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Notch's next game is an MMO

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Re: Notch's next game is an MMO

#31
This looks great, and it's evident from Notch's success with Minecraft that he really knows how to provide a great product and interact with his fans. Looking forward to trying it out.

Re: Notch's next game is an MMO

#32
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He tweeted this picture while debugging the CPU a couple weeks ago: http://i.imgur.com/DhmFp.png Sounds like fun.

I really hope that code is auto-generated. Because that coding style is ATROCIOUS.

Why?

It's just a big switch/case over the instruction set by the looks of it. Those things can get pretty damn large if your are implementing anything close to a proper CPU.

It's just very condensed, I imagine so he can change a bunch of values and re-test quickly.

Re: Notch's next game is an MMO

#33

"We are going to emulate all computers and physics even when players aren't logged in." I built a prototype trying to do something similar, inspired by a text-based RTS/MMO that kept running while you were asleep. For me this was an unrealistic goal, if the simulations are complex enough you can't operate at a price point users will pay for. Even if you can, because the game is now CPU bound, far less players fit on…

Not an expert in this but can't many physics calculations now be offloaded to modern GPUs which are designed to parallelize much more neatly?

Re: Notch's next game is an MMO

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope that code is auto-generated. Because that coding style is ATROCIOUS.

Why? It's just a big switch/case over the instruction set by the looks of it. Those things can get pretty damn large if your are implementing anything close to a proper CPU. It's just very condensed, I imagine so he can change a bunch of values and re-test quickly.

It's not quite as bad as it would be in a program other than an emulator, granted, but I can't imagine that it's easy to notice a bug in a 200-character line of:

    int pos=(ram[PC++&0xffff]+X)&0xff; byte v=ram[(ram[pos]&0xff)|
And so on. It just seems like some sort of code generation would be much easier.

Re: Notch's next game is an MMO

#36
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He tweeted this picture while debugging the CPU a couple weeks ago: http://i.imgur.com/DhmFp.png Sounds like fun.

I really hope that code is auto-generated. Because that coding style is ATROCIOUS.

Looks like standard emulator coding to me. Op-codes and state changes.

Re: Notch's next game is an MMO

#37
Has anyone decoded the name? He said it was related to 1 in a 64-bit system read in 16-bit with the wrong endianness, or something like that. I tried my hand at it briefly but gave up.

Re: Notch's next game is an MMO

#39
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He tweeted this picture while debugging the CPU a couple weeks ago: http://i.imgur.com/DhmFp.png Sounds like fun.

I really hope that code is auto-generated. Because that coding style is ATROCIOUS.

That looks like pretty much every small virtual machine I can remember reading. There's nothing atrocious about it; that's what small virtual machines look like.

Re: Notch's next game is an MMO

#40

"We are going to emulate all computers and physics even when players aren't logged in." I built a prototype trying to do something similar, inspired by a text-based RTS/MMO that kept running while you were asleep. For me this was an unrealistic goal, if the simulations are complex enough you can't operate at a price point users will pay for. Even if you can, because the game is now CPU bound, far less players fit on…

Not an expert in this but can't many physics calculations now be offloaded to modern GPUs which are designed to parallelize much more neatly?

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