Minecraft

Thuleman said:
This is where we fundamentally disagree.

You think you are entitled to a non-test "release" version of Minecraft because you paid for it. I think that the payment was to participate in the testing and receive future updates if there are any, but that there's no obligation on Notch's part to ever update the game beyond its current state.

My expectation for Minecraft is that once he realizes that fixing the (multiplayer) game is just beyond his capabilities he will release it into public domain and others who have more experience will pick up where he left off.
Click to expand...

http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=49256

With everything listed in that first post of what Notch HAS said, I have a hard time believing that Notch isn't implying that he hasn't committed himself and promised updates to Minecraft.

So, we'll agree to disagree. But you're wrong. :D

My expectation is that also....he's just not that great at coding a game like this to the extent he wants the game to be.

P.S. I know what it says in the game's EULA. Anything beyond what the game is now is just bonus. That doesn't change what Notch himself has said about the game.
 
Last edited:
Thuleman said:
My expectation for Minecraft is that once he realizes that fixing the (multiplayer) game is just beyond his capabilities he will release it into public domain and others who have more experience will pick up where he left off.
Click to expand...
that sounds about right.
 
DogChainX said:
P.S. I know what it says in the game's EULA. Anything beyond what the game is now is just bonus. That doesn't change what Notch himself has said about the game.
Click to expand...

Notch had also said the EULA update was only to appease his lawyer. And that he still intended to keep that promise.
 
Beta client updated to 1.1.0.2 as well as server.

Fixed leaf decay lag and problems, and item duping and causing crashes. Much smoother, performance should be improved for everyone. HashLand is running fully updated, with the test world. Still waiting on HMod update before our Main world returns :)
 
ojax said:
There is one guy coding it all in c++ His thread is on the MC forums somewhere. He has his own terrain generating system, and already has functionality in some features. You can even connect to his server running the code, and its very smooth and functional.
Click to expand...

I thought the game was all in Java?
 
ojax said:
Beta client updated to 1.1.0.2 as well as server.

Fixed leaf decay lag and problems, and item duping and causing crashes. Much smoother, performance should be improved for everyone. HashLand is running fully updated, with the test world. Still waiting on HMod update before our Main world returns :)
Click to expand...

And HMod's developer put up this page, just in case you are one of those who scour the forums to see if it is updated. ;-)

http://ishmodupdated.com/
 
My server is still using the last alpha build. Can I still use it with the beta client? Or do I have to move up to the beta server?

either way, I can't wait to check it out. Been real busy for the past few days.
 
dr.stevil said:
My server is still using the last alpha build. Can I still use it with the beta client? Or do I have to move up to the beta server?

either way, I can't wait to check it out. Been real busy for the past few days.
Click to expand...

Yah you will have to update the server to play with the beta client. You're lucky though, as the very first Beta release was horrid, and has since been getting better. :p

Like always, we are waiting on a 15 year old and his team to get HMod updated to Beta, so people can actually have control over their server.. The Vanilla SMP server is embarrassingly simple, with hardly any freedom to modify preferences. All the abilities are there, just Notch doesn't care about giving us control, so we are forced to rely on mods to run a server with any integrity.

This Minecraft community is odd... Weird people, odd developer, self righteous mod and plugin makers, and the biggest pile of furries and freaks than any game I've played. :p Freaks I love.. Furries on the other hand, scare me, and would be the reason I'd move to the mountains with a shotgun, No Trespassing sign, and a look of madness and contempt for humanity in my eye... The left eye, the one that keeps twitching...

HashLand is running.. I think, I've been at work all day lol.. Anyone interested in checking out Beta SMP performance is welcome to join. The server is in my sig. :)
 
I'm done with the temp layout on hashland. My stuff is up for grabs in my house along the elevated pathway (there's a sign pointing to it on the path).
 
DogChainX said:
I said, he said, she said...you are arguing semantics. If he backs out, he's no more good than a thief. Though I doubt that's what he'll do. :D

And this is from the blog:

"With Beta comes a larger focus on polish and content, and we’ll start early on with adding proper modding support with a stable API, and we’d love all input we can get on this from the modders out there. We’ll also add some kind of non-intrusive narrative to the game to help drive the game experience early on, and to provide some kind of late game goal. There will be a bigger focus on testing and stability as well, with more time between updates."


My point? He hasn't delivered...yet. Yes, it just got to Beta, yes it was in Alpha a few days ago. I'm not saying this the end for Minecraft, just that the execution is piss-poor, and hopefully Notch realizes this (I'm sure he does...)

I have hope that he'll live up to is "promises" and keep this game updated. Its in his own best interest to.
Click to expand...

Once the money stops rolling in, its not in his best interest to keep updating it. The current plan of selling people promises is working out fantastic so there is no reason for them to deviate from that. The "finished" product could be years away and people will likely have moved on to something else by then.
 
Last edited:
ocellaris said:
Once the money stops rolling in, its not in his best interest to keep updating it. The current plan of selling people promises is working out fantastic so there is no reason for them to deviate from that.
Click to expand...


sure, if he takes short term gain over long term success then you're probably right.... but the guy seems to have more common sense than that, especially considering that he just started his own game development studio. He has absolutly nothing to gain from stopping development on minecraft. It's arguably one of the most successful indy games of the decade (or possibly ever)... if he up and quit, it wouldn't do much for his or his companies reputation.

People are jumping to conclusions without giving it much thought. He's said in the past that he wants to do expansions and such for minecraft too. I wouldn't be surprised to see a version on live/PSN or on the appstore sometime in the future either.
 
dr.stevil said:
sure, if he takes short term gain over long term success then you're probably right.... but the guy seems to have more common sense than that, especially considering that he just started his own game development studio. He has absolutly nothing to gain from stopping development on minecraft. It's arguably one of the most successful indy games of the decade (or possibly ever)... if he up and quit, it wouldn't do much for his or his companies reputation.

People are jumping to conclusions without giving it much thought. He's said in the past that he wants to do expansions and such for minecraft too. I wouldn't be surprised to see a version on live/PSN or on the appstore sometime in the future either.
Click to expand...

I am fully aware that Notch has talked about enough future content that would keep him busy until 2015, however my point is that if people stop sending him money for Minecraft, you can bet he would jump off the train pretty quickly.
 
ocellaris said:
I am fully aware that Notch has talked about enough future content that would keep him busy until 2015, however my point is that if people stop sending him money for Minecraft, you can bet he would jump off the train pretty quickly.
Click to expand...

I get what you're saying, but I really can't imagine him doing that until after he's finished with the final version. It just not wise to do from a business standpoint, especially for a startup. Besides, I believe that he's the one doing the vast majority of the development... so it's not like it's really costing him anything other than his time.

I have faith that he'll come through on his promise... he's done nothing to show people otherwise. :)
 
The future

I plan on developing Minecraft until it's a finished complete game, with a downloadable client (with fullscreen mode), custom key re mappings and possibly modding support. For as long as people enjoy and purchase the game, I will develop extensions after the game is done.
Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source. I'm not very happy with the draconian nature of (L)GPL, nor do I believe the other licenses have much merit other than to boost the egos of the original authors, so I might just possibly release it all as public domain.
Click to expand...

It says he PLANS on continuing development at least until a final version is completed and released. I think it would be completely stupid of him to abandon it before then.
 
castun said:
It says he PLANS on continuing development at least until a final version is completed and released. I think it would be completely stupid of him to abandon it before then.
Click to expand...

While its fun to think that games devs are our homies and will always come through, it people stop buying Minecraft / stop playing it, no one is going to keep charging forwards towards making a final version.
 
ocellaris said:
While its fun to think that games devs are our homies and will always come through, it people stop buying Minecraft / stop playing it, no one is going to keep charging forwards towards making a final version.
Click to expand...

Assuming there even is a final version. He may have planes that go something like, "When I get this, this, this and this working properly in game, it will be a "final" version (in other words, ready to come out of beta)." However, he probably has lots of plans for things he'd "like" to put into the game, but probably never will. Or maybe he will.
 
Here's a dude on the Minecraft forums who has summed it up nicely: NOTCH NEVER PROMISED YOU ANYTHING (his caps, not mine).

I think we can all agree that none of us knows what will actually happen. I can only extrapolate from what I would do based on what Notch said. Once sales slow down, which they have to eventually, the game is over, literally.

The main reason for that is that once sales slow there are no customers left to sell stuff to if product development would continue to a finished stage. Why spend countless hours developing something you can't sell to anyone because everyone who would want it already paid for a lesser version?

Reputation is irrelevant. How many of you remember stunts game company execs pulled that ruined something or other? Yeah sure, here we are [H] and we may do better than others to hold a grudge, but by and large it doesn't matter. The masses will go out and buy the next game he may make and Minecraft will just be a distant memory. If anything people will have brand recognition "... from the makers of Minecraft!", and no one will remember that the game was never finished.

At the end of the day you will not find anyone who can honestly say that they didn't get their money's worth of fun out of the game already and that's why people will not care whether it will ever be finished.

My only hope is that he does follow through on releasing it into public domain once he is done milking it.
 
I like the game, and so far got my monies worth, however I don't think the game is quite finished just yet and theres still a lot to add. The fact that its in Beta now has me a little worried that new features are going to be few and far between at this point. Time will tell, however. I'd like to see a lot more recipes and some more use for existing materials. I guess I feel like theres a lot still to do with this game, and it being called 'beta' now has me worried that there won't be many new additions until after it goes gold. I might be wrong.

His patch methods leave a bit to be desired. He doesn't seem to test much of his code, which is apparent due to the large number of problems he has had after recent releases. In fact, the last few releases have done more harm than good. Granted, he IS quick to fix them, but still, most of the game-breaking bugs could have been avoided with a little play-testing on his part.

He seems to be coding on the fly and in a rush, and then releasing whatever is done by his self-imposed deadlines. I accept that its alpha (beta now), but the moment he started charging people for the game was the moment that peoples quality expectations rose. It doesn't help that he makes promises on Twitter/Tumblr and then fails to deliver on many of them. If you follow his tumblr posts, he talks about all the games hes playing, and then a few days before his deadline, he talks about an all night coding session to get everything done in time.

In fairness, he recently posted a message saying hes going to be doing things a bit differently, so I think hes learned his lesson on version control and patching - finally :).

I think he kinda got a bit lucky with word of mouth and a neat idea which took off - I don't think hes an especially good developer because a lot of his mistakes seem to be simple almost rookie mistakes. Releasing untested code, simple bugs, big promises with short deliveries, self imposed deadlines, and some VERY large resource usage. Bandwidth on SMP is huge, and CPU usage on both Single/Multi is pretty large as well. My wife's laptop which has a dual core CPU struggles to run this game in the lowest settings. Again - I understand that its currently alpha/beta and that code optimization doesn't happen yet.

I dunno, I guess overall I'm saying the game is great and fun and I got my monies worth, but I think it was more luck than anything much else. Right game at the right time? Notch's recent game updates and patches have left a lot to be desired. We'll see how things go in the future, but recently I've lost a bit of faith in this game.
 
He should have a development build and a stable build. And release a new stable version on a monthly basis or so.

A beta stage isn't meant for new features... In what game was it ever? He really has some issues with adding new features. He should try to fix as many bugs as possible right now, and not on revamping the game.

After the final release he should focus on adding new features... Expansion pack type of things. DLCs?

Just my .02.
 
krogen said:
A beta stage isn't meant for new features... In what game was it ever?
Click to expand...


Thats what I'm saying -- if hes calling this beta, does that means hes not releasing new features? I say thats a mistake, theres a lot of room for new things in this game.
 
krogen said:
He should have a development build and a stable build. And release a new stable version on a monthly basis or so.

A beta stage isn't meant for new features... In what game was it ever? He really has some issues with adding new features. He should try to fix as many bugs as possible right now, and not on revamping the game.

After the final release he should focus on adding new features... Expansion pack type of things. DLCs?

Just my .02.
Click to expand...

I agree with you 100%. No beta game has ever utilized that development stage to start introducing massive new features and changing the core game design. Notch is an amateur developer. He is not professional, nor did anyone imply that he was. He is one, very rich man, that has spent half of 2010 going from lowly indie game dev, to a multi millionaire with hundreds of thousands of people playing and demanding fixes to his game.

If he was professional about everything, and wasn't a sappy coder, he would have internal testing setup, he would have developer builds and be releasing stable builds to the public on a more consistent time frame. He would utilize his fucking team he supposedly has, and get them to take on other responsibilities like BUG ticketing inside the client, and a proper support forum.

We should still be in Alpha, no idea why he thinks it needed to be rushed into Beta.. Other than to have some sort of reason for starting to charge people more money... He should be concerned about not forcing people to client upgrade, fixing major bugs and features that have been broken for months, and concentrating his efforts on stabilizing his client BEFORE ANY fucking developer capes and Deadmau5 dick sucking.

Anyone who keeps defending Notch and his work ethic, also have shitty work ethics and would never be hired by me, or any company looking for employees with integrity and skill.

That said, what I paid for the game, I've more than received my share in value, entertainment and enjoyment. This still doesn't somehow prevent myself, and others from criticizing the game. We criticize it, because we are concerned and interested in its improvement and its future, not the other way around. Most people cannot handle reading someone's critique or complaints, because they usually have no passion for anything, and think its cool to have a nihilist attitude towards life.

Anyways, I was thinking for the next 24 - 48 hours before we switch back to our main world, I should download a custom world we can either destroy, explore and enjoy for the time being.. Search out Broville v9 world on the MC, "mapping and modding" forums.. If anyone is interested in checking out that massive city and everything it has to offer, I can load it onto HashLand very easily. If you are interested let me know here, or the HashLand forums.

:)
 
yes! i would love to take an awesome world, and turn it upside down like inception style biznitch!

skyscrapers with water flowing out the top

rivers of slime!

yes yes yes

cause the hash temp server is kinda boring :) lol
 
ojax said:
We should still be in Alpha, no idea why he thinks it needed to be rushed into Beta.. Other than to have some sort of reason for starting to charge people more money...
Click to expand...

That seems legitimate to me. He had to cut off the cheap alpha version at some point, look at how many people have already bought the game (and love it).

Anyone who keeps defending Notch and his work ethic, also have shitty work ethics and would never be hired by me, or any company looking for employees with integrity and skill.
Click to expand...

That's a pretty nasty thing to say. Minecraft Alpha was the best ~$10 I've spent on a game in a very long time. I think that's why a lot of people feel the complaints are overblown. You paid the equivalent of a couple fast food meals for god knows how many hours of gameplay.

Much larger dev teams have released worse games and provided less support while charging a lot more for their product.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
That seems legitimate to me. He had to cut off the cheap alpha version at some point, look at how many people have already bought the game (and love it).



That's a pretty nasty thing to say. Minecraft Alpha was the best ~$10 I've spent on a game in a very long time. I think that's why a lot of people feel the complaints are overblown. You paid the equivalent of a couple fast food meals for god knows how many hours of gameplay.

Much larger dev teams have released worse games and provided less support while charging a lot more for their product.
Click to expand...

Not nasty, but blunt and honest. Everyone keeps bringing up the cost of the game, when the price we paid for it is irrelevant. Since when are consumers told to piss off and aren't allowed to criticize what they spent their money on, and the people who made it?

Again, they are not always "complaints", rather constructive criticism. Like I said previously, those who just see complaining have never had to criticize or demand satisfaction from anything, and are either kids, young, or adults with very little in responsibility. It is a nihilist attitude and it is weak. By your definition, anything free should never ever be discussed or criticized, in which I reply, without consumer feedback, nothing would ever be properly improved.

Very few games in the past have been handled this poorly, and find one or two with this many people playing during its Alpha and early Beta stages...
 
Yr
ojax said:
Not nasty, but blunt and honest. Everyone keeps bringing up the cost of the game, when the price we paid for it is irrelevant. Since when are consumers told to piss off and aren't allowed to criticize what they spent their money on, and the people who made it?

Again, they are not always "complaints", rather constructive criticism. Like I said previously, those who just see complaining have never had to criticize or demand satisfaction from anything, and are either kids, young, or adults with very little in responsibility. It is a nihilist attitude and it is weak. By your definition, anything free should never ever be discussed or criticized, in which I reply, without consumer feedback, nothing would ever be properly improved.

Very few games in the past have been handled this poorly, and find one or two with this many people playing during its Alpha and early Beta stages...
Click to expand...

Agreed...
 
Yah, I just checked and the server crashed with some severe java exception.. No idea what happened. Anyways, the server is restarted and back up running the test world.

Hopefully today, sometime, Hmod will have an update and I will then bring back the old world. =)
 
ojax said:
Yah, I just checked and the server crashed with some severe java exception.. No idea what happened. Anyways, the server is restarted and back up running the test world.

Hopefully today, sometime, Hmod will have an update and I will then bring back the old world. =)
Click to expand...

Hopefully!
 
My hope would be that he handles this game much like Valve handled TF2. Allow people to make additions for it, pick the best out of the bunch...allow for donations and such. But it keeps enough people interested that new purchases are made fairly regularly, enough so that the money coming in justifies the time invested in keeping the game up to date and with fresh items coming in every couple months in a standard build.

I do however expect him to come up with a better engine in which he can create a more MMO-esque Minecraft 2. Where you can have a little DnD type game within the sandbox if desired. Or other types of game modes where you could introduce different kinds of enemies with some home brew AI. Simple enough people could make their own versions of npcs. At least that would interest me. Digging around in an online world is cool and all, but making meaningful interactions with that same world is a whole other realm to open up.
 
veterator said:
My hope would be that he handles this game much like Valve handled TF2. Allow people to make additions for it, pick the best out of the bunch...allow for donations and such. But it keeps enough people interested that new purchases are made fairly regularly, enough so that the money coming in justifies the time invested in keeping the game up to date and with fresh items coming in every couple months in a standard build.

I do however expect him to come up with a better engine in which he can create a more MMO-esque Minecraft 2. Where you can have a little DnD type game within the sandbox if desired. Or other types of game modes where you could introduce different kinds of enemies with some home brew AI. Simple enough people could make their own versions of npcs. At least that would interest me. Digging around in an online world is cool and all, but making meaningful interactions with that same world is a whole other realm to open up.
Click to expand...

I agree. Allowing mods that adds variations and additions to the animals and monsters is very much what I am looking forward too. Perhaps even NPC villages or caves underground inhabited by either hostile, or friendly mobs.. Even allowing factions into play, allowing players to build faction with certain mob villages so you may enter unharmed and perhaps that would unlock quests, specific loot or items, or whatever.

I also want to be able to specify the height and bottom limits of a world. None of this 128 max height. Imagine 400 max height, from GROUND level, and a 250 block underworld.. To me, that would be near the top of the list for additions and features to be added.. That would open up the world in the vertical height, allowing for more real estate within a closer N,S,E,W directional space. :) Sky cities that you need to travel further upward to start to see, similar to loading towns in the distance when running West or whatever direction. Underground caverns and spaces could be even more epic and grand, as extending the bottom of the world would allow for larger areas within. =)
 
Quick update! I took down the Test world, and loaded up BroVille v9 =)

It is a world map created by a player that has been uploaded for people to play around in and explore for single player, but it can also be added to SMP. So, I decided to run this world until we get our old world back up running with mod support. The city is HUGE with lots to see, signs to read, and passage ways and tunnels and secrets all over the place :) Come check it out!

Edit: So I just ran around the BroVille world. Pretty impressive! An entire city complete with small homes, larger businesses, a harbor with ships, a Hospital, outdoor theatre, and skyscrapers. As well as a non functional mine cart Subway.. Perhaps a mod allows the Subway to be used.. If you ask me though? What we have started in our world inside Pirate Cove could be much larger. ;) If we all expanded and worked on creating a city growing outwards from Pirate Cove, our world would rock the shit outta this place. :p

arr4ws if you are willing, I am ready to expand Pirate Cove! We can also, as a server, decide together an area somewhere that we all work on to create a town or city. Each of us could add our own style and flair, some buildings homes, others landscaping or designing outdoor attractions. This would be a cool way to build and design together as a server community, rather than always hidden away in our personal lairs. We can do both! Hell if someone wants to create their own town or city by themselves I'd be excited to see that too! I love the natural surroundings, don't get me wrong, but I love seeing and exploring these massive cities and towns.. Since the world is so big, we could have 5 - 10 cities, twice the size of BroVille all connected through mine cart tracks or boat waterways... I always think big, and outdoing BroVille is now starting to look like my next project. ;)
 
Last edited:
ojax said:
Quick update! I took down the Test world, and loaded up BroVille v9 =)

It is a world map created by a player that has been uploaded for people to play around in and explore for single player, but it can also be added to SMP. So, I decided to run this world until we get our old world back up running with mod support. The city is HUGE with lots to see, signs to read, and passage ways and tunnels and secrets all over the place :) Come check it out!

Edit: So I just ran around the BroVille world. Pretty impressive! An entire city complete with small homes, larger businesses, a harbor with ships, a Hospital, outdoor theatre, and skyscrapers. As well as a non functional mine cart Subway.. Perhaps a mod allows the Subway to be used.. If you ask me though? What we have started in our world inside Pirate Cove could be much larger. ;) If we all expanded and worked on creating a city growing outwards from Pirate Cove, our world would rock the shit outta this place. :p

arr4ws if you are willing, I am ready to expand Pirate Cove! We can also, as a server, decide together an area somewhere that we all work on to create a town or city. Each of us could add our own style and flair, some buildings homes, others landscaping or designing outdoor attractions. This would be a cool way to build and design together as a server community, rather than always hidden away in our personal lairs. We can do both! Hell if someone wants to create their own town or city by themselves I'd be excited to see that too! I love the natural surroundings, don't get me wrong, but I love seeing and exploring these massive cities and towns.. Since the world is so big, we could have 5 - 10 cities, twice the size of BroVille all connected through mine cart tracks or boat waterways... I always think big, and outdoing BroVille is now starting to look like my next project. ;)
Click to expand...


As soon as I am done with the outer walls of the fortress, there will be quite a bit of room to build within. I'm going to build the inner Keep, but if people want to warp in and build things (like a dock near the water/etc), they are more than welcome to after I finish the keep. Maybe we could have a theme for each city site? Midevil/Pirate/Modern/etc?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top