Minecraft

[Matzon]

Yeah, I am thinking a lot about what to do. A small game studio would be very nice in the long run, but for now I kind of enjoy being my own boss.
There's a significant lack of social interaction during the weekdays, though.. I'm sure I'll get extremely sick of it eventually.

A common way to "fix" this, is to rent a small cubicle at a company - usually this includes the necessarily infrastructure.
Personally, I don't think I would be able to work alone for a long time.

That said, it all depends on how long you can sustain yourself on minecraft and future intentions.

[Eli Delventhal]

A common way to "fix" this, is to rent a small cubicle at a company - usually this includes the necessarily infrastructure.
Personally, I don't think I would be able to work alone for a long time.

That said, it all depends on how long you can sustain yourself on minecraft and future intentions.

That's a good idea. I know in San Francisco there are a number of shared offices where people rent a certain number of desks in a large space. I've heard generally good things about them.

[appel]

Being used in video editing:

Just after 1 minute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLCEXtpTNYU&feature=player_embedded

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Eli Delventhal]

Being used in video editing:

Just after 1 minute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLCEXtpTNYU&feature=player_embedded

Ha, that's cool. That video though... nice idea but it's not like the guy has any suggestions on how to actually accomplish what he proposes. That means his statement is worthless.

[Alric]

Tried and tested technique.. start with some good points to make the complete nonsense that follows sound more credible.
Ironically, I think Minecraft bridged the gap between sense and nonsense 

[h3ckboy]

You can tell he's full of it cause he repeats himself like 5 times saying that the goverment uses violence...

[ChrisM]

Ha, that's cool. That video though... nice idea but it's not like the guy has any suggestions on how to actually accomplish what he proposes. That means his statement is worthless.

Not only that, but he has no real actionable suggestions to begin with.  No laws?  No taxes?  If every single person was benevolent, no worries. How to pay for public services, social services, community improvements, education, etc. without taxes?  What, people are going to willingly open their wallets at every turn?

This guy speaks of utopia.  Not possible.  Hell, we can't even find a balance in virtual worlds where none of this stuff is an issue to begin with!

[Markus_Persson]

Groan. I feel violated. Crackpots.

[edit]
The people who made that video, I mean. Not people posting in this thread.
And HI CHRISM! =D

[Corvinex]

Heh that was hilarious, I agree he doesn't propose anything of use. Although I have run across a solution, a resource-based economy. Much like how people manage their resources in Minecraft. A resource-based economy has a central computer manage the earth's resources. Instead of relying on money to divide up resources (which as u can see has been great  )among people, we would allow technology to let every person have access to everything they need. Money was great back then, but its outdated.

Anyways, keep up the great work on Minecraft. Its a great inspiration for me to finish VE.

[h3ckboy]

is that the video Ive been meaning to see for about 6 months now?

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Eli Delventhal]

Groan. I feel violated. Crackpots.

[edit]
The people who made that video, I mean. Not people posting in this thread.
And HI CHRISM! =D

To bring your thread back:

I have finally started playing Minecraft - I play it on the train to and from work.

I think it's great fun, and I can see it becoming an amazing game in the future (of course, it already is in many ways). I am also very excited for multiplayer survival.

A few suggestions:
- The game obviously needs a tutorial of some kind. I needed to look up how to get started at all.
- Given how important light sources are, it's much too difficult to make one by the first night. Similarly, finding one of the components you need to make light (I think you know which block type I'm talking about, without spoilers) seems totally hit or miss for new players. I've tried to help people get started and they've needed to restart 3 or 4 times before they find some in time.
- The difficult curve is pretty off. As soon as I was solidly set up (took about 2 days of in-game time) I had no issues whatsoever defending myself. The only time I've died since then was my first encounter with a green thing (I have learned it's a creeper) because I didn't know I couldn't just hack at it.
- Now that I am actively seeking mobs in order to get their drops from them, I am finding it annoyingly difficult to actually locate them, aside from running around on the surface at the night which is dodgy at best because there's no way to have portable light (that I have yet discovered). I think that it could really help to have either an item or just a HUD element that points (in 3D space) to nearby monsters, whether you're seeking them out or running away.
– I would love just to be able to see the names of each block type. Like I did a certain something to some stone to make it look like maybe concrete, but I have no idea in the end what it's actually supposed to be.
- It would be nice to have some hints around for what crafting can be done. For example, the player could see something etched in the mountainside or something. Just a change that wouldn't be obvious and won't interrupt gameplay in any way.
- I'm assuming I hit the bottom of the world, but there was no way of knowing that - do I need a better pick to get through it? Hard to say.
- In general, I think the game could use more messaging to the player (at least in survival mode), as it feels very difficult to figure out right now. In creative mode obviously you want people to stumble upon things more, but seeing as there's a challenge in survival I think this applies less.

No doubt you've heard all of those already from your 500,000 or whatever players.

[SimonH]

I want a dog like in Fable2! For company, to sniff out near-surface minerals and to warn me of baddies.
Aw, pleeeze! Can I have a dog? Can I? pleeeeeze? 

[Markus_Persson]

A few suggestions:

Thank you. =)

I intend to make the game more transparent. When I started it, the biggest focus was to keep it intuitive, but some of that has gotten lost recently.

[Eli Delventhal]

I threw up an alpha server which should be running most of the time:

24.6.0.215

[Eli Delventhal]

I threw up an alpha server which should be running most of the time:

24.6.0.215

SimonH and I made a rockin' roller coaster track that starts from the surface and takes you all the way to an infinite doom as you fall through a hole in the bottom of the world. Unfortunately the physics of the coasters don't work right yet but it's still pretty cool.

[SimonH]

Yeah, fun! Pity about those carts, a bit frustrating that furnaces didn't work
Otherwise it worked great! Blocks/players/items all worked just as expected.
*hint* A dog would have been useful for finding coal and iron.... 

[Eli Delventhal]

Yeah, fun! Pity about those carts, a bit frustrating that furnaces didn't work
Otherwise it worked great! Blocks/players/items all worked just as expected.
*hint* A dog would have been useful for finding coal and iron.... 

And a canary!

Oh, and it would be nice in multiplayer to be able to see the tooltip showing where other players are despite distance. Or maybe to leave infinite marker torches around, or something. On my server and other ones I've played on it's been fairly difficult to find locations of interest "follow the clouds, then when you get the big hill, follow the sun" etc.

[Eli Delventhal]

I'm taking the server down, as my little machine (it's just a Mac Mini I use to watch movies with on my projector) can't really handle the load anymore. It was a fun little experiment, and I'll keep the world saved on the disk so we can port it elsewhere some time.

[zammbi]

I don't buy games but I bought a copy

[kappa]

just saw this on the Reddit front page, all I can say is wow!

[h3ckboy]

that guy has WAAAYYY too much freetime

[Riven]

that guy has WAAAYYY too much freetime

Given that minecraft save-files are java Serializables, people are writing editors to generate such huge structures through code.

[woogley]

Given that minecraft save-files are java Serializables, people are writing editors to generate such huge structures through code.

Well, that's only true for Minecraft classic. The above screenshot is in an "infinite" map which is not simply a Serializable anymore (check the absurd amount of folders/files in ~/.minecraft/saves/World1)

Of course, he could've written a converter, but I haven't seen documentation (official or otherwise) on the new save format yet ..

[SimonH]

I haven't seen documentation (official or otherwise) on the new save format yet ..

It's out there - I totally crashed the client with dynamite trees 


Edit: forgot pic!

[woogley]

@SimonH that is fantastic. I finally found some documentation, so maybe now I can start toying with non-classic versions of the game ..

[Markus_Persson]

Given that minecraft save-files are java Serializables

Never ever do that, people. It's a horrible mistake, and you WILL regret it when you want to change the code structure.

Sure, you can override the actual serialization, but then you're really better own writing your own from scratch.

[Eli Delventhal]

Never ever do that, people. It's a horrible mistake, and you WILL regret it when you want to change the code structure.

Sure, you can override the actual serialization, but then you're really better own writing your own from scratch.

Elaborate. Did it just cause issues when you ended up changing it a lot? What exactly happened?

[Riven]

Elaborate. Did it just cause issues when you ended up changing it a lot? What exactly happened?

If you save your data with class X, and modify class X, you cannot load your data anymore.

Basically, your application-model becomes carved in stone. Every modification you make will break all saved files. It's a good idea to keep your data-format independent of your code structure, because *both* are likely to change.

[Orangy Tang]

Never ever do that, people. It's a horrible mistake, and you WILL regret it when you want to change the code structure.

Sure, you can override the actual serialization, but then you're really better own writing your own from scratch.

Yeah, that's always been my experience with Seriali(s/z)ation  as well. Ever time I think "it'll be ok this time", and convince myself that this particular usage will actually hold up, or that I can structure things so that it won't be an issue. Or that it'll only be a temporary stop-gap until I can add in proper persistance later. Every time it ends up being a much bigger burden than just manually saving/loading to some custom binary (or even text) form.

I'm back using it again for Albion, but only as a wire protocol between identical versions so hopefully I won't ever have to deal with old versions. But even this isn't ideal as it's rather inefficient and bulky, and I can't easily log incomming/outgoing packets in a generic way like I could with a custom format.

[Eli Delventhal]

If you save your data with class X, and modify class X, you cannot load your data anymore.

Basically, your application-model becomes carved in stone. Every modification you make will break all saved files. It's a good idea to keep your data-format independent of your code structure, because *both* are likely to change.

Can't you just set serialVersionID to something and keep it that way? I has always worked or me. Maybe I just haven't changed my save files enough.