January 2010
63 posts
Sunday night update
+ Tools take damage (better tools last (way) longer) + Title screen! No more automatic level generation on start. + Updated to LWJGL 2.2.2 (should fix ATi startup crash) + Remade the mouse handling. It’s slightly laggier now, but it works on multiple windows and when losing focus in linux + Some eye candy in water + Switched out the map load/save dialogs to use AWT dialogs. They’re not...
Wow, I got a lot of emails about forums
I usually reply to almost all emails I get, but these were just too many, haha. =D
Thank you for all the great suggestions and offers! Because of the events leading up to my last blog post, however, I’m going to just sit tight and see what happens, haha.
The main concern seems to be preserving all the existing posts.
[edit:]
Also, I don’t run the current forums. Aera hosts it, and...
I feel a bit like I was stepping on toes with the...
I think the minecraftforums.net forums are most excellent, and a LOT of good suggestions come out of that place.
I’d like to thank Citricsquid for starting it, Aera for hosting it, and the admins and mods (especially PuyoDead, ez and Animator who let me know what’s going on) for doing a really amazing job keeping it readable.
And a special big thank you to the entire community!
...
Trying out a new community?
Long story short; I don’t want to host any forums myself, I simply don’t have the time or the energy for that. But I am willing to set one up and pay for all the costs, as long as I don’t have to actually RUN it. ;)
What I want is something like this: http://minecraft.informe.com/ Ideally, it’d be a paid service with guaranteed uptime and no ads, but that one still seems...
SPOILER ALERT! A list of some crafting recipes on... →
Phew, last indev update for today
The game now contains 59 block types, 34 item types, and 36 recipes for crafting. More’s coming!
You can make food now by making a wooden bowl and mixing some mushrooms into it.
You can make arrows, and bows, and TNT, and workbenches, and chests. And golden weapons, if you want to. Oh, and the gemstone formerly known as “emerald” is now “diamond” because it makes...
Fragmer and Cueball are gods among men. They made... →
Crafting.. Is it fun yet?
In my opinion, kind of! Some things are too tedious, others aren’t there yet. It needs more work, obviously.
I’m considering having a 2x2 crafting area in the player inventory, then require crafting tables (which can be built from the 2x2 area) to build 3x3 items, like tools and so.
What do you think? I’d love discussion on both irc and the forums about this. It it on the right...
Crafting on /indev/ now
It’s not very intuitive yet, but it kinda actually works!
Here are some hints to get you started:
Right click with a stack of items to place only one in the inventory. Place two wood tiles so that one is above the other, and you can build sticks. Make a “T” shape out of two sticks and three wood blocks to make a wooden pickaxe.
You can make torches.
You can make emerald...
Phew, got the inventory cleaned up
I reworked how the clicking around in the inventory works, and cleaned up the code a whole lot.
There’s a new interim update up on indev now if you want to try it (and voxel sprites) out. ‘b’ is hardcoded to open a crafting menu there as well, but that’s just temporary.
Oh, and ignore the weird graphical glitch when it first starts. Just click it to make it behave. =)
There's a lot of work to be done for crafting!
I’m trying an item assembly based approach to crafting. You’ll have a 3x3 tile grid of item slots. Putting the right combination of items in there turns them into a new item.
For example, this would become a pickaxe:
XXX X = Iron ingot .#. # = Wood .#. . = Nothing
And this would be a sword:
.X. X = Iron ingot .X. # = Wood .#. . = Nothing
And an iron block: (The...
And they're gone!
Who benefits from ads?
Me as a developer? Kinda. Assuming the equation I mentioned in the last blog about the ads works out as positive, there’s an economic incentive to run ads. But I’m encouraging users to pay for other games, when I would rather have them pay for my game, which is the reason they come there in the first place.
The players? No. Definitely not. The web site gets...
VVVV →
The ads.
The flash ads caused some performance problems on some computers, so I changed to text only ads.
As for how much money they make.. I’m not allowed to share any details, or I would. But let’s just say they won’t make me rich.
From a purely economical standpoint, I should keep the ads if the revenue from ads plus the number of people who purchase the game just to get rid of the...
Back from JFocus!
For the last two days, I’ve been attending JFocus and finishing up a 4k game (more details soon).
Tomorrow (when I wake up) it’s back to Minecraft! Next up is crafting. I will get something out this week so we can start to get this nailed down. =)
A really cool interactive map by Jamigrith →
Tile particle emittors, better explosions, and ads
Last night’s and this evening’s updates:
+ Particles, finally! + Much better TNT explosions. TNT will lose power traveling through different materials, so it’ll blast smaller holes through rock, but larger through dirt. + Explosions will no longer hurt you through rock (unless the rock blows up, that is) + Tiles near the player can spawn particles (fire, lava, torches at the...
Chests, and generic tile entity support
Another indev update!
+ Chest blocks + Sounds for arrows + Lava sets stuff on fire again + When dropping a stack of items, you drop them all instead of one at a time + Stacks in the world change graphics based on how many there are in the stack
Indev's been updated with a bunch of goodies
A bunch of new stuff in this one:
* New liquid spawner in level generator. Water (and lava) can spawn above sea level now, and on floating islands, and caves should be less flooded. * Working bow and arrow. You can’t hit enemies yet, though, but the items work! Right click the bow to use it. * Local saving/loading (no online yet). This uses the new file format. * New lighting pass,...
I really enjoyed this custom level. Except for... →
Check out #5 on this list :D →
The level file format has been specified
I looked around for some tagged binary format that fit my needs, but everything was either waaay too complex or failed to do what I wanted, so I ended up rolling my own.
You can read the full level file format specification here.
As soon as I get it working well, the indev version of the game will be able to load levels in that format. Possibly tonight, probably tomorrow.
I encourage you to...
As per demand, you can now gift the game
The design is a bit ugly, but you can now send gifts of the game to other players:
http://www.minecraft.net/gift.jsp (there’s a link to this page from the prepurchase.jsp page as well)
It even checks that he/she doesn’t have the full game already.
ecrider got offered a job because of his... →
Oh wow, logic gates!
There are a lot of crazy things happening on the official forums, like freaking logic gates made out of liquid and sand! I’m very impressed, and even more inspired.
I’ve mentioned the expansion before, and as you might remember, it will include programmable tiles. Some of these will make stuff like calculators a lot easier to develop.
As an example of what I’m thinking,...
TIGJam UK 2 is over. Can't wait until the next...
Boy, I had a lot of fun, and made a few games. I even started work on what I personally think is a pretty epic 4k game for Java4k, but more about that on a later date.
Oh, and I met Dock, and talked quite a bit about Minecraft with him (even if it hardly was my primary reason for coming to Cambridge). He kicked my ass in Bomberman, and we decided to make space for custom arrow graphics in the...
And an untitled 15 minute game, on the theme... →
One hour tigjam game: CatRace →
Another three hour game. Sunshine Bubbles. →
Three hour game, made at TIGJam UK2 →
minecraft.net had some downtime again
It’s gone down three times so far. I checked the logs more carefully this time and saw that it had “too many files open”. The default limit in linux is 1000 files. On its own, the web server keeps about 700 files open on a bad day. Network connections count as files in linux.
This means that if there are 300 connections coming into the server at once (a single using refreshing a...
I SHOULD be sleeping, but..
I managed to figure out the biggest reason for water being so slow. :D It was a very silly bug, and thankfully very easy to fix.
Water runs MUCH faster now, and I added an item spawner block (check your inventory) so you can make lakes on floating maps.
I’ll go record a video of this now.
No more putting it off! Finite water in /indev/!
Well, it kinda sorta works. :D
Water will always drain from the highest most remote location when flowing. The oceans have infinite water. Water won’t move around along the surface is on. Water won’t spread out over unfilled water surfaces. This generates waterfalls that will slowly fill up basins. Water that can’t move and has empty space next to it will either evaporate (66%...
Member number 100000 was JostVice3D!
I just realized I keep track of register date and time!
One quick sort and look up later, and member number one hundred thousand officially has a free paid account. I even sent him/her a personal email.
Ok, I'm a moron.
I never got the email with the name of the 100000’th registered player. Curious as to why, I checked the source code.
if (Users.count==1000000) {
Now I wish I had kept track of register # on each account.
100 000 registered users!
Last night, the game passed 100 000 registered users! :-D That’s pretty darn good!
Unfortunately, not every single one of those were registered by a human. Back before I added the captcha, there was at least one instance of a bot running wild and registering a whole bunch of accounts. (I will probably clean out unused and unpaid accounts sometime during beta)
But still, the number of...
My schedule for the next week or so.
I’ll be gone all day tomorrow, then I’ll do some Minecraft stuff on Wednesday evening (chests, I hope, which I totally failed to add today in favor of fullscreen mode and a very nice code cleanup thing for the entity renderer).
On Thursday, I leave for TIGJam UK2, and I won’t be back until veeeery late on Tuesday next week. Wednesday evening next week, I get started on Minecraft...
Yeah, there are bugs with fullscreen mode. ;D
If you’re in a game menu, you can’t toggle it.
There sometimes is a weird gray border.
On some hardware, it can crash the browser(!).
Anything else buggy about it?
Fullscreen mode in indev
It’s a bit buggy still, but press F11 to toggle fullscreen. The game automatically switches back to windowed mode if it loses focus (like if you alt+tab) or when you press F11 again.
Also, if the applet were to magically resize somehow, the game will now rescale with it.
I'm definitely using the todo list, and some...
Yeah, that todo list is awesome. I’m definitely going to use it. I’ll add things to it as I remember them, and I’ll keep it as updated as I can. Dates and priorities will change, as I’m very flexible in my workflow, so don’t rely on what you read on there to still be valid one week later.
I’ve got it set up now so that roughly everything that isn’t set to...
Working inventory items, burning enemies, and so...
Today’s tasks:
+ Added more stats to the web site. It currently claims everyone bought the game yesterday, but that’ll fix itself within 20 hours or so. + Lava will set fire to flammable materials. + All items and enemies can catch on fire. + Made gathering resources 50%, but: + Added shovels, pickaxes and axes to gather different materials 400% faster + Added apples. Right click to...
Public TODO list?
I think keeping a public TODO list of planned features would be a very good way of letting people know what’s planned and roughly when it’s going to happen.
I’d keep the TODO list roughly in order (more accurate towards the top), and as much up to date as I can, but I’d avoid setting any dates unless I can more or less guarantee them.
For this, I’ve registered an...
Interview with Dock at CraftHub →