Let’s be honest, most games we play are fun for a few weeks. We’ll try the campaign, give multiplayer a go, then become tired with the game and move on to the next in line. Sure, some popular older titles get a rebirth via smartphones (Super Mario Run, Pokémon Go), but it’s very rare to play the same game for years on end – unless that game is Minecraft.
Since 2011, Minecraft has captivated the world in a way we’ve not seen in years, perhaps ever. It’s played on Android and iOS devices, PCs and Macs, and PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles. Heck, it’s even being used to teach in schools now. Is there really another game that is as all-encompassing as Minecraft? There are conferences, all manner of merchandising, a recent story mode, and even a movie we’re told is being released one day this century.
What keeps this ball rolling? What is it that over 100 million users return for again and again, despite the game not exactly having memorable characters or an interesting narrative? It’s the ability to create. Of course, there are sandbox games which let us wander around and destroy as we see fit, but what’s evident is that people love – really love – to build, to produce, to mine, and definitely to craft. It’s nigh on impossible to find a game that lets you create to the scale that Minecraft does.
Today, we wish to give a little respect to some Minecrafters who spend their days turning blocks into replicas of real cities, or produced majestic worlds to rival the works of any science fiction writer. These folk don’t just want to play the game, but live it, often putting in countless hours of creation time over several years. Afterward, they can make their maps available to download, where others can marvel at the construction and engage in the newly built world. Although, it should be said that these digital architects aren’t always alone, and will often host their own servers and let others take part in community projects (for example, the Westeros server is a massive ongoing development which aims to recreate the lands from Game of Thrones).
When you’ve got the option to oversee a world of your own design, it’s not hard to see why many people turn out as server-gods in Minecraft. Your rules, your vision, your domain. Don’t like the way someone is behaving on your server? Ban them and move on; things can be very simple in the Minecraft world. Once you’ve understood how to set it up, you’ll have to offer something awesome to convince other gamers to play on your server, as there are a lot out there. Unless of course you simply wish to have a server on which you and your friends can romp about without a care, engage in epic PvP battles, or build gorgeous worlds like the ones you’re about to see. The options are virtually limitless as to where Minecraft can be taken.
So, without further ado, here are three amazing maps created by talented Minecrafters, which may well inspire your own creations one day…
Last Jump Hero
If your two loves are parkour and platform video games, then you’re in luck. Last Jump Hero, apart from the great name, is an incredibly fun download that should give a good 1.5 hours of jumping fun. With five levels to complete (Green Forest, Desert Hills, Sea of Lava, Hell, and Into the End), Last Jump Hero by Mehlie puts a Minecraft twist on a classic platformer like Prince of Persia. Jump like your life depends on it.
The Star Wars Adventure Map
Any Star Wars fan loves to picture themselves roaming the icy lands of Hoth or wandering around the intricate paths inside the Death Star. There are, of course, many great Star Wars video games, but for something more pixelated, give The Star Wars Adventure Map by Hypixel a download. With the option to play as a Stormtrooper or Jedi, you’ll be given plenty to do in the form of main and side quests, and you can expect the journey to last around 40 minutes. It’s well worth it to delve into the Star Wars universe once again.
Chicago
Those scenes in movies in which a character wanders around an empty city are always fascinating and a bit trippy (28 Days Later, Vanilla Sky, etc.), so imagine being able to do something similar in Minecraft. This download, created by 18-year-old Ryan Zull, is a blocky duplicate of Chicago, Illinois. You don’t exactly have to be an inhabitant of the Windy City to appreciate the faithful replication, as it’s simply stunning to marvel at the level of detail put in by Zull. Although the project only started in 2013, Zull says he is about 80% finished and plans to keep working on more details of Chicago. How about New York next please?
These are but three downloads we wanted to cover, but there are many more out there. It will be interesting to see how the release of Lego Worlds will shake the might of Minecraft, as players will be able to build epic creations with Lego pieces and landscaping tools, but somehow we think that people will be Minecrafting for a long, long time.
Apart from the numerous games and franchises that the Lego franchise has spawned, with crossovers among different fictional universes, a new entrant in the gaming department of the LEGO corporation has been released, called LEGO Worlds. And it promises Minecraft-like innovation, with the wonders of the LEGO universe.
The game was actually first announced last year as a direct competitor to Minecraft. The game has been made by experienced hands, since the developers, Traveller’s Tales, were the ones behind the LEGO Star Wars series of games as well. So, they probably know what they’re doing and by the looks of the trailer, the game looks just as majestic and explorable as we had imagined.
The plot is quite simple here – there is none. Instead, players are put into this open environment which consists of numerous procedurally-generated worlds that are made out of LEGOs. These worlds can be manipulated in any way that the player wishes and they are also quite interactive as well. The worlds are made to be as dynamic as possible in order to have them populate with other LEGO models, very similar to how Minecraft operates.
There are also a number of vehicles which can be used to traverse across these worlds, such as bikes, helicopters, gorillas and even dragons. The game will also offer multiplayer support with online multiplayer as well as split screen multiplayer.
When Kotaku sat down to play the game, they found that this was basically a virtual LEGO playground, where players could literally make figures out of LEGO bricks, in-game. This makes the whole experience a lot more fulfilling than Minecraft since the LEGO spirit can really be utilized here when searching for items to explore and creating new and unique structures. Of course, there are also quite a few prizes to find as the player explores the worlds and unlocks new hidden items in the process.
The game was first announced last November and will be making its debut on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 as well as Steam, shortly. At $29.99, it will provide unlimited hours of gaming fun. Players are definitely going to draw comparisons among Minecraft and LEGO Worlds, and will probably call LEGO Worlds a duplicate, but they will still end up playing it more, because it is just that good.
It’s finally good to see LEGO come out with a game that actually shows what LEGO is about. About time, LEGO.
To help address some issues introduced after the release of 1.42 on Tuesday, 4J Studios has released Minecraft update 1.43 for PlayStation 4. Here’s the bugs it fixes:
Fix for MCCE-4226 – Wrong LOD showing for non-block item icons in the UI.
Fix for MCCE-4227 – Nether portals sending players to the wrong portals.
Fix for seeds always appearing as “0” in Load World menu.
Fix for MCCE-4321 – Player may fall through the block below them when jumping in a confined space e.g small tunnel.
“We’re currently working on a bug fix update to address issues found in the last update,” 4J wrote on Twitter yesterday. “Thanks for your patience.”
An ETA for the update on other platforms wasn’t given.
Discussing the recently released Fallout Battle Map Pack, 4J Art Director David Keningale said:
We tried out various different scenarios to see how they would look as Battle maps and we could quickly see Fallout would fit really well. But we knew we couldn’t just take anything from Fallout’s open world and hope it worked: Battle maps have to be pretty self-contained. By contrast, we did think about doing things in a Vault but we felt it was too enclosed for the way that Battle plays and you might get lost in the tunnels a little bit too much. So we decided to take it above ground and condense some of our favorite areas from across the series.
The Fallout Battle Map Pack is available for $1.99 USD/£1.99 and includes three maps: Libertalia, Capitol, and the General Atomics Galleria.
[Source: 4J Studios (1), (2), Minecraft Forum, Minecraft] Read more at http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2017/03/03/minecraft-update-1-43-live-ps4-addresses-issues-1-42/#2LDGxKpshcvvQ0dt.99
Mojang’s Sisyphean quest to port all the features of the desktop version of Minecraft to the Pocket Edition continues. The latest update, 1.0.4, brings in NPC villager trading stalls and a new set of skins for the Biome Settlers. A bunch of other fixes and tweaks have been added in to smooth out gameplay and generally tidy up. The 1.0.4 update is now live on the Play Store, though it might take a day or two to roll out to your specific phone or tablet.
Trading with villagers in Minecraft is more or less the same as it is in any RPG: players can trade with specific characters to swap goods for money or vice-versa. Most villagers specialized in one particular resource, with more options unlocking as the player trades more and gains reputation with the specific merchant. The rules for which villagers can sell which resource are surprisingly complex – check this wiki article for the full breakdown.
The Strangers skin pack is a collection of vaguely horror-inspired outfits for the blocky settlers. They’re available in the in-game store for two bucks.
The other big change is that the Pocket Edition and the Windows 10 version of Minecraft are now compliant with the standardized add-on format. Existing add-ons on your custom servers should still work, as they’ll be automatically converted to the new format. In addition, the add-ons can be used to modify sound effects, music, and the core user interface.
Here are the rest of the smaller changes:
The models for the Shulker and Ender Dragon can now be edited using Add-Ons
Husks are now a little bit taller than Zombies
Baby Villagers now have adorable, larger-sized heads
Addition of CDN for downloading optional content, reducing game file sizes
Added low render distance options for older devices
Clicks are now registered when quickly right-clicking items in the inventory
Field of View will now increase properly when sprinting and Field of View is set to max in the settings
The Nether Star can no longer be destroyed by explosions
Capes will no longer appear when wearing Elytra
Fixed the hitbox on Stone and Wooden Buttons so they can no longer be stepped on by players and other mobs
Zombie Villagers of different variants now keep their professions when importing a world from 0.15.9 or earlier
Destroying a painting no longer destroys the block behind it
Ridden mobs (e.g. Spider Jockeys) can now be pulled into Minecarts
Villagers will no longer wander too far away from their Village and run slower when attacked.
Achievements no longer unlock in Survival if Behavior Packs are used
Several achievements fixed and will now unlock
Several texture issues fixed
Several crash issues fixed
The game no longer needs to be restarted before a shader pack is applied
Villagers will no longer do farming work if they’re not a farmer
Villagers are less greedy and will no longer immediately pick up items thrown at them. They’ll even throw food for other Villagers
Let’s be honest, most games we play are fun for a few weeks. We’ll try the campaign, give multiplayer a go, then become tired with the game and move on to the next in line. Sure, some popular older titles get a rebirth via smartphones (Super Mario Run, Pokémon Go), but it’s very rare to play the same game for years on end – unless that game is Minecraft.
Since 2011, Minecraft has captivated the world in a way we’ve not seen in years, perhaps ever. It’s played on Android and iOS devices, PCs and Macs, and PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles. Heck, it’s even being used to teach in schools now. Is there really another game that is as all-encompassing as Minecraft? There are conferences, all manner of merchandising, a recent story mode, and even a movie we’re told is being released one day this century.
What keeps this ball rolling? What is it that over 100 million users return for again and again, despite the game not exactly having memorable characters or an interesting narrative? It’s the ability to create. Of course, there are sandbox games which let us wander around and destroy as we see fit, but what’s evident is that people love – really love – to build, to produce, to mine, and definitely to craft. It’s nigh on impossible to find a game that lets you create to the scale that Minecraft does.
Today, we wish to give a little respect to some Minecrafters who spend their days turning blocks into replicas of real cities, or produced majestic worlds to rival the works of any science fiction writer. These folk don’t just want to play the game, but live it, often putting in countless hours of creation time over several years. Afterward, they can make their maps available to download, where others can marvel at the construction and engage in the newly built world. Although, it should be said that these digital architects aren’t always alone, and will often host their own servers and let others take part in community projects (for example, the Westeros server is a massive ongoing development which aims to recreate the lands from Game of Thrones).
When you’ve got the option to oversee a world of your own design, it’s not hard to see why many people turn out as server-gods in Minecraft. Your rules, your vision, your domain. Don’t like the way someone is behaving on your server? Ban them and move on; things can be very simple in the Minecraft world. Once you’ve understood how to set it up, you’ll have to offer something awesome to convince other gamers to play on your server, as there are a lot out there. Unless of course you simply wish to have a server on which you and your friends can romp about without a care, engage in epic PvP battles, or build gorgeous worlds like the ones you’re about to see. The options are virtually limitless as to where Minecraft can be taken.
So, without further ado, here are three amazing maps created by talented Minecrafters, which may well inspire your own creations one day…
LAST JUMP HERO
If your two loves are parkour and platform video games, then you’re in luck. Last Jump Hero, apart from the great name, is an incredibly fun download that should give a good 1.5 hours of jumping fun. With five levels to complete (Green Forest, Desert Hills, Sea of Lava, Hell, and Into the End), Last Jump Hero by Mehlie puts a Minecraft twist on a classic platformer like Prince of Persia. Jump like your life depends on it.
THE STAR WARS ADVENTURE MAP
Any Star Wars fan loves to picture themselves roaming the icy lands of Hoth or wandering around the intricate paths inside the Death Star. There are, of course, many great Star Wars video games, but for something more pixelated, give The Star Wars Adventure Map by Hypixel a download. With the option to play as a Stormtrooper or Jedi, you’ll be given plenty to do in the form of main and side quests, and you can expect the journey to last around 40 minutes. It’s well worth it to delve into the Star Wars universe once again.
CHICAGO
Those scenes in movies in which a character wanders around an empty city are always fascinating and a bit trippy (28 Days Later, Vanilla Sky, etc.), so imagine being able to do something similar in Minecraft. This download, created by 18-year-old Ryan Zull, is a blocky duplicate of Chicago, Illinois. You don’t exactly have to be an inhabitant of the Windy City to appreciate the faithful replication, as it’s simply stunning to marvel at the level of detail put in by Zull. Although the project only started in 2013, Zull says he is about 80% finished and plans to keep working on more details of Chicago. How about New York next please?
These are but three downloads we wanted to cover, but there are many more out there. It will be interesting to see how the release of Lego Worlds will shake the might of Minecraft, as players will be able to build epic creations with Lego pieces and landscaping tools, but somehow we think that people will be Minecrafting for a long, long time.
With books like World War Z and Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks has already taught us more than a few ways to survive a zombie apocalypse. Now, with Minecraft: The Island, we’ll learn how to survive something even bigger: life itself.
Minecraft: The Island, the first in a non-connected series of Minecraft novels from developer Mojang and Random House imprint Del Rey Books, follows a character who must survive on an island while figuring out who he is and what secrets the island holds. Below, Brooks explains more about the book, and what appeals to him (and millions of other players) about Minecraft. But first, check out EW’s exclusive reveal of the novel’s cover:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: For people who don’t play (like me), what exactly is Minecraft? MAX BROOKS: Minecraft is an online world where everything is in cube shapes. Now, there are different types of Minecraft you can play. If you play on something called Creative, then you can just build whatever you want, and all the natural materials of that world, just like this world, are automatically in your inventory. And that’s usually where people build extravagant buildings.
So how do you play? I play on something called Survival, where literally you wake up in a world. It’s a natural world, and it looks no different than this world. There are different biomes, or ecosystems, like a desert or swamp or tundra, and you have to survive. From the moment that you open your eyes, just like in the real world, you’re losing food. So you better find a way to eat: Either hunt animals, or plant seeds and grow crops. But in order to do that, you better make tools. And to make tools, you have to get wood. And to do that, you literally have to start by breaking down a tree with your bare hands to get the wood to make the tools, to plant the seeds, to eat.
Wow. That’s very different than all the Minecraft music videos I saw on YouTube. Wow is right. That’s way different from music videos, but you know what? It’s actually not different from music videos. When I called it an alternative universe, I mean it. Because in our world, people make music videos, but those people still need to eat! And when you think about somebody making a music video online, just anybody, that person had an ancestor 100,000 years ago who literally had to find food. So that’s Minecraft. Minecraft is our world.
How did this book come about? What happened was, I got a call [asking], “Are you interested?” and [saying] that Mojang is starting to look at the concept of a Minecraft book, and do I have a take on it?
And herein lies the initial challenge of a Minecraft book. Like, if I’m writing a Call of Duty book, that’s a no-brainer. You already have the characters, you already have the plot, you have everything. Whereas this, you literally have to write a story that takes place in this world. So I already had a specific story I wanted to tell. Like we said, Minecraft speaks to different people in different ways, and this is how it spoke to me, specifically.
We need to be very clear: I’m not writing the Minecraft book. I’m writing a Minecraft book. If the folks from Halo called me to write theHalo book, I could do that, but you cannot write the Minecraft Book.
Because Halo has a mythology? Yeah. If you’re doing World of Warcraft or something like that, it’s very specific. Whereas Minecraft is literally just a world. It’s like saying, “Write the human race book.”
So how was it different than just sitting down to write a regular novel? First of all, there are very specific rules of this game. I would say for every hour I spent writing the book, I had to spend, I’m not kidding, tens — if not hundreds — of hours playing, and war-gaming, and researching to make sure that everything I did in the book could be done in the game.
And — because I’m very OCD — literally down to “How many steps can I take in a certain amount of time?” and “How fast do I lose my food when I get hungry, when I’m running as opposed to when I’m walking?” I mean, the game is that specific.
Did you do anything else to research besides playing on your own? No, because the story really happened to me once when I was playing Minecraft on Hardcore. Get this: I literally, playing the game, woke up at the bottom of the ocean. I opened my eyes and locked on the sun, because I didn’t know which way was up. Scary, huh? Swam like crazy for the surface — and, by the way, ran out of air within an arm’s reach of the surface. And once you lose air, you start to acquire damage. So I already broke through to the surface in pain, and then had to pick a location and swim for it, and hope that I found land.
Can you give us a rough outline of the book’s plot? The premise is that this person wakes up in this world and knows that they are from our world, but doesn’t know who they are in that world. They have no memory. It is a story of survival: waking up at the bottom of the ocean, swimming to an island, and having to survive on that island. And the story is, before this person can answer the really big questions like, “How did I get here? How do I get home?,” they have to solve the basic survival questions of “How do I eat?” and “How am I safe?” and “Where do I sleep at night?”
Okay, so it’s like Hatchet? It’s a little bit like Hatchet. I would say that in Hatchet, the boy knows who he is, there’s the divorce… I would say the key difference between Hatchet and my book is: The kid’s got a hatchet! How awesome would it be if my character had a hatchet?
Yeah, that would skip a lot of steps. Exactly. But if you skipped a lot of steps, you’d skip a lot of life lessons.
Do you think everybody who plays Minecraft thinks of it in terms of life lessons? Or is this just you, as an adult and as a dad? I have no idea. I’m the type of writer who can never try to anticipate my audience. My first book, Zombie Survival Guide, stayed in a drawer for a couple years, because I could have never imagined that anybody else would read a real book on how to fight something that isn’t real. I thought I was the only one who thought about this. So I would love it if more people look for life lessons in Minecraft and were interested in that stuff, but right now, I have no idea. So I have to go with what appeals to me about that world.
So is this going to be a series? No. There are other Minecraft novels coming out, and I think it is really important for the Minecraft authors coming up behind me that everybody understand that they’re not sequels, the other books. I may write another Minecraft book down the line, but the ones that are coming out behind me are not part of the same story.
Well, it’s nice that you get to be first. Yeah, well, I literally wrote the book before we had a book deal.
You did? Oh yeah. Mojang had a publishing deal with another company, and they came to me, they asked if I had a book idea. I had a book idea, they loved it… and I think their contract ran out.
Because they waited too long? No, I think that’s just the normal business cycle. And while Mojang was waiting to find a publishing partner, we were in limbo. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I had to do it, so I literally sat down and wrote the first draft of the book and my plan — if you can call it a plan — was if there wasn’t a deal, or if they said, “We found a publisher, but we don’t want you,” then I was just going to publish it as free fan fiction. Just throw it up on my website and… whatever.
Well, thank god you didn’t have to do that! Yeah, but the attitude was, “I have to write this book. This book is going to get written, because otherwise it’s going to be rattling around in my head, and it’s going to be unfair to any other writing projects I ever do.”
Now that you’ve scratched the itch, do you feel like you want to write more Minecraft books? I don’t know, because I haven’t really finished it yet. We’re on draft three, and there may be two, three, four more drafts. Part of the job now is to take the time and get it right. It’s not fair to this book if I give one neuron of my brain to another book or a sequel or anything like that.
Minecraft: The Island hits shelves later this year.
