Getting 12 Year Olds To Learn Assembly Programming

April 8, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 72 Comments

[notch], the mastermind behind Minecraft, is working on a new game. It’s called 0x10c (pronounced ‘trillek’, we think) and promises to teach an entire new generation the joys of assembly programming on a 1980s-era computer.

The setup for the game is nerdy/awesome enough to make [Douglas Adams] blush; a ‘deep sleep core’ was invented in 1988 that attached to the 16-bit computers of the day. This core was big endian, where the DCPU-16 (the computer in the game) was little endian. What was supposed to be a one-year hibernation turned into a 281 Trillion year coma, the Universe is dying, and everyone from 1988 is just waking up.

The game features a fully functional 16-bit CPU that controls every aspect of your spaceship. The specs for the DCPU-16 have been released and there are several emulators available.

Already, a few communities have been set up around the web to discuss how to program the DCPU-16: the official forum of 0x10c, the 0x10c subreddit, and another dedicated to programming the in-game computer. Already there’s a C-like language that compiles executables for the DCPU and a Game of Life implementation.

We know this isn’t a usual Hackaday post. Despite this, we’re fairly certain a good percentage of our readership will be programming a DCPU-16 in the next year. It just might be time to crack the books and learn how to build a compiler and OS. The dragon book (Compilers Principles, Techniques, and Tools, Aho, Sethi, Ullman, 1985) is very good, and [Andy Tanenbaum]’s Operating Systems Design and Implementation is how [Linus Torvalds] got his start.

One more thing: we’re going to be running a contest for the best physical implementation of the DCPU-16 in a few months. We’ll wait until the in-game hardware is nailed down, along with any peripherals [notch] plans to add. Right now the prizes are some HaD schwag, but that may change. Further info with updates pending, but you’re free to start working now.

Minestation – An External Weather Display For Your Minecraft World

March 1, 2012 by Mike Nathan 7 Comments

minestation

If you’re a big Minecraft fan, the folks at [radikaldesign] have something that might be of interest to you. (Translation) Inspired by some of their Minecraft-loving friends, they have developed Minestation – a weather station for your Minecraft game.

The concept is simple. Here in the real world we have the ability to look out the window and see what it is like outside, but many of us turn to digital weather stations, the Weather Channel, or the local news to get the real scoop. They decided that the world of Minecraft should be no different, so they constructed an Arduino shield that allows players to see weather conditions as they play.

The shield contains a Nokia 6100 LCD screen which displays all sorts of useful information. It features a clock and calendar that reflect in-game time, making it easy to know when night is going to fall. It also continually displays the player’s coordinates as well as what the weather looks like in that region. Having this information at hand when you’ve been slogging away in the mines (losing track of time and weather) seems like it could be pretty useful at times.

You can buy one of the devices at Minestation.me, but the design is completely open, so you can easily construct one of your own without too much hassle.

Continue reading to see a video of the Minestation in action.

[Via HackedGadgets]

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3D Printing Minecraft Worlds

January 6, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

If you’ve ever wanted to build an awesome tabletop game or model train layout scenery, you probably couldn’t do better than printing Minecraft worlds on a RepRap. This guide comes courtesy of [Nudel] who figured out how to use Mineways with his RepRap. While [Nudel]’s landscape print doesn’t have the full color of something from Shapeways, he only spent $3 in materials. Not bad if you’d like to print out your server’s world.

We have to give a shout out to [erich666] for his amazing work on Mineways. He bills his work as a bridge between Minecraft and a 3D printer or Blender. You can check out [erich]’s demo of Mineways after the break.

Of course the state of printing voxels wouldn’t be where it is today without the work of two guys at the MIT Media Lab and their work on Minecraft.Print(). If you manage to print out your base/castle/village, add it to the Mineways Flickr group.

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Mineable Minecraft Block

August 29, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

At Hack A Day, we’re pretty big Minecraft fans so you can imagine our interest when we saw [Ben Purdy]’s real-life Minecraft block. The build uses a projector system to display a block onto a cardboard box and reacts to being ‘mined’ just like in the game.

Block animation is handled by a piezo sensor, an Arduino and a Processing sketch. From earlier posts on [Ben’s] blog, we’re going to guess that he used ~~the keystone video projection library~~ his own solution to map the Minecraft block onto the cardboard box. Animation is handled just as in Minecraft – overlaying the breaking animation onto the block and adding some particle effects.

We’ve seen a few Minecraft hacks before, like using it as a 3D design tool, and connecting your redstone CPU to the outside world. [Ben]’s build follows in the tradition of its forebears and is something we really want to try out. Check out the demos after the break.

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Minecraft Is Now A 3d Design Tool

July 7, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 19 Comments

[Cody Sumter] and [Jason Boggess] are students at the MIT Media Lab, and they just came up with Minecraft.Print(), an attempt to create a bridge between Minecraft and the real world via 3D Printers.

The print is first prepared by placing obsidian, diamond, gold, and iron blocks on opposite corners of the model in Minecraft. From there, a Python script takes over and parses the world map to generate an .STL file for a RepRap or MakerBot.

So far, [Cody] and [Jason] have printed a few Companion Cubes and the model of the Enterprise D. We’re pretty impressed with the resolution of the prints, especially considering the original model is voxelated. The prints look very nice, and right now we really want to print out all the cool stuff we’ve seen, like Isengard, gigantic CPU, or maybe a Minecraft 3D printer.

Minecraft.Print() sure is a nice program [Cody] and [Jason] have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it. Check out a video demo after the break.

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Motion Sensing Minecraft Creeper Will Scare The Pickaxe Offa’ya

March 28, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 15 Comments

[Chris] Writes in to tell us about his motion sensing, Arduino powered Creeper. As if these buggers were not frightening enough in game, [Chris] had to go and make the closest (legal) real world facsimile. The Creeper utilizes an Arduino Uno with a wave shield to playback creeper noises, PIR sensor to detect victims, and an RC car as a motorized cart. The creeper sits and waits for a signal from the PIR detector, when it sees motion the RC remote is triggered, Creeper noises played and (we assume) panic ensues.

We might have forgone the entire RC part of the toy car and found the H-bridge motor controller, but using the RC remote has potential. The whole triggering mechanism can be placed remotely allowing the Creeper to jump out from some kind of cover.

Not enough Minecraft? Check out some our other Minecraft projects if you are interested in more tree-punching goodness.

A video of the creeper in action is available after the jump!

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Kinect + Minecraft Trifecta

March 25, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 15 Comments

Today we have a special treat, three projects combining the “fastest selling consumer electronics device”, Kinect, and the “fastest selling indie java game that once kept us from sleeping for an entire weekend”, Minecraft!

[Sean Oczkowski] writes in to tell us about his efforts to play Minecraft with Kinect using no more than the OpenKinect Java wrapper on Ubuntu. The code was written in about 4 days with some help from Wikipedia. Using histograms to locate the player in the field of view, the script calculates the center mass of the body and defines interactions for the limb occupying that quadrant of the screen. [Sean] does an excellent job of running through the whole process as well as the decisions made along the way. The whole thing is a bit like running in place, and we can’t imagine the flailing that will occur during the inevitable creeper encounter.

Next we have [Wade McGillis] with his award winning Minecraft Kinect Controller. [Wade] provides source code and executables at his site. This version of control uses skeletal tracking data to sense the user’s gestures. This still involves holding your hands out like a zombie but it is a bit more versatile as one can pass their arms in front of their own body.

Finally [Nathan Viniconis] has been doing some very interesting work using the Kinect to import giant three dimensional models into the game world. [Nathan] then goes the extra mile and animates the figures! Check out the video below for the really impressive results. We here at Hackaday feel that this is the most appropriate use of this technology, and may begin building gigantic statues of ourselves on public servers.

Check out the the tricrafta (minefecta?) of videos after the jump!

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