So let make this very clear. This will not be a clone as such, my goal is to recreate ACTUAL Minecraft in the JMonkey Engine. Hopefully to get something equivalent to an “alpha” version, ideally 1.1.2.
But I can not do it all by myself. Which means some form of collaboration will need to be worked out.
However if we all work together I believe it can be done.
How will this work? I’m unfamiliar with Minecraft licensing terms and such. I only know that there’s been problems before:
Also, have you made any games or other projects that are relevant to making a game like Minecraft? It is no small undertaking.
And finally, you should be prepared to do it all by yourself 
You might find people who want to join you, but on the other hand you might not, so if you want your project to succeed it should not depend on anyone else but yourself.
I’m afraid erlend_sh is right, you can’t recreate Minecraft as is because of the licensing terms. Bukkit, after lots of years and helping a lot, in my opinion, to the growth of popularity of Minecraft has stopped their development because of some recent problems.
Take also a look to: https://mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-being-bought-by-microsoft/.
Interesting venue. Recreating Minecraft gameplay seems possible.
However how do you plan to recreate the world procedural generation?
Most old games reimplementations just have to load the original levels and rest of the content, however Minecraft generates its own levels.
It seems to use some standard algorithms (e.g. Perlin noise and cell automata) so you could do something similar, however in order to recreate actual minecraft It’ll need to implement the same exact algorithms.
This is going to be really hard to reverse engineer.
It’s actually very easy to re-engineer. There are several repositories still available to view if you use the right keywords. You are also using the same language.
The problem is definitely not the ones you highlight. The problem will be showing it to the world. If it makes any kind of impact, the world-dominating Microsoft will shut you down before you can refresh the page.
In my opinion, make a minecraft clone. Put your own spin on it. Do something where you felt minecraft fell short. There’s nothing wrong with doing that at all. Terraria for example - very similar, but it’s own game in it’s own right.
Dont’ waste all your efforts to get stone-walled just when it gets exciting.
I have recreated Minecraft multiple times Unity3D with C# and bad copy in Java and a fairly decent copy in C++. I also made a 2D version in alot more programming languages. So i have made this sort of thing before and I am well prepaired for the challenge ahead.
Now the code is to be written by scratch. Means no copying code it will be our own to manipulate the actual Minecraft game just done differently. If you catch my drift.
Yes i know JMonkeyEngine runs off Java the more the reason to do it. Its the language i know best and it will familiarize me with JME3. Its just another challenge for me so Minecraft’s licensing will really have no effect.
I will take that into account but Microsoft won’t be able to do much its not their code. That is the point i am trying to make. So how i read that is Microsoft shut down ever single Minecraft clone…
Yes, I was assuming you wouldn’t be copying source code (leaked or decompiled), but copying by visual inspection.
However have in mind you wouldn’t be the first to receive a note from Microsoft, see Gridwars case.
That’s great to know. So you’re well prepared for the technical aspect of it then.
I guess what we’re all trying to wrap our heads around is: Why an actual Minecraft instead of a “clone” (which can be so many things)?
Fewer people will dare to engage with your project so long as there’s even the slightest chance that it could bring legal trouble upon them.
I wanna get the game into a state equivalent to Alpha 1.1.2 before i start throwing my own twists into it,
Now as for an “actual Minecraft” in JME3? again it’s just a challenge like i could its actual and it turn out to be a clone what would be the difference?
I don’t plan on rebuilding the whole of Minecraft god no. Then legal troubles will spout.
Besides the game will have shaders on the water, lighting, shadows etc etc, I plan to have custom modeled blocks but that idea is currently being decided.
Let me explain the idea behind it:
I wanna try and recreate Minecraft to the standard it was at in Alpha 1.1.2 but with shaders, models, JBullet physics and other environmental features.
So in other words its Minecraft Advanced. I dunno how to put it but to give it a JME feel. Without coping the code.
Anyone that helps can throw their own twists in it doesn’t bother me too much as it reachs an Alpha 1.1.2 feel is ok with me.
Alright, that clears it up well enough 
Hope you’ll open source your code early on then; will be fun to follow your progress.
Best of luck to ya!
The legal issues were because Bukkit actually included the minecraft source code in their project and one of the contributors to the project demanded that Mojang release their stuff as GPL or he would DMCA the bukkit project on github to take everything down. It gets even more wierd, because Mojang ‘purchased’ bukkit. Basically, there was a GPL dispute over the Bukkit implementation, one of the authors felt like Mojang was taking advantage of their open source project, and he forcibly shut down the project himself.
Recreating the game isn’t really a problem, it’s if you use their code & assets. There are quite a few open re-implementations of the game already in various states of working order scattered around github in various languages, even ones that can connect to basic Minecraft servers.
So… what you mean is that you can clone any game “as is” and publish it, even sell it, and nothing is happening to you?. Or is just with the Minecraft’s licence?.
That’s awesome and weird at the same time…
You can’t copyright an idea.
So for the most part, you can clone any game you like as long as you:
-don’t use any of their code
-don’t use any of their art
-don’t use any of their story
-don’t use their name
-don’t use any of their other trademarked or copyrightable material not mentioned above. This may include creatures and/or character names. (Having Pikachu would get you in trouble, for example.)
You’d have to talk to a lawyer about that. But as long as you’re not directly using someone else’s copyrighted material, assets, or trademarks you’re most likely going to be fine. For reference, Starcraft, and Warcraft were re-built as open-source projects see Stargus & Wargus. Total Annihilation was also rebuilt as open source. There are various other open source projects like this around. The biggest things are:
A) don’t distribute the original game’s assets/art/code.
B) Don’t claim to be affiliated with the original creating company.
C) if you want to load in the assets of the games, that is usually fine, but you have to do so in a way that requires the original media (Stargus/Wargus required the CD of the games to install properly).
Also, If you aren’t already aware there is also a completely open sourced version of the server called Glowstone. It doesn’t use JME3 as it’s a console-server. But if you take a look at it you can get a good idea of what structures would work for building a minecraft clone that’s able to emulate what minecraft does.
I intended to create any assets myself. Model all the creatures in Blender of course I will need to think of a suitable style creature to the Creeper because I really do not like them but I probably would not have them anyway. The name i’m still thinking of, art I plan to draw my own, anything the community makes they can make their own art style.
I do not wish to use anything that is affiliated with Minecraft.
If anybody is catching my drift here
I am well aware of legal problems.
Your most recent explanation makes this sound like a minecraft ‘clone’. I want to re-iterate that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a ‘clone.’ It still takes considerable effort to make everything happen. If you need some help/direction on getting started definitely post up with questions!
@NemesisMate - I didn’t really answer your previous question about cloning any game as is. But App stores have a lot of problems with games cloning each other and releasing with slightly altered assets. This can get into legal problems as there’s a thing called Trade Dress. I’m not a lawyer, but I have read about app store games being sued over trade dress issues because they look too similar to other games and infringe on the likeness of another product. It is a thing and it happens. You bypass this by making your product distinct and different. There are various ways to do this (Art style), but to have the gameplay be similar/the same. how many matching-gem (bejeweled) knock-offs are there?
saw this come up on hackernews today, it’s a complete re-implementation of Minecraft 1.7.3 (pre-release, so beta). Since it’s a clean-room implementation (no one looked at minecraft code). You could look at what they did and translate it to JME3 if you wanted. The License associated with it is minimal.
I could do that. As of right now i’m working on multiple blocks, getting blocks to generate in an array without a heap space.
What i have already done however is:
Infinite Terrain
Tweaked Rendering.
I have to weigh this project between my free time and my study time for college.
So porting that code might prove beneficial.