Minecraft on the CD32

[Haywire]

Has anyone ported over the Minecraft clone, AmiCraft to the CD32 yet?

[LaBodilsen]

that i do not think will ever happen. AmiCraft is for PPC and OS4.x, i don't see that ever running on CD32

[Haywire]

I was thinking perhaps with the TF330 expansion board.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Haywire

I was thinking perhaps with the TF330 expansion board.

No chance, i think you perhaps forget its a full 3D texture mapped world, Quake just about runs fairly decent on the 060 let alone 030, you would need at least the former i would imagine if not more to start thinking about a Minecraft, along with the fact it hasn’t been ported to OS3 prob due to speed issues, i would give up on this one and use one of the multiple other platforms to play it on.

[Haywire]

The game Trick or Treat by Duncan Stuart did good with 3D textures I thought. Was thinking that game engine would be a good starting point.

[LaBodilsen]

Trick or Treat looks to be using a simple 2.5d raycaster like Wolfenstein. Minecraft despite it's simple looks, is a pretty demanding game hardware wise.

[commodorejohn]

Plus, the real load of Minecraft isn't in the graphics at all, if I remember contemporary discussion correctly; it's in tracking and updating all the interactions between every block and object in a massive gameworld. In fact, the computational and memory requirements for that are intense enough that Minecraft doesn't even update beyond a certain radius around the player most of the time.

[Dunny]

Yep, it has a setting for world interaction updates beyond which the world stops doing whatever it is it's doing.

Minecraft is very, very well optimised and still has pretty high requirements to run on a PC - some of that though is the Java implementation; the C++ versions that run on Win10 and pocket editions are faster, but even then there's no way on earth you'll get it to run on anything like a 68k, no matter what flavour.

People think that because it's all blocks and 16x16 textures that it must be a simple graphical system. It's not, it's very very complex.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Dunny

there's no way on earth you'll get it to run on anything like a 68k, no matter what flavour.

I don’t know, i think one that was optimised for the 68k could be possible, but like i say it would prob only be an 060.

There was a nice homebrew version for the Nintendo DS called ‘DS Craft’ something along those lines, low res, lower draw distance, not without alot of work of course, but its ‘possible to some degree’.

[Dunny]

Any game is possible "to some degree". For the Amiga 060 I'd expect flat-shaded polygons (no texturing), a limited draw distance (say one chunk which is 16x16 cells) and no world processing (fire etc) outside of the visible region.

That should just about be doable, but slow.

[Glen M]

Considering my sons PC (AMD 8320, 8gb DDR 1866, GTX680, 240gb SSD) can struggle with minecraft at times you have but a snowballs chance in hell of getting it to run on a CD32 or any Amiga at that.

I could perhaps see a game with the essence of minecraft working if presented in a top down manor on a limited size playfield with the various blocks to interact with. Not sure how you would manage height and actual mining though. Maybe with different fixed levels of playfield for example:

Top level - Overworld with trees and animals and a day/night cycle with your mobs etc and the ability to collect resources to build your house/farm etc.

Middle level - mines. Accessed through predetermined points to drop you down from the top level but also used as point to get back up. Mines to have small area at access point then you "mine" your way through collecting various resources and dealing with mobs.

Bottom level - further drop down for better resources with more risk from mobs, lava etc etc.

Portals to the end and nether could be constructed to take you to those areas possible also setout with multiple levels as described above.

and there you'd have "minecraft amiga edition". Sure thats the game practically designed, come on developers whats keeping you???

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Glen M

Considering my sons PC (AMD 8320, 8gb DDR 1866, GTX680, 240gb SSD) can struggle with minecraft at times you have but a snowballs chance in hell of getting it to run on a CD32 or any Amiga at that.

Well i wasn’t suggesting the full version, plus we all know PC’s are full of bloat-wear and optimising is curse word in those parts!

IF a cut down version were possible, then obviously it would be the pocket edition, and more so as i mention above the Nintendo DS version, depending on CPU speed, the DS pulls off around 200MIPS, the 060 75mhz is around 110MIPS, again that is still nearly double the speed to make up, which is why i said if its possible it would require more cuts of some degree, although without looking, maybe the frame-rate could be comprised, its not like its a Doom style game where speed is key.

But maybe, just maybe i’m talking out my behind and none of that has any relevance

[alexh]

As already discussed it requires a PPC and a true 3D GFX card. No way AmiCraft is coming to a CD32 near you ever.