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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2010-12-17, 22:43

Ah, yes. The website has gotten a little better, but it's still awfully vague as to how you get up and running.

You can play "classic" mode through the web browser for free. Creating a login name is optional for that. In classic mode, there are no other players, no mobs, no crafting (ie. making tools), and a different set of materials from "Alpha" mode. Classic mode is really like a computerized game of Legos. You can try out classic mode to get a basic feel for some of the game's mechanics before dropping cash on the real deal.

To play "Alpha" mode, you need to create a login and buy a license through the site for €9.95. Alpha mode can be played either through the browser or by downloading the client app. Alpha itself has two modes of play: single and multi-player. In single-player mode, you can create, play, and delete five different worlds locally. In multi-player mode, you connect to a server like Bonn and I have been doing here.

(It's called "Alpha" mode because the game is basically still in the alpha stage of development. There are bugs and there are occasional performance issues, but on the whole, it's stable and playable. Notch (the lead developer) has announced that the game will go "beta" this month.)

Once you create a user on minecraft.net, you can also change your player's "skin" by clicking the "Profile" link at the top of the page. Skinning is also poorly documented, but whole sites have sprung up with downloadable skins, instructions, tutorials, and even self-contained skin editors. Here's my current player skin, for example.



Do note that the name you register on minecraft.net will be the username everyone sees for you. There are potential privacy issues there if you don't realize that and then like an idiot go and register your real name (see: the link URL in the previous paragraph).

edit: Oh, and the minecraft.net site itself is a bit flakey. I was able to hit that link a few minutes ago, but it's down now. Unfortunately, when playing multi-player, the client has to authenticate with minecraft.net before allowing you to connect to a server. So, for multi-player you're sometimes left to the whim of the mothership's uptime. For single-player, you only have to authorize your local computer once, and it'll remember that for perpetuity (I think).

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.