A return to Minecraft

[Frybird]

So it goes like this.

Never really "got" or understood Minecraft until i have actually tried it out when the Xbox 360 Version (including mandatory trial version) came out. I guess in large part thanks to the tutorial, i was instantly captivated.

I struggled a bit deciding between buying the PC Version or the 360 Version, but since (a) the PC Version is further along and (b) everyone telling me that i should get the PC Version i got that one...

...and was instantly disappointed since it ran horrible on my Computer (A gaming laptop that is about 4-5 years old and on wich i inexplicably installed W7 32bit instead of 64bit).

Of course, being a PC Game, i could compensate with tinkering about in the settings both in-game and with .ini Files as well as installing mods that boosted performance and gives more setting.

And for a while, everything was alright, and i spend an ungodly amount of hours on this game. But it wasn't really "good"...as the game still would seemingly randomly run out of memory and sometimes require constant restarts.
And worse, my hardware just can't seem to handle Jungle Biomes. Once i come close to one, i basically can only turn around and go another way, wich in a game like Minecraft can be kinda annoying to say the least.

Eventually, i got tired of it and stopped playing altogether (especially when it was announced that in the next update the game would can Singleplayer in favor of setting up a virtual server whether you play online or not), guiding my addictive obsession towards other games.

But now, with News of Updates on both PC on 360, and me trying out Xenominer on XBLIG yesterday (a sort of Minecraft Clone but with it's own unique take on survival gameplay...but ugly as hell and sort of vague), i kinda want to play Minecraft again.

And having played around a bit yesterday with both the 360 Trial and my own PC Version, the 360 Experience just was sort of ...better. The Game looks a slight bit better and has no performance issues, while on the PC i can't even use my mods anymore thanks to updates.


So i guess the question is, should i switch to the 360 Version, or am i doing something wrong with the PC Version?


Some personal notes:
- I am aware that the Levels on the 360 are rather small, but i think i can live with that, i tended to restart my game often on the PC anyways
- With the coming content update for the 360, i basically get anything i favored the PC Version for (Endermen, Villages, Ravines, Farming Stuff)...i never quite had the nerve to actually play """the story"""
- When i stay with the PC Version, i NEED some recommendations on how to make Minecraft less performance hungry
- ...and i'm not willing to reinstall Windows, buy hardware components or stuff like that just to play Minecraft on PC

Maybe you can help me with your opinions and/or tips.

Thanks in Advance.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

Build a new computer, Minecraft is a hungry game because of all of the stuff it has to render under the surface, it's not all graphics, it has to do with AI scripting for all of the monsters and animals, as well as any adjustments to terrain, and how immense the world is overall.

Also if you construct a better PC you can also get better versions of almost all of your 360 games, and still use the controller if you so wish... at a much lower price point.

That or just stick with the 360 version, because in my experience, if you don't want to build a decent gaming rig, and you have a console, why bother spending the money or dealing with the frustration not spending money brings with the lack of performance... even though chances are you could refresh your PC's innards to a much much higher perfprmance standard for like $300, and it would do you for quite some time... and pc games are more varied and cost less... but hey I'm biased in this whole thing, though I do like consoles as well as PC... just prefer PC, for a ton of reasons(mods, near infinite control options(tons of controllers and fully customizable control layouts for keyboard and mouse), cheaper games(mainly steam sales man, steam sales.), and the massive library of titles available...), but if you don't have any money to spend on upgrading at all, or want to spend that money elsewhere, and you already have a 360, and you prefer the experience on the 360 to your computer... Well, it's up to you.

 

[Rad Party God]

Minecraft is a CPU intensive game. I had a crappy CPU 6 months ago (Pentium D... yeah, it sucked) and I recently got a new CPU and oh boy what a huge difference it made for Minecraft (along with 98% of my games), from being almost unplayable, to being actually enjoyable and even running much better than I expected. Also, more ram could seriously help with performance.

Along with the mandatory "keep your drivers updated, defrag your disk, etc.", if you can't do any hardware upgrade, try with the OptiFine [http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/249637-132-optifine-hd-b3-fps-boost-hd-textures-aa-af-and-much-more/] mod, it disables and optimizes lots of stuff to improve the game's performance. If that still doesn't work, then you seriously need to consider a hardware upgrade or stick to the 360 version.

 

[Darknacht]

Check to see if you are actually using all of your memory or if you are just using all of the memory that Java has access to at the time. If you are using all of your memory then there is not much you can do other than turn the settings down more, Java is very inefficient in its resource usage and Minecraft is not optimized. If its just Java running out of memory you can allow Java to allocate more memory.

 

[Expwnent]

What Darknacht said. I was having major problems with the game until I messed around with Java's memory allocation. It takes about a minute to fix.

 

[Ickabod]

Minecraft might not look like much, but it eats computers for lunch. Still one of my favorite games of all time though.