Yes, because they have something to reference. It was like Notch took a level editor and made it into the game itself. That isn't an easy thing to figure out and takes time.
> Sometimes there are just really great ideas.
Ideas are easy and usually it's really stupid ideas that turn out to be great ideas. Who would think that an FPS level editor would be a good idea? Or a text box that anyone can edit on a profile page would be popular (facebook)?
There are not great ideas, just ideas that are executed well.
He built an infiniminer clone for himself when it was discontinued. It certainly grew into more than that, but that's where it started.
> Yes, because they have something to reference.
But you couldn't reimplement podman in a few hundred lines of code.
> Ideas are easy
Not all ideas have the same quality. Should be self evident. Nevertheless you should be able to see that I understand ideas are cheap in some sense - that's what the comment about decoupling "this was an iterative process" from "I could never do this." You can transfer an idea effortlessly - it's more about implementing it. But if its it trival to implement clearly more of the brilliance was on the idea side of things.
You don't even need a few hundred: https://github.com/p8952/bocker
And then there's 'dokku' which IIRC, started as a bash version of Heroku.
> Not all ideas have the same quality.
They really do. I've heard all kinds of things in my career, but almost none I would want to dedicate a portion of my life building. Not because they are bad ideas or won't work, but because of the person with the idea or it just didn't interest me. Those people went on to be moderately successful (like hundreds of millions worth) but I'm glad I wasn't on that ride.
I mean, it had. It was called Infiniminer. Admittedly it had only really existed for about a month before, but it was obvious that that first person voxel modification mechanic was a format that could support some really cool games. It got Notch thinking, for sure.
When Notch posted his first tech test video (archive version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMpv5kZ9-rE), he wrote:
> This is a very early test of an Infiniminer clone I'm working on. It will have more resource management and materials, if I ever get around to finishing it.
Ironically, he never did get around to finishing it.
As someone that's "recreated the core game" a few different times using a few different techniques (Unity, then Unreal, then OpenGL twice) this just isn't true. Minecraft is very deceptive in the fact that it looks simple, but recreating the core of Minecraft alpha is incredibly time consuming and difficult. Most of the clones you see don't truly recreate the core either, they'll add very simple biome generation, chunking, and some player movement and lighting.
The core of Minecraft alpha consisted of: mobs, "smart" blocks (fences that join to other fences, interactable blocks, animatable blocks etc), water, lava, physics, pathfinding AI, inventory management, crafting system, Redstone (this is actually pretty huge because it's not trivial figuring out how to properly update chunks), multiplayer networking (also not trivial by a long shot), survival mode, biomes and the nether.
Just building the base game with all of that will take around a year of full time dev work, which it did take Notch around that much time. Additionally, making all of these systems good and fast is a whole 'nother story. There are so many optimizations that can be made that add a lot of extra dev time to the mix.
So, sure, creating a cool blocky chunk renderer where you can add and break blocks can be done in like a week. But Minecraft alpha is not a simple endeavor, and I don't think it would have taken off the way it did if Notch just left out all the actual game mechanics.
> I don't look at Minecraft and think "wow I could never do this." Instead I look at it and think, "Wow. That was a really great idea."
And again, I know what you mean by this because I thought the same thing, but this couldn't be further from the truth! It's funny how I wildly misjudge the amount of effort that making a thing takes until I try to make that thing.
And we also have to remember that before you can even begin to create Minecraft you need all the prerequisite knowledge of how the graphics pipeline works and how rendering in general works. But anyways, I just wanted to interject some personal experience here and mention that a lot of the "simple details" cough multiplayer are actually pretty tough to pull off :D
I think you are right. Really impressive work is generally the result of a longer journey than you realize. The time and effort put into it is probably underestimated. But my mind immediately tries to think of exceptions (which totally prove the rule). I'm curious if others would agree with this one: Sometimes there are just really great ideas.
Minecraft comes to mind. And I don't mean today's Minecraft. I mean the alpha and beta versions which were wildly popular and essentially just an engine and sandbox world with a tiny fraction of the features today's game has. People have recreated that core game many times with fairly trivial code, which is why I attribute this more to "great idea" than long iterative process that most people cant replicate. And a totally anecdotally and subjective reason (although I've heard others express it too). I found the game immediately nostalgic. It was new but it felt old - like it had existed in some form before but had just now taken shape. That to me seems like a great idea.
Ironically, I find myself questioning if I underestimated how long Notch took to create it. A cursory search says a week for the initial version, but this timeline shows more like 1 to 1.5 years from nothing to alpha: https://minecraft-timeline.github.io/ Even still, the fact that the core game can be recreated without too much effort does suggest that that it was more about being a good idea than being difficult to implement. I don't look at Minecraft and think "wow I could never do this." Instead I look at it and think, "Wow. That was a really great idea."
Although I suppose you could says that great ideas are an iterative process too. But at that point you have to decouple "really impressive stuff" from "I could never do this".