Here's a proposal for high tech I've been going over, personally, I hate it. The style, approach and ideas are all wrong. I did this in a spare 15 minutes, so please be kind. Change it as much as you want. I personally want to look at qwertyz's Oceancraft proposal. He did it juuuuust right. Here it is.
HIGH TECHNOLOGY IN MINECRAFT
There is dissatisfaction in the forum.
What I, and doubtless many others see too often is bold and daring new ideas being proposed in a spurt of inspiration- only to be shot down in flames. The reason why it is dismissed is because of one reason-
"It's too high tech for Minecraft."
Many agree, but I see this as lunacy.
We cower behind castle walls and wait for the day. We slave away in the mines and farms for a pittance. Walking is the primary mode of transport. The awesome potential of Redstone is merely a novelty. Monsters own the night, and can destroy us at any moment they please.
Nature owns us.
How can this be?
It can be confidently said that the spirit of Minecraft is about taming nature, making IT work for US. Building walls, towers, circuits and traps that work to OUR advantage.
It is hardly doing good service to such a magnificent game to let the "goal" of Minecraft stagnate. Building monuments to our ingenuity can only go so far. To facilitate the growth of the game, we must develop more technology.
I propose that Notch and Jeb implement more tech.
Minecraft has too much potential to sit in medievalism. It needs to branch out.
This thread will be a haven for the mods, ideas and people that enrich our crafterly existence.
We stand for the introduction of (including, but not limited to)-
REDSTONE IMPROVEMENTS
This will hopefully be a major focus. Redstone is so underdeveloped, with limitless potential.
I, for one, would like my base hooked up to a supercomputer. It would control doors, traps, lighting, alarms, music and dozens of other things. Other than this practical use, it could be implemented in making games within Minecraft; like Pong, Tetris or even Minecraft.
Limitless potential.
To do this, we need miniaturisation most urgently. We need integrated circuits (or Pocket Dimensions) and different coloured wires (say, four colours to a block). There are many others, but this will do for now.
STEAM POWER
This would be a stepping stone out of the present medievalism. When steam is acquired, the work stations that come with it would allow you to build all of the below. Steam would also act as a mechanical force- driving vehicles (because powered minecarts are useless) and large contraptions.
BETTER TRANSPORT
Everybody in Minecraft gets around the map by walking. Is this the middle ages?! Oh wait...
On a map that is 8X the area of the Earth, more efficient transport is needed. Jeeps, speedboats, improved minecarts and *possibly* planes/helicopters.
IMPROVED WEAPONS
Could you imagine waging full scale industrial war? Cruisin' around in your tank, blasting at infantry- running away from your 20 tonne war machine? Sniping the poor sod who sticks his head above cover? Blowing holes in 25 block wide walls with your destroyer's guns hovering in the bay? Shelling the other team from across the continent in their trenches for your men in the front line? Or even dropping a nuke on a whole city?
How fun would it be?!
I don't know about nukes, as it might get OP unless the materials are VERY HARD to find and process, as well as making transport and detonation difficult as hell. Plus the whole lag issue of deleting 300X300X128 blocks in a shockwave manner.
FACTORIES & HARVESTERS
Very hard to build. But the finished factory would be you putting in the raw materials, being crafted automatically, then sent up a conveyer belt to where you need it. Of course the machine would have to be powered with copious amounts of coal/wood.
The harvesters would go in a straight line until they either- run out of fuel, fill their hoppers, or hit something they can't mine. The blades/drill would break and need to be replaced (also periodically with wear.) It would mine 3X3X1 every 2 seconds. Has applications in war for building tunnels for infiltration or putting a nuke under their base without them noticing.
If people don't want the above, they can tick a box before they start a game to opt out, or stay off the tech servers.
With current clunky programming resulting in mass lag on even banal maps, this is a serious issue, and it requires serious help. Jeb is currently looking at better speeds, and there is possibly a solution
Quote from crozone »
The result of the lag most likely comes down to how the game is programmed. At the moment it doesn't make use of multithreading, which means it will only be able to max out 1 core in multicore systems. Also, the rendering engine appears to be heavy on CPU and RAM and lighter on the graphics card. This results in lots of RAM being eaten and a single core of your CPU being maxed, resulting in the lag. If the rendering engine, chunk loading system and physics (water/lava/redstone) were all given separate threads, there would be an incredible speed boost.
"The guns and war will make it too FPS-y"
I don't think so. If anything, I'd imagine it being like a single ground troop inside an RTS. And, so what? If you're not a fan, stay off those servers. How could an optional new development make the game worse?
"This is too ambitious. It'll never get off the ground."
It won't if you're negative about it! The more people we have, the better chances we have.
MOD SUPPORTERS
If you are a dev, modder, artist, or have an idea, we'd love to hear from you!
Here's some mods and people who support us-
[Nobody yet- thinking of getting these people's approval-
Infinium guy
SDK Gun mod guy
Steampunk guy
Redstone Clan people
Pocket Dimensions guy
qwertyz]
TL;DR- We want...
Many Redstone improvements
Steam power
Improved weapons (various guns, battleships, artillery, tanks and maybe nukes)
Better transport (flight, better minecarts, cars, better boats)
Factories w/ conveyor belts (put in raw material, finished products come out, delivered to where it's needed)
Mechanised Miners/Harvesters (Minerals/food)
New blocks, parts and components to accommodate the above.
Your contributions!
Like the idea? Spread the word with these nifty banners, provided courtesy of- (no banners yet, workin' on it.)
A perfect example of a restone computer, only 8 bit, but has a CPU, ALU, and 16 bits of ram. There is actually a discussion in the comments about a man trying to create a basic snake game, read it if you get the time, I'm going to reply to his comment asking him if he wants to join URC!
There's a thread about this here if you're interested. There's also a thread about programming it here and a screen I've built for it here. The screen isn't connected to the CPU yet, I'm still working on the GPU, but I'll be finishing that as soon as I can so that I can upgrade the CPU a bit. :smile.gif:
Also, about playing games on computers in minecraft. I think the best way to do this would be to build a machine specifically for the game you want to play. My computer that I'm working on is too slow for real-time games, because it's made to be able to do a number of different calculations and to be programmed. If you make a machine that can only be used to play a single game, it'll be much faster as it will only need to do whatever the game requires of it, so it'll be able to do it a lot faster. Counting's PONG project is an example of this:http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=106953&p=1592848#p1584725
Here's a proposal for high tech I've been going over, personally, I hate it. The style, approach and ideas are all wrong. I did this in a spare 15 minutes, so please be kind. Change it as much as you want. I personally want to look at qwertyz's Oceancraft proposal. He did it juuuuust right. Here it is.
HIGH TECHNOLOGY IN MINECRAFT
There is dissatisfaction in the forum.
What I, and doubtless many others see too often is bold and daring new ideas being proposed in a spurt of inspiration- only to be shot down in flames. The reason why it is dismissed is because of one reason-
"It's too high tech for Minecraft."
Many agree, but I see this as lunacy.
We cower behind castle walls and wait for the day. We slave away in the mines and farms for a pittance. Walking is the primary mode of transport. The awesome potential of Redstone is merely a novelty. Monsters own the night, and can destroy us at any moment they please.
Nature owns us.
How can this be?
It can be confidently said that the spirit of Minecraft is about taming nature, making IT work for US. Building walls, towers, circuits and traps that work to OUR advantage.
It is hardly doing good service to such a magnificent game to let the "goal" of Minecraft stagnate. Building monuments to our ingenuity can only go so far. To facilitate the growth of the game, we must develop more technology.
I propose that Notch and Jeb implement more tech.
Minecraft has too much potential to sit in medievalism. It needs to branch out.
This thread will be a haven for the mods, ideas and people that enrich our crafterly existence.
We stand for the introduction of (including, but not limited to)-
REDSTONE IMPROVEMENTS
This will hopefully be a major focus. Redstone is so underdeveloped, with limitless potential.
I, for one, would like my base hooked up to a supercomputer. It would control doors, traps, lighting, alarms, music and dozens of other things. Other than this practical use, it could be implemented in making games within Minecraft; like Pong, Tetris or even Minecraft.
Limitless potential.
To do this, we need miniaturisation most urgently. We need integrated circuits and different coloured wires (say, four colours to a block). There are many others, but this will do for now.
STEAM POWER
This would be a stepping stone out of the present medievalism. When steam is acquired, the work stations that come with it would allow you to build all of the below. Steam would also act as a mechanical force- driving vehicles (because powered minecarts are useless) and large contraptions.
BETTER TRANSPORT
Everybody in Minecraft gets around the map by walking. Is this the middle ages?! Oh wait...
On a map that is 8X the area of the Earth, more efficient transport is needed. Jeeps, speedboats, improved minecarts and *possibly* planes/helicopters.
IMPROVED WEAPONS
Could you imagine waging full scale industrial war? Cruisin' around in your tank, blasting at infantry- running away from your 20 tonne war machine? Sniping the poor sod who sticks his head above cover? Blowing holes in 25 block wide walls with your destroyer's guns hovering in the bay? Shelling the other team from across the continent in their trenches for your men in the front line? Or even dropping a nuke on a whole city?
How fun would it be?!
I don't know about nukes, as it might get OP unless the materials are VERY HARD to find and process, as well as making transport and detonation difficult as hell. Plus the whole lag issue of deleting 300X300X128 blocks in a shockwave manner.
FACTORIES & HARVESTERS
Very hard to build. But the finished factory would be you putting in the raw materials, being crafted automatically, then sent up a conveyer belt to where you need it. Of course the machine would have to be powered with copious amounts of coal/wood.
The harvesters would go in a straight line until they either- run out of fuel, fill their hoppers, or hit something they can't mine. The blades/drill would break and need to be replaced (also periodically with wear.) It would mine 3X3X1 every 2 seconds. Has applications in war for building tunnels for infiltration or putting a nuke under their base without them noticing.
If people don't want the above, they can tick a box before they start a game to opt out, or stay off the tech servers.
With current clunky programming resulting in mass lag on even banal maps, this is a serious issue, and it requires serious help. I suggest that Notch take the drastic measure and translate the scripting language from the awful Java to something more powerful. Let's face it, the lag's only going to get worse, regardless of code cleanup and fast render mods.
Nothing would change the game beyond Minecraft, just the language, speed and awesomeness. I'm realistic, and I know that's a hell of a lot of code, so it might take a while. BUT- Notch has the $$$ to hire more people. He's so rich he's required by law to wear a monocle. If he and an augmented staff put in the hours, it could be done in a reasonable time, even to Minecraft gamers.
After all, we paid for it. If Java is revised, then other areas are open. Things like active weather, wind, particles, taller height limits and innumerable things would be accessable!
"The guns and war will make it too FPS-y"
I don't think so. If anything, I'd imagine it being like a single ground troop inside an RTS. And, so what? If you're not a fan, stay off those servers. How could an optional new development make the game worse?
"This is too ambitious. It'll never get off the ground."
It won't if you're negative about it! The more people we have, the better chances we have.
MOD SUPPORTERS
If you are a dev, modder, artist, or have an idea, we'd love to hear from you!
Here's some mods and people who support us-
[Nobody yet- thinking of getting these people's approval-
Infinium guy
SDK Gun mod guy
Steampunk guy
Redstone Clan people
qwertyz]
TL;DR- We want...
Many Redstone improvements
Steam power
Improved weapons (various guns, battleships, artillery, tanks and maybe nukes)
Better transport (flight, better minecarts, cars, better boats)
Factories w/ conveyor belts (put in raw material, finished products come out, delivered to where it's needed)
Mechanised Miners/Harvesters (Minerals/food)
New blocks, parts and components to accommodate the above.
Your contributions!
Like the idea? Spread the word with these nifty banners, provided courtesy of- (no banners yet, workin' on it.)
Feedback/edits please.
Epic, I love the dialogue, give a shoutout from me and the whole URC family, we could be like sister thread. Nice to hear from you again, and thats really good writing, and really motivational.
A perfect example of a restone computer, only 8 bit, but has a CPU, ALU, and 16 bits of ram. There is actually a discussion in the comments about a man trying to create a basic snake game, read it if you get the time, I'm going to reply to his comment asking him if he wants to join URC!
There's a thread about this here if you're interested. There's also a thread about programming it here and a screen I've built for it here. The screen isn't connected to the CPU yet, I'm still working on the GPU, but I'll be finishing that as soon as I can so that I can upgrade the CPU a bit. :smile.gif:
Also, about playing games on computers in minecraft. I think the best way to do this would be to build a machine specifically for the game you want to play. My computer that I'm working on is too slow for real-time games, because it's made to be able to do a number of different calculations and to be programmed. If you make a machine that can only be used to play a single game, it'll be much faster as it will only need to do whatever the game requires of it, so it'll be able to do it a lot faster. Counting's PONG project is an example of this:http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=106953&p=1592848#p1584725
Here at URC, we focus on all aspects of redstone computing, games are currently not high priority. High priority is displays, programming, (possibly a full OS) and the ability to carry out functions such as self destructing a base.
I actually got a cool idea, If you are running your base on a super computer, redstone is running everywhere, obviously we hope to get a wireless technology implemented, BUT If you were to make the redstone channels and computer underground surrounded by obsidian, when self destructing, the links would be cut, but the valuable circuits and wiring could be preserved, hidden in the remains of your base for rebuilding.
Personally, I think my proposal is too revolutionary. To realistically change anything, we need Java in the dustbin, and there might be a riot if we seriously propose anything about changing structure. Oceancraft (which was BRILLIANTLY proposed) was very conservative. What we're proposing is a COMPLETE restructure of the game on the code level.
In addition to this we need pictures, diagrams of how things are built, what they'd look like to engage the reader's imagination. Banners are also totally essential. They really grab your eye in the sigs. ATM non existent, I have a friend IRL that does great things with GIMP, but is Minecraft illiterate. Plus he's got a rep for being unreliable. I have read that EmperorPenguin does banners. If caseyds620 could get in touch with him and meet an agreement, that'd be awesome. EDIT: He can be found here. http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?t=135747
WE NEED AN ARTIST!
I will revise my proposal paying close attention to qwertyz's Oceancraft presentation style, but we can't do this without an artist.
But please know guys that it might be a while before I revise it. I'm doing my HSC (higher school certificate- endgame of high school) and I'm really swamped. When it is revised, I will contact the people in the "people who support us" section and see if I can get them on our side. If we can combine our followers, we'll get a lot of ideas, and a lot of bumps. Which is EXACTLY what a proposal needs to survive and get noticed.
Caseyds620- find us an artist.
the current dimensions are 35x15x11 for an 8 bit byte with decoder and data lines, so if laid out on a single layer within the 300x300x128 redstone block limit, it should fit 160 bytes with space at each edge. Many layers of NOR should fit under any cpu, allowing you to easily have 256 bytes of program memory and RAM. Access times aren't great, but I've tried to make it as fast as possible.
Am I the only one who doesnt understand how a few eletric wires in minecraft make a damn computer?
The same way a few electric wires in real life make one.
Quote from caseyds620 »
I imagine it being INCREDIBLY simple to make. I mean as simple as coding a game is.
Wait, you think coding a game is simple? I have a feeling none of you guys are programmers... if we can create a computer that we can type simple messages into and have it retrieve them (i.e., a text editor) then we will have achieved a work of legend. A calculator would be epic too.
Quote from Zaldarr »
I suggest that Notch take the drastic measure and translate the scripting language from the awful Java to something more powerful.
Java isn't a scripting language, and time-complexity isn't dependent on the language anyway, so translation will be of little to no help. If you don't know what time-complexity is or how it matters, you might want to look into it before making grand designs. I am not sure why you think moving away from Java will solve this and (from your comment) all other limitations.
Here are some practical ideas:
Probably the most likely candidate for creating compact electronics (which is what we'd need, really, to pull off practical computing; even stacking vertically, the chunk limit is going to hit us hard) is something along the lines of the pocket dimension suggestion. I don't think that adding more "primitive" components (e.g. a transistor block, or a logic gate block) would be a good idea; it reduces the "make everything yourself" aspect that we all love, and it also wastes precious block type slots. If we can get a pocket dimension system that's minimal in type slots and allows redstone I/O across the portal then we may have a winner. The best part is that pocket dimensions can be used for many things, so it is consistent with Minecraft's "sandboxy" do-whatever-you-like appeal rather than pandering solely to the redstone brigade. I think Notch already said he doesn't want to emphasise redstone too much anyway, so this is the best bet.
Pixels we can do with redstone torches, I don't think we need to waste a block type on that. Maybe have them interact with glass (maybe dyed glass?!) in some special way if we want prettier displays. I believe someone was working on an idea with doors over dyed wool to try and make a colour display.
But, really, the inherent problem of the layers of simulation means that our computers will be very simple beasts. I have high hopes that we can eventually do simple tasks with them (although slowly), but we're never going to have "supercomputers" as people keep calling them. Most likely they will all be hardwired for their various tasks (we could make a programmable one but it'd be slow enough to make the hardwired ones look fast by comparison).
Quote from Zaldarr »
To realistically change anything, we need Java in the dustbin
As explained above, this isn't the problem. I think you're confusing Java with JavaScript? Despite the names they are actually totally unrelated.
Quote from Zaldarr »
WE NEED AN ARTIST!
I don't think art is the major hold-up either.
the1laz's CPU is the state of the art at the minute, as far as I know. It can add numbers and we're hoping it can be made to multiply. Maybe even division at some point in the future.
Thank you so much for going through and checking this!
If you'll recall, I DID say I was an English geek, and not a computer guy. I can recite Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest" in full off the top of my head, but useless when it comes to these kinds of things.
The reason why I think Java is an issue is because it is so horribly slow, this inference may be wrong (derived from a trend I find in other Java games), as it could just be cruddy programming or numerous other factors, I really don't know. IS Java the cause of all this horrendous lag? If it isn't and you can tell me why it's not, I''ll be more than happy to revise my position.
And to perfectly honest, I was assuming if there was anything wrong with my assumption that caseyds620 would've picked it up. Should have done my research. (facepalm)
Anyway, thanks so much for giving us some input. We'd love to see you post here again!
IS Java the cause of all this horrendous lag? If it isn't and you can tell me why it's not, I''ll be more than happy to revise my position.
Java, despite what many may think,isn't particularly slow. The java virtual machine has used JIT since 1998, which is the same as what Microsofts .NET does (VB, C#, even visual C++), so it's not slow by any means. JIT recompiles the Java byte code into machine code and caches it, so it should be almost as fast, if not possibly faster than native code.
The result of the lag most likely comes down to how the game is programmed. At the moment it doesn't make use of multithreading, which means it will only be able to max out 1 core in multicore systems. Also, the rendering engine appears to be heavy on CPU and RAM and lighter on the graphics card. This results in lots of RAM being eaten and a single core of your CPU being maxed, resulting in the lag. If the rendering engine, chunk loading system and physics (water/lava/redstone) were all given separate threads, there would be an incredible speed boost.
Of course, multithreading an app is a very hard and time consuming task (I should know), and it may not even be possible. It may even require a complete redesign of how the game functions. But it would make it faster.
PS: With all this talk of logic in a single brick, have you seen the mod CraftBook? It adds MC5000 (PerlStone programmable logic chip) functionality, which you simply write the code on signs between two blocks placed above each other, and then hook the redstone in at the bottom block. With several of these chained together, it would be a very powerful system for controlling a base or the like.
Not balancing between cores eh? Interesting. The clan might just inquire about what Notch and Jeb intends to do about that issue, or even if it's possible.
I love the idea of pocket dimensions, and I'll add the guy to the list of people to contact about this. And I'd like your opinion; after getting our ideology and facts straight, what should be the next item on our agenda? Personally I think it's getting the damn proposal finalised and spreading the word, and since I'm doing the proposal, I figure an artist is essential ATM to advertising.
And remember, even though this thread is "Unity for Redstone Computing", I am personally more in favour of development of tech in general, including Redstone.
EDIT: And yes I have used Craftbook, and it's marvellous. But this is about development of Redstone officially. If you like it, here's an interesting link to a wireless Redstone transmission mod
EDIT: Quoted you, added Pocket Dimensions to proposal.
lies! I am a strong proponent of the idea of minecraft being re written in another less crap language and having it run on native code will make it use much less resources.
Sure Java is fast (there have been speed tests that prove its almost as fast as C) but I still don't think its the best choice for a video game.
Heres what I think needs to be changed in order to make supercomputers. No I don't mean fast ones (I've already said that computers in minecraft will be incredibly slow no matter what you do) I mean advanced ones, maybe even x86 compatible ones (run DOS in minecraft anyone?) Anyway, I think the 15 block transmission limit needs to be removed (just removing that alone would allow me to make an advanced music machine) The torch burnout also needs to be removed (removing that would allow me to make a fast redstone music machine) and maybe simulating 2 ticks of redstone per frame might help us.
Quote from Zaldarr »
Not balancing between cores eh?
Just so you know it IS balancing between cores, (opening task manager will prove that) it's just only running on 1 at any point in time.
lies! I am a strong proponent of the idea of minecraft being re written in another less crap language and having it run on native code will make it use much less resources.
Minecraft's popularity is partly due to it's ability to be run on any Java enabled device. Java, as far as I'm aware, is the fastest cross platform VM available. Even if it was ported to another language, it would have to then be recompiled for every different platform. This is simply not viable. It is far better that the devs develope features for minecraft rather than rewrite it and recompile it on several different platforms.
Anyway, I think the 15 block transmission limit needs to be removed (just removing that alone would allow me to make an advanced music machine) The torch burnout also needs to be removed (removing that would allow me to make a fast redstone music machine) and maybe simulating 2 ticks of redstone per frame might help us.
The removal of the 15 block transmission and torch burnout would be excellent, although it may hit performance in some way. There are already mods that can do this, however it would be nice if it was official. A redstone speed multiplier (perhaps in the options menu) would be nice as well, although this would be very cpu intensive. There are mods that can remove the redstone torch delay completely, making the any logic gate "instant", but this breaks all timing devices such as flip flops and clock generators.
Minecraft's popularity is partly due to it's ability to be run on any Java enabled device. Java, as far as I'm aware, is the fastest cross platform VM available. Even if it was ported to another language, it would have to then be recompiled for every different platform. This is simply not viable. It is far better that the devs develope features for minecraft rather than rewrite it and recompile it on several different platforms.
Not true. Official minecraft can't run on an Android phone. But yeah I know its not possible at such a late stage in development to change from java to something else. I still think you need something more powerful when it comes to writing a video game, its definitely best to have more control when it comes to optimization (of which, minecraft has almost none).
The removal of the 15 block transmission and torch burnout would be excellent, although it may hit performance in some way. There are already mods that can do this, however it would be nice if it was official. A redstone speed multiplier (perhaps in the options menu) would be nice as well, although this would be very cpu intensive. There are mods that can remove the redstone torch delay completely, making the any logic gate "instant", but this breaks all timing devices such as flip flops and clock generators.
I doubt it would "hit performance" too bad unless you did something like make a massive field as far as you can see of redstone dust and then toggled it, in which case it would be stupid to do in single player and I bet most big minecraft servers can handle it. Timing devices can just be a seperate block (crafted with a watch?) or a minecart loop. BTW a flip flop isn't a timing device :tongue.gif:
Dear Everyone. From this day forth, this thread is officially changed from Unity for Redstone Computing, to Unity for Tech Development.
I believe that even if this is a major format change, we can pull it off easily. Just come here for all your tech discussion, post ideas, questions, Anything!
The thread is officially updated. From now on, Zaldarr and I will take full responsibility for this thread, and will maintain it at all costs.
You may now talk about all things technology related, steam, light fixtures, guns, whatever you can think of.
We are about to release banners for your signatures, and would like you to add them to your sig if possible. A new post will be...posted when the banners are up.
Remember...
UTD is looking for new supporters, so any radical ideas for tech in minecraft, feel free to contact the thread poster and ask if they would like to support us. People like the creator of SDK Gun Mods and Infinium are on the top of priority.
New banners are up! Check the first post for them! There is one in my signature! They are not exactly beautiful, but they still show your support for tech development in Minecraft. Now, I am going to try to get some sponsors for this fine establishment.
Here's a proposal for high tech I've been going over, personally, I hate it. The style, approach and ideas are all wrong. I did this in a spare 15 minutes, so please be kind. Change it as much as you want. I personally want to look at qwertyz's Oceancraft proposal. He did it juuuuust right. Here it is.
HIGH TECHNOLOGY IN MINECRAFT
There is dissatisfaction in the forum.
What I, and doubtless many others see too often is bold and daring new ideas being proposed in a spurt of inspiration- only to be shot down in flames. The reason why it is dismissed is because of one reason-
"It's too high tech for Minecraft."
Many agree, but I see this as lunacy.
We cower behind castle walls and wait for the day. We slave away in the mines and farms for a pittance. Walking is the primary mode of transport. The awesome potential of Redstone is merely a novelty. Monsters own the night, and can destroy us at any moment they please.
Nature owns us.
How can this be?
It can be confidently said that the spirit of Minecraft is about taming nature, making IT work for US. Building walls, towers, circuits and traps that work to OUR advantage.
It is hardly doing good service to such a magnificent game to let the "goal" of Minecraft stagnate. Building monuments to our ingenuity can only go so far. To facilitate the growth of the game, we must develop more technology.
I propose that Notch and Jeb implement more tech.
Minecraft has too much potential to sit in medievalism. It needs to branch out.
This thread will be a haven for the mods, ideas and people that enrich our crafterly existence.
We stand for the introduction of (including, but not limited to)-
REDSTONE IMPROVEMENTS
This will hopefully be a major focus. Redstone is so underdeveloped, with limitless potential.
I, for one, would like my base hooked up to a supercomputer. It would control doors, traps, lighting, alarms, music and dozens of other things. Other than this practical use, it could be implemented in making games within Minecraft; like Pong, Tetris or even Minecraft.
Limitless potential.
To do this, we need miniaturisation most urgently. We need integrated circuits (or Pocket Dimensions) and different coloured wires (say, four colours to a block). There are many others, but this will do for now.
STEAM POWER
This would be a stepping stone out of the present medievalism. When steam is acquired, the work stations that come with it would allow you to build all of the below. Steam would also act as a mechanical force- driving vehicles (because powered minecarts are useless) and large contraptions.
BETTER TRANSPORT
Everybody in Minecraft gets around the map by walking. Is this the middle ages?! Oh wait...
On a map that is 8X the area of the Earth, more efficient transport is needed. Jeeps, speedboats, improved minecarts and *possibly* planes/helicopters.
IMPROVED WEAPONS
Could you imagine waging full scale industrial war? Cruisin' around in your tank, blasting at infantry- running away from your 20 tonne war machine? Sniping the poor sod who sticks his head above cover? Blowing holes in 25 block wide walls with your destroyer's guns hovering in the bay? Shelling the other team from across the continent in their trenches for your men in the front line? Or even dropping a nuke on a whole city?
How fun would it be?!
I don't know about nukes, as it might get OP unless the materials are VERY HARD to find and process, as well as making transport and detonation difficult as hell. Plus the whole lag issue of deleting 300X300X128 blocks in a shockwave manner.
FACTORIES & HARVESTERS
Very hard to build. But the finished factory would be you putting in the raw materials, being crafted automatically, then sent up a conveyer belt to where you need it. Of course the machine would have to be powered with copious amounts of coal/wood.
The harvesters would go in a straight line until they either- run out of fuel, fill their hoppers, or hit something they can't mine. The blades/drill would break and need to be replaced (also periodically with wear.) It would mine 3X3X1 every 2 seconds. Has applications in war for building tunnels for infiltration or putting a nuke under their base without them noticing.
If people don't want the above, they can tick a box before they start a game to opt out, or stay off the tech servers.
I will address the naysayers.
"Artillery? Planes? Better Redstone? It's too much. Java can't handle this."
With current clunky programming resulting in mass lag on even banal maps, this is a serious issue, and it requires serious help. Jeb is currently looking at better speeds, and there is possibly a solution
"The guns and war will make it too FPS-y"
I don't think so. If anything, I'd imagine it being like a single ground troop inside an RTS. And, so what? If you're not a fan, stay off those servers. How could an optional new development make the game worse?
"This is too ambitious. It'll never get off the ground."
It won't if you're negative about it! The more people we have, the better chances we have.
MOD SUPPORTERS
If you are a dev, modder, artist, or have an idea, we'd love to hear from you!
Here's some mods and people who support us-
[Nobody yet- thinking of getting these people's approval-
Infinium guy
SDK Gun mod guy
Steampunk guy
Redstone Clan people
Pocket Dimensions guy
qwertyz]
TL;DR- We want...
Many Redstone improvements
Steam power
Improved weapons (various guns, battleships, artillery, tanks and maybe nukes)
Better transport (flight, better minecarts, cars, better boats)
Factories w/ conveyor belts (put in raw material, finished products come out, delivered to where it's needed)
Mechanised Miners/Harvesters (Minerals/food)
New blocks, parts and components to accommodate the above.
Your contributions!
Like the idea? Spread the word with these nifty banners, provided courtesy of- (no banners yet, workin' on it.)
Feedback/edits please.
Links please.
There's a thread about this here if you're interested. There's also a thread about programming it here and a screen I've built for it here. The screen isn't connected to the CPU yet, I'm still working on the GPU, but I'll be finishing that as soon as I can so that I can upgrade the CPU a bit. :smile.gif:
Also, about playing games on computers in minecraft. I think the best way to do this would be to build a machine specifically for the game you want to play. My computer that I'm working on is too slow for real-time games, because it's made to be able to do a number of different calculations and to be programmed. If you make a machine that can only be used to play a single game, it'll be much faster as it will only need to do whatever the game requires of it, so it'll be able to do it a lot faster. Counting's PONG project is an example of this:http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=106953&p=1592848#p1584725
Epic, I love the dialogue, give a shoutout from me and the whole URC family, we could be like sister thread. Nice to hear from you again, and thats really good writing, and really motivational.
Here at URC, we focus on all aspects of redstone computing, games are currently not high priority. High priority is displays, programming, (possibly a full OS) and the ability to carry out functions such as self destructing a base.
I actually got a cool idea, If you are running your base on a super computer, redstone is running everywhere, obviously we hope to get a wireless technology implemented, BUT If you were to make the redstone channels and computer underground surrounded by obsidian, when self destructing, the links would be cut, but the valuable circuits and wiring could be preserved, hidden in the remains of your base for rebuilding.
Thank you very much.
In addition to this we need pictures, diagrams of how things are built, what they'd look like to engage the reader's imagination. Banners are also totally essential. They really grab your eye in the sigs. ATM non existent, I have a friend IRL that does great things with GIMP, but is Minecraft illiterate. Plus he's got a rep for being unreliable. I have read that EmperorPenguin does banners. If caseyds620 could get in touch with him and meet an agreement, that'd be awesome. EDIT: He can be found here. http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?t=135747
WE NEED AN ARTIST!
I will revise my proposal paying close attention to qwertyz's Oceancraft presentation style, but we can't do this without an artist.
But please know guys that it might be a while before I revise it. I'm doing my HSC (higher school certificate- endgame of high school) and I'm really swamped. When it is revised, I will contact the people in the "people who support us" section and see if I can get them on our side. If we can combine our followers, we'll get a lot of ideas, and a lot of bumps. Which is EXACTLY what a proposal needs to survive and get noticed.
Caseyds620- find us an artist.
See you soon.
http://thisisnotsparta.mygamesonline.org/Mine_NOR.html
the current dimensions are 35x15x11 for an 8 bit byte with decoder and data lines, so if laid out on a single layer within the 300x300x128 redstone block limit, it should fit 160 bytes with space at each edge. Many layers of NOR should fit under any cpu, allowing you to easily have 256 bytes of program memory and RAM. Access times aren't great, but I've tried to make it as fast as possible.
What would be awesome is a Redstone sim diagram to go with it.
Thank you so much for going through and checking this!
If you'll recall, I DID say I was an English geek, and not a computer guy. I can recite Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest" in full off the top of my head, but useless when it comes to these kinds of things.
The reason why I think Java is an issue is because it is so horribly slow, this inference may be wrong (derived from a trend I find in other Java games), as it could just be cruddy programming or numerous other factors, I really don't know. IS Java the cause of all this horrendous lag? If it isn't and you can tell me why it's not, I''ll be more than happy to revise my position.
And to perfectly honest, I was assuming if there was anything wrong with my assumption that caseyds620 would've picked it up. Should have done my research. (facepalm)
Anyway, thanks so much for giving us some input. We'd love to see you post here again!
Java, despite what many may think,isn't particularly slow. The java virtual machine has used JIT since 1998, which is the same as what Microsofts .NET does (VB, C#, even visual C++), so it's not slow by any means. JIT recompiles the Java byte code into machine code and caches it, so it should be almost as fast, if not possibly faster than native code.
The result of the lag most likely comes down to how the game is programmed. At the moment it doesn't make use of multithreading, which means it will only be able to max out 1 core in multicore systems. Also, the rendering engine appears to be heavy on CPU and RAM and lighter on the graphics card. This results in lots of RAM being eaten and a single core of your CPU being maxed, resulting in the lag. If the rendering engine, chunk loading system and physics (water/lava/redstone) were all given separate threads, there would be an incredible speed boost.
Of course, multithreading an app is a very hard and time consuming task (I should know), and it may not even be possible. It may even require a complete redesign of how the game functions. But it would make it faster.
PS: With all this talk of logic in a single brick, have you seen the mod CraftBook? It adds MC5000 (PerlStone programmable logic chip) functionality, which you simply write the code on signs between two blocks placed above each other, and then hook the redstone in at the bottom block. With several of these chained together, it would be a very powerful system for controlling a base or the like.
Not balancing between cores eh? Interesting. The clan might just inquire about what Notch and Jeb intends to do about that issue, or even if it's possible.
I love the idea of pocket dimensions, and I'll add the guy to the list of people to contact about this. And I'd like your opinion; after getting our ideology and facts straight, what should be the next item on our agenda? Personally I think it's getting the damn proposal finalised and spreading the word, and since I'm doing the proposal, I figure an artist is essential ATM to advertising.
And remember, even though this thread is "Unity for Redstone Computing", I am personally more in favour of development of tech in general, including Redstone.
EDIT: And yes I have used Craftbook, and it's marvellous. But this is about development of Redstone officially. If you like it, here's an interesting link to a wireless Redstone transmission mod
EDIT: Quoted you, added Pocket Dimensions to proposal.
lies! I am a strong proponent of the idea of minecraft being re written in another less crap language and having it run on native code will make it use much less resources.
Sure Java is fast (there have been speed tests that prove its almost as fast as C) but I still don't think its the best choice for a video game.
Heres what I think needs to be changed in order to make supercomputers. No I don't mean fast ones (I've already said that computers in minecraft will be incredibly slow no matter what you do) I mean advanced ones, maybe even x86 compatible ones (run DOS in minecraft anyone?) Anyway, I think the 15 block transmission limit needs to be removed (just removing that alone would allow me to make an advanced music machine) The torch burnout also needs to be removed (removing that would allow me to make a fast redstone music machine) and maybe simulating 2 ticks of redstone per frame might help us.
Just so you know it IS balancing between cores, (opening task manager will prove that) it's just only running on 1 at any point in time.
Minecraft's popularity is partly due to it's ability to be run on any Java enabled device. Java, as far as I'm aware, is the fastest cross platform VM available. Even if it was ported to another language, it would have to then be recompiled for every different platform. This is simply not viable. It is far better that the devs develope features for minecraft rather than rewrite it and recompile it on several different platforms.
The removal of the 15 block transmission and torch burnout would be excellent, although it may hit performance in some way. There are already mods that can do this, however it would be nice if it was official. A redstone speed multiplier (perhaps in the options menu) would be nice as well, although this would be very cpu intensive. There are mods that can remove the redstone torch delay completely, making the any logic gate "instant", but this breaks all timing devices such as flip flops and clock generators.
Not true. Official minecraft can't run on an Android phone. But yeah I know its not possible at such a late stage in development to change from java to something else. I still think you need something more powerful when it comes to writing a video game, its definitely best to have more control when it comes to optimization (of which, minecraft has almost none).
I doubt it would "hit performance" too bad unless you did something like make a massive field as far as you can see of redstone dust and then toggled it, in which case it would be stupid to do in single player and I bet most big minecraft servers can handle it. Timing devices can just be a seperate block (crafted with a watch?) or a minecart loop. BTW a flip flop isn't a timing device :tongue.gif:
I believe that even if this is a major format change, we can pull it off easily. Just come here for all your tech discussion, post ideas, questions, Anything!
You may now talk about all things technology related, steam, light fixtures, guns, whatever you can think of.
We are about to release banners for your signatures, and would like you to add them to your sig if possible. A new post will be...posted when the banners are up.
Remember...
UTD is looking for new supporters, so any radical ideas for tech in minecraft, feel free to contact the thread poster and ask if they would like to support us. People like the creator of SDK Gun Mods and Infinium are on the top of priority.
And please answer, what is your timezone?
I am on US Mountain time which I think is like -7? I live in Tucson AZ.
BTW, I am working on some 600x110 banners (im going to push the sig limits) and hopefully I will have a few up soon.