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Minecraft Mod Adds Emulated 6502 Processor
New submitter Direwolf20 writes "The Red Power 2 mod for Minecraft has recently been updated, and it adds a fully emulated 6502 processor that can be programmed in assembly, but comes with a Forth interpreter. From the article: 'Eloraam calls it the 65EL02, because "it supports all the 6502, 65C02, and part of the 65C816 instruction set" as well as "a set of completely new instructions and two addressing modes. Since the 65EL02 is an 8-bit CPU, Eloraam didn't have as many options for programming environments as we have on today's 64-bit computers. While it's possible to program the 65EL02 in assembly language, for general use she chose to implement a Forth interpreter. Further technical information about RedPower Control's 65EL02 is available on Eloraam's blog RP Control Internals, and on the RedPower wiki's page for Red Power Control.' (Fair disclosure: The video linked in the article is mine.)"
My impression of the metagame that is Minecraft is that doing things the hard and/or rube-goldberg way is part of the charm. There is some reason why people are trying to build ALUs in crap redstone logic rather than just alt-tabbing to the logic circuit simulator of their choice(or a VM, or an emulator of some popular retro architecture).
Given that, at what point do mods that improve minecraft's program-ability go too far and turn it from a perverse simulation game of enormous popularity into a really dreadful IDE?
Since we are talking about implementing 6502s in questionably efficient ways, it seems like a good time to plug http://visual6502.org/. Efficient? No. Logic-accurate emulation of a 6502 implemented in javascript based entirely on photographs of a decapped 6502 die? Fuck Yeah.
It got my son interested in programming. Not this mod, but another. He actually programmed a pong game on his own over the course of a week using lua in a minecraft mod that has a computer that runs lua.
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I think a large part of it is the "because I can" factor. People often have some weird sideline projects on the go - I've hunted for the first three books in pi (by ISBN) and written a directed evolution program which is building a picture of Charles Darwin from random ellipses. Other people built computers in a game running on a computer just for the hell of it. No, it's never going to be the best 6502 emulator, the point is it's the best emulator written in Minecraft. Which is cool, obviously.
I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with 0x10^c, Notch's new game, which has an inbuilt and fully emulated 16 bit for each player. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a new ultra-low-power OS come out of it.
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Because the environment "feels" real. You can run around and see the circuit pathways and actually visually understand how the processor works... as apposed to having some abstract flowchart or diagram.
Yes, programmers shouldn't program in their off time, just like artists shouldn't draw and singers shouldn't sing. Which, unfortunately, a lot of people believe.
"What are you doing?" parents and peers always say. "You're wasting your life." And they keep doing it because they want to.
I say screw people like you, and more power to people like them.
My son is the same, he's 11 and wanting to create Minecraft Mods has caused him to:
- Learn Java (he had a few brief experiences with Processing but now he's reading the Nutshell books)
- Decompile Minecraft
- Find and follow instructions on how to do all this (Web and YouTube it seems)
- Write his own mods
He's currently at the stage where he's letting his brother have his mods, and we're starting to talk to him about the implications of distribution (support, licensing etc.).
I'm doing very little except providing the right tools at the right time (IntelliJ has been excellent for navigating the code base).
Very impressed with Minecraft and how much he's been motivated to learn. I had tried to teach him some programming before but never really got anywhere, now he's so deep into aspects of Java that I can't really help him... and I've not had to utter a single word of encouragement or assistance.
Minecraft feels like it is the BBC Model B of his generation.
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