5 ms·
Technology 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
by endianswap 15y ago
Technology 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.
- Gormo 15y agoI wonder how far this concept will be extended. Will there be a full OS running on the in-game CPU, with I/O protocols to interface with the ship's systems? Will you be able to cripple your enemies' ships by writing malware, a la Independence Day? Taken to its fullest extent, this seems like not just a game, but also a simulated world in which one can learn and practice actual engineering skills.
- psquid 15y agoI wouldn't be surprised if an impromptu communication protocol (based on assigning meanings to things other ships can observe you doing) sprung up pretty quickly to allow networking. At the point that ships can communicate, it's bound to come down to needing to do it with securely-written code, or risk ship-to-ship malware. Should be really fun to see where this goes.
- Gormo 15y agoYou'd still need to develop "hardware" for the input side of that protocol, though. Unless the ship's sensors already can be programmed to detect what other ships' systems are doing.
- pdelgallego 15y agoand .. "Full specifications of the CPU will be released shortly, so the more programatically advanced of you can get a head start."
- tonfa 15y agoNow just have to wait for the llvm and gcc support :)
- damian2000 15y agoJust out now here http://0x10c.com/doc/dcpu-16.txt http://0x10c.com/doc/dcpu-16.txt
- cing 15y agoProgrammable 16-bit CPUs? Sounds like work disguised as gaming!
- saraid216 15y agoAren't all MMOs like that?
- jiggy2011 15y agoYes, but most MMOs simulate minimum wage busywork this one involves some actual skill/thinking.
- fleitz 15y agoSo true, I played WoW for about a month when it came out then I thought: "Didn't I get into to programming because I didn't want to work at UPS delivering packages?" It should have been called World of Errands.
- alanfalcon 15y agoIt's better since Cataclysm, the errands are more directly, visually, and emotionally tied to saving the world (of Warcraft.) Anyone who once thought they liked the game's single player questing aspects should spend a week with a free scroll of ressurection and experience what the game has become, because it's really awesome and fun.
- cpeterso 15y agoEVE Online has been affectionately called "Spreadsheets in Spaaaace!"
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- a1k0n 15y agoMore like a massively multiplayer programming competition. I'm doomed.
- sp332 15y agoI've followed his comments on Twitter. Apparently he considered doing a clone of a real CPU (6502), but it was too complicated to emulate efficiently. According to notch, the custom architecture he's inventing can run 2,000 DCPU's at 100kHz each and only use 50% of the time on a real CPU. Here's the first public spec from a few days ago, I think it's changed a bit since then http://notch.tumblr.com/post/20056289891/start-classified-transmission http://notch.tumblr.com/post/20056289891/start-classified-tr...
- ajuc 15y agoHe could just interprete code on clients :) You have N players == N computers to simulate. Assign randomly 5 computers to each player to emulate. Choose the result that majority of clients return and optionally punish cheaters. EDIT: apparently simulation will go on even when players log out, so each connected client may need to simulate 100 in-game computers to account for that. Still less resource intensive than running everything on the server. But Notch thought about that much longer and surely have great reasons for his architecture.
- mattstreet 15y agoLetting the clients handle the simulation would have a lot of problems for a MMO. Extra problems if you were doing the work for other players as well. I think part of the point of it being a special emulated CPU set at a certain speed is to make it fair for each player, rather than the player having more processing power just because they have a better computer. The easiest way to secure all that is to run it on the server. Anything going to the client or trusted coming from the client eventually gets hacked if there's much interest in doing so.
- anthonyb 15y agoYou could make the client run other player's CPUs, perhaps ones from accounts on a different server. If it's not someone you know or are playing with, then there's less incentive to cheat. You could even pass the same work to multiple clients and flag those that are tampering with the results. Not sure how that would affect the lag, though.
- lt 15y agoHe tweeted this picture while debugging the CPU a couple weeks ago: http://i.imgur.com/DhmFp.png http://i.imgur.com/DhmFp.png Sounds like fun.
- waterlesscloud 15y agoI look forward to new languages which only compile to this cpu.
- redthrowaway 15y agoI look forward to someone building this CPU in Minecraft.
- someone13 15y agoI really hope that code is auto-generated. Because that coding style is ATROCIOUS.
- jiggy2011 15y agoWhy? It's just a big switch/case over the instruction set by the looks of it. Those things can get pretty damn large if your are implementing anything close to a proper CPU. It's just very condensed, I imagine so he can change a bunch of values and re-test quickly.
- redthrowaway 15y agoThis could quite possibly be the nerdiest game ever made. The amazing level of boffin creativity we've seen in Minecraft could easily be eclipsed by giving everyone their own in-game programmable computers to tinker with. I can't wait.
- pdaddyo 15y agoJust so you're aware, there are now programmable computers in Minecraft courtesy of this plugin: http://computercraft.info/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page http://computercraft.info/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page