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The secret of Minecraft (2014)

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Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#101

Post by iamwil »

Auracle wrote: post #19
vbezhenar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood the appeal of having game knowledge on a separate websites. I can understand this situation happening because of lack of development resources. Like - yeah, it's easier to just let the community to write the documentation and concentrate on the game, if you're small company. But why would it appeal to the actual players? It's not really secret knowledge, there are wiki websites with all the recipes…

You know, for younger kids I can see the appeal. They might not have a device they can easily use to go on the internet, so you’d be able to do things your friends can’t and vice versa. I’ve long mulled on the idea of some kind of game where large aspects of it are randomized/generated so that no two installations would have the same stuff, recipes, whatever. I think that’d be neat and get rid of the website issue.

Those are rouge-likes. They still have wikis. See Spleunky and Hades.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#102

Post by 256_ »

cole-k wrote: post #98
256_ wrote: post #83

I'm almost surprised nobody mentioned beta 1.7.3 yet. Some people, myself included, consider it to be the last good version of the game. It came before the adventure update, beta 1.8, in 2011. To put it simply, 1.8 is the inflection point where Minecraft stopped being a sandbox and started being, as I once saw someone call it, a "pseudo-RPG". Obviously, this view is not common (EDIT: judging by some responses, maybe…

I've played a lot of Minecraft and I still remember beta 1.7.3 very fondly -- albeit for different reasons -- but I want to offer a differing perspective. I have always struggled with balancing my desire to create with my capability to create, in and out of Minecraft. I would get so inspired by all the awesome things people built, that I could never graduate from my barebones cave-with-chests because my desire to mak…

Well put.

> It used to be that you reach resource satiation quickly, but now it will take hours to [do so...]

I think this may actually be the most important point. It is also not true, but also is at the same time, I feel.

If "resource satiation" refers to the ability of the player to build/do whatever they want, then it is true. If "resource satiation" means "having enough resources", then for some people it is impossible by nature. There's always a temptation to do more and build more.

For me, I think this temptation was independent of the game itself. Looking back at my childhood, I don't feel like there was any sharp distinction between my creations in Minecraft and any of my other creative pursuits, including programming; it all sort of blended together. The game was less a game, more like yet another creative medium.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#103

Post by teaearlgraycold »

ineptech wrote: post #89
lolinder wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of pessimistic take that gets a lot of traction on HN, but man does it not match my experience. > Minecraft mods were how a lot of teenagers got acquainted with scripting, and it's a lot harder to get started with your own server since MS bought it and forced it to authenticate through Azure. First off, the pivot from mods to running a server is sort of related, I guess? But it's not at all clear how…

I'm not super knowledgeable about it so I should just let someone else answer; but to clarify what I was saying, I'm not talking about the account migration, I'm talking about the fact that the new version ("education" edition, the one most kids use because of the steep discounts to schools) client can't connect to the old ("java edition") servers. The old server is still easy to run and hack on, but none of your fri…

As someone that’s hosted many servers over the years and made a few mods, it’s easier than ever. Getting started with modding is so much easier with the excellent IDE support and mature modding APIs compared to class monkey patching and struggling to load up a decompiled version of the game in Eclipse was.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#104

Post by jfoutz »

cole-k wrote: post #98
256_ wrote: post #83

I'm almost surprised nobody mentioned beta 1.7.3 yet. Some people, myself included, consider it to be the last good version of the game. It came before the adventure update, beta 1.8, in 2011. To put it simply, 1.8 is the inflection point where Minecraft stopped being a sandbox and started being, as I once saw someone call it, a "pseudo-RPG". Obviously, this view is not common (EDIT: judging by some responses, maybe…

I've played a lot of Minecraft and I still remember beta 1.7.3 very fondly -- albeit for different reasons -- but I want to offer a differing perspective. I have always struggled with balancing my desire to create with my capability to create, in and out of Minecraft. I would get so inspired by all the awesome things people built, that I could never graduate from my barebones cave-with-chests because my desire to mak…

I don't remember the specific version (s) I played. I remember being kinda depressed and burned out.

Although I didn't discover them, water ladders and cart boosters were so much fun. That feeling of almost cheating, using the bugs in the system to do magic things was so much fun.

I'd definitely credit Minecraft for rekindling some love for hacking, in the classic, non crack sense, but, matrix like, bending the rules to do NEAT stuff.

Then mods, pipes and auto crafting, bigger stuff.

I remember when tool damage was introduced. I was annoyed, but it was ok. I think around the time of food/hunger it started losing its luster. grow potatoes or butcher cows and pigs. it was ok. But that's the time I started drifting away.

Just an amazing game that brought me joy. good stuff.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#105

Post by teaearlgraycold »

superb_dev wrote: post #93
ineptech wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard not to mourn what was lost though. Minecraft mods were how a lot of teenagers got acquainted with scripting, and it's a lot harder to get started with your own server since MS bought it and forced it to authenticate through Azure. In my kids' friendgroup at least, the "modding games as an entry point to programming" concept has been handed off from Minecraft to Roblox. It's nice that they've added a bunch o…

I dislike the auth changes as well, but it hasn’t had any impact on server hosting in my experience. It’s still just as easy as getting the right JVM and running the jar. The only thing new is the EULA you have to accept on first launch

You can even still disable user authentication. That’s a pretty sweet deal for a game owned by Microsoft. There’s legit support in the game for pirated copies.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#106

Post by ilaksh »

He makes a good point about "secret" knowledge, but I don't think that's the real secret.

I believe almost everyone, including the author here, misunderstands what made Minecraft take off.

It was NOT just the fact that you have creative control (which is what most people mistakenly assume is the main point) or that you need to learn how to craft to advance, or the procedural generation. It was the _combination_ of all of those things _with_ a challenging environment and mechanics that _motivate_ you to explore those features!

Without exploring, crafting and building, you can't survive the dangerous creatures or you starve.

And people stupidly harp on the low-fidelity graphics without realizing how well Persson absolutely nailed the core requirements of game design and execution of his concept. The graphics were secondary to all of the other things I mentioned and it was very smart to simplify them, with so much new ground and working mainly alone at first.

Pulling off the procedural generation and motivating the creativity is what made this masterful. Those were difficult features to program all at the same time and it took a strong understanding of game design. Persson wasn't just lucky. He mastered programming and game design and created a novel experience.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#107

Post by ineptech »

lolinder wrote: post #90
ineptech wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not super knowledgeable about it so I should just let someone else answer; but to clarify what I was saying, I'm not talking about the account migration, I'm talking about the fact that the new version ("education" edition, the one most kids use because of the steep discounts to schools) client can't connect to the old ("java edition") servers. The old server is still easy to run and hack on, but none of your fri…

Your complaint is essentially that Microsoft released a new version of the game under the same name, which is not compatible with the old one because it's not actually quite the same game. That's a reasonable complaint, but doesn't constitute "losing" anything. I'm still following some of the same Java Edition YouTubers that I've been following for more than 10 years now (and they're still producing content weekly!).…

We've indisputably lost whatever Minecraft would be today if notch hadn't sold it. We can't know what that is, maybe it would've sucked. What we got instead feels like just another corporate studio game, a good one, yes, but we already have a lot of those.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#108

Post by preciousoo »

pphysch wrote: post #99
codeulike wrote: post #30

One of the other innovations of Minecraft is that they didn't worry too much about rendering chunks in a timely manner. When you're on multiplayer and moving fast its not uncommon for the landscape to get rendered right infront of your eyes. Some games go to great lengths to avoid that (e.g. slow the player down or have distance fog so that they never notice areas being loaded). But if the game is fun, no-one cares a…

I don't know that it's an "innovation" as much as a lucky break. I would say it's one of Minecraft's systemic flaws, actually. It greatly constrains how smooth exploration can be in what is otherwise an interesting world to explore.

I believe they solved (to a large degree) it in their C++ rendering engine that they use for Bedrock

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#109

Post by joelkoen »

256_ wrote: post #83

I'm almost surprised nobody mentioned beta 1.7.3 yet. Some people, myself included, consider it to be the last good version of the game. It came before the adventure update, beta 1.8, in 2011. To put it simply, 1.8 is the inflection point where Minecraft stopped being a sandbox and started being, as I once saw someone call it, a "pseudo-RPG". Obviously, this view is not common (EDIT: judging by some responses, maybe…

Have you tried Better than Adventure[0]? It's a fork of Beta 1.7.3 for exactly this reason!

[0] https://www.betterthanadventure.net/

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#110

Post by squeaky-clean »

iamwil wrote: post #101
Auracle wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, for younger kids I can see the appeal. They might not have a device they can easily use to go on the internet, so you’d be able to do things your friends can’t and vice versa. I’ve long mulled on the idea of some kind of game where large aspects of it are randomized/generated so that no two installations would have the same stuff, recipes, whatever. I think that’d be neat and get rid of the website issue.

Those are rouge-likes. They still have wikis. See Spleunky and Hades.

I've had the same idea as them, they mean something beyond a rogue like.

Like here Hades has a wiki list of all "Keepsake" items and their bonuses and abilities [0]. So you can always know the Old Spiked Collar always gives 25/38/50 HP bonus. What if instead of 25 at the first tier, it was a random range from 15-35. What if there was a chance it gave a damage boost instead? Or resistance against physical damage. Or it gave lightning a 30% bonus, or....

Basically everything shuffled and procedurally generated to the degree that 2 players discussing the game would barely have an overlapping experience aside from the general genre being the same.

It would be really hard to make it so every playthrough has some semblance of balance though, and for things to narratively make sense, e.g. Iron items should always be stronger than copper items etc.

[0] https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Keepsakes#List_of_keepsakes

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