Minecraft is fun, but whenver I play it, I find myself wishing it were more like Dwarf Fortress. And then I go play Dwarf Fortress instead.

Odd. Whenever I play Dwarf Fortress, I find myself wishing it were more like Minecraft.

Combine Minecraft's visuals with Dwarf Fortress' gameplay and you'd have the perfect game.

Is that when you try to go down on Kirby and he tries to stop you?

It used to be that you could get the 3D perspective just by running one of several visualizers, so it already had that covered. They aren't compatible with the latest version, though. The only one right now that is compatible has an isometric perspective.
The game's interface itself does need lots of work, but it's still in alpha, so interface overhauls might just end up needing to be overhauled again later.

The one aspect that of Minecraft that I would like to see in Dwarf Fortress is the 'survival mode' concept. You can't really get into a challenging wilderness survival situation in Dwarf Fortress adventure mode. It is certainly in the planning though, and Dwarf Fortress will be much better at it. None of this mining-with-a-wooden-pick nonsense.

Hey, check out this tree I found in the woods that reminded me of Minecraft.

Yeah but George Lucas had people fixing his ****ed up writing on the first three star wars.

Not so more recently.

He hired some guys, they haven't done much yet though.

A crappy coder with a stolen idea. Yes.

Hell, look what Mark Zuckerberg was able to do as a crappy coder with a stolen idea.

I know. It's depressing.

I feel as though it's a bit of a stretch to say that the idea for Minecraft is stolen from Infiniminer. The earlier versions were more similar in concept, but with the direction the game is going in, it seems to take a lot of influence from Wurm Online (another game Notch worked on) and it's getting pretty far from the scope of Infiniminer's design.
Also, Infiniminer was discontinued before Minecraft was released.

Game 'clones' have always been a common phenomenon in the gaming industry, anyways.

Yeah, for one what does is matter if he's a good coder, or if the idea isn't entirely original? If derivatives and poor coding were eliminated how many games would we really have? I wonder why he didn't hire people more experienced than himself to rewrite the game though.

Because he doesn't like Minecraft and he doesn't want to work on it anymore.

If the code is poorly written and he continues to add yet more poorly written code, it will become increasingly difficult to continue developing Minecraft.

Update 11-4-12
Added leaf decay
Updated 11-5-12
Removed leaf decay because it broke quantum physical simulation.

more like

Update 1.2.3 - Re-enabled leaf decaying.
Update 1.2.3_01 - Fixed infinite looping by disabling leaf updates.

lol what are open and closed sets???

I think the code is an artistic statement.

Well, I'll certainly agree that his algorithms are very "creative."

ITT Jon`C shows (yet again) that he doesn't know anything about software engineering* by downplaying the importance of releasing software.

Crappy code in the hands of the user trumps clean elegant code that the user never sees. Unless you're an academic and writing your PhD thesis.


* As opposed to, say, just programming.

...so are you being serious, or what?

I'll have you know that I have a lot of experience with both putting crappy code in the hands of the user and clean elegant code that the user never sees!

Oh good, look at this obvious example of backpedaling on the part of Yon-C

I'm being serious. Every time I see you in a discussion on software you are absolutely spot on with every comment except that you seem to consistently misunderstand the fact that [edit: in the Real World] Shipping Is Everything. Everything else is secondary to getting users to use your software. Minecraft is successful because it is being played by real people.

The author has apparently made a lot of money out of this? That's because he released. Some hypothetical other person has some really well factored code that would be a snip to fix bugs in? Did they release? No. Fail.

I'm pretty sure that there's a big difference between neat coding and capitalism.

Sweet, a false dichotomy. I don't get to see those very often.

There is absolutely no reason you cannot simultaneously produce quality code AND ship. In fact, producing quality code in the first place means you are definitely going to ship sooner, more regularly and with a lower defect rate than whatever haphazard approach Notch is using.

No, Notch made a lot of money because he was lucky. He stumbled into an overwhelmingly huge word-of-mouth advertising campaign, which continues to gain momentum in spite of glaring flaws in the product because the majority of his fanbase suffers from debilitating Aspergers.

Some hypothetical other person has some really well factored code that would be a snip to fix bugs in. That hypothetical other person did release (Infiniminer.) Did they make a lot of money? No.

Nice theory.

Edit: And sorry, Giraffe, but there are very few people on this forum who have the right to question my attitude about development resp. shipping [being] everything, and you aren't one of them. Come back and talk to me when you ship jkworkshop or at least a jkhub that isn't broken.

I never said quality and shipping were mutually exclusive. I also never said quality was unimportant, merely that it was secondary.

I also never said there was no element of luck in becoming successful. My main point was that if you don't ship, you're out of the race before it's even started.

As to JKW and the JKHub, I've never claimed they were successes, but I note you had to qualify with "a jkhub that isn't broken", indicating that, in fact, we did ship something with the Hub. (Also, not sure what you mean by "broken"? Missing features definitely, but people seem to be getting some value from it)

If I ever came across as suggesting I deserved some respect for not releasing Workshop then I apologise for miscommunicating as that was never my intent. I don't believe I spammed the forums and made a big thing of it being developed, I quietly worked on it in the background.

You'd have to look at my professional record of delivering software to truly judge whether I "had the right to question your attitude", rather than taking two examples from
personal side projects I worked on as and when I had the time which also served as learning projects.

You're right: you didn't say quality and shipping were mutually exclusive. You also never said that quality was unimportant.

What you did say is that I don't know anything about software engineering (*gasp*) because you imagine that I consider the act of actually producing something to be an irrelevant detail.

Be careful, Giraffe. Hubris is usually JM's angle.

And my main point is that it's easy to knock down strawmen.

Hold on to your butt.

...and the same "need" doesn't apply to your opinion because....?

I don't imagine that you consider the act of actually producing something to be an irrelevant detail, I surmise it from your posts. Have I interpreted your complaints about successful software which has ****ty code incorrectly? If so, my apologies.

I can't be bothered to do all the proper quoting, but this is the exchange that prompted my original post:

DSettahr: Man, based on opinions here and at Something Awful, it sounds like there's a lot of nerd rage on the internet because Notch has managed to make himself a millionaire even though he's a crappy coder.
Jon`C: A crappy coder with a stolen idea. Yes.
kyle90: Hell, look what Mark Zuckerberg was able to do as a crappy coder with a stolen idea.
Jon`C: I know. It's depressing.

*shrug* If I'm really that wrong, sorry.

Also, what does this mean?

I'm not ashamed to admit that I wish more talented, creative people would make the big $$$ instead of useless leeches like what normally happens in our ****ed up culture. That sentiment belies a fundamental gap in my sense of pragmatism, not a misunderstanding of software engineering (or economics, which is what we're really talking about.)

In other words: apology accepted.

I can somewhat understand why would you interpret my complaints the way you did. However, please keep in mind that in the two way table of software quality vs. profitability there's very little to be gained from complaining about the other three boxes.

Man, I hope nobody ever looks at the cogs in TODOA. >_>

TODOA?

I looked at your cogs and they SUCKED

but at least you shipped.

Yeah, I think it's like Minecraft for JK

Hold on to your butt.

And then click the link in FGR's signature. Geez, where have you been?!

it sucks cogs? is it a video game?

i'm not trying to be obtuse but who is "FGR"?

I'm okay with knowing notch, a crappy coder, has 16 dollars of mine.

I'd play. Promise not to grief.

Still mentioning TODOA in every post you do?

I've never played Minecraft. I'm going to let this craze fly past me. Like everything else since '99.

That's how you know it's a good cog.