ELi5: How people can make fully functioning computers within games like Minecraft
In: Technology
Conceptually, computers are very simple – a machine that can automatically do math equations when you ask it to. Every other thing a computer can do is just an extremely complex series of math equations that represent something you can see, read, watch, play, etc. You don’t even need electricity to make a machine that can do that, just moving parts – electricity just makes it *much* faster and more space-efficient.
Because of this simplicity, you can make some kind of simple computer in most “sandbox”-style game, as long as you’re given moving parts and some way to represent the results. Here is a video where somebody makes a calculator using Rollercoaster Tycoon tracks.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FThjphBujR0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FThjphBujR0)
The key thing with Minecraft is that it’s functionally limitless – if you have the time and the know-how, you can make a machine with as many pieces and moving parts as you want, there’s no sprite/space limit like there are in Rollercoaster Tycoon and most other games. Because of this, you can take that simple calculator and, like in real life, make a staggeringly more complex version of it, taking you from “1 + 1 = 2” to “Press left = Rotate character left, update monitor display to represent what the player can now see, etc.” Inside a Minecraft computer are thousands of circuits that work like those rollercoaster carts and make up one small part of the many, many math problems you need to make a working (extremely slow) computer.
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