Tech is passing me by

[liv]

I have been trying to play Minecraft with the kids. I love the idea of playing, exploring and building and fighting in a shared world, it's basically the dream. But in practice I absolutely cannot get it to work reliably. I am starting to wonder whether I'm turning into the 21st century equivalent of middle-aged people who need to get small children to program the video recorder for them!

It's not just me, two other adults who work professionally with computers have tried and got nowhere. And the children sort of know how to achieve what they want to, but not how to debug it when it doesn't work. I, and my more technically adept partners, have tried searching for suggestions, but there's such a morass of extremely out-of-date stuff, guides that either assume you're on Windows or are unclear about which versions their information applies to, and people trying to extract money from you in more or less shady ways. I just don't have the right search terms to distinguish all the different versions (which are sometimes called 'editions') or between the different types of multiplayer, the realms and servers and I don't know what else.

I'm guessing some of you must play, either in your own right or in order to be companionable with children. Do you have any suggestions for where I should be looking? We've had games where it randomly takes four or five tries to connect and then it works fine, and games where we've spent an hour trying every combination we can think of and either it claims that the host player isn't online (when we're in the same room and can perfectly well see that they are), or the game is visible but when I try to join it times out with a very uninformative error message (Unable to join game or something equally bland and hard to search for.)

Thankfully the children have reached the developmental stage where this kind of frustration and disappointment isn't massively upsetting, but I still feel kind of bad when we make an appointment to play together and all the time is taken up fruitlessly trying to connect to the game. I am starting to feel really stupid, though; this is a game played by millions of under-10s, surely it can't be this difficult?

I'm willing to throw money at the problem if needed, but I can't even work out what sort of premium service, if any, would make this easier.

Halp?!

Comments

[nicki]

There are 2 editions- Bedrock and Java (it used to just be Java, but then they wanted to put it on tablets and win10 and console and such so they created the bedrock edition which is more cross-platform but very much less mod-able.)

I'm guessing that you are trying to play peer to peer on bedrock? I think you probably need a server. If that is the case, https://www.polygon.com/2020/8/12/21346592/how-to-make-a-realms-server-multiplayer-host .

Otherwise, I needs moar information.

[cjwatson]

Yeah, everyone involved is using Bedrock here AFAIK. And ooh, the "host your own" option seems a bit simpler than the last time I looked at it, so maybe possible without sinking too much time into it.

[rmc28]

We pay for a Realms server for C, so he can play with friends. (He did all the figuring out how to make it work, and I turned up with the credit card ...)

[liv]

Heh, maybe I should ask your C for some hints? Do you know if he's doing a lot of ongoing maintenance and troubleshooting, or if once set up he could just get on and play? I realize he might not have discussed the details with you.

[liv]

Oh thankyou, I had heard of editions, Bedrock and Java, and I couldn't figure out how they all related to each other.

We are currently trying to play mostly on Android phones, also one iPhone and one Xbox, so I'm guessing that's all Bedrock? The thing we have sometimes succeeded in doing is playing a LAN game, where there is a shared world the kids have created and I can join in and do things like hanging out in the starter house they helpfully built for me in their village. This requires me to connect to their WiFi network, which is generally not a problem. I am not sure if over LAN counts the same as peer-to-peer. I would not I think be able to get into their world if I were in a different geographical location, or if I wanted to explore on my own when the children aren't playing.

It may well be that subscribing to Realms is the right answer and thank you for the useful article. I am just a bit reluctant to pay when it's so flakey in my experience so far, but possibly that's just freeloading and the paid service would work much better.

[nicki]

Oof, yeah, you guys need a server. None of you has the oomph to host, which is probably why it sometimes doesn't think anyone is and flakes out all the time. For such a simple looking game, Minecraft can be a bit resource hoggy. The two kinds of servers people seem to have are either on Creeperhost or a Realm. Creeperhost does more traditional gaming servers, but it costs significantly more than a Realm. With the low number of people you have a Realm should be fine. It's pretty inexpensive and I think it comes mostly playable right out of the box (not an actual box :P), so there isn't a ton of setting up to do. You could maybe set up a laptop or desktop that you already have to act as your server, but I don't know enough to say if that would be viable.

[melannen]

I just started as well! You really do need to figure out your edition. I started playing on the "Educational" edition we have on the computers at work, and it was buggy as hell, and also the controls sucked, and also it didn't have all the built-in hint options. I then bought myself up-to-date Java edition, and that is much more pleasant to play with.

You should be able to find your edition name right there when you start the launcher - do you see it? What platform are you on?

I've mostly been using https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/ for reference. I have to look a lot of stuff up there but it is all there. It's pretty good at specifying whether something is bedrock or java or both, but less good if you're using something like a dated .edu install. It has a lot of good tutorials, too.

That said I've never tried multiplayer, so I'm not sure if that's way buggier or how it works if you're playing on someone else's multiplayer account.

[liv]

Oh cool, I hope you enjoy it. I don't think our problem is that we're using an educational version, but it's helpful to know to avoid that.

I have been looking up wikis but I was struggling to find basic instructions for how to interact with the world, pick things up and put them down, mine, build, wield etc. Lots of articles about how to gather such-and-such resources and craft them into a fancier resource and use that to progress in the game and acquire yet a shinier resource are all well and good, but I need something more basic than that. When I have managed to connect to the game the children have been pretty patient at showing me what to do so I think I'm mostly past the total helpless flailing stage!

I probably like the game enough to play single-player, but I'm most excited about joining in a shared world with my partners' kids, so I'm hoping between us we can get that to work somehow...

[melannen]

I think the problem was less educational edition, more old - I think the new .edu version is a lot better than the one we have!

But yeah, the controls are a lot. I have to assume they're really different between consoles/touchscreens/computers, and they're also really customizable, which is why instructions don't usually specify. If bedrock is like Java, there should be a place in the settings that lets you change the controls you use for things, and as a bonus acts as a list of all the controls? That said I only just yesterday worked out that I can walk/row backward, after over a month of playing! (It doesn't help there's stuff you can do in Java that wasn't implemented yet in the first version I used.)

For most of the "interact with thing" options it's either right click or left click or walk into it on the desktop edition, so I usually just try one then the other! Most of the fancier crafting requires right clicking on one of the bewildering variety of crafting tables you can build, though. But trying both mouse buttons one at a time usually works except the time I accidentally killed a tame animal by picking the wrong one while holding an axe :(

I am playing single-player in the "Peaceful" mode where it is very hard to die accidentally, which helps a lot when I'm learning the controls the hard way. You have helpful kids as a resource, though, so you should be fine!

[lexicalcrow]

At this point I'd just pay the money for a Realms server if you're all playing on bedrock. I do that with my partner so we can play minecraft together. We did try some of the free servers for a while, but Realms turned out to be the most stable for us. We have one each, so we can have two worlds to play in, depending on what we want to do.

[liv]

Thank you, this sounds like the right approach. I don't mind subscribing but I was really unsure what exactly I was supposed to be subscribing to. We're mostly interested in a private shared world rather than an open one (the children are under 13, apart from anything else), and it sounds like Realms is the answer.

[lexicalcrow]

Yeah, that's fair! I only started playing Minecraft mid-last year so it's still sort of new to me too, but I love it now. <3 My partner and I just play creative and build things together. <3 The good thing about Realms is that you can just invite who you want to play, so you don't have to worry about it being an open server, and only one person needs to have the subscription too. You don't have to set anything up, just create on Realms for whatever world you want to use, and it does the work for you. <3

I play with my niece and nephews too, they're 3, 6, and 8, when they come over here, and it's so fun to see how they all play. They have Minecraft at home on xbox, so they play on PC here. It's really fun. :)