
Notch programming a Doom-like in Dart - cranium
http://www.hitbox.tv/notch
======
zubspace
I'm so impressed watching Notch program in realtime. "Last Minute Christmas
Chopping" was an eye opener for me. ([http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-
dare-28/?action=preview...](http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-
dare-28/?action=preview&uid=398)). I was totally baffled when he started to
draw the ascii character map pixel by pixel in an 48h competition, but the
result was usable and actually quite simple.

My takeaway is this: Doing something quick and dirty for a first draft and
improve it later on often leads to better results in the long run than planing
and over-engineering a solution beforehand, because you can start refining
details much earlier or throw away bad approaches without investing too much
time.

What I don't get is, why he seems to like Dart so much. Don't get me wrong: I
love Dart as an language. The syntax looks very familiar to someone coming
from c#, adds syntactic sugar and the editor, with line step debugger, is
great. But in the end it's still javascript which makes it hard to create
native and mobile builds. Wouldn't Haxe be more suitable?

~~~
swah
Your takeaway reminds me of this quote from John Carmack:

"Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal,
and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. _If you aren 't sure
which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better_."

I wish I followed it more :)

~~~
cdelsolar
that's an amazing quote. thanks for sharing!

------
eamsen
Watching Notch hacking on the Ludum Dare competition is such a comforting
experience - to me he is the Bob Ross of game development. He also seems to
end up developing the same thing over and over again with different shades of
green on the leaves.

Even though you may don't like his style, you have to admire his pragmatism,
productivity and humbleness.

~~~
smrtinsert
That's so dismissive, Bob Ross was the running ironic joke of the painting
world.

~~~
jgon
I would say that Bob Ross being the running ironic joke of the painting world
says a lot more about the painting world than it does about Bob Ross. Every
episode I watched contained a man with the calm manner of Mr. Rogers guiding
his watchers through the process of creating something, providing them
constant reassurance that they possessed the ability to create art and that
they weren't making mistakes but merely going through the process of creation.

A quick trip over to reddit will reveal dozens, perhaps hundreds, of posts
from people who have followed Bob Ross' methods and create a piece of art that
brings them joy and satisfaction despite possibly a lifetime of doubting that
they had the ability. In that sense I rank him up there amongst other great
teachers who have been able to find methods that allow people to get past the
initial stages of self-doubt and embarassment and begin participating in a
fulfilling activity. Think "The Inner Game of Tennis" or "Drawing on the Right
Side of the Brain". Anyone who can let the everyman participate in the
satisfaction that comes with creating something is pretty darned ok in my
books.

I am not sure if Notch quite lives up to that legacy, but it is a comparison
that I think anyone should be flattered to receive.

~~~
gnarbarian
interesting fact, Bob Ross was a drill sergeant:

"I was the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make
your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work. The job requires
you to be a mean, tough person. And I was fed up with it. I promised myself
that if I ever got away from it, it wasn't going to be that way anymore." [1]

[1] [http://www.military.com/veteran-jobs/career-
advice/military-...](http://www.military.com/veteran-jobs/career-
advice/military-transition/famous-veteran-bob-ross.html)

~~~
jasonlotito
There is a reason the military limits how long a person can be a drill
sergeant for. 2 years, iirc, with an option for 1 more. My step father was a
drill sergeant.

------
antoncohen
Notch uploaded the code to GitHub:

[https://github.com/xNotch/dark](https://github.com/xNotch/dark)

------
yason
I'm amazed how much of editing he actually does by hand (like
growing/shrinking indentation) and mouse. That sort of switching between
actual coding and lexical editing would kill my flow.

~~~
elwell
Yeah, he's switching eclipse tabs by using the mouse! Another reminder to not
obsess over development tool choice, and just get things done.

~~~
tosh
I think I spend most of my time reading, navigating and debugging code.

IDE developers should do more heavy lifting to support these use-cases imho.

I really like what the SourceGraph people are doing
([https://sourcegraph.com/](https://sourcegraph.com/))

------
chops
Notch's Ludum Dare video for Metagun ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV-
AFnCkRLY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV-AFnCkRLY)) was inspiration for a
series of scripts I now use for clients and my own entertainment purposes (for
some loose definition of "entertainment").

It's a series of shell scripts I use that screencap videos of coding and set
them to music (so, for example, rendering a 48-hour coding competition to a
5-minute song, or as I more typically do for clients, render the development
process down to a few minutes for them to watch in fast-time how their
development was done).

It's called watchmecode
([https://github.com/choptastic/watchmecode](https://github.com/choptastic/watchmecode))
and I just have to do

    
    
      ./make-av-video.sh /path/to/video.mpg /path/to/song.mp3
    

And it does the rest, and outputs it to "done.mp4"

The result is something that looks like this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwn7mfmo0SQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwn7mfmo0SQ)

(disclaimer, I've plugged this before on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5685859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5685859))

~~~
nacs
Chronolapse can do this on Windows for those looking for an alternative:
[https://code.google.com/p/chronolapse/](https://code.google.com/p/chronolapse/)

------
odonnellryan
I found these hilarious:
[https://github.com/xNotch/dark/issues](https://github.com/xNotch/dark/issues)

~~~
elwell
My favorite:
[https://github.com/xNotch/dark/issues/13](https://github.com/xNotch/dark/issues/13)

Note the username.

~~~
grrowl
Looks like John opened an account just to file the issue: "Joined on Aug 25,
2014"[1]

[1]: [https://github.com/jcarmack](https://github.com/jcarmack)

~~~
darklajid
John - or a random guy/troll that thought that username would be funny?

Did the real John Carmack endorse this account somewhere (Twitter, elsewhere)?

------
chucknelson
So how does his process work? Does he start with the original C engine source
and start porting to Dart? Does he do some of the work beforehand?

~~~
dubcanada
It does it mostly all in his head. He's built a fair amount of rendering
engines so he knows all the basics of how to do it.

~~~
chucknelson
That is impressive if true. Does he also figure out how to read the WAD files
himself too for level geometry and textures? I just find it hard to believe he
isn't referencing the original source at all...

~~~
wtetzner
Well, the title is "Notch programming a Doom-like in Dart." So, it doesn't
sound like it's a port of Doom, just a game that's like Doom.

~~~
codezero
Was watching and the level he loaded was definitely a Doom one. Looked like
the WAD was in his assets.

------
tosh
For me personally it is interesting to see that Notch seems to prefer Dart
Editor (Built on the Eclipse platform) over something like Intellij IDEA or
Webstorm
([https://www.dartlang.org/tools/webstorm/](https://www.dartlang.org/tools/webstorm/)).

~~~
antoncohen
He doesn't seem to like it: "Argh! This editor pretty horrible" \- Notch (Aug
25 2014 19:37 UTC)

~~~
swah
Also something like "Argh! This doesn't let me use the mouse... I have to
wrestle this" \- Notch (Aug 25 2014 19:49 UTC)

------
swirlycheetah
Each time there's a Ludum Dare or someone prolific livestreams themselves
coding (usually Notch) I get all excited and want to do the same but I can
never find a website or platform which really caters to coders. Am I alone in
this? Is there somewhere? Is there actually any demand for this?

Either way, I've created a quick landing page to see if anyone would actually
be interested in a live streaming site specifically for coding -
[http://devv.tv](http://devv.tv)

It's nothing pretty but some validation or feedback before I jump head first
into this would be amazing.

~~~
Kiro
I've had this idea as well. It would really scratch my own itch so I
definitely hope someone makes it!

Focusing on live coding would open up a lot of possibilities as well. How
about hooking up the source code next to the stream in real time? The ability
to paste snippets to the audience etc etc.

~~~
swirlycheetah
Yes! These are definitely the sort of features I'll be looking to build as I
think they'll be key to gaining attention by offering something not available
as seamlessly elsewhere.

------
leishulang
Maybe it's time for me to quit the VIM/Emacs addiction.

~~~
ansible
People are addicted? News to me.

I've been using VI/VIM for decades. If I am looking at a piece of code, I
don't think too much about how to move around, or delete lines, or such. It
mostly happens while I'm thinking of higher level issues.

Fixing indent issues is just a couple keystrokes, so that reduces my
distraction too.

Practice, practice, practice with the tools you are going to use every day.

------
ColinDabritz
I think it's great to see some live programming, with all the goofs and dead
ends. While I appreciate the prepared demos that are common at conferences and
elsewhere, they are more of a quick way to provide an intro to something new,
and I feel they can give beginners the wrong idea about how real programming
works. Seeing the whole development process, warts and all, live like this is
amazingly educational. Props for doing this Notch!

------
swah
Btw, this is 2014 and I feel like we would already be able to play a simple
game like Doom in the browser, just like the real thing. But no..

\--edit--

...multiplayer with several people, of course.

~~~
skymt
You'd think so, wouldn't you?

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Legal/Infringement_Notices/3_June_2...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Legal/Infringement_Notices/3_June_2011)

~~~
swah
:(

------
taloft
I missed the livestreams due to opposite timezones. Are there archives of the
videos? Can't seem to find the button on hitbox.

------
maikklein
I can't change the streaming quality? Is this a bug?

------
hayksaakian
It sucks that hitbox doesn't work on mobile.

~~~
netcraft
I haven't ever heard of hitbox before - are there other streaming sites out
there that are popular other than twitch?

~~~
valarauca1
Twitch is in the middle of a media fiasco resulting in policy changes.

Hitbox and other twitch like platforms already existed but are enjoying people
mass moving from twitch.

:.:.:

>What happened?

Twitch introduced a new service to flag copyrighted music, and. The problem is
a lot of games have copyrighted music inside of them, so a lot of music was
cut out of footage simply because you couldn't stream the music, just the
games footage.

Valve actually had most the sound removed from their "The International" DotA2
tournament. Because in-game music was owned by Valve. As an example. Even
twitch's own podcasts were flaged and muted due to this.

Twitch started enforcing a 30second + stream delay, which angered both Users
and Streamers. Since it removed the instant feedback/conversation from the
stream.

Twitch also deleted terabytes of recorded video on a policy change.

You can get the long version from the AMA Twitch.tv's CEO did during the
middle of this _shit storm_
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2cwfu2/i_am_twitch_ceo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2cwfu2/i_am_twitch_ceo_emmett_shear_ask_me_almost)

~~~
jiggy2011
So basically they got big enough that they had to start taking copyright
seriously, then users switch to other services causing them to grow....

~~~
valarauca1
The issue wasn't so much that, they were taking copyright seriously. Its how
they handled taking copyright seriously.

Their practice was Draconian, even if _the streamer_ owned the copy right,
they still have to appeal to have their content posted. Even twitch took down
their own videos explain how this system works, due to copyrighted music.

This has been going on for >2 weeks without much change.

~~~
jiggy2011
Isn't this similar to youtube? It seems that all services end of with
draconian policies when they get big enough.

~~~
crazypyro
The difference is YouTube is on at least a couple magnitudes larger scale.
Furthermore, YouTube doesn't create content and host that, it only hosts the
content, allowing for a much easier way to share copy-written material. On
Twitch, the things they are muting are recorded videos of streams of their own
site. Note the difference here. There's not an easy way to take say a movie
and upload it to twitch VoDs in a reasonable amount of time. Lastly, the
entire VoD is muted, even if its background music, game music, etc. and most
of the time the key sound element is the streamer himself/herself, which is
completely lost with muting system. Also why can they not just respond to DMCA
requests? There is nothing that has been shown that they are receiving an
inordinate amount of DMCA requests that would be impossible to handle with a
more refined approach.

------
elwell
It has now ended.

------
presty
Hey Notch, why Dart?

~~~
jiggy2011
Is notch a HN member?

~~~
kurrent
he just said on the stream he "likes HN but doesn't hang out on HN because
there's too many nerds"

~~~
CmonDev
It's funny when nerds don't like other nerds for being nerds. But so typical
of human nature...

------
randunel
Clicked, watched someone's screen reading the same messages I was reading with
"Bubble butt" in the background for 1 minute, then closed and commented
this...

