Minecraft Runs on Computers Great and (Very) Small

[Greg Tito]

Minecraft Runs on Computers Great and (Very) Small

The Raspberry Pi, a small credit card-sized computer, will soon be able to run Mojang's minimalist masterpiece.

The Raspberry Pi is a very small computer [http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs]. Really small. Like, smaller than a sandwich small. Its creators want to jumpstart the Computer Age by making these mini-computers available for a mere $35, storage, keyboard, monitor and power supply sold separately. Processing power for the Pi is respectable for such a small package, about the same as a first generation Xbox. The Pi is a feat of engineering efficiency keeping the price so low, but there's one question on everyone's mind. Will it play Minecraft? Well, the answer is yes.

The founders of the Raspberry Pi sent a few boards to Mojang earlier this year, and the codemonkeys there were enticed by the small form factor. This week, Daniel Frisk from Mojang announced the team was successful in getting Minecraft to run on the Linux distribution that ships on the Pi's SD card.

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"The possibilities are massive," Frisk said about how the Raspberry Pi will change the computing world. "You could organize the cheapest LAN party of all time, or use the Pi to learn the fundamentals of programming on a minuscule budget. It's like hacking your way into Minecraft and modifying the game world with code, a bit like being Notch, Jeb, or Nathan, but arguably more fun and less stressful."

The goal of the Raspberry Pi is to allow children to experiment with computers like they did back in the 80s. You see, computer enthusiasts back then would tinker with their machines to make it work, and code all kinds of tiny programs as a hobby. Nowadays, with PCs so expensive and working generally as intended, there is much less experimentation in schools or computer clubs. The Raspberry Pi was designed as an educational tool to get kids back into coding again.

Of course, if you can play a little Minecraft to unwind, that's cool too.

Source: Raspberry Pi [http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2565#]

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[Twilight_guy]

The goal of the Raspberry Pi is to allow children to experiment with computers like they did back in the 80s. You see, computer enthusiasts back then would tinker with their machines to make it work, and code all kinds of tiny programs as a hobby. Nowadays, with PCs so expensive and working generally as intended, there is much less experimentation in schools or computer clubs. The Raspberry Pi was designed as an educational tool to get kids back into coding again.

Remembers ACM club, computer science classes, and various coding projects. Yep, this statement is true. Wait, no, what's the opposite of true?
Experimenting with computers is still something people do, the reason its not popular is because its not something that interests everyone. Most people want to know how to do a set of tasks and don't care beyond that. This isn't going to change that because its not a question of available materials as much as interest.

Back on topic, Theoretically since Minecraft is in Java and Java was designed to run embedded circuits, it shouldn't take much to run Minecraft, especially when you consider that it has only a small selection of simple assets that would take minimal memory space. I'm not sure why they would push Minecraft so hard for there little computer though.

 

[MrPhyntch]

Back on topic, Theoretically since Minecraft is in Java and Java was designed to run embedded circuits, it shouldn't take much to run Minecraft, especially when you consider that it has only a small selection of simple assets that would take minimal memory space. I'm not sure why they would push Minecraft so hard for there little computer though.

Someone doesn't remember the time when it was big to get Doom to run on anything imaginable. A low-mid end game that is basically a proof of concept that it can work (because we can). See also: Installing Linux on game consoles.

 

[Hazy992]

And yet I still struggle to get it to run on my laptop, even with Optifine

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

The goal of the Raspberry Pi is to allow children to experiment with computers like they did back in the 80s. You see, computer enthusiasts back then would tinker with their machines to make it work, and code all kinds of tiny programs as a hobby. Nowadays, with PCs so expensive and working generally as intended, there is much less experimentation in schools or computer clubs. The Raspberry Pi was designed as an educational tool to get kids back into coding again.

Remembers ACM club, computer science classes, and various coding projects. Yep, this statement is true. Wait, no, what's the opposite of true?
Experimenting with computers is still something people do, the reason its not popular is because its not something that interests everyone. Most people want to know how to do a set of tasks and don't care beyond that. This isn't going to change that because its not a question of available materials as much as interest.

It's still possible to experiment with computers, but it's a very different experience. If you weren't around 30 years ago, you may not entirely be aware of what it was like. Something that helped encourage at least a little familiarity with how things worked was that there wasn't really any other way to interact with some computers or much else to do with them if you were bored of whatever games and stuff you had. My VIC-20 (the C64's predecessor) basically booted straight into a BASIC interpreter. That was pretty good motivation to learn a little bit about how to use it, especially because you could get free games by typing the code in from a magazine, and if you fiddled with it a little you could change what it did (and sometimes you had to fiddle with it to get it to work in the first place).

Probably equally important was that the hardware was dead simple compared to now, and so was telling it what to do. On top of that, so were the games and other programs that already existed. Screwing around and just making anything on your own felt like an achievement when you didn't have people with a $50 million budget to compare yourself to. Just making something show up on the screen or making it beep at you was a pretty good start instead of feeling kind of lame like now. Something with relatively simple hardware in it like this which is consistent and has a way to easily access/address all of it with good frameworks might help with that in the same way stuff like Arduino made doing simple electronics projects fun and easy again for a lot of people. I at least appreciate the idea behind it, even if it doesn't end up going anywhere.

Back on topic, Theoretically since Minecraft is in Java and Java was designed to run embedded circuits, it shouldn't take much to run Minecraft, especially when you consider that it has only a small selection of simple assets that would take minimal memory space. I'm not sure why they would push Minecraft so hard for there little computer though.

Theoretically since it's a Turing-complete language, I could pull my VIC-20 out of the closet and emulate it on there, as long as I don't care how fast it runs... Also, Java was designed to be "write once, run anywhere", not to specifically run on anything in particular. Its main goal was cross-platform portability. You might be thinking of J2ME or that a dialect of it is used for Android or something. Last time I checked it's actually used most for server-side apps, especially if you don't count Dalvik.

 

[Moontouched-Moogle]

The Pi is a feat of engineering efficiency keeping the price so low, but there's one question on everyone's mind. Will it play Minecraft? Well, the answer is yes.

But can it run Crysis?

In all seriousness, this is pretty cool. I've been thinking about buying a Raspberry Pi for a while now, and this is extra icing on the cake.

 

[DugMachine]

well shit. Even my computer seems to have issues with Minecraft. Er well not really but I seem to get low frames even after I upgraded my card and maxed the settings. I can run Skyrim at 60 frames on high but Minecraft on high feels like 30. Da fuck

 

[drkchmst]

The article doesn't mention this but it is a port of the pocket edition. It will be free and called Minecraft: Pi Edition.

 

[Evil Smurf]

The article doesn't mention this but it is a port of the pocket edition. It will be free and called Minecraft: Pi Edition.

my dad has a raspberry pi, I might convince him to get it.

 

[Gather]

Huh... I might get one of these to run WC3 off just because I can.

 

[DasDestroyer]

Awesome! I just got an email today that my Raspberry Pi will (finally) be shipped on or before Dec. 21st(I get the feeling that they're hoping the world will end and nobody will find out that they actually didn't ship anything >.>), so this makes it even better.

 

[octafish]

Hmmm, pretty sure I saw a Pi running Quake somewhere?

So it's the video game equivalent of James Herriot?

I'm pretty sure I've never seen anyone stick an arm up a cows arse in Minecraft...

...as I get older I like Tristan as Dr Who more and more. I don't know why.

 

[reciprocal]

Hang on, I need to ask:
If you can run Minecraft pocket edition on your iPod touch / Android smartphone which are about the size of a credit card AND have a screen as well, why shouldn't the Rasberry Pi run it?

Also where can I get a Rasberry Pi? I've not heard of this before.

 

[DasDestroyer]

Hang on, I need to ask:
If you can run Minecraft pocket edition on your iPod touch / Android smartphone which are about the size of a credit card AND have a screen as well, why shouldn't the Rasberry Pi run it?

Also where can I get a Rasberry Pi? I've not heard of this before.

Well for starters it is much cheaper than an iPhone or an Android, and besides the fact that iPhone's CPU seems to be significantly more powerful than the one in Raspberry Pi, I recall reading that RP doesn't support the architecture needed to install Android on it, so you'd need to at the very least make a completely separate Pocket Edition for it.

You can get one on their website, but it will most likely take quite a while to get it. I placed my reservation back before this summer iirc, I only got to order the thing somewhere in July and I've only just gotten an email that it will be shipped on or before Dec. 21st.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/

 

[Bvenged]

well shit. Even my computer seems to have issues with Minecraft. Er well not really but I seem to get low frames even after I upgraded my card and maxed the settings. I can run Skyrim at 60 frames on high but Minecraft on high feels like 30. Da fuck

It's a CPU--intensive game, not GPU. Upgrading your GFX card will do nothing for minecraft, but on teh contrary will do wonders for all your others games .

Everything's procedurally generated in MC and it's all held in the cache and RAM. Upgrade your CPU/mobo for the best results.

 

[Andrew_C]

Hang on, I need to ask:
If you can run Minecraft pocket edition on your iPod touch / Android smartphone which are about the size of a credit card AND have a screen as well, why shouldn't the Rasberry Pi run it?

Also where can I get a Rasberry Pi? I've not heard of this before.

This is a port of Minecraft Pocket edition. Minecraft Pocket Edition is written by a different team than the desktop version and shares little to no code with it (fortunately).

You can find where to buy the Pi at the link in the article: http://www.raspberrypi.org/ . It's basically a credit card sized computer on one PCB, it uses a version of the ARM chip you find in most smart phones these days. You will need to supply a SD card, mouse, keyboard, monitor, Micro USB power supply (like most recent cell phones use) an OS and maybe a case. $25 for the Pi and about $5 for Power Supply and about $12 for a 16 Gig SD card. The OS's are available free.

EDIT: removed long, incoherent, OT rant about how badly coded Minecraft is.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Oh, what a coincidence.
Just yesterday I was wondering if I could run a minecraft server on one of those.

 

[blackrave]

Vanilla maybe, but I have technic pack with all visual options turned on max
Occasionally there are slight lag and that is on above-average PC

 

[DugMachine]

well shit. Even my computer seems to have issues with Minecraft. Er well not really but I seem to get low frames even after I upgraded my card and maxed the settings. I can run Skyrim at 60 frames on high but Minecraft on high feels like 30. Da fuck

It's a CPU--intensive game, not GPU. Upgrading your GFX card will do nothing for minecraft, but on teh contrary will do wonders for all your others games .

Everything's procedurally generated in MC and it's all held in the cache and RAM. Upgrade your CPU/mobo for the best results.

Ah well I had no idea. I really thought that maybe something was wrong with my graphics card. Now I just need a better cpu!