What would it take for the average i5 or i7 to virtualize a 16bit processor? Could it run on a separate thread from the main game?
Could you run part of your MMO server work as a distributed-computing setup on client PCs? (but how would you get that working in real time?)
Maybe the players that are online at a particular time could be doing some of the extra processing - the game client could run 1 or 2 extra 16-bit virtualizers in the background, along with the virtualizer for the player's own 16-bit cpu and the game thread. So 4 threads running on 4 separate cores.
I think it would be really hard to secure that as far as an MMO goes, not that there aren't a few tricks that might be worth trying. (Like having a player's CPU emulated on several different peers and comparing the output to find errors or hacks)
If it's designed carefully, the code should be trivially translatable to native x86, at which point you may even be able to run a few thousand on a single reasonably beefy server, depending on how fast the virtual CPU runs and the average load.
No, it was necessary to reframe the constraints of what can be done designwise. Idle speculation about the design of how it could be done that is wildly outside both Notch's abilities and the allocation of people on his team he plans to put towards it (zero) is pretty pointless.
You realise how much money they've made from Minecraft yeah? If he wants cutting edge virtualisation technology he can no doubt pay for it (if it'll be fun, and he definately has an intuition for what is and isn't fun)
>You realise how much money they've made from Minecraft yeah? If he wants cutting edge virtualisation technology he can no doubt pay for it (if it'll be fun, and he definately has an intuition for what is and isn't fun)
That's kinda my point, coding ability didn't limit his ability to delight people.
He has programmed a number of games from scratch in very short time periods without using a bunch of pre-existing tools etc.
He is obviously very much a generalist and has done everything from 2d/3d graphics , networking , gameplay handling , AI and now CPU emulation. I would imagine most AAA developers will at some point find a niche and stick to doing that.
Not to mention building minecraft which is a non trivial programming exercise in terms of managing and rendering thousands upon thousands of blocks which can all potentially be re-arranged.
Perhaps he is not John Carmack but I would be confident he is at least as good as 90% of the programmers working in the game industry.
>He has programmed a number of games from scratch in very short time periods without using a bunch of pre-existing tools etc.
PHP, QED. Also no he didn't, he used lwjgl.
>He is obviously very much a generalist and has done everything from 2d/3d graphics , networking , gameplay handling , AI and now CPU emulation. I would imagine most AAA developers will at some point find a niche and stick to doing that.
No.
>Not to mention building minecraft which is a non trivial programming exercise in terms of managing and rendering thousands upon thousands of blocks which can all potentially be re-arranged.
You do a real disservice to the people working on modern physics engines. Jesus.
>Perhaps he is not John Carmack but I would be confident he is at least as good as 90% of the programmers working in the game industry.
No, it wasn't. If you wanted to communicate a legitimate concern (which you don't seem to have, just idle speculation), you would have done so. Instead, you were an asshole, and made it worse by recognizing you were being an asshole, and doing it anyway.
