Slashdot Mirror
What Would Minecraft 2 Look Like Under Microsoft?
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft spent billions purchasing Mojang, the studio behind the game Minecraft, and while it's unlikely to start work on a sequel anytime soon, rather than continue development of the game, it's worth considering what a Minecraft 2 will look like. After all, as a public company with revenues to justify, it doesn't seem beyond unreasonable a few years down the line, especially since a Minecraft-like game was one of the stand-out tech demos shown for the software giant's HoloLens augmented reality headset. As the author points out, Microsoft will have to tread carefully, tackling issues like whether greater graphical fidelity is actually what players will want ever — and whether to continue to support Minecraft on PlayStation."
That's why there are so many texture packs and shaders available.
I'd expect lots of cross-over branding crap. Look what happened to Legos: you can barely avoid the Star Wars, LOTH, Disney Princess and Marvel (and yes, even Minecraft) branded tie-ins over there.
>> pushed into building artificial worlds because making in the real one is hampered by (indecipherable sniveling)
Take a minute to Google "Dungeons and Dragons" and you'll see how my generation did reality-avoidance.
D&D players were regarded as outcasts. Minecraft is on every fucking supermarket shelf. That is the difference.
I mean, it's free (GPL), open source (C++ with plugins in Lua), and there are no paid accounts. Why bother looking into MInecraft when we can just build it ourselves, and in a more original and better way?
Pretty much all the desired improvements in the article (with the possible exception of point 5 - HoloLens) are irrelevant if point 1 - a decent modding API - is added.
Here's a short list of what certainly awaits in a Microsoft Minecraft 2:
- Registration requires a multi-part authentication process that involves at least 3 e-mails and the creation of one Microsoft outlook.com mailbox -- for each member of your family that wants to play
- The game will still cost $19, but multiplayer or network storage will require an Xbox Live account and gold subscription.
- The game will be retooled to appeal to an older audience, so expect ultraviolence and maybe some skin (which will usher in an era of very crude "box" jokes).
- Minecraft mods will be easy to write in C#, but no longer be supported in Java; they will implemented as SOAP services instead of plug-ins; and to use them you will need to register as a developer go through a multi-stage certificate generation and validation process to sign your mod which will only be available through the Microsoft store
- The Microsoft store will be integral to the game and appear as a building in the shape of the Windows logo; they'll sell diamond pickaxes that otherwise will be impossible to get
- There will be Windows-phone exclusive features, including a Smite button that allows people to kick other people off a server.
I'm thinking it would look something like this...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Any time I ever common on anything having to do with Microsoft, I get pummeled by a PR firm. But this is a *positive* post, no criticism, so maybe the minimum wage public opinion manipulators will leave me along this time.
Microsoft's gaming pedigree is diverse. Each franchise has its own business model, suitable for that title alone. They didn't take, say, the Halo culture and try to force it on Fable fans. One thing Microsoft is exceedingly good at is identifying the relationship between games and the business related to them.
For me, each Halo title represents a couple hours of gameplay. Ratchet up the difficulty, beat it, done. But it also has an army of diehard fans who find its real value in PvP and turn what could be a good story in compact form into an epic adventure. Fable, for me, is one of those "get everything, do everything" franchises representing much more time in game. Where Halo has a pretty awesome miniseries, Fable will probably never see anything like that. Totally different game mechanics foster totally different cultures and business models to match. That's what I'm getting at.
If Microsoft can form a business model around the culture that already exists for Minecraft, then they will absolutely rock the entire voxel sandbox genre.
Imagine when they bring in features barely just pioneers in other games, like blueprints, and then let you have NPCs to build the blueprinted structures where directed, farmer NPCs, guards, etc to model cities. Indie devs in this genre are only looking ahead to that kind of thing but it's where the genre is heading.
Imagine when they expand combat mechanics to marry the PvP culture they're already good at fostering into a creative, open-ended gameworld. Imagine when they treat servers like planets, and we can travel between them with spaceships or magic portals.
Minecraft did not advance like it could have, due to lukewarm post-release development and a terrible modding framework. But nobody -- bar none *nobody* -- is in a better position than Microsoft to do great things for the genre. I've described a handful of systems that sound like pipe dreams but in the Minecraft boilerplate are dead simple. And then mods? Forget it. They can own this genre at that point.
I think the PR firms might leave me alone regarding this one because I am dead serious and completely honest when I say that Microsoft is totally capable of delivering something extraordinary. They would seriously have to either try hard to screw this up or do no work at all, and that's not their style.
Oh, come on. D&D players were not outcasts, and the game was readily available at every book and toy store. There was cross-branding; cartoons and wood burning kits, for cryin' out loud. There is not one iota of difference between the phenomena except medium.
How is giving them a sandbox to build whatever they want tearing their imaginations from them? Are you against writing too? Or music? Are only 'maker' projects acceptable acts of creativity?
Not sure where you are bringing regulation into it since that has pretty minimal impact on the types of projects a child is going to be able to build unless their parents shower them with resources.
"It looks like you're demolishing an online game. Like some help?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Supposedly leaked from inside Microsoft, a spoof of MS pointing fun at themselves and as a reminder of how not to do things
Heh. I remember when Mojang experimented with realistic water behavior. It did not go over well.
One of the old lessons in game design is sometimes realistic is not the best solution, and sometimes outright hurts playability.
They will rewrite everything from Java to C#. The game release will be endlessly delayed and when it does arrive it will be slow and bloated and not have half of the feature of the old Minecraft. You would better start stay on Minecraft 1 until Minecraft 3 comes out and they solve that.
we're not suggesting that Microsoft should do anything silly like try to integrate Excel support into Minecraft
TOO LATE !
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
My 10 year old lad has already said he hates version 1.8 of minecraft, and blames Microsoft for it.... Regardless of if its M$'s fault or not (admittedly its not), I am really proud of him for hating microsoft already!.... That's my boy!
It's not AS bad as the AC made it sound, but by no means is D&D on the same level as the Minecraft craze.
Why does Java suck?.....seems ok to me?
It's popular, so now it sucks?
One word: Spheres!
The one thing that Minecraft provably does better than minetest is the GUI. At least, last I checked into minetest, which was not so very long ago. I keep a source tree on my Linux boot. Are there any mods which make the UI at least as good as minecraft? This is not a very high bar.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
pushed into building artificial worlds because making in the real one is hampered by a perfect storm of regulation and fear under the umbrella of crony capitalism.
...because the only thing preventing children from building sky cities, gigantic castles, sea bases and portals to other dimensions is government regulations.
=Smidge=
Oh, come on. D&D players were not outcasts
Tee hee. Maybe not all of them.
There was cross-branding; cartoons and wood burning kits, for cryin' out loud.
Yeah, look at the other cartoons which were competing with D&D. They were simply handed a complete franchise for a great deal, of course they took it. And it was a flop.
Wood-burning kits are kind of a reasonable crossover, because that was a dying hobby, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So, you're talking about Java Applets..... Which happen to have the same security flaws as other browser based plugins, like Flash (Zero-Day flaw patched just last week).... Who uses applets now anyhow? Minecraft is a Java *application* - not an applet.
Hurray! EGA is back!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Yeah. A year ago the idea of recoding minecraft in C# would have been a bad joke. .NET framework it does sound like a good idea. Both as a sound business decision (a killer app for the newly cross platform .NET) and a technical decision.
But with microsoft open sourcing the
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
I don't know what it would look like because it would spend too much time updating during start up, and I'd fucking delete it.
And how security flaws in java affect standalone game installed on your machine and run with your user permissions? Do you think that having it written in C# or C++ would protect your PC better against malicious _Minecraft_ code or mods?
While I do wish the kids would go outside and play, it's not minecraft that's the problem, it's just the way kids are in the time of "playdates". Minecraft however is such a great game for them. It basically replaces the hours I spent with lego. I find hardcore first person shooters psychically disturbing so I'm greatly relieved when they find shooting sheep with enchanted diamond bows or building cat fountains amusing. Its similar to the way I used to build lego things that I could smash. Even better with things like raspberry pi, you can write in your own python code to build stuff or launch other people in the air when they come into your house.
The very best feature of minecraft is that there is no objective at all. Again like lego. it's up to you and your imagination. It just gives you an organized platform for creating.
What will MS do? I was afraid they might shutdown the python API on raspberry pi but they just released Windows for free on the new raspberry pi, so it looks like they might embrace it even more. I think Microsoft is finally re-learning how they became successful by being the low cost alternative to apple and IBM. they want the love again. Market share uber alles.
I suspect they might pervert it the way lego has been perverted by selling specialized kits that just build one thing. So they might sell pre-built minecraft worlds with various happy-meal like themes. Or hook it into microsoft live where you gotta pay the man a subscription to live in the microsoft amusement park. I would really resent that because kids come and go from their toy interests and so a subscription for something they are not using would hurt.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
And replace the greyish void fog with the true blue void of death.
My guess is added spyware, ad-related content, micropayments, a locked-in addons store and a dumbed-down user interface with all the most useful and frequently used functionaity now either removed, hidden or buried under a layer of braindead ribbon tools.
I expect that Microsoft will finish the C#/.NET reimplementation of Minecraft at roughly the same time the fad is over.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Why does Java suck?.....seems ok to me?
It is not the best language for game programming, at least not when performance may be a concern.
Minecraft is a memory hog and Java is at least partly to blame.
Now someone needs to make a BSOD out of tiny blocks of water...
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Minecraft is one of the things I like least on the Internet right now. It epitomises everything I dislike about the environment given to the young generation, their imaginations torn from them, pushed into building artificial worlds because making in the real one is hampered by a perfect storm of regulation and fear under the umbrella of crony capitalism.
I'm sorry that your children don't get to build their own meth lab.
No, actually, that's pretty close to the non-snarky truth. I was an avid chemistry hobbyist as a kid. Already in the 1970s it was getting harder to obtain some of the materials I wanted -- all the 1950's "chemical magic" books said to go to your pharmacy for nitric acid or carbon tetrachloride or white phosphorus, but the pharmacy was having none of that. Fortunately, I had science teachers who wanted to encourage my enthusiasm, and they arranged for me to order stuff through the schools. I managed not to do too much damage to the house, the environment, or my health.
Today? Schools and pharmacies are even more locked down, but now we've got search engines and e-commerce. On balance, it's probably easier to get stuff than it used to be. But with "chemistry sets" disappearing from the shelves, fewer kids are ever getting started in the hobby.
As for having "their imaginations torn from them", though, I think you're still way off-base. My kid spends a good bit of time on Minecraft and related online pursuits, but they still haven't come for her hot-glue gun, and her tower of miniature houses, characters, and gadgets continues to grow steadily. So do the stories that she's writing, both alone and in collaboration with former classmates. It would be cool if she took after chemistry or electronics like I did, I guess, but those aren't the only fields in which to become a maker.
Nonsense! Everyone knows the initial release always has some problems! They'll surely be fixed in Minecraft 2 Service Pack 2!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
My guess is that Microsoft will rewrite the multiplayer server modules first, replacing Java with C#. They will introduce standardized APIs (that the game sorely needs). Expect to see micropayment systems introduced. Then I would expect a move to Azure cloud services, replacing the dozens of multiplayer server farms that are out there. Games will finally support more simultaneous characters per world, larger worlds, etc. and actually scale.
By this point you will see a schism in the developer community, those that hang on to the old server code and those that begin migrating to the new cloud-based (supported) code. XBox will enable access to Azure-code servers (today you can only access a world hosted by another XBox player), and that mode of play will quickly become dominant. Mods will be developed in Visual Studio 15, with a new project type.
As Microsoft continues to extend .Net to Apple and Linux environments, they will release new clients for those environments in .Net only. Expect some tie-ins with Microsoft Phones to check in on your Azure-hosted worlds, etc like Microsoft SmartGlass does for Xbox.
The Minecraft Client will be updated slowly, in a way that most people won't realize that Microsoft is tweaking it. When they finally release a v 2.0 client, I imagine that all existing accounts will be converted to Live accounts, whether you like it or not. One day out of the blue, it will block access to Java-based servers citing a "security risk to your Live account". You can keep playing with your old client on old servers, but you wont get the new widgets, textures, etc. The server hosting community will continue to dry up, until you convert to the new client through inertia.
A better question would be, What would Windows ME look like in Minecraft?
You are welcome on my lawn.
A lot of Java->C# comments around and comments about Playstation, but I'm more concerned whether the Mac version would continue. Am also interested in whether my all-updates-for-life deal that I got by buying early into the beta (for..err...$7.95 I think) will continue.
Why do you need this sandbox in order to build stuff? What is wrong with building mechanical stuff using actual wood or metal or meccano or lego? What is wrong with building electrical stuff using actual breadboards and wires and components?
Need? No, but it does have one significant advantage, and that is cost vs return. The game is not that expensive, the hardware to run it is not that expensive, and the flexibility within it is pretty significant. Mechanical and electrical projects both require obtaining raw materials per project and tools can be quite expensive. Minecraft also has a significant multiplayer capability which allows collaborative projects on scales a child hobbyist is less likely to have access to.
I would not call it a replacement for other craft projects, but then again I would not consider mechanical/electrical projects a replacement for fiber crafting or vice versa. Different tools, different experience.
I am not sure what misunderstanding of my argument leads you to say that. I'd be against writing in a word processor which limits your vocabulary and sentence structure for no good reason, certainly.
Any project, wood, writing, music, is going to have limitations on it due to the tools or physical laws.
No, but I'd have a problem if one electronic music creation platform (say... Garageband?) massively dominated all other sorts of music composition online or offline.
Ah, the old 'if something is popular and it is not my thing, it is bad!' argument. Why exactly something that draws people in and gets them creating stuff bad? People gravitate twoards the tool and platform that suit them best, so while it is possible if you remove the option they would find other outlets, those outlets have already been rejected by them for not being what they are looking for.
That is remarkably false. Many school field trips and demonstrations and home experiment kits which were routine when I was young are permitted today, at least in the UK.
Not sure where you are paying attention, but I see a vibrant kit marketplace well in excess of what was available 20 or 30 years ago. I envy kids today and the options they have at just a few clicks of a mouse and a little shipping time. I have even been ordering kids projects or reading plans lately because there are so many and they make great little lazy saturday activities. The only place I can think of that is more limited today would be chemistry sets, which were a small market in the first place and their removal impacts a tiny number of (enthusiastic) people.
But on the whole I have seen the market for beginners and experiment kits in pretty much every domain explode, with more variety easier to obtain than ever.
A couple specific comments really stood out and indicated to me that the author is not a crafter.
Bigger worlds?? I have yet to see a world that was even 10 percent mapped, let alone actually explored. Size of the world really truly is more than sufficient for any reason I can conceive.
Pooling water? Again, nice if you looked at a world but didn't play it. If water pooled then basically all mines and caverns would simply be under water. Water really is an evil in Minecraft, and learning to deal with it is one of the elementary skills required to mine in the game.
I think the potential tie ins to other titles and universes would only alienate a lot of the most creative crafters, just look at the creations on YouTube, they love to create tie ins, from Star Wars to real world museums, but the joy is in creating the content, not in having "official" connections.
That said, I am sure there is a market among the me-toos, the ones that respond to every cool Minecraft video on YoTube with "can I get a copy of your world" for all kinds of branded content, but I don't know if Microsoft is looking to own a disloyal crowd of sycophant 13 year olds.
I am also curious about the future of Minecraft even without the Microsoft factor, because the mod coders have been waiting now for a few years for the modding API, which has been coming "soon" for a long time. Bukkit, the largest server modding framework is dead, killed by a "take my ball and go home" playground argument amped up with a DMCA takedown, and I think the window to reclaim that group of coders has just about closed, so whatever happens in the future is likely to be a different community of coders.
Combine that with losing the singular vision when Notch was making all the decisions and Minecraft 2.0 is going to be very different. Not necessarily worse or better, but different. I would have loved it if Notch had actually kept his promise to open the source, but he chose not to, and so the First Minecraft era passes.
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
I tend not to be insulting when I post, but Ill make an exception here.
Your an idiot.
Tearing their imaginations from them? I have 2 daughters that LOVE minecraft because they love building houses and castles and populating them with all sorts of creatures. They do this collaboratively with friends, some of whom are in different states. It allows infinitely more collaborative creativity than just about anything else I have seen on the internet.
Minecraft is nothing more and nothing less than the electronic generations Legos.
In case I wasn't clear the first time, let me say it again...
Your an idiot.
I do not know much about minecraft mods but I still seem to remember they are Java as well. If they port minecraft into MS tech (DirecX and C# presumably) what happens to the community mods?
4wdloop
How Lego Came Back From The Brink Of Bankruptcy
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Your post is so full of crap that I don't even know where to start...
Have you every written a single line of code?
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
Minecraft: Pocket Edition is already re-written in C++.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Citation please? Java has been multithreaded (and thus multicore) sinces 1.0.
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
Tee hee? Fucking idiot.
1) Problem?
2) U Mad, bro?
3) Seriously, it's not worth getting that bent over someone saying something in a way you don't like.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Minecraft isn't all that good of a game
You seem to be confusing "I don't like that game" with "it's not a good game". I suspect that more copies of Minecraft were sold than Neverhood, Age of Empires series , Starlancer/Freelancer series, Midtown Madness series, Mechwarrior 4 and Flight Simulator combined.
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
You know Mono exists, right?
> Vegetation should grow if unchecked
It does that already.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Yeah, constantly being accused of a Satanistic suicide cult had no negative impact on D&D.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In my limited experience working with Java, mostly on Android, I have these criticisms:
1) The advocated clean code patterns often insert layers of code logic that add little or no value. You wind up with programs that have a whole lot of "scaffolding" code with relatively little code that actually "does stuff" scattered throughout.
2) I have found the layout managers for putting controls on screens needlessly complicated. Even the all-purpose "relative layout" has surprising quirks and road blocks, especially if you are doing a lot of dynamic loading and clearing of controls. The intent is making screens very adaptable to different screen resolutions; the outcome is a lot of fuss and complexity over rarely-occurring edge cases, motivating developers to skip as much of that as possible.
3) The way java manages nested class declarations is kind of weird. Variable scope is sometimes surprising. Maybe it is just me, but I find it far easier to work with the C# visualization which treats a parent class as little more than a namespace for storing the nested class, and any instances of these classes are independently scoped from each other.
4) As with all interpreted languages; the inability to free up memory as you go (forcing you to rely on the garbage collector) introduces performance problems when doing anything CPU-intensive. In order to avoid garbage collection lag, you have to adopt some very fragile code patterns involving lots of static variables and doing work at a higher scope than would be logically appropriate.
5) No friend classes or functions. What a pain! Friendship breaks encapsulation but, used properly, it can greatly simplify a design and introduce performance efficiencies while keeping code non-fragile. Developers are forced to do hacky workarounds or extra complicated layers of interfaces and decoupling to work around this deficit.
So, there are my thoughts.
Looks like someone has made something similar to this.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
D'AWWWWW, what a cutesipoo article. I read it. Really, I did. And there are in my opinion two possible reasons for its existence. One, the autor got paid by MS in some way. Or the other, he has no idea how the game industry works today. Well, let's take a look at the "10 things" list of what's actually FAR more likely. I took the liberty to actually model it after the original list.
1. Make mods impossible
Well, unapproved mods, that is. Of course for your safety, at least that's the excuse. The reason is that, well, how the fuck are we supposed to sell you DLC addons if you can get the same for free?
2. Use MS tools to ensure vendor lock-in. .... for a price, of course. And until MS decides it no longer wants to support Minecraft 2 because you're supposed to buy Minecraft 3.
Supporting what's been said in point 1, you'll play on servers hosted by MS only. Of course they will come with all sorts of bells and whistlers
3. The game will be as you leave it ... for a price
Part of the appeal of MC is, as the author of the piece correctly identified, that you leave an impression in the world, while it would be nice if certain aspects of teh game would change over time, with water flowing and earthquakes occurring. Rest assured that you'll get whatever you want... provided you pay for it. Just 1 buck a day can save your mine from a cave-in!
4. More crossover sales
Hey, wouldn't it be great if owning a certain other MS game allows you to build something awesome? Like a laser gun if you own Halo VI? Of course... you should really get that laser gun if you want to take down those new monsters that will spawn from the next patch forward because it's the only thing that can put a sensible dent into their armor...
5. Use it to sell HoloLens
This time I crib at the original work. Because that's the only point I truly actually believe will happen. That game would be used to cram down yet another failed gimmick down our throat. Game console makers, please get it: We like our input devices the way they are. We like our displays the way they are. Stop fucking with either!
6. Realistic graphics ... provided you have the right version of DirectX
Of course the graphics get better and better with every patch. Uh... well, that is if you have the current version of DirectX. Which will of course not be available for your ancient version of Windows. But we'll support your DX... for now. But you might want to upgrade to Win11 soon, because we're gonna drop support in about 4-5 patches. And remember: You play on OUR server. WE decide which version is the right one! I.e. you won't play anymore in 4-5 patches if you ain't a good consumer and go buy our new crap!
7. Mobs will be mean
Like hell they will! How could we ensure number 4 works out if you could kill everything with that puny sword and bow? If everything else fails and we suck at AI building, we'll just cheat and send more of them. Because that's what players like today, right? I mean, all those zombie horde survival games can't be wrong!
8. More eye candy ... odd.
I said everything about that at number 6. Hey, don't look at me, it's not my fault they lamented the same thing twice in the original article because they don't have 10 points to make and having 8 looks kinda
9. Dumb it down
Remember when you first played it and how big and overwhelming it felt? We have to market it to the console crowd and if that taught us anything, then to dumb down a game to the point where a 3 year old can play it. So I guess one general tool is enough for everyone! Plus, if people take like half a year to figure out the basics, why'd they pay for DLCs?
10. Lock it down to XBox and Windows
Cross platform? Are you high on something? That game's a killer app, why the fuck would MS want to make it run on its competitor? If anything, they'd try as bad as they can to make it not run on WINE!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Meh. Everyone knows every other MS release is trash.
I'm gong to hold out for for Minecraft 10 Enterprise Server Upgrade 365 x64 for Workgroups
(and maybe SP2 just to be safe)
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
They're still selling millions of copies of 1.x each year, plus all the pocket editions and console editions. And some people shell out $15-20 a month for a Minecraft Realms server. There's an insane revenue stream here for them even if they never do release a 2.0. That's why their original acquisition announcement said that they expect to recoup their investment sometime in 2015.
I'm sure there will be a 2.0 release sometime, but if we're going to be speculating, cynical and sarcastic about MS, remember that they are experts at milking cash cows like Minecraft.
We are the 198 proof..
Thanks, Internet!
Koans and fables for the software engineer
I recon he means javascript.....*sigh*
My boys and I recently got into Minecraft. We don't have PCs for each of us, though, so I installed the Android version of Minecraft on their tablets and on my smartphone. I know this is much more limited than the full version, but it works for us. I'd be curious what Microsoft plans to do with the Portable Edition version. Will they merge it with the full version so that MCPE has as many features as Minecraft for the PC? Will they set it up so that MCPE users can enter "normal" Minecraft worlds hosted on servers? Or will they end Android development and try to push people to Windows devices? (Hopefully not the latter as they'll potentially lose out on a big market.)
Also, I've seen some people post free Minecraft alternatives. Do any of these support Android devices or are they all PC only?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Yeah. They'll probably re-write the graphic engine to solve some of the issues as well as speed it up.
Yea, like the Xbox-->Xbox360-->Xbox One thats currently getting its lunch eaten by the Playstation! Right?
Guys?
Java is supposed to be sandboxed and have controls on what access to your system is allowed. The problem is that there are continually new exploits breaing around those controls.
The windows desktop - which they will try to reinvent for the nth time
Well, I guess 1.8 is supporting multiple threads, but it was common knowledge that Minecraft only used single core on previous versions.
Cheap storage VM.
Java applications have no sandbox. They're just as 'unsafe' as exe's, or other native apps.
Stop being a dick.
.NET is your computer running?
How many versions of
Versions 2, 3, 4, 4.5 are all still in common usage.
Meh...WHY DO I BOTHER POSTING. Its like a drug that makes you feel shit but somehow you cannot help yourself...much like smoking I guess.
True, but he will probably be modded "insightful" in a few minutes anyway....
You are skipping the first 10 years of D&D. Jumping forward straight to AD&D.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Popularity doesn't equate to quality and you're an idiot for thinking that it does.
Please list the objective criteria for rating the quality of a piece of art. We'll wait.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
Clippy will come back as a Creeper.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I develop Minecraft plugins for servers and have a plugin in the Top 100 that's played by 100,000's around the world. Developing plugins is a hobby, not a job, but it'd be great if I could make it my job. Right now, that's really difficult and indeed, doing plugins is very much like developing mobile apps before the App Store or Google Play arrived because there's no eco-system, just a giving-system. What I'd really like would be for a way for players to be able to give me $1. I.e., make it just like smartphone apps. I don't think that would be unreasonable. Then I could quit my job, etc.etc.... I assume that Nadella is changing things up in Redmond, so if you work for MS and are responsible for MC planning, give me a buzz and let's talk!
Would be fun to build real world scenarios on Minecraft. Pretty easy to use editor. Download input data for scenarios from Excel and upload simulation results to Excel. Ability to playback simulation runs aferward bonus.
They're probably referring to Minecraft, which is single threaded.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Modding would be replaced with DLC packs, none of which would be free.
Any attempts to mod the client or server would be construed as cheating.
The Xbox would be the primary platform and the PC would be considered as second-tier.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Hold on, doesn't Minecraft 2.0 already exist? ;-)
Seeing what Microsoft has done in the last years and how the amrket is going , they will almost certainly go for the following :
* subscription based, forget the 15$ or whatever you paid for minecraft, they will ask 1$99 every month.
* separate set and special mods which allows more than color/form only microsoft, and only for money
* everybody else relegated to basic coloring, texture and form mod, no "command" block type mod adding new function.
* not possible anymore to have your independent server. After all you could do some stuff which would tarnish the image of MC2.0 "microsoft". And there is the money from the server subscription, like 20$ a month.
* API even more obsfucated than for MC 1.0, but with DMCA take down if you deobsfucate it and attempt to add your own command mod
* going away from Java
Yeah i am quite a cynic.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
...they listen to the various commentators on what works and what doesn't, and create something that takes the working idea of the original and extends it further (so, things like cubic chunks that allow ~infinite height worlds, a proper modding API, tutorial for new players, ). Or, even better, they look to the gaming and modding community and get them to help steer it (I think one of the reasons why Minecraft became such a great winner was because the community was able to contribute to it from a very early stage - it was built around what real players wanted).
Personally, I think that a few neat ideas would be:
If they are smart, they will keep it cross-platform and encourage it's "hackability". The thing is a giant cash-cow now, but there are so many ways that they could screw that up with a sequel. But, I am hopeful they see that one of the biggest things that made it work was that the creators listened to the community while building it, and let them be involved. It's a development technique that is utterly, utterly opposite to how Microsoft have worked in the past (a rant I heard from an MS Project MVP was basically that the MS developers were off in their own world and had nothing to do with actual project management, and I see the same in a lot of other MS products - especially Office).
Are Microsoft going to be smart (and courageous) enough to try something that radically different to what they're used to? I don't know, but I hope so. Microsoft have started to change their ways recently in ways that those who saw the 90s/2000s era wouldn't really have believed they would ever do, so maybe there is hope. If they don't, and attempt "closed cathedral" development of a Minecraft sequel then my expectation is going to range from "Mediocre improvements in some areas but still not radically different to or better than the original" to a "turdburger clusterfail".
If they're smart enough to see why it worked - and jump in and do that - I have much more hope for the future of Microsoft both as a company and a software house.
Complexity, refinement, impact and staying power.
Seriously, go listen to Bieber back to back with Mozart and YOU tell me which is clearly better. The only reason Bieber is more popular is because most people are uncultured mooks and you appear to be one of them.
Puts on a raga.
Java is supposed to be sandboxed and have controls on what access to your system is allowed. The problem is that there are continually new exploits breaing around those controls.
This is only true of Java applets, and nobody is really arguing with you that they are a bad idea.
Java--the language and runtime virtual machine--run executable code on your computer with the permissions of the user that starts the application, just like a plain binary app. Supposing that you did not trust Minecraft, the JVM is not there to protect you from it.
and if you put minecraft on a vastly overpowered desktop with 64gig. it performs just as well as it did on the laptop.
Talking about performance without benchmarks is like racing cars by looking at the spec sheets. The bottleneck in Minecraft is chunk updates, and they are inherently random disk IO bound. Spend that $2500 on a good SSD, and the game will run perfectly.
It's like building with Duplos! I mean, it's 2015 for pete's sake!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
MUSIC SHOOT OUT TIME!!
lets get Bieber (with his normal backup band) and The New York Philharmonic (with a Tenor??) to do a Sing Off.
just to make this "fair" we can get 9 of the X-Factor judges to do the judging
I just attended a seminar today where a couple of Microsoft people gave presentations. One thing that they made pretty clear is that Microsoft's Azure "cloud" is a HUGE part of their future business model.
Right now, when you ask the typical MS user if they can name 3 things Azure does, they usually get stuck naming even one item. But one of these days, Microsoft hopes to embrace the software as subscription model to the point where practically everyone will just pay for Azure to spin up and host whatever servers they wish, vs. trying to run their own on their own hardware, in-house.
They've also made a big deal in their recent marketing about the Titanfall game running on Azure -- and I'm sure there will be more of this to come. If they do a Minecraft sequel, I'd suspect it will be designed so people can easily host Minecraft servers on Azure (probably with a friendly web front-end to create and configure them?). Maybe that will be the ONLY authorized way to do it?
Accounts would sign in to Microsoft Live or whatever they call it now.
Linux clients (and possibly servers) would mysteriously not work quite as well as before, when the new updates intentionally use Java features known to not work well on non-MS platforms.
Servers might just be consolidated to "authorized" providers such as XBox Live.
The PC version might be crippled to get "feature parity" with the console versions?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
But on the whole I have seen the market for beginners and experiment kits in pretty much every domain explode...
Which, of course, is why they did away with the chemistry sets.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Complexity
So simple elegant things can't be art? How complex does it need to be before it counts? Is more complexity always better or is there a diminishing return?
refinement
Let's see...refinement, noun: "cultured elegance in behavior or manner.". Hmmm....elegance, noun: "the quality of being pleasingly ingenious and simple ". So art must embody complexity and ingenious simplicity. Gotcha. Can't see any issues so far.
impact
Impact on who? How is impact measured? Sounds to me like impact is a function of entirely subjective reactions of the audience.
staying power
So something that is obscure and thus quickly forgotten about can't be art because it has no staying power?
The only reason Bieber is more popular is because most people are uncultured mooks and you appear to be one of them.
Perhaps. Or perhaps I just understand the difference between a subjective opinion and an objective fact and I'm not arrogant enough to assume that my opinions are somehow more worthy than anyone else's. But no, I'm sure you're right. It's probably the mook thing.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
You are still ranting about applets, whomever uses applets lives in pain....Applets have nothing to do with applications using Java, they are an off by default browser extension.
Which call a JRE, which has incompatibilities based on version. There was a code-signing change in J7, for example, which breaks a number of applications.
Its not the plugin thats incompatible, because the plugin isnt what runs the bytecode. The JRE is what runs the bytecode, and is where the incompatibilities lie.
Versions 2, 3, 4, 4.5 are all still in common usage.
2,3, 4, and 5 can coexist without breaking each other. If I were to install J8 on my machine-- regardless of how I configured it-- it would immediately break my ability to configure an entire class of printers (Fiery). It would also break my ability to access the web interface of a number of Cisco web interfacesm if that were something I did, as well as Dell iDRAC.
Heck, updating your minor Java revision on a server can break BES (if you happen to use that). The upshot is that I would wager that anyone still running a BES probably does not have the latest JRE, but a LONG shot.
Sure, but there has to be a level of complexity to it, otherwise it evokes no feeling.
So again, how much complexity is required? By what metric are you judging Justin Bieber's work to be insufficiently complex? Does it not have enough different notes in it or something? If the evocation of feeling is the important part then that's a subjective reaction on the part of the audience not an objective measurement criteria.
Impact anyone. Whether it's a positive or negative impact doesn't matter. Poor art won't have any impact and will be easily forgotten.
Justin Bieber seems to have had a strong negative impact on you and a strong positive impact on lots of other people (judging by the level of screaming at least).
Exactly. If it's so worthless as to be quickly forgotten, then it's crap.
I think you have your cause and effect backwards here. Great art is not great because it's remembered, it's remembered because it's great.
It's good that you admit it. Perhaps one day you'll acquire a sense of taste.
You're making a lot of snide comments about my personal preferences for someone that knows absolutely nothing about them.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
Popularity doesn't equate to quality and you're an idiot for thinking that it does.
Please list the objective criteria for rating the quality of a piece of art. We'll wait.
Getting people who know what they are talking about to agree how good a piece of art is usually works best.
Someone who doesn't see why popularity does not equal quality is pretty much excluded from the "know what they are talking about" group.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Or perhaps I just understand the difference between a subjective opinion and an objective fact and I'm not arrogant enough to assume that my opinions are somehow more worthy than anyone else's.
There is a lot of ground between an objective fact and a purely subjective opinion, but if you want to treat the world in a binary heads/tails way and achieve the rich inner life of a tossed coin, that's up to you.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Minecraft is one of the things I like least on the Internet right now. It epitomises everything I dislike about the environment given to the young generation, their imaginations torn from them, pushed into building artificial worlds because making in the real one is hampered by a perfect storm of regulation and fear under the umbrella of crony capitalism.
Is this the bit where I say something about playing in the woods when I was a kid?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Getting people who know what they are talking about to agree how good a piece of art is usually works best.
And how do we decide which people do and don't "know what they're talking about"? At best that's a circular definition. The criteria you've proposed for judging the quality of art is that some group of people have judged it to be good.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
My PC is fairly modest, GTX 760, E5-1620 V2, 16GB ram. Using a RAID 5 array of decent magnetic storage (easily capable of 200 MB/sec) allowed Minecraft to run at about 20 fps with a chunk update radius of 32. Switching the system drive to a Crucial MX200 consistently reaches the vsync limit of 60 fps with the same chunk update setting.
Perhaps you should look into a more contemporary SSD... low end consumer ones are easily reaching 500MB/s. Furthermore, the IOPS specification is really much more important.