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The secret of Minecraft (2014)

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Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#181

Post by scubbo »

Terr_ wrote: post #61
scubbo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard it said that there are two kinds of Software Engineers when it comes to Factorio. There's one category who say "this is just like work, but I'm not getting paid to do it; why would I do this?" Then there's the other who say "this is all the bits I enjoy of work, with a faster and more direct feedback loop and without all the admin/management/other-people bullshit; I want to do this for the rest of my life"…

Option 3: "Solving these problems would be fun except they are too reminiscent of all the broken buggy real-world products that I came here to temporarily forget."

(Speaking from the Option 2 camp) Exactly! You finally get to fix them - doesn't that feel good!? :D (Yes, I understand your actual point :) )

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#182

Post by quitit »

ilaksh wrote: post #106

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 al…

It was also exciting to discover how deep the rabbit hole goes.

There was a stage where crafting recipes seemed logical, almost like you could make anything functional if you just could represent it accurately enough on a 3x3 grid with the limited handful of resources available.

Many state that the game is over after the first night, in a way they are correct. If you can survive one night, the game lacks a strong over arching motivation to do much more than simply live.

The rest of minecraft’s wonder is the creativity of the player.

Zero punctuation got it right and I don’t think Microsoft has meaningfully improved the game’s purpose.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xk5qbk

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#183

Post by 29athrowaway »

giobox wrote: post #172
29athrowaway wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple wasn't even the second mover. There were many smartphones and pocket PCs from a myriad of vendors by the time the iPhone appeared.

The concept of second mover advantage doesn't mean you have to go exactly second - your reply is somewhat pedantic - you just get the advantage by not being the very first. Apple absolutely enjoyed some second mover advantages in bringing iPhone to market. The second mover advantages Apple enjoyed went beyond just the cellphone design too - they completely rearchitected the relationship between a carrier and a cellph…

You could have shared those insights without the insults.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#184

Post by Dylan16807 »

lolinder wrote: post #177
Dylan16807 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If enough people are pushed onto a new system, then yes we do lose the ease of the old system.

That may be true in the abstract but has not been really demonstrated in this thread. I spent the rest of my comment detailing the ways in which everything I ever liked about Minecraft is still available—do you have anything to add in support of the idea that something has been lost, or just this abstract observation?

Available isn't the same if it's not what people are using. Especially since you had to buy them separately for so long. This is not an abstract loss.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#185

Post by Chilko »

astrobe_ wrote: post #140
ilaksh wrote: post #106

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 al…

> The graphics were secondary to all of the other things I mentioned IMO, not exactly. At the time of the creation of Minecraft, "ugly" voxel graphics were a necessary technical evil in order to allow the world to be fully editable. And then, when you start from that, the only aesthetically consistent choice for textures is to stick to retro-style low resolution. photo-realistic high-res textures don't feel entirely…

> And then, when you start from that, the only aesthetically consistent choice for textures is to stick to retro-style low resolution. photo-realistic high-res textures don't feel entirely right.

Not to mention that once you could add your own texture packs it became a user choice as to which graphical style they wanted.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#186

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

superb_dev wrote: post #97
pjerem wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could be tempted to start in Creative mode. Don’t do it if you can. I say this as someone who loves playing in Creative mode : it’s not the same game at all. Survival mode is pretty easy and it’s not the same mood. There’s a strange feeling in this game when you just start to build a wooden shelter with not even a door to survive the first night and somehow, after some hours, your shelter is now a cosy house with…

What were all of those survival hours for if you weren’t gathering resources for the eventual castle?

There is only hardcore. No other mode exists. Large biomes... sometimes it drops you in a desert where there is no wood, and the only obtainable block is sand. You can't build a roof with sand. There is no way to obtain coal or charcoal, so you can't make torches to light the night sky and keep monsters at bay. No trees for kilometers. You see the beach, do you dare try swimming for it? The drowned zombies come out of nowhere, you swim too slow to dodge tridents. Maybe wood out there in some sunken ship, but wooden blocks are difficult to discern from slabs or stairs down deep. Iron, if you can figure out the correct way to get to the chest. If that chest is even there in a broken ship.

"Survival" isn't about surviving, because if you die you just respawn and go grab your stuff. There is only hardcore. "Creative" isn't about creating, because you're just wishing stuff into existence effortlessly. There is only hardcore.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#187

Post by lolinder »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #184
lolinder wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true in the abstract but has not been really demonstrated in this thread. I spent the rest of my comment detailing the ways in which everything I ever liked about Minecraft is still available—do you have anything to add in support of the idea that something has been lost, or just this abstract observation?

Available isn't the same if it's not what people are using. Especially since you had to buy them separately for so long. This is not an abstract loss.

You're still talking abstractly, though. What was actually lost, in concrete terms?

As I noted in my comment, I'm still subscribed to YouTube channels of people who are still playing on the same server with the same group (with some changes over the years, of course). I don't play Minecraft as often as I did in 2012, but that's because I have a career and a family, not because I can't. I'm now introducing my son to Minecraft Java and he's loved it every time we've played it.

I'm just not seeing the loss, and those who are bemoaning it here haven't actually pinned down what's now missing from Minecraft as a result of Bedrock (or even Microsoft in general).

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#188

Post by darknavi »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #131
andrewxdiamond wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lost? Nothing has been deprecated, Java edition is still supported and kept in feature parity with Bedrock aka MS Edition. Yes, Bedrock is not mod friendly like Java, but the modding community hasn't stopped. And yes they moved the license server from a Mojang server to the MS login system, but what is the real difference here? You still have to login, you just don't like MS for unrelated reasons. https://www.minecra…

> Yes, Bedrock is not mod friendly like Java It's getting there, though. They recently introduced the framework for more advanced mods. Heck, Create Mod is even available on Bedrock now.

One of the devs on the Bedrock scripting team here :)

I started programming with Bukkit and hMod in Minecraft, so I am so happy to help others learn to program with Minecraft!

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#189

Post by Dylan16807 »

lolinder wrote: post #187
Dylan16807 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Available isn't the same if it's not what people are using. Especially since you had to buy them separately for so long. This is not an abstract loss.

You're still talking abstractly, though. What was actually lost, in concrete terms? As I noted in my comment, I'm still subscribed to YouTube channels of people who are still playing on the same server with the same group (with some changes over the years, of course). I don't play Minecraft as often as I did in 2012, but that's because I have a career and a family, not because I can't. I'm now introducing my son to M…

It's easy enough for an adult to follow setup instructions, but the ability ability for a kid to come home and set up their own minecraft server and bring in friends is cut down a lot when you go from "just about everyone has minecraft (java)" to "just about everyone has minecraft (bedrock)". Java is still there but it's not the thing everyone already has ready to go. That's especially true for vanilla but it also increases the amount of hurdles you have to go through to set up and use a modded java install.

And before they merged ownership, the gap between casual play and a custom java server went from "some setup time" in the earlier days to to "more setup time, also more than a hundred dollars purchasing copies of java version even though everyone in the group already owns minecraft". Surely you can see the lost opportunities there.

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