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Book Review: Minecraft
He certainly has the money to make many of his empire dreams come true, as Minecraft remains a strong seller more than four years after its Alpha debut. The game features a "survival" mode, in which the blocky hero attempts to survive against hordes of enemies, as well as a "creative" mode where players can mine blocks and use them to build pretty much any structure. The latter mode has unleashed some spectacular displays of creativity, including enormous replicas of the Egyptian Pyramids and the Empire State Building.
While the authors clearly had some access to Persson, they didn’t use that face-to-face time to plunge deeply into his character: there’s precious little insight into how his occasionally messy childhood informed his worldview, for example, or the duality that clearly exists between his more insular self and his ambition to build a massive company that, at its heart, rests on interactions between millions of people. On the other hand, by avoiding the plunge into that psychological thicket, they also prevent their work from falling into the tedious armchair-psychiatry that’s doomed many a biography.
The book is at its best when describing the Swedish gaming industry (from its giants down to the indie studios), and how Minecraft went from bedroom-developer project to worldwide phenomenon. That’s almost enough to overlook how much of a cipher Persson remains, even in the final pages.
You can purchase Minecraft from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Give me a break.. Notch is never going to build a gaming behemoth.
In the years since minecraft has been released - a modding community has transformed the game a thousand times over, whilst his own "gaming behemoth in waiting" Mojang, trundle along with fairly small and unimpressive additions to the game.
To illustrate this - next up, they are introducing a "stained glass update".
Now, that's fine - I didn't necessarily pay for updates - but what was promised to me was a way to modify the game without having it broken every new build. This, they have massively failed on.
We're still waiting for the mod API, notch.
Notch made a good game, seems like a good guy and all, but he's fucking lazy (I don't blame him, effectively the greatest challenge of his life - to put food on the table is over) and/or unsure of his direction.
From the outside, it seems to have low standards for his employees and what they do for the game (I've no idea if that is true - it's just what it seems).
(Still, nothing can hold a candle to the develop of Cubeworld - who essentially released an alpha for money and thinks going completely silent and ignoring your community for months and months at a time constitutes a constructive way to engage the community).
... Notch was in the right place at the right time. The success of fortress craft (clone) shows that there was an audience untapped for basically what amounts to a basic 3d modelling tool with some minor game elements.
Minecraft procgen is literally smoothed noise that has been built up over the years.
A lot of people still prefer "173craft", aka Minecraft 1.7.3 because of the world gen in that was very specifically a mess and created absolutely wonderful worlds.
I'm on the edge between them both to be honest, both generators were great. But getting them to play together is hard since they are so wildly opposing systems.
The chunk system in Minecraft that contains blocks is still terrible. Ever since that McRegion crap was added to Minecraft, it has been noticeably laggier.
I remember I used to be able to play Minecraft on a netbook easily. McRegion destroyed that ability in an update.
It also fails really hard when it comes to mobs in them. Lots of mobs+McRegion and walking the borders between regions is SO LAGGY, holy crap it is laggy.
Why that crap got integrated I will never know. It is like they never even tested it. There were so many complaints about it, nothing done. (and the complaint site they used even got disowned by Mojang! WHAT)
I'm sure Minecraft still sends entire game chunks when ONE single block is updated in them. That is 16x16x256.
I hope that was changed, I seriously hope that was changed, that would be terrible if that is still like that.
Block movements, aka liquids, are literally just spawning new blocks n+1 (and the other directions) with a flow-texture applied, based on a group-check of nearby blocks.
Fairly simple stuff and easiest way to get integer liquid flows, I am experimenting with this right now in use of simulated sounds on and off at random.
When it reaches a gap underneath, it spawns a new "source", but really a sourceless source, where it resets the meta value to max the height of the water again.
And due to the limitations of the water engine, you can take advantage of it easily. (such as the water only checking I think 4 blocks around the source for the nearest drop, which can be used to create really nice natural looking flows with no walls at height level)
Likewise, the lighting and physics system aren't the best. They work, but aren't the best. ... n is transparent or opaque.
The lighting system is also one of the reasons infinite height worlds aren't possible in the current game because it becomes an absolute nightmare. (besides the terrible chunk system mentioned above)
There has been many proposed solutions, such as storing a map of all the chunks viewed from above and using that for calculating light instead of loading ALL the chunks between sky and your game views draw distance. This system would work regardless of being 10 chunks from the sky or 1000 chunks since all it would be doing is loading a very simple map image of a chunk layer stating whether block0, 1, 2
The downside is this won't work for those mods that use realistic lighting systems that add shadows and stuff. The maps would need to increase by 2 so that it covers the 2 faces of the chunks that are needed, east to west shadows and sky-to-chunk shadows.
Then it is just general modelling stuff seen in any game. In fact they are looking to rewrite the modelling system, well, are, to make it considerably easier to implement things which will be great. I look forward to a "mob update" in the future, the thing that annoys me most in Minecraft is the emptiness.
All these new biomes coming up soon need to be filled with life.
The game needs a lot of work to fix the inefficient engine oddities.
The chunk system needs to be scrapped entirely and rewritten from the ground up, planned out the ass. Hell, get the minetest guy or the guy that made infinite height worlds, THEY get it.
Lighting needs a few simple fixes and optimizations for integer worlds and that map generation system to cut down seeking out light paths for the sky.
On a sidenote, this is also why me and friends run a Minecraft Hexxit mod server, adds a lot of fun stuff to Minecraft and takes out the boringness and emptiness of it. Fixes some stupid stuff too.