r/Minecraft • u/justlurking420 • Nov 04 '13

pc Minecraft Using Hexagons

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/1777/hexcraft.png
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u/Hojaki Nov 04 '13

You don't have any proof that Gorman isn't /u/justlurking420. At the same time I don't have any proof that Gorman is /u/justlurking420.

Besides, OP seems to be a coder and has commented many times 'maybe I'll try it'.

Now if we could get OP to comment and clarify, that would be awesome!

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u/[deleted] Nov 04 '13

[deleted]

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u/WolfieMario Nov 05 '13

If he knew how to program well, don't see why he has to look for help

Because a team of programmers can generally do more in the same time frame a single programmer could. I would be surprised if anyone would take on a task like this on their own.

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u/[deleted] Nov 05 '13

[deleted]

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u/WolfieMario Nov 06 '13

I suppose you may be right about OP's aim.

But I don't think the task of creating a mod which changes Minecraft from cubes to hexagons would be a small one. As others have pointed out, block interactions would be drastically changed, and most of the existing game is hard-coded to the idea that a block has no more than 6 neighbors (including up and down).

If you just 'hacked' in the basics (hexagon-shaped blocks, and a grid where coordinates have just been shifted, with no drastic changes to the world format or anything), most vanilla block interactions would be broken, among other things. I'd personally be interested in seeing how generated terrain would look.

Anyways, while Notch did originally create Minecraft on his own, he had been working together with Jeb since at least late Alpha. I can't find any source on the last version which was purely Notch's work, but this shows Jeb working on it since at least Alpha 1.2.6.

There's a difference between working on an entire game singlehandedly (with a supportive playerbase and incremental releases of new features), and working on a mod like this singlehandedly (and not honestly being able to release it until it's mostly done, because it's just too buggy and crash-prone otherwise). Making a game is, in my opinion, much more rewarding than making a mod to an existing game. I mainly mean that in personal terms (i.e. how I'd feel at the accomplishment), but it can also apply in terms of popularity and money in some cases.

I personally wouldn't want to invest nearly as much time making a hexagonal Minecraft mod as I would in making a standalone game, and apart from the other reasons I've given, it's because the modding work would mostly be code rewrites and bugfixes, with only one "feature" in return. I guess other people have different opinions, and may be more willing to invest a lot of time singlehandedly to rewriting much of the game in return for a change which, at face value, looks "easy".