Considering its recent surge in popularity, I think it's time to finally take a look at one of the video games that dominated my middle school years. One of the interesting things about Minecraft is that it doesn't exactly have an ending. Sure, there's a progression that ultimately leads up to a couple big boss fights, but considering that it is an open-ended sandbox survival game with huge potential for world customization, structure building, player designed-challenges, server games, mods, and more, it's hard to pin down replay value. The many possibilities outside the classic survival playthrough should certainly keep players busy until they're ready to try another survival run with the new updates. Random world generation also lends itself nicely to multiple plays.
The gameplay is paradoxically both very simple and very complex. It's very simple and intuitive to fight, break and place blocks, create items, grow crops, and breed animals. This forms the basis of the game. However, the variety of landscapes and enemies one encounters throughout the game, and the various strategies used for dealing with them, is where gameplay grows complicated. There's certainly a good amount of variety, and the optionality of the main narrative (preparing to defeat the main boss) gives players the opportunity to explore as much as they want. In this aspect I'd say Minecraft has an edge over several other sandbox survival games; the extensiveness of the open-endedness can sometimes grow exhausting or overwhelming. I've never really felt like I was "missing out" the way I have with some games. The difficulty is customizable, as is common for survival games. Surviving the first night is easy if you know what to do, and in general it's not overly challenging if you know how to prioritize, but going in blind you're likely to die several times, especially since not all the enemies appear particularly like enemies at first. With boxy models and 8x8 pixel graphics, the is visually very simplistic. When I first looked into the game several years ago it did put me off at first glance, but I soon got used to it. If you like very high-resolution games this isn't for you, but if you can stand the simple textures you'll soon grow used to them. Despite the simplicity, the textures are still, for the most part, aesthetically pleasing, and the landscapes generated by the game can be truly stunning. It is at least easy to tell what everything is. Shaders alter the graphics significantly; they are visually quite pleasant, though they make water hard to see and the glare can be, in my opinion, pretty obnoxious. The animation would look extremely awkward on more realistic models, but it fits the blocky style of the game. Some of the render settings are customizable, such as render distance/fog, cloud appearance (including removing them altogether), and whether or not leaves are see-through. This can be very useful if your computer is not powerful, but low render distance fog can be annoying. Overall, it's simplistic but effective. The soundtrack is simply fantastic. It sets the mood very well, and is enjoyable to listen to outside of the game–that's a good value, in my opinion. However, it can get a bit loud sometimes; volume is customizable, but it can be annoying when the song starts out quiet and builds up. There's also long gaps of silence between one song and the next, which can get a little awkward; the music also stops if the player goes underwater and does not pick up (or even start a new song) upon surfacing, which has gotten on my nerves in the past. The sound effects are well done and make sense. There is, however, the issue of the "cave sounds." These are essentially spooky sound effects that might play when a player is close to an enclosed dark area; their purpose is a mystery, as they have no impact on gameplay. They're pretty chilling even if you know what they are, and genuinely terrifying for a new player. There's also not an easy way to disable them, as it will disable other sound effects as well. It might be a petty complaint, but sometimes I just don't want to be jumpscared by a demonic train whistle. Closed captions with directional markers are available for deaf and hard of hearing players, which is an important consideration since sound effects are often key to alert the player of nearby hazards (nobody wants a surprise lava flow to the face). The controls are well-designed and mostly customizable, although a few of the more niche options are not, which can be troublesome when the assigned keys have other functions on the computer; I've had this minimize my window and mess up my graphics settings before. The interface is well-designed and has been improved fairly recently. The hint system mostly helps with item recipes, which is useful for players who don't want to constantly look them up, and also streamlines the process of crafting items. The game does not often crash, but despite the simplistic graphics, lag can be severe on less beefy machines. Overall, I rate it 5/5 stars. For just under 27 dollars, considering the amount of playtime and overall enjoyment I've gotten out of it, I'd say it's certainly worth the value.
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We've been working with a lot of compound objects recently, but which is the most useful–and for that matter, which is the most fun? The most useful compound object is, in my opinion, the ProBoolean. Cue the tomatoes! Yes, I know it's a simplistic answer, but I have my reasons. It's easier to use (and more stable) than regular Boolean, and has a bigger variety of functions than ProCutter, which is essentially a specialized boolean operation. It can produce a much wider variety of shapes than the relatively specialized Blobmesh, which isn't useful for any angular or completely smooth surfaces. Of everything we've used so far, I'd say the closest competition is Loft, seeing as it can allow for incredible convenience in things that might require a lot of manipulation of a lot of objects to create–I recently made a lofted screwdriver, for instance. However, Loft objects can be difficult to edit if you don't like your first result, and the transitions between different cross sections can be awkward. The fact that lofts follow a single spline limits the possible results. ProBoolean has the widest range of possibilities, and even using other compounds objects, a boolean will probably be necessary for a great many creations. A simple union can also greatly reduce the number of polygons, which is key for making games that load quickly, making ProBoolean vital for models which connecting objects. That said, I find Blobmesh to be the most fun to work with. There's just something amusing about goop; the slime craze of the earlier 2010s stands testament to that. As I've said before, the specialization of the Blobmesh makes it somewhat tricky to find uses for, but that's part of the fun. It's satisfying to know I've found a project where a relatively niche artistic tool is useful. So, to summarize:
Today I was reminded of the fact that upon first seeing the word "metaballs," I will always think it says "meatballs," and that got me thinking: what, exactly, is the use? The ability to create soft, uneven surfaces sounds useful, but the more I think about it, the more bizarre the idea of a blobmesh seems. I've used it so far to make cushiony chairs and glazed donuts, and I'm not sure how useful those are in most video games. I've read that blobmeshes are useful for "thick liquids," but when, exactly, does one encounter those? Lava comes to mind. So does honey. This might sound odd at first, but I've noticed that the sci-fi and fantasy genres (not just of video games) seem to be a little too infatuated with the idea of giant bug nests, especially beehives and spider lairs. Giant beehives tend not to be structured like beehives, and instead the honey is just spilling all over the floor. Spider lairs are typically just caves full of webs. I think a series of lofted splines covered in blobmeshes might make for an especially disgusting mass of cobweb for the player to get stuck in; in fact, I'd like to try this. A pit of honey in an inexplicably disorganized beehive also seems within the realm of possibility. Designers of giant bug nests also tend to neglect the fact that real nests tend to have dedicated areas for the babies, and instead decide it's more fun (or horrifying) to strew eggs and larvae all over the floor and walls. Why not use a blobmesh to create a disgusting little baby worm–or multitudes of them? Another thing fantasy and sci-fi love is the slime monster. Take fifteen seconds and think of all the games you've played that had some kind of slime creature, typically as an early enemy. I like making 2D slime monsters because they're easy to create, but 3D has so far proved difficult to conceptualize. I've got a plan for a flying blob monster in the works. In addition to these fantastical ideas, there is, of course, there's snow. While there are situations in which a sad smattering of frost does make sense, knee-high snow just looks better. The player character ought to sink into it a little. There's also the possibility of furniture–pillows, cushions, etc–as stated before; a plush armchair or couch in an office, perhaps. There's also food. Funnily enough, my misreading "meatballs" might be somewhat fortuitous: I want to see if I can make meatballs out of spheres covered in metaballs. So, to summarize:
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AuthorI'm moving on to my 4th (and final) year as a Game Art & Design student at Durham School of the Arts. I'd like to call myself an artist, but I'm a programmer at heart. Archives
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