Category: Free Inquiry (Page 1 of 2)

I went to the Nether!

December 3, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

I went to the Nether!

So I have been watching this video about making machines with redstone and I figured I’d try making the first one for this week’s post.

However I instantly ran into a problem because I need an observer to make it and to make an observer you need Nether quartz

Okay, new goal! Get a working Nether portal. I have actually been mining really close to two busted portals but I didn’t realize what they were until a couple weeks ago. So I figured I would break down the worse off of the two so I could rebuild the other.

So I salvaged what I needed and headed to the more complete portal!

Then I was ready to try it out, but I didn’t have any with my flint and steel. So I had to spend time running around to get that. But THEN I was ready! I stocked up with weapons, food, extra flint and steel, materials to make a shelter if need be. And I tried to start the portal but ended up setting myself on fire.

Then I decided to check out the bricks that were lighting up and bits of stuff were flying off of. A quick search revealed that there were crying obsidian and needed to be replaced for the portal to work again. Thankfully I still have more obsidian from the other broken portal, so I hacked the crying obsidian away and replaced it. Now I was ready to start the portal.

Yeah!! But the night cycle was about to start and I had no idea if that would affect things in the Nether so I decided to sleep and go in the morning.

After one last gear check I was, once again, ready to go through the portal

This video is pretty long and is basically me going to the Nether and being freaked out by the weird noises I was hearing and doing a mad dash for the closest materials I could mine. Eventually I come back victoriously and make my long awaited observer!

Alas, my time was up and I needed to stop playing Minecraft and move on other things. Maybe next session I’ll have everything that I need to make my sugar cane factory machine. But for now I’m happy that I took an unexpected trip to the Nether tonight.

Until next time?

I found a skeleton spawner!

November 27, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

I found another mob spawner, so I started by carving out a bigger room for them. Then, I got bored with that and I cracked and turned on coordinates. I’m not too sure how much help this will be but I’ve been looking into how to more reliably get materials in the game and knowing your y-axis coordinates seems to be helpful for that.

It does feel a bit silly since I went through all the trouble of making the locator map, but I’m still happy I have that. Also the locator map is actually a much smaller portion of the world map than I was expecting.

Now I’m trying to mine in the y-11 area, I hope that makes sense, of the world. It is pretty low but I have dug deeper in mines so It wasn’t too big of a deal. Turns out the suggestions were correct! I’ve been finding gold, iron, coal, and diamonds and that was just one mine. I think I’ll travel around a bit to my other mining sites and go back to the y-11 areas to do some more digging.

Also with the coordinates on I can not jot down the locations of my various bases which is going to be so helpful!

Teleporting black death octopus

Unfortunately as I was digging down I ended up breaking through a wall and looking out over the water/lava canyon and across the way was this ominous black creature with purple eyes. Then, SURPRISE it teleported over to me and I tried to run away, not sure what I was thinking since this thing just teleported to me but there it is. Obviously running didn’t work and I ended up getting killed by this thing. So, naturally, I Googled it. Turners out it was an Enderman something I should have been able to kill, so now I know for next time. However, I did remember to make sure I went back right away to get my loot before the 5 minute timer was done. I had to coerce the Enderman out of my mine, but somehow I was able to avoid getting killed again and got back to all my precious materials before they disappeared . I saw this as a win, I’m progressing with gathering materials and I’m going to be following along with this video to make some fun things in my world!

It may seem a bit late for this, but I think it’ll be fun to make a few of these builds.

Until next time!

Things actually worked out!

November 21, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

I think I have been doing this wrong this whole time! I know it has only been a couple weeks but starting my Minecraft sessions by watching some tutorials and planning out what I want to do has resulted in a much better experience. Not that my goals have been very extreme but I have to start somewhere I suppose. So for this session I wanted to collect sugar cane, to make paper, and redstone and iron, to make a compass. With paper and a compass I can make a locator map which I am hoping will help me out in this game. I have seen sugar cane growing around my newest house/cave, because there are water sources nearby. From the videos I watched sugar cane only grows by a water source and you are supposed to harvest it on the second, or middle, block. I’m not sure why you are supposed to harvest it that way because the video didn’t explain it but I did it that way and now have a bunch of sugar cane! I think I might try and start growing it next week, but we’ll see. For the redstone I have two choices, I could try to dig down where my new base is and hope to find some, or I could try and find my way back to my first base. Since I wanted to try, again, to get back to my first base I decided to give that a go. I have tried to venture out to my first Minecraft home/base a few times already but I ended up going deeper into the mountains and snowy area, apparently my sense of direction in Minecraft is pretty bad. Yet, during this session I was able to find my way home! It was great to be back and grab some of the redstone for my compass. But first, I wanted to kill some zombies from my zombie spawner room. When I died I started off at level one again so I wanted to regain some lost ground. Maybe next week I’ll explore what levels do in this game. Anyway, after I killed some zombies and planted some seeds at home I was ready to make my locator map but then I realized my mistake. Worried that I might die and not be able to find my loot within five minutes I only took a small amount of my paper (made from the sugar cane) with me. So now I needed to somehow get back to my newest base. I really didn’t plan this out very well.

I ended up making two compasses and took them both with me on my way to find the new base. After a night of rest I headed off, thankfully I had just made the trip so I was able to recognize some landmarks and made it back to my newest base in no time, and I now know that it is due east of my original base.

And then, I did it!!! I made a locator map!!

Then I took it out, and it was okay I guess. I think I had built it up to be this game changing item when in fact it was just a somewhat useful tool. Although maybe if I look more into it I’ll understand how useful it can be. All in all I was happy that I was able to get something done and after that I decided to go down and do some mining because I still had some time. I ended up finding more redstone, gold and iron.

Until next time!

Starting again.

November 13, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

Here I go again! I started again respawning at my house far far away from my dead body. I also realized that I got back to level one when I died so that was not the best way to find that out. So I had a choice to make, try and go back to find where I was when I died or forget about it and travel somewhere else. I ended up collecting a few things around my house, making a new set of armour and heading out to see if I could find the cave I died in.

Surprisingly it worked! I was able to navigate back to where I had so unceremoniously been killed by a wizard but there was nothing there. No loot to be seen, all of the items I had been carrying were gone. One more thing I should have checked beforehand but I didn’t so I found out after being confused about the loot situation. Apparently the items you drop when you die will disappear if they are not collected promptly (you only have 5 minutes to get back) and I waited too long between plays so even though I found my cave camp, all my stuff was gone 🙁

Thoroughly annoyed I started going on an adventure to make a map! First I needed sugar cane for paper and I think I have the ingredients for a compass at my home base. I want to make a locator map so I have an easier time navigating around the world. So I started the journey to what I thought was towards my home base but ended up going wildly off course. But, I found what looks to be a pretty cool chasm with loads of materials and a lava flow at the bottom. I decided that my luck with daylight was running out and this place seemed cool so I built a place to stay the night and started digging.

After digging around for a while I emerged into daylight once again and start wandering around again, this time very very lost. The next day I ended up stumbling into a town with townspeople in it. This is the first town with people that I have found so it was a bit exciting for me. I ended up trading some leather for a emerald and ransacking the houses. Now that I’m thinking about it, I probably should have checked if that would have bad results before doing it, but it seems like the townsfolk are still friendly so I guess its okay.

Lastly, here is a video about Minecraft maps which inspired my gameplay last session.

Until next time!

Is this what rage quitting feels like?

November 9, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

I have been exploring my Minecraft world during my sessions and trying to sort of discover different aspects of the game as I go along. I watched a few videos in September on how to get started, and when I find something interesting I’ll look it up but other than that I’ve been going it on my own. However, I think this is when that method stops and I start doing more research into things. I normally play this game as a bit of a ‘brain break’ and start it up with the goal of exploring what I can do. However I find that I end up wandering around and digging/mining without much point to it and the last few game sessions I have left feeling like I didn’t do much.

Last week a frustrating Minecraft session ended when I died in a spot that I am not really sure I know how to get back to. I went outside of a new place I had built at night and was immediately attacked and killed by a wizard. I suppose it wasn’t so much of a rage quit as it was just giving up because I couldn’t be bothered to deal with finding all the stuff I had dropped. So here is when I decided that maybe some time I put aside to playing the game should be shifted to watching some how-to videos. For next week I am going to search out some resources on YouTube or maybe some other blogs and start my game sessions with a plan. Hopefully that will give me a goal to work towards in my exploring of Minecraft.

Until next time!

Exploring and gettin’ lost

October 31, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

Every time I start playing this game I sit down, and I think “Okay, what am I doing again?”. Maybe if I were playing on a more regular basis it would be easier to progress and look up more information that would help my game play, but time is a hot commodity for me during the school year. For this session I decided to head in one direction and explore whatever I came across. I crafted a compass so I could go in a mostly, straight line. Before I headed out, I visited my zombie spawner that I talked about in my last post. So, after killing all the zombies in there I took out all the candles I had left in there because I think it was impeding the spawn rate. Then it was off on my adventure!

I headed south to explore something that I saw lighting up the sky during the night cycle. It was not very far away and when I got there it looked like Minecraft lava so of course I jumped in! Then I died. So that was a fun learning experience. After respawning and returning to pick up all the loot that I dropped I found that the sun was setting, and I needed to find shelter. However, I wanted to stay in this area, so I started digging and building up a little shelter for myself to spend the night digging/mining in. Which turned out to be great because I was able to mine a bunch of the blocks around the lava but sometimes, they would explode so I should probably investigate what was happening with that.

Once it was day again, I continued exploring south, finding caves to hide in during night to avoid getting mobbed by baddies. I almost made it to a mountain but my time was nearly up and I wanted to head back to my home base because I had a bunch of new items I had no idea what to do with.

So, I made the journey back and I found a merchant along the way, but these people only want to trade for emeralds, and I have no idea how to get those. One more thing to add to the research list. Also, I found out that you can ride lamas, but I do not know how to control them, more research, hahaha! When I got home, I carved up all the pumpkins I had to decorate for the weekend, or forever who knows.

Happy Halloween!!

Until next time!

Digging Deeper and Deeper

October 25, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

I have been playing this game for a while now and I think I am starting to see how people sit and play for hours and hours and not even notice the time pass. Since I have many assignments, classes, work, and general life going on most of my time is scheduled and that includes time working on this free inquiry. Alarms and timers on my phone have been a life saver in this Covid-19 world where most of my time is spent inside at a desk. I have been feeling more at home in my little Minecraft world and after spending a bunch of time digging and pickaxing my way to iron and diamonds I resurfaced to go to my home base so I could drop off a few things. On my way up the mine shaft I had dug I heard the strangest noises. Confused, I started looking around expecting to see an enemy trying to attack me. But there was nothing so I figured I’d have a deeper look once I finished my trip ‘home’. When I went back to investigate the noises were in the same spot so I figured I should start busting down some walls and figure out what was going on.

And then, I found the zombies.

It was strange but so is this game so I cleared the zombies away and walked into the room they were stuck or hiding in. That is when I saw it.

Usually when I find something unfamiliar in this game I do a quick search for what it is before messing with it. Turns out this thing is a zombie spawner and its great for leveling, which is good I guess! The rest of the session I spent enlarging the room so the zombie spawner could do its thing and I’ll go back later for all the sweet low effort experience points.

Until next time!

Fifth week reflection and Minecraft update

October 24, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

Fifth week reflection and Minecraft update

There was no class in week five because of the long weekend so I took this time to start exploring some streaming software. I have been involved with the charity Extra Life for the past few years by helping my partner set up their in the person event. The two of us have typically been part of a bigger team that run various games for the 24 charity marathon but like most things this year it is going to be a bit different. This year instead of auctioning off seats at the game table and having a sort of revolving door of players there will only be 7 people playing for the entire 24 hours. In previous years we have streamed the 24 event with an extremely simple set up of one webcam and two microphones because all participants were in the same room. However, this year five people will be in different locations and two will be in the same room. The two people in the same room will each have their own camera and audio feed. To bring this all together I decided to use OBS as our streaming software since it is easy to connect it to Twitch, where the game will be streamed, and OSB has robust features with, what I hope will be, easy to manage menus. I have no experience using OBS but from the tutorials I have looked at it should be a great solution for the stream.

For Minecraft this week I spent most of my time mining and trying to find iron, gold, diamonds, or any other materials hidden in the earth. I decided to just start digging down in a random spot and ended up finding a few pockets of usable materials. Eventually I hit an area where I couldn’t break any more of the blocks, no matter which pickaxe I tried to use on the blocks. I suppose I hit the lowest layer?

As this is a short update I’ll leave it here for now.

Until next time!

Finding my Minecraft home

October 10, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

Making Progress

Okay, I have spent a bit more time in this game and this was the first week where I wanted to keep playing after my scheduled time was up. Because of the open world concept that this game has I was finding it hard to really focus on anything. I also found the day-night cycles annoying because I felt the need to run back ‘home’ every time the sun went down. Oh yeah, I found a home!

My Town (it’s a ghost town)

I found an abandoned village at the end of my last session and I was genuinely (a little) excited. I didn’t know that you can set a respawn point at a bed when you sleep in it, so that was great. Now when I die I don’t just appear in a random spot, somewhat close to all the loot I dropped, on the map. I cleared the spiderwebs out of one of the buildings and added doors so I could stay safe during the dangerous night mode in the game. This probably took me way longer than it should have but thats what I get for watching a single how to video on this convoluted game.

This feels familiar, sort of.

During this Minecraft session I started finding a bit more enjoyment in the crafting side of the game. I

Cooking some food in Minecraft

am building up an array of materials and am able to remember where I can find certain materials in the game. In fact, the crafting side of the game reminded me of the game Stardew Valley. Which got me wondering because I enjoyed playing Stardew Valley so why wasn’t that same enjoyment coming through in Minecraft? There is even a day/night cycle, a part of Minecraft that I have been frustrated by, in Stardew Valley so what gives? Then I realized that I stopped playing Stardew Valley after I had completed the storylines in the game. So maybe that is the problem, although I’ve spent hours in loot-grind cycles in other games. It could be the open world, no obvious goals that makes it seem a little pointless to me.

Wait, is Minecraft “free inquiry” in game form?!

Okay I’ll have to unpack that idea on my own for a little bit. Next time I’ll be talking about venturing away from my new found home and delving deep into the earth around me, after all it is called MINEcraft.

Until next time!

A Minecraft post for people sensitive to motion sickness

October 4, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

Photo by Nina PhotoLab on Unsplash

This week I spent more time in the world of Minecraft but with a few changes. The first session I played I had to cut a bit short because I was overcome by nausea and dizziness. I originally attributed the feelings to the large amount of ice cream I had eaten while I was playing but was worried it may have been motion sickness. After paying for a while during my second session my suspicions were confirmed, Minecraft is among the first person view games that give me motion sickness. I have had this happen with other games before (Portal and Halo to name a couple) but not all first person view games have this effect on me. To solve, or at least lower, this issue I have a couple tricks I try before giving up on a game so I tried these out on Minecraft to see if I could continue this inquiry.

First I went into settings and lowered the mouse sensitivity, this makes the movement of your mouse slower on screen so that instead of flicking all around in the field of view your “head” moves slower within the game. Less chaotic movement in the game can be earlier on the tummy sort of how going down a rollercoaster gets some adrenaline going where going down a rollercoaster while spinning would be much uhm, messier. I mentioned field of view and this is another setting that can be changed in Minecraft, and many other games. I find that a wider field of view can help with motion sickness so I increased the field of view, this is also done in the settings menu.

The last change I try to solve motion sickness issues in first person view games is my last resort change. I only do this when the first two changes still leave me nauseous and the change is the “window” the game. This is when you play the game out of full screen mode, as a window, with part of your background/desktop showing. Having the game sit within a stable image really helps me with motion sickness, but the game can feel much less immersive so I only do this if the other changes don’t work.

This photos show a game starting in “windowed” view

Video Games Made, Not Played By Flickr User Myrtle Beach The Digitel (CC BY 2.0) Photo cropped in to show screen

Here is the YouTube video I got these tips from

I’m not sure if there are other methods to solve motion sickness while gaming because these have always worked for me.

I ended up finding an abandoned village in my game, more on that in my next update!

Sign that reads "No video games until after homework is done. Capice?"

No games photo by Robert Couse-Baker Cropped in for emphasis

A good reminder, but what if my homework is video games?

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