Minecraft in space? Not quite. But the newest game that Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson has up his sleeve does tip its hat to some of the more advanced creations that gamers have built within the sandbox-themed Minecraft universe.
In this case, it's an emulated computer. While the overall theme of Persson's game has been done time and time again — a space sim that allows players to fly around and do just about whatever they want, including combat, trading, resource mining, and all that — the unique glimmer within "0x10c" (working title) is the working computer that Persson plans to build into the game. Technically, into each ship.
"The computer in the game is a fully functioning emulated 16 bit CPU that can be used to control your entire ship, or just to play games on while waiting for a large mining operation to finish," Persson wrote on the official 0x10c website. "Full specifications of the CPU will be released shortly, so the more programatically advanced of you can get a head start."
And if you think that's ambitious, you should check out the game's plot. In the parallel universe that's home to 0x10c, space travel is a fairly common activity. Or, rather, it was. For it appears as if your character will be part of a group of humans that got put to sleep in 1988 as part of one of those science-fiction space hibernation kinds of deals.
As is often the case with space hibernation, something goes wrong and your group ends up waking up during the year 281,474,976,712,644, "a universe on the brink of extinction, with all remote galaxies forever lost to red shift, star formation long since ended, and massive black holes dominating the galaxy."
While Notch's game will likely require a monthly fee to play, there's no word yet on what that might be. Or, for that matter, when 0x10c might be ready enough for players to start jumping into early builds of the title.
"The game is still extremely early in development, but like we did with Minecraft, we expect to release it early and let the players help me shape the game as it grows," Persson wrote.
Better brush up on your space programming.
For more tech tidbits from David Murphy, follow him on Facebook or Twitter (@thedavidmurphy).
