Markus has a new game in the works.
What’s interesting so far, is the DCPU-16. http://0x10c.com/doc/dcpu-16.txt
GitHub has also implemented support for the assembly code. https://github.com/blog/1098-take-over-the-galaxy-with-github
I’m glad he is having fun, but assembly doesn’t have mass appeal. 
Minecraft got a lot more people willing to install mods (which wasn’t the easiest the Minecraft was organized), so maybe people will like the rest of the game and be happy to install programs written by others for the DCPU. It might even inspire some to learn more than they normally would.
You’d think the computers in the future would be controlled by slightly higher-level languages… 
I really would like to see a game that includes its own high-level programming language – so you could program the game within the game. :o
If it’s supports assembly you can just target that with higlevel langues that you use today and just work compiler. 16-bit might be restriction but there is lot of that you can do with 16-bits computers.
Yeah, we could even go and implement a JVM for that CPU :-P.
BTW, here’s an attempt to make an emulator of the DCPU-16: https://github.com/swetland/dcpu16/blob/master/dcpu.c
If you follow him he already talked about it for long time. I always thought he was doing Java only.
There is already a (beta) LLVM backend for it, so you can code in C and compile to DASM/DCPU.
But the DCPU-16 is implemented in Java right?
It doesn’t really matter. I’m quite sure that Notch implemented it in Java, but in the end all DCPUs will run serverside so we wouldn’t know.
I know :-). It just sounded like @ReBirth thought that this was not implemented in Java.
Anyhow, it’s an exciting game idea. I think all geeks at some point have dreamt of implementing some kind of detailed star ship simulation :-D.
Well, seriously I consider this as new thing.
I looked at it briefly, thought “oh god” and wandered off… and I’m a programmer.
Compiling to it from other languages is interesting. Still no mass appeal, IMO (not that it is necessary). It does sound like a neat project.
I’m just seeing the Apple effect here. Everyone makes tablets, no one buys them. Apple makes tablets years later, the market booms. I just don’t see the appeal of a normal computer in a game. Either you want to learn or produce something or have fun, not program something without a future without having much fun. But considering the insane amount of time people spent on making worthless stuff in Minecraft, it probably at least won’t fail…
Yup, there were all sorts of insane geniuses building stuff for Minecraft (like working computers :o), etc. Do keep in mind that the modding community around 0x10c will likely make tools to make stuff much easier, probably even some sort of visual editors that won’t require players to write code to make/do stuff.
QFT. Every game with a turing-complete scripting language is just as moddable, and what matters is the allowed sets of inputs and outputs (e.g. Lua scripts in WoW are jailed to a subset of the UI). This is solely the geek factor – I just hope there’s more game there than Minecraft.
When he first announced the project I thought the virtual cpu idea was plain weird and didn’t make a whole lot of sense in a game. Why not just include a scripting language that would be far more efficient to run and easier to code for?
But having seen the gigantic instant community that has sprung up around it and people talking about learning programming just to play the game I am both baffled and somewhat in awe.
Not that baffling - there are a lot of people now who hang off of Markus’ every word as gospel.
Cas
I don’t think it’s that, actually. Minecraft has such a large player base, that there are bound to be hundreds of developers both willing and capable of writing assemblers, emulators, debuggers, etc.
If he would have designed a game around lawn mowing, an equally compentent and willing subset of the player base would have raised up to the challenge to fill him in on the latest and greatest models/technology in that area.
It doesn’t take mindless fanboys to follow his ideas, it’s about the big numbers.