Minecraft released for android.
market.android.com
market.android.com
Right now its Xperia Play only, Mojang have said it'll be available on other devices in a month or two.
Some people have already thrown the .apk on other devices, and gotten in game, however it's unplayable without the physical inputs on the Xperia Play. (http://imgur.com/a/bknX7)
They've committed to further updates following a similar model to the desktop version. The current version is actually 0.1.
Minecraft's level of success is unheard of for an indie game, by a huge margin, and it's well deserved. My favorite critic quote called it something like "an end to the era of shallow games". I think they've created a new genre, or possibly multiple genres, with more potential than any one developer could realize in a lifetime.
And yet:
They hocked exclusivity rights to a marginal platform. Now they have to develop and promote a game that nobody can buy for some mysterious amount of time. I seriously doubt that whatever amount of cash Sony dumped on them was worth it.
And what they released, and attached the Minecraft name to, is a drastically dumbed down version of the game: 36 blocks, no survival, no mining, no infinite worlds, no online multiplayer. You can see the disappointment reflected in the market reviews.
I'm aware that a straight port is not technically feasible, but I'm confident that they could make something a lot closer to the desktop version if they took advantage of cloud resources and took mobile more seriously.
Notch is a very talented game designer and I think he has great vision, but maybe not enough confidence in his vision. He's still thinking like an indie developer and grasping at opportunities.
Or perhaps he's thinking incrementally. Notch has always been a big proponent of incremental development, rather than keeping a game secret and releasing it only when it's done.
If the mobile version is being developed independently of the desktop version, then it's always going to lag way behind and not share the same base of players. It's the t-shirt, not the game.
You seem way off point with your analysis. Seems they are actively moving across every major platform.
The Xperia Play.
> Minecraft Pocket Edition is now up for grabs -- provided you've got $6.99 to spare, and you're one of the folks who picked up Sony's Xperia Play.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/238162/minecraft_pocket_editi... (This is so clunky, I wish we just had Markdown).
Not only has he limited himself to Android (you notice no other mobile platforms in your list there) he's chosen to take an exclusivity deal from Sony so that it's artificially limited to only the Xperia Play for at least a month or two.
And one to two month is hardly exclusive, its just a marketing gamble by Sony.
It's still a timed exclusive.
Curious. I'm trying to think of which restriction would exclude my device.
Or...could it be that I'm running CM7, when the Motorola Milestone is only officially on 2.2?
PS: yes, Age of Empires did seem futuristic at the time! Try play it now though - the low resolution may just burn your eyes :-)
Everyone else that has been hired at Mojang is working on their next game 'Scrolls'.
I've tried to play console adapted games on touchscreen via emulator, and it just simply doesn't work well. Games with action are horrible (Super Mario World was what I tried), but even turn based games are annoying to control. Having buttons really makes it easier.
On a completely unrelated note, that's why I bought a Droid 1 and then a Droid 2. I really wish more Android phones would include a physical keyboard; they're a much nicer experience than any touchscreen keyboard I've ever used, including the iPhone's.
My conclusion: in 2011 you should write your program in C if you want to reach the widest audience with a single code base.
You'll still have to write some Obj-C for OSX/iOS but it's easier to interop Obj-C with C than any other language. With Android you go with NDK and you might have to write a little Java/Dalvik if the default launcher of NDK is not good enough. On desktop Linux you'll need a little bit of X11 programming.
On iOS, OSX, Android and Linux you can do use Posix system calls pretty liberally but have to keep some portability issues in mind (e.g. epoll vs. kqueue).
Of course then there is Windows, that has almost nothing in common with any other platform out there but it can still be programmed with C.
I've seen products that claim to give you portability across all these platforms but my experiences with that kind of frameworks have always been negative. Some cross platform game engines may be able to deliver a bit better.
Of course then there's the option of simply duplicating the code base for all platforms which seems to be popular with small apps. With a game, where the graphics and game logic are the majority of the code, you probably don't want to duplicate that part. You could also try writing some of the non-speed critical stuff (like game logic) with a scripting language like Lua (if your appstores allow you to do such a thing).
I am slightly disappointed that we still have to write C to write code that's fast and portable, esp. on mobile platforms. Also the lack of any kind of standard library (apart from libc and posix) makes a cross-platform developers job a bit harder.
Second is the standard library. The systems in question might not ship with a decent C++ standard library ("STL").
Third problem is C++0x. If I were to write C++, I would definately want to use C++0x, the language has cool features like auto and lambda and the standard library has nice additions w.r.t. C++98, especially std::thread and std::chrono.
Third is the API's you have to deal with. Using C API's in C++ apps either requires you to use a wrapper layer or give up using constructors, destructors, exceptions or at least give very special attention to those and end up writing code with a bastardized C/C++ hybrid.
Don't get me wrong, I like C++ but it's always a PITA to try to write something portable with it.
Which appstores forbid that?
You have to pay again in order for the software developer to make those funds back. There would be a lot less incentive to port software or develop future versions if they had to be made free.
> Minecraft is a sandbox building indie video game...It was released on May 17, 2009, with a Beta on December 20, 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft
Years, actually.
but well, that's goes to show why they don't have to offer free DS version along with it :)
I know software requires manual translation. But, the above behavior is what I expect.
A program port is more than just moving data.
If you bought a house, would you expect to be able to use that house on both your desktop AND your laptop, because it's the same damn house? Uh, no, because physical matter doesn't work that way. In case you haven't heard, though, copying data _does_ work that way, and many people DO expect that if they buy music they SHOULD be able to use it on more than one device. And similarly for games (when it's a single chunk of code), which is actually how Minecraft actually works.
Note, I'm not arguing that MPE should be free with purchase of Minecraft, or that it shouldn't. I'm just pointing out the deadly obvious: that physical-goods arguments are basically useless for digital goods.
I just fed a troll, didn't I?
You can't copy Minecraft from your PC to your Android phone like an MP3 (well you can, but it won't work). My analogy was trying to get to the point that a smaller house would be able to reuse assets (scaled drawings, design, etc.) but it still requires someone (similar to a new developer) to create it and port the existing design to the less complicated design.
If you bought a house, do you expect to get an identical house free in another country? (a country is like a computer platform, right?)
You're free to convert it on your own.
If it shows up for my phone, I might shell out $7 for it anyway.
Hence you should get this for free if you bought it in Alpha—this image[1] explains it nicely.
The language he uses in a blog post is not relevant. What’s relevant is whether a court would think that “future versions” from the license also includes different games using in some respects the same mechanic, that share some resources but not code. That’s very, very unlikely.
Your first sentence is justified, the second is speculation masked as a factual statement.
(This also reeks of entitlement. Even if Mojang made a mistake when writing their license, asking for all ports to be free is behavior I’m unable to comprehend.)
How many people really thought along these lines when buying MC alpha? I'm pretty darn sure that when people read "all future versions for free", it meant "Alpha, and everything up to and including RTM for free", and not "Everything MC related, forever".
Heck, I think Notch threw in expansion packs for alpha purchasers. They should consider themselves lucky that he did.
Thats the difference between aplha and beta purchases. People, like me, who purchased the beta version get all version up until release and bug fixes after release. People who bought the alpha version get that plus any expansions and add ons.
Pocket Edition is, as far as I'm concerned, not part of the Minecraft version timeline, not an addon and not an expansion, therefore should be exempt from the for free clause.
Then again, since I purchased the beta version, I don't get the extra free stuff, so I'm not exactly invested in arguing that MPE should be free, so...
I don't feel particularly entitled to it but it certainly seems like a version of minecraft.
If anything Minecraft is a port of creative mode Minecraft (which is completely free). But not even a straightforward port.
Additionally, the PC game is only a few weeks away from getting one of the largest updates in its history. It is unreasonable to state that you aren't getting your money's worth.
That image reeks of stupidity. The mobile version (SEE, I said it) is a different game on a different platform. Like most words in any natural language 'version' is ambiguous. The original promise meant that you would get every update to the game for free, not that you would somehow be entitled to every derivative game released later on.
Certainly, some additional work goes into each separate version and you shouldn't just get that for free. But to pay full price for both versions seems wrong too. Might there be a base cost, with an additional cost for each system? That's as simple as giving Tam a discount for the mobile version after entering a legitimate license.
That’s not all that problematic on their side (though still a lot of work), maybe they could find some sort of (semi-)automatic way to get a discount on the desktop version of Minecraft with a receipt or a code the Android app displays. (I would guess that at the volumes Minecraft sells something like this has to generate a lot of support requests, though.)
The much, much more common case (existing buyers of Minecraft for the desktop buy the mobile edition) is also much harder. I don’t think the Android Market has a built-in mechanism for entering codes to get discounts or something like that. (Maybe it has, I don’t know. I have never heard of something like that, though.) They would have to create a way for buyers to, I don’t know, maybe enter a code the Android app displays on their website to get a discount. That would again be work but at least it’s possible.
But how is Mojang going to get $2, $3 or something like that to the customers? Is there a way to easily do that? I don’t think so and even if the fees would be horrendous.
All of this is work and would also probably be a customer support nightmare.
It’s easier to just have one price point, especially if it is so low anyway. Hardly anyone will buy the mobile edition and not the desktop edition, how would it be worth it to create an additional price point for this tiny minority? It just doesn’t make any business sense.