"Oh, it's an alpha." That's no excuse for Notch not at the very least playtesting his game. This may be an inde game, but he's VERY WELL ****ING FUNDED for it. You can try using that excuse all you like, but it doesn't matter. All you're doing is sucking up and bending over backward for Notch. He NEEDS to learn to playtest his stuff BEFORE releasing it.
He has the funds. He makes more in a SINGLE DAY then most people make IN A YEAR. He has every resource that he could ever want to make this. And yet. And yet we get these SHITTY updates that only break more things. Why the HELL are you defending him? You paid money for a game. Would you defend it if this was a normal game developer that released a product with bugs that make it, often times, unplayable? No, you wouldn't. And those that do are merely asskissers. Call me whiny if you want, but know that we're right.
He has the funds.
He has the time.
All he needs is to stop being lazy, and either hire a small testing team that can test his updates BEFORE actually releasing them. This is not a mere "indie" game, anymore, whether you think it is or not. It's a multimillion-dollar game.
I won't call you whiny, far from it, but the number of people and money thrown at a project doesn't affect the development cycle in a linear fashion. a thousand people do not multiply the development rate by 1000, and having infinite dollars doesn't mean anything if it's still just one person working on it. For one, the thousand people would all need to be trained, and then any changes those people make in the system would cause bugs, which someone else would fix, then causing more bugs. Try drawing a single picture of a character, then try again with two or three friends. The co-operative one won't look as nice (assuming you all have similar abilities), but it'll be done faster. Of course, offsetting this is the fact that you now have to go back and fix the errors, and it'll end up taking a similar amount of time.
Trying to keep any number of people synchronized on one project is very, very difficult.
The main reason *I* think Minecraft is in such a state would probably be lack of planning. He designed it for single-player, then added in multi-player. if it had been designed for multi-player, both would work in a similar fashion.
It's kinda like adding jet engines and wings to a car to make it fly, compared to designing a jet from scratch. both will work, but the car will have some serious problems.
The Notch Defense Force is so ****ing obnoxious and smugly indignant it makes me vomit. "This game is in ALPHA", "If you don't like it don't play!", "You kids are immature, learn to deal with it!", "Notch is a one man team and is working HARD!".
[Cut to avoid wall of text]
I'm not under the impression that notch is spending 8+ hours a day on this, especially when he's just getting his company started. If he WAS spending 8+ hours a day working on this thing, we'd have reason to worry - he'd probably end up sick of it, and we wouldn't get any farther. People who complain about the rate of development really must not understand creativity and motivation. Once his company is established, it'll be back to secret Fridays.
"breaks more than he ever fixes.. ever" For this to be true, Notch must have wrote several thousand flawless lines of code, or Minecraft wouldn't run. at all. Incredibly unlikely, and it's obviously your opinion. If you want "The Notch Defense Force" to leave, or join you, try using facts. I have no motivation to defend notch - if I felt I wasn't getting my $10 worth, I'd be bitching too - but there's little to no evidence, just opinions from impatient people.
"None of your usual spam of defense means anything to these facts." << I'm curious, what facts? I haven't seen any, certainly not in your post anyways.
Also, just a note on "It's time to hand the game over to some people who know what they're doing"
Notch is using a technique known as agile. What this means is that there is little to no documentation, so the new people would need to spend roughly a month analyzing the code to find out what's what. Even after, it's unlikely that the development would proceed faster or be flawless, because the number of people you throw at a project complicates things. The amount of money thrown at it doesn't help either in most cases, but with an in-house artist he won't have to spend time working on the textures or models anymore. As it is, getting the new programmer up to speed will probably take a few weeks.
"...MONTHS of broken, shitty coding..." and a few other statements suggest you "knew" notch was a shitty coder for a while now. If you knew that, why didn't you make a backup? you had plenty of time, and then you could just rollback to the previous installation that worked.
"Just put it all in your sigs and stop posting" Just saying, this nugget works both ways.
"people who legitimately want to *****" Legitimate bitching? please. Definition taken from Wikipedia:
"To criticize (something) spitefully, often for the sake of complaining rather than in order to have the problem corrected." AKA there's nothing legitimate about it.
"None of your usual spam of defense" I hope this dissection will atone for the "usual spam of defense" you've endured. By the way, your usual spam of offense is clogging up the boards.
PS: Once Notch is done with Minecraft, he said he plans to release the source code online. He won't be "leaving MC to fall apart", he'll be giving it to the fans.
Try moving the tool you want to use to the first slot in your (belt? the gray thing on the bottom). It's annoying, but at least you can get stuff done.
Calm down. Maybe notch should release a patch to a small group of testers, get feedback, and eventually release as stable. Or Notch's employees can do this as well. Let the artist test the game while he has nothing to draw up, for instance. When I FIRST spawned in SMP, I immediately noticed fall damage on world load. You can't NOT see that bug, unless you didn't test. When I died I respawned away from my regular spawn point -> you can't not notice that! Health was implemented.. so test health-related things! Hit a sheep. Kill a sheep. Write down what happens, repeat.
These are all bugs that are fairly obvious, and are easier to find when you know what the changelog was. I think the problem is that notch is having a VERY hard time with adding multiplayer in to the base game. All of the features/fixes seem to end up as hacks to get things to work. I wouldn't mind if he rewrote the game to take into account multiplayer. It would probably be for the best.
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound angry or anything, it's just amazing that people expect it to run perfectly all the time. I'm in school for this stuff, I know all too well how frustrating attempting to fix bugs can be - and I haven't even made a graphical application like this, I've been working in all-text.
Yes, I...suppose I didn't take that into account yet. :L We'd most likely have to get someone else to host the server. Of course, my friend and I would be the one paying to keep it running if that's the case. :U I need to get better organized. I hope all goes well. :biggrin.gif:
EDIT: I'll get on that right now, actually.
If you and your friend can get $500 together and buy a desktop, you could use that and not end up paying recurring fees. I can help with setting up the server if you don't know how. If I had a decent desktop, I'd offer, but unfortunately all I have is a laptop that's on and off all the time.
If latency becomes a problem, talk to your internet service provider - you should be able to have your server set up in the ISP's room, so it won't be affected by people using the internet at your house.
Alternatively, you can get hosting for pretty cheap, but the price usually reflects the service and they're usually set up for web hosting.
I find it sad that Notch does not have the decency to test out his stuff before he releases it. Invisible mobs, Magic darkness that hurts me, Once you get hit you take damage over time, invisible players after death. This is insane. If it will pretty much break the game DON'T RELEASE IT. But than again you had plenty of time to fix and code it but just like always im guessing you just sat around and coded randomly for 5 min.
Welcome to the wonderful world of programming. As a coder, you can test your code for days on end and find nothing, but 500 people find bugs an hour after release. Notch is one guy, most developers have swarms (200+) of contract testers for their games, and bugs STILL get through. (BXR in halo 2, for example, was not intended in the game)
You obviously know nothing about programming.
[EDIT] I'd just like to add that you have, in essence, pre-ordered a game (albeit at half price, due to the risk of the game not even launching). You have no entitlement at this point. As a pre-order gift, you are allowed to play the current development version.
IF minecraft is not completed and development ends in beta, you can complain and request your money back, but to be honest I feel I've already had my $10 worth.
There is actually a technical reason for it. When you first enter hell, the generator has to generate the hell world based on the surface world. If you go past the limits of the overworld in hell, then it becomes a problem. The part that generates hell is built to take the surface world's characteristics into consideration, but the normal level generator isn't built to take hell into consideration.
Using a picture as an example:
Give a group of artists a 10x10 sprite and a sheet of paper. Almost all of them will look radically different.
Give a group of artists a 100x100 pic and ask them to make a 10x10 sprite. within reason, (a few shades of colour differences, etc) all of the sprites will look fairly similar. applying this to minecraft, I'm trying to say that it's a lot easier to generate a smaller area based on a larger area then it is to generate a large area based on a smaller area.
They could both be generated at the same time, but then exploring in hell will be incredibly taxing on the limited resources on the host computer.
Coding a level generator is well beyond my abilities, and beyond my comprehension right now. Still, knowing what I know about programming, it's freaking hard.
The other problem is that Minecraft is a single-threaded application. It can only use ONE core on your computer, so a quad core phenom running at 3.6 isn't going to fare much better than a dual core running around the same speed. if Minecraft could have each level generator running on a separate core, then it would be feasible to have both generate simultaneously.
tl,dr; There's a technical reason.
EDIT: I don't actually know exactly how he's built it, but it's my educated guess that didn't have hell planned when he wrote the level generator. The rest is educated guesses as well, but there's logic behind them.
Technically, considering the definition of "beta" in terms of software, minecraft was in beta the second it was released to the public. Alpha is when only the people inside the studio and possibly their immediate family have access to the game. Closed beta is when people outside of the studio have access to the game, but it's not open to the public. Open Beta is when it's avaliable to the public during development.
Minecraft has been in beta since the old people played it
Everyone's heard how one block in hell is equal to 10 blocks in the overworld or something similar.
What if, instead of not allowing us to build in hell once we're outside generated space in relation to the overworld, the walls of hell just become unbreakable? like adminium? or have the difficulty level ramp up the closer to the "edge" of hell? (say you enter hell from the center of the overworld. moving in any direction, more and more baddies spawn until you're beset by several ghast)
I don't know, I'm not personally a fan of losing my ability to place blocks. To me that's like me losing the ability to manipulate objects with my hands when I visit America (from Canada). Any thoughts?
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I won't call you whiny, far from it, but the number of people and money thrown at a project doesn't affect the development cycle in a linear fashion. a thousand people do not multiply the development rate by 1000, and having infinite dollars doesn't mean anything if it's still just one person working on it. For one, the thousand people would all need to be trained, and then any changes those people make in the system would cause bugs, which someone else would fix, then causing more bugs. Try drawing a single picture of a character, then try again with two or three friends. The co-operative one won't look as nice (assuming you all have similar abilities), but it'll be done faster. Of course, offsetting this is the fact that you now have to go back and fix the errors, and it'll end up taking a similar amount of time.
Trying to keep any number of people synchronized on one project is very, very difficult.
The main reason *I* think Minecraft is in such a state would probably be lack of planning. He designed it for single-player, then added in multi-player. if it had been designed for multi-player, both would work in a similar fashion.
It's kinda like adding jet engines and wings to a car to make it fly, compared to designing a jet from scratch. both will work, but the car will have some serious problems.
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I'm not under the impression that notch is spending 8+ hours a day on this, especially when he's just getting his company started. If he WAS spending 8+ hours a day working on this thing, we'd have reason to worry - he'd probably end up sick of it, and we wouldn't get any farther. People who complain about the rate of development really must not understand creativity and motivation. Once his company is established, it'll be back to secret Fridays.
"breaks more than he ever fixes.. ever" For this to be true, Notch must have wrote several thousand flawless lines of code, or Minecraft wouldn't run. at all. Incredibly unlikely, and it's obviously your opinion. If you want "The Notch Defense Force" to leave, or join you, try using facts. I have no motivation to defend notch - if I felt I wasn't getting my $10 worth, I'd be bitching too - but there's little to no evidence, just opinions from impatient people.
"None of your usual spam of defense means anything to these facts." << I'm curious, what facts? I haven't seen any, certainly not in your post anyways.
Also, just a note on "It's time to hand the game over to some people who know what they're doing"
Notch is using a technique known as agile. What this means is that there is little to no documentation, so the new people would need to spend roughly a month analyzing the code to find out what's what. Even after, it's unlikely that the development would proceed faster or be flawless, because the number of people you throw at a project complicates things. The amount of money thrown at it doesn't help either in most cases, but with an in-house artist he won't have to spend time working on the textures or models anymore. As it is, getting the new programmer up to speed will probably take a few weeks.
"...MONTHS of broken, shitty coding..." and a few other statements suggest you "knew" notch was a shitty coder for a while now. If you knew that, why didn't you make a backup? you had plenty of time, and then you could just rollback to the previous installation that worked.
"Just put it all in your sigs and stop posting" Just saying, this nugget works both ways.
"people who legitimately want to *****" Legitimate bitching? please. Definition taken from Wikipedia:
"To criticize (something) spitefully, often for the sake of complaining rather than in order to have the problem corrected." AKA there's nothing legitimate about it.
"None of your usual spam of defense" I hope this dissection will atone for the "usual spam of defense" you've endured. By the way, your usual spam of offense is clogging up the boards.
PS: Once Notch is done with Minecraft, he said he plans to release the source code online. He won't be "leaving MC to fall apart", he'll be giving it to the fans.
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Sorry, I didn't mean to sound angry or anything, it's just amazing that people expect it to run perfectly all the time. I'm in school for this stuff, I know all too well how frustrating attempting to fix bugs can be - and I haven't even made a graphical application like this, I've been working in all-text.
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If you and your friend can get $500 together and buy a desktop, you could use that and not end up paying recurring fees. I can help with setting up the server if you don't know how. If I had a decent desktop, I'd offer, but unfortunately all I have is a laptop that's on and off all the time.
If latency becomes a problem, talk to your internet service provider - you should be able to have your server set up in the ISP's room, so it won't be affected by people using the internet at your house.
Alternatively, you can get hosting for pretty cheap, but the price usually reflects the service and they're usually set up for web hosting.
0
Welcome to the wonderful world of programming. As a coder, you can test your code for days on end and find nothing, but 500 people find bugs an hour after release. Notch is one guy, most developers have swarms (200+) of contract testers for their games, and bugs STILL get through. (BXR in halo 2, for example, was not intended in the game)
You obviously know nothing about programming.
[EDIT] I'd just like to add that you have, in essence, pre-ordered a game (albeit at half price, due to the risk of the game not even launching). You have no entitlement at this point. As a pre-order gift, you are allowed to play the current development version.
IF minecraft is not completed and development ends in beta, you can complain and request your money back, but to be honest I feel I've already had my $10 worth.
0
Using a picture as an example:
Give a group of artists a 10x10 sprite and a sheet of paper. Almost all of them will look radically different.
Give a group of artists a 100x100 pic and ask them to make a 10x10 sprite. within reason, (a few shades of colour differences, etc) all of the sprites will look fairly similar. applying this to minecraft, I'm trying to say that it's a lot easier to generate a smaller area based on a larger area then it is to generate a large area based on a smaller area.
They could both be generated at the same time, but then exploring in hell will be incredibly taxing on the limited resources on the host computer.
Coding a level generator is well beyond my abilities, and beyond my comprehension right now. Still, knowing what I know about programming, it's freaking hard.
The other problem is that Minecraft is a single-threaded application. It can only use ONE core on your computer, so a quad core phenom running at 3.6 isn't going to fare much better than a dual core running around the same speed. if Minecraft could have each level generator running on a separate core, then it would be feasible to have both generate simultaneously.
tl,dr; There's a technical reason.
EDIT: I don't actually know exactly how he's built it, but it's my educated guess that
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Does it snow everywhere in america? I thought not :biggrin.gif:
I live in the only place in canada that doesn't get snow every year. only two of three years usually bring snow.
I'm under the impression that the lower states (texas, cali, florida) don't usually receive snow, do they? I'm honestly curious.
lol, if hell's frozen over, then pigs will fly, and sandwiches will make themselves! XD
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I really want flying pigs. Another use for arrows!
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Minecraft has been in beta since the old people played it
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'Naw, that's just 'cuz canada just finished owning the devil. Canada > devil.
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lavacreepers in hell?
Agreed with the two above me~!
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What if, instead of not allowing us to build in hell once we're outside generated space in relation to the overworld, the walls of hell just become unbreakable? like adminium? or have the difficulty level ramp up the closer to the "edge" of hell? (say you enter hell from the center of the overworld. moving in any direction, more and more baddies spawn until you're beset by several ghast)
I don't know, I'm not personally a fan of losing my ability to place blocks. To me that's like me losing the ability to manipulate objects with my hands when I visit America (from Canada). Any thoughts?
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This is first result in the google search he posted: viewtopic.php?f=1012&t=56807
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Or we could use gaempads. those are fun.
And spider-riding skeletons
and creeper riding zombies!