The secret of Minecraft (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#71

Post by ineptech » Sat, Jul 27, 2024, 10:28 PM UTC

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 of functionality, but the pessimistic view is that MS spent $1.6B to force the world's schoolchildren to make office.com logins.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#72

Post by pjerem » Sat, Jul 27, 2024, 10:29 PM UTC

pizzafeelsright wrote: post #40

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…

Never played. No idea. We're big lego fans. Where should I start? Anything to avoid?

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 some underground cave that gives you an access to your own mine.

That’s really a cosy feeling that you can’t feel in creative mode.

Survival is pretty easy : there are monsters at night but surviving is nothing more than hiding in a dirt house.

And then after hundreds of hours, your start to be bored and it’s time to go Creative and to build gigantic castles.

Also you said "we" : if you can play the game in multiplayer, it just doubles the fun.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#73

Post by xmprt » Sat, Jul 27, 2024, 10:37 PM UTC

momojo wrote: post #46

> I’m a writer, and don’t get me wrong: To publish a plain ol’ book that people actually want to read is still a solid achievement. But I think Markus Persson and his studio have staked out a new kind of achievement, a deeper kind: To make the system that calls forth the book, which is not just a story but a real magick manual that grants its reader (who consumes it avidly, endlessly, all day, at school, at night, un…

It has a lot of parallels with Lego and not just the fact that they're both a bunch of boxes that you can attach together. I think the fundamental mechanics of Minecraft lends itself to a type of creativity that other games find it hard to recreate. By being so little, it manages to be so much more than the sum of its parts. Minecraft didn't have a proper ending for the first few years of its life.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#74

Post by medstrom » Sat, Jul 27, 2024, 10:42 PM UTC

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #63

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…

I just introduced my kid to Minecraft and it's fascinating how quickly they take to it, but to my (internal silent) horror, they've added so much that changes the survival experience from the early days that it's not really the same any more. Now there's villages which provide pre-made shelter, you can just trade and build up villager slaves to make all the resources for you, you can get a bed (which you find in all…

> Removed supernatural or fantastical minecraft mobs: no zombies, skeletons, creepers, endermen, etc.

No zombies? That is mind-blowing. I love the vision you outline at 13:40-15:40, will play when I get a beefy enough computer for Minecraft mods ;-)

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#75

Post by herewulf » Sat, Jul 27, 2024, 10:50 PM UTC

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…

Minetest, which has been around nearly as long and is a FOSS game with more or less feature parity, covers all these bases. Super easy to script in Lua. Simple to set up servers.

I've gotten my kids into Minetest after they kept hearing about Minecraft and asking to play, and they absolutely love it. Runs great on lower end hardware too.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#76

Post by tialaramex » Sat, Jul 27, 2024, 10:50 PM UTC

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

I don't think it would ever "work" for Minecraft to attempt something like one of the big mods. Even "Better Than Wolves" which most people have been exposed to via packs with a later, richer "Better With Mods" is sort of giving the game away. Yes, the things "Better Than Wolves" did are better than what Minecraft itself delivered in that timeframe (Wolves, duh) but often what Minecraft's devs are doing is fundamental, infrastructure work. Mojang and then Microsoft make two kinds of ore, and then add a third, boring - but modders couldn't have added six hundred more kinds of ore without that. The built-in biomes are fine but they're not as radical as anything modders have done - but modders couldn't have added new biomes without that infrastructure.

I think Mojang and Microsoft have been very good at sketching in new ideas, enriching the concept rather than refining all the details.

They've also been good, because it's easier for a corporation, at completion. Anybody still waiting for Jaded's Agrarian Skies 2 ? How about for a meaningful end to Twilight Forest ? Modern packs tend to play the non-ending of Twilight Forest as if that's normal - gating further progress on the Magic Lamp for example, or just putting everything after the Trolls as optional - but wandering around the final castle it's obvious this just isn't finished.

I play almost exclusively modded, mostly ascend-to-godhood type packs, and it's still very noticeable how different a modern pack is (based on modern Minecraft) than the 1.7 era packs we started out playing, because the base game is significantly better.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#77

Post by lolinder » Sat, Jul 27, 2024, 10:51 PM UTC

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…

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 your complaints about servers have any bearing on the modding, which is still very much there. The Minecraft Forge docs are better than ever [0], there are 3000+ mods on Curseforge already compatible with 1.21 and 5000+ compatible with 1.20. That a lot of kids have moved to other games has more to do with the ephemeral nature of childhood entertainment than it does with Microsoft stifling modding in any way.

Second, I'm not at all sure what you mean about servers being harder to set up. Here are the instructions for setting up a Minecraft server [1]. The instructions actually seem substantially shorter than I remember them being from back in the day, most of the bullet points are just explanations for various settings you could configure. (EDIT: Just to be sure I decided to try it myself and got a server running in just under 5 minutes. Obviously your average kid isn't going to be able to move that quickly in the terminal, but there was no authentication step.)

> It's nice that they've added a bunch of functionality, but the pessimistic view is that MS spent $1.6B to force the world's schoolchildren to make office.com logins.

Microsoft bought Minecraft in 2014, 3 years after it was officially released and 10 years before now. What you're offering is a very pessimistic view given that history, especially so given that it seems to be entirely based on a single account migration from bespoke Minecraft accounts to Microsoft accounts. You can be cynical about that all you want, but speaking is a developer in a company that currently has 3 account systems I'm going to venture that that move was exactly what they claimed it was: an effort to simplify things and increase security.

[0] https://docs.minecraftforge.net/en/latest/gettingstarted/

[1] https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/360058525452-Ho...

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#78

Post by Livanskoy » Sat, Jul 27, 2024, 10:52 PM UTC

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #63

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…

I just introduced my kid to Minecraft and it's fascinating how quickly they take to it, but to my (internal silent) horror, they've added so much that changes the survival experience from the early days that it's not really the same any more. Now there's villages which provide pre-made shelter, you can just trade and build up villager slaves to make all the resources for you, you can get a bed (which you find in all…

I can recommend checking out Vintage Story if you want the refined Minecraft survival experience. Just finished playing it with my wife a few weeks ago — great fun.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#79

Post by 256_ » Sat, Jul 27, 2024, 10:55 PM UTC

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…

I can't even imagine what it's like now, but Roblox is how I first learned programming when I was 11. This was well over a decade ago.

Roblox (talking in past tense; not sure how much of this is still true) allowed you to create "Places", which were basically 3D interactive universes that consisted of a few primitive parts (rect. prisms, cylinders, etc.) arranged and connected to each other, as larger solid objects, or with hinges. It was, in other words, a multi-player physics sanbox. Also, the use of the word "place" instead of "game" is interesting to note; as a child, it felt like they could really be anything, with no particular expectations.

I don't remember when Lua scripting was added - I think it was around 2008-2009 or somethng - but it allowed you to perform simple event-based programming, registering clicks/deaths/collisions/etc and manipulating the game world. As a child I saw this as a form of magic. What would otherwise be a physics sandbox with inanimate objects interacting in a strictly mechanistic fashion became one in which anything could happen. You know, magic. Maybe that sounds stupid, but that was my thinking.

So I became a programmer because I wanted to be a wizard. I am still pursuing this goal. Also, RIP Erik Cassel. His tutorials were one of my first - if not my first - introduction to programming ever. He died too soon.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#80

Post by andrewxdiamond » Sat, Jul 27, 2024, 10:56 PM UTC

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…

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.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server

https://hub.docker.com/search?q=minecraft

https://old.reddit.com/r/admincraft/