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Notch's next game is an MMO
- uriloran 15y agoThe DCPU-16 specification is up at http://0x10c.com/doc/dcpu-16.txt http://0x10c.com/doc/dcpu-16.txt I am so exited right now!
- potomushto 15y ago@notch: The DCPU-16 specs are up, with some sample code and a memdump: http://0x10c.com/doc/dcpu-16.txt http://0x10c.com/doc/dcpu-16.txt
- razzaj 15y agoThis sounds similar to ogame only for hardliner geeks. I like it already. But i guess it will all be in the interface, i hope he nails it right. This could be very interesting.
- mikedougherty 15y agodepending on your chosen minecraft server, his first game was an MMO too!
- Breefield 15y agoEVE Online meets Minecraft.
- trickjarrett 15y agoI was thinking the same thing.
- endianswap 15y agoTechnology of note: "The computer in the game is a fully functioning emulated 16 bit CPU that can be used to control your entire ship, or just to play games on while waiting for a large mining operation to finish. [...] The cost of the game is still undecided, but it's likely there will be a monthly fee for joining the Multiverse as we are going to emulate all computers and physics even when players aren't logged in."
- zackham 15y agoBackstory is cool too and coincidentally appropriate for parent's username: "released, compatible with all popular 16 bit computers. Unfortunately, it used big endian, whereas the DCPU-16 specifications called for little endian. This led to a severe bug in the included drivers, causing a requested sleep of 0x0000 0000 0000 0001 years to last for 0x0001 0000 0000 0000 years."
- hesdeadjim 15y agoThis essentially embraces "macroing" as part of the game. Something every MMO out there has tried to fight and usually ends up losing. Makes me wonder if he will provide a way for players to sell the programs they make for in-game resources. This aspect alone is enough to excite me, can't way to play it!
- cpeterso 15y agoSounds like a Core War MMO. :)
- stephengillie 15y agoWill he fight the conversion of ingame currency to real-world currency, or will he take the Second Life route? So exciting!
- moe 15y agoPerhaps we get a second-life that doesn't suck after all. If there's a living designer who could pull it off then my money would be on notch.
- mdanger 15y agoBetween this and http://www.ftlgame.com/ http://www.ftlgame.com/ , it's nice to think that the scifi games I used to be only able to dream about are slowly becoming real.
- ericd 15y agoWow, thank you for posting about that. I'm really glad there are people doing really original work in the indie gaming world, it gives me hope that we haven't seen the last of the xcoms and fallouts (the original, scrappy versions of these, not the recent AAA incarnations)
- joshu 15y ago"roguelike-like"
- officemonkey 15y agoAs a fan of old space travel role playing games like "Traveller", I'm looking forward to this. If it combines the "build-it-yourself" bits of Minecraft (build your ship, build your computer, build your programs) with MMO trading, and guild-building of EVE Online, and let players build the universe, then it might be a real winner. I'll sign-up regardless.
- jiggy2011 15y agoAgreed, I have never pre-ordered a game in my life but I would certainly consider doing so with this.
- Gormo 15y agoThe amazing implication here is that if the game were to use a sufficiently realistic physics engine and realistically model materials and energy generation/consumption, then the ships and control systems that you design could actually be potentially viable designs for real-world spaceships! I doubt even Notch is able to accurately and fully emulate reality itself just yet, though.
- vitno 15y agoI think I'm going to lose a lot of time to this game...
- justauser 15y agoI thought Scrolls was his next game?
- oflannabhra 15y agoIf I remember correctly, Scrolls is Mojang's next game, but Notch was uninvolved in its developement (aside from hiring everyone).
- Zaak 15y agoNotch was at least involved in the original concept for Scrolls. I don't know if he's been involved in the actual development.
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- aresant 15y agoA four paragraph website outlining the vision coupled with a simple way for customers to engage directly with the CEO of the company. Notch understands "Minimum Viable Product"
- rauljara 15y agoI don't disagree. But it is important to note that the minimum viable product for the creator of minecraft is significantly different from the minimum viable product for random internet denizen x. You are guaranteed a certain amount of customer engagement when your pre-existing customers have already begging for years to hear about your next product.
- wildmXranat 15y ago"Hello, I'm Gabe Newell, I would like to introduce you to our new game, titled "Fill in The Blank". You run around, maybe as part of a group of some sort. Maybe rescue some hostages, scout and snipe terrorists every now and then and maybe stab a chicken or two. Physic, shaders and purple monkey dishwasher; I'm surprised you got this far before signing up for our email notification subscription." Yes, some personalities have plenty of currency to spend amongst their fan base.
- EwanG 15y agoWhere's the link to the Kickstarter page so I can contribute? Only 1/2 :-)
- officemonkey 15y agoYou forgot micropayments for hats.
- masklinn 15y agoHe forgot hats, to start with. He also counted some things up to 3, a numeral (and index) which does not exist in the ValveVerse.
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- pantaloons 15y ago"We are going to emulate all computers and physics even when players aren't logged in." I built a prototype trying to do something similar, inspired by a text-based RTS/MMO that kept running while you were asleep. For me this was an unrealistic goal, if the simulations are complex enough you can't operate at a price point users will pay for. Even if you can, because the game is now CPU bound, far less players fit on a single instance -- you now need incredibly clever partitioning and load distributing facilities to keep the world appearing seamless. Even AAA titles haven't solved that problem, a look at world PVP lag in EVE or WoW will tell you as much.
- jiggy2011 15y agoNot an expert in this but can't many physics calculations now be offloaded to modern GPUs which are designed to parallelize much more neatly?
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- heretohelp 15y agoPhysics/vector math aren't getting off-loaded, a virtualized 16 bit processor is.
- stephengillie 15y agoWhat would it take for the average i5 or i7 to virtualize a 16bit processor? Could it run on a separate thread from the main game? Could you run part of your MMO server work as a distributed-computing setup on client PCs? (but how would you get that working in real time?) Maybe the players that are online at a particular time could be doing some of the extra processing - the game client could run 1 or 2 extra 16-bit virtualizers in the background, along with the virtualizer for the player's own 16-bit cpu and the game thread. So 4 threads running on 4 separate cores.
- mattstreet 15y ago
- jiggy2011 15y agoI hope this will be like EVE Online but actually fun. When I played EVE, I always thought that a programmable ship would be fun. Although there is a risk that programmers will get an unfair advantage. On the other hand it may get more people interested in programming. I wonder if this will ship with an interpreter/compiler for any language or whether you will have to write ASM? Surely won't be long before there is a LISP for it. I can also imagine a lot of people getting pissed of because they keep getting killed accidentally by someone else's buggy software.
- stephengillie 15y agoWill players have to maintain multiple accounts just to remain competitive, as in EVE? Someone will have to make and sell a 16-bit "minesweeper" to play while mining. What will the first computer virus do? Will there be "actual" viruses? Can we convince Notch to let our characters get Space Flu?
- jiggy2011 15y agoWell if there is some way to make the ships communicate data between each other's computers then I think exploits and viruses become a feature of the game whether the developers like it or not. It really depends on how the admins choose to handle this, whether spreading viruses is fair play or whether it will get your account banned. I can imagine a newbie would find it highly annoying if 5 minutes into the game they end up with some Space Virus that causes their ship to spontaneously auto destruct all the time. Regards mining: Generally this is the most boring part of any MMO, just mindlessly grinding resources. Hopefully the programming aspect will let you do this while you are offline and have some scripts to decide what to do when you are attacked etc. The other problem with the programming aspect is this. I imagine Notch put it into the game thinking that it would be something fun for all players to mess about with. What could happen in reality is that a few of the better programmers release a bunch of scripts to do anything and these scripts become to best scripts out there. In such a case anybody writing their own code would probably be at a disadvantage compared to the other 99% running UberScript v3 so you end up with all players running essentially the same software. I hope that this game can be designed in a minecraft sort of way where it is not directly competitive and more can be gained by players working together rather than everyone out to "gank" each other. Although epic space battles are always fun.
- cpeterso 15y agoI was a developer for the ill-fated Perpetual Entertainment's Star Trek Online MMO (which was later sold and successfully launched by Cryptic Studios). Star Trek Online's #1 most common feature request from beta testers was "ship interiors." Players didn't want to play "WoW in Spaaaace" game. They wanted to play "The Sims meet Star Trek" and relive their favorite Star Trek TV episodes. That sounds like a pretty cool game (for a small, but dedicated niche), but Perpetual's game designers scoffed and (having worked at Blizzard) proceeded to create "WoW in Space."
- h2s 15y agoThis is the one thing stopping me from reaching 100% rabid-fanboy-mode about this news. We already have Quake in Space, WoW in Space, and Spreadsheets in Space: I hope this doesn't turn out to be "Assembly Programming in Space". This quote gave me hope: > A cloaking field, for example, might require almost all the power from the generator, forcing you to turn off all computers and dim all lights in order to successfully cloak. I'm hoping that "dim lights" means actually dimming the lights inside and being less able to see, and that the fact it's mentioned is a sign that this is their intended direction. I really hope Notch nails this. Give me a chilled-out space MMO that lets me have a friend ride shotgun and take over the controls to check out the awesome spaceship I just bought and then help fight off some attackers Millenium Falcon style. Please.
- zmanji 15y agoOut of curiosity what is classified as "Quake in Space" and "WoW in Space" ?
- DannoHung 15y agoQuake in Space is maybe Shattered Horizon? "WoW in Space" is either Star Trek Online or Star Wars the Old Republic.
- sbierwagen 15y agoShattered Horizon isn't nearly as fast moving as Quake. It's more BF2142 In Space than Quake In Space.
- tnash 15y agoThis looks great, and it's evident from Notch's success with Minecraft that he really knows how to provide a great product and interact with his fans. Looking forward to trying it out.
- thinker 15y agoThe creator of Minecraft is creating a space game!? He should totally call it Starcraft.
- tomrod 15y agoYou sir, are the best hybrid of geek and reddit. Have an upboat. Shame the name is trademarked.
- tomrod 15y agoWow, tons of downvotes. There goes 6 months of hard work. Bad way to start a day.
- nateberkopec 15y agoWelcome to Hacker News, where everything is made up and the points don't matter!
- tomrod 15y agoLove it. Best show ever.
- sirclueless 15y agoYou should be aware that the HN crowd is in a massive state of collective denial where they all pretend that they are less banal than reddit.
- ique 15y agoHas anyone decoded the name? He said it was related to 1 in a 64-bit system read in 16-bit with the wrong endianness, or something like that. I tried my hand at it briefly but gave up.
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- losvedir 15y ago0x10^c in base 10 is 16^12, or how many years into the future the people woke from their sleep. I think you're referring to his tweet: "What happens if you try to read a 64 bit representation of 1 in a 16 bit system, but you get the endianness wrong?" In other words, the endianness and 64/16-bit comments in that tweet weren't a puzzle, so much as the back story. (Check the paragraph beginning "In 1998"). i.e.: "What happens if you specify something one way and a program reads it a different way? You end up a 200 trillion years in the future!"
- bobwebb 15y agoHe's poking fun at the Y2K, Y2K38 problems. :)
- mindstab 15y agoIs this some hint? the year 281474976712644 - 1988 (first year of deep freeze) == exactly 2^48 And how do you get that much sleep on a 16bit cpu
- a1k0n 15y agoThat's why it's called 0x10^c. And the 16-bit CPU supports extended addition and multiplication via ADD/ADC and MUL, so it's easy.
- justjimmy 15y agoHopefully it'll have some sandbox features! MMO Scene has been missing a decent sandbox since UO and SWG (Pre you know what. And dont' say EVE online cause to me, that was just a huge game of stare-at-your-UI-windows)
- stephengillie 15y agoCan it please be "EVE-craft"? If it were just "Minecraft in space" on the EVE scope? Go mine iron to craft parts for your spaceship!
- andyobryan 15y agoTotally agree, I kept my beta UO account up this whole time but the last DEV regime really lost a lot of players.. new producer seems to have priorities right. We will see. Create a better sandbox game and we'll see another game last 15 years.
- ilaksh 15y agoGreat, now I can finally stop pretending that Infinity: Quest for Earth is actually going to happen.
- afterburner 15y agoYes, the seamless planet landing thing made me thing of Infinity too...
- ConstantineXVI 15y agoWithout any context for the name: maybe "sixteen (or hex-ten) to lightspeed"? Space game with a focus on the ingame CPU, seems logical.
- codesuela 15y agoI hope someone comes up with something like "Spaceship on Rails"
- mkramlich 15y agoFunny timing. I was designing a new space/SF computer game this weekend for a few hours. I tend to make one new one every few years. I saw a little overlap between his feature list and mine, but a lot of potential differences too, which is great. I may put it up on Kickstarter too if/when I have some proof-of-concept demos ready to show. So little free time though...
- w1ntermute 15y agoI hope the graphics don't suck, like they do in Minecraft. I know it sound superficial, but graphics do matter. Minecraft succeeded despite its graphics, not because of them.
- emeltzer 15y agoStrongly disagree with this. Minecraft's graphics are a direct consequence of what the game IS (i.e. a world made out of large-ish blocks). More realistic (that is, less stylized) textures look strange on top of huge blocks, and anything that obscured the block structure of the world would have made Minecraft a worse game.
- v21 15y agoMinecraft needed to be made of blocks, it's true. But Minecraft could be more beautiful than it is. Which isn't to diss it - what it does well, it does really well. And it can often be beautiful -- the terrain generator can produce some wonderful things. While it isn't aiming for all the same points, and is obviously inspired in some parts by Minecraft, I think for example Cube World is a much better looking game. http://wollay.blogspot.co.uk/ http://wollay.blogspot.co.uk/
- ghayes 15y agoThis is a refreshing comment. We can say the same about a lot of websites. I should note, however, this runs abut to the concept of UI versus UX.
- Osmose 15y agoI disagree. The graphics in Minecraft match very well with the gameplay mechanic of working with a small, simple set of building blocks. It's a not-so-subtle signal to the player that the entire world is constructed with these blocks, and invites the player to see how they can be creative when given a limited, low-res set of building blocks. Consider the common complaint about current-day Lego blocks: "Legos used to be simple." You can say that it applies only to the functional aspect, shape, but I think it also applies to their visual aspect. I mean, how many special blocks does Hogwarts or Prince of Persia really need? And, disregarding all of that, there's a significant portion of gamers out there who will pay in both money and loyalty when you evoke nostalgia, which Minecraft does via pixellated graphics.
- gavanwoolery 15y agoWe are in the year 281 474 976 712 644, but there are only 16 bit computers on the ships? Anachronism!!!
- Tuna-Fish 15y agoNo. The ships were launched in the 80's, and all the tech they contain is 16-bit. Presumably, there are more powerful computers out there, but they are advanced enough that you are certainly not going to do anything useful with them. (Let's just ignore that the tech ran without issue and succesfully woke you up after 281*10^12 years.) I find this actually really clever. I suppose the less programmatically inclined will trade new programs from the people building them.
- gavanwoolery 15y agoAh I think I misread that. ;) Still, I think even a thousand year gap in tech would make ships obsolete. I mean, look at how far our tech has progressed over the past century...
- rdl 15y agoI hope this doesn't ship for a year or two. I'd like to get more work done first :)
- dholowiski 15y agoI hope it ships soon, because it's the only thing that will be able to keep me from wasting so much time on Minecraft
- mkoukoullis 15y agoMy sentiments exactly!
- dysoco 15y agoThe game looks really awesome, I love space games, and if you combine it with Minecraft... and not only that but programmable CPUs !!!! I would love it. Sadly "Monthly Fee" is something I don't like... I don't have the money to pay it, nor a credit card to do it, so nope.
- codesuela 15y agoyou can't spare 5 USD for potentially many hours of monthly entertainment?
- Heisens 15y agoI'd like to see this on the iPad vs. Java.
- jebblue 15y agoIf Minecraft was a hit then this sounds like it could be a mega-hit I mean a computer you can program in the game (I think I read that right), duct tape (how can you possibly keep a modern spaceship together without it?)!
- genu1 15y agoNotch is officially my programming hero. This post inspires me; to take risks and be brave with my coding decisions while nurturing the process. Before today I would code and think over think and run into wall, while the original plan remains stagnant, always looking forwards to the finale. Now I look to code richly, daily, and to water my plants. Notch is zen. I can't wait to play this game.
- emarcotte 15y agoWasn't Notch's first game an MMO? Didn't he work on Wurm?
- fruchtose 15y agoI don't know what I'm more excited for: the possibility of a DCPU C compiler, or the first player to exploit the security holes in a program written for the DCPU C compiler.
- richurd 15y agoWho writes games in fucking Java? Idiots, I'll tell you who.
- fleitz 15y agoWouldn't it just be simpler to use an x86 CPU and qemu? Or a sandbox'ed process, etc, etc. I'm sort of thinking that if you used an x86 CPU there are so many existing tools that could be used for it instead of having to write new compilers, etc.
- anthonyb 15y agoThat would be incredibly slow if you wanted to run more than a handful of CPUs...
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- anthonyb 15y agoHe's released the spec for the 16-bit CPU used in the game: http://notch.tumblr.com/post/20056289891/start-classified-transmission http://notch.tumblr.com/post/20056289891/start-classified-tr...
- ddelphin 15y agoWhile I'm def excited about this game, when I thought about it, how is this not just the second half of Second Life by Linden Labs? Second Life already offers an MMO with object creation (Minecraft) and scripting (0x10c). While the sci-fi story line is more appealing to me, the concept of building thing and coding their workings in a 3D MMO doesn't seem novel to me... Unless I completely misunderstood something.
- mfringel 15y agoExecution counts. A similar concept doesn't guarantee a similar user experience.
- nknight 15y agoIt's not even such a "similar concept". SL's "resources" are just... money. Real money. And it doesn't really have any inherent "gameplay". It's a pure sandbox -- with dollars for grains of sand. Notch is talking about real resource management issues, combat as an inherent part of the game, random AI encounters, etc.. This is a game that happens to share some SL-like properties. SL is just a framework. Arguably that makes SL more interesting in some ways, but it's also a lot harder to "get" something out of SL other than pure socialization.
- joeycfan 15y agoI like the way he explains the 'too long in stasis' problem - they should call the game 'Oops'....
- kaonashi 15y agoReminds me of an MMO version of SunDog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunDog:_Frozen_Legacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunDog:_Frozen_Legacy).
- ericHosick 15y agoThis might be a great environment to encourage people, and especially kids, to learn how to program. This was seen in Minecraft and maybe he will try to extend the idea into this new MMO. I hope so because anything which encourages and helps people to learn programming is a plus in my book.
- LostInTheWoods2 15y ago"The only thing to it, is to do it!" -- Martin Lawrence
- chromejs10 15y agoI'm super excited for this game. I like open ended games, and Notch spends a lot of time trying to make the game fit each user. But does anyone know why Notch gets so much shit online for being "greedy" or an "ass"? I've never seen or heard about him doing anything to get those ugly titles. Looking at the twitter feeds on 0x10c.com, I see a bunch of "greedy bastard" comments. There is nothing wrong with selling a game in the alpha stages. People will get a chance to voice their opinions on how the game should function.
- padraigm 15y agoIn light of his giving away his dividends last year to his employees[1], I think it's hardly appropriate for anyone to call him 'greedy' or an 'ass'. He actually seems like a genuinely great guy. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/02/markus-notch-persson-gives-3-million_n_1317396.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/02/markus-notch-persso...
- chromejs10 15y agoExactly. And he also did that last coding competition for charity.
- naughtysriram 15y agoGuess its pronounced "Oh X ten C" or something like "Oh! Extacy"
- lloeki 15y agoI was reading those specific two bullet points: * Hard science fiction. * Space battles against the AI or other players. which, combined with: * Lots of engineering. * Fully working computer system. reminded me of essays such as "Realistic Space Combat" [0]. I wonder if Notch considers such a thing. [0] https://gist.github.com/1526107 https://gist.github.com/1526107
- mattmanser 15y agoJust glancing at that essay it's pretty awfully written and repeatedly wrong. And my physics is extremely poo. Ever heard of a heatsink and then releasing it later? Decoys of simple complexity but same mass are as cheap to make as real ships of complexity? Nope.
- curiousepic 15y agoYou can start here: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/misconceptions.php http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/misconceptions.php
- lloeki 15y agoThat's exactly what I meant with 'such as'. I couldn't find that link again, thanks. I was more concerned about general physics considerations (inertia, etc) and scale (like intercepting stuff flying at 30000km/s).
- curiousepic 15y agoEven if he has, I'm sure he will prioritize his vision of gameplay over realism. He's already demonstrated that by mentioning cloaking fields.
- Tichy 15y agoSounds as if I can program the computer to play for me? I'm in! Wanted such a game for decades (former Corewar player here).
- wildster 15y agoRed Dwarf!
- goblin89 15y agoSlightly off-topic, but—how mercilessly correct he is about physics of our space-time. We all know the universe is expanding, but many consequences of this phenomenon are not obvious—such as that after some time we'll be unable to see (and therefore ever reach) even nearby galaxies, since they're constantly getting farther and farther away. We'll be completely alone forever, and future scientists would have completely wrong picture about universe in such an absence of information. Thinking about that, we already miss a lot of information because of red shift… There're facts potentially explaining the eternal question ‘about universe and everything’, but they are slipping away from us, crossing the event horizon never ever to be learned about. Not a fun thing to know. Personally for me that was a discovery thanks to the explanation by Lawrence Krauss in his ‘A Universe From Nothing’ popular talk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo).
- LinXitoW 15y agoIt'd be cool if someone made a Minecraft IDE, where you program using preformated elements in a visual style by literally building your program with blocks. Sorta like Scratch.
- dsirijus 15y agoI'm getting a git repo up for DCPU16 on dcpu16.com, .net & .org as we speak. With a custom design by a Swedish guy that looks like notch's twin. :D Will update you guys when it's up, should be today. I already have people that want to push.
- quattrofan 15y agoAn Elite for the 21st century? Want!
- mischa_u 15y agoWhat Notch means with "Hard Science Fiction": http://0x10c.com/doc/hardscifi.txt http://0x10c.com/doc/hardscifi.txt
- narkee 15y agoWhat an amazingly complex game it would be if he decided to include relativistic effects of time-dilation.
- jentulman 15y agoOkay so I'm just a simple PHP dev, would someone be so kind as to point me in the right direction to start learning what I'm going to need to write for the in game CPU, so I can try and get a jump on things? (0x10c.stackexchange one day?)
- elliottcarlson 15y agoNever think of yourself as a simple X dev. While you may not have the same experience or background as someone else, that alone doesn't take away from you being a developer (keeping in mind I don't know your proficiency or length of time as a developer). That being said, since it's going to be a virtual CPU with what seems to be a system based on 6502 opcodes (or similar), we can assume that this means there will also be an opportunity for abstraction/compilation to that system. Basically, there would most likely be cross compilers available in a matter of time that could aide in the development so you don't have to learn ASM or anything that low level. If you want to learn for the sake of learning, and with a great chance of being able to implement that new knowledge in to this game, then learn C - it will teach you a lot more about lower level development and would be a great candidate for a cross-compiler when one were to come out (ex: http://www.cc65.org/ http://www.cc65.org/)
- kreeben 15y agoIf someone will create a .net-like framework for me to run managed code upon, then sure, I'll play this game.
- recursive 15y agoDCPU-16 = CLR DCPU-16 machine code = MSIL The framework is the machine. Free your mind.
- jonnycowboy 15y agoNotch mentioned in another interview that he was looking to create basically a modern 'Elite' set in a persistant universe but this programming thing seems to deviate slightly. Super interesting!
- Aissen 15y agoOne word. SpaceChem. This looks heavily inspired by this indie game. In spacechem you must you use "chemistry pipe design skills", that highly resemble how you design logic circuts, in order to create certain molecules. It also seems quite inspired with what you can do in minecraft with the redstone. All that, but more open, pushing the limits. Not such a bad idea.
- martingordon 15y agoThis sounds like its the beginning of OASIS: http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/030788743X http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/03078...