What is Minecraft?

THIS is Minecraft!

  
     Minecraft is a sandbox survival game based on the PC, which allows players to use near lifelike skills to survive, by making use of the resources around them. The game styling is very basic, employing simplistic, but effective, pixel blocks for the items around the player. Everything is composed of blocks which are set to a 1m³ size. This makes determining distance and height very easy, and is good for building 1:1 scale replicas of buildings. They must harvest these resources in order to increase their chances of survival. Crafting weapons and tools allows the player to expand into other regions and mine deeper into the ground with added protection. The deeper you go into the ground, the more rare the items you find are. Once you have the items you require, the player can do whatever they want with them: construct buildings, craft items, or throw it into a lava pit! Minecraft comes in two flavours:

1. SSP: SSP - or "Survival Single Player" is the primary form of Minecraft, and is played by a single player on a map. There are no servers or network connections set up, so the player is totally alone in this map. They have the free will to do what they please, ranging from exploring dark caverns and mines, to building elaborate houses and other constructions. The general idea behind the "survival" element is that the player must attempt to survive in an environment populated with violent creatures that will constantly attack you during the night. It is therefore vital that before nightfall, the player has either acquired coal for torches, or has built a shelter. Ideally both are favourable to survival, however one or the other is acceptable. Once the first night is done, the player is safe in the knowledge that they can spend the whole in-game day exploring and return to shelter.
2. SMP: SMP - or "Survival Multi- Player" is essentially the same as SSP, but a map is hosted on a client server where other players can join if invited or if they have access to the IP address of the server. The gameplay is exactly the same, with the added element of either cooperation or conflict. Players can either choose to work together and build elaborate constructions or explore caves, or they can pit themselves against each other in contests such as finding diamond first!

An unfortunately common occurrence in survival mode...

     The entire Minecraft world is composed of 1m³ blocks arranged in a distinct x,y,z grid. This means there are 3 planes of movement, but placement of blocks can only occur when directly aligned above, below or beside another. The game does not allow any overlapping of multiple blocks. The blocks are designed to represent their real-life counterparts. For example, dirt and grass blocks are found and make up the ground, stone is often buried deeper, and sand occurs around edges of water. This makes it a true to life experience, as much as a lego-styled game can allow! There are hundreds of different types of blocks which can be harvested or crafted, some often having their own variants of the same block, such as different coloured wool. These blocks can be harvested to craft other items, or placed to create structures and buildings.

     Items are different to blocks as they are usually used, and not placed. Anything from a piece of armour, to a pickaxe to a lever or an arrow. These are all items. They are usually used by clicking and holding the left mouse button, or clicking the right mouse button.

     On top of these main aspects, there are sub-aspects which are survival and creative. Survival makes use of the difficulty setting which can either be peaceful (which means no creatures spawn), easy, normal or hard. The greater the difficulty, the more damage is dealt to the player when attacked. The emphasis on survival is the need to mine resources, craft useful items and fight off aggressive creatures. There is no main goal, but the player can make their own accordingly. In creative mode, the difficulty is usually set to peaceful, and players are usually allowed to use the commands built into the game to spawn items for them. For example, a diamond block is a very very rare item to come across, but the player can spawn as many as they like into their inventory and place them to build whatever they need it for. This rarely incorporates resource collection into it as sometimes crafting large structures would take vast quantities of hard-to-find resources which would take hundreds of actual hours to collect!

From basic, to more elaborate