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Comment by eamsen | Hacker News Reader

Watching Notch hacking on the Ludum Dare competition is such a comforting experience - to me he is the Bob Ross of game development. He also seems to end up developing the same thing over and over again with different shades of green on the leaves.

Even though you may don't like his style, you have to admire his pragmatism, productivity and humbleness.

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http://notch.net/games/

There's a pretty big variety there.

You're right about him putting out a few little games, which do not share the same game mechanics, but a lot of his work is based on repetition and refinement. Or to quote [1] himself:

"I am forever cursed to keep making the same game over and over again!! But at least it's fun.. Now, space!"

[1] https://twitter.com/notch/status/189315622818168832

and he's worth like a million million bucks, yet still does what he loves, and gives $ away to his team, like keanu. may he live as long

Corrections: he's worth $10's or even $100+.

is this really live? I mean -- hardly see him pause for thought or anything.

Interesting to see he just uses plain 'ol Eclipse (Eclipse FTW!).

Yeah it's really live - he's done a lot of work on stuff similar to this so he's probably got a mental checklist of everything that needs to happen. He's pretty good at what he does: making games! Rarely is watching somebody write code entertaining, but he makes it so.

i like his games -- been playing minecraft off-and-on with some friends for years -- but I have to admit, most of his games look very similar. the thing he's working on now looks like it could have been made from in minecraft. Use Craftbukkit or MineForge and you can just add things like new overlays and ui's... bam! new game.

It's probably akin to a many types of artists, like painters. A certain style will always follow. But evolve as you go.

>he's probably got a mental checklist of everything that needs to happen.

I would love to see someone make such a list explicit and then post it as a submission here.

his minicraft certainly was, but also super-engaging

He is using the Dart Editor (an editor using the Eclipse platform written from scratch for Dart support):

https://www.dartlang.org/tools/editor/

Doubt it's "from scratch" -- a lot of projects use Eclipse as the base for their "custom editor" when in reality it's just a bunch of plugins strapped on top of the base Eclipse. (Android editor, CTools editor, etc). You probably can just install the Dart support plugins and get the same features.

Eclipse is a very robust, very flexible editor.

UPDATE - Here seems to be the plugin: https://www.dartlang.org/tools/eclipse-plugin/

I've watched Notch code numerous times (mostly on Ludum Dare streams) and he's strongly in the always keeps moving camp of developers. He thinks as he goes and isn't scared to backtrack or rip stuff out when he changes his approach.

I imagine that having a live feed of you working also motivates you to avoid procrastinating.

For somebody successful I doubt it matters much.

I participated in Ludum Dare this time and live streamed for a little bit, but the constant knowing that someone was watching me was really distracting so I eventually turned it off and was more constructive.

That's so dismissive, Bob Ross was the running ironic joke of the painting world.

The analogy is apt. Notch isn't known for being a stellar programmer.

I'd rather be a successful programmer than a stellar one (probably).

Of course! "perfect is the enemy of good"

Minecraft itself was a clone of the game "infiniminer". Whose developer had given up and stopped work after the source code was stolen.

When I think of the rise of Minecraft I am drawn to a few things he did differently.

1) He set up a way for customers to pay him for the game early (as soon as he had a minimum viable product). This gave him tons of feedback, money to keep working, and incentive to keep going because people were constantly asking him for features and tweaks.

2) He employed a simple and fun mechanic that allowed users to create their own things in the game (forts castles etc).

3) all of the content is procedurally generated. So every time you play it you get a different experience to some extent.

4) From very early on you would get weekly updates pushed out constantly adding new features. For most people new things were being added far faster than they could get bored with them.

5) it ran everywhere.

6) He didn't focus on graphics. He made design choices that would drastically simplify development at the expense of quality and/or performance. This lent itself to a blocky 'style' that was both easy to handle and visually unique.

What do you guys think? am I missing anything?

> 6) He didn't focus on graphics. He made design choices that would drastically simplify development at the expense of quality and/or performance. This lent itself to a blocky 'style' that was both easy to handle and visually unique.

This one is widely considered to be false. There have been numerous catastrophic overhauls of many of Minecraft's sub-systems because they are very poorly designed, leading to stalled overhauls and whatnot. The architecture of systems was definitely not Notch's strong suit. That he chose an easy way to structure the world is only one of many design choices.

This is why the "mod kit" is still a pending feature. And at this point would probably be too late considering the amount of community work put into creating their own environments.

I agree 100% but there were many choices he DID make which simplified his job regardless of how poorly they were ultimately implemented such as:

* Everything is forced into a cube

* No dynamic lighting

* No Shaders

* 16x16 Textures

* Water/lava is not volumetric

* No AI

* He used Java

* barely any physics (removing the bottom segment of a tree does not make the top fall down)

and on and on and on.

While he is no doubt a programmer it is his superb game design skills that brought him to success.

His taste, if you will?

In the case of Minecraft, sure. Its design is mostly just a case of having the right idea and running with it. Making a few critical early choices that have shaped everything.

That "taste" wouldn't necessarily translate to the nitty-gritty game design skills necessary for a complex strategy, card, or board game, for example. But hey, it's enough. Not all of us can be Reiner Knizia.

I would say that Bob Ross being the running ironic joke of the painting world says a lot more about the painting world than it does about Bob Ross. Every episode I watched contained a man with the calm manner of Mr. Rogers guiding his watchers through the process of creating something, providing them constant reassurance that they possessed the ability to create art and that they weren't making mistakes but merely going through the process of creation.

A quick trip over to reddit will reveal dozens, perhaps hundreds, of posts from people who have followed Bob Ross' methods and create a piece of art that brings them joy and satisfaction despite possibly a lifetime of doubting that they had the ability. In that sense I rank him up there amongst other great teachers who have been able to find methods that allow people to get past the initial stages of self-doubt and embarassment and begin participating in a fulfilling activity. Think "The Inner Game of Tennis" or "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". Anyone who can let the everyman participate in the satisfaction that comes with creating something is pretty darned ok in my books.

I am not sure if Notch quite lives up to that legacy, but it is a comparison that I think anyone should be flattered to receive.

interesting fact, Bob Ross was a drill sergeant:

"I was the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work. The job requires you to be a mean, tough person. And I was fed up with it. I promised myself that if I ever got away from it, it wasn't going to be that way anymore." [1]

[1] http://www.military.com/veteran-jobs/career-advice/military-...

There is a reason the military limits how long a person can be a drill sergeant for. 2 years, iirc, with an option for 1 more. My step father was a drill sergeant.

It wasn't meant to be dismissive.

To me, Bob Ross's art wasn't so much in painting as it was in creating that synergy of education and relaxation by taking you with him through the joy of creation.

Something in Notch's live streams triggers the same nerves for me.

I'm not sure Bob ever noticed. He was too busy painting.

Aside: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGN5xaQkFk0

I was wondering how this thread got so long without anybody linking to ERB :)

Bob Ross was a national treasure who dedicated his life to helping others see that it is wonderful to make or create for the sake of it.

Anyone I've met who thinks he's a joke have been illustrators who hadn't yet come to terms with the reality that they were craftspeople and not fine-artists. As if there is some dishonor for being a dedicated and skilled craftsperson. Having a passion for and love for a craft at any skill level is a beautiful thing.

I live in a country where Bob Ross isn't really known at all, and I spend a lot of my free time doing illustration or painting (http://ultimatehurl.tumblr.com is where I post stuff, to give an idea). Having relatively recently learned of him and his show I think it's amazing and encouraging. I have no formal training yet frequently have people say to me 'I could never do something like that!', Bob Ross worked to prove that's not true, because it's really not.

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