Notch Wants To Make a Firefly-Inspired Sandbox Space Game

silentbrad sends this snippet from PCGamer: "After stepping back as lead designer of Minecraft earlier this year, Notch has been considering what to do next. ... While he's still deciding exactly what he wants to work on, he told us that he'd quite like to do a sandbox space trading game like Elite, 'except done right.' Notch is aiming for something with a bit more character than the classic trading sim. Instead of being the spaceship, you'd be a character inside the spaceship. 'I want the space game that's more like Firefly,' he said. 'I want to run around on my ship and have to put out a fire. Like, oh crap, the cooling system failed, I have to put out the fire here.' He hasn't decided to make the game yet, and doesn't mind if someone else takes up the reins. 'If someone steals the idea before me, that's totally fine. I just want to play that game,' he said."

Vegastrike

[Culture20]

It's been an oft-asked for feature in Vegastrike. [sourceforge.net] And they've already got the flying around in space and trading stuff covered. Maybe he could do the "I'm just a space janitor" portion that no one seems to want to do?

Oolite -- Open source Elite

[BDZ]

In case there are Elite fans out there who haven't heard of it; check out Oolite http://www.oolite.org/ [oolite.org]. It's an open source version that is nicely done. Available on Linux, MacOS & Windows.

Sounds similar to a game on Kickstarter just now.

[Anonymous Coward]

FTL [kickstarter.com]
It is a spaceship roguelike where you actually control the ship up close, rather than directly.
Glad it got funded, these guys sound pretty good and the idea sounds solid.

Would like to see him have a try at it. So little actual decent space-trading games that are full-on, large or even fun.
So many of them are just a plain chore to get in to, and you can lose everything just like that.
Quite literally a second job to get in to in order to even play most of them.

Re:I could go for that

[mccalli]

I loved the idea of Elite but the implementation (particularly the later ones) was always a bit off for me. The crew based thing would be quite a bit of fun. Have a game that is part space shooty, part RTT or TBT crew management.

I want a remake of Psi 5 Trading Company [cerebus.de]. That's a great game which I still play now and again - for those that don't know it, you're the Captain of a freight-carring star ship and you command your crew. You can do nothing directly, all actions occur because you've instructed your crew to carry them out.

I'm a massive Elite (original, never got into Frontier) fan too - have a look at Oolite [oolite.org] for a modern remake.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:and this is why...

[Richard_at_work]

Unfortunately, the first semester of any Computer Games Development degree course is filled with kids who think just that - I like playing games, I have an idea, I would have fun building what I like to play. The second semester of those courses are usually much less full...

The gory details of creating games usually murders the fun of playing them :(

Re:and this is why...

[Teancum]

The difference is that Notch not only has the talent to pull it off, but also the money to buy the help to finish it off if he wants to get onto the next cool thing. He even hired a separate CEO to manage the business and financial affairs so really the only thing he needs to do is simply write the software.

I think Notch could write a lame version of Pong and still sell over a million copies at the moment from his fanbase, so the fact it may be successful is almost irrelevant too.

Re:amazing

[DurendalMac]

Not to mention having the most hideously atrocious, inefficient game engine in recent memory. Even if we take into account that it's written in Java, it's still mind-bogglingly AWFUL. Other games will do exponentially more with geometry, physics, lighting, etc and still get better framerates on the same hardware. Hell, make a moderately large redstone device and watch what happens. It chugs like hell over something SIMPLE. Personally, just about everyone at Mojang should never be able to write another line of code, especially Notch. Let him serve as the idea man, not the developer, because he fucking SUCKS at it, as does the rest of his team. If they had any brains at all then Minecraft would've had a ground-up rewrite a long time ago.

Re:amazing

[Ihmhi]

I agree that Minecraft is missing a lot. When jeb took over, however, the game has been noticeably improving. Patches are coming pretty consistently now and they're really changing the game for the better.

I think Notch is better at the initial idea than the long-term execution. He's like a Stage 1 rocket booster - he gets the idea off the ground and pretty far, but don't depend on him to make it all the way to the end.

For the reasons above, I doubt his ability to finish something good. Start it? Sure. But put out a finished, quality product? He seems to have a hard time doing that.

Re:amazing

[Rowan_u]

Coding isn't just about writing amazingly optimized code, or running as close to the metal as you can get; or heck, it isn't even about not crashing. The whole reason for Java and the other high level languages is so that less analytical geniuses and more artists/thinkers can get into programing. Notch is a perfect example of a regular guy, who isn't really the greatest coder or artist, but never-the-less, still managed to outdo every single 100+ team dev house. Why? 1. the balls to buck absolutely every convention. 2. the presence of high level abstracted languages and libraries for him to build on. 3. the willingness to borrow from what comes before (Infiniminer, Dwarf Fortress, Gary's Mod) 4. pure damn luck. Notch is a phenomenon, not simply because minecraft is an amazing game, but because we love a rags-to-riches storyline :)