But all these games are blocky, just like Minecraft. I'm not saying Mojang has blocks or the sandbox copyrighted, but they are all ripping off Minecraft.
According to Notch's blog, the idea for Minecraft was born when he was playing Infiniminer, which is a blocky game.
By the way, I am happy to report that the "Minecraft Block Story" issue is solved. After our multiple complaints, agame renamed it.
There's even a game called "Minecraft Block Story", and the name "Minecraft" is trademarked. That aside, making a similar game isn't by itself a cause for legal action; I wouldn't be surprised if a game with mechanics similar to Minecraft (e.g. placing/breaking blocks) existed before it did since in the end there are only a few types of games out there, just with many variations. Not that Mojang really cares.
Hi TheMasterCaver. I am one of the 2 developers of block story. I would like to clarify this.
We DO NOT call it "Minecraft Block Story" nor do we ever want our game to be confused with Minecraft for which we have a lot of respect . We let agame publish our old web player version in their site and they by themselves decided to call it that (I guess trying to get clicks). When we noticed this, we immediately contacted them and asked them to either drop the "Minecraft" or remove our game from their web site. No one is more frustrated than me that it is still live, and I am actively working on getting this removed.
This is making us look bad, and we had nothing to do with it.
Any way you guys could make the payment ideal or greenlight it on steam because on desura they pay with creditcards but i pay with Ideal and that is much easier and you don't need a creditcard for it i hope you guys make it so you can buy it from all over the world so everyone can buy/enjoy you're game
We are thinking of relaunching on greenlight, and making a much more coordinated push. But it will come after the next update. We want to do it right this time, and hopefully we can get through.
All that stuff that game has and it doesn't even have liquid physics...
I have not developed water physics in Block Story because I try to focus on differentiator features first. Also, because I have been busy building an MMO version of Block Story.
I am one the people behind Block Story's performance. I wrote the block engine last year, and I have spent countless hours optimizing it to make it run good on Mobile. Since we worked so hard to optimize it for mobile, desktop hardware is a piece of cake.
I even wrote a few articles describing some optimizations that I have done: http://www.blockstor...node/56. These are the tips of the iceberg, but each one yield very good results.
As a profesional java developer, I can tell you that this particular optimization: http://www.blockstory.net/node/59
is either impossible or extremely ugly to make in java, because java does not have custom value types. My guess is that Mojang is doing some very awkward bitwise operations, nasty byte arrays, or separate arrays for block types, data and light in order to keep their chunk data.
Having worked on Java for years, I can assure you I would never pick that language to write this kind of program just for this reason.
I have no clue how Minecraft does the rendering, I can tell you some optimizations in Block Story you won't find in any paper. For example, I invented an algorithm that combines multiple consecutive blocks, and renders them with just 2 triangles with an average performance of O(n*n). I might write a paper about it one day.
The textures are indeed 128x128 by default. And at max settings we do normal mapping, which makes the textures look 3d. We also react to light coming from the player, so you can equip a torch and explore caves. We might introduce specular lightning in the future, which will cause gold and glass to reflect light. I don't expect this to affect performance significantly in the pc version though. We try to push as much work as we can to the video card.
If we were to restrict our engine to direct x 11, there could be further optimizations. You can tell the video card to generate the triangles (geometry shaders), which would hardware accelerate this part as well. Though I don't know if Mojang can leverage this with their tooling.
I felt very proud of my work when I read your post and saw that this effort got noticed.
I do think Minecraft could improve their performance, but in my opinion their choice of tool (java), puts limits in how much they can achieve.
I know what you are trying to do and if all you are going to continue to use this topic to advertise your game you are not actually aiding in the discussion.
I love indie developers don't get me wrong, but all you care about is yourself. I wouldn't mind so much about you making posts about you and your products if you didn't ignore me every time I try to have a conversation with you about the games we make as well. I gave interest in your work, treated you with respect, but you just ignore me. So no more.
Here is a taste of your own medicine; get of my topic before I have to make a report.
I am so sorry Galactic_Muffin I had no idea you were trying to reach me. If I ignored you I assure you it was not on purpose. Feel free to pm me if I am not responsive.
Since my post appeared to be seen as inappropriate I edited it out.
Don't worry, I was not planning on posting anything else here unless asked a question.
An earlier comment said how Minecraft was a rip off.
The topic is saying the game that looks similar to a mod is ">" Minecraft. I could be over-reacting, but that's just how I comprehended it.
I do not think Minecraft is a rip off (I hate that word). Minecraft took inspiration in Infiniminer in much the same way we took inspiration in Minecraft and other games. You can view the history here if you are interested.
I certainly do not trash talk Minecraft, much less in Minecraft forums. I have nothing but respect for Mojang, and if I ever have 5% of their sales, I would be the happiest man on earth.
There are many differences between block story and Minecraft, and we have a policy of avoiding Minecraft features whenever possible (we reject ideas simply because they are on Minecraft).
The video does not do a good job of highlighting the differences. We are currently working on a new video to address this.
Some of the differences:
* Colored lights
* Infinite up and down
* Colored glass (brand new, not released to the public yet)
* 88 non blocky mobs
* Quests
* Leveling
* Skill Points
* Floating islands
* Full compatibility between desktop and mobile (worlds can be moved)
* Magic spells you cast on mobs
* Guns
* Cars
* Flying tied to mana
* Gear like flippers to swim faster,
* Torch you can carry to light your way through caves
* shields
There are also a lot of features that Minecraft has that we don't, as I said, we avoid Minecraft features. These are 2 different games, with _some_ similar features (voxel terrain and crafting, that is about it).
And I am posting in off topic, where the forum rules say it should be, or replying to people that talk about block story. I do not spam around or trash talk MC (which I consider to be the best indi game of all times).
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We also made it so that you can ride 30 different animals including sharks, dolphins, horses, eagles, dragons (including the pet dragon).
We are also adding a spell to capture monsters into blocks, kind of like a pokemon:
0
According to Notch's blog, the idea for Minecraft was born when he was playing Infiniminer, which is a blocky game.
By the way, I am happy to report that the "Minecraft Block Story" issue is solved. After our multiple complaints, agame renamed it.
3
Hi TheMasterCaver. I am one of the 2 developers of block story. I would like to clarify this.
We DO NOT call it "Minecraft Block Story" nor do we ever want our game to be confused with Minecraft for which we have a lot of respect . We let agame publish our old web player version in their site and they by themselves decided to call it that (I guess trying to get clicks). When we noticed this, we immediately contacted them and asked them to either drop the "Minecraft" or remove our game from their web site. No one is more frustrated than me that it is still live, and I am actively working on getting this removed.
This is making us look bad, and we had nothing to do with it.
0
We are thinking of relaunching on greenlight, and making a much more coordinated push. But it will come after the next update. We want to do it right this time, and hopefully we can get through.
Thank you for the feedback.
0
[video][/video]
Hope you guys like it.
1
I have not developed water physics in Block Story because I try to focus on differentiator features first. Also, because I have been busy building an MMO version of Block Story.
0
0
0
No, not at all. We made all the textures ourselves. We used to use some textures from Summerfields (with the consent of the author), but not anymore.
0
0
I even wrote a few articles describing some optimizations that I have done:
http://www.blockstor...node/56. These are the tips of the iceberg, but each one yield very good results.
As a profesional java developer, I can tell you that this particular optimization:
http://www.blockstory.net/node/59
is either impossible or extremely ugly to make in java, because java does not have custom value types. My guess is that Mojang is doing some very awkward bitwise operations, nasty byte arrays, or separate arrays for block types, data and light in order to keep their chunk data.
Having worked on Java for years, I can assure you I would never pick that language to write this kind of program just for this reason.
I have no clue how Minecraft does the rendering, I can tell you some optimizations in Block Story you won't find in any paper. For example, I invented an algorithm that combines multiple consecutive blocks, and renders them with just 2 triangles with an average performance of O(n*n). I might write a paper about it one day.
The textures are indeed 128x128 by default. And at max settings we do normal mapping, which makes the textures look 3d. We also react to light coming from the player, so you can equip a torch and explore caves. We might introduce specular lightning in the future, which will cause gold and glass to reflect light. I don't expect this to affect performance significantly in the pc version though. We try to push as much work as we can to the video card.
If we were to restrict our engine to direct x 11, there could be further optimizations. You can tell the video card to generate the triangles (geometry shaders), which would hardware accelerate this part as well. Though I don't know if Mojang can leverage this with their tooling.
I felt very proud of my work when I read your post and saw that this effort got noticed.
I do think Minecraft could improve their performance, but in my opinion their choice of tool (java), puts limits in how much they can achieve.
0
It features the colored lights and glass. And a brand new tutorial designed for PC
0
I am so sorry Galactic_Muffin I had no idea you were trying to reach me. If I ignored you I assure you it was not on purpose. Feel free to pm me if I am not responsive.
Since my post appeared to be seen as inappropriate I edited it out.
Don't worry, I was not planning on posting anything else here unless asked a question.
0
I do not think Minecraft is a rip off (I hate that word). Minecraft took inspiration in Infiniminer in much the same way we took inspiration in Minecraft and other games. You can view the history here if you are interested.
I certainly do not trash talk Minecraft, much less in Minecraft forums. I have nothing but respect for Mojang, and if I ever have 5% of their sales, I would be the happiest man on earth.
There are many differences between block story and Minecraft, and we have a policy of avoiding Minecraft features whenever possible (we reject ideas simply because they are on Minecraft).
The video does not do a good job of highlighting the differences. We are currently working on a new video to address this.
Some of the differences:
* Colored lights
* Infinite up and down
* Colored glass (brand new, not released to the public yet)
* 88 non blocky mobs
* Quests
* Leveling
* Skill Points
* Floating islands
* Full compatibility between desktop and mobile (worlds can be moved)
* Magic spells you cast on mobs
* Guns
* Cars
* Flying tied to mana
* Gear like flippers to swim faster,
* Torch you can carry to light your way through caves
* shields
There are also a lot of features that Minecraft has that we don't, as I said, we avoid Minecraft features. These are 2 different games, with _some_ similar features (voxel terrain and crafting, that is about it).
And I am posting in off topic, where the forum rules say it should be, or replying to people that talk about block story. I do not spam around or trash talk MC (which I consider to be the best indi game of all times).
0
You can add red, yellow and blue dies to sand, snow, wood, or wax. Combine them in any one of 64 colors.
If you paint sand, you can then melt it and you get colored glass
if you paint wax, and then make a candle with it, it will glow that color.