The emulator runs Atari 2600 games like Donkey Kong and Space Invaders using a complex system of over 2,000 command blocks that plays actual Atari ROMs. They’re a little slow. The 2600 managed 60 frames per second. Seth’s emulator can do 60 frames every four hours. By the end of 18 hours, the first barrel in Donkey Kong has just reached the middle of the second platform.
Seth explains the process in a second, more technical video. He builds cartridges using basic materials like stone and dirt, each block standing in for a certain binary value. He can use those blocks to assemble the code for games.
After that? It’s the long process of using the allocated memory to draw the sprites. The data is occasionally drawn into the wrong spot on the screen but given the fact that this is an emulator that used Minecraft blocks that’s only a small setback.
Seth has shared the world file for people who want to check it out for themselves, as well as an editor to help folks load in their own ROMs. So, if you happen that have Atari ROMs laying about and are sick of seeing them run at normal speed, boot them up in Minecraft and sit down for the longer game of Pac-Man you’ll ever play.
With 30 million trials of last year’s ‘Hour of Code’ tutorial, Microsoft and Code.org believe their new Minecraft offering will again introduce tens of millions to coding for the first time.
It is coming on the heels of Microsoft’s coding workshops worldwide during Computer Science Education Week.
The Minecraft Hour of Code Designer is a coding tutorial for students and educators created for Hour of Code, an annual, global campaign held during Computer Science Education Week, Dec. 5–11.
The new web-based tutorial enables beginner coders to create and share their own simple “Minecraft” game, and is designed to empower anyone to begin learning the problem-solving and critical thinking skills required in today’s tech-fueled world.
Created by “Minecraft” game designers at Mojang and Microsoft, in partnership with Code.org, the fun and easy-to-learn one-hour experience builds on the success of last year’s record-breaking “Minecraft” tutorial, which reached more than 30 million students worldwide.
With the goal of inspiring millions more to try coding for the first time — and to keep going on their journey of learning computer science — as of today, the tutorial is available in 10 languages, including Spanish. It is scheduled to be available in 50 languages by Dec. 5.
With the immense popularity of “Minecraft” around the world, Microsoft and Code.org believe the tutorial has the potential to reach people of all ages and likeness.
Women and girls already compose nearly half of the game’s global fan base. The tutorial also underscores Microsoft’s commitment to ensuring all young people have the opportunity to learn computer science, an economic and social imperative in this era of digital transformation which Microsoft aims to reach students most likely to be among those without access, particularly girls and minorities.
“We are partnering with Code.org again this year to make computer science more accessible to millions of youth around the world with ‘Minecraft’ and Hour of Code,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft.
“I am inspired by the ‘Minecraft’ generation who view themselves not as players of a game, but as creators of the new worlds they dream up. This is the generation that will imagine, build and create our future, and together we can equip them with the computational thinking and problem-solving skills to seize the opportunities ahead.”
Adding his comments, Hakeem Adeniji-Adele, public sector director at Microsoft Nigeria, Microsoft and Code.org are working globally with schools, educators and governments to deliver the benefits of computer science education in schools, after school and at home to give all youth the opportunity to learn the skills they need to achieve more.
Designed for ages 6 and up, the Minecraft Hour of Code Designer teaches students to create their own “Minecraft” experience where they can program the rules.
“They can make chickens that drop gold, or zombies that run away instead of attacking. Along the way, students use Code.org’s familiar drag-and-drop coding interface to learn computer science concepts such as object-oriented programming, event handlers and repeat loops. Players face a series of 12 challenges, culminating in creating their own simple game, which they can share with friends,” said Adeniji-Adele.
Also sharing her thoughts around the importance of Computer Science in their classrooms, Mrs. Abbas Omobolanle of Ikota Computer Centre (located in Obalende Primary School), as a class teacher, the importance of Computer Science is to enable our pupils fit in the society.
In her words, “We need to catch them young to reason and think faster. To enable our pupils to know the happenings in our environment and the world at large.”
“Code.org was founded with the vision that every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer science — not only because it’s foundational for any career, but because students love it,” said Hadi Partovi, co-founder and CEO, Code.org. “‘Minecraft’ is a special game that appeals to a diverse global community. We’re delighted to have the chance to teach students coding with the fun familiarity of ‘Minecraft,’ to engage students of all backgrounds and skill levels.”
In support of Code.org and the global Hour of Code campaign, Microsoft will also lead thousands of youth coding events in more than 60 countries.
Ex-Microsoft engineer SethBling has created an Atari 2600 emulator using nothing but Minecraft.
Redstone wizard SethBling has created an Atari 2600 emulator in vanilla Minecraft, recreating game cartridges and Atari hardware using dirt blocks.
While the emulator is impossibly slow, SethBling’s video details how the 1977 game console can be faithfully recreated by using Minecraft’s features and some scripting wizardry.
SethBling’s emulator uses a Minecraft armor stand to draw colored blocks to represent the game’s 8-bit visuals. It draws information from 128 bytes of “RAM” crafted from a huge slab of dirt and stone, designed to represent the binary code. Dirt represents zeros, while cobblestone represents ones. The video provides a very visual explanation of how information is handled by computational hardware to create animation frames.
SethBling also provided tools to allow people to try the emulator for themselves in the description of the above video, which even includes a tool to convert 4 KB Atari 2600 ROMs into block cartridges for the emulator’s Minecraft world state.
Microsoft is already offering Minecraft to schools to teach all sorts of subjects from maths to computer science. SethBling’s video exemplifies the game’s versatility in this area, particularly when it comes to engaging younger audiences with technical topics. I think I’ll stick to blowing up Zac Bowden with creepers, though.
YouTube personality SethBling has emulated the Atari 2600 inside Minecraft. It’s a clever use of the game’s command blocks, which act as the brains of the operation.
But don’t get too excited.
While SethBling has provided a tool to load Atari ROMs into Minecraft, once they’re in there you’re only going to be playing at around 60 frames per… four hours.
Instead, think of his project as a tremendous way to explain how games are made.
SethBling has assembled an array of more than 2,000 command blocks in his design. The way he has them configured, they read stone and dirt as either ones or zeros. When an Atari game is pushed into Minecraft it resolves itself as a 4 kilo-block chunk of land, a three-dimensional representations of raw game code.
It proves to be a remarkable visual representation of the ephemeral nature of programming. You can watch SethBling sculpt the blast shields from Space Invaders on the cart itself before they’re sent to the 2600’s “screen” by manually editing them with his in-game hand.
It’s easy to see how a teacher could use SethBling’s tools, capitalizing on the familiar landscape of Minecraft to teach kids programming. A much more technical explanation is available, and you can even download the world for yourself and mess around with it.
The studio responsible for ongoing development of Minecraft is dipping its toes into the games journalism business, Mojang announced this week, re-launching Minecraft.net as a community hub dedicated to all things Minecraft -related. It’s not going to feature the world’s most objective coverage of the popular sandbox game but the new Minecraft site does show some promise.
It’s not clear what led Mojang to make the change, though the recent spate of publisher-owned blogs makes the news significantly less surprising. What is clear is that Microsoft and Mojang are doing what they can centralize discovery and distribution of new Minecraft content, regardless of whether it was created in-house or by a member of the Minecraft community. The new site will include snapshot announcements, patch notes and other developmental news. Mojang says it also plans to use the site to “[dig] into development secrets, inspiration behind our updates, DLC, game mechanics, and more.”
The studio also plans to use Minecraft.net to highlight community creations, including popular YouTube videos, Minecraft mods, new servers and even those who prefer channeling their love of Minecraft into physical art, like cosplay. Of course, seeing as it’s a company-run platform, we’ll also see plenty of Minecraft merch sprinkled into the mix. The studio even brought in Marsh Davies, known for his work at PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun, to run the revamped site. Minecraft fans can currently read up on the inspirations behind the recently added underwater temple and one of the game’s most-popular world-generation tools.
Minecraft is currently available on PlayStation 3, PS4, PS Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, iOS, Android and PC.
Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com and follow Scott on Twitter for more Minecraft news throughout what’s left of 2016 and however long Mojang supports Minecraft in the years ahead.
The ones and zeroes used by computers as the basis for all programming are represented by alternating blocks – either dirt or stone.
However, the emulator is too slow to actually be playable – a single game could take months.
Mr Bling’s console comprises a giant screen, which gradually updates as the game animates, and a huge field of blocks that form the virtual console’s memory.
He has also designed game cartridges for Donkey Kong, Space Invaders and Pac Man – in the form of huge Minecraft blocks that are scanned as though being read by the original hardware.
Two thousand command blocks – which can perform operations on other blocks – form the system’s processor. They manipulate blocks in the memory just like a physical processor operates on data in a computer.
But the processor works very slowly, drawing frames to the screen 60 times every four hours. The original console ran at 60 frames per second.
“Because of the structures that exist within Minecraft […] you could, weirdly, in an Inception-like way, build a Minecraft within Minecraft,” said Tom Crick, professor of computer science and public policy at Cardiff Metropolitan University, referring to the film.
The possibilities, he added, were more or less boundless.
“You could very easily construct a modern Intel ARM microprocessor – it would be very slow but it would functionally correct and complete,” he told the BBC.
He pointed out that, in the physical world, Lego also allows people to build all kinds of mechanical devices on a large scale.
Learning with blocks
The game’s developer, Mojang, released an educational edition of the game earlier this year and parent company Microsoft recently unveiled a one-hour online tutorial, built entirely in Minecraft, that teaches students to code.
But last month, the UK government’s “behaviour czar” Tom Bennett told The Times newspaper he was “not a fan” of Minecraft in lessons.
“This smacks to me of another gimmick which will get in the way of children actually learning,” he said.
Prof Crick said Minecraft was not a magical tool that solves educational problems, but added, “The fact you can create essentially anything is a very powerful thing.”
