FLoBathon Recap

So, in terms of raising money for Child's Play Charity, FLoBathon was a complete and total success.  Despite taking almost an entire year to raise $29,220 with regular FLoB episodes on YouTube, Kurt put forth the lofty goal of doubling that to $58,440 in three days, with the incentive that if it happened, he'd go to MineCon.

$58,440 totally happened.  In fact, the count was up to over $70,000 before the end of the livestream.  I think it helped that for the last day Kurt had an overlay showing the current total on the stream, so people could see exactly how much was raised and attempt to GET various funny amounts, the most common of which was ending it with 69 cents.  They talked about this during the stream, but there totally were the two factions, the breakers and the fixers.  The breakers donate random amounts of cents extra, and the fixers try to get it to a nice round value.  It's fun to watch, and it helps the fundraiser to boot.

Before the weekend even began, Child's Play Charity promoted Far Lands or Bust to the Platinum sponsors section, alongside such names as Amazon.com and Microsoft.  And also a boatload of gaming-related things.  Also worth noting, MAGFest is a Gold sponsor.

The livestream was not without its large events, a few of which were actually positive.  On the first day, Kurt had at various points during the day pretty much the entire Kerbal Space Program team from the Mexican indie game company Squad on.  In addition to giving him KSP codes to give away, they also added Kurt Kerman to the game, complete with a model that has red-blue 3D glasses.  It'd be Kurt J Kerman, but apparently there's some issue in the naming with the fact that none of the other Kermans have middle names.

On the second day, Notch himself was around in the chat talking to people.  Kurt basically said that we didn't need any huge donations from Notch to reach the goal, that the Farlanders could do it themselves.  Notch agreed, since he'd just donated $10,000 to Child's Play during the Qubetubers stream while Kurt was streaming for them, but he did give Kurt a few Minecraft gift codes to give away.  Also, the guy who made the texture pack he uses for FLoB episodes made a special version for the stream that Kurt switched to during the second day.  It puts some Sixelona art in the crafting bench window, little "stay away, Wolfie!" symbols on cacti, and changed the beds to say "FLoBathon".  Otherwise, not a heck of a lot changed.

I actually missed the second day's stream because I was out having fun with friends in real life.  Don't worry, I watched the archive on twitch.tv.

On the third day was when the sad and frightening stuff happened.  Kurt was progressing as normal, then decided to go on a break to eat food.  So he exited and backed up the world while he ate, and when he came back, Wolfie was no longer there.  Re-watching the archived footage proved that Wolfie had been there before he went on the break, in fact, he was in the process of trying to push Kurt around when he exited Minecraft to make the backup.  The previous backup was too far away to use, so Kurt really had no choice but to press on without his companion and FLoB mascot.  He tried restoring from the backup he made just before the break, but Wolfie wasn't present there either, though I and a number of people in the chat did hear the "wolf shaking off water" sound right as he started playing again.  He left a chest full of bones, food, and some pink wool along with a message on a sign for Wolfie, and then pressed on.

It almost immediately came up that if he took damage, Wolfie might teleport to him.  Perhaps against better judgment, Kurt decided to test the theory.  He got shot by a skeleton in a nearby cave, and no Wolfie.  Then the frightening part happened.  Leaving the cave, it got dark, and a zombie was bearing down on him as he frantically tried to pillar up to make an elevated hidey hole.  He ended up having to kill the zombie and got taken down to half a heart of health in the process.  Fortunately he keeps a stack of wheat around, so he was able to make bread and get back to full health, but it was still really scary to see him that low on health in FLoB, given that he has yet to die in that world.

So, the livestream ended without Wolfie, but with SethBling's suggestion that Wolfie could probably be re-obtained using MCEdit.  Since it was a glitch that caused Wolfie to disappear rather than an actual death, it might be a bit more legit to find Wolfie in MCEdit and move him back to Kurt, but we don't know what's really going to happen in that regard.  Technically, if Wolfie still exists in the world, there would be seven tamed wolves in the FLoB world.  The original five that drove Kurt crazy and then never reappeared after he crossed an ocean, the extra Wolfie from the hidey hole paradox episode, and of course the real Wolfie.

Also, there was a pre-built monument (aka a derp tower with a somewhat decent base) where he decided to end the stream, so he pressed F3 on top of the derp tower.  Once again my guess was fairly close, although it was farther off this time than before.  In both celebratory livestreams so far I've submitted guesses based on mathematical constants.  The first time it was based on e, just multiplied by 100000 so it would be somewhat plausible.  Guess 271828, final distance 292202.  This time I took π and multiplied that by 200000.  Chopped off the decimal places to end up with 628318, final distance was 699492.

So, hopefully something reasonably legit can be done about Wolfie, and FLoB can continue with its mascot and sidekick.  In before "tame another wolf and pretend it never happened".