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Like a Redstone Cowboy

Posted by timothy on from the tinyurl-getrollin dept.

neonsignal writes "Machine creations in Minecraft are becoming increasingly complex as people build on each other's ideas. Some notable examples include a Rubik's cube simulator, a 5-channel music sequencer, a 3D color printer, a 16-bit processing unit, and Conway's Game of Life. My own recent contribution is the world's slowest Universal Turing Machine. I'm now waiting for someone to implement Tetris in Redstone logic."

24 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. What am I missing here... by Fluffeh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Disclaimer: I haven't ever played Minecraft, so I might not understand the fuss properly. Please feel free to educate :)

    Haven't games within games been around for a heck of a long time? There are loads of mods that either emulate classics or offer a totally new unrelated game to players. Heck, I recall even playing texas hold em with guildies during raids through an ingame mod when I was playing Warcraft.

    What is so special about minecraft that it makes so many stories? Is it just purely flexibility and users being imaginative, or is there a particular reason that /. loves it so? I recall a post a few months ago about a guy who recreated a good portion of a Star Trek ship in minecraft. Was it merely a slow news day then as well?

    --
    Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
    1. Re:What am I missing here... by jimmydevice · · Score: 2

      just watch one of the videos, you will then understand. I's all mechanical 3d blocks.
      mindfuck is easy.

    2. Re:What am I missing here... by 3.1415926535 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Part of it is that it's hard to actually make anything using in-game redstone wiring, in the same way that it would be tricky but nerdily rewarding to make a 16-bit ALU using discrete transistors and wires on a breadboard. It also requires digging around in interesting and often surprising environments to actually *get* the redstone to make this stuff, so it's makes a good time sink for addictive personalities. It's pretty different from writing a mod for a game in some scripting language.

    3. Re:What am I missing here... by smash · · Score: 2

      its the amoount of creative freedom you have. you can wire up pretty much anything in redstone, and the landscape is, for all intents and purposes, infinite (at least in terms of X and Y).

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    4. Re:What am I missing here... by Amiralul · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ever played with LEGO? Ever built your own fort or tree house? Ever went on a beach and built up castles or simply dig holes? Minecraft if the digital version of all of these activities and more (adventure, exploration, unusual landscapes, 3D viewer for models impossible to see otherwise - Star Trek ships for instance).

    5. Re:What am I missing here... by Wizarth · · Score: 2

      The main reason these are notable is these are not mods. There is no programming code involved. This is all done within the games mechanics. And those mechanics are limited to little more then wires and some simple logic gates.

    6. Re:What am I missing here... by varcher · · Score: 2

      Minecraft harkens back to the nostalgia of Lego (incidentally, http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Cl1OHhsao3A/TbkenaqJq1I/AAAAAAAADMo/lInbKf814Z8/lego-minecraft-1.jpg is a minecraft scene, in Lego. No less).

      The combination of light gameplay (there's a grand total of 4 hostile - and horrendously stupid - critters that pop out of the dark to annoy you) and the liberty of placing blocks however you want them have proved a massive hook.

      It took me about one hour. And while I'm not the most imaginative of architects, making some stuff on the fly after seeing one of the thousand of videos where aspiring architects (most of which cheat anyway) showcase their massive e-block... I do enjoy.

      Regarding redstone circuitry, I think it hovers on the razor-thin edge between ease and complexity. It's simple (the base element is the universal NOR, meaning you can make any digital boolean circuitry), quirky (which is important if you make a game rather than a dumbed down electronic simulator), and that's what fuels the creativity. And, unlike other games, it's all there in basic form. While a few modders have added "what they felt was missing", in fact, there's relatively little missing. A few sensors, a few actuators, but the whole is enough.

    7. Re:What am I missing here... by RogerWilco · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's not about playing the game. it's about creating the contraption to do it. The focus is on the creative process.

      So an analogy in WoW would not be the ability to play an ingame game, but to make it. Remember the chess game from Karazhan? Suppose WoW plugins could make things like that. Suppose plugins could make battleground like concepts, with new types of combat and siege. Or plugins could add dances to the game. Or new model mounts, engineering tools, etc.

      Imagine that kind of freedom. There would be an amazing new WoW addon each month, that would end up as a Slashdot topic. Suppose someone made an addon that would allow parties and raids to meld into a combined form, like Voltron or Megazord. Suppose you had total freedom in how to defeat a raid boss: You could build a wall around it and drown it in lava, or build a cannon and shoot your plate wearing players at it (especially dwarves), fight it as a big human pyramid, so only a few people can move everyone around. Wow can't do that, because it would be totally unbalanced. It would be a lot of fun and give addon developer a whole new meaning.

      That is what Minecraft does: It gives you basic building blocks (literally), and a lot of creative freedom to mould the world.

      It means that the creativity is no longer limited to what the designer of the game could come up with, but the players can add their own creativity. The sky is the limit (literally, as it's only 128 blocks high).

      --
      RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
    8. Re:What am I missing here... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2, Informative

      One simple logic gate. The NOR gate. That's all you get - any other gate you want must be constructed from NORs. You can have up to five inputs, but getting that type of wireing density requires three-dimensional thinking.

    9. Re:What am I missing here... by nschubach · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It depends on the person. Some people are more hands on. This is why we have hardware and software engineers.

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    10. Re:What am I missing here... by Internetuser1248 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Once again minecraft shows itself to be dwarf fortress' inferior cousin. This is not the only example.

    11. Re:What am I missing here... by dissy · · Score: 2

      where aspiring architects (most of which cheat anyway) showcase their massive e-block

      I'd just like to add that, at least right now there is no true "game" aspect to this game.
      It's a "game" app in the same category as Lego Digital Designer is a "game".

      The two common modes of play are a) Survival, where you only get the resources you can mine yourself, and have to avoid the baddies and deal with the few game like pieces that won't be done until the final version.

      And B) creative mode, where there are no bad guys, no RPG or adventure game aspect (Outside of exploring), and you get free access to all blocks to place as you will.
      Creative mode is not called "cheating" and there are plenty of servers even configured to run this way.
      In this mode Minecraft is a lot more like Lego Digital Designer, even if slightly less of a tool.

      Just because one doesn't have to jump through hoops to get bricks in Lego Designer in order to place infinite bricks, one would not call this cheating since it is this way by design.

      The only major difference between the two modes is that when someone accomplishes the same task in Survival mode, they just put a ton more work into it. (And that isn't to say that ton of work was trivial, I respect anyone with the skill to design something I could only do in creative mode while dealing with bad guys at night and exploding creepers)

    12. Re:What am I missing here... by Skowronek · · Score: 2

      I'm very much an addictive personality *and* an actual digital designer. My personal reaction to Minecraft's "redstone" crap was a resounding "meh", though.

      In the same amount of effort and time that it takes to build a slow, useless piece of Minecraft logic, I can build something actually interesting in an FPGA by instantiating and placing LUTs (a marginally higher abstraction level than redstone), and have it run at 500 MHz.

      After doing ASIC design, even FPGA design feels a bit like playing with Lego bricks after building real bridges (there's nothing wrong with Lego bricks, but they do not have the same mechanical qualities). But at least it's not plasticine, like Minecraft (again - nothing wrong with plasticine, but it really does limit what you can do).

      People should be dissuaded from doing otherwise unremarkable things in the most painful way possible (16-bit CPU in Redstone - great, but you could achieve the same CPU in 100-200 lines of Verilog, and it would be quite fast). Those guys are probably quite bright, and could do much more impressive things if they didn't restrict themselves to plasticine. Start on the Lego :)

    13. Re:What am I missing here... by Lehk228 · · Score: 2

      but sometimes a monster will come out of the trees and wreck part of it.


      just like a little brother does to your Legos

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    14. Re:What am I missing here... by justforgetme · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think that You are not getting it.

      You are right on all accounts but ignore the reason why building minecraft machina in a sandbox is more fun than programing an FPGA: Minecraft still is a game, programing FPGA's on the other hand is at best a hobby (if not straight out work for some). So it is the gamelike qualities that encourage for this. The fact that you can have Friends pop into the server your sandbox lives in and help out (or destroy everything). It is the community that you belong to when doing this.

      Don't look at this quantitatively, this is not a survival game in a free economy, this is doing things because you can.
      And that is true nerd spirit!

      --
      -- no sig today
    15. Re:What am I missing here... by Skowronek · · Score: 2

      Dunno, I really enjoy Minecraft otherwise (building, pretty landscapes, running around with friends), but redstone logic feels not only like work, but like the most unpleasant part of my work - what I'd call "the drudgery".

      And not only it's like work, but it's also ultimately pointless. You are not exploring new frontiers, you are trying to recreate 1960s tech with wood sticks.

    16. Re:What am I missing here... by nschubach · · Score: 2

      But with DF you are limited on the embark area... so you have to balance your options.

      The interesting thing (to me) is that DF requires that you build your contraptions using actors (the dwarfs) instead of manually placing all the items yourself. So you have to balance a population of labor's needs with your final goal. You can, of course, cheat in both games. But I still wouldn't place DF on a throne of gold. Toady can only do so much and it feels like things are slowing down.

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    17. Re:What am I missing here... by tibit · · Score: 2

      So, now you know how it felt to be a scribe in the monastery, copying books all day :)

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
  2. Re:Two words... by spongman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    what a sorry place we've come to as a species if every time someone has the drive, passion and concentration required to do something extraordinary like this they're labeled as having some kind of disorder.

    Michelangelo? Asperger's definitely, right?

    At least this guy's not some spaz that can't sit still for more than 10 seconds...

  3. Re:Two words... by Psychotria · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My thoughts exactly. When did a place who's slogan is "News for Nerds" become such the antithesis of that? Once upon a time (I've read for much longer than my UID indicates) we'd discuss things because they were interesting. We'd discuss just about anything that inspired the imagination. Now the big stories are world events, and the really interesting things (peoples doing things just because they're interesting and trying out new ideas) are shoved aside, or they get comments like "Two words... Asperger's Syndrome."

  4. Great Potential by arisvega · · Score: 2

    The least that it is, it is a natural evolution of IRC; one can interact with other people's avatars, but the digital environment is much more appealing.

    Already in the game there is a stereoscopic mode; one can choose to set the display in red-blue 3D, and that is only one of the aspects that make this game so immersive.

    Imagine when VR displays and even more immersive technology are commonplace, wouldn't you just appreciate it that such a piece of software exists, one that allows you to create your own virtual interactive on-line environment, and it is ridiculously cheap because its indy developer absolutely loves what he is doing? They (he and his team) went viral just from word of mouth, and made enough money to "exit gracefully" to some undisclosed island- yet they chose to hire more people and develop like crazy. And he was not put down by PayPal withholding his income, embarrassing him to his clients.

    Not only that, but Persson (the creator of Minecraft) has stated that "Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source."

    C'mon, what more do you want.

    --
    The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
  5. Re:Pretty cool logic by Spacejock · · Score: 2

    My 13 yo daughter has been running her own minecraft server for quite a while now. She's registered a domain name and runs her own forum & website for the group she plays with. She's also coding the web pages by hand, using a text editor. (Computer programming is her fave topic at school.) Keep 'em off the streets, that's what I say.

    --
    Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
  6. I want to see RNA Translation in redstone by mentil · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The animations I've seen make translation look neat, I bet it'd look neater with 3d blocks in a video game. Somehow.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  7. Re:Pretty cool logic by djdanlib · · Score: 2

    Keeps 'em off the streets, for sure.

    But it also keeps 'em off the playground, and out of the woods, fields, and streams. Heck, kids are only visiting friends to sit in front of THEIR screens nowadays.

    Don't forget to send 'em outside to play once in a while. Even the most computer-addicted of us needs some fresh air and sunlight to be healthy :)