Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The secret of Minecraft (2014)

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 230 posts

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#141

Post by 5636588 »

29athrowaway wrote: post #130
jameshart wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notch didn’t nail it all on his own though - Zach Barth nailed a bunch of those crafting and world manipulation and building mechanics in Infiniminer. Notch was screwing around cloning infiniminer in Java and Minecraft is kind of what popped out. Obviously he wasn’t as interested in the PVP combat mechanics that Zach built, so he ended up leaning into survival, and had some ideas about how to extend the procedural ge…

When Apple released the iPhone, several smartphones were in existence. But the iPhone created a much more cohesive and simplified experience compared to those. There's merit in that.

It's called the Second-Mover Advantage.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#142

Post by astrobe_ »

preciousoo wrote: post #108
pphysch wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, Minetest which was C++ from the start manages well these days. It still offers distance fog, which I think is something you want anyway for aesthetic reasons - being able to see clearly 5 km away feels wrong, especially if your game does have a weather system. OP sounds a bit like "sour grapes" to me, especially in this case. Other games deal with the issue with level-of-detail (LoD) tricks, or make it a proper part of the game (e.g. the "popping" of objects like trees is animated).

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#143

Post by trinix912 »

fbdab103 wrote: post #29
Version467 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Microsoft did a great job handling Minecraft imo. I thought they were out of their mind paying that much money for something that I didn't think had many opportunities left to grow. But now I think it was the perfect time for Persson and his team to give it to someone with the resources and the reach to make those opportunities. Yes, Microsoft changed some things about Minecraft the game, but overall they didn't…

Nah. Microsoft did a great job handling Minecraft imo. I am still peeved that my lifetime license "mysteriously" broke during Microsoft's account transitions. Trillion dollar company lacks the manpower and technical capability to handle it? Or someone cannot be arsed to maintain "freeloader" customers.

They did provide several notices regarding that years in advance to shutting down the old auth servers and also had a long migration period during which you could log in with both accounts (assuming you have migrated the old account to Xbox/Microsoft).

The whole reason they did it is that you can now easily switch between Java and Bedrock, and that it's not as laughably easy to hack accounts as it used to be.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#145

Post by nottorp »

kevinsync wrote: post #86

Microsoft didn't ruin Minecraft -- all they did was graciously allow the Java version (moddable) to continue to exist and improve while making Bedrock work consistently cross-platform (way more important than you may realize, so many kids are introduced via phones and tablets) and be the place where branded IP / predictable content goes. My 12 year old son has been playing since he was 6 I think, and is an unbelievab…

> making Bedrock work consistently cross-platform

Pray tell, where are the Mac and Linux versions of Bedrock?

Have they removed the limitations on world and redstone updates in Bedrock yet, or is it still only updating right around you in the name of rendering distance?

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#146

Post by nottorp »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #39
simonw wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's stewardship of Minecraft has been fantastic. Simplicity has never been a key element of Minecraft - redstone circuits were added years before the acquisition. The sheer quantity of weird and delightful stuff they've added has kept Minecraft new and interesting for over a decade.

Tbh Microsoft hasn't done anything near as impressive as the modding community. It's nice that they are still developing the Java edition so the modding community can continue though Check out the Create mod If Microsoft ever adds anything as cool as that to Minecraft, I may agree with you that they are keeping it new and interesting

> The sheer quantity of weird and delightful stuff they've added has kept Minecraft new and interesting for over a decade.

Yeah, you can only say that if you've never ran across Java edition mods :)

Incidentally, a good chunk of stuff that has been added across the years was present in mods first.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#147

Post by [deleted] »

strogonoff wrote: post #133
herbst wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Had one of the first few thousand accounts. Since Microsoft took over: - it got hacked. Got it back but name was changed, history not perfect anymore - much later somehow lost my account due to me trying to keep my old account I guess. Whatever I wasnt noticed that my account is going to die. It just did. Microsoft support also never answered to my request getting it back - Never played Minecraft again

Microsoft’s bean counters immediately set about milking as much profit from Minecraft as they can right after the purchase, be through Minecoin, premium skins, or by collecting PII via requiring phone numbers from everyone for “SMS verification” due to “security alert” blackmail (total joke—the attacker could just as well provide their own phone number and lock me out—except, of course, there is no actual suspicious…

[deleted]

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#148

Post by jwrallie »

joelkoen wrote: post #109
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/

For people that would prefer the vanilla experience, I recommend the Betacraft client. I have been using for some time since I had some issues with sound being missing when playing older versions on the official client.

[0] https://betacraft.uk/

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#149

Post by tialaramex »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #110
iamwil wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

If the game is significantly interesting to a sizeable population they will unwind any amount of complexity and randomness. If you think about it, that's what happened to our actual world.

If it's a "random range from 15-35" that's what the Wiki will say. Worse, if you've coded this slightly wrong and it's actually 15, 18, or 20 to 35 with no chance of 16 or 19, that will be on the Wiki. If you have much better shot at 30+ if you were holding the "jump" button as you picked the collar, that too finds its way to the Wiki if there are enough players.

The exact same thing which drives humans to find out how the hell it's possible for some atoms of the same element to be heavier than others (more neutrons) will also drive players of a very popular game to figure out the fine details of how it works.

Don't add balance by the way. In single player games it's probably futile (players will break it anyway) and you may destroy the fun elements in the game in a quest to "balance" it properly, like taking a delicious tart and turning it into mush fit for a baby. Even in a multi-player game, prefer to make everybody unbalanced rather than trying to homogenize them. If rock smashes scissors, but paper wraps rock, and scissors cut paper we've got a game, it's not a very good game, but it's at least a game.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#150

Post by kragen »

ineptech wrote: post #71
rootforce wrote: post #23

I’ve been playing Minecraft off and on since beta, and I’ve been able to introduce each of my kids as they’ve gotten old enough to play. It is pretty amazing, they all started in creative running around punching random things and now each one has their own way they like to play. One loves to build, another mini games, survival, parkour, mods etc. we are currently watching MCC live and it’s like the Super Bowl. They a…

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…

consider minetest, which makes it trivial to get started with your own server and can be scripted in lua like roblox
Post reply on HN