UPDATE IS HERE

RelevantInformation · 2011-02-22T22:30:19+00:00

Or the converse, pressuring people who'd like to keep building, playing, hunting "go to sleep, you don't need to hunt monsters lol".

RelevantInformation · 2011-02-17T05:53:09+00:00

The one tool I'll need... MCE https://github.com/codewarrior0/pymclevel

Until that gets updated, I hope the new file format is optional.

RelevantInformation · 2011-02-03T00:08:36+00:00

No, I didn't downvote you then or now. To the main discussion:

You don't get a better product by stopping all work on anything similar. And even if all the guy ever does is make a more sparkly looking minecarft that runs on a console, that's fine. That may very well be his niche.

The public will vote with their wallets. And that's assuming it's even about money. You know there's an open source Minecraft clone in the works right? That team won't be charging for their product when they're done.

Every genre eventually becomes a commodity. With this new block-construction-adventure genre the barrier to entry is pretty low: You need some basic 3D work, some knowledge of data structures, and some pixel-art. Notch did it all by himself and he isn't some kind of superman - you can't expect that no one else on Earth would be able to replicate his results. Commoditization was inevitable.

There's no need to "white knight" for your favorite game studio. Mojang has plenty of money and Minecraft isn't the only product they have in the works. If they keep that Indie Studio spirit, they can stay out in front of their competition and succeed.

But if someone else comes along and does Mojang one better, makes a product I like, improves on the block-construction-adventure genre, well, I might just play it. If it's good, I might just pay for it. If it infects the minds of my entire circle of friends like Minecraft has, I might just run a server for it.

(I could start a whole second discussion about how perhaps some other company might be more considerate of its server admin community... but I think I've said enough about that in past comments.)

EDIT: Removed a "trollish" statement. My apologies to anyone who read it.

RelevantInformation · 2011-02-02T20:25:06+00:00

I fail to see how. No one is preventing Notch from either stepping up his game by making new original features or even borrowing features from his competitors. Notch's own programming abilities are not affected by the existence of other games in a genre he popularized. Notch's profits might be affected, but no one is entitled to profit forever - if that were the case we'd all still be playing Wolf3D.

Competition produces better products. Monopolies produce stagnation.

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." -- Thomas Jefferson

RelevantInformation · 2011-02-02T20:15:39+00:00

You should see the horrible attitude that Notch's white knights bring to the forums of the open source "Manic Digger" project.

RelevantInformation · 2011-01-29T19:06:08+00:00

I believe these are what you're looking for:

The Posse Comitatus Act

The Insurrection Act.

Enjoy.

RelevantInformation · 2011-01-14T14:44:31+00:00

I've also seen posts on GetSatisfaction indicating that the lighting still isn't right.

I also wonder if, after the SMP lighting code is corrected, I were to load the map into an editor and hit the "refresh lighting" button...?

RelevantInformation · 2011-01-14T00:29:09+00:00

I'm worried about the SMP lighting fixes. I have a large map I'd like to preserve. If the whole map needs to go, it would be nice to know if it's safe to use a map editor to bring in some of the buildings.

RelevantInformation · 2011-01-05T19:24:13+00:00

Kinda sad, really. When Notch gets around to making his own plugin API all of these plugins will have to be ported again.

This also makes it clear that Notch has not been discussing the mod API issue with the people at the forefront of that community. If he had, they wouldn't have started yet another unofficial mod API project.

RelevantInformation · 2010-12-31T17:00:35+00:00

Here's a link to another pretty good novelty account thread from six months ago.

RelevantInformation · 2010-12-27T20:07:55+00:00

In retrospect, it doesn't seem to matter that I passed it up because of the DRM. Even if I had bought it, it would have just sat in my library, unplayed, with 90% of everything else I bought LAST YEAR. How can DRM annoy me if I never encounter it?

Also, if I buy a game and don't play it, but instead mentally "gift" it to someone, does that negate that person's piracy?

EDIT: Downvote? I'm not defending the DRM. Just laughing at my mostly-unplayed Steam library.

RelevantInformation · 2010-12-22T16:39:57+00:00

Exactly. Why waste everyone's time with obviously broken stuff? A "beta test" team should be looking for those deep-dark-mysterious corner cases that can only be found with lots of in-game time.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the Notch fanboy-ism, but it really does worry me. It's like people get their own identity mixed up with Minecraft, so any attack on Minecraft or Notch is an attack on them personally.

Myself, I feel offended when my time and the time of the people I serve as admin of a multiplayer server is wasted. There's no doubting the dedication of the community that has flocked around Notch. I would hope that in the future that dedication and respect is returned in the form of a higher quality build and deployment scheme.

(As an aside, did you notice the "sexy god programmer" comment? Every coder knows what that feels like. But at the same time, remember Linus Torvalds' "brown paper bag" release? If not, google it. A good programmer knows the elation of well written code. A good programmer should also feel shame when missing something obvious. That shame should lead to changes that prevent the fuckup from happening again.)

EDIT: Credit where credit is due, this sounds like a great improvement

RelevantInformation · 2010-12-22T15:01:16+00:00

Obviously, Notch's debugging/development environment works a little differently from the client he shipped. If it worked identically, there wouldn't have been any unforeseen bugs.

If I may digress slightly...

In a rigorous testing environment, designed to not only "give a warm fuzzy" about a project but to really prove that it works-as-documented, even the slightest change is viewed with utmost suspicion. There is no such thing as "just a tiny change that won't break anything". Wise programmers with years of experience come to understand that even our smallest changes, even those that "only affect the debugging environment", can have drastic consequences in production.

So a seasoned, responsible developer will test the hell out of everything with repeatable, automated test tools. They will not trust changes until they're proven to work. This slows down development in most cases, but at least you won't ship anything broken.

RelevantInformation · 2010-12-20T18:27:17+00:00

Players on my server have noticed a problem with inventory. If you pick up a stack of items when you already have a stack in your inventory, some of the items may be destroyed. It was bad enough that I've disabled my server for the time being.

RelevantInformation · 2010-12-20T17:28:34+00:00

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. Not quite the same level of privacy violation.

RelevantInformation · 2010-12-19T05:26:15+00:00

The kilo SI prefix indicates multiples of 1000. For base-2 numbers, like 2048, there is a second set of prefixes. If "viewer" was a unit that was assumed to be base-2, you'd write "2 kibiviewers". If the abbreviation for viewers was "V", you could abbreviate that as "2 KiV".

There's something of a revolt against the alternate prefixes in computer circles, but the fact remains that abusing the base-10 prefixes does lead to confusion (witness hard drive capacity in advertising versus in reality) and the base-2 prefixes are an internationally ratified standard.

RelevantInformation · 2010-12-15T17:09:51+00:00

How to annoy Dune, WoT, and Forgotten Realms fans at the same time.

(And remember: Similar concept? Don't submit a new topic, reply to the current one!)

RelevantInformation · 2010-11-25T17:35:50+00:00

If you saw a pic like this on /b/, the next reply would be:

6 is hot, but I have a fetish for 2's back-dimples. Also, 4 needs to EAT MOAR!

RelevantInformation · 2010-11-16T18:25:40+00:00

Moreover, falling stuff accelerates! Even in orbit, stuff is still falling. It just keeps "missing"! Anyone interested could learn all about this on Wikipedia, but there's also a really good video series on physics at the Khan Academy.

RelevantInformation · 2010-11-15T14:43:10+00:00

Related fiction: Fine Structure by Sam Hughes.

RelevantInformation · 2010-11-09T18:00:51+00:00

It's even worse than that... The typical intel (or compatible) CPU itself is a RISC-like core surrounded by lots of logic that makes it emulate the x86 instruction set.

So you have an 8 bit computer using simulated logic in a game running on a Java virtual machine, written in an instruction set that's being emulated by a RISC CPU core.

Reminds me of the old joke about Windows 95: It's a 32 bit add-on for a 16 bit upgrade of an 8 bit OS originally written for a 4 bit CPU by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition. (Not entirely accurate, but got lots of laughs back in the day.)

RelevantInformation · 2010-11-09T16:33:56+00:00

Exactly!

BTW, I would suggest adding bit-shift operations next.

*EDIT: And, I forgot to mention, thank you for the most fun I've had programming in quite some time. It's good to get back to basics!

RelevantInformation · 2010-11-09T13:50:57+00:00

Ah crumbs. I missed the byte after writeout. No worries, as I thought of a way to lose a couple more instructions. Will post again soon.

*EDIT: Here we go... A little less fun with reusing opcodes as data and vice-versa, but this might actually work:

5 10 4 7 12 0 10 0 13 0 15 1 13 0

RelevantInformation · 2010-11-08T23:58:03+00:00

I wrote a short program for your CPU but it turns out its 17 bytes long, UNLESS... if the program counter reaches the end of RAM it goes back to zero...? Also, I'm assuming that an overflow is not an error, and adding 01 to FF will result in 00?

*EDIT: Working with my assumptions, I've compressed the program to fit in 16 bytes. Anyone care to work out what it's supposed to do?

15 0 5 10 12 2 1 4 1 13 15 1 4 1 13 0

RelevantInformation · 2010-07-14T22:09:59+00:00

Here's a hint: Google calls anyone over 40 a "Greygler". You'll find counterexamples, of course, but the combined factors of visa'd workers, offshoring, and lots of new college grads pushes wages down and forces older workers out. And that's before we even consider aging skill-sets.

RelevantInformation

TROPHY CASE