Neither. I don't like the Aether mod because it should be adding building options and providing new and interesting building mechanics that mesh well with what came before. Similarly, I don't care for the "everything you had before is almost useless now" philosophy which pervades the mod.
Edit: I realized I didn't talk about the End. Well, it's horrible on so many levels that I really don't even see why it should be in the game at all.
Also I don't think Jeb is all that great, afteral if you've ever paid attention to the convention talks, then you'll notice he is a little out of touch with the mod developers who have done great things for Minecraft, where he talks about limits and impossibilities... Which is really just ignoring possible solutions to the problems Minecraft has for whatever issue like time and lack of help. Of course I don't think that could be entirely blamed on him when his position was under Notch, now that he is charge of the game maybe he will do things differently. And the game will be better for it.. or not..who knows.
I of course haven't see any such convention talks. Can you give some examples of what he said?
To everyone who thinks it's "about time" and hating on Notch: He made this whole game exist and you should respect him. He may have got a bit lazy recently, but he's still a great designer and coder.
I disagree with him being a great designer. He got the basic idea for Minecraft from Infiniminer. The game essentially is still in an alpha state despite what they like to pretend. It doesn't have a lot of features a full-fledged game needs. It's a great concept (which again, he didn't come up with), and there's a starting idea for a great game, but it hasn't gone much of anywhere in the last year in terms of having features come together into a really great GAME. People aren't using it to GAME, they are using it to design structures and the like -- well, it's more of a game if you get a ton of mods, but that's not really Notch's doing now is it? Note that the Yogscast and others use it more like a toolbox and simplified 3D model maker than as a game. As a game it is boring and uninteresting and doesn't offer a challenge, reward skill, or anything else. The updates haven't done anything to change that, despite Notch's goal of wanting it to be an adventure game (a goal at which it absolutely fails to be good).
Lots of games start with good ideas, where the creator came up with them or not. A great idea to start with doesn't mean that you'll end up with a good game and the overall development of Minecraft has been sadly lacking.
I don't particularly see why I should have some great amount of respect for him.
Jeb posted that they're hiring someone to work on the AI this Month? If I recall correctly.
I see that and I see the fact that just one person is working on minecraft full-time, and I can't imagine they are hiring another person to only work on minecraft AI full-time. That guy has to be to help out more than just Minecraft. We'll see though.
I'm sure jeb is a fine developer, but we have seen much more of notch's stuff (the entire game essentially), so you can't really judge fairly right now.
And saying "jeb did <feature I like> so he is the better developer" is stupid. Don't do that.
To nitpick a bit, we've seen a lot of Jeb's programming work, but as far as we know we haven't seen any of his design work. Notch has been calling the shots on what to do, and Jeb has been doing that (and doing it a lot more than Notch himself, obviously). We'll have to wait and see what sort of gameplan he has for Minecraft's development beyond bug fixes (not a bad start, but it doesn't tell you much about what is to come).
And the next pre-release will make wool re-grow. Jeb is like Minecraft's saviour, Minecraft was getting stuffed with things the community didn't want and things we did want were never added. Jeb is adding the things we want and making what we don't like better.
To be fair, bug fixes and ironing out blatant problems is very good, but it is quite different from designing new features. We really don't know much about how good Jeb is at doing that.
I don't know that it needed to be different than it is, other than being 'tight,' though. One click for attack and (now) one for defense is pretty simple and straightforward, and you'd think that it'd be easy to get working right/well. But due to poor programming, it doesn't work as expected, even for how simple it is. Poor preformance isn't always bad design, it's more often bad programming. A combat system might work terribly for a game and be poor design, but that'd require something more along the lines of including something like Splinter Cell's combat into MC. That combat system wouldn't work well for a game where sneaking isn't as involved, players aren't special forces agents capable of breaking necks while hanging upside down, and players aren't supposed to have assault rifles.
From my perspective, the combat system lacks any significant depth, and that's a real design problem. If combat is unimportant, then it doesn't need depth. Ostensibly, combat is supposed to be important (Notch's vision, the End, the work to try to improve the combat system, etc). You can have a simple system that has depth, but Minecraft doesn't have that either.
It could be greatly improved just by having attack animations that line up with attacks, so that you have to time when you defend yourself (for instance). It could also be improved by adding more types of weapons that work differently. I think both would be a good idea for the game. Don't think special forces, think more about Zelda or other adventure games.
As to the work habits of notch and jeb i dont think any of us are in a position to assume anything.
Notch takes numerous breaks, works on other projects, makes a post on his blog about how he loses interest in things before they get finished, steps down from lead developer, etc, etc. I think we can certainly make comments regarding Notch's interest in a game he's been working on less and less after all that.
Granted, I don't know much about Jeb's feelings on programming Minecraft, but I think it seems fairly likely he's more interested in it than Notch at this point, given the above.
If he does it, then he's a good developer. The fact is Notch hasn't listened to the community since 1.4. He should immediately be disqualified, because he's a horrible developer. He once knew what he was doing, but then he just stopped trying and started changing things without consulting the community.
I must respectfully disagree. Communities tend to be rabid packs of wolves. They aren't good at proposing good game design at all. They can be quite good at finding bugs and problems, horribly at coming up with good solutions to those problems. Sometimes they have good ideas for features and a lot of times they don't.
Listening to the community to an extent is advisable, but only regarding certain things. As far as getting game design ideas go, looking at popular mods is probably better than directly listening to what community members say (of course, putting multiple mods together into the official product can be tricky with regards to balance).
I disagree- their design is good enough; the follow through/programming capability is terrible. Combat (for example) wasn't meant to be stellar, it's a sandbox game about mining/building. The problem is that combat often glitches, so when you should have hit you missed; or mobs moving through objects; or hits passing through solid objects. Poor path-finding, weird loading effects, MP's neglect, glitchy everything; That's programming deficiency right there.
I'd agree that BTW is both better designed and better programmed, however.
Actually, Notch intended this as sort of an action/adventure game. So the combat was presumably supposed to have been pretty good/tight, which it isn't.
The real question is how good of a game DESIGNER Jeb is. You can be great at coding things in, but if you can't design the elements to work together in good ways then there will be problems.
And because they didn't choose to improve their core elements to the game, it got replaced by Galaga, a much better iteration of the core theme.
So if Minecraft doesn't improve upon its game, it will be replaced by something that is willing to do it better. It's called if Mojang stalls its development, they will be bought out by a major publisher. That may actually be a good thing actually.
Or another indie group. Can't be that hard for say a team of 2-4 people to get out something that's largely been developed by one person at a time. I'd think 4 people could develop and exceed minecraft with a year of work easy.
Given Notch's very obvious declining interest in Minecraft, it is better that he isn't making decisions about it. Jeb has already been doing most of the work, so it would seem to me that the main effect is that he now doesn't have to listen to someone who has to struggle to remain interested in the game's development. Should be an improvement overall.
Of course, I am still not sure how great at game design either one is. Minecraft has some good basics, but that doesn't indicate to me how good the long-term development will be (so far it hasn't been that great, imho).
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The worst thing that could happen is to constantly switch the lead developer back and forth.
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Edit: I realized I didn't talk about the End. Well, it's horrible on so many levels that I really don't even see why it should be in the game at all.
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I of course haven't see any such convention talks. Can you give some examples of what he said?
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I disagree with him being a great designer. He got the basic idea for Minecraft from Infiniminer. The game essentially is still in an alpha state despite what they like to pretend. It doesn't have a lot of features a full-fledged game needs. It's a great concept (which again, he didn't come up with), and there's a starting idea for a great game, but it hasn't gone much of anywhere in the last year in terms of having features come together into a really great GAME. People aren't using it to GAME, they are using it to design structures and the like -- well, it's more of a game if you get a ton of mods, but that's not really Notch's doing now is it? Note that the Yogscast and others use it more like a toolbox and simplified 3D model maker than as a game. As a game it is boring and uninteresting and doesn't offer a challenge, reward skill, or anything else. The updates haven't done anything to change that, despite Notch's goal of wanting it to be an adventure game (a goal at which it absolutely fails to be good).
Lots of games start with good ideas, where the creator came up with them or not. A great idea to start with doesn't mean that you'll end up with a good game and the overall development of Minecraft has been sadly lacking.
I don't particularly see why I should have some great amount of respect for him.
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I see that and I see the fact that just one person is working on minecraft full-time, and I can't imagine they are hiring another person to only work on minecraft AI full-time. That guy has to be to help out more than just Minecraft. We'll see though.
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I'm not very impressed with how Notch has handled things over the last year, to put it mildly.
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To nitpick a bit, we've seen a lot of Jeb's programming work, but as far as we know we haven't seen any of his design work. Notch has been calling the shots on what to do, and Jeb has been doing that (and doing it a lot more than Notch himself, obviously). We'll have to wait and see what sort of gameplan he has for Minecraft's development beyond bug fixes (not a bad start, but it doesn't tell you much about what is to come).
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To be fair, bug fixes and ironing out blatant problems is very good, but it is quite different from designing new features. We really don't know much about how good Jeb is at doing that.
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From my perspective, the combat system lacks any significant depth, and that's a real design problem. If combat is unimportant, then it doesn't need depth. Ostensibly, combat is supposed to be important (Notch's vision, the End, the work to try to improve the combat system, etc). You can have a simple system that has depth, but Minecraft doesn't have that either.
It could be greatly improved just by having attack animations that line up with attacks, so that you have to time when you defend yourself (for instance). It could also be improved by adding more types of weapons that work differently. I think both would be a good idea for the game. Don't think special forces, think more about Zelda or other adventure games.
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Notch takes numerous breaks, works on other projects, makes a post on his blog about how he loses interest in things before they get finished, steps down from lead developer, etc, etc. I think we can certainly make comments regarding Notch's interest in a game he's been working on less and less after all that.
Granted, I don't know much about Jeb's feelings on programming Minecraft, but I think it seems fairly likely he's more interested in it than Notch at this point, given the above.
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I must respectfully disagree. Communities tend to be rabid packs of wolves. They aren't good at proposing good game design at all. They can be quite good at finding bugs and problems, horribly at coming up with good solutions to those problems. Sometimes they have good ideas for features and a lot of times they don't.
Listening to the community to an extent is advisable, but only regarding certain things. As far as getting game design ideas go, looking at popular mods is probably better than directly listening to what community members say (of course, putting multiple mods together into the official product can be tricky with regards to balance).
Actually, Notch intended this as sort of an action/adventure game. So the combat was presumably supposed to have been pretty good/tight, which it isn't.
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Or another indie group. Can't be that hard for say a team of 2-4 people to get out something that's largely been developed by one person at a time. I'd think 4 people could develop and exceed minecraft with a year of work easy.
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Of course, I am still not sure how great at game design either one is. Minecraft has some good basics, but that doesn't indicate to me how good the long-term development will be (so far it hasn't been that great, imho).