It's a minecraft mod, yes. It's also a fully functional DC electrical simulation, with realism as a primary focus. Any inaccuracies are either strictly required (= it runs at 20Hz for most purposes), or allowances for decent gameplay.
Minecraft is an amazing learning tool even for adults! I used Minecraft as a "build along" tool for fully understanding logic gates while reading "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" (which I highly recommend - great book!). I used a mod called "red power" to make laying out the circuits much easier (the color coded, bundled cables alone were worth using it). Perhaps I will have to fire up Minecraft and take Electrical Age for a spin - it looks REALLY cool!
People don't realize how much crazy stuff originates from minecraft.
For instance, battle royale (e.g. fortnite, pubg, realm royale, etc). That came from a minecraft mod based on hunger games before Arma+dayZ implemented it on their end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royale_game
But there's way more cooler stuff than that coming out of minecraft.
We have people building full blown computers in minecraft too.
The full blown computers running in Minecraft has made me hope for more games that make computation an integrated part of game mechanics.
Like what if parts of the game code where represented as the environment. So that you can build your own game. Perhaps you can mod the game from inside the game. Or perhaps something more controlled, like modifying the level generation by interacting with the level itself.
>The full blown computers running in Minecraft has made me hope for more games that make computation an integrated part of game mechanics.
You know, speaking of which, I actually learned FORTH from Minecraft.
Years ago, there was a now-defunct mod, Redpower 2, that massively expanded on the game's existing redstone mechanics. Redstone wires that could be run on walls and ceilings, insulated wires, bundled cables that carried 16 signals in parallel, a plethora of single-block logic gates, and a huge array of added features like the motorized "frames" that let you move huge constructions all at once, or the sophisticated pneumatic-tube networks for moving, routing, and sorting items. It was hugely popular; many features it introduced worked themselves so deeply into the modded community that clones copying many of its mechanics would remain popular to this day.
And one of the things it added, in one update, was a computer - specifically, an emulated custom 6502 variant (the 65EL02) with 8K of RAM (expandable to 64K), and a boot disk for a FORTH-based operating system to run on it. (Some dedicated users did code up other operating systems; someone ported BASIC to the thing, although it took up an awful lot of that limited memory)
Nobody had ever seen anything like it in the modded community, and a lot of children (including me) made at least a nominal effort to learn some basic FORTH so we could build things like password-locked doors, or pilot frame-based flying machines to do useful things like quarry out half the world and deliver it to our doorstep. Lots of more advanced stuff got built, too - 3D printers, computer-controlled automatic crafting systems, teleporters with selectable destinations.
The Redpower computers ended up not terribly popular, in the end - FORTH, being a language from 1970 that nobody had heard of before and which didn't look much like anything else most Minecraft players had ever used, proved a pretty intimidating barrier to entry; and shortly after Redpower introduced their feature someone else made their own mod that added Lua-based computers with a much less barebones OS and friendlier ways of interacting with useful functionality. This had a much easier time taking off.
I'm honestly curious: where do you think the boundary between work and play occurs here? It seems to me that many of those that make those mods do it mostly as a recreation, don't you think?
Exactly! And that's the beauty of designing such a game in the right way. There's an opportunity to narrow down the freedoms in just the right way to limit failure rates.
I don't think complexity alone is a game stopping issue. There are plenty of highly complex games that people find fun and addictive. But complexity in combination with high failure rates (a lot of trial and error) will kill the fun.
But I think that high complexity with low error rates is perhaps exactly what makes a game fun. If you can express yourself freely and roam around while expecting most of your actions to produce an interesting result the game will be very interesting.
It's a minecraft mod, yes. It's also a fully functional DC electrical simulation, with realism as a primary focus. Any inaccuracies are either strictly required (= it runs at 20Hz for most purposes), or allowances for decent gameplay.
(Or bugs. Those are probably my fault.)