Sad news: Notch has confirmed that he's stopped working on his space exploration/programming game, 0x10c.

Apparently it just wasn't holding his attention any longer. Rock Paper Shotgun has a brief but informative write-up on this.

Interestingly, some of the folks who thought this was a great idea for a game aren't willing to let it fade away. They're getting together to figure out how to build it themselves, completely from scratch.

Best of luck to them!

Flatfingers wrote:Sad news: Notch has confirmed that he's stopped working on his space exploration/programming game, 0x10c.

Apparently it just wasn't holding his attention any longer. Rock Paper Shotgun has a brief but informative write-up on this.

Interestingly, some of the folks who thought this was a great idea for a game aren't willing to let it fade away. They're getting together to figure out how to build it themselves, completely from scratch.

Best of luck to them!

Wow, that's a bit sad, thanks for the update ~ wasn't at all aware of this.

Shame, but then again it did look like it was moving at a glacial pace. I was interested in it as well though

Best of luck to those brave folks

Wasn't too surprised to hear this actually. Notch wasn't talking much about it which I took as him losing interest. It'll be interesting to see what other folks could come up with but I'm not interested in the multiplayer aspect though.

Well, to be honest, it was a wierd concept to begin with...

The only thing which was fleshed out was that you basically had the equivalent of an old 8/16 bit machine as board computer and were supposed to program your ship's software yourself.

...which seriously strikes me as an abnormally dumb idea. Seriously, the last thing on my mind when hankering for a space game is "Whee, it would be SO MUCH FUN to program an AI firing algorithm in a proprietary basic variant on an emulated computer." Followed by "Fun" multiplayer moments like "Oh, my shields obviously just shut down due to a software exploit in the shield modulation script I downloaded a week earlier. That's GREAT FUN!!!"

Good riddance to bad brainfarts, I'd say. I'm not sure what the guys who intend to pick up the idea plan to do with it, since the whole concept beyond "you can program your ship's computer" was incredibly vague and generic.
Games are supposed to be fun. I fail to see where this thing could have been, unless you're a programmer. And even then...

I guess it could be an interesting game for programmers?

"omg you h4x0r me I will haxx you lolololololol" something of that sort?

I love the graphics though.

As a relatively old-school programmer, game design amateur, and gamer, I can see both sides of this.

The programming part sounds odd, but could have been enjoyable -- not just for grognards like me, who like the idea of finding value again in our arcane knowledge of assembly language coding, but for newbies who want to see what that kind of programming nearly down to the metal feels like. At a level up from that, being able to use programming skills to improve your starship's systems (or buying systems that could be improved by other players) is a pretty darn sexy concept to some people. Not everyone, obviously! But some, and some can be enough. (The Minecraft pitch probably sounded nuts to some people.) Finally, being about to enhance your ship's systems through programming would have been an interesting way for 0x10c to distinguish itself commercially from other space action games.

On the other hand, the programming game part needed to be well-integrated into the overall game. Ad it needed to be something that was fun to do in itself, and not hard to do. It needed to be a useful part of the game, but not take over the game during either development or actual gameplay... but I get the feeling that's exactly what happened.

I can't say I'm surprised that 0x10c didn't make it -- it is a pretty unusual idea. But that's also why I'm disappointed it didn't get enough traction to become at least an alpha for people to try.

Hardenberg wrote:Well, to be honest, it was a wierd concept to begin with...
[...] Games are supposed to be fun. I fail to see where this thing could have been, unless you're a programmer. And even then...

Hey, I've heard there are still people around playing CoreWars, little bits of software written in some assembler like language fighting in some simple x * x area.

ThisIsJustMe wrote:Hey, I've heard there are still people around playing CoreWars, little bits of software written in some assembler like language fighting in some simple x * x area.

I still have my copy (somewhere) of the rules that A.K. Dewdney sent me for Core Wars.

Some of the tricks people came up with, both for causing errors in the code of others and for hardening their own code, were pretty darn clever.

ThisIsJustMe wrote:

Hardenberg wrote:Well, to be honest, it was a wierd concept to begin with...
[...] Games are supposed to be fun. I fail to see where this thing could have been, unless you're a programmer. And even then...

Hey, I've heard there are still people around playing CoreWars, little bits of software written in some assembler like language fighting in some simple x * x area.

Well, let's see:
Core wars is pretty much exactly this - a programming contest in a sandbox, two programs enter, one program leaves. You might notice the distinct lack of narrative, lore or spaceships here. It's an unpretentious game about software trying to screw other software, while you watch. Call it programmer porn. You even have both hands free while said programs go hogwild with each other (myself, I prefer to play with my joystick, or at least play a little five finger jam on a mouse). If Notch intended to do a fancy version of core wars, I'd have nodded (off, probably) and then looked for something more fun. Yes, I consider programming a terrible, unfun chore. Sue me. There's a reason why I support KS projects like this one, namely that I can't program my way out of a wet paper bag, but still like to play games. Hence I leave to programming to the pros, who might even find that fun. Josh seems to be enjoying what he's doing, and that's good enough for me.

Unfortunately, 0x10c aka "unpronounceable" was supposedly inspired by Elite & Co, which tends to contains spaceships, pewpewpew and other sundry things like orbits, flight mechanics and upgrading your ship. This attracts a certain crowd of people (me, the guys over at spacesimcentral, the dude at space game junkies, a few of the X board regulars, the fine folks over here...). And those might get a smidgen miffy when you try the old bait and switch, since a) not all of us are programmers and b) even those who are might not be keen on spending hours on code when they want to spend hours on pewpewpew and fancy flying.

Having a script interpreter a'la the X games is a nice idea for people who are talented and willing to make some fancy stuff. But tossing me said script interpreter in lieu of properly working AI components and calling it a feature means you get my finger instead of my wallet contents.

Hardenberg wrote:But tossing me said script interpreter in lieu of properly working AI components and calling it a feature means you get my finger instead of my wallet contents.

Hardenberg wrote:But tossing me said script interpreter in lieu of properly working AI components and calling it a feature means you get my finger instead of my wallet contents.

But now you're making a different argument. This is criticizing the (super-early) implementation; your earlier problem was with the very concept of the game. Should I conclude that you just don't like anything about this game as Notch actually described it?

You weren't "tossed" anything because 0x10c was nowhere close to even a pre-pre-alpha state. In fact, it was unusually nice to be given an extremely early look at the *possible* shape of a future game. How many developers do that? I don't see it as deserving of the level of criticism you're giving it.

If you just plain don't care personally for any of the ideas floated for 0x10c, that's a question of personal taste on which I have no standby to disagree. Dinging all the 0x10c concepts as irredeemably broken on an absolute measure for everybody, though... that's debatable, to put it politely.