Playing “Minecraft” without Minecraft (2024)(lenowo.org)
103 pointsby coolcoder6137 hours ago5 comments
  • bcraven2 hours ago
    I am always fascinated by articles that contain technical details like:

    "In order to run all of these, you will need a 64 bit computer (ideally little endian, on BE you will need to use a JIT like box64 which decreases performance) with 4 or more processor cores at over 900 MHz. A minimum of 4 GB of RAM is recommended, with some trickery like zram you might get away with less but it will cause slowdown. Ideally youd want an OpenGL capable graphics card too."

    Alongside text like:

    "Now, click on the right facing triangle (play button"

    • galaxy_gas2 hours ago
      its fitting given the Forum this Post is from its running on a camera via uart debug port
  • hamish-ban hour ago
    Site is currently down, wayback machine link: https://web.archive.org/web/20250919031347/https://lenowo.or...
    • minki_the_avali27 minutes ago
      yeah, hackernews killed my poor ip camera again xD
  • tossit4445 hours ago
    I think it's amazing to have a massive commercially successful game such as Minecraft give the fans the ability to be very liberal with what they can do with it. Now we have open-source re-implementaions that are pretty close to vanilla!
    • somat3 hours ago
      Minecraft is wierd because all that amazing modding that is done is in spite of mojang not because of them.

      I have not played minecraft in a few years but I think nothing has changed. Mojang, even pre microsoft, has never provided any sort of modding support. I grew up on quake where ID would give you the game code and tools necessary to make mods. Mojang gave nothing. modding on minecraft involved decompiling the bytecode, dealing with the terrible symbols the decompiler gave you then recompiling it back into a jar. It was ugly and unpleasant. later the bigger efforts produced some tooling and libraries to make this better, but mojang had no part in this.

      So minecraft is wierd, one of the most modded game in existence, yet the developers have provided no mod support.

      • xboxnolifes2 hours ago
        I don't know if it was done with modding in mind or not, but the transition to data packs was a non-trivial addition of mod support.
        • immibisan hour ago
          At the cost of inner-platform-effecting all the game code. Long-time software engineers know all about the inner platform effect - if not, see [1]. Instead of writing directly what you want, something like:

          new Block("mymod:mystone").setShape(Shapes.CUBE).setTexture("mymod:stone_texture").setStepSound(Sounds.STEP_ON_STONE)...

          you now have to do some of this inline (the part that can't be customized in data packs):

          new Block("mymod:mystone").setStepSound(Sounds.STEP_ON_STONE)...

          but the rest is looked up across 5 different cross-referenced JSON files full of magic values with no autocomplete or syntax highlighting. Start with an indirection layer in assets/mymod/blockstates/mystone.json: [2]

          {"variants": {"": {"model": "mystone"}}}

          then of course you have to actually specify how to display the block: [3]

          {"parent": "minecraft:block/cube_all", "textures": {"all": "fabric-docs-reference:block/steel_block"}}

          (you see that? there are inheritance and variables in Minecraft's ad-hoc JSON language)

          You need a second file to specify how to display the item when it's held in your hand. Usually it's similar boilerplate. But have a look at the abomination that is "item property overrides" [4] [5] as an example of inner-platforming. Instead of render(is_cast ? cast_model : uncast_model); there's this whole infrastructure of a registry of item property predicates written in Java which can then be referenced in JSON to select a different model file under specific conditions.

          [1] https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_inner-platform_effect

          [2] https://docs.minecraftforge.net/en/1.12.x/models/blockstates...

          [3] https://docs.fabricmc.net/develop/data-generation/block-mode...

          [4] https://docs.minecraftforge.net/en/1.12.x/models/overrides/

          [5] https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Models#Example:_...

          • tehbeard9 minutes ago
            A key part you're missing either willfully or ignorantly is that they're midway through the refactoring to make it data driven, so you have these odd/rough edges.

            Yes, having to declare json files for your new block in your mod is a pain...

            Meanwhile what it was built for, resource packs, this actually gives a good amount of power to the pack maker without having to ask the client to run untrusted java code.

      • Its_Padar3 hours ago
        They do provide deobfuscation maps these days at least
      • herbst2 hours ago
        That's where I got my update anxiety from. Everything was broken after every update, but we loved the updates still.

        It wasn't easy and majong did not help back then.

      • charcircuit2 hours ago
        >never provided any sort of modding support

        Bedrock added support for modding in 2016, 9 years ago, with resource packs and behavior packs. You can make custom entities, custom items, custom blocks, etc. There is also a marketplace available to distribute these to players, built right into the game.

        Java edition also has had similar things for many years.

      • imtringued2 hours ago
        The developers decided to not provide mod support because the modders have infinite freedom the way they are doing things right now. More freedom than if they gave you a modding toolkit like Bethesda does. It's the Bedrock Edition of Minecraft that's crippled with its official modding support.
    • CalRobert4 hours ago
      MS is slowly killing off Java so they can push Bedrock (much less flexible) on everyone though. And all my daughter's friends use Bedrock :-\. I have a server with GeyserMC running to let them play together but it definitely isn't what it once was.
      • terribleperson4 hours ago
        Bedrock might be more popular, but I think there is a large community with absolutely zero interest in ever moving away from Java. I will never go back to playing Minecraft without Distant Horizons after experiencing it, so Bedrock is absolutely not an option for me unless they added real LOD features natively.
        • CalRobert4 hours ago
          The kids all seem to use tablets or windows with bedrock though, my own are the odd ones out with Java on Linux.
          • Imustaskforhelpan hour ago
            A lot of windows users use java on windows too.

            I do think that I have yet to see a bedrock player on windows as compared to java player on windows & I have been playing minecraft for so long and joined so many discord communities of minecraft related as well and that's my experience.

            Java is really peak minecraft, with modpacks as well. You should try out prismlauncher, its open source and works quite smoothly on linux and you can try a lot of modpacks which the bedrock players can't play.

            Fabuously Optimized is a must have modpack given how efficient it can make minecraft / give fps boosts

        • squigz2 hours ago
          Distant Horizons is awesome. Too bad my computer really does not agree :P
          • terribleperson2 hours ago
            It's a bit hard on the CPU for sure, but running a server and pregeneration both help.
      • p0w3n3d3 hours ago
        During ramblings about new Minecraft jeb_ recently said that java is not going to be sunsetted, or at least that's what I understood.

        Of course the course of Microsoft and jeb_ might be different and he might get pushed towards some decisions later. The problem is that kids nowadays don't use computers. They use phones and tablets. For me Minecraft experience on phone is awful but there are many young generations that consider it native way of playing games

      • xboxnolifes2 hours ago
        By the time Mojang kills off Java, mod developers will have backported the entirety of modern Minecraft to 1.7.10.
      • dm3192 hours ago
        I find bedrock has much better performance than java. It runs very nicely using the MCPE launcher on linux.
      • squigz2 hours ago
        No they're not? Vanilla Java gets updates too, and even if they were, the modding scene is as vibrant as ever.
    • dustedan hour ago
      I played the original a lot, and lots of modding, but I prefer Luanti these days. There are lots of great games in it, and many of them are very much Minecraft, others explore entirely different approaches which can be very interesting as well. I'm spending some hours playing with my 5 year old too, and it's great.
    • charcircuit5 hours ago
      It was like that until 2012. Ever since then they've been tightening down further and further.
  • anthk3 hours ago
    I'd recommend Minetest+some full game instead of a reimplementation from an older version. I know it's not the same; but some full games for Minetest are close enough and they will run on really old machines much faster than this reimplementation.
  • globalhsbc2 hours ago
    [dead]