0x10c - Notch goes to space

I think Michael might be right -- this looks vastly more intricate than Minecraft, with many more moving parts, and if I understand the tenor of his hires correctly, that's a young team without much experience with big programs. It's really easy to have a complex project spiral out of control, and this sure looks like a complex project.

Hopefully they'll realize this in time to structure their development properly. Lots of young teams have crashed and burned trying to do similar things.

I'm not sure it needs to be very complicated. They could easily have something on the order of Spacechem complexity when it comes to programming it. They could also pick up and re-purpose existing open source CPU simulations.

Notch posted a FAQ of sorts. Some key questions answered:

- Subscription based, since "f2p is a scam"
- No OS provided, but people are free to write and distribute their own
- First person (so apparently you're not playing as a spaceship (a la EVE))
- Player code sharing seems to be encouraged; malware is a possibility

I'm a little unclear on just what role the CPU will play in the actual gameplay. If this is just some obscenely complex version of moving the LOGO turtle around, I can't see it developing much of a following. Hopefully there's a bit more "game" to the game too.

FD 100
RT 20
FD 40
REPEAT 5 [FLIPGORETHEBIRD]
LT 180
FD 2000

This really seems like an attempt at the rebirth of 80's game/hacker culture. Writing an OS is not as bad as you might think; people used to do that in a one semester class. You probably won't need an OS for something like a gun emplacement, anyway. At least until you want to tie various devices together, and even then, you could do that with an Ethernet style messaging system built into each driver. And there will be code decompilers to check for malicious code, I'm sure, but I'm sure a part of the game will be the arms race between in-game malware authors and the white hat defenders.

Could be very cool. Brush up on your coding skills; I know mine are very rusty.

Something I'm wondering about is what kind of communications will be implemented to the point where malware is an issue, and what that communication is intended for. Could you have an AI fleet swarming a task.

Wow. Notch is crazy. In a good way.

IMAGE(http://0x10c.com/screenshots/002.png)

Markus Persson ‏ @notch Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
Ultra smooth shadows look amazing, but eat all the framerates for breakfast:

Per a recent Twitter update:

I gave up on my ambition to do hard scifi. I can't do that in a game! I updated http://0x10c.com to reflect my failure.

His update on the site:

Hard science fiction. Update: GAH, NO! I'm focusing on fun gameplay instead. I still want to get corrected on glaring scientific errors, though.
Norfair wrote:
Malor wrote:

Wasn't this just an April Fool joke?

I think calling it Mars Effect was a joke. What with their recent fun calling a game Scrolls and all.

It would have been funnier if he had called it "StarCraft".

Or "Star Raft".

Mars Effect keeps it targeted at Bioware though.

O.O

LiquidMantis wrote:

Mars Effect keeps it targeted at Bioware though.

It was Bethesda that was all pissy about Scrolls...unless there's been drama between Notch and Bioware I don't know of.

This is... fascinating. The denizens of the Space Game Thread will surely be interested.

Stengah wrote:
LiquidMantis wrote:

Mars Effect keeps it targeted at Bioware though.

It was Bethesda that was all pissy about Scrolls...unless there's been drama between Notch and Bioware I don't know of.

Bah, I don't know what I was thinking.

LiquidMantis wrote:
Stengah wrote:
LiquidMantis wrote:

Mars Effect keeps it targeted at Bioware though.

It was Bethesda that was all pissy about Scrolls...unless there's been drama between Notch and Bioware I don't know of.

Bah, I don't know what I was thinking.

Oooh oooh! I know! You were confusing Bioware and Bethesda.

I never got onboard with Minecraft, but I'm really looking forward to what he may produce with this one.

Yet again, it looks like the community might be outdoing Notch.

GitHub[/url]]GitHub officially supports the DCPU-16 assembly language

Today we have added DCPU-16 Assembly as an officially supported language on GitHub. Files with the .dasm16 or .dasm extensions will be automatically recognized and highlighted properly when pushed to your repositories.

Likewise, code blocks with the dasm16 tag will be highlighted in comments, and you can now choose DCPU-16 Assembly as the language for new Gists.

There are various DCPU emulators available. Start practicing!

I never got into Minecraft, and it's possible that Mojang is in over its head, but I'm really impressed with the ideas on display and the risks Notch is willing to take. This is something I'm definitely going to need to try at least once.

More screenshots. Click for full size.

IMAGE(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2012/04/001s.png)

IMAGE(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2012/04/002s.png)

IMAGE(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2012/04/003s.png)

IMAGE(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2012/04/004s.png)

IMAGE(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2012/04/005s.png)

IMAGE(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2012/04/006s.png)

IMAGE(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2012/04/007s.png)

I still don't have a clue what this game is supposed to be....

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I still don't have a clue what this game is supposed to be....

Like EVE, except you do everything via simple AI macro.

I'm gonna hold off until someone creates a c/c++/c# port.

I just realized that the name of this game kind of sucks.

wordsmythe wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

I still don't have a clue what this game is supposed to be....

Like EVE, except you do everything via simple AI macro.

And, judging by those first two screenshots, using a Commodore 64 with the serial numbers filed off.

No, wait, a 16-bit version of that.

...Yeah. I don't get it either.

It seems like a mix of space and planetary exploration with a weird programming-based ship micromanagement system bolted on to it.

So, people are already pointing out ways the design spec of the CPU could be improved to allow them to implement a C compiler more easily: http://0x10c.wonderhowto.com/blog/he...

I was thinking, 'geeze, that's a lot of work, why not just emulate a 68000 instead?" But the 68000 was a 32-bit processor with a 16-bit bus. It emulates like a demon, but the memory space was just way too huge. So then I thought, well, they should copy a good 16-bit processor, so that they don't have to spend much time on the design.

Problem is, I've never even heard of a nice, clean 16-bit architecture. x86 was horrible, and I think it was the only actual 16-bit instruction set that was ever in common use. So I guess they kinda do have to roll their own.

Grubber788 wrote:

I just realized that the name of this game kind of sucks.

How do you actually go about saying it? I've been calling it "Oh by ten see".

Obai Tensee!