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by shiado 1570 days ago
On the other hand Minecraft is the best-selling PC video game of all time and it was originally written in Java and the Java client is the definitive experience of the game.
3 comments

There's also Project Zomboid. Which doesn't really come close to Minecraft, but it's also developed in Java with a Lua engine on top.

Why? Well, I have absolutely no clue...

Heh, thanks for bringing that to my attention; based on the video alone, I think that'd be right up my alley (linky-linky: https://www.gog.com/game/project_zomboid and it's on Steam, too, if you're into that)

> Why?

From the GOG page:

Works on: Windows (10, 11), Linux (Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04), Mac OS X (10.9.0+)

is almost certainly "why," and I'd guess the lua part is because it seems to be the lingua franca of game modding, so meet folks where they are

Lua is very common - the OpenComputers mod for Minecraft exposes a Lua machine.
not really a desktop app though, is it?

And Minecraft is also a notable outlier. Outside of mobile, there are very few games written in java on PC or consoles.

Minecraft is an application which runs on the desktop... I don't see what you mean.
It's a game. It's UI is full screen and completely divorced from "standard" UI elements (WIMP, etc).

You can call it a desktop app, and you'd be correct in the most pedantic sense, but then every web app is also a desktop app since you run it on a desktop.

Chrome the browser is a desktop application, websites you visit in it are not.
That's right let's not forget about the famous Ruby and Javascript desktop games that have outsold Minecraft...
Limewire tho
How is it not a desktop app? Millions play it on their desktop.
Still, not really in the sense of the article - he's talking about desktop apps like word processors or email clients: Minecraft's GUI is just a big canvas that the 3D renderer renders into. It's not using any windowing components - IIRC, even the menu and buttons were custom.
Minecraft can pop up GUI windows but even mods rarely do it.

Running a server without nogui gets a window also.

Let's not exclude Runescape, when it was a java applet back in the early 2000's.