by Stone Marshall | Jun 24, 2016 | Minecraft News |
To help fix issues joining public Battle Minigames, developer 4J Studios has released Minecraft update 1.29 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita in North America and Europe today.
The issues were discovered shortly after Minecraft update 1.28 was released earlier this week, and 4J Studios went to work right away on the patch. A fix for Wii U is currently in testing with Nintendo.
If you live in the US and purchased the $9.99 Battle Map Pack Season Pass, 4J Studios is aware of an issue where the DLC maps are missing:
The Battle Map Pack Season Pass gives you access to all four map packs as they become available, and “all future content that is part of this pass will be accessible in-game once it is available.” The final map pack is expected by June 2017.
Did today’s patch fix all your Battle Minigame issues?
Minecraft Update 1.29 Today on PS4, PS3 & PS Vita Fixes Battle Minigame Joining Issue
by Stone Marshall | Jun 23, 2016 | Minecraft News |
During this year’s E3 event, which took place on 14th of June at the Los Angeles Convention Congress, best game developers took the podium to announce their upcoming games for consoles, PCs, and mobile devices.
Surprisingly, few games were announced for the latter. This could either mean mobile game developers disregard E3 or the gaming industry is just fed up of Android and iOS devices. Nonetheless, we’ve managed to compile a list of some fascinating titles announced at the event, some of which are already available while others will arrive in the coming months.
Pokémon Go-Niantic/Nintendo
Pokémon fans will be able to catch Nintendo’s adorable creatures this July. Pokémon Go, developed by Niantic in conjunction with Nintendo, will launch this July but with a completely new experience, it will be played in augmented reality, taking the experience of mobile games to the next level. That simply means players will be catching these creatures without looking at their smartphones, but via wrist-worn wearable called Pokémon Go Plus that will alert users of nearby Pokémon so that they can capture it. The device is sold independently at $35 and is open for pre-orders.
Unfortunately, it will not be ready at launch, Nintendo confirmed. The smartwatch-like device will connect to iOS and Android devices through Bluetooth and a player will tap a button to catch a Pokémon. Generally, Pokémon Go is all about hunting for Pokémon in a real-world location. Gamers look through their smartphone cameras to see Pokémon appear in the local environment then capture them.
Batman- The Telltale Games
Telltale series announced a five episode series based on Dark Knight’s adventures. Players will have the opportunity to wear the suit of scandalous billionaire Bruce Wayne and Batman’s well-known mask. The game tells the story in a comical manner and focusses on action, drama, crime, corruption and treachery in Gotham city. The first 15 minutes of an E3 demo shown by Telltale rep showed Batman stalking some heavily armed men who have invaded the city hall.
During the event, the rep said Bruce Wayne is as important as Batman, implying the game may see more of Wayne than Batman. There is a hidden Bat cave where Batman keeps his wide range of gadgets, the costume, and the Batmobile, which resembles a car. However, the game focusses on the complicated life and the fractured psyche of Bruce Wayne.
Minecraft Realms-Mojang
Minecraft is one of the most renowned mobile games. The title’s Pocket Edition has established itself at the top of the chart of paid-for games in App Store and Google Play Store. However, the game’s mobile fans have been grumbling of the inability to play with their colleagues on the other platforms. Mojang responded in time at the E3 event when it announced Minecraft Realms that has been included in Minecraft Pocket Edition 0.15 update (The Friendly Update), which also adds goodies like new texture packs and mobs. Minecraft Realms player-server service will let players on phones and tablets join their colleagues on the other platforms like Xbox Live, Windows 10 and Samsung Gear VR. Minecraft Realms will be available for free 30-day trial by new players, who will be required to pay at least $7.99 per month thereafter.
Severed-Drinkbox Games
Drinkbox Games first showed Severed back in early 2014. Finally, the game will be released later this summer after a two-year wait. The game is centered on one-armed warrior lady (fights on with a single sword) who adventures into the world in search of her family. She encounters all kinds of monsters, which she will involve in fiery battles. Drinkbox did not give a concrete release date, but hopes are high that it will be one of the best mobile games to hit the iOS platform this summer.
The Elder Scrolls: Legends-Bethesda
The Elder Scrolls fans will be pleased with the announcement of the Legends, Bethesda’s created strategy card game set in the Elder Scroll Universe. Players will approach rivals in three game modes. Moreover, they will craft decks by combining two of these five game attributes; Agility, Endurance, Intelligence, Strength, and Willpower. Each crafted deck takes a different class. For instance, if a gamer combines Agility and Strength, he will be able to build an Archer deck while combining Willpower and Intelligence yields a Mage deck. You will be required to use your own insight and tactics to decide on the best pick suitable for the situation at hand.
Pokémon Go, Minecraft Realms and the Best Mobile Games Announced at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2016
by Stone Marshall | Jun 23, 2016 | Minecraft News |
Microsoft, the new owner of Mojang, attended this year’s E3 event and announced the new Minecraft: Pocket Edition 0.15 update, which was named “The Friendly Update”. From now on, players will have access to Minecraft Realms – the subscription-based service that will allow them to rent official Minecraft servers, and they will be able to play with their friends who own an Xbox 360 or Xbox One console, thanks to cross-platform play support.
Previous updates for Minecraft already brought support for cross-platform play among PC, Android, iOS and Windows Phone versions, and 0.15 now allows players to join servers along Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles. Another nice addition is the Minecraft Realms integration, which exempts players from hosting games on their devices, in order to allow others to access their shared sandbox anytime, as this subscription-based server hosting service will give them the possibility to rent Minecraft servers. The pricing for Realms servers starts at $7.99 a month, but the first 30 days are free, so players will decide a month later if it’s worth investing money in Microsoft’s servers.
Minecraft: Pocket Edition 0.15 update comes also with new sounds for jumping on blocks (version exclusive); a skins button; a new store button used for buying skin packs and resource packs; Achievements for iOS and Android (version exclusive); Resource packs; a new UI for the main menu and skins menu; Blocks: pistons and sticky pistons; new gameplay involving pig riding with new sound when accelerates (version exclusive), Interact buttons, Boost – used when riding a pig with a carrot on a stick etc.
Items available in the new update are: Raw mutton, Cooked mutton, Fire charges, Spawn eggs, Horse (zombie horse and skeleton horse in version exclusive), Donkey, Mule, and for version exclusive have been introduced Stray, Husk and Wither skeleton horses. Other items are: Name tags, Leads, Carrot on a stick, Tipped arrows made with potion cauldrons (version exclusive), Horse armor made of leather (version exclusive).
Minecraft Pocket Edition 0.15 Update Brings Xbox Cross-platform Play
by Stone Marshall | Jun 22, 2016 | Minecraft News |
LOS ANGELES — In Minecraft, you can build just about anything you want, unless those things happen to be different enemies, behaviors or scenarios. Modders cracked the Minecraft software and started adding onto it long ago, but doing so it not easy for the average user, which is why Microsoft has begun to add simple, no-nonsense modification (“modding”) options that let players tweak Minecraft with only a modicum of programming know-how.
Microsoft showed me how the process worked during a press demonstration at E3 2016 yesterday (June 14). Enemies in Minecraft follow simple scripts written in JSON, a robust and workable JavaScript-based language. In a future update for the Windows 10, iOS and Android versions of Minecraft, users will be able to access these files. Whatever they update will appear in-game as soon as they restart the session. It’s really that simple.
To show us how the authorized-modding options worked, a Microsoft representative showed us a quick level he’d created that was populated by creepers, Minecraft’s signature exploding green bad guys. With a quick trip into Microsoft Paint, he altered a creeper’s image file to give it googly eyes and gym clothes. Then, he opened the JSON script and tweaked the creeper’s speed. As soon as he closed and reopened the session, the silly-looking creeper zoomed around the stage, giving the rep no time to react before it exploded right on top of him.
By adjusting a few simple values — height, width, speed and so forth — users can create very different variations on their favorite creatures simply by adjusting a few numbers in a text editor. If they want to get slightly more ambitious, users can even swap enemy behaviors. This involves some copying and pasting, but it’s still well within the grasp of anyone who’s ever programmed an HTML page.
The representative took the creeper protocols, opened up the JSON document that controlled the behavior of chickens, then swapped a few parameters. When he loaded up the game again and spawned a whole field full of chickens, he lit one on fire. Seconds later, the entire flock of poultry erupted into a cataclysmic explosion. It’s not hard to see how important this functionality could be.
Budding script kiddies with a little time on their hands could make some even more radical changes to the enemies without the modding tool. Microsoft showed off how it created a whole race of alien invaders, and black-suited G-Men to fight the aliens, using nothing more than existing character models, some height and behavior modification, and whole lot of time and effort.
While Microsoft’s modding tool is not that robust yet, there still seems to be a lot a creative player could do, and Microsoft hopes to implement even more modding abilities in the future. The initial update will hit sometime this fall, and while Microsoft has no plans for an in-game editor, it does plan to make documentation available to show average users how to manipulate JSON files.
Better still: If the modders screw up, they can just delete their attempted mods, and the game will repopulate the defaults automatically.
Make Chickens Explode with Microsoft’s Minecraft Mods
by Stone Marshall | Jun 22, 2016 | Minecraft News |
Nintendo has confirmed that Minecraft Wii U Edition will undergo Nintendo Network maintenance this week.
That will see network services within the popular sandbox game temporarily become unavailable between 4.50 – 6.30am BST on Tuesday 21st June.
There is no given indication as to why the maintenance has been scheduled, but we’re sure that it is nothing more than some background tinkering to improve online play.
Minecraft Wii U Edition most recently added the Super Mario Mash-up Pack, which introduced new skins, a Super Mario-themed pre-made world, and a set of Super Mario-themed music and item textures.
Minecraft Wii U Edition
by Stone Marshall | Jun 21, 2016 | Minecraft News |
Looking for some new apps to help make your everyday phone use even more efficient? Or do you just want to have a bit of fun on your phone this weekend? We’ve got you covered on both fronts with our latest Five to Try column, which spotlights some new and updated Android options in the Play Store.
Evie is an interesting pick, as it shakes up the usual Android launcher approach by building the interface around an intelligent universal search bar, while Dango is designed to get you the contextual emoji and GIFs you need during conversations. Meanwhile, Minecraft: Pocket Edition got a huge update this week with dedicated servers and wider cross-platform play, while _PRISM is an alluring puzzler and Toca Life: Vacation is a perfect pick for the kids.
Evie’s home screen search bar taps not only into your local apps, but also info, maps, and services from the web.
Tired of hunting around your phone for the right app or service to complete a task? Evie could help: it’s a new home screen launcher built around a search bar. Start typing in a query, such as the name of an app, restaurant, movie, or nearby hotspot, and it’ll serve up options not only from your device but also the web, Yelp, and other services.
And from there, it’s even more useful. You can tap on a restaurant listing, for example, and have one-tap access to the correct app for placing a delivery order, as well as the ability to make a reservation or beckon an Uber or Lyft driver (with a cost estimate to boot). Search can often be siloed to just point you at apps or search within a single app, but Evie seems to bridge the gap and impresses as an all-in-one option for varying needs. If you spend far too much time digging through menus, it’s worth a look.
This week’s E3 gaming convention might have been mostly about big console and PC games, but even the years-old Minecraft took center stage for some big news of its own: Pocket Edition on Android now has cross-platform multiplayer that lets players link up over Xbox Live to play with iOS, Windows 10, and Gear VR players. And there’s another big feature in this week’s update—dubbed “The Friendly Update”—as the game now has support for dedicated servers.
Want to play online with one friend—or up to 10? Mojang’s Realms feature lets you pay a monthly fee for access to a server that continues on even when you’re not there, letting you create persistent worlds to share with friends. It’s $4/month for two total players or $8/month for up to 10 in the same space, although there’s a free month-long trial available for the larger plan.
Like Evie up top, Dango is an app designed to speed up everyday use of your phone… albeit in a very different way. See, Dango is an artificially intelligent app built to help pull up the emoji, animated GIFs, and stickers you need at any given moment. Once installed, it puts a little pink face in any chat or messaging above the keyboard; as you type, it reads the context of your message and suggests an ideal emoji to fit your note.
Tap the pink icon and you’ll see a wider range of suggestions, including several emoji, pop culture GIFs based on mood, and more. Better yet, Dango doesn’t just suggest images based on your in-progress messages, but also the ones sent your way, gaining context from conversation. If you’re a heavy GIF and emoji user, it could save precious seconds with every single missive.
Looks just like the pineapple-man I met on my last vacation…
Toca Boca is one of the premier developers for ad-free, kid-friendly apps, and its latest offering is perfectly primed for the summer school break. Released this week, Toca Life: Vacation ($3) drops you onto a tropical island resort, letting you choose from an array of characters and interact all around the locale, including at the hotel, beach, and even the airport.
Your cartoonish avatar can leap on the bed, x-ray a suitcase, fly an airplane, wander the boardwalk, and take on all sorts of other appropriately-themed activities. Toca Life: Vacation isn’t heavy on complex interactions, nor are there extensive games to play; rather, it’s a colorful and kid-centric way to have a little tropical fun wherever you are, and hopefully spur a little creativity in the process.
This might look totally confusing, but it makes sense once you start rotating the shape and touching the symbols.
Thanks to their multitouch screens, phones and tablets are ideal for the kind of puzzle games where you must push, pull, rotate, and otherwise manipulate objects. That’s why The Room trilogy has been so successful, and also why _PRISM ($3) might turn your head this week. It doesn’t have the spooky atmosphere or narrative threads of the former series, instead putting a mystical, serene spin on the act of solving these faux-physical brainteasers.
You’ll draw slide glyphs into place, rotate and shift icons, and hunt around each geometric shape to find the next input needed to expand the puzzle to its full size, with a mysterious and and colorful aesthetic throughout. _PRISM isn’t terribly long, promising about an hour’s worth of gameplay on average, but it’s well-designed, nicely presented, and should be a treat for fans of brainy-yet-tactile challenges.
Five to Try: Evie rethinks the Android launcher, and Minecraft gets friendlier than ever
