''Far Lands or Bust'' (abbreviated FLoB) is an online video series created by Kurt J. Mac in which he plays the video game '' Minecraft''. The series depicts his journey to the "Far Lands", a distant area of a ''Minecraft'' world in which the terrain generation does not function correctly, creating a warped landscape. Kurt has been travelling since March 2011 and is expected to take another 20 years to reach his destination; the show also holds the

Guinness World Record ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

for the longest journey in ''Minecraft''. Episodes of ''Far Lands or Bust'' typically act as a sort of podcast, with the game providing a backing track while Kurt discusses recent events in his life, news and science. The show also encourages viewers to donate to charity to reach fundraising goals. This charity was originally Child's Play, for which the show raised over $400,000. From 2018 to 2019 the charity was

Direct Relief Direct Relief (formerly known as Direct Relief International) is a nonprofit humanitarian organization that provides emergency medical assistance and disaster relief in the United States and internationally. The organization is headed by an inde ...

. Beginning in 2020 the charity is the Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), from which Kurt adopted his own dog, Juno, in 2017. On August 30, 2020, Kurt announced he would no longer be using PAWS as his charity, mostly due to complications with their donation system, instead switching the charity to the Equal Justice Initiative.

Format

The Far Lands

''Minecraft'' is a

sandbox A sandbox is a sandpit, a wide, shallow playground construction to hold sand, often made of wood or plastic. Sandbox or Sand box may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Sandbox (band), a Canadian rock music group * Sandbox ( ...

video game which places players in a 3D procedurally generated world. As a player walks in any direction, the game generates terrain ahead of them, creating (in theory) a virtually infinite world for the player to explore. However, due to computational limits in earlier versions of the game, at a distance of roughly 12,550,821 blocks from the center of the world the terrain generation algorithm behaves unexpectedly, creating a sudden warped landscape. Markus Persson, the original developer of ''Minecraft'', commented that "''Walking that far will take a very long time. Besides, the bugs add mystery and charisma to the Far Lands.''" The name "Far Lands" was adopted by the community to refer to this area. Persson also said it would be "impossible to reach the Far Lands" and Kurt took that as a challenge. Due to changes to the game's code, recent versions of the game do not contain the same error, and terrain continues to generate normally at distances up to from the center of the world. Kurt has continued to record his series in version Beta 1.7.3, the latest version of the game in which the Far Lands are still present. Persson estimated in 2014 that walking to the Far Lands would take approximately 800 hours. Even further out (32 million blocks), the game fails to check for collision, leading the player to fall through the map to their death. In August 2022, this goal was reached for the first time by another player, Mystical Midget, after 2,500 hours of walking.

F3 monuments

In the game, a debug screen can be opened by pressing F3, which displays the player's current coordinates in the world, plus the biome. In Kurt's journey to the Far Lands, he only presses F3 once the season's charity donations goal has been met to wrap up the season. Additionally, he builds a monument to commemorate the occasion. One exception to this was when he crossed a point where the

floating-point error In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can b ...

grew from two texture pixels to four. On August 8, 2020, due to witnessing an increase in the

jitter, Kurt pressed F3 during a live stream (listed as episode 793.5) to confirm he'd hit the milestone of 4,194,304 blocks. In the next episode, 794, on August 11, 2020, he built a monument to mark the point.

Notes

:1.Initially $820, but raised to $8,200 after goal was reached in under a week

References

External links

* * {{Minecraft 2010s YouTube series 2011 web series debuts 2020s YouTube series Charity fundraisers Gaming-related YouTube channels Minecraft YouTube channels launched in 2010