Thompson

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by Thompson

  3. Posted

    The survey will close at 3PM PST on the 16th of May. At that time I will be creating graphs and charts to represent the data and collating the write-in responses. Once all that's done I'll be more than happy to share the responses. People have been writing pretty involved stuff.

    I think Steam, GoG, Kickstarter and Bandcamp (first examples that came to mind) are good examples of added value or flexible price structures, both of which I feel provide a strong incentive not to pirate and to a certain extent achieve that goal. It's probably somewhat pointless to go after people, who wouldn't throw any money your way anyways, and more beneficial to focus on existing costumers and potential customers who would be willing to pay for the product, if it were on different terms. Also as far as I'm concerned punishment never achieved anything positive in the history of mankind and introducing a creator/consumer barrier in the form of added legislation/punishment would absolutely be the wrong approach to the problem.

    I must say, the response has been a lot larger than I thought it would be; I'm currently sitting at 92 responses. Thanks peeps!

  4. Posted

    It's an IT project where I'm creating a website investigating the issues and possible solutions surrounding piracy; this survey will provide data on internet users' opinions on and experiences with piracy.

  6. Posted

    Hey, I'm conducting a little survey for a school project, if you guys could fill one out I'd be super grateful.

    It's 6 short questions, you don't need an account, it's totally anonymous and won't store your IP.

    Survey.

  9. Posted

    Eden of the East

    I saw a trailer for that and was intrigued but never got around to watching it. With a recommendation too, I think I'll make that priority.

    The only thing I'm really watching at this point is Nichijou, which is probably one of the funniest things I've ever watched. Also, completely insane.

  13. Posted

    SO MUCH TO TELL YOU GUYS about:

    I joined the server and took a stroll to take in the sights. So much stuff has been built since I last checked in, and I was looking forward to explore it all. I saw things you wouldn't believe; inside this great big tree there were what looked like little stations for carts with signs promising to take me to places far away! I pushed a little button but nothing in particular happened. I also saw a giant, advanced contraption with levers galore, and signs warning me not to operate them, also galore.

    Alas! outside a magnificent glass pyramid I was accosted by a green man who attacked me. I had a sword and managed to kill him with it, but not without losing all but one of my many hearts. Hurt and hungry, I headed for a nearby town. What a pleasant neighborhood it was! I saw Pirate Poo's corner house and found out what secrets hid in the many dungeon floors beneath his at first glance inconspicuous abode (

    none

    ) But then, as wet storm clouds gathered and a mighty tempest grew, alas! a spider appeared and came at me, hissing like a snake. I managed to duck inside a nearby door to avoid its poisonous fangs. Trapped, bleeding, and starved almost to death, I, a man of morals, found myself rummaging through the chests and containers of a stranger's house looking for something, anything to keep me alive. I found a loaf of bread, but I didn't find out how to eat it, and then I logged out.

    I feel like I'm reading an account of an old timey explorer's expedition to some far flung land.

  15. Posted

    As for super-powerful equipment, I gave Thompson a set of diamond tools for his enormous help on the tree, and one night when everyone was dying a ton I passed out diamond swords to... 6? people. Everything else is legitimately created to my knowledge. Diamonds really aren't terribly hard to find with certain mining practices.

    For the record: I have since gone through 2 sets of legitimate diamond tools.

  18. Posted

    That elevator is extremely impressive. I've never tried to make one, but I can only assume you use a vertical shaft of redstone torches which each feed into an inverted or non-inverted redstone wire which then activates whatever the actual elevator is made of. I feel like that's the only way it could be so fast, right?

  21. Posted

    So anyone think the idle thumbs network should try and pull Robert Ashley from "A Life Well Wasted" into their fold? Someone has to get that guy to put together another show.

    Seems like he's just happier doing other stuff. While I'm glad he's enjoying his band and actual life I'm totally selfish, and I want my A Life Well Wasted back.

  22. Posted

    Reading this thread has helped me realise what exactly it is about Minecraft that I love so much: It wasn't really until I got deeper into redstone circuitry that I found an interest. There are two basic things that make Minecraft great for me.

    1. Redstone provides an interesting and fun challenge, basically allowing you to pretend to be an electrical engineer.

    2. The constraints Minecraft places on you are half of what makes it challenging, much as electrical engineers work within the constraints of reality (fitting CPUs into progressively smaller chips, for instance) the redstone engineer has to work within the limits of the world's size, the specific workings of redstone and blocks, the game's ability to render your creation and your own imagination.

    The craziest example I can give you is the roughly 3 months a friend and I spent building something we dubbed "The Stacker". It started as a simple idea: Can you make film in Minecraft? Much as film is run through a projector we wanted to run blocks through a viewing device of some sort. So we created the first prototype, then we made it bigger, and then bigger again and we realised that it totally worked.

    Over the next months we streamlined, optimized and improved both the performance and usability of The Stacker until we were happy with our design. We then went insane. Instead of resting on our laurels we began turning the entire area around the stacker into a 'show'. We created 'landing lights' which flashed in order drawing attention to the stacker, built a second stacker and filled to the brim the entire massive mountain range behind the stacker with TNT. (We later automated the entire 'show'.) I believe the final TNT count was about 30k blocks. Keep in mind we placed every single block manually. We did use creative mode. We'd still be doing it if we didn't.

    A few of you saw the stacker in action briefly on the Idle Thumbs server, but for everyone else it works something like this.

    [walloftext]

    You create frames with gravity affected blocks (sand and gravel) which can contain whatever you want. Each frame is 7x7 (there's no reason you can't make this larger) and has a 1 block high row above it called the buffer frame. The first frame sits upon a layer of extended pistons over a deep pit (we'll get to that later) and lined up with the buffer frame at the top of the first frame is a set of retracted pistons. Above that buffer frame sits another frame, another buffer, another frame, another buffer... until you hit the max world height.

    The actual action is very simple. All you need to do is wire the two sets of pistons to work in the opposite way and time them perfectly (easy with repeaters) so that you punch the buffer frame out (away the viewer, behind the frame) and then drop the first frame into the pit in the correct timing. Then all you need to is reset the pistons and the whole film drops down into position to go again, displaying a new frame. Then it's just a rinse and repeat process.

    We realised that we could automate the stacker relatively easily. All we had to do was create a 'mini-stacker' underground near the stacker which would drop gravel onto a block between two pieces of redstone allowing signal to pass between them for a set period of time before being dropped into a pit. Adjusting the timing of this mini-stacker and hooking it up to the stacker allowed us to automate the stacker so that pulling one lever did the entire process.

    As for where all the blocks go, that's my favourite part. At the stacker aperture there is an extra set of pistons which make up part of the bottom of the view port, while the main frame is dropped straight into the front half of the pit the buffer frame is dropped onto a set of torches behind the frame and those mini blocks are dropped into the back half of the pit. The pit below the stacker is two blocks deep, nine blocks wide and many blocks high, at the bottom is netherrack fire (infinite). Roughly halfway down the pit, on the wall which the frame blocks will touch as they fall is a row of torches and a piston operated ledge which can jut out one block or be flush with the wall. As the frame blocks fall they land on this ledge and are broken into mini-blocks by the torches, they slowly build up here until, at the end of the stacker's operation, the ledge is retracted and all the mini-blocks fall into the fire. The buffer frame mini-blocks simply fall straight into the fire.

    [/walloftext]

    As for what you put in the stacker, letters and numbers work quite well. We did build a much larger one later on which contained entire words.

    I still have the final save. I wonder if it would work in new versions of Minecraft considering it was finalised in October 2011.