It’s been quite a while since Minecraft was a PC game. It’s on just about every platform you can imagine nowadays. One difference between the PC platform and every other platform out there, though, is the extraordinary modability of the former. While none of the countless mods created for Minecraft to this point have been officially supported, you can do all kinds of things to the game with user-created content.
Because none of those mods are supported, though, and because they’re made using reverse-engineered or extracted code, any update to the game can render the mods useless. Players end up playing years-old versions of the game just to keep their mods working, the devs say. I’ve done exactly that, so I know, at least anecdotally, that that’s accurate.
That’s exactly what the Minecraft team at Microsoft is looking to change with the new Add Ons initiative.
On top of working to let different platforms play together, as they’re already working on with the Windows 10 and mobile platforms, the team wants to let players make their games almost unrecognizable with custom worlds, tilesets, and monster behaviors. If you want to make chickens flammable and explosive, that’s definitely a thing you can do. You an make zombies behave like rabbits, right down to eating and mating. You could, as they showed, do a whole-world conversion and be playing in a city with aliens.
The plan is for these mods to eventually work on all platforms, including typically closed systems like consoles and iOS, explained senior producer James Webster in a hands-off preview at E3.
So how do you get in there and start modding?
What the team has done is make all the swappable parts of the game visible to the player in the form of text and image files. The text files, built in a format called JSON (Java Script Object Notation), look pretty intimidating at first, but looking for a few more seconds reveals that a lot of what’s in there is incredibly simple. A Creeper’s speed is set to 0.2. Crank that up to 1.0 to make creepers not just startling but downright terrifying. Save the the file and reload the mod pack and you’ll see creepers move with a new zest for life.
I expect that, in this age of YouTube tutorials, even the younger players will figure this system out in short order and start doing some absolutely wild stuff with this new access.
The idea behind making these add ons official is to make them secure and future-proof, meaning that you can’t break the game with these mods and they’ll work with all future versions of the game, so that you can upgrade when patches come out without fear.
The whole initiative seems very community-focused, and Webster and his team have a lot of faith in the community. They’re not worried about creating apps to assist with modding because they know their players will do that for them in short order. For example, I’m waiting for a mod that lets you paint textures directly onto the models, rather than using the somewhat confusing texture image files that look, as Webster described, a bit like taking the wrapping off a gift and laying it out flat.
Minecraft is one of the biggest communities out there, but the variety of platforms and the obsoletion of mods through upgrades have both done a lot to fragment the community. Letting platforms play and mod together will help to reunify that community and give one of the biggest games out there and even longer life.
According to Jay Ong, Marvel’s vice president of games, Insomniac’s Spider-Man game is just the beginning for Marvel’s ambitious plan to bring its superheroes to consoles.
“When I joined Marvel two years ago, I came in with a mandate to usher in a new era for Marvel Games,” Ong told Polygon in an interview. “We have a treasure trove of the best superhero characters on earth. What can we do with this to create truly epic games?
“Is [Spider-Man] a signal of things to come? Oh, yes. Absolutely. And we can’t wait to tell the world about it.”
Over the past few years, Marvel Games’ output has been primarily on mobile (Avengers Academy, Contest of Champions, Future Fight), on PC (Marvel Heroes) and for Disney Infinity and Lego games. Marvel fans haven’t had their own Batman: Arkham equivalent. But with multiple Marvel console games in development, it sounds like that’s changing.
Ong said there was a lot about Marvel Games’ plans for consoles that he couldn’t talk about. There are existing partnerships with Telltale Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Warner Bros.’ TT Games to make titles based on Marvel’s properties, but he indicated there’s a lot more in the works, some of which we’ll hear more about later this year.
Marvel wants to work with the best game developers in the business, Ong said, teams that share the company’s passion for its heroes and villains. But it’s being choosy about who it works with, and which teams work on which properties.
“One of the things we really focus on in terms of our new strategy is that we all believe that great games drive the brand and great games are what our fans really deserve,” Ong said. “The question is, ‘How we can get there?’ The thing we landed on is to be really selective with who we partner with. Extremely selective. Right now I would say that out of every 10 opportunities we look at, we maybe do one.”
Ong said Marvel Games has a set of criteria as it looks to work with publishers and developers.
“What we look at first and foremost is the talent level of partner,” he said. “Are they world class in building the games we’re talking about? They have to have world-class talent. They have to be able to invest the resources to make that talent sing. Equally important is, do they have passion for the IP they’re working on? Do they share the same ambition? Do they love the character? We look for passion, that comes through in the first 30 seconds.
“One of our mantras is authenticity; it’s easy to make a game with Spider-Man on the label, but it’s much harder to make it truly authentic in a way that reflects Peter Parker, the character.” Insomniac Games and Spider-Man creative director Bryan Intihar, Ong said, embody that mantra.
When publisher Activision was in charge of developing and publishing Spider-Man games, those titles were often tied to the release of movies or annual publishing schedules. The quality of those games varied, and while they were often successful commercially, Ong indicated that Marvel Games doesn’t want to push games to market just to coincide with a theatrical release. (The upcoming Spider-Man game is “wholly original” and unrelated to 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, the next Marvel feature film starring the web-slinger.)
“We are absolutely obsessed about [quality],” Ong said. “That is our North Star. We always say ‘Great is not good enough. We’re going for truly epic.'”
Ong said that if a future Marvel Games title lines up with the release of a Marvel Studios movie, great, but “in this modern day and age, that model doesn’t work anymore.”
“Things like [games] you cannot under-resource,” he said. “You can’t not give the development time … to do justice to the game. We think, ‘How do we make the game better? How do we help our partners make the game better?'”
It’s not yet clear when Marvel, Sony and Insomniac’s Spider-Man game — or Telltale’s unnamed Marvel game, which Ong says will delight fans — will be released. But those titles represent a new course for Marvel Games.
“Building these franchises, and building these characters [at Marvel Games], this is that first big milestone from this team,” Ong said. “This is a huge ambitious project.”
The official Minecraft game has been recently released for Windows 10 users, but it is still being marked as “Edition Beta: on the Store. Now the game has received a pretty important update, which adds a couple of new features.
The new update allows players to start creating with basic redstone components, explore new desert temples, collect four types of cute, fluffy rabbits, spruce up dwellings with five new door types, download new biome settler character skins and much more. Here’s how the official changelog looks like:
What’s New in Version 0.13.0 Basic Redstone Circuits, including Redstone Wire, the first set of Redstone Producers (Daylight Sensors, Pressure Plates, Tripwire Hooks, and more), and the first set of Redstone Consumers (activator rails, note blocks, TNT, Trapdoors, and more). The rest of the Redstone functionality is right around the corner…stay tuned. Desert Temples! But maybe stay off the roof…can’t say we didn’t warn you. Keep zombies out with Spruce, Birch, Jungle, Acacia, and Dark Oak doors. Cute fluffy crop-eating bunnies! Biome Settlers Pack, with new skins from the Desert, Tundra & Forest.
The game is available for a price of $6.99 along with other inside-app purchase, so if you’re interested, go ahead and download it. And if you’re a Windows Minecraft gamer, here are some other stories that you might be interested in.
Microsoft has recently released an update for its Windows 10 Movies & TV app, bringing a couple of useful features especially for desktop users. Let’s have a look at which these are and whether they matter or not. When it announced that it’s going to rebrand the Xbox Music app to Groove Music, Microsoft also talked about the new Movies & TV app in Windows 10. And the first important update has started rolling out for the service.
Movies & TV App for Windows 10 gets new features
Microsoft representative Ellen Kilbourne said that the app has received the following updates:
During playback, you can double-click or use the ESC key to toggle in and out of full-screen mode
Extras that come with bundles won’t flood your collection – they are now listed on the detail page of the main title in the bundle
Those who are members of the Windows Insider program are being further asked to provide feedback on this app, as it allows Microsoft to see what’s wrong and what works well.
So, what’s your take so far on the app, do you like or do you think there are still many features that have to be deployed? Leave your comment below and let us know.
Minecraft is probably the most popular game in the world, and Microsoft did the right thing when it included the game into Windows Store. But, some players are reporting that they’re unable to download the game due to an error 0x803f7003, so here are a few tips if you’re facing this problem, too.
Can’t download Minecraft from Windows Store? Follow this
Solution 1 – Try to refresh the download multiple times
I know this sounds like a dumb solution, actually it doesn’t sound like a solution at all, but some users reported that they were able to download Minecraft normally after hitting the download button a lot of times, so before you do anything else you can send a few minutes repeatedly pressing the download button again and again.
If this really proves to be the wrong ‘solution,’ then problem probably lays in the Windows Store, so you should do something with it.
Solution 2 – Reset Windows Store
As I said the problem probably lays in the Windows Store, so the first thing you can do is resetting the Windows Store, and then try to download Minecraft again. Here’s how to reset the Windows Store:
Go to Search and type wsreset.exe
Press Enter and let the process reset your Windows Store
Now, login to your Microsoft Account once again, and try to download Minecraft. If the problem is still present, you should check out our article about solving Windows Store problems for more solutions.
If you’re still unable to download the game from Windows Store, you should look for additional solutions on Minecraft and Windows forums, hopefully these guys figured out some other solution.
If you have any other Windows 10-related issues you can check for the solution in our Windows 10 Fix section.
If you like empire-building games, then this piece of news will catch your interest: Crown and Council has landed on Windows 10 PCs. Expand your luxurious kingdom, divide and conquer all your enemies and if they refuse, crush them all with no mercy.
Wrench havoc in all 75 available maps and show everybody who the leader is. This is a fast-paced strategy game, there is no time for rest when it comes to conquering land and obliterating rival monarchs. If you are not fast enough, others may get there before you.
The strategy is simple: click adjacent land tiles to subdue them with your army, then pile their gold to fund further expeditions, defensive forts, naval attacks, build universities and other essential structures. Alliances are not tolerated in a worlds where there can be only one ruler.
It’s simple to play, but it’s not so easy to win. Pay attention to the depletion of your resources, if you spend all your money on universities, your army won’t be strong enough to subdue your enemies. Don’t attack too quickly either, hoping to put enough boots on the ground to give you an irreversible early advantage. Recovering after a defeat can be more difficult than expected.
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As much fun as this game may appear, players have already encountered issues:
Surprisingly good, casual, easy to learn, free game which gets harder and more satisfying as you progress with new units and ways to increase turns. At this point, there are many problems with the interface: click area not responding, window sizing, minor Engllish errors, but hopefully Mojang will fix these in an upcoming patch. Though the game saves progress and continues at the highest level you’ve completed, I don’t see a way to reset progress or any interface options to adjust sound or screen size. The only serious drawback is the random level creation which makes some levels either impossibly difficult or incredibly easy. There’s no reason to not try this or give it a bad rating since it’s free and delivers what it promises.
And another player adds:
There is a list of things wrong with it however: Window is not resizable, controls are somewhat obfuscated, they’re only really relayed by the loading screens between games, and the game has no real menus, including no start menus.
Maybe all these issues will be fixed in the future, but for the time being, Crown and Council is an excellent game to kill time on your commute way back home after a day’s work.
