According to the latest reports, next month, Minecraft will receive one of the biggest console updates so far. In fact, the update is so big that the console version of the game will finally be as good as the PC Edition.
In concordance with Engadget, the December Update for Minecraft will finally bring “Elytra” to the players, which is a set of wings that the players can find in the Minecraft world, and which will allow them to glide in the game.
In addition, the new Minecraft console update will also bring some additional features such as: “End Cities”, “Dragon’s Breath” portion ingredients, Amplified Terrain and many more.
The expected update will be released for Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, PS3 and PS4, which will finally bring the game almost at the same “level” with the Minecraft: PC Edition. In addition, the new “Minecraft” December Update (also known as the “Holiday Update”), will come with user interface bug fixes and new blocks, mobs, items, status effects and more.
Let’s go back to “Elytra Wings Set” and where you will be able to find it. First of all, you should know that this item is found when you reach “The End” in the Minecraft game. “The End” is the third and the final dimension of the game. “The End” will be included in the console update that we’ve talked about in this article and it will also have: End Cities, Chorus Plants, Purpur blocks, Ships, Chorus Flower and more.
It seems that Mojang has already confirmed the December Update for Minecraft, but it didn’t offer too many details about it yet. The company will most likely reveal some information about it in the following days.
Do you think that the Minecraft version of Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, PS3, PS4 and PS Vita will receive this major update next month?
Microsoft dropped the Xbox One S to £229 for Black Friday but Amazon has gone a step further with a £199.99 bundle offer that’s literally too hot to ignore!
The Minecraft bundle is what you’ll be getting with an extra sweetener of a copy of Forza Horizon 3 thrown in for good measure. This is the lowest we’ve seen yet on a new 500GB Xbox One S, which also makes the cheapest 4K Blu-Ray player money can buy even better value.
It probably won’t be around for long, so hit the link below and let your wallet fly!
Video game lovers who missed the first installment of “Minecraft: Story Mode” can now download episode one for free on Steam. Meanwhile, an upcoming patch will introduce several enhancements and tweaks to the game’s “Minecraft” console versions.
“Minecraft” fans now have the chance to get episode one of Telltale’s “Story Mode” for free, according to PC Gamer. Initially released for free in October, many gamers were disappointed to discover that it was only open for Windows 10 users. However, the same episode is now available on Steam with the same zero price tag but for a limited time period.
The first in an eight-episode saga, “Minecraft: Story Mode episode 1” featured the adventures of the protagonist named Jesse. With the option to choose between a male and female version, players will be tasked to complete a challenging quest.
“Minecraft” gamers will embark on a mission to find the legendary Order of the Stone. Identified as the world’s only hope, Jesse and his friends will face several challenges and villainous characters as they travel in various in-game worlds.
Meanwhile, “Minecraft: Story Mode” is a special episodic series created in collaboration between game creator Mojang and Telltale Games. Originally released in October 2015, it allows gamers to make their own decisions that will impact the story and its characters.
In other news, Mojang recently unveiled its planned update for the game’s Xbox and PlayStation versions. In an announcement posted on the gaming company’s website, several new items, blocks, status effects and enhancements are in store for “Minecraft” console owners.
Some of these enhancements include the ability to craft Lingering Potions by using Dragon’s Breath, a perfect deterrent against pursuers. An insectoid glider named the Elytra will also be added to the “Minecraft” console versions, as well as the addition of End Cities.
With Purpur blocks, Chorus Plants and End Ships, gamers can explore the various structures in the Ender Cities, as well as mine some of its materials. “Minecraft” console gamers will also meet new enemies, namely the Shulkers, whose weapon includes a homing rocket.
The “Minecraft” holiday update for Xbox and PlayStation consoles is expected for release in late December. Learn more about the game and its various crafting recipes in the clip below:
“Minecraft,” the sandbox video game originally created by Markus “Notch” Persson,” a Swedish game designer, is not just a game for researchers at Microsoft Research Lab. The lab’s open-source platform is testing artificial intelligence using the game’s pixelated universe.
Katja Hofmann, lead researcher of Microsoft Research Lab, said that the open-source platform, Project Malmo, could create AI agents and set it loose in a modified version of “Minecraft” free-to-roam 3D environment. The agents, through trial and error, learned ways to walk, move and dodge barriers in a physically consistent world, Wired reports.
Moving AI To Interactive Learning
The ability to learn usually needs expensive robots that could also use tolls, craft objects and collaborate with agents directed by humans or other AI. Hofmann said that feature could help move the AI field to interactive learnings from its present paradigm learned through machine. Microsoft trains algorithms with data troves before the AI is deployed. Is “Minecraft” an effective tool for this?
In interactive learning, most of the coaching would occur on the ground by exchanges with end user. Microsoft uses Malmo to investigate how AI could learn from people using human feedback. Using “Minecraft,” the AI agent could be taught a new skill and given a feedback every time the AI does something correctly.
In selecting a video game to serve as AI training ground, Microsoft tested several games. Hofmann said the lab selected “Minecraft” because of the video game’s versatility, not because the software giant co-founded by Bill and Melinda Gates acquired in 2014 Mojang, the developer of the game in Sweden.
1.0 Update Launch Before End Of 2016
Meanwhile, PCGamesN reports that “Minecraft” Windows 10 Edition would get its 1.0 update soon. There is no official date of the release, but the gaming website confirmed the roll out of the 1.0 update would be before 2016 ends. Also included in the yearend launch are new mobs, items, blocks and changes inbound.
Black Friday Deals 2016 already commenced in several online retailers like Amazon. Microsoft’s latest console has been found bundled with great discounts only at Kohl’s for as low as $249.99. Furthermore, Target and Best Buy with $15 games along with $250 PS4 consoles with game bundles.
Microsoft’s recently released a smaller Xbox One console–the Xbox One S that is said to be 40 percent smaller than its predecessor. Black Friday Deals 2016 for the latest Microsoft console reportedly sells cheapest over at Kohl’s. The retailer store is offer Black Friday Deals 2016 the Xbox One S 500GB with Minecraft Favorites for only $249.99 packed with $75 Kohl’s Cash.
Best Buy also rolled out with Black Friday Deals 2016 for the Xbox One S 1TB with Battlefield 1 Special Edition Console with a Free Controller at $299 for those who opt for higher memory. Both Target and Best Buy offer Black Friday Deals 2016 for the Gears of War on Xbox for $29.99. Additionally, Kohl’s is offering Black Friday Deals 2016 for the PS4 Slim 500GB with Uncharted 4 and $75 Kohl’s Cash for $249.99.
Best Buy is reportedly offering the same Black Friday Deals 2016 bundle but packed Ratchet & Clank as well as The Last of Us in the $249.99 PS4 Slim 500GB bundle. In addition, Black Friday Deals 2016 at Target include Bloodborne and Until Dawn. The Overwatch also costs $34.99 for PS4 and Xbox One on GameStop.
Meanwhile, more and more retailers are reportedly offering Black Friday Deals 2016 $50 discounts for the Xbox One S and the PS4 Slim. Moreover, retailers have also been selling additional controllers for both consoles at $20 below retail price. Additionally, Black Friday Deals 2016 for the Nintendo 3DS Super Mario bundle now sell with $99 discounts.
Black Friday Deals 2016 at Walmart and Dell will reportedly begin on Nov. 24 9 p.m EST. The Microsoft is also offering $50 on all Xbox One and Xbox One S bundles with FIFA 17 and the Halo Collection from Nov. 24-28.
Silent, deadly, and destructive, creepers are probably the most dreaded mob in Minecraft. Fittingly, the creeper has a twisted and horrifying past that ranges all the way back to one of the first editions of Minecraft.
The creeper is one of the oldest entities in the franchise: it was the first enemy mob added in the survival test in 2009. Creepers were never meant to be in the game, though. According to creator Markus “Notch” Persson, he was originally trying to create a pig.
“The creepers were a mistake” Notch revealed in the 2012 documentaryMinecraft: The Story of Mojang. “I don’t have any modeling programs to do the models, I just write them in code. And I accidentally made them tall instead of long, so it was like a tall thing with four little feet. And that became the creeper. As opposed to a pig.”
Inspired rather than horrified by the monstrosity that he had created, Notch added a green texture and some aggressive behaviors and threw the creature into the alpha version of the game to torment players for years to come.
From the beginning, the explosive power of creepers was a real threat, and unlike zombies, which most seasoned players can run circles around, creepers have never stopped being dangerous. On higher difficulties they can kill you in one explosion in iron armor and drop you down to two hearts even in diamond. They can knock you into lava, off of ledges, or toward other mobs. They’re completely silent until they’re right on top of you, making them especially painful for players with bad sound or who like to listen to music
For a while, it seemed like creepers would remain an afterthought, with little more than a placeholder texture and behavior that was mostly a copy of the way zombies behaved, but— possibly because of how many unfortunate players lost their lives, loot, and bases to creepers— they eventually got a new texture, sound, and unique behaviors (here’s a recording of the old creeper sounds, which are lot less horrifying than the current hiss-boom). Early on, creepers would charge right at players like zombies and only explode when killed, but Notch decided that wasn’t maddening enough, and made the explosion their baseline attack.
Fans of Minecraft developed a love/hate relationship with this iconic mob from the very beginning. The “That’s a very nice [X] you have there, it would be a shame if something happened to it” joke is probably the oldest Minecraft meme in existence (using ‘sssSSSS’ as an interrupter is probably about as old, but hasn’t had the same persistence). Some of the earliest Minecraft fan videos are expressions of frustration about creepers, like Rocket Jump’s Minecraft Massacre, though perhaps an equal amount of effort has been spent on trying to understand the tormented creeper.
Aside from Endermen, who (inconsistently) pick up and move blocks, they remain the only mob that can affect the terrain, making them a particularly cruel foe to survival builders:
Hilariously, creepers could also damage players and objects in creative mode through the end of beta. It took several patches for the devs to iron out creeper-related bugs like that one, and every now and then a new one would slip through. For a short while creepers would explode after falling, which meant players were literally being dive-bombed by unavoidable, completely silent exploding mobs.
After a few patches, Mojang decided that creepers weren’t quite unpredictable enough and added a way for them to become even more destructive: if struck by lightning, creepers become charged, and explode at twice the force. Don’t let the fact that you are unlikely to ever encounter a naturally charged creeper soothe you into a false sense of security, because it happens when you least expect it. Weirdly enough, mobs killed by a charged creeper will drop heads that can be worn as disguises, causing some particularly deranged players to actually seek out the glowing monstrosities.
Creepers, aside from cosmetic changes, are still basically the same mob that they were at release, but, ironically enough, they have a long and storied history of wreaking havoc on the code as well as on players. Getting creepers just right, in terms of behavior, power, and interactions, has proven to be pretty sticky for developers. For a while, other mobs would run away from creepers, but this behavior was removed, presumably because it was causing undesirable AI interactions. Iron Golems — which are supposed to protect villagers from mobs—still ignore creepers because otherwise they’ll blow the village to pieces. Most of these bugs have been addressed in the Java edition, but the latest MCPE patch was delayed for almost a week because creepers were exploding through doors and ruining survival players’ hard work.
The legacy of this particular monster was so immediately iconic, that in 2011, the Minecraft logo was updated to include a creeper face, and it’s stayed that way ever since. Some of the very earliest Minecraft merch were creeper plushes, and in 2016 that’s expanded to include t-shirts, toys, hoodies, and, for some reason, Bible covers?
And yet, Notch’s cruel disregard for his creation continued as long as he was at the helm of Mojang. When asked to describe the creeper, Notch said that he always thought of them as “crunchy, like dry leaves”, but that he doesn’t know why they explode. I like to imagine that it’s because they’re filled to bursting with the burning shame of being discarded by their maker, but maybe that’s being dramatic.
So the next time a creeper blows a hole in your house or ends your five hour spelunking expedition with an ignominious plunge into a river of a lava, spare a thought for the poor creature, lurching through the world of Minecraft like an abandoned Victorian monstrosity, malformed by fate and unloved by all, doing the only thing that it knows how to do: kill.
Rob Guthrie is a lapsed academic who writes about history, video games, and weird internet things. Follow him @RobertWGuthrie for pithy Tweets and lukewarm takes.
