I find this choice interesting. Vulkan is a sensible choice given the game is multiplatform (and of course they mention MoltenVK right in the announcement.) Despite that, I still find it interesting that a Microsoft subsidiary would make this choice given that Vulkan is a direct competitor to Direct3D and that Microsoft seemed to only begrudgingly continue to support OpenGL and wgl. (Am I hallucinating, or was there not a period of time where the graphics drivers shipped from Windows Update simply omitted OpenGL support, leaving you with only the terrible OpenGL 1.4 software renderer?)
The bedrock lineage is microsoft's attempt at microsoftifying minecraft. The team behind bedrock are responsible for showing the world the supremacy of DirectX.
Bedrock is far behind on features and is far buggier compared to java edition. A ground up C++ rewrite is noble beginnings. Unfortunately time has shown that they only planned to get it to an MVP necessary for some gross monetization tactics targeting children and not really a genuine interest in improving the tech, growing fandom goodwill, or creating new art.
You could run java literally anywhere it matters with not too much effort, but ios store terms would never allow for mods anyway (neither would ps/xbox/ninty store probably), so you could just as well redirect effort to optimize for platform specific audiences, AKA in this case kids wielding their parents' credit card.
Sure and I don't argue that. But it also wasn't fully there. This past couple of weeks Codename One introduced some big missing pieces:
* Level builder/game designer
* Proper 3d that works natively everywhere (direct 3d on windows, metal on iOS/Mac)
* Support for native win32, Linux and mac - real native with no JVM, 5mb binary
* Native performance for some edge cases (low level SIMD API etc.)
You're right that mindshare is a huge part, but there were also many important missing pieces especially on the deployment front. I think that with good tooling and a royalty free pitch this might open some doors that were previously closed to Java.
Getting to major studios would be an uphill battle but since they acquire indie studios the path goes through there.
Another thing to note is that Mojang had already commissioned a C++ port of Minecraft for the console versions, which they then abandoned in favor of Bedrock. The original console port ran better, was less buggy, and had a nicer UI for controllers than Bedrock. Bedrock is basically an extension of Minecraft Pocket Edition (the smartphone port of Minecraft) so I imagine that they shifted to Bedrock so they didn't have to pay to implement the same features on Java, console, and Pocket Edition whenever they updated the game. The console version was developed by an external contractor, which is probably why they chose to give that up instead of Pocket Edition.
"Bedrock is basically an extension of Minecraft Pocket Edition "
This seems crazy. When MS bought Mojang, why didn't they start with the console port for Bedrock? Even if some other contractor, it would be a starting point better than the phone version?
This isn't really true, the code works like most cross platform codebases where most of the code is common and then there's a bunch of platform-specific backends that handle graphics, sound, input, etc. They used the same gameplay code for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation Vita, Xbox One, Playstation 4, Wii U, and Switch, so clearly there's not really much keeping it stuck to a single platform. A recent leak of the legacy console source code revealed that they also had an internal Windows port to make development easier, although you still need a controller to play.
As for the internal windows port, that's how most console development is done nowadays. Gamefreak (the pokemon people) does build of their games for PC which is neat considering how different the switch is compared to the differences between playstation/xbox and pc (those are just amd cpus and gpus on the inside, whereas the switch uses some nvidia soc)
It started with that, yes, with Pocket Edition, but then that codebase got used for the console editions. I guess the temptation to monetise was too strong, and monetising Java was probably a lot harder and would spark a lot more outrage.
The Modded Minecraft community is basically all Java, and yeah, I think the Microsoft team on this have done a good job, but given how much awesome stuff modders give away a monetisation gambit is going to bring loads of ire for relatively small gain. "Better Than Wolves" is an entire mod which exists because one solo was angry about Wolves being added to Minecraft and they were like "I can do better than that" and of course the only way to show that you're serious was to uh, make a mod which is better than the wolves. IIRC it's a mechanical power system, water wheels, wind mills, gears and then simple machines to connect.
I don't think there's much chance Sony or Nintendo would have blocked the publishing of a Java version of Minecraft, if that had been on offer in place of Bedrock.
The rules are always flexible for huge games, especially when they'd otherwise be an exclusive for a competitor.
My experience has been that unless you are using the basic graphics options of Bedrock it performs worse at the same render distance, and even with basic graphics the perf is not much better. With Java version getting Vulkan rendering I suspect it'll out perform bedrock even without mods.
Not to mention bedrocks "improved" graphics look like trash compared to the shaders available for modded Java.
It's simple. Microsoft the new owner has no idea what Minecraft is about.
Or at least the subset of Minecraft that I play: complex builds and automated farms done in survival not creative. At that level the combat they keep adding to is ... just getting in the way of my building.
I think the problem is that Minecraft caters to a huge range of tastes. I fully agree with you, I’d much rather have more options for automation and building fun machinery but my son is deeply into the PvP side of things where the new combat options are hugely appealing, and lead to new ways of playing the game. That’s barely scratching the surface, you’ve also got the speed runners, the boat racers, the people using it as a place to shoot weird films, the drop map obsessives, and the speed bridgers competing to bridge from one point to another as fast as possible. It’s almost impossible to accommodate everyone all the time.
> Microsoft the new owner has no idea what Minecraft is about.
They've had 12 years to figure it out[0]. Now sadly they've spent those 12 years working out how best to milk every last microtransaction and merchandising cent out of the property rather than actually listening to anyone and improving the game(s) but whomst among us could have predicted that outcome?!
Microsoft the publisher also cares about other OSes, and each studio does whatever they feel like including publishing on mobiles and all game consoles.
Microsoft the Windows/XBox division has other priorities.
Direct3D 12 is Vulkan under the hood. GL is the real competitor, and it provides legitimate accessibility to small developers, which is why the industry is extinguishing it.
Is Direct3D not dead? I’m seeing no major releases in years, no notable features pushed (much less teased), and no team to speak of at MS. Is there a team still? Does MS plan to do anything with it? Seems like it’s Bush-era Internet Explorer at this point.
Is it safe to say that this positively affected me?
For the very first time I installed Linux Mint on my old gaming with a 1080 TI and installed Minecraft/Steam. Minecraft ran beautifully and it is Java Edition 26.2.
I've had a harder hit and miss time with games on Steam.
I once tested the MS-Windows version on Wine on Linux vs MS-Windows on the same box. Both wine and native were faster on Linux, with the native Java version being the fastest (but not by much).
I even (quite a few years ago) successfully ran an older version of Minecraft on a laptop released in 2003. That had a Radeon 9000 graphics with a whole 32MB of VRAM.
And yes, it was playable with IIRC around 20fps, with minimum settings and a performance-tweaking mod (Optifine?). I played it a lot, since that laptop was all I had.
Even 0ad (the open source RTS game) was playable on that.
That was maybe in 2013 or something like that, so the machine was "only" 10 years old.
Minecraft Java is notorious for running like absolute dogpoop regardless of the hardware. Most people play with optifine or whatever the current optimisation mod is
Why? "Game ready drivers" are just a marketing thing to add game-specific performance hacks to new games, you don't expect "instability" just because nvidia doesn't do that anymore
OpenGL doesn't have any way to do this except sometimes via vendor specific extensions. Basically how OpenGL works is it creates the graphics context on whichever device the system hands it. So you can configure the GPU used by OpenGL on the system level but not at the application level.
FYI, setting `NvOptimusEnablement` and `AmdPowerXpressRequestHighPerformance` have been the canonical way on Windows, `__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD` + `__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME` on Linux. Though not an OpenGL feature per se, as you mentioned.
I believe if you plug your monitor into your motherboard then OpenGL will use your integrated graphics rather than your card. I think with Vulkan it doesn't matter what port you plug it in, it can coordinate it?
I remember this being a nice API in wgpu, being forced to specify settings through a builder, otherwise it would not compile. Forces you to think how you want this application to operate
I don't think Minetest has much of a chance, it always felt like a loose group of programmers making a game engine rather than game designers creating a game. At least when I last tried it, it was completely devoid of any features to improve the game feel, everything (movement, camera movement, animations, mining, etc) just felt like a soulless "technically correct" implementation that a programmer without artistic vision would come up with.
Meanwhile. Famous people are being banned from multiplayer for "hate speech" due to an "exploit." This includes both these people's private and public servers. Imagine being banned from visiting your own website. The modern version of the game is a disgrace to what once existed.
Mojang won't authenticate your account to the server. They can't remove the censorship without turning into a server that allows prirated accounts to connect.
Basically with each chat message there's a cryptographic payload proving that you are the sender, so reports can't be fabricated.
If you remove it on the server before sending it to other players (or remove it on your client before sending it to the server) you can't report the messages.
That is irrelevant. It doesn't require chat messages to be banned for hate speech.
Someone found the right way to phrase a report or are just relying on support to mess up on one of the many reports being sent to get them banned. It's not like the player being banned was on the same server as the people reporting them.
Last time I played I'm pretty sure they had a plugin that disabled sending chats to Mojang but left all other checks intact. It just broke the griefing-by-reporting functionality.
Of course that won't save you if you go to servers that don't have reporting disabled so careful where you play.
considering the amount of money they are making on Minecraft there is almost no forward momentum with the game. the tech is so dated that you have to go to mods to get basic performance improvements. Stuff like shaders and improving the render distance. more intelligent mobs.
The content updates are the laziest I've ever seen in a game, usually just re-skinned versions of other mobs.
really, it's illegal in Sweden to even think about lighting a fire under someone's ass. everyone's too comfortable to innovate. it's sad for a game with such potential. I'm waiting for someone to come and knock it off the voxel throne...
They were doing great game updates until Caves and Cliffs, where they promised too much and had to split it over like 5 next updates. After that they decided to mostly just do useless "feature" drops.
My view: The nether update was fabulous with so much new stuff. After that they seemed overconfident and promised way too much. They delivered but it took three new versions rather than one. Each of those versions was awesome in my opinion. But the community got sour because they were promised this stuff faster. I think part of the reason was that certain features, especially the Warden, Deep Dark and Ancient Cities was extended in scope, with awesome results. But then Mojang started promising less and moved to smaller feature drops. The autocrafter seems fun, but all in all, the updates from 1.20 onwards have been so boring that my interest have just dwindled out.
> ...the game is utterly fucked with insane bugs atm
As someone who's been playing since alpha 1.2.0 starting back in october 2010, there has never been a moment in minecraft's entire history where the game hasn't been utterly fucked with insane bugs. This is status quo.
Bedrock is far behind on features and is far buggier compared to java edition. A ground up C++ rewrite is noble beginnings. Unfortunately time has shown that they only planned to get it to an MVP necessary for some gross monetization tactics targeting children and not really a genuine interest in improving the tech, growing fandom goodwill, or creating new art.
However the C++ version has a reason to exist, sadly Java never established itself for gaming outside desktops and J2ME/Android.
One could argue about AOT, but those are not widely adopted, CodenameONE, RobotVM.
The issue isn't that it isn't there, it is mindshare among game developers, especially when it isn't part of the official SDK.
This isn't unique to Java, and that is why outside indie games, it is always the same languages that get used among all major studios.
* Level builder/game designer * Proper 3d that works natively everywhere (direct 3d on windows, metal on iOS/Mac) * Support for native win32, Linux and mac - real native with no JVM, 5mb binary * Native performance for some edge cases (low level SIMD API etc.)
You're right that mindshare is a huge part, but there were also many important missing pieces especially on the deployment front. I think that with good tooling and a royalty free pitch this might open some doors that were previously closed to Java.
Getting to major studios would be an uphill battle but since they acquire indie studios the path goes through there.
This seems crazy. When MS bought Mojang, why didn't they start with the console port for Bedrock? Even if some other contractor, it would be a starting point better than the phone version?
As for the internal windows port, that's how most console development is done nowadays. Gamefreak (the pokemon people) does build of their games for PC which is neat considering how different the switch is compared to the differences between playstation/xbox and pc (those are just amd cpus and gpus on the inside, whereas the switch uses some nvidia soc)
Minecraft isn't exactly be the type of game to showcase a 3D API's supremacy.
Nvidia did exactly this...
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/campaigns/minecraft-wit...
https://github.com/AngelAuraMC/Amethyst-Android
The rules are always flexible for huge games, especially when they'd otherwise be an exclusive for a competitor.
MS didn't make the best decision, but their decisions have been good enough.
But does allow you render distances and frame rates that are impossible with the stock Java game (and can still be tricky even with mods.)
Not to mention bedrocks "improved" graphics look like trash compared to the shaders available for modded Java.
Or at least the subset of Minecraft that I play: complex builds and automated farms done in survival not creative. At that level the combat they keep adding to is ... just getting in the way of my building.
They've had 12 years to figure it out[0]. Now sadly they've spent those 12 years working out how best to milk every last microtransaction and merchandising cent out of the property rather than actually listening to anyone and improving the game(s) but whomst among us could have predicted that outcome?!
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/15/microsoft...
Microsoft the Windows/XBox division has other priorities.
https://www.techpowerup.com/346810/microsoft-intros-directx-...
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/
And yes, it was playable with IIRC around 20fps, with minimum settings and a performance-tweaking mod (Optifine?). I played it a lot, since that laptop was all I had.
Even 0ad (the open source RTS game) was playable on that.
That was maybe in 2013 or something like that, so the machine was "only" 10 years old.
No need for the marketing sauce when you can already see the sizzle.
Also MC is usually more CPU bound than GPU bound
Did OpenGL not do this?
It seems like Minetest has more or less evolved from trying to be a Minecraft clone to trying to be Roblox, that's ... weird
Of course most of those are closed or semi closed so useless for commercial purposes...
Basically with each chat message there's a cryptographic payload proving that you are the sender, so reports can't be fabricated.
If you remove it on the server before sending it to other players (or remove it on your client before sending it to the server) you can't report the messages.
Also look into this and this for exploits:
https://github.com/nodusclient/gaslight
https://github.com/nodusclient/guardian
Someone found the right way to phrase a report or are just relying on support to mess up on one of the many reports being sent to get them banned. It's not like the player being banned was on the same server as the people reporting them.
Of course that won't save you if you go to servers that don't have reporting disabled so careful where you play.
The content updates are the laziest I've ever seen in a game, usually just re-skinned versions of other mobs.
really, it's illegal in Sweden to even think about lighting a fire under someone's ass. everyone's too comfortable to innovate. it's sad for a game with such potential. I'm waiting for someone to come and knock it off the voxel throne...
Bit ridiculous when it's the country that produced the original.
As someone who's been playing since alpha 1.2.0 starting back in october 2010, there has never been a moment in minecraft's entire history where the game hasn't been utterly fucked with insane bugs. This is status quo.