Notch Puts 0x10c On Ice , Community Picks Up Torch

What do you do when a developer tells you that they're putting a project on ice?

Most would shrug and wander away. After all, with so many other games in the industry, there's barely any reason to even ponder writing petitions or vitriol-laden letters. However, when Minecraft's Markus 'Notch' Persson said that he had no future aspirations for 0x10c on a Team Fortress 2 livestream , a small group of avid fans decided that they would not, in fact, migrate to another dream but make 0x10c themselves.

In case you're still elbows-deep in Minecraft and have yet to hear about Notch's new undertaking, 0x10c is a sandbox science-fiction game set in a universe where the space race never ended. It's not a particularly jovial environment - massive black holes and dying stars abound here - but it does have a fully functioning emulated 16bit CPU, one many have become utterly fascinated with.

"I think the main reason we set out to do the project is that we were really excited for 0x10c." Nouht, who initially broke the news of Notch's seeming loss of ambition, explained. "As soon as Notch said he was dropping it, a lot of the community were disappointed. Hearing Notch say there wasn't going to be a 0x10c on the livestream really shook people up."

Shane Dalton, who serves as Project Lead and head writer for the community-run endeavor, has little to say about 0x10c being shelved. "I think we didn't really look into why he put it on hold. We just sort of looked at the project and were like, 'Okay. This is a community project now.' We're not using any of his old code, his name or anything."

Having only established themselves less than a week ago, the nascent team is understandably shy about publicity. When I first started questioning Reddit, it was requested that I hold off on coverage. "We need to get going first." He said. "We are humbled by the fact that people want to write about this but we don't it just yet. It could destroy everything." Wolf87, who helps maintain the project's web presence, pleaded.

Things have since changed and rather quickly, for the matter. The team is now broken into several 'departments' consisting of like-minded volunteers, each with a lead responsible for co-ordination. "We have Miles, who is the lead leader. Basically, he's managing all the programming. We're going to split it up into multiple departments later on but that's something we're planning to do once we've got some basic prototypes down." Dalton says.

"We've also got some design people in there." He adds. "But we're usually designing as a team. At first, it was very unstructured and very hard but now, we've re-kindled our design systems to suit this kind of system."

The team is aiming to first create a base and progressing from there. "We're bringing the community onto the ground floor as soon as we get everything set up. Then, we will take suggestions from them and release early builds to gauge their reactions."

Currently, there are no plans to ever acquire monetary remuneration for their work. This, it seems, is a labor of love. Dalton says, "We're not planning on monetizing it except for asking for donations to help with server costs. It's also because of the open source nature of the game. It's like, we going to release the game for free since we want as many people as possible to play this."

More information can be found on this Reddit thread or by visiting Project Trillek's new subreddit. As always, we'll keep you posted as we learn more.