
Notch is coding live again - Zolomon
http://www.twitch.tv/realnotch
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fferen
I'm happy to see him using Paint.NET to edit the graphics. I've yet to see a
free image editor that remotely compares in usability and power; I just wish
it were available for Mac and/or Linux.

Not affiliated with it or anything.

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atomicdog
GIMP?

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fferen
I tried it on Ubuntu a while ago, and it was the most inhumanly difficult
program I've ever used. It always seemed none of the tools looked anything
like what I wanted to do. It probably exceeds Paint.NET in its capabilities
but would take far longer to learn.

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tehjones
I cannot believe how addictive this is to watch. Really makes me feel like I
am wasting my time though.

~~~
pella
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)>

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ohashi
Something about 9000 people watching a guy write code amazes me. I understand
reading the source and all that, but is this something commonly done now?
Watching others code live? I am somewhat amazed by how fast he seems to be
moving, I find I have to sit and think about things a lot more most of the
time.

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tjogin
He'd probably have to stop and think more often if he hadn't built a dozen or
more similar games before.

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georgieporgie
This is a perfect example of how to attain 'flow'. He's done the same (or very
similar) thing before, so there is no distress or despair. The 48 hour window
provides the necessary, low-key stress stimulus necessary.

MCN (an unusual motorcycle magazine) had a series on this. To attain flow, you
need some stress, but too much stress will stop flow. This is probably why we
find many parts of coding to be fun, but debugging and navigating poorly
documented APIs to be painful.

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Estragon
At one point, I saw a huge switch statement comparing the value of "col" to a
list of twenty or thirty long hexadecimal numbers and returning objects like
"LockedDoor". Is that kind of thing common in game development? It looks like
a nightmare to maintain, but maybe that doesn't matter in a 48 hour
competition?

Also, what is the engine that's rendering the maze for him? Is it a publically
available library?

~~~
Impossible
The huge switch statement is probably because that's the easiest thing to do
with a simple 48 hour game. There is no point in wasting time writing clean
maintainable systems with a lot of glue code when you're writing a simple game
in 48 hours that you are the only developer of and will probably never look at
again after the compo. Even in a larger commercial game it wouldn't be too
hard to maintain that stuff (maybe clean it up by defining constants). I've
written similar code for LD48 map loaders.

There is a good chance that the "engine" that's rendering the maze for him is
something he wrote during the competition. Its not too hard to write a simple
maze renderer using OpenGL or even an oldschool raycast software renderer like
wolfenstein's pretty quickly. All final LD48 entries must submit source as
well, so once Notch is done you could take a look at what he's doing. Probably
not anything you can easily turn into a library or reuse :).

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rch
One thing I've noticed is that he tends to put a little extra energy into the
quality of everything - say 20% more than the minimum. And I mean Everything -
from consistent naming and semantics to the visual touches (like the color of
the cloud over the moon). This fractional boost to the quality of so many
components really adds up.

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pella
Playable game: ( with source code )

[http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-
dare-21/?action=preview...](http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-
dare-21/?action=preview&uid=398)

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neutronicus
I wish I could see what music he's listening to.

~~~
bobzimuta
Commenter on twitch.tv: <http://www.di.fm/> Electro House station

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m1
Pretty cool, any reason why he is doing this? Also would be awesome if someone
recorded this from the start.

~~~
fredoliveira
Sadly because he had to switch streaming providers, the actual recording is
split between livestream and justin.tv/twitch.tv. However, you can definitely
go back and replay it all if you know where to look. Markus is also taking
screenshots ever x seconds (sorry, no idea how big x is) which he'll use to
make a video for his entry. That should give you a 10,000ft view of the
process he went through to develop his game.

~~~
cmelbye
I believe that he permanently deleted his livestream account due to huge
charges that were racked up due to the high traffic of the broadcast
(something along the lines of $4,000 I want to say?), so the recorded video is
no longer available at livestream last time I checked.

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barrkel
More like $17,000 I believe.

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listic
Is there a reason to draw in-game font except for fun factor?

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shabble
if your basic/permitted libraries don't include a way to render orthographic
text, I suppose. I didn't see the beginning, but in comments in the previous
threads, he's written the whole of the 3D FPS system to a fairly low level as
well.

~~~
fredoliveira
Yup, he did everything from scratch. The first 4 hours were scary. And
beautiful.

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EGreg
Why doesn't anyone tell me about these 48 hour game coding competitions? I'd
definitely like to join. Been a while!

~~~
pella
_"Ludum Dare Events are held every 4 months; Every April, August, and
December. Dates are announced 1-2 months before the start time. The best way
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<http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/rules/>

~~~
pella
All game:

<http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview>

