim is easily the best game of 2011. I was never a fan of The Elder Scrolls series due to some problems with Oblivion, however Skyrim fixed those problems and then improved on the old games by 1000x.  I have trouble putting this game down when I start playing, with the main quest being decently long and not to mention the millions of side quests, which I have to admit are quite annoying…..——— There just isn’t time for the real world while playing Skyrim. This is my first time playing an Elder Scrolls game on PC and I regret not doing it sooner, the consoles don’t do it justice. I highly recommend picking up this game for PC if possible. I’ll also be posting pics of my adventures in Skyrim over the next few weeks, a few of which you just need to see. 

I apologize about my absence though, I really have been quite busy with my personal blog and just living life. Hope not too many of my followers left me. I hope you are all doing well and hope to hear from you!

Postcards

A week ago or so I received a very lovely postcard from a fellow internet dweller. While we have only talked a few times, she definitely managed to cheer me up better than some of my long time friends. Simply by the act of sending a postcard. She started this project of hers because she wanted to make others happy and just for something to do. It’s a neat idea in this day and age to still use the mail, so I advise anyone reading this to please use the postal service while we still have one. While I never truly thanked her in anything more than a quick message, I am taking the time to write this in the hopes she will take it as a more gratuitous thanks. (Also, I can’t believe I spelled gratuitous correctly without spell check).

At the time she wrote the postcard to me, she had done 29 before, making me her 30th out of 100. If you’d like to receive a postcard from this lovely woman, please message her on twitter or follow/post on her blog. The instructions I believe are on there, but all you must do is email her with your name and address. I am not sure how many she will continue to do so please, act fast! I must also point out you should look at her artwork if you can find a way. That is what originally brought me to looking at her blog.

Well, I am off for the night… or morning since it is currently 5:30am where I live. Good night followers, may whatever Deity bless you and I wish you the sweetest of dreams.

-Gemini

P.S. Thank you Jacqueline.

P.S.S. Jacqueline’s blog is: http://apostcardproject.wordpress.com/

The Light Source Bug

For the past few weeks I have been trying to get more and more people to notice this problem on Minecraft. Unfortunately the few that have, haven’t helped or are utterly useless to talk to. Only about two or three people have helped me spread the message across the internet and I doubt that any of our messages got too far. So when the infamous 1.8 patch was “pre-released” I had hope for it. I immediately logged on, went in to creative mode and built a replica room of a building on the multiplayer server. I used stone as the ceiling, put holes in it evenly to place glass, then added the glowstone above the glass and finally filled the roof in around the glowstone so that only the bottom of the glowstone was visible through the glass. I then removed all the torches I had placed in the building and….

Nothing, not a damn thing was changed. Oh yes there was now color/dynamic lighting added but it’s useless if the glowstone can’t be used in ceilings as light. Now, the problem isn’t ONLY with glowstone, it also happens with the bottom of lava. If I were to replace the glowstone with lava so that it is in the same spot as the glowstone I receive the same effect. Thus proving to me, no one has noticed or complained enough for this to get fixed. So I began tweeting more about it, I also decided it was time to take it to the forums. Unfortunately the topic of 1.8 was trending so fast that by the time I made the first post it was 4 pages away. So I copied it and made a few changes, then re-posted it two more times. Finally after seeing that there was no way anyone would notice it, I went to the support thread and made a post there. Clearly the only way to go. Well I log on this morning and find out I have been warned for “spamming”. So I immediately argued with the guy, wonder how that will work out for me.

In the mean time I checked my forum post and got a response from another user claiming this is normal -yada-yada-yada. So I reply to why this ISN’T normal and that it is a bug. I also then go back and re-read to what he said; “…lower the glowstone so it ‘hangs’ from the ceiling and it’ll be brighter still. ” — Clearly he didn’t take the time to read my post all the way through either or he’d notice that hanging the glowstone is not what I’m referring to at all, in fact that reveals the sides of the glowstone which, yes give more light, but are not part of the “bug” I am reporting at all. In fact that’s part of the reason I’m reporting this bug, because the SIDES and TOP give more light than the bottom square of glowstone or lava. So now I’m waiting for an admin to respond.

Here is a picture of what I am referring to, this first picture is of the ceiling where there is little light being given off by the glowstone. (These aren’t the best pics.)

This next pic is of the top of the glowstone that is placed in the floor. I’d like it to be noted that the texture pack makes no difference, neither does the blocks around it. There is just a significant difference in the lighting between the top of a glowstone block and the bottom of it.

An unforeseen problem…

While over the past month I have been working day and night on the minecraft server, I have also been advertising it both here on my blog and on twitter. This has had very good results, as I have received quite a few new comers to the server. However this evening while I went to dinner a grieffer logged on and began destroying some stuff in the creative build map, resulting in other server admins having to reload that map quite a few times. I believe this, although a small bump in the road is going to have to make us step back and take a look at a few policies.

One of these policies being the white-list feature. We have used it in the past, however I want to try and avoid it as long as possible. We have made great accomplishments lately and I don’t want to take a few steps backwards by having to block out users. I really think that once we get more populated it should be easier to switch to a white-list however for right now I want people to come and go as they please…as long as they follow server rules that is.

With the new 1.8 patch releasing this Thursday we will also be creating a new world, or maybe a few, to get new players the ability to start off fresh. We should also be adding a few new mods here to prevent cheating and also just basic stuff to help the server. So stay tuned for those! I really can’t wait to start a new map in the 1.8 and actually be able to get stuff done.

Good news!

Our minecraft server is now back up and running. I am currently working on some of the upgrades I have planned for the server. However I think that starting a few new worlds entirely are going to be called for. I believe limbo will still exist however it will need a tad revamping in my opinion. However that will have to wait for awhile. I am more focused on trying to get the server known for right now.

As I stated in my previous post, if people would like to join the server, it is completely open. Those of you willing to help with some of the fixes on the server also might receive a reward of possible moderator or admin powers when the server is back to fully operational. We would all love help on this and just to meet new people so feel free to swing on in!

-Gemini

Organizing things for Minecraft

Trying to re-organize the community and get our minecraft server population back up there. I’ve got quite a few ideas on how to do this, however I am definitely going to need a lot of help from the guys. I also might be looking for outside help if anyone would be interested. This might eventually result moderator or admin privileges for those that help, either that or you will be in big favor with the few admins and mods we do have and that’s just as good. 

These plans call for labor on a mass scale as well as thoughts being shared back-and-forth by many players. So it’s going to be a big time project all around. Hopefully if we get enough people it wont take too long to accomplish. The server of course will remain open through-out the project, there just will be a lot of commotion.  For those of you who don’t know, this is a dedicated server box that minecraft is hosted on, not something just being ran on a desktop. So feel free to join in at anytime! I guess this is it for now about the minecraft project so I’ll be back to fill everyone in later.

-Gemini

Minecraft Server ip: dwserver.net

There is no port, just type that in when you go to “multiplayer”

A new beginning…

I have now officially unfollowed all blogs that are not relating to the genre of this blog. I have also deleted all old posts and shall be starting fresh. I chose to remain with tumblr specifically for its ease with integrating in to other sites. From this point on this blog shall be used for my gaming blog, a long with maybe some of my writing and or movie production. Basically this is where you’ll need to look for any info on what I am doing as far as events. (I say that like I’m famous or something but oh well, I can dream!) If you wish to follow my personal blog there is a link for it.