By Jim Rossignol on November 17th, 2010 at 9:20 am.
Remember the guy who was making a working CPU in Minecraft? Well, he’s finished. You can get his saved game from here here. He’s also done a little explanatory release video, which I’ve posted below. The file also contains an instruction set so that you can see what is going on. Well, that’s the intention. I just climbed up a nearby mountain and said “woo!”
17/11/2010 at 09:32 The Army of None says:
This guy is my hero.
17/11/2010 at 16:25 TeeJay says:
“You listening, pig?”
17/11/2010 at 09:33 Mashakosha says:
The reasons why anyone would want to do this are beyond me. Sure, it’s pretty impressive, but what drives people to do these things?
17/11/2010 at 09:38 Dawngreeter says:
A desire to create.
17/11/2010 at 09:38 Rich says:
Why does anyone build anything other than a mud hut in Minecraft? Creativity.
Why do you think Lego and Meccano are such successful toys?
17/11/2010 at 09:39 Quxxy says:
I know what you mean. It’s like all those people who paint pictures or write novels or make movies. I mean, they don’t do anything practical, so why bother? If it doesn’t fulfil some sort of practical, real-world function, it clearly has absolutely no value whatsoever.
[/sarcasm]
Honestly, these sort of comments really make me sad. He’s doing it because he enjoys it, because it’s a challenge, because plenty of people probably told him it wasn’t possible. This should be self-evident to anyone who has ever done something they loved.
If you really don’t understand the drive to do things for fun or learning, then I really feel deeply sorry for you.
[Edit: Haha! Three responses all within a minute or two of each other. :P]
17/11/2010 at 09:43 Rich says:
Indeed Quxxy. This kind of thing makes me proud to be human.
Honestly, people even ask why we bother with projects like CERN. Silly, narrow minded people.
17/11/2010 at 09:52 Novotny says:
I don’t think Mashakosha has failed to have some elementary understanding of human endeavour in the arts, Quxxy. He asked a fairly reasonable question, and he enquired politely.
I think this is amazing, but I can also see how someone could ask why.
For example: I find some modern art a bit pointless- in fact, I think some of it is self-indulgent wankery – but I am also aware that to others, the very same installations contain meaning and purpose, and so I simply shrug and accept that I do not see the world with the same eyes as everyone else.
If you really don’t understand that people are different and thus have differing concepts of what is fun or learning, then I really feel deeply sorry for you. (can you see what I did there?)
17/11/2010 at 10:10 Quxxy says:
Novotny, I’m perfectly aware that people are different. On the other hand, joy in creation is a fairly widely-shared trait. If you look at something someone has created which they and others are excited by and ask “but what drives people to do these things?” then you’re either discounting or don’t understand the drive to create things.
17/11/2010 at 10:59 MarkSide says:
Random discussion on the nature of art? Thumbs up!
17/11/2010 at 11:07 boab says:
i bet he has a pretty good understanding of how such a CPU works by now, which is more than i do.
17/11/2010 at 11:11 Huggster says:
Art, movies and literature are all about making you feel an emotion though.
I think the problematic crux of things like this is that apart from the “wow”, they are by nature less likely to elicit emotion, so there is a more of a “but so what” attached.
What one could hope for in this is that someone borrows the CPU for example, and uses it in a future minecraft adventure “behind the scenes” or some such..
17/11/2010 at 11:54 basil says:
I felt an emotion with that CPU, though.
Just the one.
17/11/2010 at 12:06 Shakermaker says:
“Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?”
“Because it’s there!”
17/11/2010 at 14:37 Huggster says:
Mount Everest is different though. Adventure Enthusiasts (climbers, potholers) have a very physical link to the world and are exhilarated and also awed by nature. I can see why they do it.
Something like this is less tangible.
Minecraft can be beautiful in its own way … when it feels like a living, breathing world.
I guess from a technical perspective its pretty, but not more than that.
17/11/2010 at 14:40 HeavyStorm says:
I have many theories why. LSD, ecstasy… throw in some vodka and you done.
Oh, and a lot of free time. Well, it’s fucking cool, so, I guess he’s also my hero. :)
17/11/2010 at 15:19 Latterman says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkBVDh7my9Q
17/11/2010 at 18:00 Jakkar says:
Don’t worry. I understand your question.
I enjoy creating a stronghold, performing daily tasks, challenging myself, exploring the depths of the world seeking bizarre and beautiful formations of water and lava converging, and hunting the ever-elusive diamond veins.
The notion of spending months meticulously arranging a computer system is so far from my idea of ‘fun’ or even ‘interesting’ as a process (albeit fascinating as an end result) that I must question what kind of person enjoys it.
Evidently, the answer is ‘him’. And he frightens me just a little.
But then, one of my best friends is a programmer, and a skilled one at that – I don’t know how he can enjoy doing what he does so much, while still having anything in common with me.
We’re a frighteningly varied species.
17/11/2010 at 18:10 Huggster says:
Now I want to hug kirk
18/11/2010 at 02:45 MrEvilGuy says:
I’ve been compulsed to create random things before on giant scales… and I do it because I feel a need to do it – and when I start on something it’s like an addiction. Even if I want to stop I won’t.
On a rational level, this doesn’t make sense a lot of the time. In other words, I can’t explain even to myself why I am creating some random thing, other than referring to some psychiatric problems (which is rational in its own way).
19/11/2010 at 19:19 Burc says:
It’s a senseless act of beauty, and I love it.
Anne Herbert would be proud.
17/11/2010 at 09:34 rei says:
I was impressed when I still thought people were making these things in-game, but if you’re just exporting it from some external design software i don’t think you even have to really understand how it all works, since I’m sure there are a multitude of books that you can copy the layout from.
17/11/2010 at 09:41 Rich says:
I think in this case it wasn’t simply an import of someone else’s design. To get Minecraft’s logic gates to work he would have design them right.
17/11/2010 at 09:55 Quxxy says:
So you think there’s no skill involved in, say, designing a functioning CPU unless they hand-build every circuit board personally?
He used a program that let him build the layout out of the game; he still had to design the entire thing. Besides which, I’m fairly certain that there are absolutely no books anywhere that contain Minecraft-compatible circuit designs.
Don’t rain on someone else’s parade because they didn’t start by rubbing two sticks together to discover fire.
17/11/2010 at 09:59 Corrupt_Tiki says:
@ Quxxy, shh! Don’t get the nixon angry!
17/11/2010 at 10:01 rei says:
I don’t think I implied that I feel there is no skill involved. I’m saying that the Minecraft part of this is completely superfluous. Would you be impressed if he just uploaded the blueprints somewhere?
17/11/2010 at 10:08 Kristian says:
@Rei: I’m impressed, blueprints wouldnt be a working computer. this one is. and it’s made inside a game. The game has limited functionality to achieve what he needs, and he figured that out and used the game for something it was never meant to which is totally awesome.
17/11/2010 at 10:11 rei says:
@tiki: *yawn*
I’m sure you think that a world where everyone agrees on everything and a site where no one will voice an opinion that differs from the median value would be great, but I’m sorry to say neither is likely, and you’ll just have to deal with people not all thinking the same things.
@Kristian: It definitely must’ve involved a lot of work, which I suppose has to be admired, but still the nuts and bolts was already figured out:
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_circuits#Logic_Gates
I’m sure saying that you can just copy/paste those into an existing circuit board design isn’t doing the effort justice, but there you go. I enjoy the game, and I’m glad people are doing unusual things with it, but I just feel that if you purport to do something with Minecraft you should do it with Minecraft, else the particular vehicle that you choose to showcase your designs with is a little pointless.
17/11/2010 at 10:27 Froibo says:
Science is a compounding art. No one invents anything from scratch. Also your link of logic gates has no where near the potential of a fully functioning 16-bit CPU.
17/11/2010 at 10:40 rei says:
That’s science now too?
17/11/2010 at 10:52 Lilliput King says:
Surely the difference between this and a diagram is that this functions and computes?
17/11/2010 at 10:59 Rich says:
Yes it is, and it isn’t a new definition either. No one but mathematicians do anything from scratch.* You use what others have done before you and you build on it, or apply in a novel way. It’s how you make progress. Even the physicists who poke around with the fabric of the universe are using knowledge and techniques that other people have developed, often a very long time ago.
*OK some of the giants of science did, and do (Hawkins), but sadly we’re not all geniuses. Some of us have to make do with being above average.
17/11/2010 at 11:12 rei says:
@lilliput: Yes, the difference between a diagram and an object built from the diagram is that the diagram doesn’t actually do what the object built from the diagram does.
@Rich: I’m happy to agree with what you’re saying about science, being an ex-physicist and a future biochemist. You can make science building on something that someone else has done, but it doesn’t conversely mean that building on something that someone else has done makes anything science :p
I think I’ve explained as well as I can why I’m less impressed with this than some people seem to feel is reasonable, so I’ll bow out and go have lunch now.
17/11/2010 at 11:29 Rich says:
Fair enough. I’d argue that this example is science, however, as he’s introduced a novel step in his application.
If there was a diagram that could be imported directly into Minecraft without any extra work, and that was all he’d done, this would indeed be derivative. However he’s used the logic circuit designs that are unique to Minecraft, which won’t be included in any diagrams he can get hold of. He’s therefore had to understand the workings of a 16-bit processor enough to incorporate Minecraft’s logic circuits, and redesign the whole thing such that it fits within the constants of Minecraft, e.g. fixed block size, no crossing redstone wires etc.
17/11/2010 at 11:29 Lilliput King says:
“Yes, the difference between a diagram and an object built from the diagram is that the diagram doesn’t actually do what the object built from the diagram does.”
There you go, then.
17/11/2010 at 11:32 Iain says:
Not to take away from the effort. But the block structures that make up a 16bit CPU are fairly well known. Doing it from logic gates is a massive leap but there are many intermediate steps like flip flops, mutexes, adders etc. They should all be known by any 1st year Computer Science student to be honest. The link provided above even has clocks and flip flops to build the bigger structures from.
It’s not really science just fabrication.
17/11/2010 at 12:04 Tei says:
“It’s not really science just fabrication”
> Impliing building the LHC is not science.
Let me guest… your definition of science is a whitelist?
17/11/2010 at 12:24 LevingLasVegas says:
@ rei: Or, you know, it could have been that Corrupt_Tiki was *gasp* making a light joke. Tiki wasn’t even replying to you, but rather to Quxxy. Hence the “@ Quxxy,” bit at the very beginning of his comment. Even if Tiki meant to reply to you, it’s still a light joke, not some scathing dismissal.
In all seriousness; in the words of Richard Pryor, “have a coke and a smile and STFU.”
17/11/2010 at 12:29 Mr_Day says:
Even if you can copy the layout from a book, two things to consider:
First, getting the diagram to work in a game engine, no matter how simple, requires a great deal of patience and knowledge of the engine you are working with.
Second, if you look at any large Minecraft project and scoff, you don’t know the terror of building in the game. Creepers. My god, man, CREEPERS.
EDIT: And even if you can follow the diagram, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he did. Some people have more fun with Lego whilst ignoring the blueprints*.
* and, admittedly, making a Lego penis.
17/11/2010 at 13:11 Iain says:
@Tei
No as this is clearly nothing like the LHC.
To take an example from actual Computer Science. The implementation of say a standard ARM core in a new factory with new parts is not science, it’s just fabricating from blueprints. There is a valid claim for science if the fabrication method is totally new. However as has been shown the basics of logic gates in minecraft were already demonstrated before this. Hence fabrication.
Even then there has to be something totally new about the fabrication method, if it is just reapplication of already known plans into a new medium that doesn’t necessarily warrant it being called science.
Again, not taking away from the achievement. Just correcting the claim that it is science.
Another example would be: I can write the A* algorithm flawlessly in C++, a new language has been created called E++ and I am the first person to code A* in E++. That is not science. The algorithm has a set of properties for ease of argument it has the property that it is computable on any Turing machine. Proving that link for the first time is science. Or being the person to prove that C++ or E++ as languages have the descriptive power to describe any algorithm computable on a Turing machine is science. Just being the first person to port something isn’t science, it’s just application or fabrication.
Not saying it isn’t a long, fiddly and time consuming piece of work. But whoever demonstrated that logic circuits can be implemented in Minecraft did the only thing approaching science here. Everything else was already proven by induction on that simple fact.
17/11/2010 at 14:19 Pete says:
This argument is basically:
- Climbing is easy, just put one foot higher than the other
- Therefore everyone should be able to climb Everest, and mere consumption of time and energy doens’t make it difficult.
I’ve been playing a lot of Transport Tycoon lately (well, OpenTTD) and I think a computer is completely feasible in it. At least two obvious approaches suggest themselves, using cargo to represent charge and using signalling to obstruct/allow the flow of trains. There’s also conditional orders, which I’ve not explored, but offer further power.
17/11/2010 at 14:37 Iain says:
No it isn’t. It’s just fairly straight forward inductive reasoning.
17/11/2010 at 15:03 Tei says:
@Iain
Your reply is a blacklist of “what is not science”. Your blacklist contains things like building A* in E++.
I can’t discuss one peoplel whitelist or blacklist. And I don’t think a definition that is a blacklist/whitelist is usefull. More wen his users are flexible to add or remove items from these blacklist/whitelist. Then I think theres another definition that is hidden from view.
17/11/2010 at 15:14 MacBeth says:
@Tei
“It’s not really science just fabrication”
> Impliing building the LHC is not science.
Actually much (or most?) of the building of the LHC was an engineering challenge, not science. Much like rocketry – the science isn’t generally the hardest bit, it’s building the thing out of raw materials and components and making it actually work without blowing up/crashing into things/otherwise failing.
I’ve absolutely nothing against science, but having studied engineering I do have a certain loyalty… engineers should get credit for making awesome things!
17/11/2010 at 15:26 Iain says:
In agreement with Macbeth here.
I wasn’t listing what is and isn’t science as that would be daft. I was describing the intellectual difference between science and engineering with an example. This is speaking as someone who actually did scientific research in Computer Science and is now an Engineer.
This is a brilliant piece of minecraft engineering essentially and would be a great teaching tool as somebody mentioned.
18/11/2010 at 00:42 Froibo says:
en·gi·neer·ing noun
The art or science of making practical application of the knowledge of pure sciences.
Now stop this silliness.
17/11/2010 at 09:35 Tei says:
{slowmo}Nooooooooooooo!{/slowmo}
We will never have a iPad/iPod version of Minecraft, because Apple reject any app that can be used to create progams, since these programs can be used withouth paying the certifications.
@Mashakosha The reasons why anyone would want to do this are beyond me. Sure, it’s pretty impressive, but what drives people to do these things
I don’t understand why people have childrens, buy cars, watch sports, … On the other part, climbing mountains, creating art, playing sport, doing science, going where no one has been before,… make sense to me.
17/11/2010 at 09:50 Ravenholme says:
I’m sorry Tei, but the first of those that you don’t understand doesn’t make any sense to me. As in, how you could not understand that, it’s a basic biological imperative, and it’s a (pro)creative act in the first place. Otherwise, I agree with you, but I think if you don’t understand the urge to have children, there is something wrong with you. You don’t have to share the urge, but understanding it is as basically human as you can get.
17/11/2010 at 09:51 wm says:
Having childrens is such an overrated endeavour. Honestly don’t know why humanity bothers.
17/11/2010 at 10:13 Baboonanza says:
How else are grown men supposed to find an excuse to go to theme parks and play with train sets?
17/11/2010 at 10:31 mandrill says:
You need an excuse?
17/11/2010 at 11:13 Huggster says:
“Having childrens is such an overrated endeavour. Honestly don’t know why humanity bothers.”
The practising is not overrated though.
17/11/2010 at 16:36 Edgar the Peaceful says:
It’s easy to forget how much much fun building (extensive, many walled, many moated) sandcastles is until you have kids. (Unless you’ve got enough front to just go for it as a ‘man without child’ – sadly you’d get a few looks though)
There is – or was for me – a horrible period say 17 until Daddyhood where you think you have to take yourself and others terribly seriously in order to find a mate. Once you have kids 1) You have license to play with them 2) If you’re lucky your rediscover the value of ‘childish’ play (with or without the kids)
[EDIT: Basically what Baboonanza said]
18/11/2010 at 00:04 daf says:
Don’t think Apple accepts java apps in their appstore for the same reason they don’t want flash (no 3rd party vm), Notch rewriting the entire game just to support the iphone is very unlikely, on the flip side a striped down version for android might just be doable :)
17/11/2010 at 09:57 Corrupt_Tiki says:
Alas, I tried to create a light switch that turned on when an item landed on a switch in a trap I made; The light didn’t work, and the trap didn’t kill zombies. – Went back to building my citadel
17/11/2010 at 10:13 Quxxy says:
I made an item indicator for my cactus farm the other night. I think most of the problems with redstone derive from the unintuitive way it connects and transmits signals.
I’ve actually been thinking about doing some Minecraft tutorial videos; maybe I should start with that. :P
17/11/2010 at 10:28 Rich says:
I spent ages (until I eventually gave up) trying to get two doors to open and close at the same time using one leaver. One door behaved fine, but the second would switch to open as soon as redstone touched it. I was left with a door that would open when the off and close when on. The exact opposite to the other one. I could have made a crazy logic circuit to fix it, but I would have had to make the gatehouse to my fort a lot bigger.
17/11/2010 at 10:43 Corrupt_Tiki says:
@ Quxxy, yeah I played with it a bit(redstone circuits), but then got so very frustrated so I went out and punched wood for all 10minutes of daytime, I made one super effective trap that dominated anything that fell into it, and err, haven’t been able to replicate it since, but I keep trying because traps are awesome! Almost as awesome as building a wildly stupid castle.
@ Rich, huh how long ago was this? I managed to get two doors wired up to one button ok and they worked fine, until I died and could not figure out where the fort was… damn that 8x bigger than earth map!
17/11/2010 at 11:04 Rich says:
It was maybe a week before the Halloween update.
17/11/2010 at 12:19 Freemon says:
@Tiki
The most awesome thing that has happened to me was when i died, like you, i couldn’t find my fort anymore, so i started over, a few days later, i was digging an extremely loooong tunnel and i found a place with torches and beautiful rooms full of chests and stuff and signs over the doors, underground gardens, mine carts, etc. yes, it was my old forgotten fort.
17/11/2010 at 19:11 frymaster says:
@rich,
in multiplayer, redstone doors didn’t work before halloween. Also, if you’re talking about double-doors, one door of the pair requires the opposite signal of the other, for tedious technical reasons.
17/11/2010 at 21:08 Rich says:
Ah, double doors. Bugger.
17/11/2010 at 09:59 HelloThere says:
Insanity! In a good way.
17/11/2010 at 10:03 MrCraigL says:
He talks like Captain Kirk. Awesome though – thinking of taking a look on my lunch break but that would mean having minecraft on my work computer, and that would be dangerous.
17/11/2010 at 10:23 Rich says:
Reply fail. Please ignore.
17/11/2010 at 10:32 James says:
Notch needs to make more blocks that can be triggered to actually interact with the environment, like a water-gate or animal/mob pushing device. Or something.
17/11/2010 at 10:33 Rich says:
Just allowing water to flow through open doors would do it.* Also, trapdoors would be nice.
*Probably not trivial though.
17/11/2010 at 11:24 Tei says:
Modders already did floodgates, bridge blocks and what looks like “multipurpose on-off” blocks.
*I* want to create a “Turtle Logo” block, that can be programed with tiny logo-ish scripts. Like “move forward 10, rotate 90, move forward 10″. But I am always too busy to do anything wen I get home and can relax. I envy all these people that seems to have a lot of time to make mods :-P
17/11/2010 at 11:45 MadTinkerer says:
Ooooh, Tei that would be a neat project. Too bad I’m too busy learning C++ to stop and learn Java right now, or I might be tempted to try that myself.
17/11/2010 at 12:52 rei says:
Not to mention that Notch doesn’t approve of mods and you’ll be banned from the official forums if you are to make something like that.
17/11/2010 at 13:06 Rich says:
That surprises me. I can understand why he wouldn’t officially support them, as they’re likely to break as he adds things and debugs others. Actually banning people for making them is a bit strong.
17/11/2010 at 13:38 rei says:
It’s probably more complicated than my comment made it appear, but there was a lot of controversy on the topic a while ago (which I only paid a very cursory attention to). Either way I was surprised to see anything other than wholehearted delight for mods on his part, since the way I see it the game is basically all about messing around and being creative. Ostensibly it’s an intellectual property issue, but IANAL.
17/11/2010 at 14:46 Wilson says:
@Rich and rei – As I understood the mods thing, Notch didn’t like people making mods and distributing them when they included a large part of the actual game’s code in them. He stated he wasn’t against all mods, just that kind of mod (if I’ve understood correctly). I would hope for him to add in a good system to allow mods to the game in a way he’s happy with (it would seem an obvious thing to aim for given the nature of minecraft).
Here’s a quote from him: “I was referring to client mods that alter or inject code. Texture mods and server mods are fine.”
17/11/2010 at 14:50 Urthman says:
I don’t think it’s true that anyone has been banned from the official Minecraft forums for making a mod of this sort. There are certainly plenty of active threads about such mods.
(Maybe someone has been banned for making multiplayer hacks or something that facilitates piracy. I don’t know.)
17/11/2010 at 14:58 Tei says:
I don’t think you get banned for making mods for minecraft, lol, I have done 4 mods and no one has banned me.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&p=1190288
17/11/2010 at 18:06 rei says:
Actually, Tei, I think your boat mod is against the rules at least. You’re not even allowed to discuss mods that modify the .jar files in any way, which I gather it does.
17/11/2010 at 18:43 Urthman says:
Rei, even simple texture mods — explicitly allowed by Notch — changes files in the minecraft.jar (which is just a .zip file with a different extension).
17/11/2010 at 19:15 Tei says:
Disgusting people are against modding, but nothing can stop it.
Oops… I accidentally made another mod.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-_itKNitjE
This one replace the trees by giant fungus.
17/11/2010 at 20:49 rei says:
@Urthman: Can’t find the original post, but
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133386&p=2029339&viewfull=1#post2029339
17/11/2010 at 10:39 w says:
“Listen, pig!”
17/11/2010 at 11:05 Huggster says:
Close your eyes and he sounds like Angel Batista from Dexter.
17/11/2010 at 11:24 a says:
You wouldn’t download a CPU!
17/11/2010 at 11:28 Peloris The Grunty says:
Soooo… What does this Minecraft CPU do?
17/11/2010 at 11:36 Rich says:
Calculations. Pretty much what the CPU in your PC does. The difference is that your PC has all sorts of other components, firmware and an OS that get more interesting things out of those calculations. I think he has to put his input in manually.
18/11/2010 at 03:26 GoodPatton says:
I don’t understand, but wish I did. Arm I dumm?
17/11/2010 at 11:38 qx says:
I still don’t know what this is suppose to be? I know what an CPU is, but how is this relevant in Minecraft, and why is it remarkable?
17/11/2010 at 11:43 MadTinkerer says:
Click on the wikipedia link in my comment below and think about it.
17/11/2010 at 11:41 MadTinkerer says:
I actually bought the book he recommended, by the way: The Elements of Computing Systems. That book is insane in it’s scope. (Insane as in insanely awesome)
Rather than contain some sort of plug & play blueprint as some doubters have accused him of earlier in these comments, it teaches you the principles of what you need to go from logic gates to high-level programming stuff. It uses a software-based hardware simulator-thing in it’s examples, as it assumes you are more likely to have a personal computer than thousands of dollars of electronics and tools and an electrical engineering degree. It’s not a light read, but it explains everything very well (that I’ve read so far).
From what I can tell, it’s more than fair for the guy to claim this as an “original” work, regardless of whether he used one of the Minecraft level editors or dug out all the redstone himself (come on: designing a working CPU is impressive enough, he doesn’t need to manually mine all the materials and place the blocks if he’s still ‘drawing” where they go). It’s not going to revolutionize the world, but it’s still impressive. How many Virtual Machines have you made lately?
Computing is esoteric but it’s not magic. This is nothing more or less than impressive achievement. It’s not cheating just because you don’t understand how he did it, and it’s not less than noteworthy just because you don’t appreciate exactly how much effort it takes to do it.
17/11/2010 at 11:57 Iain says:
No offence but the details of going from logic gates to high-level programming ought to be evident to a first year Computer Science student.
It’s a fantastic amount of effort he’s put in but it’s not novel or terribly difficult. Just massively time consuming.
17/11/2010 at 14:28 Pete says:
Hello. I write microchip design software for a living. We sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars a copy because it’s actually quite difficult and getting all the details right (including timing) matters.
17/11/2010 at 14:40 Iain says:
Yeah and if you wrote microchip design software for something this simple you’d have clients laugh in your face. There’s also a multitude of reasons why microchip design is infinitely more complex than a 16bit toy virtual machine. All the material science and physics involved as well as logic gates for one.
17/11/2010 at 23:04 Stephen says:
Is your problem that it’s not complicated enough or that he’s done it in Minecraft?
17/11/2010 at 13:16 RIchard Fairbrass says:
Impressive in the amount of time it must have taken, and the fiddly engineering work of making a circuit within Minecraft’s blocky 3D space, but not in a creative way.
Minecraft seems to provide fairly good tools for simple interactions with which to create logic gates, and thus higher level computers. The step from low to high is very well documented and I’m sure a lot of Computer Science and Elec Eng students would be able to replicate this in time. I struggle to see which step in the process of creating this was particularly novel or creative. I enjoy the giant water slides and mad castle complexes people have built in Minecraft far more because they use Minecraft’s charm to their advantage. This is a bit lacking in charm.
Now if he had created a working computer where the basic tools are far more esoteric and real, imaginative thought is needed, that would be impressive. Making a working computer using trains and buses in Transport Tycoon or within The Incredible Machine for example.
As it is I think others have done more impressive things in terms of virtual machines before, and if this wasn’t connected to Minecraft few people would be as interested.
Check out this for something similar but more amazing (in my opinion anyway):
http://rendell-attic.org/gol/utm/index.htm
17/11/2010 at 13:32 Rich says:
Imagine making a processor out of SimCity, using the effects surrounding zones and buildings have on the development of other zones to perform calculations.
Edit: “if this wasn’t connected to Minecraft few people would be as interested”
Actually, you might have a point there. I think it’s more to do with the visualisation, i.e. the fact that walk around in it, that makes it particularly impressive.
17/11/2010 at 15:28 Gamedragon says:
It’s very much the idea that the ability to walk around the circuits and examine them from a viewpoint where you are standing inside of the circuits… Circuits which are composed of two basic components which you know what they do, which makes this fascinating to people.
and it’s this concept along with the constant “how does this work man?” that has fuelled this guys latest concept of a minecraft museum to exhibit and explain electronics.
An interesting venture at the very least.
17/11/2010 at 23:06 Stephen says:
We’re so very picky about what we get for free on the internet. It has to take lots of time to make and be absolutely novel technology or it gets rubbished in the comments.
17/11/2010 at 13:28 Buzko says:
Tag request for “You listening, pig?”
17/11/2010 at 13:33 the_fanciest_of_pants says:
So much argument about how valid this is.
The guy made a cool thing in Minecraft, can we all just agree on that? No one is billing this as some turning point in technological history.
17/11/2010 at 13:51 battles_atlas says:
Ah, but is it cool?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt2SVKKG50Y
(Also yes, you are totally correct in your summation of this)
17/11/2010 at 14:42 Huggster says:
” No one is billing this as some turning point in technological history.”
Remember those words in 20 years time….
17/11/2010 at 15:18 Gamedragon says:
Okay, i feel obliged to bring up his other video, and citing a why for all you people.
Originally, he started out to learn. Now he’s setting out to teach.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aaTwJnMVXY
If you can’t be bothered to click, here’s the video description, which sums it up nicely.
“I really think this could be a way to make something even more out of all of the amazing talent we currently have generating complex digital machines in a virtual world.
Right now we’re doing it for our own pleasure, but I can’t see why we can’t add to these creations the explicit context needed to learn how they work.
And a user-contributed, ever changing world where there are a multitude of these “exihibits,” all working to teach someone the principles of the devices they’re based on, would be a fantastic end-point for this line of thought.
Anyone agree?”
17/11/2010 at 15:22 Iain says:
I think it’s a great tool for that. Sure beats the over head projector slide versions we got at University.
17/11/2010 at 15:35 Gamedragon says:
Well, there is the issue of communication, right now all that’s available is signs.
Interactivity in the middle of the exhibits can make it a great tool.
And exhibits would be typically large.. especially our star exhibit here.
but we have minecarts and canals.
17/11/2010 at 21:17 Yeah, about that... says:
But the real question remains:
ISN’T MINECRAFT JUST THE NEW SECOND LIFE?
18/11/2010 at 13:51 tapanister says:
Fascists! My derogatory comments were deleted :@
27/07/2011 at 12:37 Nehh says:
Next step: Making a Minecraft computer complex enough to run Minecraft.
MINECRAFTCEPTION!