Cave game tech test

Nizzotch · 10.5M views · 2009 · 3:02

Open on YouTube

Indie game developmentGame programming & enginesGame history & retro gamingdemo

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN links it as a historical artifact showing what Minecraft looked like at its very beginning.

What it is

An early 2009 tech test by Notch of an Infiniminer-style cave game running about 700 fps on a 256x256x64 tile map. It is the prototype that grew into Minecraft.

Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2013 to 2022.

What Hacker News said

Cites itafroma · 2013-06 · on “Skycraft: Minecraft clone in WebGL”

Edit: I just wanted to preface this by saying I think this is a very cool demonstration and a great first step towards a game: I should've made that clearer in the rest of my comment which continues below. The state of the demo is about where Notch was about this time in 2009: [this video] I point that out because every month or so someone creates a "voxel"-based terrain generator with basic building and gets branded a "Minecraft clone", as if that's all there is to one of the most abnormally successful indie games of all time. Unfortunately, it takes a lot more than that just that to make something that's actually fun to play and is comparable to even Minecraft in its pre-alpha incarnations. And

Cites Torn · 2013-11 · on “How Minecraft Was Born”

Notch described what later became Minecraft in a 2009 youtube, calling it an 'Infiniminer clone' he was working on [this video]

Cites capableweb · 2022-06 · on “Goodbye Zachtronics”

Straight from the horse's mouth: The World of Notch - The origins of Minecraft | [LINK] > While looking through some project folders, I found an old protype of a game that never quite became anything. Kinda. > It was called “RubyDung” (for various reasons), and was supposed to be a base building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress > As the RubyDung engine got more advanced, I started thinking about adding a first person view for following your minions around, kinda like in Dungeon Keeper. It worked ok, but the graphics got very pixellated and distorted, so I left it out. > But then I found Infiniminer. My god, I realized that that was the game I wanted to do. I played it in multiplayer for a whi