minecraft

[doublebeta]

Rewritten in C/C++ (god don't bother with assembly) it should run at least 10fps but no way you're gonna get it runnign with the Java client. Like has been said... The Pandora won't have enough RAM for java to work at it's best (still bad) as well.


SO learn from this fail and write everything in C ammirite?


I like the story of how Minecraft got popular but just wish the devs didn't use java.


edit: aw crap I made a new page...damn

 

[WizardStan]

SO learn from this fail and write everything in C ammirite?

No, it is not fail. Even if it can't run on the Pandora does not automatically make it fail. If he had written it in C, the executable would have been x86 and possibly Windows only, so we'd be even more stuck then we are now: THAT would be fail.


For the job it was meant to do, Java does not underperform for this game. A fairly "low end" (by today's standards) can still play it, and rewriting it in C would not make as big a difference as you seem to think it would.

 

[doublebeta]

I was using it in a joking way - personally I very much hate java - there is no acceptable way to use it in a game.


So I guess my machine, AMD Athlon64 3200+, 2GB DDR2 800 RAM, and NVidia GeForce 6600GT is 'low-end' now? . I only get about 5fps. Sun Java w/ Kubuntu (using LXDE not KDE) x86_64. With nothing else running but LXDE, pulseaudio (doing nothing) and Java.


While I can agree it would suck if it were an x86 binary but without room to JIT - which it may/may not have you will likely get the same speed interpreting the binary as with java. And you might be lucky enough to get to use CPU registers when not using java.


Does our OMAP have Jazelle? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle


Do we have a driver written to use this? It might be faster using this, even if video calls need to be intercepted. 'Faster' is not 'fastest', and in this case not 'standard'.


I really don't mean to piss anybody off with Javahate but i believe it's needed - and i'm not hijacking threads here, i'm still ontopic.


EDIT: The fail was the inefficiency, not that we can't run it on the Pandora as such. I guess they both apply since the game SHOULD run on the Pandora had the game been fast enough. Assembled languages ftw!


EDIT...again...: I acknoledge, MOST of the time in games IS spent blitting and rendering. But having a memory heavy Java running and using that for your game logic reduces the amount of time that IS left in a second. Even optimising my own code made the CPU usage lower even when the time spend executing my code was only a tiny bit less, because of the average CPU time, our eyes will interpret a framerate the same and the same with an fps counter. I've seen myself that at times python/perl will be quicker because it isn't allocating memory constantly :\. Watch Frozen Bubble run vs. a game with similar complexity(or lack thereof) and which loads your system down more? The Java one, no doubt. Though I do believe there are some serious problems with the SUn Java x86_64 implementation for Linux because everyone around me never says a word - or is it they just have faster machines?


Edit 3(ugh): I have a friend who himself loves java, and is always defending it's 'honour' whilst I blame it for AIDS, Cancer and Chernobyl(metaphoriacally). Even he admits that java is one step forward and two thousand steps back because it is so slow. I want to like Java, I want to be able to play minecraft, it's a pretty cool game. But it's hard to love a hideous, stupid, complaining creature. Instead you want to run knives through it.

 

[Wolenber]

Yeah, for everyone reporting obscenely slow framerates, try running it on something with Snow Leopard or Windows, Sun Java is terrible on Linux, although I have no clue why.

 

[Klaue]

Java isn't slow. It's a memory hog, yes, and it's startup is slow, but when it's running, it isn't slow.


Java being oh so slow is most of the time just a myth. I will not deny that there are use cases where java will fail performance wise, but most of the time, the difference is so small that an unbiased human observer wouldn't notice it. And sometimes, Java is even faster than native code (In one of my progs, for example, I calculate the md5 sum of thousands of files, which is both memory and cpu costly. Java performs better than md5sum).


Also, if you absolutely want to, you can compile java bytecode to native code so you won't have a JVM running in the background. I never tried it, though.


Also, Java makes way more fun to work with. I was a C++ developer for years and switched to Java about a year ago and I won't go back. If I would make a game for a desktop computer, I would use java too, and java haters could choke on my coffee

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Does our OMAP have Jazelle? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle

Yes it does, but documentations are held back making it some sort of proprietary extension. However, thanks to Edward Nevill IcedTea6 received a brand new Jazelle RTC implementation for "ARM Cortex-A8+ class CPUs" earlier this year: Thumb2 JIT


An ARM optimised interpreter in "hand crafted ARM assembler" which is supposed to be 5x faster than the C interpreter of the OpenJDK Zero port is another project of him. He's focusing on fixing the cache trashing rather than optimising for raw performance to speed things up.

 

[WizardStan]

So I guess my machine, AMD Athlon64 3200+, 2GB DDR2 800 RAM, and NVidia GeForce 6600GT is 'low-end' now? . I only get about 5fps. Sun Java w/ Kubuntu (using LXDE not KDE) x86_64. With nothing else running but LXDE, pulseaudio (doing nothing) and Java.

I'm gonna call shenanigans. I don't know what's wrong with your computer, but yours has a better CPU and graphics card than mine (mine has 4GB of ram however) and I was able to run the server and 3 clients simultaneously before it noticeably started slowing down. I'm running stock Ubuntu 9.04, also with the Sun Java.

 

[Caine]

Also, Java makes way more fun to work with.

Java? Fun? Is there a new dialect or something? I always experienced Java as a horribly verbose language to write in.

 

[sebt3]

I always experienced Java as a horribly verbose language to write in.

With a good editor (code folding, auto-completion) utter verbosity isn't a problem

 

[Jan-Nik]

With a good editor (code folding, auto-completion) utter verbosity isn't a problem

The sames goes for any other language


@Minecraft:


I saw some videos but I don't get why the game should be fun or even addictive. After I've built a cave/home/shelter what should I do next? Couldn't I simply survive forever by hiding there?

 

[WizardStan]

I saw some videos but I don't get why the game should be fun or even addictive. After I've built a cave/home/shelter what should I do next? Couldn't I simply survive forever by hiding there?

Yeah, that's the extent of the game right now. There are "dungeons" implemented that spawn mobs you have to kill, with treasure chests, but the treasure is pretty lame. He's working on it full time now. I'm certain more game will be developed over time.

 

[darfgarf]

I saw some videos but I don't get why the game should be fun or even addictive. After I've built a cave/home/shelter what should I do next? Couldn't I simply survive forever by hiding there?

it's pretty much a lesser gmod


though easier to handle i guess

 

[Caine]

With a good editor (code folding, auto-completion) utter verbosity isn't a problem

I disagree. A good editor helps a bit with the writing, but the reading part doesn't really improve a lot.


The worst part for me is the inflexibility by sticking to a purely OO paradigm. If I want to utilize a functional solution for a subproblem, I need wrap this up in OO boiler-plate code which looks horrible and hides the concept being utilized. For instance, to pass a first-order function you have to define a (possibly inner) class with a method rather than utilizing an inline function definition (a lambda). Which is just ugly as hell.


Well, enough off-topic for now. Back to minecraft.

@Minecraft:


I saw some videos but I don't get why the game should be fun or even addictive. After I've built a cave/home/shelter what should I do next? Couldn't I simply survive forever by hiding there?

That's pretty much it for the first night. After that you start to explore, harvest resources and build. By exploring into mountains you can encounter caves with monsters. The deeper you go, the more resources you will find.


I suppose the game has two types of players: explorers and builders.


The exploring does grow stale as the random generated world doesn't throw any real surprises at you and obviously the game lacks a real goal. For builders the exploring is a means to an end. Gather resources, construct tools and build insane projects.


For instance, there is the concept of redstone ore which allows you to build http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGkkyKZVzug. Furthermore you can build advanced

https://www.youtube.com/embed/0v5cAFYouWY?feature=oembed to get around or you can opt to construct otherwise http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_J1JiGyhEw.

 

[banjeed]

The sames goes for any other language


@Minecraft:


I saw some videos but I don't get why the game should be fun or even addictive. After I've built a cave/home/shelter what should I do next? Couldn't I simply survive forever by hiding there?

Think more "Lego" than "Resident Evil". It's not really about survival, that's just to keep it interesting.

 

[WizardStan]

Think more "Lego" than "Resident Evil". It's not really about survival, that's just to keep it interesting.

Although I do hope that more game is added eventually. Building is fun, but I'd like to have an objective in the future.

 

[I8NY]

Although I do hope that more game is added eventually. Building is fun, but I'd like to have an objective in the future.

Well Notch did say will will add other modes like adventure and maybe something like fending off tons of monsters(not survival mode). I haven't heard anything about it lately so it won't be added until it is in beta or later.


Now about the system requirements: I ran minecraft on a 7yrs old laptop with tons of junk apps on it using pentium 4 ~1.2GHz with intel sucky graphics with the settings on low. It was playable and i would play it on a pandora if it was like it. I think it can work if it can run on that bad of a PC.

 

[mcobit]

Or do something, that needs a lot of time and is really useful. Like building your own 16bit computer ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/LGkkyKZVzug?feature=oembed

 

[Caine]

Or do something, that needs a lot of time and is really useful. Like building your own 16bit computer ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/LGkkyKZVzug?feature=oembed

That was the first link in my post. It's so bloody awesome. The moment I read about the possibilities of redstone ore, my first thought was: "Ooh, cool. You can build an ALU with that". I googled for it and there it was

 

[mcobit]

That was the first link in my post. It's so bloody awesome. The moment I read about the possibilities of redstone ore, my first thought was: "Ooh, cool. You can build an ALU with that". I googled for it and there it was

I'm sorry, didn't see it.

 

[WizardStan]

There's apparently an initiative to implement some open source CPU in minecraft, the awesome thing being that there's already a compiler for this non-existent CPU so once it is finished, they'll be able to compile programs to run in Minecraft. Compile OpenJDK, run Minecraft in Minecraft.