A new update has been released for the Windows 10 and Pocket Edition of Minecraft, adding new “redstone components” for players, as well new environments and other features.
Gamestop reports the .13 update will grant players access to a unique material known as redstone.
Mining redstone blocks will produce a substance known as redstone dust, which can be used to carry signals between objects and structures. Redstone can be utilized in a variety of ways, allowing players to construct creative mechanisms such as doorbells, switchable lights and even roller coasters.
The update will feature simple redstone items such as “redstone wires, redstone torches, redstone lamps, levers, buttons, pressure plates, tripwire hooks, note blocks, trapped chests, detector rails and TNT.” Future updates will bring more advanced tools like Pistons and Repeaters.
In addition, players may now stumble upon hidden temples when exploring desert levels. The temples will hold valuable loot if the players can survive its hazards.
Apparently, bunnies are also a thing now. The cute critters will hop across worlds, and help themselves to your crops if you aren’t vigilant.
Players now also have the option of purchasing the Biome Settler Pack for $1.99, which adds over two dozen new character skins to the game including archer, hunter and brewer models.
In other news, Microsoft announced this week that Minecraft developer Mojang joined up with Code.org, to produce a programming tutorial for children for the website’s annual Hour of Code event in December.
“Teachers and students can access the tutorial across PCs, tablets and phones to conduct an hour of code at home and in their classrooms on nearly any devices,” said Deirdre Quarnstrom, director of Minecraft for Education at Microsoft.
“Microsoft will also host Hour of Code events around the world and within Microsoft stores kicking off early next month,” she added.
Last year, Microsoft purchased Minecraft and Mojang for $2.5 million, launching Minecraft for Education soon after.
Minecraft Updates, Gameplay, News: New Update Adds Redstone Components, Desert Temples, Cute Bunnies
This month, the American children’s writer Jeff Kinney published the 10th book in his blockbusting Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Entitled Old School, it came out simultaneously in more than 90 countries, and within a single week had sold a million copies. With figures like this, Kinney need never have strayed from home and could have simply concentrated on writing the 11th book, but instead he decided to head out on tour to promote it even more. In the past two weeks he has visited Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Spain, China and Japan. This week it’s the UK, and then he’s on to other sundry European destinations, before heading on to South America.
“It’s Tuesday, right? At least, I think it is,” he says with a laugh, settling into his central London hotel suite, and sounding far perkier than someone carrying that amount of jet lag should. Given his astonishing sales record –the number of copies in print of Wimpy Kid now exceeds 164 million, there’s a film franchise and Time magazine has voted him among the 100 most influential people on the planet – you might expect Kinney to have superstar tendencies, albeit of the literary kind. But to call him unassuming would be to understate matters. Kinney, in his pressed shirt and ironed chinos, is almost vigorously ordinary and normal.
“I’m always worried kids will be disappointed when they come to meet the writer of their favourite book, only to find this middle-aged, average-looking guy,” the 44-year-old says.
Kinney’s early ambition was to become a newspaper cartoonist. While at university, he had created a comic strip about a socially maladjusted freshman called Igdoof, and spent several years trying to get his work syndicated. But, he says, “my drawings weren’t professional enough”. He started designing children’s websites, and in his spare time continued drawing, replacing Igdoof with a middle-school student by the name of Greg Heffley. And lo, Diary of a Wimpy Kid was born. It has probably worked so well because of its universality: we were all awkward kids, once. Written, as the title implies, like a diary – in handwriting – and full of simple yet sprightly cartoons, it’s more comic strip than novel, and follows the eternal travails of adolescent Greg, his family and friends. The latest story finds him attempting to unplug himself from the modern world – switching off phones and computers – with reassuringly calamitous results. As with the previous nine books, this one runs to a very precise 217 pages (Kinney likes order and uniformity), and children, as ever, are devouring it the way they do sugar.
But if his books are easy to read, Kinney insists they are torture to write. “I enjoy having worked, but I don’t enjoy the work,” he says. “It’s a grind. I can spend four hours trying to come up with a single joke” – his books are full of jokes – “and fail to write even one. And I spend up to 17 hours a day on the drawings. It breaks you down.”
He must surely be exaggerating here, if only because the man has cranked out 10 volumes in just eight and a half years. But if he struggles with the writing process, then he does enjoy the spoils of his efforts. He downplays giving talks alongside the Titanic director, James Cameron, and enjoying dinner with US presidents past and present, but will concede that his unexpected success has benefits.
“I never expected to become wealthy, but I do like being able to make positive changes in my town,” he says. Kinney lives with his wife and two boys in Massachusetts, in a town called, perhaps appropriately for an Everyman, Plainville, where they live in a “regular” house and pursue a largely “ordinary” life. But he has built a soccer field for the local school, and a downtown bookshop called An Unlikely Story. “It’s become the cultural hub of the region, and that is very validating,” he says.
This has been his busiest year: he has written the screenplay for the fourth Wimpy Kid film, is planning two seasonal specials, and also a musical. The books, meanwhile, keep coming.
“I often debate whether to try and create something else or simply be happy with what I have,” he says. “But I always feel that when a cartoonist retires their characters, it leaves a hole in people’s lives. I don’t want to bring them to an end unless I have good reason to do so. And I don’t, yet.”
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Jeff Kinney has sold 150 million copies of his book
Ten years ago today, on November 18, 2005, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” officially released in theaters across the U.S., and there was much rejoicing.
And by “that,” obviously, we mean the part immediately after Harry Potter’s name emerges on the binding list of Tri-Wizard Tournament competitors, when Albus Dumbledore comes raging down the stairs, grabs Harry by the collar, and bellows, “HARRY! DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET OF FIRE?!!”
Of all the things that got lost in translation when “Harry Potter” made the move from page to screen, this is the one screw-up that fans are still talking about. It’s the gaffe that must not be named; the Voldemort of mistakes.
And today, in honor of the movie’s tenth anniversary, we’re taking a closer look at it.
Needless to say, this scene played out pretty differently in J.K. Rowling’s novel, where Dumbledore was described as asking the question calmly — and where he definitely didn’t pull that crazy shoulder-grabbing move, which probably terrified Harry and gave him a near-fatal case of shaken-wizard syndrome.
Truth: The GOBLEDDA FIYAH moment was just the most egregious example of the wise old wizard being portrayed in a way that was wildly out of character. J.K. Rowling’s Dumbledore was ancient, wise, and always in quiet control (albeit infuriatingly vague at times.) Gambon’s Dumbledore? Much more shouty. Like, at least 5000% more shouty.
The best-case scenario? Ignorance. Unlike Richard Harris (who played Dumbledore in the first two “Harry Potter” films before his death in 2002), Gambon has a personal policy against reading the books that he’s starring in adaptations of — which means he had no idea, going in, that Book Dumbledore was such a soft-spoken guy.
When asked about acting in the “Harry Potter” series, he famously replied, “I don’t have to play anyone really. I just stick on a beard and play me, so it’s no great feat.” (So basically, that’s not even Dumbledore we were watching. It’s just Michael Gambon in a prosthetic beard.)
A Brief History Of The Worst ‘Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire’ Mistake Ever
Minecraft v0.13.0 for Android entered beta earlier this month. Gamers downloaded the game. They tested it. They played with the new Redstone components. They dealt with bunnies. They opened and closed new types of wooden doors. Everything checked out, so now the latest version has gone stable. Non-beta testers are free to download the update straight from Google Play.
The addition of Redstone is a big deal, as it gives players the capability to create all sorts of things using wires, buttons, pressure plates, and other ways of managing power. That said, this release contains the first set of Redstone producers and consumers. The remainder of the functionality is on the way.
But let’s not forget the little tweaks. Skeletons now run away from wolves. Ghasts and Slimes actually spawn. Minecarts, boats, and beetroot soup are stackable. Obsidian breaks in 6.5 seconds instead of 3.
I’m going to stop here. You can read the changelog for more
What’s New:
New Features:
Redstone Circuits: Redstone Wire, Torch, Lamp, Levers, Buttons, Pressure plates, Tripwires, Trapped Chests and Detector Rails. Craft them all!
Cute, fluffy, crop-eating, bunnies
Desert temples
New types of wooden doors
Removed Features:
Stonecutter (RIP)
Herobrine (RIP)
Tweaks:
Redstone can be used to control doors, trapdoors, TNT and rails
Faster boats with improved handling
Increased item tooltip visibility time in Windows 10 Edition Beta
Stack count labels now use a bigger and more readable font
Slimes and Ghasts now actually spawn!
Hunger restored by food items now match the PC version
Flowers created by using Bone Meal on Grass now depend on the biome
Skeletons now run away from Wolves
Obsidian now breaks in 6.5 seconds rather than 3
Minecarts now stack on top of each other
Boats now stack
Beetroot soup now stacks
Fixed Curved Rail and Redstone behaviour
Improved Slime spawning
Block lag should be significantly reduced. – Everything should feel more responsive now
Updated door textures all over the place
Even more Ghast and Slime spawning
Bug fixes:
Mobs no longer suffocate in carpets (because that was kinda cruel)
Held items now look better in first-person mode
Loads of other bug fixes that are too boring to go into here
Minecraft Pocket Edition v0.13.0 Is Out With Redstone, Bunnies, And More Stackable Things
At this rate, Minecraft: Story Mode might set the record for fastest-released episodic Telltale game. Where players of Telltale’s Game of Thrones and Tales From The Borderlands had to wait months between episodes, Story Mode fans need only hold out til November 24 for Episode 3 – a scant four weeks since the release of Episode 2.
If you’re not familiar with Minecraft lore – and yes, there is such a thing – this trailer might have you a bit confused. What are those scary-looking jet black things with the purple eyes? Why is there a biodome with a portal full of stars in it? What’s a “wither storm”? Well, if you hurry, you’ll still have time to play Episodes 1 and 2 to find out.
Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 3 trailer reveals November 24 release date