This post is specifically targeted at players of minecraft who engage in playing the special mods that go with it. I’m specifically referring to modpacks like Tekkit and Feed The Beast.
I would have thought that increasing the level of options available for me in minecraft would have been a great idea. Making machines that automate the process of massive amounts of work really sounded like a good idea. And then I remembered I’m a programmer…
Seriously, I really thought that this was going to be fun. When I saw the yogscast having such a great time with tekkit, and all the wonderful things they made with it… I really thought this would be great. Why search around and dig manually when I can instead build a machine that will dig a large chunk of the ground out for me? And then I need to make some sort of sorting algorithm that’ll sort the dirt/stone/gravel/flint crap into one garbage can, and all the good stuff like uranium, jewelery, diamonds, redstone, etc etc etc. can go into the big treasure chest! Oh, but I better make sure this thing is modular and extensible, because I’m going to build another machine that takes that and improves on it by… Wait a minute… And then somewhere in the middle of this, I realized I already do this kinda shit for a living, as well as a hobby. The server this site is running on is a perfect example… It’s a result of me looking for an automated solution for something.
Here’s another great example… On my android phone, I have an app called Script Manager – SManager. What does it do? It runs bash scripts. This is something even the iphone still cannot do. I had a problem with one of my music-streaming apps that would download the song itself as a file into one of my file directories, and it wouldn’t download completely, thus messing up the app. The simple solution was to erase everything out of that directory and restart the app. Simple enough, right? Well, I didn’t like having to go into the file browser, drill down, find the folder, then painstakingly erase everything. So I made a bash script that will delete everything. Now when I want to do this, I click one button and I’m done! So simple! So easy!
And this is why I don’t like these industrialized minecraft mods. Hell take one look at computercraft… What – the – hell? I’m on a computer all the time. I love computers, don’t get me wrong… but to even begin to understand computercraft, you’d need to know: programming, networking, operating systems, engineering, and quality assurance. They literally put a computer in the game… and little robots which you can control with lua scripts. What is lua? Some kind of scripting programming language… one many don’t even know all that well (Seriously, why the hell did you pick lua of all things? Were python and ruby not good enough for you?). After countless hours of research, and countless more of trial and error, I’m pretty sure you could get a really good computerized automated system going. Just like with the industrialized machines… I’m sure after many hours of tweaking you’d get the absolute best and most perfect little machine system…
And that’s when you realize you’re not playing the game… rather, you’re creating machines and debugging them to play the game for you. This is where I draw the line.
I thought minecraft was about ultimately moving to the end of the game… getting the best armor/weapons and fighting your way to the end dimension so you could kill a dragon…
You won’t be doing any of that with these industrial mods around. Prepare to spend all your time in a factory or in front of a virtual command line.
This isn’t fun for me.
Thankfully, though, there are other mods that make life fun, like Hexxit. I was thoroughly impressed with Hexxit, even though it had a bit of a steep learning curve. It was difficult to understand what the point was… The point is to be a looting bastard. You go into any dungeon you find, kill everyone in it, and take all you find, including anything made out of metal like iron bars. You bring ‘em back to your home base and you melt down all the metals in the smeltery. I feel like a post-apocalyptic scavenger, and it’s damn fun. I’m out exploring and being challenged. And the further out you go, the more interesting it gets. Pirates, wizards, hoards of undead, soldiers… this modpack has it all. It’s also got an additional Twilight Forest dimension to explore for fun.
Am I still distracted from killing the big mean dragon? Well, maybe, but at the very least I’m playing the game!