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[BenKenobiWan]

Those lights look cool, I'll probably steal your ideas now 

[pspeed]

Those are nice.  They would be perfect for flames, too.

[FutureB]

LOL im sorry i didnt even realise that u where ofended by that first one when i added that next one which a friend showed me. lol sorry it was just coinsidental that it hapened at the same time :S

[pspeed]

LOL im sorry i didnt even realise that u where ofended by that first one when i added that next one which a friend showed me. lol sorry it was just coinsidental that it hapened at the same time :S

Yay.  Getting Rickrolled by all your posts is way funnier now anyway.

[BenKenobiWan]

I stared at that for what seemed like years, mesmerized. Then suddenly, everything - EVERYTHING - made sense!
 

[FutureB]

lol play i spy with my little eye for my treehouse i built  :O

[Moonkey]

I fownd it! I could only find it at night. Sneaky lil' treehouse.

[Evtal]

minecraft is now at 1.2.3., as far as i know. free of lag even on my computers.

[pspeed]

minecraft is now at 1.2.3., as far as i know. free of lag even on my computers.

Yeah, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.  I could spend the next six months optimizing and still be left with a game that's just a minecraft clone... and potentially have to redo the optimization later anyway as code changes.  Or I can wait until post-alpha where I already have a game that can stand on its own and earn some money for development.

I know there are some easy paths to optimization but my strategy so far has been to get to alpha first.  To the best of my ability, I want to make sure that the game doesn't get slower after alpha (sucks when you buy a game that you can't play a few months later).  Optimizing too early adds a ton of risk to that plan.

And anyway, please don't judge performance just by the spawn town on the network server.  I get 200 FPS every where else in the world and only 30-40 FPS in spawn town.  That area is a wreck and I will be moving the spawn point soon because of it.

[Moonkey]

Maybe you could make a pre-purchase state? I'm sure most of us here would like to buy it  . Never drop the game mid-way through the making of it, i've seen "Minecraft clones" be dropped and it didn't turn out good. It was still in a crappy state and wasn't much fun. NEVAR do that   

[pspeed]

Maybe you could make a pre-purchase state? I'm sure most of us here would like to buy it  . Never drop the game mid-way through the making of it, i've seen "Minecraft clones" be dropped and it didn't turn out good. It was still in a crappy state and wasn't much fun. NEVAR do that   

What do you mean by a pre-purchase state?  You can already donate which essentially pre-purchases the game when/if it comes out.

Alpha will be the point where I draw a line in the sand and say "You must buy the game to play the full version."  And when I say that, I want to have at least a general idea that the game is only going to get faster after that.  Right now, I know I have a bunch of easy performance wins but they may end up perfectly offsetting the physics, animation, AI systems.  So if I add them now then we are on some kind of performance roller coaster and everyone complains with every new release.   I'd rather try to keep performance basically the same from release to release until I can really start optimizing post-alpha.

[diegokilla]

That looks nice, I think I should come check it out.

I think it would be cool if some people worked together so that we could have some meaningful roads on the server.

That was the nice thing about a lot of the original building when the server first started.  People were pretty good about building roads to everything.

...then the griefers descended and I think most of the new developments are happy to toil in unconnected obscurity.

Someday I need to figure out a way to make ungriefable roads.

It may seem a bit harsh, but maybe make build rights on your public server a Donor only option?

[pspeed]

It may seem a bit harsh, but maybe make build rights on your public server a Donor only option?

I've half-considered it.  Or making property grants a donator only perk.

In the end, though, I will be setting up a second game mode server.  That one will probably be donators-only.

In which case, I care a little less about restricting the current public server.  And while my grief-hate burns with the fury of a thousand suns, the rampant griefing has helped me fix a lot of bugs I might otherwise not have found.  Even the nice players who do more innocent things like auto-clickers have found some issues.  So I actually derive some benefit from everyone being able to build.

[steric]

I understand the optimization/alpha level tradeoff. I think you should optimize later. I have read as much of your posts as I can but...

What are some concrete timelines/deadlines that you aim to meet? What I am looking for is something like this (just random example):

07/01/12 - NPC interactions will be underway

09/01/12 - Stop adding physics and just tweak what is there

12/01/12 - alpha stage

I know I know I know that this is difficult and always subject to change but you ARE in a race. You may not see it that way but your vision (even though it is yours originally) - is shared by a few throughout the community. You have one helluva great start but a progressive forward thinking outlook must be had at all times. I just wish there was some way to market this to get you real money so you can dedicate more time and manpower.

[pspeed]

Every time I make date commitments, I end up missing them by a mile.

I hope that a basic AI will take me a month.  You may want to double that estimate.

Also, my whiteboard is fully overloaded with various less-than-specific to-do items that I need to clear off a bit.

And... I want to hook up the game client to the central server so that the donators can use their master login if they want to (and eventually get some in-game perks).

I was trying to hit alpha by July but that was a very aggressive milestone meant to keep me motiviated.  And that's looking a little less likely and largely depends on how my wife's surgery goes on Thursday.

The real problem with schedules is that it kind of forces me into a "less productive" box.  My output is 200% of normal when I'm really inspired by something so sometimes I take a tangent because I know getting that done now will be faster than doing it later.

This next week I will be away from my main computer and working from the laptop.  This hobbled state may force me to work on things a little differently than I normally would.  This often leads to a few leaps in areas that would otherwise be dealt with later... though I have a bunch of material on AI that I'm really looking to dive into and I won't be hounded by the whiteboard looking at me over my shoulder.   I think this next week will be AI prototyping, more music creation, and concept art work... since there will be times when I have idle hands and can bring a sketch book but not a computer.