Somewhere in an alternate universe there’s a Dreamcast 2 and, presumably, a Dreamcast 3. And, in that alternate universe, our doppelgangers are able to play Minecraft on their console of choice. But for us, stuck here in this hellish timeline, we’ll have to settle with a clever clone for the original Dreamcast, now available for free online.
Over at DCEmulation, forum member gameblabla has taken it upon himself to port a Minecraft clone called Crafti designed for a high-end Texas Instruments calculator onto a vintage Dreamcast. And apparently it works like a charm, albeit a charm without enemies or sound of any kind.
Tom Charnock, founder of The Dreamcast Junkyard, has been to this promised land and returned with a first-hand account.
Tom Charnock/Crafti
“Controls take a little getting used to,” Tom wrote, “but once sussed, Crafti is about as close to the real Minecraft as you’re likely to get on a Dreamcast. Movement is handled through the D-pad, looking on the analogue and the face buttons allow you to place or erase blocks in the world. You can also jump, and there’s an action button for opening doors and pressing switches.
“After 10 minutes playing with Crafti I had already built myself a nice little house, complete with a fireplace and a bookshelf full of leather-bound books. The smell of rich mahogany also wafted through the structure.”
Thanks to Charnock for the tip. We’ve included a few of his screenshots above.
You too can download and play Crafti right now. It’s available for free as an image for CDs and SD flash memory.
Focus Home Interactive is cornering the market on dark role-playing games from Europe.
Today, the publisher announced a deal with White Wolf Publishing for Werewolf: The Apocalypse for PC and consoles. The Cyanide studio (makers of Styx: Master of Shadows, Blood Bowl, and the upcoming Call of Cthulhu RPG) will develop the adaptation of the pen-and-paper game. Focus Home is known for RPGs and strategy games, and Werewolf is a good fit for its product portfolio.
Werewolf is part of White Wolf’s “World of Darkness” universe, which also consists of Vampire: The Masquerade (its 2004 PC adaptation is a cult-classic) and Mage: Ascension. The setting is a twist on modern times, where the supernatural lurks in a world torn by corruption, the divide between the rich and the poor, and devious men and women. You play as a werewolf (a Garou, which comes from the French Loup-garou), and you fight against civilization and “supernatural corruption.”
“The World of Darkness has always attracted creatives with a strong passion for telling dark and immersive stories. So to work closely with the great talent at Focus Home and Cyanide exploring the savage Werewolves of this universe is an absolutely fantastic experience for us at White Wolf, and we are more than excited to see this great and highly relevant IP realized in a video game”, said Tobias Sjögren, chief executive officer of White Wolf.
Minecraft isn’t all building houses and digging holes.
Mojang has announced new content out today for Minecraft Realms, a subscription service for the block-building game on PC that costs $7 a month. It allows players to create their own private servers, but it also gives them access to minigames and maps. It also gives Mojang a new revenue stream for a hit that has already sold more 100 million copies on PC, home gaming consoles, and mobile.
The new maps include the Big Giant Lightshow, a 20 minute musical experience synced up with the game world that Mojang is introducing as the first in a new “experiences” category. These aren’t minigames — they’re more like music shows or roller coasters that you can enjoy inside Minecraft.
If you want something a bit more traditional, you can also play the Battle of the Gods minigame, a new class-based brawler.
“Play as one of many gods, each with their own special powers,” Mojang details. “Blast people into the air, launch a ranged fireball attack, but whatever you do, make sure that you keep your eyes on the prize: grabbing the three relics and returning them to your home biome. Battle of Gods also features a single-player mode, based on the multiplayer, so that you can get to know the terrain and practice with the map’s innovative ability system.”
You can learn about the other new maps, including one that lets you play a board game inside Minecraft, on Mojang’s site.
Microsoft, which owns Minecraft, will stop supporting the Windows Phone 8.1 version of its own immensely popular world building game, Ars Technica reports. While the game’s development continues apace, Redmond is essentially admitting that even with a massive player base, the venn diagram between Windows Phone users and Minecraft fans has too little overlap to be worth the effort.
On mobile, the Android and iOS versions of Minecraft: Pocket Edition will still be supported, of course, and that same version is also what gets ported to platforms like the Gear VR and Apple TV. Unlike those other systems, which recently hit an official 1.0 version last month, the Windows Phone version never quite made it out of beta.
Microsoft did, however, recently release a new version of Minecraft for Windows 10 as a Universal Windows Platform app that will eventually run on everything from desktops to Surface tablets to the HoloLens. Although the Windows 10 version is based on the same Pocket Edition code, Microsoft has unfortunately decided to go against its own developer guidelines for the Universal Windows Platform and currently only supports a desktop interface. That means you’ll still need a mouse and keyboard to smash those blocks for now.
Respected security analyst Brian Krebs published a report today detailing his research into who authored Mirai, a publicly available piece of malware that can be used to infect devices with online connections (think: printers, routers, etc.) and unite them into botnets capable of executing massive distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Mirai and its ilk garnered headlines around the world last year after it was employed to DDoS the servers of DNS provider Dyn and “break the Internet” by taking down popular websites like Twitter, Reddit, Netflix and more.
Countless game developers rely on these services, and they may be curious to read Krebs’ report that the author of the Mirai malware — and indeed, the business of conducting DDoS attacks in general — is deeply intertwined with Mojang’s mega-popular game Minecraft.
Krebs claims the real identity of Mirai author “Anna-Senpai” is Paras Jha, who at one point described himself as the president of Minecraft-focused DDoS protection firm ProTraf Solutions. It’s unclear if he still works at the company — Krebs claims Jha has not (yet) responded to his request for comment, while a ProTraf Solutions representative reportedly told him that “we [are] in the process of restructuring and refocusing what we are doing.”
Moreover, Krebs reports Jha got interested in the mechanics of DDoS attacks as a Minecraft fan and server operator who complained online when his own popular Minecraft server was attacked. Krebs believes this inspired Jha to take an interest in DDoS protection, and notes that Jha’s LinkedIn page includes stints at multiple high-profile Minecraft servers.
Plus, in a now-deleted (but recovered via the Internet Archive) personal bio, Jha describes himself as an aspiring Minecraft modder and game developer.
“My passion is to utilize my skills in programming and drawing to develop entertaining games and software for the online game Minecraft,” reads the excerpt of his personal bio published by Krebs. “Someday, I plan to start my own enterprise focused on the gaming industry targeted towards game consoles and the mobile platform.”
Krebs’ whole post is fascinating, and well worth reading in full if you’re at all interested in the position Minecraft servers hold in the DDoS attack business.
“The Minecraft industry is so competitive,” Robert Coelho, chief of fellow Minecraft-focused DDoS protection service ProxyPipe, told Krebs. “If you’re a player, and your favorite Minecraft server gets knocked offline, you can switch to another server. But for the server operators, it’s all about maximizing the number of players and running a large, powerful server. The more players you can hold on the server, the more money you make. But if you go down, you start to lose Minecraft players very fast — maybe for good.”
Malware that launched the net’s largest ever cyber-attack last year had links to Minecraft servers, according to those investigating it.
Security blogger Brian Krebs has spent months investigating the attack which knocked his blog offline.
He claims that the origins of the Mirai botnet can be traced back to rivalries in the Minecraft community.
His claims are backed up by a security expert who provided net security for Minecraft servers.
Robert Coelho, vice president of security firm ProxyPipe, told the BBC that his suspicions about who was behind the Mirai code have been passed to the FBI, which is “actively investigating” the claims.
The botnet Mirai was made up of more than 500,000 web-connected devices such as webcams and routers.
The attacks it launched – so-called denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that hit web pages with so much data that they fall over – were the biggest the net had ever experienced.
Victims that were knocked offline included Twitter, Spotify and Reddit.
‘Hundreds of hours’
Shortly after the attacks, the individual claiming responsibility – using the codename Anna Senpai – released the source code online, paving the way for copycat attacks.
A modified form of the malware was later used to attack UK internet service providers TalkTalk and the Post Office.
Since being hit by the Mirai botnet in September 2016, Mr Krebs has devoted “hundreds of hours” into uncovering who was behind it.
“If you’ve ever wondered why it seems that so few internet criminals are brought to justice, I can tell you that the sheer amount of persistence and investigative resources required to piece together who’s done what to whom (and why) in the online era is tremendous,” he wrote.
His research led him directly to the community around Minecraft, a computer game now owned by Microsoft, in which users build things from cubic blocks.
It has a huge following, especially among children, and it is estimated that at any one time a million people are playing it.
Image caption A sweeping valley featuring a castle
According to Mr Krebs, a large successful Minecraft web server with more than 1,000 players logging on each day can earn up to $50,000 (£40,600) per month, mainly from players renting space to build their Minecraft worlds.
“The first clues to Anna Senpai’s identity didn’t become clear until I understood that Mirai was just the latest incarnation of an IoT [internet of things] botnet family that has been in development and relatively broad use for nearly three years,” he writes.
The code for these earlier versions was often used to knock over web servers used to host Minecraft, he claims.
ProxyPipe – owned by Mr Coelho – had plenty of Minecraft servers as clients and in mid-2015 was hit by a massive attack, launched from a botnet made up of IoT devices such as web cameras.
Mr Coelho told the BBC that he had his suspicions about who was behind the attack: “Minecraft is a tight knit community. We know who is talking to who.”
He alleged that the attack came from a competing security firm, which also offered DDoS protection to Minecraft clients.
He claimed that the founder of the security firm had previously run a Minecraft web server and was one of his clients.
He also claims that the Mirai author – Anna Senpai – contacted him via Skype at the end of September, partly to explain that the attack on his firm was “not personal” but also to brag that he had been paid by the owners of a large Minecraft server to launch an attack on a rival server.
