0x10C (Notch makes Eve, but better)

[Pezzle]

I will not play this game.  The elements included are designed to subtract from my fun.

[DraconianOne]

What I took from the statement is that he wants a game with real problems,  where you feel like your ship can fall apart and you might have to duct tape shit to get to the next planet. 

You mean, like the Millennium Falcon? 

I liked the video. The graphics made me feel all nostalgic and took me back to the day of modding Doom.



 

[Yegolev]

The game will probably have some decent quality and will be fun for some people, but sounds like "EVE IN SPACE".

[Mrbloodworth]

The "Notch only just decided to have textures" thing makes it sound like he's desperately flailing around trying to figure out what he wants and what he's going to make, and really shows he doesn't have a designers bone in his body, he just struck it right by making a block mining game.  And honestly, while I'm not knocking minecraft, it got it's popularity before the real "game" elements were added in.  It was pretty much accidental but now he's busy thinking he's a designer god and "must get things perfect" and it's pretty funny.

Keep in mind, Wurm Online was Minecraft 1.0. There are many, MANY lessons learned there he applied to Minecraft. A great deal of the "complication" in Wurm was not Notch, it was not his idea of how it should be, Minecraft is infinitely closer. My point, Minecraft did not come out of nowhere. It was a refinement of what he had already attempted. The Cube Terrain came from another game, but the principle is the same, the visual representation of "Terraforming" just changed.

With 0x10C, hes going after the Chris Roberts vision, hes admitted as much over and over. But he has never made a game like that before.

[KallDrexx]

Keep in mind, Wurm Online was Minecraft 1.0. There are many, MANY lessons learned there he applied to Minecraft. A great deal of the "complication" in Wurm was not Notch, it was not his idea of how it should be, Minecraft is infinitely closer. My point, Minecraft did not come out of nowhere. It was a refinement of what he had already attempted. The Cube Terrain came from another game, but the principle is the same, the visual representation of "Terraforming" just changed.

With 0x10C, hes going after the Chris Roberts vision, hes admitted as much over and over. But he has never made a game like that before.

I never played Wurm, but while he had a vision for the full game of Minecraft, but most of the gamey elements were put in place *after* Minecraft had started gaining in popularity.  Minecraft became popular because certain decisions he made about the world building aspect took off to keep it simple, but what we'll never know if that was his intention, or his intention was for the game to take off because of the world building plus the more gamey aspects (biomes, villages, etc...).  For example, if Minecraft was released as it is today would it be popular with all the features turned on, or would most servers/players keep it at the base world building and play with that. 

Anyways, I guess my main point is that nothing in his public comments about this game or minecraft make it seem like he has a clear and well thought out idea about where he exactly wants to take it.  He has some pie in the sky idea that is extremely similar all the 16 year olds that go "I wanna make a MMO".

[Malakili]

Anyways, I guess my main point is that nothing in his public comments about this game or minecraft make it seem like he has a clear and well thought out idea about where he exactly wants to take it.  He has some pie in the sky idea that is extremely similar all the 16 year olds that go "I wanna make a MMO".

If he gets the base stuff right, like he did with Minecraft, that'll be well over half the battle.

[Scold]

The "Notch only just decided to have textures" thing makes it sound like he's desperately flailing around trying to figure out what he wants and what he's going to make, and really shows he doesn't have a designers bone in his body, he just struck it right by making a block mining game.  And honestly, while I'm not knocking minecraft, it got it's popularity before the real "game" elements were added in.  It was pretty much accidental but now he's busy thinking he's a designer god and "must get things perfect" and it's pretty funny.

Keep in mind, Wurm Online was Minecraft 1.0. There are many, MANY lessons learned there he applied to Minecraft. A great deal of the "complication" in Wurm was not Notch, it was not his idea of how it should be, Minecraft is infinitely closer. My point, Minecraft did not come out of nowhere. It was a refinement of what he had already attempted. The Cube Terrain came from another game, but the principle is the same, the visual representation of "Terraforming" just changed.

With 0x10C, hes going after the Chris Roberts vision, hes admitted as much over and over. But he has never made a game like that before.

Whoa, Notch worked on Wurm?

[Amaron]

He has some pie in the sky idea that is extremely similar all the 16 year olds that go "I wanna make a MMO".

That's underestimating his experience a bit too much.  Minecraft is a bit more technically impressive than it looks.  He's at least competent enough to gauge the work involved.

[schild]

The "Notch only just decided to have textures" thing makes it sound like he's desperately flailing around trying to figure out what he wants and what he's going to make, and really shows he doesn't have a designers bone in his body, he just struck it right by making a block mining game.  And honestly, while I'm not knocking minecraft, it got it's popularity before the real "game" elements were added in.  It was pretty much accidental but now he's busy thinking he's a designer god and "must get things perfect" and it's pretty funny.

Oh, for sure, he absolutely has no idea what he's doing. This space thing should be right up his alley, but it would probably be best if that studio never said a damn thing until something was Done Enough.

[Paelos]

I agree, he's only going to hurt himself by giving out information at this point.

[KallDrexx]

That's underestimating his experience a bit too much.  Minecraft is a bit more technically impressive than it looks.  He's at least competent enough to gauge the work involved.

There is a difference between being able to code the technical aspects of a game and designing a good and fun game.  I agree that Minecraft is technically impressive, but that has nothing to do with my criticisms.  Most people with the "I wanna make an MMO" mentality don't fail because of the technology, they fail much sooner in game design and content design before they even run into technical limitations because they have no clear vision of what they exactly want to make, and those that have an idea of what they want to make have no idea how to take those ideas and design (not even code but design) game systems to facilitate those ideas.

All of posts about 0x10C come off as exactly that.  He has a pie in the sky ideas but does not seem to either 1) have a clear vision of what he wants or 2) does not have a good idea of how to convert those ideas into concrete game systems (and I don't mean code wise). 

But you know, he's a millionaire that probably doesn't need to work another day in his life if he didn't want to so he can do whatever with his time. 

[Paelos]

But you know, he's a millionaire that probably doesn't need to work another day in his life if he didn't want to so he can do whatever with his time. 

My guess is he's going to blow it. What he should have done is take anything and everything he made from Minecraft, dumped it into a healthy mutual fund account, and walked away.

What he will do is probably throw a bunch of it into his "next venture" that will never live up to Minecraft because he never truly understood what people loved about his game.

[Mrbloodworth]

Uh, hes been publishing other games and has a few teams in house making others. His personal project is really immaterial to his company. Minecraft on PC alone still sells 7k a day. Its odd you guys have the image of him sitting on a pile of cash programming alone and no one else on his staff has any contributing skills.  

Whats to spend on 0x10C? Marking? Tools? Art assets? sounds?

Also: gun.

[tazelbain]

The guy does blue water game development.  You can't layout a large, specific game design when the game is filled things that have never been tried.  He isn't making 2d platformer number #1123452345235345234.  Have you seen the video on how Subversion died and Prision Architect was created?  You take the ideas you think might be fun and make a prototype to see if it is fun.  You add and subtract things hoping that you find the fun core.  If not, you ditch and move on.  If you do, you build and expand on it to make a game.  The issue is we discovered Minecraft after this process and we are watching 0x10C before.  

Saying this is going to fail is an safe prediction like predicting a football team won't win the superbowl during the preseason. It takes no insight to make it.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yep.

I'm putting most of the comments here under "These people think Phong Shading is AMAZING!!!1!" category :)

 

[Paelos]

I'm not dooming the project. I'm questioning his decision making processes.

He's got an absolute hit and doesn't need to prove anything to anybody. He's giving out information on a completely unfinished project with no clear goals. From what I understand, and I could be wrong here, he's already been married and divorced in the span of the last 18 months. At the very least he's decided to do another game, even though it's not necessarily in his genre. The worst case would be if he decided to take the money from gaming and roll it into a real estate deal or something. That's what I usually see with people who piss away good fortune.

I think the game will be fine if he just shuts down the info-machine, works on the project, and releases it when he's done.

[Mrbloodworth]

He has never, EVER been that kind of developer. He will likely always, and for ever, talk about what he is working on. Its a useful tool, and did help minecraft immensely. This is not a guy out to make a hit. Its a guy who makes games he wants to play. The cash just means he does not have to do anything else.

Just about every step of Minecrafts development, thoughts, ideas, and blunders are in his blog. Anything before that, would be discussions on TIGSource and IRC.

This is first video of what the world had seen of  what would become Minecraft. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9t3FREAZ-k&list=UU3XJRyvLD7rvsVFCFS1IX0A&index=35&feature=plcp

[Sky]

Saying this is going to fail is an safe prediction like predicting a football team won't win the superbowl during the preseason. It takes no insight to make it.

Welcome to f13!

I think the idea of Notch making some crazy space thing and messing with it until it meets his idea of fun is ok. The only problem with releasing info as he does stuff is that people are fucking moronic retards. It's cool seeing what he's tinkering with, it's not cool seeing how people build it up into something, because they're fucking moronic retards. Same shit has been happening with minis kickstarters, these cool creators are lifting the veil so we can see minis go from concept to sculpt to cast to painted and people lose their minds because it's not, well pick whatever moronic thing you'd like, too tall, too thin, not hot enough, too much ass, not enough ass, etc. Mind you most of these people have no concept of technical limitations in casting minis. So most of the folks have just stopped posting greens and WIP stuff.

The game Notch is working on may or may not be cool. Watching Notch work on a game is cool.

[Paelos]

If you're willing to put your process out there, especially in a creative sense, you deserve what you get.

I don't think there's much benefit to doing it. In my mind it's like an athlete with a Twitter account. I fail to see an upside that couldn't be accomplished with a more selective approach of information.

Hell, you could even keep a running diary on what happens and not release it immediately. You could release it after the fact, or every quarter, or something more measured. Firing from the hip is a bad idea.

[Samwise]

I don't understand how it's a "bad idea".  What is the bad outcome?  The project is abandoned and all the howler monkeys of the Internet say "lol, Notch failed"?  I don't think he cares.

If Notch were EA and desperately trying to generate buzz for some game and get it released in time for Christmas to keep their stock prices from tanking, yeah, it would be a bad idea to publicize work in progress and risk having it flop.  Notch is not EA.  He's a guy with a hobby who has happened to make a lot of money at it.

[Paelos]

I think it's a bad idea because like it or not, opening up the process to the public can have unintended consequences on your own creativity, especially if you lack a clear vision.

Sort of think of it as the committee effect.

I agree he's not EA. For that we can all be thankful. He can run his business any way he sees fit. If he wants to treat it as a hobby, I can only hope he's got a massive amount of his money locked away with a solid financial company that handles his affairs responsibly and legally.

[Yegolev]

His openness caused several crap posts in this thread, so there's your empirical evidence.

[tazelbain]

He's Swedish.  He has nothing to worry about even if he pisses it all away.

[Mrbloodworth]

His openness caused several crap posts in this thread, so there's your empirical evidence.

 

[Amaron]

Most people with the "I wanna make an MMO" mentality don't fail because of the technology, they fail much sooner in game design and content design before they even run into technical limitations because they have no clear vision of what they exactly want to make, and those that have an idea of what they want to make have no idea how to take those ideas and design (not even code but design) game systems to facilitate those ideas.

No they fail far far sooner than that.  The moment they start the sentence with "I" they've failed.

I think it's a bad idea because like it or not, opening up the process to the public can have unintended consequences on your own creativity, especially if you lack a clear vision.

Actually I think he's the kind of guy to ignore the feedback.  It's not actually an open process. 

[Samwise]

Actually I think he's the kind of guy to ignore the feedback.  It's not actually an open process. 

Kinda my take on it too.  I don't follow him very closely but from what I know Notch seems like the sort of guy who gives no fucks.

[Margalis]

The guy does blue water game development.  You can't layout a large, specific game design when the game is filled things that have never been tried.  He isn't making 2d platformer number #1123452345235345234.

Minecraft was apparently started because a game called Infiniminer came out, was cool, then fell apart, and Minecraft looks A LOT like Infiniminer. Like...almost exactly the same.

Infiniminer was a game, but people decided that just building stuff in it like a toy was more fun than playing the game part. So then Notch made Minecraft, which elevated that concept - then later added back in more gamey shit that nobody cared about.

My point is that he had a template to work from.

Now with this game there doesn't appear to be a template, and the production seems like it would be a LOT more difficult. In Minecraft you have axis aligned cubes you can create in code. That sort of thing will not fly in a space game where you need actual models.

The brilliance of Minecraft is that it is a very systems-driven game with simple systems and almost no content production requirement. That isn't true of a space game.

[Stormwaltz]

In Minecraft you have axis aligned cubes you can create in code. That sort of thing will not fly in a space game where you need actual models.

Blockade Runner?

[Venkman]

You don't need models if you just let the a constructed set of cubes move

As to 0x10C. When there's deets, or a indie groundswell of support, I'll care. If a major publishers picks it up, I'm out.

[UnSub]

Minecraft was apparently started because a game called Infiniminer came out, was cool, then fell apart, and Minecraft looks A LOT like Infiniminer. Like...almost exactly the same.

Heh, in Bloodworth's link up there to the first Minecraft video Notch calls it "a very early test of an Infiniminer clone".

[Mrbloodworth]

0x10c multiplayer test

[Ghambit]

Kinda funny how people can say 0x10C will flop when fact is it's a hit regardless of how good it actually is.  Anyone here actually think the thing wont/cant turn a profit?  Get real.  Sure, Notch's feelings might get hurt if everyone (after buying and playing his game) thinks it sux...  but he'll still get to snort his woes away off an expensive hookers ass.

Only way it fails economically is if he gets suckered into bloating his studio, finding an expensive pubby, and wasting tons of cash on pointless marketing.  His biz model should be EXACTLY the same as Minecraft.  Only the dunce asleep in the back of economy 101 would think changing that model would be smart.  It worked... and worked well.  Why the fuck change it?

[Sky]

My bet is it will be a better game than Tom Hall and Mr and Mrs Romera poop out of Loot Drop. If they ever do poop one out before blowing through and VC they might actually someday bilk people out of.

It's a sad day when Notch and a decent mmofps are getting all the hate and Loot Drop barely gets a mention for trying an old-school VC robbery.

[Soln]

Whatever happened to Scrolls?  I thought that going to be Mojang's second game.   

[apocrypha]

Still in development, apparently now in closed alpha.