I don't think Emualynk got around to patching the server and starting it up again & I think he's sleeping at the moment. I'll catch up with him on IRC in the morning and tell him to update.

I'll be buying Minecraft come November, so I'll join you plebes very soon ;)

Do it, Minecraft will be moving out of alpha in the next update I think.

I really think the 10 Euros was worth it

Well, the "next update" (aka "halloween update") is already here and should have been downloaded if you have launched Minecraft since this morning. Notch, on his official development blog, says that he is now considering about implementing a real "survival multiplayer mode" and that would be a step towards a beta. So I think that there's still plenty of time before minecraft moves out of alpha.

And that's perfect for me: I prefer notch to conitnue taking his time, setting up his company and working on updates than to rush things and botch everything.

Oh I did download it. I was referring to the same blog post you were. I think that if the gears grind now, he'll build up momentum and it'll maybe go faster, but I don't mind either way

Any way in SSP to create Obisidan easily, I can't get enough due to a lack of lava...

If you dig down far enough you should be able to find as much lava as you need. The deeper you go the more common lava is (statistically speaking). You will also sometimes find obsidian where lava and water met naturally, but this isn't as desirable as raw lava. Either way, lava is the only thing that produces obsidian, and unlike with water you can't make Newton cry by creating an infinite pool of it. Lava is commonplace in Nether, however (there are entire seas of the stuff), so you only need to worry about gathering enough for the first portal.

Forget about mining obsidian, that takes forever; the way to do it is to collect the lava with buckets, then build a mould at the portal site, first pouring in a bucket of lava and then one of water, repeating and adjusting the mould shape as needed until the whole thing is complete. You can save four blocks by leaving the outside corners off (which can later be filled in with whatever other blocks you want). You'll need ten buckets of lava and one of water for each portal (water is needed for each block but can can be picked up again and thus recycled), or fourteen if you're not cutting off the corners.

Another detail worth noting is that portals are double-sided (entry from either side works, and you can in fact walk straight through without being teleported), so you could take advantage of this to provide access to a single portal from two different rooms in your fortress or whatever.

Little sidenote, is, Portals are currently not working in multiplayer. ;)

You can make a hell server though, there's a new option in server.properties

hellworld=false

change to true.. and away you go!

If you've explored far then it won't change much though. Best to do for a new server.

My main annoyance is the portal issue, I made a portal in SSP, passed into Nether and then went back through the same portal and ended up quite a long way away.

I was really hoping to be able to make some sort of fast-travel system.

I'm hoping it's a bug to be sorted rather than the way things are supposed to work.

This seems to be by design. When the Nether is randomly generated it won't always match up with the overworld, so if a portal would be spawning in solid rock or under lava or whatever it is instead relocated to the nearest spot with a big enough opening. When you go to go back its equivalent location in the real world is much more likely to be open so this generates a third portal. From what I've read on the forums it's possible to deliberately tunnel away the area where the first portal should have taken you and then go through it again to generate the portal in the correct location.

JOINED!

I may have to pay the server a visit sometime soon

As far as I know, it's a bug that occurs due to reasons Arkose has explained, but i've attatched a pic shamelessly stolen from This thread which summarises what occurs. Through use of maths (1 block in nether = 8 blocks in normal world) you should be able to work out where to place a portal that links up the one your built first.

A similar bug occurs (which happened to me) when a ghast disables your portal in the nether, you die and use the normal world one again, and it generates a new portal due to the old one being disabled and blocking the placement. This new portal also generates another new portal in the normal world, though this wouldn't be miles away like in the previous bug.

EDIT: actually attaching the picture might be a good idea. Derp.

I can't kill chickens. Is it related to my connection, or is it a multiplayer thing?