[HN Gopher] The secret of Minecraft (2014)
___________________________________________________________________
The secret of Minecraft (2014)
Author : prawn
Score : 60 points
Date : 2024-07-24 20:26 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| cedws wrote:
| Call me a hater but I think Microsoft ruined Minecraft. The
| "secret knowledge" that the author describes is no longer a
| thing. The game shows you all the recipes. There are way too many
| blocks now so there's not as much need for creativity in
| building.
|
| Simplicity made Minecraft a true sandbox. There was no real
| objective, just blocks and ways to arrange them. Now there's
| always an objective to get the next magic/powerful item.
| amiantos wrote:
| It is interesting that despite the overwhelming success of
| Minecraft, Microsoft/the team building it still felt that it
| needed to have a full tutorial system and overarching story
| objectives tacked on it to further encourage players to get
| hooked on it if the open-ended aspect of it didn't appeal.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| After you've already attracted all of your primary audience,
| all you have left for growth are non-primary audiences.
|
| See also: bands pivoting from niche to mass market genres
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I never understood the appeal of having game knowledge on a
| separate websites.
|
| I can understand this situation happening because of lack of
| development resources. Like - yeah, it's easier to just let the
| community to write the documentation and concentrate on the
| game, if you're small company.
|
| But why would it appeal to the actual players? It's not really
| secret knowledge, there are wiki websites with all the recipes.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| You know, for younger kids I can see the appeal. They might
| not have a device they can easily use to go on the internet,
| so you'd be able to do things your friends can't and vice
| versa.
|
| I've long mulled on the idea of some kind of game where large
| aspects of it are randomized/generated so that no two
| installations would have the same stuff, recipes, whatever. I
| think that'd be neat and get rid of the website issue.
| jbmny wrote:
| Reminds me of the fatalities in Mortal Kombat growing up.
| All the regular moves were in the manual, but IIRC the
| fatalities were not. It was a form of secret knowledge, and
| it was really cool if you knew one. Granted, this was right
| before the Internet-connected home computer became
| ubiquitous.
| Kye wrote:
| GameFAQs very quickly democratized game knowledge the way
| Wikipedia did for general knowledge a handful of years
| later. I learned the infinite 1up stair trick in Mario[0]
| from a sibling before that, but had the most fun with
| stuff I could look up.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQCSEcyGQH4
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| It's bad design and it was annoying already back when
| Minecraft was still young. The article author gets this
| hilariously wrong. He claims that he is "obsessed" with
| Minecraft, but later admits that they haven't played the game
| much. I knew that before I even got to that paragraph...
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I think maybe the author means they are obsessed with
| something about Minecraft, the success story, the cultural
| impact, something like that. Not necessarily obsessed with
| playing it
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Especially when the goto gaming wiki site host is straight-up
| internet cancer.
| itronitron wrote:
| The appeal of having it on a wiki is that you can browse to
| related items and topics that can inform how you play the
| game. Serendipitous discovery of information, something the
| internet used to enable.
| Medox wrote:
| How else would you find the knowledge if not through separate
| websites, when using the Web Displays Mod [1] in game? /s
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK-m2dH4LEw
| hluska wrote:
| I like it because you don't have to consult those resources.
| If you like, you can figure out the game completely as you
| go.
| eBombzor wrote:
| The end game thing was added years before Microsoft bought
| them. But I agree, the simplicity is no longer there.
| GaggiX wrote:
| >The "secret knowledge" that the author describes is no longer
| a thing. The game shows you all the recipes.
|
| It does show the recipes you have unlocked (e.g. by mining a
| particular one that makes them), I'm glad they did that, it's
| much less painful for a new player and for the viewers of that
| new player (I like watching people play a game they've never
| played before).
| Version467 wrote:
| Nah. Microsoft did a great job handling Minecraft imo. I
| thought they were out of their mind paying that much money for
| something that I didn't think had many opportunities left to
| grow.
|
| But now I think it was the perfect time for Persson and his
| team to give it to someone with the resources and the reach to
| _make_ those opportunities. Yes, Microsoft changed some things
| about Minecraft the game, but overall they didn 't touch the
| core gameplay loop. Instead they focused on expanding the
| minecraft universe with genre crossing spinoff games and
| cooperations that the old Mojang could've never done. And kids
| loved most of it. Stuff like Minecraft: Story Mode added a
| richness to the franchise that you could completely ignore if
| you wanted to, or dive into if it appealed to you.
|
| Microsoft grew Minecraft because it still had a lot of growth
| in it. It might clash with your nostalgia, but it evolved such
| that it still broadly appealed to its growing core audience.
| And that is and always has been children. And children still
| love Minecraft.
| codeulike wrote:
| Underrated thing Microsoft have done is allow Bedrock to
| cross-play between Windows, IOS, Playstation, Switch and XBox
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Nah. Microsoft did a great job handling Minecraft imo.
|
| I am still peeved that my lifetime license "mysteriously"
| broke during Microsoft's account transitions. Trillion dollar
| company lacks the manpower and technical capability to handle
| it? Or someone cannot be arsed to maintain "freeloader"
| customers.
| herbst wrote:
| Same here. Had one of the first few thousand accounts.
| Since Microsoft took over:
|
| - it got hacked. Got it back but name was changed, history
| not perfect anymore
|
| - much later somehow lost my account due to me trying to
| keep my old account I guess. Whatever I wasnt noticed that
| my account is going to die. It just did. Microsoft support
| also never answered to my request getting it back
|
| - Never played Minecraft again
| kenmorechalfant wrote:
| Oh man, I guess I was so angry about that at some point I
| blocked it out. My dumb ass actually bought a 2nd account
| because I couldn't convince my friends to play with me
| until it was free. After MSFT purchased Minecraft I could
| never recover either of those accounts!
| Version467 wrote:
| Yeah, that's fair. That was just a shitty thing to do. I
| was more focusing on the creative development that
| Minecraft saw under Microsoft.
|
| Fandoms are often extremely nervous when a large
| corporation buys the rights to a beloved media ip, largely
| because this has gone wrong so many times, with poor
| adaptions or obvious cashgrabs milking a property until the
| fanbase turns away.
|
| This really hasn't happened to Minecraft. It grew further
| in popularity, even though it was already massively popular
| at the time and it did it mostly without driving away the
| existing fans. That in itself is quite unusual (I think)
| and definitely not what I would have expected. At the time
| I really thought that the sale would mark the beginning of
| Minecraft's slow descent into irrelevancy and I definitely
| remember that being a fairly common sentiment.
|
| But I fully understand people being mad at the license
| issues you mention. They should be. Might not have been
| illegal, but that was essentially theft.
| kenmorechalfant wrote:
| Minecraft STILL doesn't have a lot of stuff Notch was
| planning on adding. Instead of becoming an actual living
| breathing world you want to explore more they focus on
| premium skins and an occasional update with mostly
| bewildering content. Usually big projects like movies and
| games have a director(s) with a grand vision. Notch had a
| vision but he gave up on it for money. Microsoft's only
| vision for Minecraft has ever been sponsorship deals and
| merch. Honestly, I feel more betrayed by Notch than by
| Microsoft.
| Version467 wrote:
| > Notch had a vision but he gave up on it for money.
|
| That's certainly one way to see it, but I don't think Notch
| was ever really in a position to turn some of his more
| grand ideas for the game into a reality. Not because he
| couldn't afford it, but because he didn't have the skill
| (or interest) in leading a Studio that's much bigger than
| ~20 people. From everything I've read about him it seems
| like he never liked any of the additional responsibilities
| that came with Minecrafts growing success and there are
| some accounts from some early members of the team that seem
| to corroborate this.
|
| So I really don't think he sold out. I think he realized
| that he couldn't be the person to manage Minecrafts
| generational success and that he'd rather have 2 billion
| dollars in exchange for giving another company a shot at
| that, versus not having that money and then seeing himself
| fail to bring his ideas to fruition.
|
| In the end that's of course just speculation. It could just
| as well be that he never had any of those thoughts and just
| fucked off, laughing all the way to the bank and then to
| the biggest hollywood mansion that money can buy. In that
| case I'm still glad that he got the bag from Microsoft,
| because I can imagine much worse ways that this could've
| gone.
| hoten wrote:
| Hardly anyone interacted with the crafting system via
| "discovery mode". Almost everyone consulted a wiki, or I guess
| had a friend tell you what to do. Stumbling upon how to make an
| axe without looking it up has got to be the least enjoyable
| part of Minecraft (note: not saying it's NOT enjoyable, it's
| just not high up on the list for most).
| grape_surgeon wrote:
| For me, I just don't really care about needing to discover
| everything myself. Discovering things like that takes time.
| If I play a game, I want to get the maximum intended
| experience from it without dragging things out while being
| confused. Does that "ruin" the experience? I don't really
| care if it does
| jasonjayr wrote:
| In the early days of NES (8-bit console) a lot of discovery
| about the games came from community, looking things up in
| various magazines, or just talking with your peers.
|
| There is value ot be had in sticking to that stance: It
| encourages social interaction, but more importantly for the
| bottom line, people are talking about your game. That
| Minecraft is now a multi-generation thing, there's a lot of
| people to talk to about it!
| simonw wrote:
| Microsoft's stewardship of Minecraft has been fantastic.
|
| Simplicity has never been a key element of Minecraft - redstone
| circuits were added years before the acquisition.
|
| The sheer quantity of weird and delightful stuff they've added
| has kept Minecraft new and interesting for over a decade.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Tbh Microsoft hasn't done anything near as impressive as the
| modding community. It's nice that they are still developing
| the Java edition so the modding community can continue though
|
| Check out the Create mod
|
| If Microsoft ever adds anything as cool as that to Minecraft,
| I may agree with you that they are keeping it new and
| interesting
| tialaramex wrote:
| I don't think it would ever "work" for Minecraft to attempt
| something like one of the big mods. Even "Better Than
| Wolves" which most people have been exposed to via packs
| with a later, richer "Better With Mods" is sort of giving
| the game away. Yes, the things "Better Than Wolves" did are
| better than what Minecraft itself delivered in that
| timeframe (Wolves, duh) but often what Minecraft's devs are
| doing is fundamental, infrastructure work. Mojang and then
| Microsoft make two kinds of ore, and then add a third,
| boring - but modders couldn't have added six hundred more
| kinds of ore without that. The built-in biomes are fine but
| they're not as radical as anything modders have done - but
| modders couldn't have added new biomes without that
| infrastructure.
|
| I think Mojang and Microsoft have been very good at
| sketching in new ideas, enriching the concept rather than
| refining all the details.
|
| They've also been good, because it's easier for a
| corporation, at completion. Anybody still waiting for
| Jaded's Agrarian Skies 2 ? How about for a meaningful end
| to Twilight Forest ? Modern packs tend to play the non-
| ending of Twilight Forest as if that's normal - gating
| further progress on the Magic Lamp for example, or just
| putting everything after the Trolls as optional - but
| wandering around the final castle it's obvious this just
| isn't finished.
|
| I play almost exclusively modded, mostly ascend-to-godhood
| type packs, and it's still very noticeable how different a
| modern pack is (based on modern Minecraft) than the 1.7 era
| packs we started out playing, because the base game is
| significantly better.
| sweca wrote:
| 1.8.9 is the best version. It's the calm before the storm.
| itronitron wrote:
| Yeah, 1.9 added shields.
| sweca wrote:
| And that awful PvP upgrade. Although that's probably an
| unpopular opinion.
| itronitron wrote:
| I was playing a lot of UHC at the time and everyone
| universally hated the 1.9 update.
| bakugo wrote:
| Agreed. I could write a 10 page essay about all the subtle ways
| minecraft has lost a lot of its original appeal since I first
| played it 14 years ago, but a few people have already done it
| for me in video format:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KqeLT-EOe0
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbFUK3r8GGU
| crngefest wrote:
| Just play an old version like 1.12 - IMO it's the version that
| has most of the quality of life stuff like elytra but not too
| many new blocks
| HuoKnight wrote:
| The article says that there is no built in tutorial or guide, but
| that isn't true. For as long as I have played the game, there has
| been the basic prompts that tell you to cut down a tree and make
| a crafting table. Accessible from the inventory or crafting table
| are recipes for every single item you can craft with the
| materials you have found. That's all the guide you need, as the
| rest is sandbox. All the progression can be discovered and needs
| no guide, though people usually use guides anyways.
| diggan wrote:
| I only remember Minecraft from when it had no built in
| tutorials what so ever. Seems that has changed now at least,
| for better or worse.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| > Accessible from the inventory or crafting table are recipes
| for every single item you can craft with the materials you have
| found.
|
| That wasn't there at first. I'm not sure when it was added, but
| this article is from 10 years ago, and I wouldn't be surprised
| if it hadn't been added yet.
| TheCleric wrote:
| If memory serves, those things were added shortly after this
| was written, sometime after Microsoft purchased Minecraft.
|
| Before it was "put you in a world, give you no instructions,
| and you have to figure out which items to place in specific
| position in a 2x2 or 3x3 grid to craft something (or read it
| online)."
| phit_ wrote:
| well the recipe book was only added in 2017, almost 8 years
| after the game was released.. so you haven't been playing that
| long
| phit_ wrote:
| hints like chopping wood were also added later in 2017
| diggan wrote:
| > The genius of Minecraft is that the game does not specify how
| this is done.
|
| Is this still true? Long time ago I last played Minecraft, but
| it's terrible common for games to change to be more mass-market
| friendly when bought by larger companies (Microsoft in this
| case), so it would surprise me if its still like that.
| HuoKnight wrote:
| It tells you to cut down a tree and make a crafting table,
| beyond that there isn't anything (bedrock edition may be
| different I haven't touched it in a while)
| opan wrote:
| For other "wiki games", I would recommend Terraria and Stardew
| Valley. Both have very rich wikis you can read for hours that
| will give you a much better understanding of game mechanics. I've
| also gotten into the habit of keeping a txt file for a game open
| in vim with notes on what I'm working on or what to work on next
| time I play. For Stardew it's stuff like "Kent's birthday is
| coming up, give him x item", or "catch/grow this before season
| ends". A lot of it gets deleted as I finish it, but I've also
| been thinking I should maybe flesh out a basic skeleton of
| important things to do on a new run so that I can get a refresher
| if I don't play for a long time.
|
| I think I plan less with Terraria than Stardew since the passing
| of time doesn't matter much at all comparatively, but I still
| consult the wiki constantly to see where to get an item or what a
| monster drops and so on. I've got over 1000 hours in Terraria,
| but some of this stuff is just a bit much to remember, plus it
| can change slightly from game updates.
|
| Both games have a lot of informational YouTube videos as well.
| All the videos of beginner tips are what finally got Stardew to
| click for me after owning it for years but failing to get into
| it. I went from taking months or years away from the game within
| the first Spring to finally getting sucked in enough to finish
| the rest of my first year within a few weeks IRL time.
|
| While some people probably think it's a chore to do all this work
| outside the game, I see it similarly to the author in the
| article, I think it enriches the experience. It also gives you a
| way to think about the game and get better at it while it's not
| even open. I don't like to open Stardew unless I'm prepared to
| play multiple hours in a row, but I can read the wiki and jot
| down some notes for a few minutes at any time.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Not to ick anyone's yum, but when games begin to approach the
| same parts of my brain that I use for work, I question why I'm
| not just using them to make more money instead.
|
| But said as an ex-EVE player, so color comment to taste.
| Carlseymanh wrote:
| I cannot think of any game that could approximate a full-time
| job as much as EVE (I am currently obsessed with factorio,
| which I play after working for 8 hours on production line
| automation systems)
| hoten wrote:
| Oh boy. Do many of your colleagues play, or at least
| understand your obsession? this reminds me of truckers
| playing trucking games in their rigs during downtime.
| scubbo wrote:
| I've heard it said that there are two kinds of Software
| Engineers when it comes to Factorio.
|
| There's one category who say "this is just like work, but I'm
| not getting paid to do it; why would I do this?"
|
| Then there's the other who say "this is all the bits I enjoy
| of work, with a faster and more direct feedback loop and
| without all the admin/management/other-people bullshit; I
| want to do this for the rest of my life"
|
| I am very much in the latter camp, but I can absolutely
| understand the former.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Option 3: "Solving these problems would be fun except they
| are too reminiscent of all the broken buggy real-world
| products that I came here to temporarily forget."
| oasisaimlessly wrote:
| Taken to an extreme, this would exclude any game with any
| element of problem solving, leaving just... cookie-clicker-
| and twitch-reflex-FPS-style games.
| awelxtr wrote:
| With games there less negative repercussions if you fail.
| Like none.
| yismail wrote:
| In a similar vein, I'd recommend Factorio and The Binding of
| Isaac.
| runeblaze wrote:
| Since we are onto game recommendations I recommend Pokemon
| without any irony. The wiki is vast. Honestly I don't know how
| people are supposed to learn about all the deeper game
| mechanics without a wiki, and RNG manipulation can be quite
| fun.
| opan wrote:
| I almost added on Pokemon to my comment! Agreed. Though I
| will say it's depressing to see the party you spent the whole
| game with is genetically inferior (low IVs) and you have to
| breed a whole new set to play competitively (or cheat, or use
| Pokemon Showdown instead of a real game), and that the
| breeding process has a lot of luck involved and takes ages. I
| think they improved this in more recent games with ways to
| raise your IVs, but it made me burn out on the series and
| stop playing at least once. I haven't played the Switch ones
| yet. When I was last playing through a Pokemon game, I think
| it was Sun, I planned out my final party and movesets for
| them in advance so I knew what TMs I had to find and which
| 'mons to catch on which routes.
| rootforce wrote:
| I've been playing Minecraft off and on since beta, and I've been
| able to introduce each of my kids as they've gotten old enough to
| play.
|
| It is pretty amazing, they all started in creative running around
| punching random things and now each one has their own way they
| like to play. One loves to build, another mini games, survival,
| parkour, mods etc. we are currently watching MCC live and it's
| like the Super Bowl. They all have their favorite streamers too.
|
| Few games turn into multi generational cultural movements like
| this.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Never played. No idea. We're big lego fans. Where should I
| start? Anything to avoid?
| itronitron wrote:
| If you like lego then you would probably want to start off in
| a basic survival world on peaceful or easy mode. That will
| give you a feel for the core mood of the game, build a house,
| tame a wolf, etc.
|
| If you really want to build elaborate structures then try
| creative mode.
|
| Some multiplayer servers have good support for creative, but
| I'd recommend avoiding the pvp minigames which are the
| standard fare on servers.
| rootforce wrote:
| Start at the beginning, survival. Try not looking anything up
| till you get stuck or bored.
|
| Avoid mods at first.
|
| Family friendly streamers are:
|
| - [Jax and
| Wild](https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCiJmKXWW7dOAVOrnHFviqhw)
|
| - [Grian](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU2851hDb3SEes
| CjVCmseu6...)
|
| - [Mumbo](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VMK_u3Hsd4U)
|
| -[Stinarose](https://m.youtube.com/@StinaRose)
| hluska wrote:
| A child taught me the game, my child picked it up when she
| was old enough and at this point I've played a lot of
| Minecraft.
|
| I'm a big fan of starting in creative mode with the
| difficulty set at peaceful. Mobs won't attack you and you
| don't have to deal with hunger. It's a good way to figure out
| crafting, mining and finding resources without having to deal
| with the combat and hunger systems. While you're in peaceful
| mode, learn how to grow crops (I like wheat and melons) and
| raise livestock (I like sheep and cows).
|
| My kid and I play a lot of survival together. I'm great at
| mining and find it very relaxing so I'll fill chests with
| materials and flatten out spaces so she has near endless
| materials and a lot of space to build whatever she is
| interested in.
|
| As you keep going, you'll figure out your style. There are no
| rules and you can play however you like.
|
| There are several streamers I would avoid but I'll let you
| figure that out according to your family's standards. We
| restrict multiplayer to friends my kid knows in person and
| whose parents I know. We'll change that as the years go by
| but for now it works.
|
| But have fun, enjoy and prepare yourself for some really
| interesting experiences.
| pjerem wrote:
| You could be tempted to start in Creative mode. Don't do it
| if you can.
|
| I say this as someone who loves playing in Creative mode :
| it's not the same game at all. Survival mode is pretty easy
| and it's not the same mood. There's a strange feeling in this
| game when you just start to build a wooden shelter with not
| even a door to survive the first night and somehow, after
| some hours, your shelter is now a cosy house with some
| underground cave that gives you an access to your own mine.
|
| That's really a cosy feeling that you can't feel in creative
| mode.
|
| Survival is pretty easy : there are monsters at night but
| surviving is nothing more than hiding in a dirt house.
|
| And then after hundreds of hours, your start to be bored and
| it's time to go Creative and to build gigantic castles.
|
| Also you said "we" : if you can play the game in multiplayer,
| it just doubles the fun.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| I just introduced my kid to Minecraft and it's fascinating how
| quickly they take to it, but to my (internal silent) horror,
| they've added so much that changes the survival experience from
| the early days that it's not really the same any more.
|
| Now there's villages which provide pre-made shelter, you can
| just trade and build up villager slaves to make all the
| resources for you, you can get a bed (which you find in all
| villages) which let's you skip the night phase completely, and
| they've even added in wings so people are flying everywhere.
|
| Ironically they've taken the mining out of Minecraft (both the
| mines because you get resources elsewhere and the minecarts
| because every other mode of transport is better) and the
| survival out of survival mode.
|
| Of course, I got bored and tried my hand at building a new and
| better survival mode and recapture that magic mixed with my own
| curiosities of making a natural world simulation:
|
| https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/modpacks/au-naturel
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kMuTS7tevt4&pp=ygUKYWNvd2Fkb25...
|
| So maybe I'm just playing the game in 2024 after all :)
|
| And my kid loves creative.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| > No lava buckets
|
| But that was available since InDev :'(. Cheers though, I
| appreciate the points you make and I agree with them. The mod
| adds too much realism for my taste, but most of the removals
| are very nice.
| skerit wrote:
| Villagers have been in the game since Beta 1.9, the last beta
| release before 1.0.0 in 2011...
|
| So maybe not the best example.
|
| Elytras have been around for a long time too, but they really
| are OP
| herpdyderp wrote:
| I can only play on hardcore mode now, doing that puts the
| survival back in. Unfortunately I have no friends willing to
| join me in that :')
| medstrom wrote:
| > Removed supernatural or fantastical minecraft mobs: no
| zombies, skeletons, creepers, endermen, etc.
|
| No zombies? That is mind-blowing. I love the vision you
| outline at 13:40-15:40, will play when I get a beefy enough
| computer for Minecraft mods ;-)
| Livanskoy wrote:
| I can recommend checking out Vintage Story if you want the
| refined Minecraft survival experience. Just finished playing
| it with my wife a few weeks ago -- great fun.
| ineptech wrote:
| It's hard not to mourn what was lost though. Minecraft mods
| were how a lot of teenagers got acquainted with scripting, and
| it's a lot harder to get started with your own server since MS
| bought it and forced it to authenticate through Azure. In my
| kids' friendgroup at least, the "modding games as an entry
| point to programming" concept has been handed off from
| Minecraft to Roblox.
|
| It's nice that they've added a bunch of functionality, but the
| pessimistic view is that MS spent $1.6B to force the world's
| schoolchildren to make office.com logins.
| herewulf wrote:
| Minetest, which has been around nearly as long and is a FOSS
| game with more or less feature parity, covers all these
| bases. Super easy to script in Lua. Simple to set up servers.
|
| I've gotten my kids into Minetest after they kept hearing
| about Minecraft and asking to play, and they absolutely love
| it. Runs great on lower end hardware too.
| lolinder wrote:
| This is the kind of pessimistic take that gets a lot of
| traction on HN, but man does it not match my experience.
|
| > Minecraft mods were how a lot of teenagers got acquainted
| with scripting, and it's a lot harder to get started with
| your own server since MS bought it and forced it to
| authenticate through Azure.
|
| First off, the pivot from mods to running a server is sort of
| related, I guess? But it's not at all clear how your
| complaints about servers have any bearing on the modding,
| which is still very much there. The Minecraft Forge docs are
| better than ever [0], there are 3000+ mods on Curseforge
| already compatible with 1.21 and 5000+ compatible with 1.20.
| That a lot of kids have moved to other games has more to do
| with the ephemeral nature of childhood entertainment than it
| does with Microsoft stifling modding in any way.
|
| Second, I'm not at all sure what you mean about servers being
| harder to set up. Here are the instructions for setting up a
| Minecraft server [1]. The instructions actually seem
| substantially shorter than I remember them being from back in
| the day, most of the bullet points are just explanations for
| various settings you could configure.
|
| > It's nice that they've added a bunch of functionality, but
| the pessimistic view is that MS spent $1.6B to force the
| world's schoolchildren to make office.com logins.
|
| Microsoft bought Minecraft in 2014, 3 years after it was
| officially released and 10 years before now. What you're
| offering is a very pessimistic view given that history,
| especially so given that it seems to be entirely based on a
| single account migration from bespoke Minecraft accounts to
| Microsoft accounts. You can be cynical about that all you
| want, but speaking is a developer in a company that currently
| has 3 account systems I'm going to venture that that move was
| exactly what they claimed it was: an effort to simplify
| things and increase security.
|
| [0] https://docs.minecraftforge.net/en/latest/gettingstarted/
|
| [1] https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-
| us/articles/360058525452-Ho...
| 256_ wrote:
| I can't even imagine what it's like now, but Roblox is how I
| first learned programming when I was 11. This was well over a
| decade ago.
|
| Roblox (talking in past tense; not sure how much of this is
| still true) allowed you to create "Places", which were
| basically 3D interactive universes that consisted of a few
| primitive parts (rect. prisms, cylinders, etc.) arranged and
| connected to each other, as larger solid objects, or with
| hinges. It was, in other words, a multi-player physics
| sanbox. Also, the use of the word "place" instead of "game"
| is interesting to note; as a child, it felt like they could
| really be anything, with no particular expectations.
|
| I don't remember when Lua scripting was added - I think it
| was around 2008-2009 or somethng - but it allowed you to
| perform simple event-based programming, registering
| clicks/deaths/collisions/etc and manipulating the game world.
| As a child I saw this as a form of magic. What would
| otherwise be a physics sandbox with inanimate objects
| interacting in a strictly mechanistic fashion became one in
| which anything could happen. You know, magic. Maybe that
| sounds stupid, but that was my thinking.
|
| So I became a programmer because I wanted to be a wizard. I
| am still pursuing this goal. Also, RIP Erik Cassel. His
| tutorials were one of my first - if not my first -
| introduction to programming ever. He died too soon.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| Lost? Nothing has been deprecated, Java edition is still
| supported and kept in feature parity with Bedrock aka MS
| Edition. Yes, Bedrock is not mod friendly like Java, but the
| modding community hasn't stopped.
|
| And yes they moved the license server from a Mojang server to
| the MS login system, but what is the real difference here?
| You still have to login, you just don't like MS for unrelated
| reasons.
|
| https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server
|
| https://hub.docker.com/search?q=minecraft
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/admincraft/
| codeulike wrote:
| One of the other innovations of Minecraft is that they didn't
| worry too much about rendering chunks in a timely manner. When
| you're on multiplayer and moving fast its not uncommon for the
| landscape to get rendered right infront of your eyes. Some games
| go to great lengths to avoid that (e.g. slow the player down or
| have distance fog so that they never notice areas being loaded).
| But if the game is fun, no-one cares about hiding the loading.
| comprev wrote:
| I've never played Minecraft as such but have great memories of
| spending time with my nephews while they built things with this
| digital Lego.
|
| We also built loads of cool things with [my old] Lego too :-)
| momojo wrote:
| > I'm a writer, and don't get me wrong: To publish a plain ol'
| book that people actually want to read is still a solid
| achievement. But I think Markus Persson and his studio have
| staked out a new kind of achievement, a deeper kind: To make the
| system that calls forth the book, which is not just a story but a
| real magick manual that grants its reader (who consumes it
| avidly, endlessly, all day, at school, at night, under the
| covers, studying, studying) new and exciting powers in a vivid,
| malleable world.
|
| This so vividly captures my childhood experience with Minecraft
| Beta.
|
| Something I think the article could have clarified; it's not the
| quantity of content, but the lack of it, that (IMO) made it such
| a joy to play. It offered just enough, and not a speck more.
|
| They've added so much more content since then (not a bad thing),
| but I think kids are naturally curious, volume-filling creatures.
| I didn't need a tutorial to tell me to start exploring caves. But
| it gave me torches and dark, mysterious entrances just asking to
| be dived into.
|
| My theory, if anyone wants to make something akin to minecraft in
| the future, is to do just enough, and not too much. Make a game
| that's delightful as a toy to pick and play around with; and
| resist the overwhelming urge to add more.
| xmprt wrote:
| It has a lot of parallels with Lego and not just the fact that
| they're both a bunch of boxes that you can attach together. I
| think the fundamental mechanics of Minecraft lends itself to a
| type of creativity that other games find it hard to recreate.
| By being so little, it manages to be so much more than the sum
| of its parts. Minecraft didn't have a proper ending for the
| first few years of its life.
| nottorp wrote:
| The secret of Minecraft is that it's the Lego game without Lego
| corporate involvement.
|
| Or at least it was before MS bought it.
|
| These days you have to find servers that disable the chat
| censorship if you're an adult that plays with adults.
|
| And no, it's not kids only, as 90% of the other comments probably
| say.
| infinitezest wrote:
| For anyone wanting to re-experience the beta-like nature of the
| original Minecraft, I suggest minetest. There are quite a few
| game modes, but the one that I tend to like the most is called
| MineClonia, since it fairly closely follows the general shape of
| Minecraft gameplay (as one might expect). The devs are very
| responsive and it's very easy to hack on and mod (as it uses
| Lua).
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