Minecraft truly is a game of near limitless possibilities, and this colossal map is a real testament to what one (or many) can do in the game when they put their mind to it.
ShireCraft is the result of five years, 1500 players, and hundreds of builds. There’s even a working railway system, which is ridiculous in the best possible way.
Crazy, right? They’ve even got their own set of rules and regulations – hell, you even have to apply to join – this is a proper, thriving virtual community, and they’ll have none of your nonsense.
Of course, don’t expect to be able to just jump in and start building giant Minecraft dicks wherever you want in ShireCraft. Small projects must be built in the wilderness, at least 100 blocks away from other creations, while large projects actually need approval from a staff member.
Take a look at an extract on their rules for infrastructure:
The Shire Transit Authority will maintain all rail lines and highways connecting between cities. Please do not build any rail lines or highways without their consent or supervision. Specific standards have to be met and the STA is the only team qualified to do so. Contact STA Director Andy if you have questions or wish to set up an appointment with your local STA representative.
Honestly, you should check out their Wiki page because it’s seriously in-depth. I guess you can’t build such an impressive world without implementing a few rules.
Take a look at a video tour of one of ShireCraft’s most impressive cities below.
I don’t know whether I’m impressed, or terrified that the ShireCraft community will one day rise up and overthrow society.
IBM’s Watson is still in its early days, but the cognitive computing system could end up having a substantial impact on a number of industries, particularly healthcare and education. For example, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in England is currently using the technology to improve the patient experience, while an interactive toy called the Cognitoys Dino uses Watson to answer a child’s questions in a kid-friendly and personalized way.
Another space that could largely benefit from Watson’s capabilities is the gaming industry. The interactive nature of games paired with Watson’s natural language processing capabilities and data analysis has already led to a number of new gaming initiatives, including the first-ever Minecraft game that utilizes Watson. Called ‘Medical Minecraft,’ the game was recently created by a group of high school students. In the game, players fly a nanobot through the bloodstream of a human boy while killing off elements of infectious diseases like measles and malaria.
When they hit roadblocks in the game, Watson – which is filled with information from medical journals on infectious disease from around the world – comes in to answer questions that will help the player progress. The purpose of the game is provide a learning experience for students that is not only exciting but also allows them to learn on their own terms since they’re the ones formulating the questions and determining what to ask next.
Speaking at the Games for Change Festival in New York City this week, head of strategy and business development at IBM’s Serious Gaming unit Porter Stowell discussed why he believes games like Medical Minecraft have the potential to revolutionize the way today’s students learn.
“When you tell [students] that it’s Minecraft time versus science time, their reaction is completely different,” Stowell said. “One of the things that I think educational designers get wrong, specifically in the corporate environment, is that they make the assumption that when they develop educational content, you’re going to pay attention. That you’re going to sit down, you’re going to focus on this learning module they created and you’re going to read every line and soak up every aspect of text. To me, learning in the traditional sense isn’t designed for the new normal. You have to win the war of the eyeball first.”
He also argued that games can help explain complicated subject matter in a way that other methods of teaching cannot because they allow players to experiment.
“I hear so much in the educational space that they want to simplify things. You don’t need to steer away from complexity,” he said. “What games do better than any other medium is they allow you to experiment. In games there is that safe environment for you to try something new, get a result, try again, do it differently, adapt, learn, repeat and experiment.”
I caught up with Microsoft Studios to discuss the future of Minecraft and to check out how the game will evolve in the near future.
Microsoft purchased Minecraft a couple of years back for a cool 2.5 billion dollars. Naturally, Microsoft has big plans for the franchise, and we were able to get a glimpse of those during E3 2016.
Minecraft showed off Realms for the Pocket Edition and Windows 10 tablet and PC version of the game at E3. Minecraft Realms allows players to rent a dedicated, persistent server, which friends and family can connect to and share without requiring a host to be online. Previously, Realms only supported the legacy PC and Mac versions of Minecraft, but eventually, the console versions of Minecraft will also be able to connect to a shared Realm.
In our demonstration session, we also saw how players will be able to further customize their experience across PC, tablets and phones. We also learned a bit about the future of Minecraft on Windows 10 Mobile.
What’s the deal with Minecraft on Windows phones?
One of the first questions I asked the Minecraft team was about the Windows Phone versions of the game. As Windows Central readers are no doubt aware, Windows on phones is in a strange place right now, where even Microsoft aren’t prioritizing development for some of its apps on the platform. Minecraft is no different, as the iOS and Android versions of Minecraft now support achievements, while the Windows Phone 8.1 version does not.
I asked what the plan was for the Windows Phone version of the game. Would the Pocket Edition be replaced a Windows 10 UWP version? Would it support Continuum? I mentioned how cool it would be to utilize the new Bluetooth Xbox One S controller to play Minecraft via Continuum on my Lumia 950 XL, for example.
Microsoft told me that those ideas and questions are exciting, but they have nothing to announce right now regarding their roadmap for Windows on phones. They said that the idea is prioritizing players where they’re at, effectively hinting that Windows Phone’s market share is to blame for the sluggish pace of development.
However, they did tell me though that the goal for Minecraft is 100% parity between all versions. Windows Phone, Windows 10, Xbox One, and beyond. They assured me that Windows Phone users would not be forgotten, but whether or not they hold true to their word remains to be seen. I certainly hope we do see some of the upcoming improvements to Minecraft, given how cool some of them are.
Exposing Minecraft’s code to players
Minecraft is switching to a data-driven architecture which allows players to totally customize and mod the game. Microsoft demonstrated this briefly at their E3 conference, showing how players can easily create aliens and UFOs to add to an existing game’s world.
Using simple editors, such as Notepad and Microsoft Paint, players will have access to the game’s textures and JSON files, allowing them to customize the game easily as they see fit. Those files can then be uploaded to your personal Realm server, and any changes you’ve made will appear for all players who connect to your Realm.
To demonstrate this, Microsoft showed off an athletic creeper, complete with sports gear and heightened speed. Changing the numerical value for “speed” in the game’s files and then reloading the game updated the creeper’s behavior. Similarly, they demonstrated how you could change the color of the creeper’s texture using something as basic as Microsoft Paint, swapping the color of his jersey from white to blue with the paint bucket tool.
The files to edit Minecraft on the Pocket Editions and Windows 10 PC version will be accessible via the each platform’s file explorers, and Microsoft said that it’s impossible to break the game by inputting the wrong JSON syntax. If Minecraft detects a code error, mob behaviors will just revert to their defaults.
Watching a bunny zombie eating carrots, and then proceeding to make baby zombies was particularly hilarious.
A speedier Creeper was relatively cool but nothing too impressive. Microsoft Studios then kicked it up a notch. They showed how you could add extra points to a zombie’s model to add texturing for bunny ears. They also demonstrated how you can transplant the entire brain of a rabbit into a zombie, simply by copy and pasting the code out of the JSON files. Watching a bunny zombie eating carrots, and then proceeding to make baby zombies was particularly hilarious.
The studio also showed how you can customize the death behavior of mobs, and even how mobs react to different events. They spawned a herd of cows that picked up the death behavior of exploding on ignition. The result was a veritable bovine nuclear apocalypse, and it was glorious. They showed us custom robot skins made in Microsoft Paint, and described 100-foot tall creepers and other wacky creations.
Microsoft said they have no plans to have a marketplace for custom skins or behavior files, and that they’d put it in the hands of the community to decide how distribution would work.
Bringing Minecraft players together
Microsoft closed by emphasizing that the goal is to bring all Minecraft players together. Part of that is ensuring their new moddable Minecraft is fully forwards compatible with future versions, but also that all versions must reach parity over the coming months.
The plan for Minecraft is to expose as much of the code as possible, to allow players to create the game they want — and with Realms, when they want. In the very near future, you’ll no longer have to wait for your friends to be online before getting back to work on that castle you started building together, nor will you have to copy and paste all your modded skins and behaviors from one version to the next. Through Realms, everything will just work, exemplifying Microsoft’s overarching dedication to computational mobility.
Obviously, the most powerful application for these new features is education. An easily editable Minecraft will not only teach kids the basics of texturing models in video games, but also the fundamentals of programming. As Minecraft progresses, it’s clear that Microsoft’s primarily ambitions weren’t necessarily about cashing in on the never-ending licensing bucks (although that’s a definitive side bonus), they want to use the game to train the next generation of software engineers. And with initiatives like Minecraft for Education, it’s already begun.
The new editing capabilities described above are heading out to players on Windows 10, iOS and Android in the Fall. At this point, we can only hope that Microsoft keeps their promise to bring updates to Minecraft for Windows mobile devices.
We’re entering an era of long-delayed “sequels,” with Independence Day: Resurgence (a follow up to 1996’s Independence Day) arriving in theaters hot on the heels of Finding Dory (a sequel to 2003’s Finding Nemo).
While Finding Dory premiered to good, if not great reviews, Independence Day: Resurgence is having a rough time with critics — here’s what the reviews have to say:
‘Resurgence’ Gives Blockbuster Fans Exactly What They Want And Expect
Independence Day: Resurgence” delivers swiftly and generously when it comes to the goods most viewers will have come for – the time-honored joys of blowing stuff up, in set pieces that escalate dizzyingly in size and context. “Independence Day: Resurgence” delivers swiftly and generously when it comes to the goods most viewers will have come for – the time-honored joys of blowing stuff up, in set pieces that escalate dizzyingly in size and context.
Independence Day: Resurgence is packed so full of cheese, explosions and too-convenient plot-twists it could sink a ship; yet it all adds up to a fun, old-fashioned disaster pic
The “so bad it’s good” factor occasionally kicks in. But even with those ascents from base camp to high camp, this noisy, assaultive, stunt-oriented film leaves us clawing for the oxygen of human and dramatic interest.
A reboot quite without the first film’s audacity and fun. The plot’s potentially interesting dependence on the idea that there are aliens who are allies as well as enemies is lost in a tiresomely written muddle – an all-but-plotless melee of boring digital carnage.
And It Banks On Us Remembering A Lot Of The Original
Whether our collective memory of “Independence Day” is quite as treasured and detailed as “Resurgence” imagines it to be is another question. Its rather scattered screenplay — written by five hands, where the 1996 film managed with two — forges a dense network of callbacks to established events and characters, in certain cases via next-generation newbies.
The plotlines and characters are too numerous and disorganised; the action feels diffuse, and we can never be certain what is happening in which part of the world, or how Group A got to Location D so speedily when they seemed to be many hundreds of miles away and all the intervening roads were destroyed in an alien attack.
But While There’s No Will Smith (!), Jeff Goldblum Does His Best To Hold Things Down
Goldblum, more than anyone here, is essential. While the VFX tornado swirls around us, he brings things (if you’ll excuse the phrase) down to earth, allowing us to revel in the sheer giddy movieness of it all, and thereby forgive the majority of its shortcomings.
Minecraft players on Android or iOS devices undoubtedly know about the former limitations of playing Minecraft Pocket Edition line. Whether you rented a server or figured out how to host your own, the experience wasn’t all that fun: Mobs and animals were missing, and the maps were rather boring.
Last week, Microsoft updated Minecraft Pocket Edition for iOS and Android, adding Realms, the official multiplayer hosting service for Minecraft. If you’ve been looking for a better Minecraft online experience, here’s what you need to know about Realms.
You gotta pay to play
New subscribers of the $7.99 plan will get a 30-day trial to test out the new wares, while subscribers of the $3.99 plan will start paying right away. The difference in the two plans outside of cost is the more expensive subscription allows for you and 10 friends (11 players total) to be in a realm at the same time. The less expensive option only allows you and two friends, or three total players, in the realm at any given time.
All billing is done as a subscription service through Apple’s App Store or the Google Play store.
Well, one of you has to pay
At first glance, it would appear you’ll need a subscription to connect to the Realms server. That, however, is not the case.
Only one person needs to pay the monthly fee to keep the server active, meaning if you can convince enough friends and family members to join and split the cost, each person won’t have to pay all that much.
Keep in mind, however, that the owner of the server has complete control. Meaning, he or she can kick you out, reset the world to a brand-new state, switch between creative and survival modes. And if he or she decides to cancel the subscription, the realm and all of your accomplishments disappear.
Before you can join or create a realm, you’ll need to log into an Xbox Live account within the Minecraft Pocket Edition app. The good news is you don’t need a paid Gold account in order to connect to a server and start crafting away.
You can sign up for a free Xbox Live Silver account, as can your friends (or in my case, my kids) and access Realms without issue.
Platform compatibility
While adding Realms capabilities to Minecraft Pocket Edition is welcome and opens up a whole new world of possibilities, there are some limitations. Primarily, users of Minecraft Pocket Edition are only able to join and play in Realms from compatible platforms.
iOS, Android and Windows 10 versions of Minecraft all play nicely together, while the PC and Mac versions of Minecraft will not work with a Pocket Edition Realms server.
In other words, if you have an iOS device and your buddies are all on Android, you can still play together. But don’t expect to connect with your friend who plays on a Mac.
You’ll need Wi-Fi
Before you get too excited and expect to work on your farm while traveling down the highway or standing in line at a coffee shop, keep in mind that in order to connect to the Realms service you’ll need to have an active Wi-Fi connection. Bummer, huh?
You can read more bout Minecraft Realms and other small caveats to the service here.
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