Mojang Milestone

The Swedish indie developer Mojang recently sold the three millionth copy of their flagship product, the block placing game Minecraft. Congratulations, guys! Not bad for a game still in beta.



Minecraft was initially a one-man project by game developer Markus Persson, based on Infiniminer by indie developer Zachtronics Industries.



Here's a picture of Markus, also known by his nickname, Notch.



The success of Minecraft has allowed Markus to found his own game development company, Mojang AB.



While much of the work at Mojang is put in the ongoing development of Minecraft, Mojang has a second team working on a separate game, Scrolls.



As more and more people have become familiar with Minecraft, many people have become curious about the company's unusual name. I, too, wondered what it meant, but luckily my online detective skills allowed me to find the answer.

It turns out that "mojang" is Sundanese for "girl".



It's often used in a phrase "mojang Bandung", literally "girl from Bandung". Figuratively it means a pretty girl, Bandung having a reputation for beautiful girls.



Now that we've cleared the mystery of their name, let's have a look at what's going on at Mojang's offices.

Dig and map

I've got a problem. See, I built a lighthouse:

I had to put in cactuses during construction to stop spiders from climbing in over the unfinished walls. Stupid spiders!

Obviously, I want a light on top of the lighthouse; I mean, without a light, it's just a house. That used to be easy, but now that Notch (you know, this guy) fixed fire, it's no longer possible to have a permanent fire using just wood. What I need is netherrack, which will burn infinitely. The problem? You can only get that in hell. And to build a portal to hell, you need either lava or obsidian.

Now, there's lava over at my other tower, but that's far away and besides, the last time I had anything to do with that lava, I died. So I'm sticking to my old digs. And when I say digs, I mean this dig:

My goal is to eventually reach the bottom of the map, for a proper chasm. On the way there, I'll definitely run into some lava, which will let me build a portal to hell. There's all sorts of interesting things you can do with portals, which are intriguing in connection to another project I'm thinking about.

Now, as anyone who's played Minecraft knows, mining ain't easy. Here's what I stumbled across in my big dig:

Yup, that's me looking down into a cave with a Creeper in it. Turns out, not only is there a Creeper, but there are several skeletons as well. Now, am I going to drop down into that death cave of death to be murderlized by skeletons and creepers? Hell no.

Hey creeper! You think you're going to blow me up?

Think again.

It's really hard to explain how satisfying that is. Especially since creepers aren't nearly as big a problem now as they used to be. Way back when, I have "fond" memories of hunkering down in a barely secure dugout or tiny wooden cabin, listening to the zombies zomb and watching the creepers creep, and then running like crazy in the morning to get away from the fucking exploding cacti before they destroy me and everything I've built. Before I tidied it up a little, the ground in front of my door looked like it had been shelled by Schwerer Gustav. But then this came along:

That's right, beds. Now if you mosey on inside around sunset and bed down before it gets dark enough for monsters to spawn, the game skips the night altogether and lands you safely in next morning, with nary a creeper in sight. So now, while all this is going on, you just sleep:

And wake up to a pristine world without creepers hiding behind corners. Blah. It's all so easy for you young 'uns! Why, when I built my first tower...

When Minecraft makes it to the XBox, blowing up a creeper with TNT has to be an achievement.

**

I have to be honest, though: even with all these explosive shenanigans, mining solid rock isn't really all that interesting in itself. I'm in it for the end result, not so much the process, even if there is a certain meditative quality to it. So every now and then, I take a break from the mining to explore side projects. This time, I've been mapping!

The silver arrow is where I'm at, and it's currently at my first ever base. Just to the right of it is my first tower. Here's a more complete view of the area around my spawn point:

You can actually see my tower and the walkway leading away from it. Oddly, on these maps north is left. Notice some ice at the lower right corner! As you can tell from those two maps, the wooded hill to the left of my tower is where my main base is, and the underground passages I'm digging lead east of there. The lighthouse is a little to the north of the hill.

**

All this is well and good, but how about mapping something a little more epic? Like maybe Epic Island?

It's good to be back!

Maps, however, don't make themselves. You need redstone, iron and paper, and while I've got the first two in quantity from my mining operations, paper is a different beast. Through excellent foresight, by which I mean a lucky accident, I took some reeds with me and planted them next to my tower to get that sweet, sweet paper:

And once that's done, here we go!

The way the map works is simple: as you walk around holding it, it fills in. So the way to map Epic Island is to walk around on it, and as I'm doing so, I'm struck again by how freaking big it really is. Here's some sights from along the way, starting with a very unlikely geological formation:

A nice view from the coast, about directly north of Twin Tower:

And this epic snow-covered mountain, a sure site for a construction project:

That shot also gives you a fair idea of how mapping works. The plains in the middle of the main part of the island are full of sinkholes and caves:

The map actually takes up quite a bit of the screen when you're holding it, and you can't see directly below you, making it amazingly easy to walk right into one of those.

Finally, here's the more or less finished product:

That giant thing is Epic Island. And no, it won't fit on the map. To give you an idea of the sheer scale involved, my Blood Bowl pitch is in the lowermost part of Epic Island, the bit that's connected to the island proper by a sort of isthmus, at the extreme right. Snow Base, on the other hand, is just beyond the ice at the very top right-hand corner, slightly off the map. Twin Tower is just east of the cursor in the middle of the screen and can actually be seen as a tiny brownish-gray dot on the map. The white area at the eastern edge is the snow-covered mountain in the previous picture.

So yeah, it's huge. No wonder I couldn't circumnavigate the damn thing! Still haven't, by the way. The two maps don't quite fit together, but this is a fair approximation:

That's most of the world I've seen so far. I want to venture out and see a lot more of it, but I'm kind of holding back in anticipation of the great adventure update, which is coming at some point. If they're going to be adding loads of new stuff specifically as incentives to go adventuring, then surely there's no point in not waiting? So for the moment, my exploration of my Minecraft world is on hold. There's a lot to do before the great adventure update, though, so I'll be back soon...

In the meantime, if you want more Minecraft-related entertainment, got take a look at Far Lands or Bust; for background, take a look at the Far Lands page on the Minecraft wiki. It's pretty awesome.

Deeper underground

I am doing just that. First of all, though, my underground garden is coming along nicely:

And I saw a wolf! Haven't seen those before; they showed up a couple of versions ago.

Remember that rockface from my previous post? Here it is:

That is the great underground hall leading all the way to Twin Tower. Or would be, if not for one little thing:

Yeah. The ocean.

**

Next on this music-themed Minecraft update: Creedence Clearwater Revival.

I have!

Weather was just one of many things Notch introduced in version 1.5 (which he stole from Goblin Camp). It looks and sounds great, but at the moment the rain rather abruptly stops at the edge of a biome:

Nonetheless, it's a great addition I've been looking forward to for a long time. The sound of the wind and rain, especially when you're inside, is incredibly atmospheric. Way to go guys!

**

To get my tunnel further along toward Epic Island, I have to move deeper. Firstly, this involves deepening the chasm, which I'm working on with the aid of a chicken:

Not that it actually helps me. Because there's some lit grass at the top level (more on that later), peaceful animals spawn up there. Chickens make it down just fine by flapping their wings; the other animals occasionally take a downward trip as well. They make it, just not quite how they left:

Along the way down, I've found gold:

And had a Shelob moment:

The whole process of continuing my great underground passage requires moving down one level. So, here's the corridor through my underground base:

Through the door on the left are the stairs up to my base:

It's still unfinished, but through the next door:

Stairs to the next level!

That's something for later, though; for now, I've spent long enough underground. It's time to get back onto the surface and get started on another project...

Underground garden

For some reason, I'd always assumed that in Minecraft, plants need sunlight to grow. Turns out that's not true: according to the indispensable wiki, all, say, a tree needs is light and space. You know what that means? An underground forest.

Not only is the idea of an underground forest incredibly sweet, but a supply of lumber would mean I could skip the trips to the surface to get more wood for tools.

Here we go!

My first ever underground tree!

While it's growing, I'll get back to the mining. My current plan is to dig an underground tunnel from my home base to Twin Tower. But since I've already dug a simple tunnel from my base to my first tower, I want to do something rather more interesting.

The tutorials at the Minecraft Wiki recommend building a quarry to gather rock and minerals. I should do something like that to get my hands on all the goodies like gold, diamonds, redstone and whatnot, but my problem is that a quarry is just so... ugly.

So my solution is an underground quarry.

And after some hard mining, I pop back to my garden, and hey presto!

A tree! And here's me making planks out of a tree I grew underground!

I never have to go up on the surface again. Take that, death cactus!

**

Meanwhile, Phase 1 of my great underground project is pretty much finished. Not only are the underground trees growing, but my chasm is looking pretty good:

And here's the first section of underground hall. The door on the right leads to my first underground base.

I fully realize that it's obvious both from the context and the pictures themselves that all this is, in fact, underground, but I like to say underground base.

My next project is turning this rockface into a great underground hall that leads all the way to Twin Tower.

I'll go do that now.