My Minecraft Skin Timeline

Hey, guys! I’m back for another post, this one about my menagerie of Minecraft skins that I’ve created – which has been a little varied, to say the least.

I don’t have a picture of my very first skin, but one of the first ones posted on my Planet Minecraft account is this.

Yuck.

You could tell I started to get the hang of it right about here.

Still pretty awful though. That skin color is nasty.

They got a little more detailed, but not much.

Ooh, plot twist! I added a nose and started to shade more like this.

It’s still not too great. I hadn’t really got the gist of palettes yet.

My hair shading changed multiple times while I used this shading.

Then – voila! – I had a big lightbulb, and this happened.

I didn’t like that shading much, so I experimented for a while. Notice how the level of detail is getting higher and higher.

And then I figured it out.

I’ve come a long way, don’t you think?

Thanks for checking this out!! 🙂

~ Summer

Rift: Exploring the Wardrobe Patch

Hey, guys! As you may have read in my earlier post, I’ve dropped Diablo 3 as my main RPG and started playing Rift instead. For the few of you reading my blog that may also play Rift, you’ve probably been keen on the new game patch: the wardrobe update.

When I first heard about this patch, it didn’t seem like much. Some new clothing looks, another menu for clothes. [I’ll admit, I didn’t go too far into the research.] Sure, I thought it would be cool, but I didn’t expect it would be anything big.

When the patch came out and I got to play it for the first time, I thought it was stupid. The dye merchants in Sanctum and Meridian were gone, replaced by an in-game dye menu. You had to pay credits to get the nice colors. I learned, slowly, that apothecary dyes still worked, and the colors in the menu were nice, anyway. It still seemed pretty pointless. Now you could have two sets of clothing. It didn’t make much sense to have two wardrobe options; why not just wear the best armor you owned at all times? I put all my normal clothes in my wardrobe slot. It felt pretty much the same, albeit with nicer colors.

Then I realized that wasn’t what the update was, and I started to like it more. Now, easy as pie, you could make your character look like he or she was wearing whatever you wanted him or her to. You could even wear something that your class couldn’t normally use – while still retaining the stats of the armor you were really wearing. This worked better than ever at the time, right after I’d picked up a piece of chest armor that had good stats but was ridiculously immodest. [Yeah, sorry, my rant about inappropriate/impractical womens’ RPG outfits will come later.]

In my opinion, this is especially useful for mages and warriors, whose clothing options aren’t exactly pleasing [to me, anyway.] Mages’ robes usually look like they’re wearing bathrobes, especially the lower-level ones; the warriors sometimes look like they’re wearing metal swimsuits. Not exactly advisable if you’re going into battle. Even the weapons are customizable – if you’re tired of your boring dagger or dull staff, exchange it for a swaggy sword that you’d never be able to use anyway!

The wardrobes can be accessed via the character page [press C]. Click on the wardrobe tab on the left side and tinker with your appearance to your heart’s content!

Maybe later I’ll post a picture of my character’s wardrobe, if anyone wants to see it.

Thanks for reading! I hope my review of the patch was useful to you!

– Summer 🙂

5 Things I’d Like To See in Minecraft

Hey, guys! Today I’ll be talking about five awesome things I’d love to see implemented into Minecraft. If any modders or anyone from Mojang are reading this right now, please think about adding these cool things into the game. Enjoy!!!

1. Apple Trees
Currently, apples fall from oak trees, which is a little bit weird. I think that there should be another kind of tree, with another kind of wood, that when you break the leaves there’s a 50% chance of dropping an apple. They’d drop saplings normally, like every other kind of tree, but in essence they’d be a food tree.

2. Birds
There aren’t enough birds in Minecraft! I mean, there’s the chickens, which are pretty cool, but I think there should be flying birds as well. They should come in multiple colors like the rabbits, be about the size of silverfish, and spawn naturally in forest, jungle, and taiga biomes. They should drop only feathers if you manage to kill them, since songbirds wouldn’t really be much to eat anyway.

3. Fish
You can craft a fishing pole and go fishing, so where are the fish? I think fish should be implemented in as mobs and not just a food source. You’d have to sneak near them, like ocelots, and boats would scare them away unless they were still. You’d still be able to go fishing normally, but the fish have to bite, and they’d bite as a mob as often as they do in the current version of Minecraft.

4. Plastic
I think this would be a cool new material to play with in the game. You could make tools out of it, and they’d be slightly more durable than wood, but it would be very easy to get as you’d get it from smelting a bucket of oil that spawns in caves. One bucket of oil would produce twelve pieces of plastic. They could also be turned into blocks, colored, and used for building.

5. Slingshots
Minecraft needs a new weapon! If I were trying to survive in the wild, I’d want more than a sword and a bow, seeing as swords can be hard to fight with and I stink at archery. How about a slingshot? You can use them to throw pieces of cobblestone or stone just like bows use arrows, and you would aim like with a bow, but with different animation. It would do less damage then a bow, and would be more difficult to aim, but the ammo and crafting recipe – four sticks aranged in a Y shape – would be much easier to obtain than a bow.

Thanks for reading, guys! I hope this was interesting, and maybe gave you some ideas if you’re into that kind of thing!

Summer 😀

Minecraft vs. Animal Jam: Which is better?

Hey, guys! Sorry I haven’t posted in a few days; I’ve had a busy weekend and haven’t really been able to think of anything to post. I then thought about gaming, remembering that I’d quit Animal Jam, and decided to tackle that topic. Which is really better: Minecraft or Animal Jam?

Animal Jam: The Pros
– It’s a very secure, child-friendly, secure website. Very difficult to hack.
– It’s a much more straightforward game than Minecraft, so that people of pretty much any age can enjoy it.
– There’s a variety of different minigames available in the game without having to search around for different servers.

Animal Jam: The Cons
– It’s very easy to run out of things to do, simply running around and playing minigames.
– Much of the game is only available through pay, and even then for a short time.
– The ways to customize your account are very limited.

Minecraft: The Pros
– It’s completely open-ended and can be turned into pretty much anything – an art game, a survival game, or a freestyle building game.
– It’s very difficult to run out of things to do, as every update brings something completely new and not just a differently styled copy of something else, like AJ. Customization is almost limitless.
– It only requires one payment EVER, and there’s no fancy membership options that give some players advantages over others. [Mojang actually made a law-enforced rule against selling pay-to-win items in-game, but that’s for another post.]

Minecraft: The Cons
– It’s an indie game, meaning that it’s more experimental and has a bigger range of options for annoying glitches.
– It’s written in Javascript and is basically a coded document on your computer, making it much easier to hack into minigames and thereby possibly cheating in minigames and inconveniencing other players.
– Some versions of the game are very skill-oriented and may be age inappropriate for kids who would’ve otherwise been Animal Jammers.

My conclusion
I think Minecraft is a better game to play simply because it is so open-ended. Yes, Animal Jam is fun, it’s true, and it’s a better place to just hang with friends, but after months of playing and doing the exact same thing every time you play makes it get old MUCH faster than Minecraft. Yes, Animal Jam is more secure codewise and no one can hack into minigames and cheat, but Minecraft’s java liabilities can also be used to code in other awesome features like new blocks, abilities, mobs, and more. Sorry, Animal Jam, but Minecraft really never gets old.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed checking out my debate between two cool video games, and I hope you’ll keep reading my stuff!!!

Summer ❤

Cool Things about Minecraft 1.8

Hey, guys! So, today I’ll be talking about the new Minecraft update that was released last Tuesday. It was supposed to come out in June, but Mojang came up with some cool new stuff to add to it, so its official release date was September 2nd. Now, there are a lot of mixed opinions about this update, including its ridiculous lag and the fact that it’s “ruining” Vanilla gameplay, but I personally think it’s a big step forward in Minecraft’s history, and here’s why.

The Skins
Oh my goodness, the 1.8 skins!! I was so excited when they added this. Instead of the old format, in which there was only a 3D layer over the head and the arms and legs had to be symmetrical, the new 1.8 format allows a “hat” layer over the entire body and asymmetrical arms and legs. You may not think this is a huge development, but it’s an enormous change for us Minecraft skinners. It allows so much more to be expressed on one skin.
Skin WITH 1.8 layer

Skin WITHOUT 1.8 layer

The Mobs

For a lot of people, this is the most noticeable feature in 1.8. Two new mobs were added: the bunny and the guardian. The bunnies come in a few different colors like the horses and behave like ocelots, except that they can be tamed with carrots instead of fish. They spawn naturally in forests and fields and, very rarely, will spawn as “the Killer Bunny of Caerbannog” as a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference. The guardians spawn in pairs or small groups in the new underwater ocean temple and will try to kill players on sight with laser beams they shoot out of their eyeballs. Minecraft is getting pretty creative, don’t you think?! Also, rabbits will drop rabbit meat, sheep drop mutton, and villagers will replant and harvest their crops.

The Blocks

Several new blocks were added as of 1.8. Three of them, different types of prismarine, can be obtained through killing the guardian mobs mentioned above. There are also six different kinds of stone – diorite, andesite, and granite – with polished versions of each one. Sponge now spawns naturally, and turns into wet sponge when it gets into water. Bouncy slime blocks can now be crafted from slime balls, and there are also several new blocks that spawn in the ocean temples.

The Commands

I honestly know next to nothing about the new commands. Sorry this section isn’t very helpful, but all I know is that they were added. The only commands I know how to use fluently are /summon, /time, and /gamemode, all of which are old commands and not 1.8 features. Sorry, guys.

Anyway, thanks for reading!! I hope this was helpful to you!

Summer 🙂