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Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by kayoone on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:36PM (#5458576)
Seriuosly interested, why is Node.js better suited as a gameserver than say C or Java ?

What exactly are you doing on the serverside? Is it an authorative setup or are you just passing position messages around (in which cases huge amounts of players wouldnt be suprising) ?

Did you reverse engineer minecrafts multiplayer protocol or is this an alternate implementation?

EDIT just looked it up and it seems like the minecraft network protocol is public, so no reverse engineering needed. It also looks like its not an authorative setup which could cause cheating problems in PvP enviroments down the line

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by throwaway54-762 on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:39PM (#5458584)
Sure, Java or C will be much faster at any computational work. And I am no node.js fan-boi. But doing actual asynchronous local-file IO in C is non-trivial, and if their server is not CPU bound, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with using node.js. Could you also use libuv from C? Sure.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by niggler on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:45PM (#5458599)
"Java or C will be much faster at any computational work"

That is far from clear. I've been using nodejs for some computational work using https://github.com/substack/gamma.js and https://github.com/niggler/bessel and found that the JS version is faster than the straightforward Java implementation.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by halter73 on Thursday March 28, 2013 @09:00PM (#5458668)
The OP made too general of a statement because there are certain cases where V8 can preform better than the JVM; however, generally Java does seem to perform better (ignoring startup time).

http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?te...

In the linked benchmarks, V8 only has a decided advantage executing regexes.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by gritzko on Friday March 29, 2013 @01:42AM (#5459430)
Heh. Last time I checked v8 regexes were really fast, except their string builder was a disaster... it wrapped every piece of string as a js object (gc and everything).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by Cthulhu_ on Friday March 29, 2013 @05:02AM (#5459839)
Sounds familiar to Java's own string concatenation. In Java you use StringBuilder / Buffer to create larger strings from smaller ones; in Node you'd use Buffers, although I never dived too deep into those.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by loeg on Thursday March 28, 2013 @09:46PM (#5458810)
Well, C will be faster anyways... and the JVM is probably faster than v8 more times than not.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by kayoone on Thursday March 28, 2013 @09:00PM (#5458667)
im not an expert but arent UDP Socket connections more like an fire and forget scenario which doesnt create alot of waiting ? Id think that game servers have to compute heavier stuff per tick and have to process all the incoming packets anyway so that waiting for IO isnt really an issue ? It might make sense to have the game world updating and sending/recieving packets in different threads though, so is that were nodejs makes sense?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by loeg on Thursday March 28, 2013 @09:47PM (#5458813)
The network stuff is, yeah. But presumably you want your minecraft world to be durable, which means hitting disk. And you don't want your network stuff blocked behind that.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by kayoone on Thursday March 28, 2013 @09:59PM (#5458850)
ok makes sense but i wouldnt write every change to the disk anyway. The server state can well be kept inside memory and only be saved once in a while, but nevertheless doing that in a different thread would make sense.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by TkTech on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:50PM (#5458619)
The protocol isn't public and Mojang has always refused to say anything about it. The protocol is RE'd by http://mcdevs.org/ which runs http://wiki.vg. There is no technical or otherwise limitation on authorization, they just haven't implemented it yet.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by throwaway54-762 on Thursday March 28, 2013 @07:49PM (#5458401)
Cool, a distributed minecraft server. But where's the source, or something more technically meaty? "I made a distributed X and here's some screenshots" isn't that interesting alone.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by mappum on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:01PM (#5458438)
I plan on open sourcing it and trying to foster a community of modding/contributions, but first I would like to clean up the code. Also, we want to figure out our business strategy.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by artursapek on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:02PM (#5458446)
Well, I'm logged in right now and there's no lag with many players. Try it.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by throwaway54-762 on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:36PM (#5458574)
I am at work, and don't have minecraft on any machine nearby =).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by DanielRibeiro on Thursday March 28, 2013 @10:28PM (#5458929)
Interesting that you guys are applying to YC 13. Note that YCombinator already have invested in a very similar company: Minefold[1].

TC had some info on that too[2].

[1] https://minefold.com/

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/12/minefold-launch/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by kepzorz on Thursday March 28, 2013 @10:32PM (#5458948)
The Minefold guys were just on our demo server! They're the best.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by w-ll on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:03PM (#5458455)
This might have come up on HN when it was released, but here it is anyway.

A minecraft server written in php.

edit: updated repo https://github.com/shoghicp/PocketMine-MP

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by TkTech on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:26PM (#5458539)
Actual repo is https://github.com/shoghicp/PocketMine-MP, not sure why you linked to an outdated fork?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by goughjustin on Thursday March 28, 2013 @07:36PM (#5458347)
I like the line... "building penises out of dirt right now". Someone should put that on a T-shirt.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by leetrout on Friday March 29, 2013 @12:34AM (#5459252)
And wear it to PyCon...

(sorry, couldn't resist)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by Scryptonite on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:50PM (#5458620)
I was going to buy redstone.io for pretty much the same project. I was only late by 15 days. Oh well, such is life. Wish you luck!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by mappum on Thursday March 28, 2013 @10:26PM (#5458922)
Haha, I almost waited to buy it. So how is your project the same?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by Scryptonite on Thursday March 28, 2013 @10:52PM (#5459002)
It was going to use node.js; So far I have written my prototypes in CoffeeScript, but if I end up going through with my project it will likely be with vanilla JS. The premise of it wasn't for it to be a MMO.

You can imagine my surprise when I found out who purchased the domain and what projects you are working on, knowing that redstone.io was pretty much destined to be node.js and minecraft related.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by pizzeys on Thursday March 28, 2013 @07:48PM (#5458399)
Do you have any sort of permission or support from Mojang? It might not be a good idea to invest a substantial amount of time in "A Minecraft MMO" without this...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by TkTech on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:31PM (#5458552)
Mojang has no issue with custom servers so long as you use their authentication, hasn't since the classic days.

Legally, they *have no say in the matter, as the server uses no assets from Minecraft and the protocol has been Chinese Wall'd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Computer_science) via http://wiki.vg

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by kepzorz on Thursday March 28, 2013 @07:52PM (#5458412)
We emailed them for permission to make a custom server a while back, and they said it was ok. We haven't contacted them specifically about the MMO yet though.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by citricsquid on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:18PM (#5458513)
http://minecraft.net/brand

Just follow these and you'll be fine :-)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by kepzorz on Thursday March 28, 2013 @10:35PM (#5458955)
Ah, thank you! This is really useful. :)

Also, the statue you "erected" has unfortunately been destroyed. :(

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by pepijndevos on Friday March 29, 2013 @05:54AM (#5459932)
How can it be on the front page of HN without any players in it? Or is that a bug as well? I'm flying around in a near-pristine and empty world.

[edit] I dug a hole, fell through, respawned, fell through my own hole. I'm sorry. I'm afraid everyone will fall through it now.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by mappum on Friday March 29, 2013 @02:52PM (#5462347)
When you made that comment, it was the middle of the night here. Everyone was online at USA after-work hours.

The reason the world was near-pristine was because I messed up the storage for this deployment, which made so every once in a while it would regenerate the chunks.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by charonn0 on Friday March 29, 2013 @12:44PM (#5461564)
Move around (horizontally) and you should get a notice that you've changed servers, at which point other players may be found (if not, keep going.)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by trbs on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:06PM (#5458463)
A Minecraft MMO? Would Mojang allow you to do that? Would Redstone still be categorized within the scope of a mod at that point?

Either way, I logged on for a bit, and there was no lag whatsoever with a ton of players online. Fascinating stuff.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by kepzorz on Thursday March 28, 2013 @10:53PM (#5459005)
Thanks for checking it out! I don't think we'd violate Mojang's brand policy, but we're waiting on a response from them to confirm that.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by trbs on Thursday March 28, 2013 @11:46PM (#5459151)
Interesting. Great work guys!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by bitsweet on Thursday March 28, 2013 @09:42PM (#5458793)
Mojang is already working on a Minecraft MMO [1] - how would this be different?

[1] http://help.mojang.com/customer/portal/articles/1018151-mine...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by mappum on Thursday March 28, 2013 @09:57PM (#5458846)
That isn't an MMO, it is just a server hosting service. However, if they wanted to add MMOs to Realms, they could acquire us. ;)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by jmgrosen on Thursday March 28, 2013 @09:59PM (#5458856)
I don't think that's an MMO -- it's just a way to easily set up a server and play on it with your friends.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by Chunkr on Friday March 29, 2013 @10:24AM (#5460868)
Please tell me you are going to opensource / release this, this would be so awesome for some Minecraft Related projects i'm doing ( Gigantic PVP & RPG Servers ) I just can't go >600 Players w/o lag on a decent E3 Series.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by mappum on Friday March 29, 2013 @02:49PM (#5462321)
I am leaning towards opensourcing it, but we don't want to do it too soon unless we realize we want to do a PaaS sort of thing.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by JoshTriplett on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:29PM (#5458549)
I've seen lots of work on alternate Minecraft servers; has anyone worked on an open Minecraft client (obviously not named "Minecraft" for trademark reasons, but compatible with the network protocol)?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by exemd on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:43PM (#5458592)
Manic Digger (http://manicdigger.sourceforge.net/) used to connect to Minecraft Classic servers. And a client for full Minecraft was planned.

But Notch didn't like seeing alternative clients, so I removed it from the game.

Also, see http://wiki.vg/Client_List

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by just2n on Thursday March 28, 2013 @10:29PM (#5458937)
That's one of the reasons I don't like Notch. This game is literally perfect for WebGL. The rendering done is minimal, the CPU work done is minimal, the textures are (or could be) tiny, and the code required would be tiny.

But no, it's STILL in Java. Why?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by geuis on Friday March 29, 2013 @03:05AM (#5459624)
You don't like notch, who is one of the nicest and modest people in the world, because of a programming decision he made on his game and his product? You may disagree with a business decision, but saying you dislike someone personally because of it is a bit much.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by pekk on Thursday March 28, 2013 @10:36PM (#5458959)
Possibly because that's what Notch was comfortable with, it's a valid choice, and he built it and made big stacks of money instead of agonizing about what language to use on the grounds of whether people would think he was cool.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by mbell on Thursday March 28, 2013 @10:45PM (#5458980)
Spout is working on a client as well as an open server, both are designed to be general purpose for voxel based games but have minecraft compatibility plugins: https://github.com/SpoutDev/Spout
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by throwaway54-762 on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:37PM (#5458578)
There are a couple projects in this direction (I looked into trying to make a bot at one point). Unfortunately, any names have slipped my memory at this point. But be assured, they exist.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by mappum on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:47PM (#5458609)
Voxel.js is one: http://voxeljs.com/
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by joshu on Thursday March 28, 2013 @09:49PM (#5458821)
In what way is this a minecraft client?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by mappum on Thursday March 28, 2013 @10:17PM (#5458903)
Well it's not technically Minecraft, but obviously heavily inspired. I'm pretty sure I heard about someone hooking it up to the real protocol.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by kbar13 on Thursday March 28, 2013 @07:46PM (#5458385)
is there a mailing list or something that I can join, besides the mlist for their far-from-now MMO release so that I can keep up on development?

Even more internets for open sourced on github perhaps?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by kepzorz on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:01PM (#5458440)
We'll use this mailing list for anything interesting on the project, like open-sourcing it, even if it's not directly related to the MMO.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by KVFinn on Friday March 29, 2013 @02:57AM (#5459611)
Nice.

How are people doing this? Are they reverse engineering Minecraft or is the server side fairly straightforward?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by mtthw on Friday March 29, 2013 @01:32AM (#5459405)
A buggy server for a buggy game. Sounds like an adventure.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by thejosh on Thursday March 28, 2013 @11:28PM (#5459098)
How does this differ from spout except for being in Node?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that ru... by zachlatta on Thursday March 28, 2013 @07:34PM (#5458338)
This is super neat!
[ Parent | on HN ]