Notch's New Game - Minicraft (And An Android Port) | Hacker News Reader

Notch's New Game - Minicraft (And An Android Port)

gun.io

104 pointsMizza37 comments

The livestream was awesome again too - it's up here: http://www.twitch.tv/notch/b/302823358

Though I made the dreadful mistake of watching it with comments on: http://www.mrspeaker.net/2011/12/20/troll-at-notch/

Now I understand how '10x more productive programmer' works.

Oh, thanks for the links to your post. Interesting read. =)

I've been working on an Android game that I envision as a mashup of Zelda and Minecraft, so it's pretty entertaining to see Notch whip out a pretty similar idea over a single weekend.

Entertaining or frustrating? The guy is a machine, I watched his stream (not the whole thing but a few minutes here and there) and he was almost never not typing (or editing something in paint.net).

How he maintains his focus for that long and doesn't get stumped by bugs for any great length of time is truly impressive.

It's true, I was amazed at how fast he worked. A bit of programmer envy from me.

Entertaining, definitely. Notch has been making games for years, so he's drawing on a lot of experience.

I love how he uses the most uncool tools out there. Eclipse, Java, Pain.net, Windows, yet produces more than most of us combined.

Pain.net: Typo, or subtle joke?

Funny, it was a typo :)

Since when windows and eclipse aren't cool?

I think it's something I could learn from. Stop messing around trying to get everything perfect and just go ahead and get something done.

The flip side to this is that his projects tend to accrete bad design decisions and just outright bugs that a more methodical developer wouldn't. Minecraft multiplayer comes to mind.

I'd imagine the pressure of having hundreds of people watching would keep him in check. It's pretty unlikely he'd stream himself doing some casual browsing with a sandwich in hand.

Me too, I'm working on a 2D MMO for Android: http://developingthedream.blogspot.com

And it's a real treat to see a 2D game like it being made. Not to say other participants didn't have cool looking 2d games.

It's actually very easy to hack the code. I've created a "God-mode" version that you can play on github: http://acanis.github.com/Minicraft-God-Mode/

There's already a little community forming around the game, which is neat. They've got a wiki: http://minicraft.wikia.com/wiki/Minicraft_Wiki

What's the license on Minicraft? Or in spite of particular license, is Notch pretty much giving the thumbs up on porting anyway?

I think it's still "All rights reserved". The rules for Ludum Dare say that you have to submit the code for judging, but you don't give up copyright. And he didn't put any license in the source archive. Although I doubt he'll complain, this porting effort might violate his copyright.

Last I heard at least, he still seem to regard mods to Minecraft as some bad terrible thing (though apparently Jeb has at least gotten him to go along with a mod framework--which is a good thing, because it's the only way Minecraft remains playable!), so "I doubt he'll complain" might be reaching a bit.

My impression was that Notch is fine with mods, but he just doesn't think there's a way to make Minecraft very moddable without effectively open-sourcing it, which he doesn't want to do.

There's not might - without a license, even the Github mirror made by Rich is infringing.

Actually, isn't he still in Sweden? In that case, I have no idea if computer software is automatically copyrighted the moment it's written. I think maybe that's a US-only thing?

Sweden signed the Berne Convention [1] in 1904 [2], and has automatic copyright since at least then

They also signed the WIPO Copyright Treaty [3] in 2002, which expclitly says that computer programs are to be treated as literary works, and receive the same protection (that has been implemented by the DMCA in the US).

According to Directive 2006/116/EC [4] the copyright term in the EU for literary works up to 70 years after the author died. If life expectancy continues to increase, they will probably extend the term again to cover the intended 2 generations.

Have fun playing your copy on vintage hardware then :)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Prote... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_internation... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty [4]: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...:

Notch has stated it's not released under any license.

https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/149273594667606017

Interpret that as you wish, but make no assumptions.

There's not much to interpret: not under any license means the default copyright terms apply - meaning any distribution is forbidden.

Oh wait - if he's still in Sweden, isn't it different? Don't you actually need a copyright notice attached for the code to be copyrighted?

No, copyright in Sweden is by default. Copyright notices are optional, not mandatory.

I made a working android port. video here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9UylEe04Rw

Link on github: http://github.com/chrislott/

i'm not a programmer. how do i build his source in eclipse? the closest i get is this and i'm stumped: http://i41.tinypic.com/opxrna.png

That happened to me as well (also not a programmer). It is because the directory with the sounds and images, called 'res', is not in the right place. You need to move the 'res' folder into the 'bin' folder.

Try this version on github, you can compile and run the source with 'ant run': https://github.com/skeeto/Minicraft

I hope you two will have some fun browsing the code and just messing around. Might be a well-motivated introduction to programming.

I don't know how to configure eclipse to build this, but I spent a few minutes and made an ant script. Save [it](https://gist.github.com/1dd9bd89748f489f67c9) as `build.xml` in root directory of the project and run `$ ant jar`. This will produce `minicraft.jar` which you can execute by running `$ java -jar minicraft.jar`.

(Details: The reason eclipse is complaining is because the images weren't included as resources in the classpath. This cause a null pointer exception when the game attempts to load it's sprites. I don't really use eclipse, so I'm not sure how to fix it)

When I see this I don't think of Minecraft, I think of Realm of the Mad God - http://www.realmofthemadgod.com/

Which came out of another game programming competition, "Assemblee 2" : http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?board=38.0

That game is a lot of fun, I usually use it to waste time while when I'm waiting for my fiance to finish getting ready.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com