YouTube sensation DanTDM is coming to Birmingham with his smash hit brand of gaming.
He has added a new date at Birmingham Hippodrome on October 23 after his first tour sold out in 24 hours.
Many people may not have heard of him, but to Minecraft gamers he is a huge star – and there’s extraordinary demand to see him live.
DanTDM is bringing his Minecraft show to Birmingham
Dan ‘The Diamond Minecraft’ Middleton has his own YouTube channel with 14 million subscribers where he posts his comical gaming commentary videos, which have had more than six billion views.
He talks fans through the game of Minecraft, offering his tips and advice.
As you may have heard, we’ve been making a few changes to the way redstone works in Pocket / Windows 10 Edition – just part of our ongoing mission to give minecrafters as many cool tools as possible. Most recently, we’ve been trying to simplify the peculiarities of redstone without compromising on the power.
Talking of power, right now a block can:
give off power (often referred to as a strong signal or directly powered signal)
be powered (often referred to as giving off a weak, or indirectly powered signal)
be unpowered
In the image below you can see this in action. The redstone block on the left gives off a strong signal, lighting up the adjacent lamp. But the lamp diagonal to the redstone block and the one next to that remain unpowered. Over on the right, a redstone wire has been placed on the middle lamp, allowing it to carry the strong signal from the redstone block and light the lamp next to it.
Pistons get powered the exact same way!
Of course, Redstone engineers from PC / Mac may note something missing here: something our community calls quasi-connectivity!
What’s quasi-connectivity? In a sense, it’s a bug. But it’s one that’s become so useful to crafters that it’s become a feature! In the PC edition of Minecraft, pistons can receive redstone power from a distance of two blocks when they are placed in a very specific diagonal position, rather than from a block right next to it. But blocks only get updated when something affects adjacent blocks. It means that you can power a piston and then remove the power without the piston detecting it! It puts the piston in this state where it actually needs to be deactivated, but doesn’t know yet. Clever minecrafters exploit that to build elaborate trigger mechanisms known as Block Update Detectors: when something happens to a block next to a piston – like a block being placed or destroyed, gravel falling, fire igniting, rails re-orientating or even cake being eaten – the piston will “wake up”, notice that it isn’t powered any more, retract and trigger something else.
We never really intended this – but the community quickly showed us its potential, using it to build automatic farming contraptions, flying machines and so much more.
When remaking Minecraft for Pocket, we had to rethink how redstone works: we decided it’d make more sense to remove the bug – or, rather, never put it in – but offer an alternative, official way to achieve the same result. And so we’ve introduced the Observer block. It checks for changes in the environment and, if triggered, switches between emitting a strong signal and an unpowered state – but without relying on a bug to do so.
We’ve tested this with lots and lots of different builds, and we can’t wait to see what you lot do with it. We’ve also added some other cool stuff: pistons can now push chests and many other things!
We’re not done yet, either! We’ll continue listening to what you folks have to say and refine redstone accordingly. PC crafters can rest easy, too: we aren’t planning to remove quasi-connectivity from that version. But stay tuned for other exciting developments there, too!
Mojang today announced that they are making changes to the way redstone works in Minecraft Pocket and Windows 10 Edition. They are trying to simplify the peculiarities of redstone without compromising on the power. Minecraft community discovered a bug and called it as a feature called quasi-connectivity. Before Mojang team fixed it, the community showed us its potential, using it to build automatic farming contraptions, flying machines and so much more.
What is quasi-connectivity?
In the PC edition of Minecraft, pistons can receive redstone power from a distance of two blocks when they are placed in a very specific diagonal position, rather than from a block right next to it. But blocks only get updated when something affects adjacent blocks. It means that you can power a piston and then remove the power without the piston detecting it! It puts the piston in this state where it actually needs to be deactivated, but doesn’t know yet. Clever minecrafters exploit that to build elaborate trigger mechanisms known as Block Update Detectors: when something happens to a block next to a piston – like a block being placed or destroyed, gravel falling, fire igniting, rails re-orientating or even cake being eaten – the piston will “wake up”, notice that it isn’t powered any more, retract and trigger something else.
Instead of fixing this bug, now Mojang team is bringing this feature to Minecraft Pocket Edition. They are introducing a new feature called the Observer block. It checks for changes in the environment and, if triggered, switches between emitting a strong signal and an unpowered state. Also, pistons can now push chests and many other things.
It’s official, Pocket Minecraft finally has Oculus Rift support; this is great news for Windows 10 PC gamers as the VR headset is now compatible with that version of Minecraft. For mobile gamers, this is not very good news.
The Oculus Rift support is exclusive to PC’s that have Windows 10 and are playing on the new Windows 10 edition of Minecraft. This is a free update for this platform and all users with the Oculus Rift VR headset can now experience the world through that headset.
While this is not the first VR headset to be compatible with Minecraft, the Oculus Rift does offer more services such as external camera tracking which gives Minecraft Pocked Edition players a different experience.
Gamers also have the option of using a Samsung Gear VR which was made compatible with Minecraft earlier this year; both headsets use a Xbox One controller and there is no Touch Motion Controller support for either headset just yet.
The next big update for Minecraft Pocket Edition is Update 0.16.0 which will be released this Fall; the developers have been releasing various hints and have teased a variety of screenshots. Several upcoming features and adjustments have been confirmed by the developers however, there are also various potential features that could be in this update.
It was revealed on Twitter that Minecraft Pocket Edition will be receiving Deep Oceans and also the Ocean Monuments which should also contain Guardians; players also expect that Polar Bears will be added to the game in this update. The Polar Bear mod has been hinted at for several months but has yet to be added to the game, it would make sense for the team to release this mob for the Fall/Winter period.
Some new hints from the developers have suggested that an in-game Crafting Guide Book will be added with this update; in addition to this, players can look forwards to Loot Tables which will impact item drops in the world.
New information shows that Minecraft Pocket Edition will be receiving a version exclusive where the maps use a variety of colors to represent the different biomes in the world. As a bonus, players can expect to see new Resource Packs and potentially even Custom Resource Packs.
Developer Mojang will be making some changes in how redstone works in its popular sandbox game Minecraft for Windows 10 and Pocket edition gamers.
For those of you who don’t play Minecraft, redstone (not to be confused with the Windows 10 update that has the code name “Redstone”) is a special substance in the game’s world that can transmit power. PC and Mac users also have another way to use redstone called quasi-connectivity, and it’s actually a bug that, in Mojang’s own words, has turned into a feature.
In the PC edition of Minecraft, pistons can receive redstone power from a distance of two blocks when they are placed in a very specific diagonal position, rather than from a block right next to it. But blocks only get updated when something affects adjacent blocks. It means that you can power a piston and then remove the power without the piston detecting it! It puts the piston in this state where it actually needs to be deactivated, but doesn’t know yet. Clever minecrafters exploit that to build elaborate trigger mechanisms known as Block Update Detectors: when something happens to a block next to a piston – like a block being placed or destroyed, gravel falling, fire igniting, rails re-orientating or even cake being eaten – the piston will “wake up”, notice that it isn’t powered any more, retract and trigger something else.
The Windows 10 and Pocket versions of Minecraft did not add this “feature” but Mojang decided to create an Observer block that basically does the same thing:
It checks for changes in the environment and, if triggered, switches between emitting a strong signal and an unpowered state – but without relying on a bug to do so. We’ve tested this with lots and lots of different builds, and we can’t wait to see what you lot do with it. We’ve also added some other cool stuff: pistons can now push chests and many other things!
PC and Mac users will still have this redstone bug in place; Mojang does not intend to “fix” it.
