Using Minecraft to bring stories to life

[Graham H Miller]

Emurelda - I use my PC to play Minecraft and BandiCam to record with a USB headset. But there are three main competitors Fraps and one other. I downloaded them all and tested out the demo versions. Bandicam seemed to work best for our setup so we paid to get the full version and remove the watermarks. As far as I know it is much harder to record X-Box Minecraft.

I know a lot of the professionals use complex setups with web-cams and video editing suites but I seem to cope with this so far!

Thanks for all your support - off to watch other people's videos now!

Graham

 

[Emurelda]

Emurelda - I use my PC to play Minecraft and BandiCam to record with a USB headset. But there are three main competitors Fraps and one other. I downloaded them all and tested out the demo versions. Bandicam seemed to work best for our setup so we paid to get the full version and remove the watermarks. As far as I know it is much harder to record X-Box Minecraft.

I know a lot of the professionals use complex setups with web-cams and video editing suites but I seem to cope with this so far!

Thanks for all your support - off to watch other people's videos now!

Graham

I use my laptop which isn't the best way to play minecraft. But we really need to get a standing pc really.

Thanks for the tips. I will definitely look at trying their demos out. Just avoiding the looks I get from my family when I talk to myself playing it is a difficult one to mute

 

[Emurelda]

Am thinking of changing my voice when playing. Speeding it up and going deeper lol! I sound confused and bewildered when I hear it.

 

[Graham H Miller]

My first videos were awful. I ended up roughly playing up through what I wanted to do without recording and making notes. Then, when I was recording I could read the notes (just sentence fragments really) to keep me on track. I find it really hard to play Minecraft, talk sensibly and keep to the script. Every now and again it goes a bit wrong and you get some "umm, err, that shouldn't have happened!"

Also, I strip down my computer, remove as many unnecessary background programs, even switch off some of the Windows effects, all to just get a bit more performance!

Graham

 

[Bernard Stacey]

OK - I've got to ask as I'm getting more and more mystified by all this.

WTF is this Minecraft???

 

[Emurelda]

OK - I've got to ask as I'm getting more and more mystified by all this.

WTF is this Minecraft???

Lol....yeah - it's one of those 'you either get or you don't' kinda games...like Marmite

Many parents like me have succumbed to the 'if you can't beat 'em join 'em' mentality and entered the Minecraft world with no clue what I was getting into.

It's a randomly generated world which players can explore...everything is blocks! It uses clever algorithms to generate worlds and no 2 worlds are the same which makes it interesting to explore. You can explore caves where you MINE for ores like gold, iron, coal, diamond, red stone, etc. Plus you can CRAFT stuff with what you have mined like armour, weapons, ...hence why it's called Minecraft.

You can play in 'creative' like @Graham H Miller has shown and build all sorts of wonders or 'survival' where you have hunger, enemies and shelter to deal with.

There's so much to this I'm sure others can add to this. But I'm more interested in what you make of it all

 

[Graham H Miller]

Two things really set Minecraft apart from most other computer games. Firstly, it's limitless, there isn't really a plot or an end game. If you play survival, obviously you want to survive, but your goals are entirely your own. Most people in survival want to build a nice house, start a farm and go exploring to get better resources to build more stuff. But, if you have an interest, like stone circles or a book or TV show, then you can work towards that.

This ties into the second part. When they made Minecraft for PC, Mojang left it open to be changed. This lets programmers and advanced players write modifications to the code, called mods. These range from the simple that add blocks or animals up to huge complex packs of mods that effectively change the game into something new. I've written a fairly simple mod to make it more like prehistoric life and less fantasy-like.

These two means that if you get bored there is always somewhere else to go and something else to do!

 

[Emurelda]

I haven't gotten the hang of mods.
Or many other features like playing with other players.

 

[Emurelda]

There is an end if you want to finish off the Ender dragon...i think @Alistair Roberts will like that bit

Plus the Nether world..that's just hell...er, literally.

Each Minecraft world generates 3 separate dimensions..you need to go through portals to reach them.

The first one is the overworld..which is where you spawn. Then there is the Nether (hell) then The End where you have to defeat a dragon and win the egg. I have never gotten to The End without cheating

 

[Bernard Stacey]

Lol....yeah - it's one of those 'you either get or you don't' kinda games...like Marmite

There's so much to this I'm sure others can add to this. But I'm more interested in what you make of it all

Thanks for the précis - I get the idea.
What do I make of it?
It sounds like a part of the ninth circle of hell to me, joining other excrescences like the X-box, Playstation, Las Vegas, and all reality TV.
I like Marmite though.

 

[Emurelda]

Thanks for the précis - I get the idea.
What do I make of it?
It sounds like a part of the ninth circle of hell to me, joining other excrescences like the X-box, Playstation, Las Vegas, and all reality TV.
I like Marmite though.

And I am not too partial to it...Marmite that is. But yep a lot of people are very much wth?! about Minecraft. Good company good company.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

OK - I've got to ask as I'm getting more and more mystified by all this.

WTF is this Minecraft???

I thought that obvious? It's a craft full of mines, simple really lol

 

[Emurelda]

Bought a second hand xbox to play minecraft!! I mean for my kids of course..