0x10c: Scifi by Notch

[Lyinginbedmon]

So there's some buzz running about Markus "Notch" Perrson's latest game under Mojang, provisionally-titled 0x10c.

So far we know it's going to focus on hard science-fiction (that is science fiction with a decent or "hard" scientific basis) and be populated with players who were cryogenically frozen in 1988 and revived 281 billion years later. The universe is on the brink of extinction and different groups are fighting for supplies etc.

What's been causing the most buzz is the in-game programming using emulated 16-bit processors. Notch has said that players will be able to program the operating systems for their spaceships and that there will be no inherent protection against viruses for the emulated systems.

The game will have a similar marketing model to Minecraft, but multiplayer games will require a monthly subscription.

I think personally honeypots might be a great tactic in this game. I can imagine building a large and heavily armoured space station and packing it full of automated cyber warfare programming to seize attacking ships and harvest them for parts or use them as remote drones for defense and luring others into the trap.

[Metcarfre]

So you have to have a modicum of programming ability to be able to effectively play the game?

I guess niche marketing works pretty well sometimes.

[Jostain]

I like the concept of being able to program your own stuff. too bad I don't have a clue how to program anything.
I hope he goes all the way with it so that you can build your own ship from scratch as well.
since he has said that he want to capture the "firefly feeling" I hope he allows for crews so that for example Loading ready run can have a crew and be able to run a massive ship or space station.

Not fond of the monthly fee tough because I don't do monthly fees.

[Metcarfre]

Isn't that how MMOs work, though?

[theDreamer]

Either monthly fees or micropayments.

You need to pay for those servers somehow. Then make money.

I'm...interested.

As a coder, I don't really want to code in my games...And if this is in java as well (like most other mojang titles) I might weep.

[Keab42]

it sounds interesting, but I suspect the steep difficulty curve will make it a niche product, probably why he's looking at subscriptions for multiplayer, he's unlikely to make teh big bucks from this one.

[Fugiman]

Registered dcpu.org and dcpu-16.org

Working on a compiler and decompiler now.

I'm so ready for this game!

[theDreamer]

I'm not certain of his cycle counts.

Well, I mean, I'm not certain I couldn't design a CPU that would do it fucking better.

y no pipelining notch.

y no pipelinging.

(because it's overly complicated, that's why, and people will have enough troubles coding in dcpu-assembly).

Also Fugi, what are you compiling from?

Furthermore, hold up there notch.

"0x2: ADD a, b" yet can either take a literal OR a register value?

WHAT MAGIC IS THIS.

...now I want to see his CPU.

[Fugiman]

Goal is to have a psuedo-c language that compiles into highly optimized DCPU-16 code. So you'd have shorts (16bit), ints (32bit), and longs (64bit). If I want to get fancy, could probably implement floats too, but baby steps first! Basically, try to make it so you don't have to write assembler.

I threw up my proof of concept decompiler on http://www.dcpu.org/. Feedback is appreciated, though I did spend at most 2 hours on this while riding to PAX

[Lyinginbedmon]

So you have to have a modicum of programming ability to be able to effectively play the game?

I guess niche marketing works pretty well sometimes.

I like the concept of being able to program your own stuff. too bad I don't have a clue how to program anything.

I predict that people will start passing programs around, operating systems for ships especially.

There may even be an in-game market in them, with operating systems specialising in specific kinds of ships like the reliable hauler with the drive core designed for getting big payloads across empty space or the fighter ship with fast reactions and onboard weapons systems etc., but I don't imagine everyone will be nearly so proficient in programming to figure it out by themselves.

Goal is to have a psuedo-c language that compiles into highly optimized DCPU-16 code. So you'd have shorts (16bit), ints (32bit), and longs (64bit). If I want to get fancy, could probably implement floats too, but baby steps first! Basically, try to make it so you don't have to write assembler.

I threw up my proof of concept decompiler on http://www.dcpu.org/. Feedback is appreciated, though I did spend at most 2 hours on this while riding to PAX

Pseudo-C would certainly be a huge help compared to have to write in a specific game-only assembler dialect.

Personally I'm waiting on in-game code examples to really have much of any idea how to apply the code. We're reasonably certain viruses will exist, but not how they'll be transmitted, or how your operating system will affect the operation of your ship.

Depending on what systems are self-managing rather than program-controlled, viruses could be able to do simple things like turn off all the lights onboard to navigating the ship into the nearest black hole. The main page of the site describes onboard generators that may require you to deactivate computers and lighting to engage a cloaking mechanism successfully, so there may either be a manual flight method or the implication may be that you need to be essentially dead in the water to cloak in that situation. Either way deactivating onboard computer systems would seem a fairly reliable method of avoiding virus impacts, depending on how you actually deactivate the onboard computer systems...

I'm definitely fascinated by the virus aspects of gameplay but I sort of have to wait to find out exactly what they entail.

[Avayu]

It seems like that Mars Effect site was more than just Notch's April's Fools joke.
This all very interesting, but most of it is far over my head. I guess I'll take care of the duct tape part of engineering.

[Jostain]

Isn't that how MMOs work, though?

well many MMOs have microtransactions now that I am much more ok with.

The problem I have with subscription based gaming is that it expects me to make a decision on how much I want to play a game the coming month.

Micro transactions on the other hand encourages me to pay more money the more invested I am in the game and I am not denied gaming because I cant afford it a given month.

Im hoping that the computer thing will be a part of the game rather than The Game. Much like redstone is a part of minecraft but you don't have to understand half of it to still enjoy the game

[Lyinginbedmon]

I'm not sure it'll be all that expensive, he's certainly cutting some costs by using the same server model as Minecraft PE for LAN games, so the multiverse is likely a kind of Mojang community server.

You can complain about deciding how much you want to play a game in a given month, but really there isn't much more viable solutions out there for the servers to run reliably for everyone involved.

[Lyinginbedmon]

New info from Notch

He reserves the right to change his mind, but it looks like a LRR spaceship crewed by Runners will be entirely possible.

[Metcarfre]

@Jostain Interesting. Other people seem to get into a frothing rage regarding microtransactions. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, can't please everyone, etc.

[Jostain]

I like microtransactions when they are done right. I am very fond of the puzzl epirates form of micro transactions. Also, people who froth over games morons.

I guess we will have to see. If the subscription fee turns out to be cheap enough I might give it a go anyway.

I really hope he goes all the way with the customizing thing because that would mean you could build a fleet of LRR-logo shaped fleets and big clans are bound to build death stars.

[Keab42]

I'm still wondering about the name.

given that the c is stylised as a superscript I'm guessing it's not a memory location.

So that assumes it's standard notation. 0 x 10 ^ C. Given that this is sci-fi we can probably assume that C is the speed of light. But 0 x 10 ^ x is nonsense notation, because it's 0.

[theDreamer]

0x10^c :

0x means hex.
0x10=16
C=12
0x10^c = 0x0001 0000 0000 0000

Which, thanks to a glitch of big/little endian confusion, is how long everyone has been in stasis for.

[Keab42]

Thanks for explaining that, I should have known that though <shame>

[theDreamer]

At first I was trying to figure it out with c=speed of light, then I realised.

That was typed from my phone the second I had it, so sorry if it sounds curt.

[the amativeness]

Notch is a genius. He's come up with the idea for a game where the user pays money to do some of the coding. Brilliant!

[Geoff_B]

Maybe it's a plot to release an unfinished product and get the customers to finish it for him? EA could take note

[Jostain]

Its the Swedish model.

Also I really want to play a space sim now. Any suggestions?

[Metcarfre]

Escape Velocity.

[theDreamer]

SPAZ is pretty sweet (and involves drift).

0x10c is an Elite clone in that it is heavily inspired by Elite, so perhaps that.

Freespace is a pretty cool space dogfighter, but the controls are...weird to say the least.