@@TSTRUSS Either way they should be responsible for anyone who uses their affiliate code and ends up scammed by the service, that's the only way these types of scams will stop.
Here's an idea: what about a control to rotate the current chunk 90 degrees? So you could see multiple sides of things? I'm sure this would be super easy to implement and would in no way totally break every core system you've made thusfar.
I do wonder how difficult that would be. I don't know a thing about assembly or anything, but wouldn't it simply involve reading the chunk data in a different order? So instead of north to south, you read south to north. Then you just recalculate the player's position and rotation.
@@yuval3210 Dear yuval I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to offer a friendly perspective on your recent comment, which contained the emoji "😂" in response to the assertion that "a control to rotate the current chunk 90 degrees would be easy to implement." While humor and laughter are often delightful in the right context, it's essential to consider the appropriateness of such expressions. The original comment simply stated the feasibility and grants of implementing a control to rotate the current chunk 90 degrees which is a straightforward observation and not inherently humorous. Using laughter in response might inadvertently convey sarcasm or belittlement, which may not align with the intention of the original comment. When participating in discussions, it's valuable to maintain a respectful and constructive tone, acknowledging the merit of others' input. By doing so, we can foster a more positive and supportive online environment for everyone. I appreciate your understanding, and I look forward to more engaging interactions in the future. Best regards, Anchs
Limit item quantity to 6 bits, that way you have two bits left for special flags. Like specifying that the number reflects durability instead of quantity.
Some item types are stackable, some are not. Those that are can use the 6 bits to store the number of items. Those that aren't use the 6 bits to store durability.
As both a Minecraft and arcade nerd, I love the absurdity of this project. Really drives home the level of dedication it took to make games with the limitations of older tech. Very impressive!
@@LavaCreeperPeoplei can’t imagine it would be very good considering the limitations now a Nintendo 64 would be interesting there’s still massive limitations but you have a lil more wiggle room
One of the problems you'll run into with isometric is platforming. Jumping from tile to tile, you can easily become discombobulated. Add a shadow that appears under your character as he jumps to help solve this, this'll help players gauge jump distance.
But then there would be the problem of having to render the shadow on the lowest block under stanley, since it wouldn't really make sense to have a floating shadow right under your feet while you're falling. Also there would be the problem of having to split the shadow in half while you're standing between a higher block and a lower block, in 2/3 if you're standing more on the block than on the block under ect.. basically it would be needed to render every single pixel of the shadow independently from each other. Also, to make it look good it'd be needed to add a shade to every single block you can stand into in case some of the pixels of them are shadowed. So practically impossible especially with limited VRAM and colours, but this guy is crazy enough to actually somewhat do it, so we'll see
Making some of the blocks a bit darker in a checkerboard pattern would make it easier to understand where exactly a block is. It would also be helpful for the block cursor, for the same reason.
@@iXenox block shadows do the same thing but may be too hard to implement but basically in isometric there are only 2/3 possible shadow states. The first state is where a triangular half of a face of the block is shaded on all 3 sides, not touching. The other state is the opposite halves. The last state is simply both of these, or fully shaded.
When you went into the house, an issue with the current design showed: There's no way to "hide all ceilings". Since you don't have the luxury of the first person cam, you need to somehow be able to hide ceilings, otherwise any cave visit or interior space will suck. A cheap way would be to simply stop drawing blocks that are above in Z and infront of the player (with that meaning the sum of x and y exceed of the block exceed the sum of the x and y coordinate of player itself). This way you could achieve something similar to the sims, where you could hide ceilings and walls in front of someone. A +-1 addition can be used to toggle between "no walls", "half height walls" and "full height walls" if you'd like that option.
My idea would be to not render any blocks that are in front of the player(meaning that their x, y, and z coords are all greater than or equal to the player's, assuming that greater is closer to the camera), but only when the player would be completely covered by blocks. You'd probably also need to render any block faces that shouldn't be visible as black, to prevent x-raying.
i know it would probably take a while to redraw (computationally) but redrawing from different angles would be great combined with the suggestion to cull blocks above the player's head; you could even reuse the old code to have 8 directions for the camera. but i would suggest making the top of the block the same size visually as the side of the block for consistency
my idea was to add a block for the door and maybe a clear block that indicates a cave entrance, and entering these blocks changes the whole world to the interior space you're entering
idea: when your cursor is over a block it should show on screen what the block type is, so that if you're selecting an occluded block (say, you're stuck down a hole or inside your beautiful dirt house), you know what it is that Stanley is looking at
one feature I think could be useful, if possible, is to have all blocks 2 blocks above the player be invisible if the player is below a celing. so that tou could navigate caves or the interior of a house.
This might need to be a quick toggle, so that you don't lose track of things "above". It would be cool as a translucent overlay but that's probably too difficult/expensive to implement. It would probably require an extra rendering pass to generate the "top" overlay and then another one to re-render the current level slice and then calculate the overlay effect.
@Forke13 yep seems like people forget we had "3d"(ish) graphics when doom was out in '93 and by '99 we had real 3d with unreal tournament 1 and system shock 2
@@DaddyGandhi actually despite its primitive nature Doom was a fully fledged 3D engine, despite not being able to look up or having rooms above rooms all the collisions and the world itself in doom 1 and 2 are code-wise speaking actual 3D representations with true collision detection and rotating/scaling. the doom engine doesnt simulate 3D it IS 3d. just very archaic.
Love to see your channel grow. I said it in the past, but I'll say it again: You're one of the most underrated channels on this platform, and I'm glad your channel was reccomended to me.
I was blown away with the first video in this series. And again now. It’s unbelievable how week this is turning out. Imagine brining this to your friends house to play in the 80’s - super cool
I love the progress, and the fact that youre not cutting many corners. I feel like most "I remade minecraft" videos would give up at making the inventory, or would make only the most basic items.
If you fall into a maze undergroud the outline won't help you. You should be able to change maximum draw height. This could also be used to remove roof of the house to see inside.
You should also add an outline on top of interactive blocks like chests and crafting tables so if they are behind a block you still know they are there. Looking awesome so far, Cant wait to see it finished!
I assume the fact that the two week timeframe was set 11 months ago means that either you were way off or this proved too difficult and you had to quit.
Man, I thought you could not stretch the limitations of Commander X16 any further, but you keep up your impressive work! Your devotion is remarkable. This project is hands down fascinating, so please keep going and good luck!
Since this is 8-bit blocks, the stack size should definitely be 8. No but really, maybe use the last few bits to affect stack size limits, like how some items are not stackable? Maybe this could even let you have durability using the stack size bits? Great job so far, excited to see how far this gets!
suggestion, start + (u/d) scrolls through row in the inventory, use less sprites by using 1 set of tools and changing their colors (stick separate), use smaller flowing for liquids and maybe milk as a liquid, change the player model for armor using change of color pallette, food?, health at 16 to match with the 8-bit, i hope youre having fun making this, good job IB!
I think having an artificial cap on the number of items you can carry at once would let you open up a few bits for extra info, like durability/enchantments, etc You could also make it so different items have a type (block/armor/tools) so you can set the number of bits allocated to what for each if needed Mostly just spitballing
Incredible work! And I'm delighted to see Emerald Tools be included! Kinda hope that Emerald Tools are the best tier of tools, since that was always a childhood dream of mine hahaha. You're really cooking here, keep up the incredible work! Though I think that 8-Blocks would be a better condensed name for the title
If you one day add furniture, like furnaces or crafting tables, I think it would be a good idea to add an outline to them too. If you put them inside your house you wouldn’t be able to see them.
I haven’t played this but from the looks I worry the controls may feel clunky. I know it’s probably arrogant to suggest controls then but maybe something like this could be looked at or built off of: • Move: D-Pad • Jump: B • Scroll Hotbar: L/R • Building and Mining: Hold Y, then DPad for lateral aim, L to cycle layer, R to place/mine (depending on what the cursor is overlapping), and still B to Jump to reach higher. • If a sword is held, Y is just a simple attack in the DPad direction, no holding it to pop out the cursor or anything. • Quick-Place Below You: Tap Y with block selected (this seems good gameplay-wise but feels ugly). • Inventory: X My thought process is to speed up and simplify building, and because the cursor only appears when you hold Y it wont ruin screenshots. A, Start and Select remain free and unused for any other controls I didnt think of.
Using the sholder buttons to rotate the cursor seems a little unnatural. Have you considered this?: Holding R makes it so the player stands still, so the D pad is free to be used for selecting the 8 surrounding blocks. Holding L or Y also holds the player still, so the up and down buttons are free to change the cursor height.
I would also consider synthesizing the cursor and character movement. Have the dpad control the cursor position in the x,y plane, and when the player tries to move the cursor beyond the selection range have the character move into the previously-selected position. This might end up being annoying though. Depends on whether you're doing more block manipulation or complex movement. Maybe have it toggle?
@@haphazard1342Maybe the cursor could instead be semi-tied to the player, pointing horizontally in the last direction pressed, and vertically it can be cycled through a few positions using some button (maybe 6; up, a 4-block vertical range in front of the player and down). Though this might be a bad idea.
This is so impressive! congrats, I can't wrap my head around how much work went into this. Also, the game looks surprisingly playable (the outline feature is awesome)
For walking animation I wonder if you could just recolor the bottom 2 pixels with different shade of blue. Then it might look like the feet are moving.
Two things: 1. Ink blocks by Inkbox was a genuinely clever name. Darn. 2. Now, I dropped out of a programming-related major because I lacked the touch (I'm in audiovisual production now-) but I distinctly remember one of my professors back in the day telling me that "whatever project you're working on, when you are estimating how long it'll take, take whatever estimate you made, add two and go up an order of magnitude to get the time it'll actually take" - So like, if you think it'll take 2 weeks, it'll take 4 months. Edit: Actually third thing, Subbed :)
Simply phenomenal work! Perhaps the coolest trick you did was block placement around the player - and speaking of, I emailed you a character sprite sheet for you to freely use if you want it! Hope it helps!
common optimisation move is to calcutale which blocks are able to be seen by checking if it has a neighbour block being air every time chunk is changed in any way and only drawing those blocks.
8-Bit Blocks is really cool and I respect the dedication. Let's say, hypothetically, you weren't restricted to an upgraded NES system. Imagine how many amazing things could be achieved with even just a 16 bit computer. Anyway I'm sure we all hope to see a potential update to this in the future
This might be very difficult, but a very significant improvement - dont render a certain area around the player of blocks that are all above the player +2 blocks. The player highlight helps, but you can still very much get lost. Even in the very house you built
It might be a good idea to add something like a way to display a "slice" of the world, to make it easier to go underground. Just having an outline won't be too helpful in that scenario, since you still can't see the blocks blocking your way, even if you know where _you_ are. I think the most straight-forward way of doing this would just be to have the ability to hide the top _n_ layers, which would allow you to scroll down to the vertical position you want to look at. Some complications with this method arise if you want to hide things from players like the position of ores, which could be done by rendering blocks that are covered on all sides using some placeholder "hidden" sprite instead of the normal one, until they are uncovered. Though I don't know this architecture at all, so there might be better ways to do it.
1 neat trick I've used back in the day ( C64 era) on isometric games is to treat everything as background, then everything that's below and to the left of the character within a box 2x2 the character size ( 0,0 is bottom left) render those tiles as sprites with priority after the main character. That's way less expensive even a potato could run it glitch free. Assuming there are enough sprites/multiplex slots available.
i know it would probably take a while to redraw (computationally) but redrawing from different angles would be great combined with the suggestion to cull blocks above the player's head; you could even reuse the old code to have 8 directions for the camera. but i would suggest making the top of the block the same size visually as the side of the block for consistency
im sure you probably already noticed this but theres quite a few cases where the player will be moving as the UI overlay is drawn causing the player area to draw overtop of the UI. so you might want to change the order of operations there or make it wait until the player stops moving to draw the UI. Thanks so much for releasing alpha!!
I feel like the bumpers should definitely be for controlling the hotbar, while the start+dpad combo seems a really elegant way to move the cursor around. If you use start+dpad up/down to move the cursor's height, that even frees up another button on the right hand side of the controller
This is looking really nice! one feature that i think might be appreciated is the ability to rotate the camera, and some way of viewing the interior of a cave. It's nice that you can know where your body is underground, but how can you navigate out if you can't see any of your surroundings?? And what's the point of completing builds if certain angles of them will never be visible anyways? otherwise, i think your game is awesome!
I'm also making a Minecraft-like game from scratch in assembly! My project has been on hold since a few days ago. I will likely need to pick a different assembly language and rewrite the world generation and camera control code. I expect my project to take a few years, but right now, I need a break from it.
I think the overlay system to show where your character behind a wall is very cool! I have an idea that you've probably already thought of as well but i'm going to comment anyways because this video is wonderful. have you considered adding a mode to only render any block lower than your current Z axis, a "no-roofs" style view, so you could actually go spelunking in a cave and have some sort of real view of what's actually in the cave? instead of groping around in the dark, navigating only by memory and trial/error. I hope you consider it, I look forward to seeing what you do next :)
He says "with the next big features to be added being proper mining, and terrain generation, which should probably only take me about two weeks I'd guess" So we'll be seeing the next update in about 8ish weeks!
Considering how time consuming this turned out to be, I think the only way that would work is if a group of people teamed up to make it happen. I hope this ends up seeing the light of day at some point, would be amazing
Even writing something like this in XNA-esque engines as a base in modern C# is a challenge, especially to make it run quick. I know because I've done it, lol. I can't imagine figuring that out at the assembly level.
Something you may want consider is making the cursor and player control Pikmin-style, where the d-pad moves the cursor and if you try to move the cursor beyond your reach then the player moves
Directly moving around with the d-pad is pretty useful though. Perhaps implementing both styles and have a button/combination switch between them if it’s even possible with such limited processing power
Really cool project! Instead of the Outline showing up when you move behind blocks, the blocks could get transparent in a radius around the player. Would be very interesting to see how this would work so you can look inside your builds as well :)
Whoa, this is really awesome, I like demakes and such of games and this is by far one of my favorites, I hope you keep working on it and add a lot of things to it. I have a suggestion, the outline on the player is fine but, is there a way to make it so if you go behind a block or underneath a block (roof) those blocks dissapear or if it's even possible become transparent, yk as a way to see what's going on, kinda like Project Zomboid does.
This is starting to look super cool I'd propose select + should buttons for selecting a block instead of start + arrows left and right. It would play nicely together with choosing the block cursor with just the should buttons. Thanks for the video!
Imagine if there was an entire series on this, watching the game get made in every major generation of console to show how Minecraft could have evolved if made back then
Considering how time consuming this turned out to be, I think the only way that would work is if a group of people teamed up to make it happen. I still hope we get at least this version working at some point.
Great vid. I thought a bit about the inventory. You can theoretically store a bunch of 6 bit numbers packed together, but in case of such a small inventory it wouldn't be beneficial since you'd spend more memory on fetching/storing the number instructions, compared to how much you'd save. You'd need somewhere around 160 slot inventory to just gain net 0 compression with such a method. Also this wouldn't be as fast as just fetching a number from memory directly. So having 64/256 item slots is purely based on what you prefer more
7:57 in the minecraft xbox 1 edition 'a' was used for jumping, b for dropping stuff, y for inventory, x for crafting or creative inventory, the button with 3 lines was used for menu, the button with 2 squares was used for the player list and host privileges, left joy stick was used for moving, right for rotating, the cross thingy was used to move on the xy plane while flying, the big thing on the top left was used for mining, the one on the right was used for placing blocks, and the 2 little things on the top were used to switch hotbar slot.
After like, two hours... I finally got it working, and it was worth it! The game runs pretty well, and it's kinda easy too use, but the keybinds are a bit hard too use. (sorry if that sounds harsh.)
I think adding a feature where you can see the slice of the world would be really cool, you would see blocks only up to a certain height. Because right now you can't really see inside of your house or inside of a cave for example. Not sure if you can actually implement it though :/
14:48 Just make select move through the list on its own with no need for the dpad. Once it reaches the end it just wraps around. I'm pretty sure that's how it was used in the first place to select between main menu options.
I'd say that because the inventory is probably going to be quite small and the number of block types and stackable items will be limited that 256 per stack makes a good amount of sense. I also have a feeling that with the limited controls and hardware it'll feel more annoying to have to go back and forth between building and resource gathering.
The first 100 people to use code INKBOX at the link below will get 60% off of
Incogni: incogni.com/inkbox
8-Bit Minecraft: There's A Reason This Doesn't Exist
it's a scam
great vid
its like promoting temu and established titles, its a scam but most creators don't know that
@@TSTRUSS Either way they should be responsible for anyone who uses their affiliate code and ends up scammed by the service, that's the only way these types of scams will stop.
Here's an idea: what about a control to rotate the current chunk 90 degrees? So you could see multiple sides of things? I'm sure this would be super easy to implement and would in no way totally break every core system you've made thusfar.
😂😂😂
I do wonder how difficult that would be. I don't know a thing about assembly or anything, but wouldn't it simply involve reading the chunk data in a different order? So instead of north to south, you read south to north. Then you just recalculate the player's position and rotation.
Hahahaha that was such a clever joke
@@yuval3210
Dear yuval
I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to offer a friendly perspective on your recent comment, which contained the emoji "😂" in response to the assertion that "a control to rotate the current chunk 90 degrees would be easy to implement." While humor and laughter are often delightful in the right context, it's essential to consider the appropriateness of such expressions.
The original comment simply stated the feasibility and grants of implementing a control to rotate the current chunk 90 degrees which is a straightforward observation and not inherently humorous. Using laughter in response might inadvertently convey sarcasm or belittlement, which may not align with the intention of the original comment.
When participating in discussions, it's valuable to maintain a respectful and constructive tone, acknowledging the merit of others' input. By doing so, we can foster a more positive and supportive online environment for everyone.
I appreciate your understanding, and I look forward to more engaging interactions in the future.
Best regards,
Anchs
that sounds so absurdly complex it'd be worth it just for the joke
Limit item quantity to 6 bits, that way you have two bits left for special flags. Like specifying that the number reflects durability instead of quantity.
yessss! Less is more :D
yessss! Less is more :D
I would say limit it to 7 bits, that way you can have a clean 99 limit and an extra bit for a special flag
The item ID should already be enough for this since you can look up the item and check if it should be stackable or not
Some item types are stackable, some are not. Those that are can use the 6 bits to store the number of items. Those that aren't use the 6 bits to store durability.
As both a Minecraft and arcade nerd, I love the absurdity of this project. Really drives home the level of dedication it took to make games with the limitations of older tech. Very impressive!
imagine trying to fit a huge game like Minecraft into an NES/Sega Master System cartridge
@@LavaCreeperPeoplei can’t imagine it would be very good considering the limitations now a Nintendo 64 would be interesting there’s still massive limitations but you have a lil more wiggle room
would minecraft even function in the ps2? @@leeroyjenkins0
@RepentandbelieveinJesusChrist5shut up
@RepentandbelieveinJesusChrist5sir, this is 8bit minecraft.
One of the problems you'll run into with isometric is platforming. Jumping from tile to tile, you can easily become discombobulated. Add a shadow that appears under your character as he jumps to help solve this, this'll help players gauge jump distance.
It certainly sounds like a good feature if the engine permits it.
But then there would be the problem of having to render the shadow on the lowest block under stanley, since it wouldn't really make sense to have a floating shadow right under your feet while you're falling. Also there would be the problem of having to split the shadow in half while you're standing between a higher block and a lower block, in 2/3 if you're standing more on the block than on the block under ect.. basically it would be needed to render every single pixel of the shadow independently from each other. Also, to make it look good it'd be needed to add a shade to every single block you can stand into in case some of the pixels of them are shadowed. So practically impossible especially with limited VRAM and colours, but this guy is crazy enough to actually somewhat do it, so we'll see
Making some of the blocks a bit darker in a checkerboard pattern would make it easier to understand where exactly a block is. It would also be helpful for the block cursor, for the same reason.
I think with isometric view locking the players position in a grid would also help. But it's my preference. Shadow alone works too
@@iXenox block shadows do the same thing but may be too hard to implement
but basically in isometric there are only 2/3 possible shadow states. The first state is where a triangular half of a face of the block is shaded on all 3 sides, not touching. The other state is the opposite halves. The last state is simply both of these, or fully shaded.
"should only take me about 2 weeks"
6 months later...
A full year later…
When you went into the house, an issue with the current design showed: There's no way to "hide all ceilings". Since you don't have the luxury of the first person cam, you need to somehow be able to hide ceilings, otherwise any cave visit or interior space will suck. A cheap way would be to simply stop drawing blocks that are above in Z and infront of the player (with that meaning the sum of x and y exceed of the block exceed the sum of the x and y coordinate of player itself). This way you could achieve something similar to the sims, where you could hide ceilings and walls in front of someone. A +-1 addition can be used to toggle between "no walls", "half height walls" and "full height walls" if you'd like that option.
option to cull blocks above player's head is a really good idea
My idea would be to not render any blocks that are in front of the player(meaning that their x, y, and z coords are all greater than or equal to the player's, assuming that greater is closer to the camera), but only when the player would be completely covered by blocks. You'd probably also need to render any block faces that shouldn't be visible as black, to prevent x-raying.
i know it would probably take a while to redraw (computationally) but redrawing from different angles would be great combined with the suggestion to cull blocks above the player's head; you could even reuse the old code to have 8 directions for the camera. but i would suggest making the top of the block the same size visually as the side of the block for consistency
my idea was to add a block for the door and maybe a clear block that indicates a cave entrance, and entering these blocks changes the whole world to the interior space you're entering
idea: when your cursor is over a block it should show on screen what the block type is, so that if you're selecting an occluded block (say, you're stuck down a hole or inside your beautiful dirt house), you know what it is that Stanley is looking at
And auto highlight the block you are walking towards so you know if it is lava or air.
could maybe draw the same block in a corner or somewhere of the screen
one feature I think could be useful, if possible, is to have all blocks 2 blocks above the player be invisible if the player is below a celing. so that tou could navigate caves or the interior of a house.
This might need to be a quick toggle, so that you don't lose track of things "above". It would be cool as a translucent overlay but that's probably too difficult/expensive to implement. It would probably require an extra rendering pass to generate the "top" overlay and then another one to re-render the current level slice and then calculate the overlay effect.
Let's be honest: If someone got this thing back in the 90's on an 8-bit pc, they would be absolutely freaked out, how amazing it is.
90's? More like 70's or 80's
no kidding. i cant wait for enemies and objectives to make it the greatest true 8 bit rpg ever made
@Forke13 yep seems like people forget we had "3d"(ish) graphics when doom was out in '93 and by '99 we had real 3d with unreal tournament 1 and system shock 2
most computers were 32 or 16 bit btw, so he would have a lot more to work with
@@DaddyGandhi actually despite its primitive nature Doom was a fully fledged 3D engine, despite not being able to look up or having rooms above rooms all the collisions and the world itself in doom 1 and 2 are code-wise speaking actual 3D representations with true collision detection and rotating/scaling. the doom engine doesnt simulate 3D it IS 3d. just very archaic.
Love to see your channel grow. I said it in the past, but I'll say it again: You're one of the most underrated channels on this platform, and I'm glad your channel was reccomended to me.
I originally found his channel from the NESOS video, I feel like there are plenty of people with this creative mindset but just don't make videos.
this dude is advertising scam, his channel should be deleted
5:28 the logo colliding with the subtitles was incredible
I was blown away with the first video in this series. And again now. It’s unbelievable how week this is turning out. Imagine brining this to your friends house to play in the 80’s - super cool
I love the progress, and the fact that youre not cutting many corners. I feel like most "I remade minecraft" videos would give up at making the inventory, or would make only the most basic items.
The Science Elf and Inkbox are really taking the sentence "if exists, it runs Minecraft" to a whole new level!
My respect for you two.
The Doom situation is becoming the Minecraft situation....
I wonder how would Minecraft run on Conway s game of life
@@dannyweiss5001 very very slowly :)
Yeh, I watched both! Even Zachary Staines is trying to get everything to run minecraft!
David must be thrilled to have this on his computer.
he actually featured it on his latest video
@@poblelink?
@@reyariass th-cam.com/video/mPuP1L7vnr0/w-d-xo.html
If you fall into a maze undergroud the outline won't help you. You should be able to change maximum draw height. This could also be used to remove roof of the house to see inside.
14:50 So, why not Select+L/R?
You should also add an outline on top of interactive blocks like chests and crafting tables so if they are behind a block you still know they are there. Looking awesome so far, Cant wait to see it finished!
I assume the fact that the two week timeframe was set 11 months ago means that either you were way off or this proved too difficult and you had to quit.
By the way, I would love to see 8-bit Minecraft realized, I'm in awe at this!
"Joe, they turned the frogs 8-bit."
"I licked an 8-bit frog once, and I could see the clockwork villagers."
Man, I thought you could not stretch the limitations of Commander X16 any further, but you keep up your impressive work! Your devotion is remarkable. This project is hands down fascinating, so please keep going and good luck!
Since this is 8-bit blocks, the stack size should definitely be 8.
No but really, maybe use the last few bits to affect stack size limits, like how some items are not stackable? Maybe this could even let you have durability using the stack size bits? Great job so far, excited to see how far this gets!
Those “attributes” should be implicitly (or nominally i guess) tied to the block ID, not as a separate value like that.
A stack of 64 would only be.. well, 6 bits. Then another array entry for block type, or maybe durability counter, etc.
suggestion, start + (u/d) scrolls through row in the inventory, use less sprites by using 1 set of tools and changing their colors (stick separate), use smaller flowing for liquids and maybe milk as a liquid, change the player model for armor using change of color pallette, food?, health at 16 to match with the 8-bit, i hope youre having fun making this, good job IB!
I think having an artificial cap on the number of items you can carry at once would let you open up a few bits for extra info, like durability/enchantments, etc
You could also make it so different items have a type (block/armor/tools) so you can set the number of bits allocated to what for each if needed
Mostly just spitballing
This is way more depth than I expected. Well done. I can't wait to see how far you take it
Incredible work! And I'm delighted to see Emerald Tools be included! Kinda hope that Emerald Tools are the best tier of tools, since that was always a childhood dream of mine hahaha.
You're really cooking here, keep up the incredible work! Though I think that 8-Blocks would be a better condensed name for the title
Still amazing project! Can't wait to see where this is going
If you one day add furniture, like furnaces or crafting tables, I think it would be a good idea to add an outline to them too. If you put them inside your house you wouldn’t be able to see them.
I haven’t played this but from the looks I worry the controls may feel clunky. I know it’s probably arrogant to suggest controls then but maybe something like this could be looked at or built off of:
• Move: D-Pad
• Jump: B
• Scroll Hotbar: L/R
• Building and Mining: Hold Y, then DPad for lateral aim, L to cycle layer, R to place/mine (depending on what the cursor is overlapping), and still B to Jump to reach higher.
• If a sword is held, Y is just a simple attack in the DPad direction, no holding it to pop out the cursor or anything.
• Quick-Place Below You: Tap Y with block selected (this seems good gameplay-wise but feels ugly).
• Inventory: X
My thought process is to speed up and simplify building, and because the cursor only appears when you hold Y it wont ruin screenshots. A, Start and Select remain free and unused for any other controls I didnt think of.
Using the sholder buttons to rotate the cursor seems a little unnatural. Have you considered this?: Holding R makes it so the player stands still, so the D pad is free to be used for selecting the 8 surrounding blocks. Holding L or Y also holds the player still, so the up and down buttons are free to change the cursor height.
I would also consider synthesizing the cursor and character movement. Have the dpad control the cursor position in the x,y plane, and when the player tries to move the cursor beyond the selection range have the character move into the previously-selected position.
This might end up being annoying though. Depends on whether you're doing more block manipulation or complex movement. Maybe have it toggle?
Yeah [button] + D-pad Up/Down for Z pos, and D-pad L/R for rotating
@@haphazard1342Maybe the cursor could instead be semi-tied to the player, pointing horizontally in the last direction pressed, and vertically it can be cycled through a few positions using some button (maybe 6; up, a 4-block vertical range in front of the player and down). Though this might be a bad idea.
Is this still being worked on?
hope so
I'd really love to see this game made in java with 3d graphics and first person pov
This is so impressive! congrats, I can't wrap my head around how much work went into this. Also, the game looks surprisingly playable (the outline feature is awesome)
11:15 Congratulations, your 8-bit assembly code can do something renderdragon can't
For walking animation I wonder if you could just recolor the bottom 2 pixels with different shade of blue. Then it might look like the feet are moving.
Two things:
1. Ink blocks by Inkbox was a genuinely clever name. Darn.
2. Now, I dropped out of a programming-related major because I lacked the touch (I'm in audiovisual production now-) but I distinctly remember one of my professors back in the day telling me that "whatever project you're working on, when you are estimating how long it'll take, take whatever estimate you made, add two and go up an order of magnitude to get the time it'll actually take" - So like, if you think it'll take 2 weeks, it'll take 4 months.
Edit: Actually third thing, Subbed :)
Simply phenomenal work! Perhaps the coolest trick you did was block placement around the player - and speaking of, I emailed you a character sprite sheet for you to freely use if you want it! Hope it helps!
Yes, I got it, thanks for your contributions!
bro this is amazing and i hope to see more of it. please dont ever give up on this project
0:15 woah thats crazy, i remember voting in that
I hope you plan to continue this project. It's so impressive and I would absolutely play it.
common optimisation move is to calcutale which blocks are able to be seen by checking if it has a neighbour block being air every time chunk is changed in any way and only drawing those blocks.
8-Bit Blocks is really cool and I respect the dedication. Let's say, hypothetically, you weren't restricted to an upgraded NES system. Imagine how many amazing things could be achieved with even just a 16 bit computer. Anyway I'm sure we all hope to see a potential update to this in the future
i like how the early public build of this game mirrors the early builds of actual MC lol
5:45 I like to think the aliens are watching your videos with great interest, wishing they could help you with the physics
Also, name idea for the finished project: Stanley's Bits
@@dingusbingus7463in french that doesn't sound right😂
@@econo23bis I don't think it sounds right in any language 🤣 which is what I was going for
@@dingusbingus7463 i don't think you've got my point try to translate it
This is really impressive, you should be proud of what you've achieved even in alpha
Out of the countless Minecraft clones on TH-cam this is by far the most impressive
"vote for you favorite mob"
everyone : *W O O D*
This might be very difficult, but a very significant improvement - dont render a certain area around the player of blocks that are all above the player +2 blocks. The player highlight helps, but you can still very much get lost. Even in the very house you built
This is turning out even better than I expected keep it up man
It might be a good idea to add something like a way to display a "slice" of the world, to make it easier to go underground. Just having an outline won't be too helpful in that scenario, since you still can't see the blocks blocking your way, even if you know where _you_ are. I think the most straight-forward way of doing this would just be to have the ability to hide the top _n_ layers, which would allow you to scroll down to the vertical position you want to look at.
Some complications with this method arise if you want to hide things from players like the position of ores, which could be done by rendering blocks that are covered on all sides using some placeholder "hidden" sprite instead of the normal one, until they are uncovered. Though I don't know this architecture at all, so there might be better ways to do it.
I can see it's been several months since an update. It's okay to take a break and come back to it, but don't give up...
Two more weeks
@@InkboxSoftware LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
@@InkboxSoftwareI LOVE YOU
@@InkboxSoftwareany updates?
@@InkboxSoftware man please i live of off these videos like drugs
I’ll see you in six months when that two weeks has finally elapsed
Why not Select+L/R for hotbar so its more like normal minecrafts controls? Also Start+Dpad seems like itd be better for block cursor
1 neat trick I've used back in the day ( C64 era) on isometric games is to treat everything as background, then everything that's below and to the left of the character within a box 2x2 the character size ( 0,0 is bottom left) render those tiles as sprites with priority after the main character. That's way less expensive even a potato could run it glitch free. Assuming there are enough sprites/multiplex slots available.
He said 2 weeks and 6 months later I'm still waiting
no
i know it would probably take a while to redraw (computationally) but redrawing from different angles would be great combined with the suggestion to cull blocks above the player's head; you could even reuse the old code to have 8 directions for the camera. but i would suggest making the top of the block the same size visually as the side of the block for consistency
The design reminds me a lot of Sim City 2000. Love the work!
im sure you probably already noticed this but theres quite a few cases where the player will be moving as the UI overlay is drawn causing the player area to draw overtop of the UI. so you might want to change the order of operations there or make it wait until the player stops moving to draw the UI. Thanks so much for releasing alpha!!
This is such a cool project! Can't wait to see what comes next
I feel like the bumpers should definitely be for controlling the hotbar, while the start+dpad combo seems a really elegant way to move the cursor around. If you use start+dpad up/down to move the cursor's height, that even frees up another button on the right hand side of the controller
This is awesome, both the project and the videos!
This is looking really nice! one feature that i think might be appreciated is the ability to rotate the camera, and some way of viewing the interior of a cave. It's nice that you can know where your body is underground, but how can you navigate out if you can't see any of your surroundings?? And what's the point of completing builds if certain angles of them will never be visible anyways? otherwise, i think your game is awesome!
petition to change name ‘8-bit blocks’ to ‘Craft-Mine’
I'm also making a Minecraft-like game from scratch in assembly! My project has been on hold since a few days ago. I will likely need to pick a different assembly language and rewrite the world generation and camera control code. I expect my project to take a few years, but right now, I need a break from it.
Stanley, my favorite Minecraft character
I have a new-found respect for the guy who made Rollercoaster tycoon in assembly
Please tell me you're still working on this! This is amazing!!!
I think the overlay system to show where your character behind a wall is very cool! I have an idea that you've probably already thought of as well but i'm going to comment anyways because this video is wonderful.
have you considered adding a mode to only render any block lower than your current Z axis, a "no-roofs" style view, so you could actually go spelunking in a cave and have some sort of real view of what's actually in the cave? instead of groping around in the dark, navigating only by memory and trial/error. I hope you consider it, I look forward to seeing what you do next :)
Pls continue this project and add weapons and tools
He says "with the next big features to be added being proper mining, and terrain generation, which should probably only take me about two weeks I'd guess" So we'll be seeing the next update in about 8ish weeks!
Just a suggestion for the game name, wouldn't be cooler if the 8bit blocks were called 8it blocks? Because the B and 8 looks really similar.
and bitblocks is easier to say
@@DrTheRich Ate It Blocks
that’s a cool idea, bitblocks or 8itocks is a pretty good name
@@bickle8911 or maybe byteblocks since 8bits is a byte
8bits miner or 8miner sounds cool but it's pretty similar to 4dminer
Idea: when the player is obstructed, have the blocks covering them to vanish and when you walk out, re-appear
You should definitely make different textures for the armor in the inventory and in the game.
Considering how time consuming this turned out to be, I think the only way that would work is if a group of people teamed up to make it happen.
I hope this ends up seeing the light of day at some point, would be amazing
Series has been dope so far. Hope it blows up bigger than the first episode!
Even writing something like this in XNA-esque engines as a base in modern C# is a challenge, especially to make it run quick. I know because I've done it, lol. I can't imagine figuring that out at the assembly level.
You could try to program minecraft into a QR code using HTML
14:30 maybe you could use the extra bits to save the durability of the tools, or some other aspect of the items that may be relevant
Something you may want consider is making the cursor and player control Pikmin-style, where the d-pad moves the cursor and if you try to move the cursor beyond your reach then the player moves
Directly moving around with the d-pad is pretty useful though. Perhaps implementing both styles and have a button/combination switch between them if it’s even possible with such limited processing power
This is actually a very good idea!
This is amazing, please continue this project!
Really cool project! Instead of the Outline showing up when you move behind blocks, the blocks could get transparent in a radius around the player. Would be very interesting to see how this would work so you can look inside your builds as well :)
2 weeks he says huh
Whoa, this is really awesome, I like demakes and such of games and this is by far one of my favorites, I hope you keep working on it and add a lot of things to it. I have a suggestion, the outline on the player is fine but, is there a way to make it so if you go behind a block or underneath a block (roof) those blocks dissapear or if it's even possible become transparent, yk as a way to see what's going on, kinda like Project Zomboid does.
Whens the next video???
This is starting to look super cool I'd propose select + should buttons for selecting a block instead of start + arrows left and right. It would play nicely together with choosing the block cursor with just the should buttons. Thanks for the video!
Hey, I forgot about this! Cool to see the project's still around.
Imagine if there was an entire series on this, watching the game get made in every major generation of console to show how Minecraft could have evolved if made back then
Considering how time consuming this turned out to be, I think the only way that would work is if a group of people teamed up to make it happen. I still hope we get at least this version working at some point.
You are amazing, we should send you back in time, so that you could release this for the NES
Maybe a roof dissapear/invisable mechanic so that people can also design the interior and use their chests and such. Such a fun project!
I honestly love the way this is going- this is absolutle legendary stuff happening right now, keep it up!
Great vid. I thought a bit about the inventory. You can theoretically store a bunch of 6 bit numbers packed together, but in case of such a small inventory it wouldn't be beneficial since you'd spend more memory on fetching/storing the number instructions, compared to how much you'd save. You'd need somewhere around 160 slot inventory to just gain net 0 compression with such a method. Also this wouldn't be as fast as just fetching a number from memory directly. So having 64/256 item slots is purely based on what you prefer more
Multiplayer over networking is going to be chaotic and beautiful at the same time.
7:57 in the minecraft xbox 1 edition 'a' was used for jumping, b for dropping stuff, y for inventory, x for crafting or creative inventory, the button with 3 lines was used for menu, the button with 2 squares was used for the player list and host privileges, left joy stick was used for moving, right for rotating, the cross thingy was used to move on the xy plane while flying, the big thing on the top left was used for mining, the one on the right was used for placing blocks, and the 2 little things on the top were used to switch hotbar slot.
After like, two hours... I finally got it working, and it was worth it! The game runs pretty well, and it's kinda easy too use, but the keybinds are a bit hard too use. (sorry if that sounds harsh.)
Part three please, I love this concept and hope it goes further!
I think adding a feature where you can see the slice of the world would be really cool, you would see blocks only up to a certain height. Because right now you can't really see inside of your house or inside of a cave for example. Not sure if you can actually implement it though :/
14:48 Just make select move through the list on its own with no need for the dpad. Once it reaches the end it just wraps around. I'm pretty sure that's how it was used in the first place to select between main menu options.
glad to see more content on this epic project! good luck!
I'd say that because the inventory is probably going to be quite small and the number of block types and stackable items will be limited that 256 per stack makes a good amount of sense. I also have a feeling that with the limited controls and hardware it'll feel more annoying to have to go back and forth between building and resource gathering.