PixlBit

In keeping with the 1984 theme today, I watched Ice Pirates staring Robert Urich. Angelica Huston was also in it, as was John Carradine and Ron Perlman. This is not a good movie. It's supposed to be funny too, and it just wasn't. You may be thinking, "well, at least it has some good scifi space visuals and such." but don't bother because it's like they found a closet on the Hollywood lot with all this extra stuff from every type of movie and cobbled it all together. It's lazy in every way from visuals to script. In every scene, I predicted what would be said or happen and had a better outcome in my mind. To top it all off, the ending had no impact at all and felt like nothing really happened in the movie. Bah! 

Then I was going to play 1942 Joint Strike, and then remembered I had the original 1942 arcade game on my 360 within the Capcom Virtual Arcade hub. I played it, and it reminded me how much better this game is on a cabinet with a real joystick. Thumbsticks do not cut it, especially mine, which I think is starting to get busted because it drifts on its own. It's from all those open world games I've been playing where I'm running almost constantly with the left thumb stick jammed forward. Maybe I'll look into another controller sometime soon. 

So then I wanted to play another 1984 game, Tower of Druaga. It's an action RPG. You run around a 2D maze and stab at slimes while trying to get the key that lets you through the door to the next level. You have to draw your sword early and just run 'em through instead of slashing. It's a weird mechanic, but I got used to it. It's more like as if you were using a lance. I played about five minutes of it on my DS earlier in the week (via Namco Museum) but I wanted to play it on the big screen. I thought the Namco Museum Virtual Arcade was just like the Capcom one on Xbox Live, but it's actually on a disc, which I own, but didn't bring with me to Mark's place. So I couldn't play it. Maybe tomorrow. 

(This was the moment of cheesesteak eating. The picture was horrible though, so just imagine it. Yum!)

Then it was all about Minecraft the rest of the day. The graphics of this suddenly reminded me of Doom for some reason. It's kind of similar graphically to that 1993 game. Anyway, I began my time in Minecraft going after the "gather all 16 dyed wool" achievement. I dyed all the wool and put them in a chest but nothing happened. Then I realized you have to "gather" them, and so I went about bringing sheep into a pen, dying them, and then shearing the dyed wool. That did the trick, but it took a while because sheep don't readily regrow wool. I had to dye a pair (one for Mark and one for me) and then mate them to produced a calf. Then wait for the calf to grow big, redye it and shear it.

I did other little things while the sheep were regrowning wool, or growing up, like building a holding pen for lava in the house and then making a waterfall of lava from the roof to the holding pen. It looked like a hot tub with a waterfall going into it. I realized there is only one way to swim in lava, and that's to treat your armor with fire resistance. I think that's from a potion, and I haven't figured out potions yet. You need to get to the Nether World for ingredients. Mark finally built a gateway there, but I never got around to it. I just watched him get his butt kicked by fire throwing, floating squid things. 

After getting the achievement for dyed wool and building the lava hot tub thing, I got bored and starting drilling a shaft straight down from the floor of the house, using ladder pieces to climb back out. I put a trap door on the top. Then I got a notion to dig out a 12x12x3 room at the bottom, then drill straight down 12 stones more and do another room, and keep doing that 'til I hit bedrock. At the sixth room (that's 72 stones deep - which I think translates to 72 yards), I hit bedrock.

Down there, I dug a narrow passage way at that level, in a 12x12 square and then excavated the middle. I found a good deal of diamonds, which once Mark heard about it, he rushed down and started "helping" me. I kept finding more and he didn't, which made him mad. Anyway, I dug out four 12x12 rooms, connected by passenge ways of 12 block length each, in a large square formation, and ended up where I started. The whole series of rooms and shafts from top to bottom were like the tomb of some Egyptian Pharaoh.Then it was nearly time to stop (in the real world), and I came back to the surface with all the minerals I'd found. It was a very nice haul. 

I noticed, that as I dug just 2x1 passage ways in the mine, that it looked and felt a bit like real mining, or maybe spelunking. The walls were close around me and it was very dark and clausterphobic. I thought that feeling was kinda neat. 

As I left Mark's, we talked about how to better access the bedrock level where there seems to be a lot of resources. I had this idea of digging just one long shaft straight down 72 blocks and using ladders. Then I realized you could use water to push you down there much faster, but how to survive it. Mark had the idea of a pool at the bottom. He said it had to be at least four blocks deep. So you'd just jump the 72 block distance into a pool, and use the ladders to get back up. Maybe tomorrow I'm going to try that. Darn this Minecraft is adicting.