There are pigs afoot. Be careful out there.
If I remember correctly, today marks the third complete year of this website’s operation. As you may have realized, I have not been utilizing it as regularly as I have in the past. I have become somewhat burnt out on writing, and I have instead occupied these past few months with the pursuit a long held dream of mine. I am making a Minecraft mod!
I have been collaborating with people all over the world to produce a custom version of Better Than Wolves loaded with new content and tweaks to make the survival experience more engaging in the long term. Thanks to my friend Sockthing, it also adds these beautiful new gourds! Pumpkins and melons galore!
More exciting, they grow right on the vine in patches of creeping tendrils! This change will make farming feel a little more engaging and a lot less video-gamey. Any feature that encourages the player to build new structures (in this case, a dedicated pumpkin patch) is a great feature in my book. Systems that encourage the player to respond to problems creatively are at the heart of Minecraft’s design. Unfortunately, the bozos at Mojang seem to have forgotten that in their drive to make Minecraft like Terraria.
I have been having a blast with this project. Polishing my coding abilities while testing my sensibility for game design has been an extremely rewarding experience. Unfortunately, I doubt future employers are going to be impressed when I attribute my lack of portfolio worthy productivity to a niche Minecraft mod. Perhaps I can spin it..
For one thing, this project has given me a much more realistic perspective on making a video game. Seemingly simple feature ideas can stack up very quickly, and when it comes to actually programming them, sacrifices need to be made. A man can only stare at an IDE for so long before despair kicks in. And I have been *putting in the hours.* These past two weeks alone, I have streamed two sessions of roughly six hours of coding each. I can only imagine that the total hours of trying to mod Minecraft stack up into the triple digits at this point.
Another thing–this is a rare moment where a project I am working on is actually driving itself to completion. I have set myself some deadlines of course (many of which I have actually managed to meet), but there isn’t a boss or professor telling me to do this. Every day, I load up Eclipse for the pleasure of it. I love Minecraft, I love Better Than Wolves, and now I am finally putting this dedication toward contributing to these things myself. I’ve grown a stronger attachment to the wonderful BTW community, people that have selflessly walked me through so many hurdles and bugs and stupid questions. Never has my sense of purpose and belonging in life been stronger. Seriously.
While I hope that people will use my addon to create all kinds of amazing experiences and stories, I think I am the most excited to see it completed. I want to play this thing so bad. I want to sink a weekend and more into just playing my work, a Minecraft fugue.
So yes. That is why I haven’t posted much writing. I will try to be better. In the meantime, here is an excerpt from my BTW Player’s Guide:
Cows are gentle herbivores that amble lazily in search of fresh pastures to graze. In order to support their massive bulk, cows are constantly eating. In fact, a herd of these bovines could clear an entire field of grass in a few days!
Though generally tame, it is best not to spook a cow. Their powerful legs can deliver deadly kicks from behind, and, despite their immense size, an enraged cow can cover a lot of ground quickly. This makes cows much harder to hunt than other animals, though the prize of taking one down is sometimes worth the risk. Cows hold within themselves a surplus of food and crafting material. The beef within a cow is extremely nourishing, and their hides can be cut to make leather armor. Finally, the bones of a cow are hard enough to craft a pickaxe out of, which will grant you the ability to break solid stone and mine for ore.
If you want to hunt a cow, it is best for your health to trap it in a pit or take it down from a distance with a bow. A cow doesn’t need to be killed, however, to benefit the player. A man can survive on milk for days, and cows are happy to provide their milk to anyone with a bucket. If the udder is engorged, then the cow is holding plenty of delicious milk to harvest, but take heed: do not try to milk a cow that doesn’t have a full udder! It bothers them to be poked and prodded.
Thanks to their hardy nature and tough hooves, cows can survive a night of monster attacks better than most animals. If the zombies had any brains, they’d leave the bovines alone.