<p><pre><code> I was disappointed to find out that not only is Minecraft
closed-source but it also hasn't shipped an official API
</code></pre>
There is currently a plan for this to be added to the game, there's no public time-line but they are working on an API. There are also some really amazing community projects that have built this sort of thing, server side there is bukkit and client side there is forge.<p><a href="http://dev.minecraft.net/blog/" rel="nofollow">http://dev.minecraft.net/blog/</a> <a href="https://github.com/Mojang/Minecraft-API" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Mojang/Minecraft-API</a> <a href="http://bukkit.org" rel="nofollow">http://bukkit.org</a> <a href="http://www.minecraftforge.net/forum/" rel="nofollow">http://www.minecraftforge.net/forum/</a>
"There are a few out there, but quite frankly they all reeked of Java and were limited by the nature of decompiling as a workaround to Minecrafts lack of an API."<p>What does Java smell like?<p>Seriously though, is it really the language that's the problem here? Honestly, this guy is a JavaScript developer. If there ever was code that had potential to "reek" it would be JavaScript. However, it would be ignorant to discredit an entire language and toolset because of that. Don't judge every line of Java code out there because <i>Minecraft</i>, of all things, doesn't have any kind of public API or because it's closed source. Especially since Java has such a thriving Open Source community.<p>The article was however really interesting, and I'm glad the author wrote about his experiences. I've been playing around with Minecraft and thought it would be fun to write a clone of my own.
Another open source voxel engine worth checking out is PolyVox (which powers Voxeliens, among other things).<p><a href="http://www.volumesoffun.com/polyvox-about/" rel="nofollow">http://www.volumesoffun.com/polyvox-about/</a>
As a side project I've been contributing to a remake of voxel FPS Ace of Spades based on a C/Lua stack: <a href="http://github.com/iamgreaser/buldthensnip" rel="nofollow">http://github.com/iamgreaser/buldthensnip</a><p>It's already a playable game at this point, but I have some interest in following the progress of a JS engine for the kinds of reasons outlined in this blog - code reuse tends to be a lot better within the browser.
Have a look at this, exactly what you are looking for: <a href="http://badassjs.com/post/40691367335/voxel-js-a-minecraft-like-block-based-game-engine" rel="nofollow">http://badassjs.com/post/40691367335/voxel-js-a-minecraft-li...</a>