Minecraft Redstone!

IN DEEP THOUGHT

The making of a mini redstone computer

Considering it's a game about having adventures and building, Minecraft sure is home to a lot of computers. Computers that calculate; computers with screens; computers that run programs; computers that play games. They’re computers in a world in a game in your computer!

That’s because Minecrafters discovered that redstone and some of its components, such as comparators, repeaters and redstone torches, act very much like the electronic components that you find squeezed down to a microscopic scale inside a chip.

But just because redstone behaves like this doesn’t mean that it was intended to build computers. When the first Minecraft computer was shown off, way back in September 2010, it knocked a lot of socks off, even Notch’s. That computer was made by theinternetftw and it performed maths and logic operations, but it wasn’t a computer that you’d easily recognise. It lacked its own memory and a screen and it didn’t play games. But it was extraordinary to behold.



The reveal as theinternetftw comes out of the cave and looks out across his computer as it spreads out into the distance still puts shivers down my spine. What a sight!

Since then, many, many more Minecraft computers have been built. Laurens Weyn’s Redgame computers came with memory and a GPU and could run programs and even play simple games. They were huge, comprising thousands of blocks, using both redstone and command blocks, and today, Minecrafters are still pushing the boundaries, like SethBling’s new Atari 2600 emulator, which can run and display games like Donkey Kong. Very, very slowly.

As well as building massive and complex computers, there’s also the challenge of making small ones. A new computer called Deep Thought is tiny by Minecraft standards. Built by n00b-asaurus, it fits into an area of just 40 by 40 blocks across and 35 blocks high. Seriously, this is small, but it can execute four different operations: AND, XOR, OR, and ADD+C. Together, these can perform just about any calculation you need, and what’s more, Deep Thought has ports into which you can plug other hardware you might build, such as a screen.



Inside Deep Thought’s neat exterior lies its complex Redstone workings.

n00b-asaurus has had an interest in electronics since he was about 10, when his parents got him a Radio Shack electronics kit. “At 13, I got an Arduino, and when it came time to go to college, I signed up for the first electronics class I saw, no hesitations,” he tells me. Arduino is a system of connected components you can use to build and prototype electronics, and it led him to learning more about electronics in college.

But n00b-asaurus finds it a lot easier to work with redstone than it is to work with electronics. “There's no power and ground traces to route. You don't have to deal with induction causing noise, plus you can see everything happening inside the computer as it's happening. Also, components are expensive!”

But this doesn’t make creating a computer like Deep Thought easy. Its size brought some serious challenges. “It took quite a bit of 'deep thought' itself,” n00b-asaurus jokes. (Deep Thought’s name is a bit of a joke, too: it’s from the city-sized computer in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which calculated the answer to the Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything to be 42.)



Designing a computer like Deep Thought takes a lot of doodling on scrap paper.

To fit in the space, n00basaurus had to rein in some of his ambitions. He originally wanted it to be 8-bit, but had to scale it back to 4-bit. In simple terms, bits relate to the size of individual numbers a computer can handle. An 8-bit computer can handle numbers up to 256, while a 4-bit computer can handle only 16, but it uses far fewer blocks. Yet with some clever design Deep Thought can perform calculations on much larger ones.

Another tactic n00b-asaurus used was to use something called a finite-state machine as the control circuit, a structure that tells each part of the computer what to do. Though simplistic and rather inflexible, a finite-state machine is smaller to build than the logic circuits found in other computers, and it also made timing instructions more straightforward.

The result is a machine that n00b-asaurus says is similar in architecture to an Intel 4004, which was the first commercial microprocessor when it was launched in 1971. He admits that Deep Thought is rather lower powered, however.











As for his next challenge, it’s all about recreating in redstone an x86 chip. This is a long-living family of chips on which you might well be running your copy of Minecraft today, since it’s inside most PCs!

After all, the only real restriction to building Minecraft computers is time. “A redstone computer’s clock speeds are limited to how long it takes to get data from one side of the computer to the other,” he explains. Thus, the bigger the computer, the slower it is. “Really, there's no limit to how sophisticated redstone computers can get, it’s just whether you’re willing to wait 4-5 hours for the result.”

But why does he only work with headstone and not command blocks, which are inside most other Minecraft computers? “I’m not at all against using command blocks in a computer,” n00b-asaurus says. “In fact, I do intend on eventually making a computer out of command blocks simply for the fact that so many options open up when you use them. For now, though, the challenge presented by redstone is a lot more fun and rewarding. That and it's fun to watch redstone lines flicker on and off when you finally get your computer running.”

Video and Photos here:  https://minecraft.net/en-us/article/deep-thought 

Minecraft Map!



LEARNING TO FLY

How 4J designed the Console Edition’s epic new tutorial map!

When Elytra wings hit the Console Edition in its big update at the end of last year, they came with a brand-new tutorial map specially designed to help players take to the skies.

4J’s tutorials are much more than just a set of instructions on how to play. They’re huge and exciting playgrounds in their own right. So how did 4J go about designing this new one?

The first thing was to think about how to make somewhere that’s great for flying around. Previous tutorial maps have been set in recreations of some special places in 4J’s home country, Scotland, including Edinburgh Castle and Melrose Abbey.

But amazing though Scotland is, it doesn’t quite have somewhere to fully showcase Elytra flying.



The team included as many biomes as they could for variety, while also using extreme terrain generation to ensure there are a lot of deep canyons, pinnacles and precipices for exciting flying!



Here’s the full layout of the new map. It's a clever mixture of handcrafted and generated terrain, dotted with unique structures and gigantic sculptures of mobs. Spot the guardians off the coast?



Early in development, 4J decided players would start in a blocked-off area for the initial tutorial before getting to freely roam from a central hub set in a ruined castle in the centre of the map.



The team included as many biomes as they could for variety, while also using extreme terrain generation to ensure there are a lot of deep canyons, pinnacles and precipices for exciting flying!



Here’s the full layout of the new map. It's a clever mixture of handcrafted and generated terrain, dotted with unique structures and gigantic sculptures of mobs. Spot the guardians off the coast?

Next

So the setting was open, but the first step for the 4J team was to figure out what the player’s flow around the space should be and what sort of terrain it would need. “It had to have high mountains and vantage points from which to fly and we also wanted to show off the new amplified terrain,” 4J art director David Keningdale tells me.

The map is a mixture of hand-painted height map with naturally generated terrain, so the team could control its large, flat areas for the core tutorial while also mucking about with the amplified terrain generation for the exciting flying bits. What’s more, it’s peppered with different biomes to give a real tour of the Minecraft experience!

The challenge for designing the Elytra tutorial was ensuring it’s set at the right level of challenge. “It was tough to balance so it isn’t too hard or too easy, because the more we tested it, the better we got!” says David. “But eventually I think we found a happy medium.”



Hoops are carefully placed to mark aerial courses that really put your elytra skills to the test.

At the core of the flight tutorial are a set of hoops to fly through, with tight turning circles to test and hone players’ skills. But instead of having them hang in boring open space, 4J created tunnels and arches in the canyons, and used the sharp twists in the deep gorges of the map to create thrilling runs that allow flyers to stay airborne for long periods.

Oh, and in case they should fall down, 4J also added a few ladders, paths and towers so they can get up high so they could take to the skies again.



There are loads of details carved into the landscape - ancient scultures and outsized weapons!

With the layout of the map completed, the next step was to think up a theme. 4J settled on something dramatic: the ruins of an ancient civilisation of Minecraft worshippers! “With towers and viaducts decaying in the landscape, giant statues of mobs and items strewn around the map for players to discover,” David says.

“As we were testing flight paths through the ravines, we started thinking about the type of people who would live in each biome. We started making bases or forts in each, themed to the settlers you might find there, so treehouses, caves, even building into giant mushrooms. The people that live there must be fun guys.”

Props to the excellent dad-joke, David! And thank you for taking us through the map. Here are a few more screenshots to show off some more of its many highlights!

More photos here:  https://minecraft.net/en-us/article/learning-fly