Notch Cancels Space Sandbox Game, Fans Salvage It

Cognimancer

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Jun 13, 2012
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Notch Cancels Space Sandbox Game, Fans Salvage It



Notch isn't continuing development of 0x10c, but that won't stop his fans from seeing it through to release.

Markus "Notch" Persson moved on from Minecraft some time ago to work on a new project: a complex space exploration game called 0x10c [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/116651-Notch-Unveils-His-New-Game]. However, it seems that particular frontier will go unexplored - Notch announced in a recent livestream that he had no plans to continue developing 0x10c, and the project was effectively dead in the water. One group of fans has already taken up the mantle to bring the project to completion under a new name: Project Trillek.

The actual gameplay of 0x10c was nebulously explained, but many of the core mechanics were known. The game would take place in the dying universe of the distant future, and players would have to manage their spaceship while exploring the stars. Plenty of realistic science and engineering would be at work - your spaceship's computer would be a fully emulated 16-bit CPU to support custom programming. These features captured the interest of many fans of hard sci-fi, leading to the fan revival of the game.

"We just sort of looked at the project and were like, 'Okay. This is a community project now,'" says Project Trillek lead Shane Dalton. "We're not using any of his old code, his name or anything." The new team is rebuilding 0x10c from the ground up, with little guidance besides the core gameplay mechanics Notch had described. There are no plans to monetize Project Trillek as of yet, but it'll be a while before the team is ready to talk about any kind of release.

Source: US Gamer [http://www.usgamer.net/articles/notch-puts-0x10c-on-icecommunity-heats-things-up-by-going-diy]

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Daaaah Whoosh

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Jun 23, 2010
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Damn. I was looking forward to 0x10^c. If nothing else, it would give me a chance to learn how to program a 16-bit CPU. That could have been fun.
 

Riotguards

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Feb 1, 2013
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i wonder if notch will get behind the project or hinder it

it'd be funny to see him get a slap in the face because of this lost potential
 

scw55

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Nov 18, 2009
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Riotguards said:
i wonder if notch will get behind the project or hinder it

it'd be funny to see him get a slap in the face because of this lost potential
You can't really mock him for losing interest in the project.
Yes, he could have made the game and it could have made him quite a lot of renown for it. But fundamentally means nothing if it was at the expense of his own enjoyment of life.

I'm disappointed he wasn't able to continue, but I respect his choice. I'm glad a community was able to pick up the torch.
 

Baldry

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Feb 11, 2009
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I was actually really looking forward to this so best of luck to the fans who picked it up.
 
Apr 28, 2008
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Well, even if this fails there's Rodina [http://elliptic-games.com/].

Still, glad someone's trying to finish this. More space games = happy me.
 

KDR_11k

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Feb 10, 2009
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Probably wasn't fun, eh? Some game ideas just don't work because they turn out to be nothing but rote busywork (for example Perimeter's morphing units are horrible, Perimeter 2 tried to fix that but didn't just cut the convolution, it also cut the unit variety so far that the game was no fun). Programming a computer doesn't sound like it'd actually have been fun, especially if your goal is to make it control a spacecraft. You'd just program in the same old control routines every time.
 

josemlopes

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Jun 9, 2008
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I think its better this way, even Minecraft was a lot better with the mods and stuff while the updates kind of messed up the whole thing.
 

Weaver

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Apr 28, 2008
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I mean... the fans didn't really "salvage" it did they? They're just starting entirely from scratch.
 

AzrealMaximillion

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Jan 20, 2010
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I thought this may happen. Notch's steam seems to be really puttering after leaving Minecraft.

Ah well, StarMade exists so there's that.
 

CUnk

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Oct 24, 2008
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Zombine3D said:
Anyways, FUCK YOU NOTCH.
First you spit into my face by refusing to give a small ammount of that cash that your house is made of for Pscyconauts2, and now you say - meh, not interested anymore, to somehting that has tons of potential!
You make me sick.
I assume this ia a joke. Making fun of the very real psychos that think this way.
 

Smooth Operator

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Oct 5, 2010
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Well I do hope they work this out with Mojang beforehand so it doesn't end in court room tears, technically you can't trademark a game concept but them announcing that it's a copy would make a pretty solid case.

And I can't really blame Mojang for putting this on hold, it didn't really look like they had the full concept worked out into something worth our/their time, sometimes you just need to let ideas simmer for a while until the real taste comes out.
The other games currently doing their own take on the idea are caught in just about the same limbo where no one is really sure where things are going.
 

JarinArenos

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Jan 31, 2012
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You know what would be an awesome gesture? Notch releasing the current code under GPL or something similar.
 

Fasckira

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Oct 22, 2009
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AC10 said:
I mean... the fans didn't really "salvage" it did they? They're just starting entirely from scratch.
Aye, bit of an odd choice of words! I guess they salvaged the concept if anything, be interesting to interview Notch one they're finished and ask him how close its turned out to what he had in his mind's eye.
 

Nurb

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Dec 9, 2008
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Well... they shouldn't monitize it if it was all a concept that was nearly realized by another person, even if they build from scratch.
 

Busard

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Nov 17, 2009
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Time for another vacation, I guess.

If only he could invest all that minecraft money in at least making a big enough studio to make games or in good projects that need funding.
 
Sep 14, 2009
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TheKasp said:
"Oh look, I'm gonna promise and don't stick up to it again. And I'm going to have people defend me!"

Notch ditching another project of his. Not big surprise.
it was an entirely new IP, and considering there was VERY little to go off of for it, it's not a big deal that he backed out, just like other devs I'd say the same thing about.

I have no idea what your bone to pick with Notch is, but dropping a new project that your not driven/passionate about enough to finish isn't too big of a deal, no one had money dropped on the game or anything, otherwise that's a whole other bag of issues.

OT: cool to see it was "picked up" by some community peeps, hopefully a decent game comes out of it!