16-Bit Computer Built in Minecraft

Following in the footsteps of Dwarf Fortress grandmasters who have built in-game computers in the past, YouTube user TheInternetFTW has constructed the first piece of a 16-bit computer within Minecraft. According to the video description, “That computer will be “Hack” compatible, which is to say that it’ll run code meant for the Hack machine described in The Elements of Computer Systems.”

In the video above, you’ll see the first completed building block of the computer: The ALU, or arithmetic logic unit, one of the key components of the CPU (central processing unit.) Minecraft fanatics may note that it was designed in Baezon’s Redstone Simulator, a tool for simming the way those precious red wires and torches operate before you painstakingly build them, and imported using MCEdit, although “hours of experimenting with prototypes, modifications to the design, and debugging took place in the game itself.”

A comment we passed along when we wrote about the Dwarf Fortress Turing machine is still relevant here: “Now the question is: can you build a computer capable of running dwarf fortress within dwarf fortress, then build an 8 bit computer in the dwarf fortress running on the computer in dwarf fortress. Because if so, you would win all the internets.” Replace “dwarf fortress” with “Minecraft” and the trippiness of this achievement starts to kick in.

(Thanks, Gil.)