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16-Year-Old Creates Scientific/Graphing Calculator In Minecraft
New submitter petval tips another amazing Minecraft project: a functioning scientific/graphing calculator. "On a virtual scale, the functional device is enormous — enough so that anyone in the real world would become a red blot of meat and bone staining the road if they fell from the very top. Honestly, his virtual machine looks more like a giant cargo ship ripped from a sci-fi movie than a working calculator. Yet type your problem out on the keypad, and the answer appears on a large white display mounted on the side of the monstrous brick structure." The creator says it can do "6-digit addition and subtraction, 3-digit multiplication, division and trigonometric/scientific functions ... Graphing y=mx+c functions, quadratic functions, and equation solving of the form mx+c=0." We've previously discussed the creation of a 16-bit ALU in Minecraft.
This is a really fantastic accomplishment. More than I've ever done in Minecraft.
Anyone know how he did functions like logarithms, trig, etc.? I didn't watch the whole video.
Minecraft is a sandbox type game where you can build stuff out of the environment. It has no scripting or math functions built in, nor does it really have any sort of logic gates built in. However, it does something called "redstone dust" which you can use as wires. The wiki explains more, but you can hand-craft logic gates out of it: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_Dust
There is an editor. Nobody does these projects in game, it's literally impossible (not enough game ticks per second * time minecraft has been out to accomplish the builds).
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
This is explained in the video, the "buttons" are re-skinned wooden pressure plates, so he has to walk on the to activate.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
The description states that he used a custom texture pack, nothing more. In this pack he made a bunch of iron blocks with text on them. He also made Wooden pressure plates invisible, and had placed them over the 'buttons'. Pretty ingenious.
Just to clear something up (in case someone else has never played it)... Minecraft is not an online game. It's a Java based game with a massive procedural generated world full of blocks that can be moved around. It has multiplayer aspects and a dedicated server, but they are not required for play.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It's binary... the redstone has a delay when you go through some of the gates and repeaters which makes it look a bit analog, but the logic is all binary. The torches can be used as repeaters (torches power redstone up to 16 blocks) and/or carry a bit signal up or down in elevation in the world. You cannot put redstone wire on the side of multiple block so you have to use stairs (space intense) or torches (compact) to change elevation.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Basically, he's created an ALU found on a CPU, but operates like something Charles Babbage would have made. Even the gates for memory are mechanical, the input and output are all mechanical too. Truly amazing!
It takes a long time because the game is essentially a 3D cellular automation. When you flip a switch, for example, the block it sits on is "powered" - then it takes one update cycle for that "power" to travel up to 16 blocks, then at least one more update cycle for the next 16 blocks, etc. Any object that's not wire (like the components in a logic gate) adds at least one more cycle worth of delay. It adds up quickly.
Redstone was really intended for simple mechanisms like switch activated doors and other very simple, local interactivity. But people have really taken it to the limits of the game. Basically you're building logic gates and digital circuits out of discreet relays!
=Smidge=