9 ms·
Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that runs on Node.js
- trbs 14y agoA Minecraft MMO? Would Mojang allow you to do that? Would Redstone still be categorized within the scope of a mod at that point? Either way, I logged on for a bit, and there was no lag whatsoever with a ton of players online. Fascinating stuff.
- zachlatta 14y agoThis is super neat!
- goughjustin 14y agoI like the line... "building penises out of dirt right now". Someone should put that on a T-shirt.
- leetrout 14y agoAnd wear it to PyCon... (sorry, couldn't resist)
- kbar13 14y agois there a mailing list or something that I can join, besides the mlist for their far-from-now MMO release so that I can keep up on development? Even more internets for open sourced on github perhaps?
- kepzorz 14y agoWe'll use this mailing list for anything interesting on the project, like open-sourcing it, even if it's not directly related to the MMO.
- pizzeys 14y agoDo you have any sort of permission or support from Mojang? It might not be a good idea to invest a substantial amount of time in "A Minecraft MMO" without this...
- kepzorz 14y agoWe emailed them for permission to make a custom server a while back, and they said it was ok. We haven't contacted them specifically about the MMO yet though.
- citricsquid 14y agohttp://minecraft.net/brand http://minecraft.net/brand Just follow these and you'll be fine :-)
- kepzorz 14y agoAh, thank you! This is really useful. :) Also, the statue you "erected" has unfortunately been destroyed. :(
- TkTech 14y agoMojang has no issue with custom servers so long as you use their authentication, hasn't since the classic days. Legally, they *have no say in the matter, as the server uses no assets from Minecraft and the protocol has been Chinese Wall'd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Computer_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Computer_science) via http://wiki.vg http://wiki.vg
- throwaway54-762 14y agoCool, a distributed minecraft server. But where's the source, or something more technically meaty? "I made a distributed X and here's some screenshots" isn't that interesting alone.
- mappum 14y agoI plan on open sourcing it and trying to foster a community of modding/contributions, but first I would like to clean up the code. Also, we want to figure out our business strategy.
- artursapek 14y agoWell, I'm logged in right now and there's no lag with many players. Try it.
- throwaway54-762 14y agoI am at work, and don't have minecraft on any machine nearby =).
- w-ll 14y agoThis might have come up on HN when it was released, but here it is anyway. A minecraft server written in php. edit: updated repo https://github.com/shoghicp/PocketMine-MP https://github.com/shoghicp/PocketMine-MP
- TkTech 14y agoActual repo is https://github.com/shoghicp/PocketMine-MP https://github.com/shoghicp/PocketMine-MP, not sure why you linked to an outdated fork?
- JoshTriplett 14y agoI've seen lots of work on alternate Minecraft servers; has anyone worked on an open Minecraft client (obviously not named "Minecraft" for trademark reasons, but compatible with the network protocol)?
- throwaway54-762 14y agoThere are a couple projects in this direction (I looked into trying to make a bot at one point). Unfortunately, any names have slipped my memory at this point. But be assured, they exist.
- mappum 14y agoVoxel.js is one: http://voxeljs.com/ http://voxeljs.com/
- exemd 14y agoManic Digger (http://manicdigger.sourceforge.net/ http://manicdigger.sourceforge.net/) used to connect to Minecraft Classic servers. And a client for full Minecraft was planned. But Notch didn't like seeing alternative clients, so I removed it from the game. Also, see http://wiki.vg/Client_List http://wiki.vg/Client_List
- kayoone 14y agoSeriuosly interested, why is Node.js better suited as a gameserver than say C or Java ? What exactly are you doing on the serverside? Is it an authorative setup or are you just passing position messages around (in which cases huge amounts of players wouldnt be suprising) ? Did you reverse engineer minecrafts multiplayer protocol or is this an alternate implementation? EDIT just looked it up and it seems like the minecraft network protocol is public, so no reverse engineering needed. It also looks like its not an authorative setup which could cause cheating problems in PvP enviroments down the line
- throwaway54-762 14y agoSure, Java or C will be much faster at any computational work. And I am no node.js fan-boi. But doing actual asynchronous local-file IO in C is non-trivial, and if their server is not CPU bound, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with using node.js. Could you also use libuv from C? Sure.
- niggler 14y ago"Java or C will be much faster at any computational work" That is far from clear. I've been using nodejs for some computational work using https://github.com/substack/gamma.js https://github.com/substack/gamma.js and https://github.com/niggler/bessel https://github.com/niggler/bessel and found that the JS version is faster than the straightforward Java implementation.
- halter73 14y agoThe OP made too general of a statement because there are certain cases where V8 can preform better than the JVM; however, generally Java does seem to perform better (ignoring startup time). http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=v8&lang2=java http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?te... In the linked benchmarks, V8 only has a decided advantage executing regexes.
- gritzko 14y ago
- Scryptonite 14y agoI was going to buy redstone.io for pretty much the same project. I was only late by 15 days. Oh well, such is life. Wish you luck!
- mappum 14y agoHaha, I almost waited to buy it. So how is your project the same?
- Scryptonite 14y agoIt was going to use node.js; So far I have written my prototypes in CoffeeScript, but if I end up going through with my project it will likely be with vanilla JS. The premise of it wasn't for it to be a MMO. You can imagine my surprise when I found out who purchased the domain and what projects you are working on, knowing that redstone.io was pretty much destined to be node.js and minecraft related.
- bitsweet 14y agoMojang is already working on a Minecraft MMO [1] - how would this be different? [1] http://help.mojang.com/customer/portal/articles/1018151-minecraft-realms http://help.mojang.com/customer/portal/articles/1018151-mine...
- DanielRibeiro 14y agoInteresting that you guys are applying to YC 13. Note that YCombinator already have invested in a very similar company: Minefold[1]. TC had some info on that too[2]. [1] https://minefold.com/ https://minefold.com/ [2] http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/12/minefold-launch/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/12/minefold-launch/
- kepzorz 14y agoThe Minefold guys were just on our demo server! They're the best.
- thejosh 14y agoHow does this differ from spout except for being in Node?
- mtthw 14y agoA buggy server for a buggy game. Sounds like an adventure.
- KVFinn 14y agoNice. How are people doing this? Are they reverse engineering Minecraft or is the server side fairly straightforward?
- pepijndevos 14y agoHow can it be on the front page of HN without any players in it? Or is that a bug as well? I'm flying around in a near-pristine and empty world. [edit] I dug a hole, fell through, respawned, fell through my own hole. I'm sorry. I'm afraid everyone will fall through it now.
- charonn0 14y agoMove around (horizontally) and you should get a notice that you've changed servers, at which point other players may be found (if not, keep going.)
- mappum 14y agoWhen you made that comment, it was the middle of the night here. Everyone was online at USA after-work hours. The reason the world was near-pristine was because I messed up the storage for this deployment, which made so every once in a while it would regenerate the chunks.
- Chunkr 14y agoPlease tell me you are going to opensource / release this, this would be so awesome for some Minecraft Related projects i'm doing ( Gigantic PVP & RPG Servers ) I just can't go >600 Players w/o lag on a decent E3 Series.
- mappum 14y agoI am leaning towards opensourcing it, but we don't want to do it too soon unless we realize we want to do a PaaS sort of thing.