Show HN We just launched forking for your Minecraft worlds(blog.minefold.com)
blog.minefold.com
Show HN We just launched forking for your Minecraft worlds
http://blog.minefold.com/post/16987166800/gorgeous-maps-cloning-worlds-pro-accounts
11 comments
Hey Sam! Great to talk to you finally (we had an awesome time with @wedtm at Waza). We're primarily targeting existing Minecraft users at the moment because there is less teaching needed (and therefore less work). However we know that there's still a massive potential in reaching people who have never played (or even heard of) Minecraft before.
I'm really curious to hear specifically how you thought it was confusing. We've spent a lot of time trying to make the interface as simple as possible and would appreciate all the criticism we can get :) Fancy shooting an email to [email protected]?
I'm really curious to hear specifically how you thought it was confusing. We've spent a lot of time trying to make the interface as simple as possible and would appreciate all the criticism we can get :) Fancy shooting an email to [email protected]?
Yes, Miles mentioned he had spoken to you at the conference he attended, although Miles is no longer with the company and has no involvement with MCF or MCW any longer, just so you know.
The confusion I had came from the lack of hand holding. The individual pages (well most) make sense and are well designed and explained, but the process of using them feels disjointed. I'm not sure how much sense that makes, but I'm trying to imagine it from the point of view of someone who only understands a basic idea of how to play Minecraft.
For example, after signing up I click "create a world" and I'm presented with a well designed screen with lots of configuration options, but at no point does it explain what a world is. It's devoid of any information, it assumes I understand what you mean by world. Some sort of introduction on this page that says something like "A Minefold world is a minecraft world that you can invite your friends to, once created you add our server address to your multiplayer server list and add your friends to your access list and you're ready to play" would do wonders.
Next: the individual world management page. If I create a new world it shows "playing here" greyed out, what does this mean? After investigating the system I've worked out that you can only play on 1 world at a time and "playing on a world" is which world you've configured via the control panel to be accessed when you log in to pluto.minefold.com, not the world you're actually connected to, this isn't explained anywhere and I believe it will confuse users. If I click through the the "members" page there's no explanation here of what these people listed mean, I added my other account "samuel" and there was no explanation of how they can now join my world, or what the account needs to be (minecraft? minefold?). It makes sense they'd need a Minefold account when thinking about it and how the service works but users don't think, they expect the service to do that for them.
I could go on and on, although the interface is very pretty and simple which is what you aimed for, it is not straight forward, you need to hold your users hands and let them know exactly what to do and provide examples of exactly how to achieve the most popular use cases (creating a server for a friend and then getting a friend into the server is the main one).
edit: my comment seems a bit abrasive, apologies, tired, mean well :-D
The confusion I had came from the lack of hand holding. The individual pages (well most) make sense and are well designed and explained, but the process of using them feels disjointed. I'm not sure how much sense that makes, but I'm trying to imagine it from the point of view of someone who only understands a basic idea of how to play Minecraft.
For example, after signing up I click "create a world" and I'm presented with a well designed screen with lots of configuration options, but at no point does it explain what a world is. It's devoid of any information, it assumes I understand what you mean by world. Some sort of introduction on this page that says something like "A Minefold world is a minecraft world that you can invite your friends to, once created you add our server address to your multiplayer server list and add your friends to your access list and you're ready to play" would do wonders.
Next: the individual world management page. If I create a new world it shows "playing here" greyed out, what does this mean? After investigating the system I've worked out that you can only play on 1 world at a time and "playing on a world" is which world you've configured via the control panel to be accessed when you log in to pluto.minefold.com, not the world you're actually connected to, this isn't explained anywhere and I believe it will confuse users. If I click through the the "members" page there's no explanation here of what these people listed mean, I added my other account "samuel" and there was no explanation of how they can now join my world, or what the account needs to be (minecraft? minefold?). It makes sense they'd need a Minefold account when thinking about it and how the service works but users don't think, they expect the service to do that for them.
I could go on and on, although the interface is very pretty and simple which is what you aimed for, it is not straight forward, you need to hold your users hands and let them know exactly what to do and provide examples of exactly how to achieve the most popular use cases (creating a server for a friend and then getting a friend into the server is the main one).
edit: my comment seems a bit abrasive, apologies, tired, mean well :-D
No, this is awesome. Everything has been duly noted! We definitely owe you a beer :)
Has some bugs.
So I was wowed by your maps and signed up to try the free account. I uploaded my world (I had to do it twice because the upload timed out once, and the second time it took several minutes). After logging in to pluto.minefold.com, it didn't put me in my world (My world's seed: -6543031652815246039 vs what the seed on pluto is: 1328309103 if you want to follow up)
Also, I'm hesitant to play on anything that doesn't have bukkit/WorldGuard. I'm not sure what your access control/griefing rollback mechanisms are. That should probably go in your FAQ.
So I was wowed by your maps and signed up to try the free account. I uploaded my world (I had to do it twice because the upload timed out once, and the second time it took several minutes). After logging in to pluto.minefold.com, it didn't put me in my world (My world's seed: -6543031652815246039 vs what the seed on pluto is: 1328309103 if you want to follow up)
Also, I'm hesitant to play on anything that doesn't have bukkit/WorldGuard. I'm not sure what your access control/griefing rollback mechanisms are. That should probably go in your FAQ.
Addressing a couple of your issues:
1.) Our uploads go straight to S3, so the first one timing out may (?) have just been a connection problem? We checked our logs and we didn't receive notification of the upload finishing. If you upload more worlds in the future and they keep failing, email them to [email protected] and I'll hook you up.
2.) The seed changing is a bug. We're working on fixing that now, but in the mean time if you send your username and the world to [email protected] I'll manually fix your seed for you.
3.) We've had lots of requests for Bukkit but were hesitant to support it because we thought it would be replaced by the Mod API. Now that it looks like the Mod API will just be Bucket, well… I don't want to commit to anything but it's something we're "investigating" :)
4.) At the moment griefing is controlled as all worlds are whitelist only. Only let your friends play in a world :) We're also saving snapshots every 10 minutes exposed a mechanism to rollback yet. I might sound like a broken record, but if you email [email protected] we can manually rollback your world for you.
1.) Our uploads go straight to S3, so the first one timing out may (?) have just been a connection problem? We checked our logs and we didn't receive notification of the upload finishing. If you upload more worlds in the future and they keep failing, email them to [email protected] and I'll hook you up.
2.) The seed changing is a bug. We're working on fixing that now, but in the mean time if you send your username and the world to [email protected] I'll manually fix your seed for you.
3.) We've had lots of requests for Bukkit but were hesitant to support it because we thought it would be replaced by the Mod API. Now that it looks like the Mod API will just be Bucket, well… I don't want to commit to anything but it's something we're "investigating" :)
4.) At the moment griefing is controlled as all worlds are whitelist only. Only let your friends play in a world :) We're also saving snapshots every 10 minutes exposed a mechanism to rollback yet. I might sound like a broken record, but if you email [email protected] we can manually rollback your world for you.
This is a stroke of genius: http://screencast.com/t/v2e0i31sAC (Pro accounts)
You nailed it. Perfect value-add, perfect price point.
You nailed it. Perfect value-add, perfect price point.
I like it! Just one thing: a more prominent (header?) link to your main site from your blog and a sign up link within the blog post (since it talks about accounts) would probably help convert HN/Twitter viewers into customers. Maybe I'm just blind, but I had to navigate manually to your homepage and again to see plans, and the only links I saw in the blog post were to individual maps.
I noticed that the "pricing" screenshot links to the pricing page, but there's nothing there to indicate the screenshot is a link.
I noticed that the "pricing" screenshot links to the pricing page, but there's nothing there to indicate the screenshot is a link.
Hey thanks for the feedback. We haven't spend too much time on the blog yet (building!) but I just added a signup link to the end of the post.
Sorry I don't really know minecraft, but it isn't open source right? if so how did they manage to technically do this
The Minecraft Server protocol has been documented by the community since 2009, there are a wide variety of custom servers in existence today, for example Myne which is open source: https://bitbucket.org/andrewgodwin/myne2/src
When Java is compiled, it is converted into java bytecode language that is almost one for one with the Java language. This means it is possible to decompile it, although you'll often lose the variable names. This is why there has been so much modification, and custom clients made.
Tweeted at you guys, but this is absolutely amazingly awesome. I used to own/run MinecraftServers.com and I thought that was awesome but this blew me away, especially since this is all running on node.js, eventmachine and redis! Keep it up!
Wait, each person pays individually?
Looks like it: https://minefold.com/help
That’s $17 per month for a 4 people server (with the $25 plan, $15 per month with the $45 plan). I don’t think that’s a competitive price (but don’t quote me on that, I have zero experience setting up or shopping for Minecraft servers). They also don’t support any plugins. It, however, looks like the service is incredibly easy to set up and use.
Just like with Dropbox, you pay more but you (are supposed to get) ease of use in return. I think that can work if done correctly. (There are also other advantages: You don’t need one gracious person to set up everything and pay, you don’t need to collect donations, …)
Edit: Wow, the experience really is smooth. It took me not much more than a minute from their homepage to running around in my own multiplayer world. I have never set up any Minecraft server anywhere and zero experience with all of that. Nice work!
That’s $17 per month for a 4 people server (with the $25 plan, $15 per month with the $45 plan). I don’t think that’s a competitive price (but don’t quote me on that, I have zero experience setting up or shopping for Minecraft servers). They also don’t support any plugins. It, however, looks like the service is incredibly easy to set up and use.
Just like with Dropbox, you pay more but you (are supposed to get) ease of use in return. I think that can work if done correctly. (There are also other advantages: You don’t need one gracious person to set up everything and pay, you don’t need to collect donations, …)
Edit: Wow, the experience really is smooth. It took me not much more than a minute from their homepage to running around in my own multiplayer world. I have never set up any Minecraft server anywhere and zero experience with all of that. Nice work!
Yep. It's a bit of a change from what people are used to be we think it makes more sense. It means you personally can stop playing and you don't have to keep on paying for your friends. It also saves all the hassle of collecting donations to run a server.
We are, however, working on let you "shout" friends.
We are, however, working on let you "shout" friends.
Fantastic work guys... can't wait to see what you craft next!
Wow the maps are indeed gorgeous! Makes me want to play.
Kickin' ass fellas. What's next?
Well done dudes
Still, great work, good luck :-)