Minecraft Creator Announces Space Sandbox Game Mars Effect

An anonymous reader writes "Notch posted the official page of Mars Effect today, saying through Twitter, 'it's a completely different game! Our takes place in space, and focuses on characters, and lets you land on planets!!' He gives more detailed on the new website, noting the game will be based around hard science fiction (think Star Trek sci-fi) and puts characters in control of a character rather than just a ship. Similar to Minecraft, it will be a free-roaming game, but with a full economic system, different planets, customizable ships, space battles against AI, and other features. There will also be an in-game, 16-bit computer. Notch also took the chance to poke fun at Mass Effect, noting it will have 'A game ending that makes sense.'"

Comments

Sigh

[bonch]

© April 1 2012 Mojang

Re:Sigh

[alexgieg]

© April 1 2012 Mojang

Yep. I was believing it until this: "hard science fiction (think Star Trek sci-fi)". Very hard indeed.

Re:Sigh

[Trilkin]

The "Waist high walls" thing under the features list is what tipped me off.

Re:Sigh

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Way to go to spoil the fun on the first post.

Re:Sigh

[History's Coming To]

Damn it. I was going to complain about the hard SF / Star Trek thing myself, and it only takes two posts to realise I'm an idiot. (Mind you, knowing the way Notch works, even if this is a gag it'll probably end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Of what relevance is it that Star Trek is harder than Star Wars? My best guess is you're just trolling Star Wars fans by saying it sucks, but the thing is, harder sci fi doesn't mean better sci fi, it just means harder sci fi. Although I disagree on your initial premise -- I think Star Trek and Star Wars are both about equally soft.

Star Trek does treknobabble to give the appearance of hard sci fi without the actuality. Star Wars dispenses with that (except the midichlorians fiasco, which was very Trek-ian), losing very little. Neither of them are hard sci fi. Both have actual magic (The Force, psychic powers).

If anything I'd give Star Wars a razor-thin edge for having:

1. Characters that understand multiple languages augmented by translator androids, instead of the magic universal translator (that somehow skips Klingon sometimes and occasionally Vulcan or others).
2. Somewhat more diverse aliens rather than limiting themselves to 5'10" bumpy forehead aliens (though it's still too humanoid).
3. More internal consistency (granted, this is subjective and it could be argued that's just because there's more authors writing canon Trek material).

That's not saying a lot though. Both are very soft. A bit harder than comic books or Doctor Who. Softer than almost any other moderately popular sci fi (not Farscape).

Re:Sigh

[loosescrews]

After several weeks of trying to come up with a good name for the game, we finally decided not to learn from previous experiences and pick a name that's already kind of in use by a huge existing franchise.

After playing around with names like "Elight", "Wind Commander", and "Steve Online", we finally settled on the very catchy name "Mars Effect".

It is an April Fools joke.

Re:Sigh

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I would just like to point out that not one person challenged Star Wars' scifi-ness until after the prequels came out. Face it, this whole topic is about geek chic.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

I would just like to point out that not one person challenged Star Wars' scifi-ness until after the prequels came out.

Heh. You're too young to know about USENET, aren't you?

Re:Sigh

[interkin3tic]

According to wiki,

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both

Mass effect was pretty much the closest thing to "hard sci fi" I've encountered in a video game. A google search for "hard sci fi videogames" came up with two yahoo questions asking if there were any, mass effect was mentioned in both as the closest examples of it, so I'm not alone in that opinion. There was a scientific explanation in the codex (text that got added under a menu nearly every time you encountered something new in the game) that was surprisingly detailed. You could just play the game and ignore the explanations, but in case you were wondering why your guns overheated but never ran out of ammo in ME1, there was a detailed explanation you could pull up.

At the same time, they are very similar to star-trek. I would call it more like star-trek than "Rendezvous with Rama" by Artur C. Clarke (which wikipedia mentions as an example of hard sci fi).

I'm sure calling mass effect hard sci fi would annoy some slashdotters, but with an interactive media, there's different challenges. Perhaps "star trek level" is as hard sci-fi as anyone has figured out how to make a game and still call it a game, rather than an interactive science lesson.

Re:Sigh

[KDR_11k]

I hope the joke is just the name and the stuff announced today, not the whole space game. After all Notch did announce a "firefly-style" space game some weeks ago.

Re:Sigh

[toriver]

What, the translator droid is in their ears like a babel fish or something? Is there a scene where a droid is actually translating anything except for the Ewoks in the third movie? Luke/Jawas scene: No translating. Han/Greebo scene: No translating. etc.

Star Wars is just a war/samurai hybrid set in space. But then again, westerns was what fueled much of Star Trek.

Re:Sigh

[Shoe Puppet]

I would assume that the droids do indeed translate, but we aren't shown it because that would be just annoying.

Re:Sigh

[danbert8]

I agree, Mass Effect 1 was actually decently hard sci-fi. And then it went flacid with the sequels. They figured stuff didn't need any explanation, and you know this RPG stuff is for pansies. Let's just shoot ALIENS!!!

Re:Sigh

[Teancum]

About the only other game I can think of that would be somewhat close to "hard science fiction" that I can think of is SpaceChem, as you need to use a modified periodic table in order to complete the challenges... and the "back story" sort of reads like a poorly written science fiction novel. However that game gets so close to an interactive science lesson that some real-world brick and mortar schools have even the audacity to include the game in their curriculum.

I suppose that if you think molecular level nano engineering projects are something that could happen on an industrial scale, perhaps SpaceChem reflects real chemistry.

Your point stands though. I saw a "game" that reproduced the Millikan oil drop experiment down to the most tedious detail including having to "record" the results in a journal. That takes the whole interactive science demo thing perhaps just a little bit too far (but it was still an interesting piece of software).

Re:Sigh

[Tolleman]

Unlike Jar Jar?

Re:Sigh

[ffgandalf]

The Luke/Jawas scene makes sense that their wouldn't need to be a translator. The Lars family dealt often with the Jawas who were one of 2 native species of tatoone. The fact that they understood each others languages, even if they couldn't speak them makes sense.

Re:Sigh

[Digital Vomit]

Mass effect was pretty much the closest thing to "hard sci fi" I've encountered in a video game. A google search for "hard sci fi videogames" came up with two yahoo questions asking if there were any, mass effect was mentioned in both as the closest examples of it, so I'm not alone in that opinion. There was a scientific explanation in the codex (text that got added under a menu nearly every time you encountered something new in the game) that was surprisingly detailed. You could just play the game and ignore the explanations, but in case you were wondering why your guns overheated but never ran out of ammo in ME1, there was a detailed explanation you could pull up.

Just having techno-babble explanations for how things work does not make scifi "hard". Having explanations for how things work which do not require handwavium (e.g. "element zero") or magic (e.g. "biotics") and which follow the known laws of physics makes scifi "hard".

The various technologies depicted in the Mass Effect games are most definitely "soft" scifi.

I'm sure calling mass effect hard sci fi would annoy some slashdotters,

Well, at least the ones who know what the term "hard scifi" means. :-P

I have a feeling that I just responded to an "April Fools' Day" joke-post, though...

Re:Sigh

[Digital Vomit]

Oh, I forgot this: Mass Effect Explains Everything.

Re:Sigh

[robi2106]

why is waist high walls.... anything? this most be some new meme all the kids are talking about...

Re:Sigh

[interkin3tic]

Having explanations for how things work which do not require handwavium (e.g. "element zero") or magic (e.g. "biotics") and which follow the known laws of physics makes scifi "hard".

Are you sure that's the actual, commonly accepted standard for what qualifies as hard sci-fi, or are you just saying you personally don't consider it hard sci fi if any fictional technology is featured? The wiki page goes on to say "Neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy—instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful" so I'm not sure why element zero would necessarily move mass effect from hard science.

Re:Sigh

[king neckbeard]

They read the subtitles, duh.

It's reasonable that these characters were fluent in more than one language. What needs explaining is why the conversations don't take place in a single language, but it might be that they knew the languages well enough to understand them when spoken, but not enough to speak them. Given the anatomical differences, this could be quite plausible.

Elevators in Minecraft first

[Y-Crate]

Please?
Thank you.

Re:Elevators in Minecraft first

[Danieljury3]

Been done already

April

[joaeri]

Posted at "2012-04-01 0:14". First April fools day joke! Keep them coming, always nice to see if you get fooled this year

Re:April

[Teancum]

The name may be a joke, but the game isn't. Notch has been doing some development work including creating a virtual machine that he claims to have on his development system running 4000 instances of that VM simultaneously with only 50% of his development machine CPU bandwidth in use. Some details about the VM can be found here:

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/20056289891/start-classified-transmission
(note the date... not April 1st)

He has been talking about this game for over a month, and a couple of days ago he tweeted out to his "fans" to give some name suggestions.

Almost everything on the "Mars Effect" website is pretty much a compilation of everything he has said about this game in terms of interviews, tweets, blog entries, and casual comments over a pint of beer in terms of his vision for the next big project he wants to be working on.

The game itself is very real, it is just that the name is something I strongly suspect and was something I noticed immediately after its name was announced. With Notch though, me might be saying "damn the torpedoes" and be willing to make everybody think it is a joke of a game too... if for nothing more than to get some fans off his back. Any time he makes reference to a website in his twitter feed, it often crashes to something like the Slashdot Effect in part because of how many people are following his tweets.

Re:April

[Teancum]

Perhaps. You really don't know what to expect on April 1st.

The CPU instruction set is real and has some thought put into it though.

Awesome

[krakass]

This sounded like such an awesome game idea until I saw:
© April 1 2012 Mojang
at the bottom of http://marseffect.net/

Re:Awesome

[toygeek]

Actually this has been in the works for a while, this isn't the first mention of such a game. I do not believe this is a slooF lirpA article.

Re:Awesome

[krakass]

Yeah, looking through his tweets this goes back at least a couple days, so I'm hopeful this isn't an extremely elaborate joke.

Re:Awesome

[gman003]

While the game may be real, I highly doubt the title and logo are.

Re:Awesome

[krakass]

I don't think anyone was confused that name was a knock off of Mass Effect.

Re:Awesome

[game kid]

In particular, he started spec'ing a 16-bit processor (listed as a feature of this game) some days ago on his tumblr and twitter pages (its data format, registers, instructions, a "Hello World" program...).

If this is a 4/1 joke, it's a fairly elaborate and overengineered one. It's ok to me; I love overengineering. :)

Lame.

[Anonymous Coward]

April fools, guys.

Typical Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of noticing the obvious Mass Effect parody in the name and logo design, and the April 1st copyright date at the bottom, Slashdotters are zeroing in on...the classification of Star Trek as hard science fiction. Yeah, because THAT was the obvious tip-off.

Re:Typical Slashdot

[rbpOne]

That feeling when you realize you are a moron.. Im feeling it now.

Re:Typical Slashdot

[Anrego]

Haha, yup!

I was actually buying it until I read that. That's not to say I had an extreme "omg that is so untrue that this must be fake" rection, it just knocked me out of my mindless daze long enough to notice the other (what should have been obvious) clues.

Shit it started early

[Dyinobal]

Shit April fools has started early, everyone ignore news sites for the next three days. If we are lucky congress won't use the confusion to rush any draconian bills through.

Re:Shit it started early

[osu-neko]

Shit April fools has started early...

Not early. Notch lives in Europe.

Re:Shit it started early

[NoobixCube]

Assuming every day is April Fools is the only way the news doesn't induce instant mass suicide, I think.

Really!?

[dvdungeon]

Since when has the technobabble of Star Trek been hard sci-fi?

Re:Really!?

[Johann Lau]

Since when did Notch make games?

Re:Concept not April Fools

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/minecraft-creator-looks-to-mix-firefly-and-elite-in-next-game/

22 march 2012

Minecraft creator looks to mix Firefly and Elite in next game

Minecraft mastermind Markus Persson wants to make his next sandbox game a space simulator that's equal parts Firefly and Elite.

Ain’t no problem in the ‘verse as bad as getting your space shipping lanes all set up and then having the whole thing torn down by hostile mobs of Reavers. Setting up those shipping lanes is half the fun though, or at least it will be if Markus “Notch” Persson has his way. The commonly behatted creator of Minecraft said in a recent interview that his next project will be a space-based sandbox game styled after David Braben’s Elite and Joss Whedon’s Firefly.

The logo

[olborro]

Way to go on making a non-infringing logo! :)

Re:Neat, but..

[wmbetts]

You are aware that, here on slashdot, it's still March 31st right?

Re:Finish Minecraft First

[Sarten-X]

No software project is ever "finished".

Notch was smart enough to recognize that, and has moved out of the main role developing Minecraft for quite a while now.

Re:Star Trek is hard Sci-Fi?

[Iceykitsune]

He means that the game will be more like star trek rather than "hard sci-fi"

Re:Neat, but..

[SwedishPenguin]

No it's not, says so right there above your post.
"by wmbetts (1306001) on Sunday April 01, @12:50AM " :)

Re:Hmm

[Mitchell314]

You may want to check the date. Keep in mind Notch's timezone, if you reside in the west.

The Elder Minecraft: Skyrim

[tepples]

The title appears to satirize a lawsuit over one of Mojang's titles being too close to Id Software's The Elder Minecraft: Skyrim .

Re:Hmm

[osu-neko]

RTFA:

After several weeks of trying to come up with a good name for the game, we finally decided not to learn from previous experiences and pick a name that's already kind of in use by a huge existing franchise.

After playing around with names like "Elight", "Wind Commander", and "Steve Online", we finally settled on the very catchy name "Mars Effect".

That should explain it completely...

HEY NOTCH!

[fragMasterFlash]

How about formalizing a set of interfaces for the modding community so they won't see all their hard work go up in smoke every time you release an update? Its really hard to explain to the kidlets that the 'Ooh yay, kittycats!' Minecraft update they downloaded broke all the mods they had installed.

You're Early

[medv4380]

The 1st is in a few more hours.

Poking fun at the ending

[Enigmaster]

Notch also took the chance to poke fun at Mass Effect, noting it will have 'A game ending that makes sense.'"

Have you seen the end of Minecraft? This seems like the bigger poke to be had.

Re:Finish Minecraft First

[osu-neko]

I love it how, when stupid people encounter people who aren't stupid enough to agree with them, it's obviously "fanboyism"... XD

Similar to my Light Rising Browser Based MMO

[AnthorOe]

Ha! I got sucked in by this until I saw the comments about April Fools! Notch's fake game is similar to my Light Rising browser based mmorpg... http://lightrising.com/game/ I was inspired by Elite, Sundog, and the Ultima aeries of games, along with the browser mmo Shartak: http://shartak.com/ I actually would really have enjoyed a Notch game like this, but oh well... I'm still hoping for the remake of Sundog!

Re:Finish Minecraft First

[Teancum]

There is villager AI that is quite good in Minecraft. It is called "Millenaire" villages though, that are by far and away much more developed than the Testificates. Kinniken just added warfare between different villages and allows "the player" to be able to act as a diplomat to either fester hostilities or try to smooth over relations along with a rather complex inter-village trading system. The monetary system has been in place for quite some time, including some very awesome blocks. I love the Japanese paper walls as well as the Mayan golden scroll work blocks. The thatch planking as a floor material is also worth looking at as well.

If that is all you are complaining about, I feel sorry for you. Perhaps Notch realizes that the fan-made mods have so totally surpassed anything he could do that he needs to move on to something else?

Heck, there is a chunk generation storage and rendering system made by mod developers which allows world height to be raised to 64k blocks and even renders faster than the current rendering engine. The serious fans have improved the game in many substantial ways and Mojang (aka Notch) is mostly re-implementing these fan-made ideas at the moment. Add in Optifine and some enhanced shaders that cast some impressive shadows at sunrise and sunset and you got a game that would blow you away.

Let Notch start and stop projects like nothing else. If that is all he does, he still should stay wealthy and a multi-millionaire. Once he gets those ideas going there are plenty of people who are willing to pick up the pieces.

I think the name is a joke, but the game is real

[Lord Lode]

After all, there were rumors about a space game by Notch before. So I think only the name is the April fools part, and later the game will be announced with its true name!

I hope, at least, the game looks so great...

I'd buy that game.

[Pandur77]

If it was real hehe. Good one Notch!

Re:minecraft "computers"

[Teancum]

What is this obsession with making digital circuits in Minecraft? I don't get it. If you want to simulate a simple digital circuit then use any of a number of free or student-version or pirated simulators. I thought at first that people were actually building simple mechanical computers, but it turns out that it's nothing of the sort.

Other than the fact that these "digitial circuits" can be used for things like serial data communications between train stations or constructing a device that will build you a house (or one of a couple different mobs) from source materials in the game.

There are practical applications for these circuits, and you can hook some kids into the basics of circuit design in a piecemeal fashion. Besides, where else can you be building a circuit design and you have to kill off real (virtual) bugs in order to get the circuit to function? One Creeper in the wrong place can ruin a perfectly good CPU or even just a relay circuit. Or for that matter laying down wires in the middle of a blizzard.

Notch's other game was also announced

[93 Escort Wagon]

It's going to be named "Call of Doody Too". You can sign up for the beta on the 15th.

Re:Concept not April Fools

[Shark]

April Fools or not, I guess I fell for it. I was thinking: Oh cool, he's re-making Starflight 2!

Ok, now I've shown how old I am. I'll go back to sipping my Geritol.

You're a day early, Notch...

[aaronmoxxley]

...at least by my calendar. April Fools!

Kerbal Space Program

[kizza42]

Looks like he took some "inspiration" from a real game: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/

Re:Hmm

[X0563511]

Woosh.

Check your clock, globe, and calendar.

Re:April Fools

[Securityemo]

"I would have loved for this concept to have been executed by a competent developer." - like yourself maybe? The tools are free, you can start today.

Re:Star Trek is hard Sci-Fi?

[Firethorn]

I took it to mean that it'd be 'hard' in the sense that the rules are consistent, but the abilities would be along the lines of Star Trek.

Re:April Fools

[Macthorpe]

So:

- Uses Java to release a game on several platforms at once without having to recode
- Makes tens of millions of dollars
- Generates burgeoning community of modders and players
- Wins several major gaming awards including a BAFTA
- Labelled as incompetent by random Slashdotter

Yeah, sounds like April Fools Day to me.

(Incidentally, if you're on a 64-bit OS, get the 64-bit version of Java. Any stuttering there was vanished completely for me.)

Re:April Fools

[Macthorpe]

I replied to the wrong comment. I need modding as "-1, Idiot".

Re:April Fools

[Vahokif]

No, the point is that it was a success for the wrong reasons, and therefore it won't carry on to his future endeavours. I wouldn't go as far as to predict they'll go bankrupt but you have to admit Minecraft is still ridiculously unpolished for a "gold" game - chunks appearing/disappearing out of nowhere, the entire render thread hanging when it needs to generate terrain, etc, etc.

Re:Finish Minecraft First

[Shoe Puppet]

He made a shitload of money and presumably enjoyed working on Minecraft. If that is no success, I don't know what is.

Re:minecraft "computers"

[jones_supa]

People kill themselves every single day for no reason, so damn it let the people build fake computers to open single doors.

And if you work at Foxconn, you can do both. :P

Walls rule!

[mycroft16]

Why has no one given us "waist high walls" until now? This is definitely not a hoax. How long have we waited for walls high enough to protect us from small children while affording us an easy view?

Re:April Fools

[Macthorpe]

What are the wrong reasons? Was it not a fun, enjoyable, worthwhile game? Regardless of ignorable bugs (and I really mean ignorable, unless you have a speed hack on it's hard to move so fast that chunks fail to appear) then it seems to me like it does exactly what it's supposed to.

Having a couple of technical gripes about the game doesn't stop it being a good game.

Re:I think the name is a joke, but the game is rea

[CmdrEdem]

Yep. The name is a joke and some of the features (Ex. "A ending that makes sense") but Notch is working on this for real. He wrote on Twitter later: https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/186739199523831810