Minecraft for the Nintendo Switch is about to look dramatically better when connected to televisions, and it’s thanks to the cautionary diligence of its console handlers that we’re seeing it now, a few months after release. The game shipped on May 11 locked in both handheld and TV mode at 720p, pushing on the order of about a million pixels. After the update, it’ll run at 1080p in TV mode, and push over twice as many pixels.
How’d they do it? Microsofttold TIME in May that the reason for the lower resolution involved “issues currently experienced shifting from one resolution to the other when docking/undocking.” The company passed along speculation from 4J Studios that 1080p might be attainable, but it couldn’t promise anything.
I just spoke with 4J Studios CTO Richard Reavy, and it turns out the issue of getting Minecraft for the Switch to 1080p involved double and triple checking the interface — and a bit of performance optimization. (4J develops all console versions of Minecraft.)
Reavy tells me the game needed further optimization to handle 1080p comfortably, but that the studio was confident it could make that happen given sufficient time.
“We did spend some time analyzing our GPU usage and optimizing things before we did this move as well,” he says. “We needed to spend some time looking at the fill rate and being more careful with that, just because of the number of pixels in 1080p. We kind of knew we could do the optimization and we would get there with the performance. But yeah, ultimately, the fundamental problem was switching resolution.”
More specifically, switching the user interface at different resolutions. Reavy tells me the user interface on each of the console versions — besides the Switch, they include the PlayStation 3 and 4, PS Vita, Xbox 360 and One, and the Wii U — have custom user interfaces. “Every interface seam is handcrafted by our art team to suit the exact resolution of the console it’s on,” says Reavy. Everything through May ran at a fixed resolution. But when the Switch arrived, 4J Studios had to grapple with its signature feature: transitioning dynamically between different resolutions without hiccups or pauses.
“We wanted to make sure the transition was really slick, and that the user wouldn’t notice anything, like it taking seconds unloading one user interface system for another,” he says. “And also because you can dock and undock your console at any point, it can be quite problematic that the user could switch the console at a really inopportune moment.” This explains Microsoft’s delay in rolling out the feature between May and now: 4J Studios simply wanted the time to thoroughly vet the user interface while changing resolution at any point while playing the game.
For now, 1080p is the biggest technical revision. The draw distance is still a bit lower than on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, you’re limited to “Medium” world sizes (3,072-by-3,072 blocks versus “Large,” which supports 5,120-by-5,120 blocks) and you don’t get the checkbox to create “Amplified” terrain. “Everything else is unchanged at present,” says Reavy. “We really just wanted to make sure jumping up the resolution wouldn’t cause any problems.”
Those differences may fade when, later this fall, Minecraft for the Switch transitions to the much more versatile and scalable “bedrock engine” that currently runs on Windows 10, iOS and Android devices. And it’s at that point things get really interesting, because Microsoft and Nintendo will be doing something that has no industry precedent, allowing Xbox One, iPhone, Windows PC and Nintendo Switch owners to play together in a single, seamlessly backend-unified ecosystem.
If you’ve got the urge to spend a few hours running around Chernarus today, you don’t need to boot up Arma 2 or DayZ. Now you can do it in Minecraft, thanks to map-maker Criand who has recreated the entire map in beautiful—and incredibly accurate—blocky glory. Here’s a big gallery of images to scroll through, (I’ve posted a few shots below as well) and there’s a trailer above.
In a Reddit post, Criand says the project began in 2014 and took an estimated 1800 hours to complete. It really shows: the detail is amazing, the various cities, towns, roads, airfields, castle ruins, and landmarks are instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent a good amount of time in Arma 2 or DayZ. There’s even an interactive zoomable version of the map.
The Chernarus map isn’t currently available to download, though Criand says it will be “eventually.” In the meantime, there’s a server you can join (no mods required) to check it out, run around, and kill some zombies using the IP play.mcraftz.com.
We’ve launched the PC Gamer Club, a membership program that offers ad-free browsing on this site and a bunch of other benefits including a digital subscription to PC Gamer magazine, monthly game keys, access to our private Discord server and more. For all the info, visit club.pcgamer.com.
Remember the Halo live action TV show Microsoft announced way back in 2013? Unlike Spartans that never die, it sure felt like the project’s been dead for quite a while. The tech titan told AR12Gaming in an interview, though, that it has never stopped developing the series and that it’s still working with Steven Spielberg and Showtime like it said years ago. 343 Industries, the Microsoft Studios subsidiary in charge of the franchise, said it’s merely taking its time to ensure that the final product can meet fans’ expectations.
AR12Gaming reached out to Microsoft to check on the project’s status, considering it’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about it. Not to mention, Microsoft has cancelled a bunch of projects within the past few years, including Xbox Entertainment Studios and Xbox Fitness. Unfortunately, the company remains as secretive as ever and has yet to reveal any juicy info about the show, such as when we’ll finally be able to watch it.
Here’s the Microsoft spokesperson’s full statement:
“Progress on the Halo Television Series continues. We want to ensure we’re doing this the right way together with a team of creative partners (Steven Spielberg and Showtime) that can help us build the best Halo series that fans expect and deserve. We have no further details to share at this time.”
After an up and down first year of existence, the Pokémon Go Fest was supposed to be a triumphant event where players could work together in news ways and earn unique awards. The event unfortunately suffered as cell networks and the game’s servers couldn’t keep up with the strain, preventing many attendees who had traveled from around the world from participating. Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke was actually booed when he appeared at the event, and later in the day the company announced it would refund attendees for their ticket costs, add $100 in PokéCoins to their accounts and give them the Legendary Pokémon Lugia.
The issues, and Niantic’s inability to deal with them before they derailed the event, recalled many of the problems Pokémon Go has dealt with since its launch. Incredibly popular right out of the gate, the game suffered with significant instability for months, and still occasionally has problems preventing players for logging in now. It’s the first augmented reality game with participation and appeal on a massive scale, but putting its most hardcore players through a day like yesterday is just another strike against it, even as the money continues to roll in.
For those who are still trying to catch them all, however, there are some new updates. If you’re in the Chicago area, special areas from the Fest have been expanded across a two mile area around Grant Park through Monday morning. For players everywhere, there are a number of bonuses that will be available through Monday evening at 8PM ET:
Double Stardust
Double Candy
Double XP
Increased Pokémon encounters
Reduced hatching distance
Reduced buddy distance
Also, beginning today, Legendary raids have been unlocked, featuring Lugia as well as Articuno monsters. They will be joined “soon” by Zapdos and Moltres.
After no shortage of hype, Warner Bros. is finally ready to show what Steven Spielberg’s take on Ready Player One is all about. The studio has released the first trailer for the adaptation of Ernest Cline’s novel, and it’s clear that the flick is playing up not just the book’s disjunction between a dystopic real world and VR, but the endless references to pop culture of decades gone by. Some of them are patently obvious in the clip — you’ll see a famous time-traveling car and a certain giant robot — but some are of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it variety. Take Duke Nukem in the epic battle above, for example.
The preview is a whirlwind tour that focuses more on the spectacle of the OASIS’ virtual world than the story, which isn’t surprising when the movie isn’t slated to premiere until March 2018. It’s big on slam-bang action scenes (such as a gigantic virtual race) more than anything else. As such, we have some unanswered questions: how closely does it hew to the tale of Wade Watts and his quest to win James Halliday’s final game? How much will it lean on spectacle versus tackling the broader concepts of the novel? It could take months before we have a better sense of that, but it’s apparent that the visual style is at least on point — it’s easy to see why people would flock to the spectacle of the OASIS given a real world devoid of adventure.
We’ve launched the PC Gamer Club, a membership program that offers ad-free browsing on this site and a bunch of other benefits including a digital subscription to PC Gamer magazine, monthly game keys, access to our private Discord server and more. For all the info, visit club.pcgamer.com.
