Infiniminer

Infiniminer
Author(s)	Zach Barth Chris Gengler
Platform(s)	PC
Written in	C#
Latest release	1.5
Release date	April 29, 2009
Rating(s)	Unrated
Size	1.45 MB
License	MIT
Source code	Yes (Source)

Infiniminer is an open source multiplayer block-based sandbox building and digging game, inspired by the games Infinifrag, Team Fortress 2, and Motherload, in which the player plays as a miner searching for minerals by carving tunnels through procedurally generated block-based maps and building structures. Infiniminer is commonly associated with Minecraft for giving Markus Persson (Notch) the idea for where to go with Minecraft, and is often regarded as a direct forerunner.

History

A screenshot of Infiniminer.

A bridge across a cave.

A block of diamond ore.

Clouds in the dark sky.

Infiniminer was developed by Zach Barth of Zachtronics Industries with the help of his friend Chris Gengler in their spare time, and released in steps of incremental updates during late April and early May of 2009. It quickly garnered a following on message boards around the internet, and inspired Notch to start working on Minecraft shortly after it was discontinued.

Like Minecraft, Infiniminer is a block-based mining and construction game. Players can play on one of two teams, Red or Blue, as one of four classes: Miner, Prospector, Engineer, or Sapper. Each class has their own set of abilities, tools, and blocks they can build with, with each costing a certain amount of metal ore to place. Many building blocks are team-colored, and most exist to serve a specific function rather than being purely decorative. Players and tools are represented by flat sprites rather than three-dimensional objects. The sky is perpetually dark, and the landscape is made up entirely of bare dirt, stone, ores, and lava blocks which flow similarly to liquids in Minecraft classic. The maps are limited in size, and walking off the edge or digging through the bottom causes the player to fall into the void and die.

Infiniminer was originally intended to be played as a team-based competitive game, where the goal is to locate and excavate precious materials such as gold and diamonds, and bring the findings to the surface to earn points for one's team, until the winning team reaches a certain amount of points. However, as the game gained popularity, many players decided it was much more fun to build things than to compete for points.

Zachtronics discontinued development of the game less than a month after its first release, after a major source leak was discovered due to the developers forgetting to obfuscate a new release, which allowed players to make unauthorized modifications to the game. Soon, there were players using modified clients to cheat on servers, and multiple communities arose each with different versions of the game, and it was hard for the developers to maintain Infiniminer, resulting in further development ceasing and the game becoming open source. In 2015, the Google cloud server for the game was shut down, making the server browser nonfunctional, but direct connection to servers is still possible. The game is still available for download, and the source code of Infiniminer is available under the MIT License. Building Infiniminer requires Visual Studio 2008 and XNA Game Studio 3.0. Infiniminer is also included in Zach-Like, a Zachtronics book and game bundle.

According to Notch, Infiniminer was "the game I wanted to do". Notch enjoyed the game, but found it flawed, noting that while building was fun, there wasn’t enough variation, and he thought that the big red and blue team-colored blocks were "pretty horrible". He believed that a fantasy game in that style "would work really really well", so he created a simple first-person engine in the Infimininer style, reusing some art and code from multiple earlier projects, to create the cave game tech test, which would eventually go on to become Minecraft.

Controls

The help menu.

• W, A, S, and D keys to move
• Spacebar to jump
• E to switch tools
• Left click to use a tool
• R or scroll to switch block type
• Q to ping teammates on the radar
• Y to send a chat message to all players
• U to send a chat message to all teammates
• N to change teams
• M to change class
• 1 to deposit ore from a bank block
• 2 to withdraw ore from a bank block
• esc + Y to quit
• esc + N to reset the player
• F1 to open the help menu

Classes

The red team classes.

The blue team classes.

• Miner
  • Can build: solid, team force field, ladder
  • Can carry extra loot and can dig twice as fast
• Prospector
  • Can build: solid, team force field, ladder, beacon
  • Can use the prospectron tool to detect gold and diamonds and place "dig here!" signs on dirt
• Engineer
  • Can build: solid, both team force fields, road, ladder, jump, shock, bank, beacon
  • Can carry extra ore and can use the deconstructor tool to instantly break any block they can place
• Sapper
  • Can build: solid, team force field, ladder, explosive
  • Can use the detonator tool to activate their placed explosives

Blocks

Natural

• Dirt - Makes up the bulk of the map, can have "dig here!" signs placed on it
• Rock - Can only be removed with explosives
• Lava - Kills players on contact, flows downward and outward infinitely, can only be removed with explosives
• Ore - Generates in large veins, gives 20 ore points when mined
• Gold - Generates in small veins, gives 100 loot points when deposited
• Diamond - Generates alone, gives 1000 loot points when deposited

Artificial

• Solid block - Comes in red and blue, a basic building material, costs 10 ore
• Force field block - Comes in red and blue, players on the matching team pass through it while players on the opposite team collide with it, costs 25 ore
• Road block - Players move twice as fast while walking on it, costs 10 ore
• Ladder block - Allows players to climb up and down, costs 25 ore
• Jump block - Launches players upward, costs 25 ore
• Shock block - Kills players that touch its shock surface (the bottom), costs 50 ore
• Bank block - Comes in red and blue, allows players on the matching team to deposit or withdraw ore, costs 50 ore
• Beacon block - Comes in red and blue, creates a radar waypoint that players on the matching team can see, costs 50 ore
• Explosive block - Destroys all players and blocks besides banks, beacons, gold, and diamonds within a 5x5x5 area when detonated, costs 100 ore

Removed

• Teleporter block - Teleports players to random locations on the map, costs 200 ore
• Home block - Comes in red and blue, allows players on the matching team to deposit loot, cannot be built or destroyed

Historical images

• 

  The old texture for the shock block.

• 

  The old texture for the red bank block.

• 

  The old texture for the blue bank block.

Gallery

• 

  Promotional image for the full release of Infiniminer.

Trivia

• Infiniminer was not the first block-based game created by Zach Barth: Infinitron, Intelligent Destruction and Infinifrag and were similar and earlier games in the so-called "Infinifranchise". However, Infiniminer was the first of these games to have gameplay focused on collecting and using resources from a natural environment. The Infinifranchise has continued with the more recent Zachtronics game Infinifactory.
• The default port of 25565 used for Minecraft servers is directly copied from the port used for Infiniminer servers, 5565. c0.0.15a-05311904 actually uses the port 5565 but it was changed to 25565 in an unknown later version.
• Infiniminer has several death messages:
  • <player> was killed by a misadventure!
    • Appears when the player falls into the void.
  • <player> was killed by gravity!
    • Appears when the player falls from a high hight.
  • <player> was killed by an explosion!
    • Appears when the player is killed by an explosion.
  • <player> was incinerated by lava!
    • Appears when the player is killed by lava.
  • <player> was electrocuted!
    • Appears when the player is killed by touching the bottom surface of a shock block.

External links

• The origins of Minecraft (archived) - The Word of Notch.
• Credits due (archived) - The Word of Notch.
• Zach Barth stating why Infiniminer failed.
• Infiniminer on the English Wikipedia.
• Infiniminer Official Website.
• Infiniminer Wiki.

See also

• Dwarf Fortress, another game preceding Minecraft.
  • Dwarf Fortress Wiki
  • Dwarf Fortress Website
• RubyDung, another game preceding Minecraft.
• Zombie Town, another game preceding Minecraft.
• Legend of the Chambered, another game preceding Minecraft.
• Miners4k, a game about mining made by Notch in 2006.