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Minecraft Reaches Beta Status, Price Goes Up
Eric writes "After over a year of development, Minecraft has hit Beta status today. Minecraft was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009. With the new milestone, the price of the game has increased to €14.95; when Minecraft moves beyond beta status, it will sell for €20.00. The beta is more focused on polish and content. The aim is to add proper modding support via a stable API, some kind of non-intrusive narrative to help drive the game experience early on, and a late-game goal. Updates will be less frequent, so as to make sure stability is maintained thanks to more extended testing. Despite this, there have already been two beta releases: client and server Beta 1.0 followed quickly by client 1.0_01."
did they get their money back from PayPal?
The summary fails to mention the spectacular fail.
The release that was supposed to inaugurate the beta also created a bunch of bugs for both single- and multi-player modes, including dupe bugs, which he was trying to fix.
The patch that followed the beta release was supposed to fix those bugs, and didn't. Minecraft remains almost unplayable for me in single- or multi-player mode; my friends can't even connect to the server anymore.
I understand that "beta" is just a milestone, but this is really inauspicious.
http://www.tenjou.net/
Minecraft Reaches Beta Status, Price Goes Up
If there's one thing I don't do, it's buy software that isn't written yet. Maybe under some limited conditions in custom software both otherwise, let me know when you're done and what you're charging for it and I'll consider it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Regardless of whether you blame Minecraft's success on luck or Notch's genius, he's a rather poor programmer. If you read through the release notes on his blog, he's apparently incapable of adding features without breaking lots of stuff on the way and waiting for him to fix basic functionality can take months.
I don't know if that's true or not, but I do know that programming 'under the spotlight' can be very distracting. What with twitter, blog comments, and forums there are far too many ways for the customer base to contact Notch 24/7. That's got to make fixing stuff hard if people are constantly shouting "FIX IT!" in your ear.
I bought the alpha a few months ago, and while I haven't played it recently due to time contraints, it is easily well worth the money that is being charged. I played it far more than games that cost three times as much, not to mention that when playing it, I was never frustrated, or angry, but thoroughly enjoying the experience, which is something I can't say about most games, not to mention ones that aren't even freaking finished yet!
Does anyone want me to _vaguely promise_ to supply them with some lego blocks? - I can take pre-orders for only $10 / My swiss bank account number is....34568q35689uyq35698uy. -Blocks to follow sometime...... But if you paid and it turns out to be vapour-ware do you have any recourse?
The game was well worth the 10 euro I paid for it. Found a nice multiplayer server with a great community, lots of people are regulars where I play. The amazing thing is to see all the new creations since last visit: Minecraft sort of have the same charm as Lego, I mean there is no ultimate goal in Lego, you just build stuff. The world of minecraft is complex enough to be Turing complete.
I had no idea what I was getting in to when starting Minecraft. It is fun to start off knowing nothing about how the game is played, and just start building a castle or whatever.
It is amazing how this game far outshines other games that are much more graphic intensive.
Minecraft is your Utopia. You can do anything in Minecraft.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I'm played around with it a bit, but to me it just seems like a very limited type of Second Life minus all the social stuff, scripting, interaction, etc.
Am I missing some unique part of the game experience that makes this better?
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Right now, Minecraft saves worlds by making a huge tree of directories that stores individual data chunks in various sub-directories. Even though the total amount of data is small (my server is only about 10 megs), any time a copy needs to be made to backup or test, it takes an eternity because there are literally over 10,000 files on the disk.
I'm hopelessly in love with the game, but with the frequent software updates, there is also a need for frequent backups to make sure I don't lose all the work of everyone on the server.
I mean, I just read Mi*****ft, and I think "Wow, Windows is finnaly in beta, but the price is even more up?".
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Hey, don't slam Dora! Her adventure games are pretty damn amusing.
Ssssssssssssssss...
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
There's already minecraft cosplay. There was a cardboard creeper at Otakon.
You're way behind, Mr. Mopps. Behold: http://linnnk.com/awesome-minecraft-costume
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
To me it's like playing with cube-shaped Lego bricks in that the satisfaction comes from thinking of, planning, and building cool-looking stuff on an infinitely large green baseplate. Also like playing with Legos, sometimes you have to hunt through the pile to find that one block you need to make your tower go from cool to extra cool. And to take it a bit further, sometimes at night your little green brother who is totally annoying will come over and blow up the fishing cabin you were working on for the last 15 minutes.
(Or to take another tack, if you liked building cars and creatures more than playing the actual game in Spore you'd probably enjoy Minecraft.)
Ah yes, Geek-Sheik, the famous fashion movement characterised by pocket protectors and an impressive scholarship of Islam.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I heard great things about this game, so I tried the non-pay version before buying. Didn't work on my computer, even though supposedly it's "run everywhere" Java. So I didn't buy the alpha.
Your poor sensible art loving eyes.
Here, have some photo realistic explosions with your linear game story.
Now stay there hypnotized while I try to grow the biggest fucking tree this minecraft server ever saw.
And then, build a castle ontop it!
That's interesting, I didn't know. I guess that's one of the advantages of running XFS on a SSD :p
(Yes, yes, TRIM is still not supported. I will either re-TRIM the disk manually or cycle it out if it really starts breaking)
There has been little official word on any api yet, except they want to make one. It is not included in the current beta release. The state of modding is currently decompiling the obfuscated java, making some changes, and recompiling it. kinda a hacky way to make changes.
For me this game will always be just dwarf fortress fan art. The breath people are wasting on complaining about bugs for this game would be better spent chattering excitedly about the upcoming world wide real time trade and item tracking that is planned for the next DF release. Mind you minecraft works well for those without the patience or inclination for DF's vertical learning curve. For those who have climbed it however minecraft is a dim shadow cast by one of the greatest leaps (long treks?) forward in gaming history. Oh and DF is free.
As a DF/Roguelike purist I have to say you are both wrong. All this shiny bling pre atari 2600 graphics are way too shiny and pretty and detract from the pure gameplay aspect. Yes I am half joking. Only half.
I thought that too. Then I played it. It's very fun, it reminds me of GarrysMod (My friends and I can spend hours building things) but with more substance. There's enemies (that you didn't create) and it doesn't all die when you quit the game.
Has anyone actually played this game?
From the videos I can find of Minecraft it just looks just like a sandbox. No actual point to doing anything. No objectives.
It looks even more pointless than 2nd life. Is it really that bad?
I've had a roughly similar idea for a game that keeps resurfacing last 15 years. With cloud computing catching & technology advances I might actually learn programming to build my game.
Minecraft is the closest game I know of that is about building blocks and huge worlds where players move around and change things. That is the foundation for my game & things differ much from there.
I bought four copies of Alpha & my in-laws bought 3 copies in Alpha & host a server for us.
It's fun now & we are all excited about future updates. The money was well spent.
Ah yes, Geek-Sheik, the famous fashion movement characterised by pocket protectors and an impressive scholarship of Islam.
THANK you. Chic, GP. The word is chic.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
Minecraft is one of those little homebrew projects that has taken on a life of its own.
Really - it's simple without being simplistic, and allows people fantastic expression of their creativity.
It's totally worth paying for, and supporting this programmer.
The next obvious step would be a more robust permanent world capability, along with the ability to lock ones' creations from the deliberate vandalism and destruction of others.
-Styopa
Goes to show that a lot of people like having a huge sandbox and tools to play with it & willing to pay for it.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/9/20/
I bought this game in Alpha stage because I saw videos of what people were doing with it on Youtube. The fact that this is a game which allows for so much creativity is what drew me to it. A kid who made a fully functional computer _inside_ the game is exactly why it's so appealing. I love the blocky graphics and the ethereal music. The generated worlds are full of surprises and interesting little crevices and caves to explore. My only complaint is that the game is written in Java. I understand why it was, but my true dream would be to have a version written in C maybe, in a tight little EXE. If they could do with Minecraft what was done with Kkrieger, I would be excited beyond measure. Because of what this game is, there is no reason I know of why it needs to hog resources and load up a huge Java environment. Kkrieger was done years ago, even.
You've never actually seen an Atari machine, have you?
He apparently has *millions* of dollars now.. why not hire a team of decent C programmers and convert the game? I imagine you could get it running on mobile platforms damn fast shortly afterwards and make even more money.
How we know is more important than what we know.
sound s great
www.partinchina.com
BTW who play this sh.i.t ?
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
I forget where I saw it now, but I saw mention of Mojang considering the creation of a new team-based multiplayer mode that made use of security systems, griefing etc. in a similar fashion to the SourceForts HL2 mod (a truly excellent pre-TF2 mod that's sadly fallen by the wayside)
The idea was for teams to build fortresses and attempt to raid their opponents' using all their ingenuity, setting traps and pitfalls for each other while defending their bases as best they could. There wasn't any more detail than that, but I thought the notion sounded exceptionally fun, and would not require any hacks to the core game mechanic (possibly slightly more prolific mineral distribution, allowing for quicker building of steel defences/doors, circuits, TNT, diamond tools etc.) Distinct build/attack phases could be enforced (again similar to SourcForts) using the inherent day/night cycle to great advantage and enhancing the Survival-mode's need to be in-tune with daylight.
A distinct advantage over other team-based deathmatches would be the ease with which you could host 3 or more teams without worrying about uniquely tailored maps. The exact objective is maybe not clear, but I would think that CTF would work best (flag would have to be below sea-level to prevent unassailable sky-towers). I've seen Youtube clips of people building TNT-powered "cannons," hidden underwater bases and ingenious traps and escape mechanisms, which suggests to me that this niche is aching to be filled (fnarr.)
There are already unofficial game-modes being played - SPLEEF being a prime example - but there is real potential demand for unique, dedicated game modes, once Notch's new team is up to speed.
Meta will eat itself
You obviusly don't understand the point of technology, and Notch obviusly "get it".
Technology is at the service of awesomness, to make awesome things. Is not important if the netcode is awnfull, but what Notch did with it.
Also, you don't get what type of programmer seems Notch, he is a "jam creator", he create prototypes, original code very fast. This is important, because normally code is soo expensive and slow to crate, that by the time you have a idea implemented, everyone is already bored of the idea. He make real dreams while you are still sleeping.
-Woof woof woof!