The meeting room at the Leominster Public Library exploded with excitement and chatter on Wednesday, Feb. 22, when Thi Sarkis of the Rhode Island Computer Museum encouraged children to summon the Ender Dragon.
Seventeen boys and girls, between the ages of 8 and 12, participated in a free two-hour Coding with Minecraft workshop, where they were introduced to coding concepts using JavaScript. Minecraft is a wildly popular sandbox game, where players can create, explore and customize their own virtual worlds using building blocks.
Laptops were provided for use to each participant, many of whom had no prior experience with Minecraft or coding. Students sat at tables in groups of four and were able to connect and play together on a secure server. Looking around the room, you could see custom-built houses, forts, castles, and skyscrapers. The kids learned how to change the weather to make it rain, to build giant rainbows and how to summon lightning bolts with a bow and arrow.
The kids didn’t realize they were building on their creativity, collaboration and problem solving skills. They just knew they were having lots of fun.
No matter what its developers say, there’s no escaping that Lego Worlds bears uncanny similarities to Minecraft. Of course, Mojang’s sandbox build-’em-up itself taps into the same simple pleasures of building whatever the imagination wants afforded by real Lego. This cyclical influence, along with two years of early access experience on PC, has allowed TT Games to craft a title that, while familiar, also stands on its own. Well, mostly.
For one, Lego Worlds has a story. Not a terribly complex one – it taps into the ‘mythology’ of the Lego movies, presenting players with the end goal of becoming a Master Builder, following a spaceship crash in the game’s opening moments. It’s scant plot material, but it does give players some direction, and a nice contrast to Minecraft’s sometimes daunting wilderness.
There’s more complexity to the worlds you’ll be exploring too. Rather than one near-infinite mass, Lego Worlds is split into biomes, each with their own challenges and resources, and drawing from real Lego toy sets. Exploring these environments will introduce plenty of recognisable gameplay mechanics to anyone who’s played the standalone Lego games – destroying objects to gather studs; easily dispatched foes to smack the plastic out of; simple quests to complete.
Warner Bros / TT Games
Unfortunately, not all biomes are available instantly. Access to new areas is awarded through collecting the now-familiar Gold Bricks, earned through completing tasks. This is the awkward trade-off that sits at the heart of Lego Worlds – it wants to give players the freedom to do whatever they like, but also guide them; to give access to all its features while using progression mechanics to reward completing missions.
Where matters get substantially more complex is in how you actually build and reshape the biomes once you’ve unlocked them. Lego Worlds packs in thousands of objects to build, but you uncover plans for them rather than construct at will, building them brick-by-brick. These often factor into quests, with characters asking for certain structures to be built or items delivered, but they can be placed or used ad-hoc. However, to add an object to your catalogue you’ll generally have to scan an existing version in the world, meaning the game feels padded as you run around committing everything to record.
Worlds feels fiddly, too. With a radial wheel of building tools to choose from, and an increasing library of menu screens for object designs, it can become frustrating trying to find the exact thing you’re looking for. With categories and subsections, TT Games has done a commendable job of trying to make the extraordinary volume of objects more accessible, but there’s still an almost overwhelming volume of stuff to wade through.
Vehicles prove a highlight too, something that, mine carts aside, Lego Worlds’ chief competition doesn’t have an easy analogue for. From Lego staples such as cars and boats to deep-earth mining drills and even dinosaurs, tearing around a biome without a purpose is still fun.
Warner Bros / TT Games
Ultimately, Lego Worlds isn’t as ‘pure’ a building sandbox as its rivals, but its also not as well-polished and focused as the likes of Lego Star Wars or the Lego Marvel games. Straddling the line between the two, this will pick up some fans of either, but doesn’t yet feel competent enough to take their places.
Hopefully, Worlds will prove more engaging as the game is refined – despite leaving Early Access, TT Games has plans to keep the game updated, and more user-created objects filter into the ecosystem, but for now, it’s likely to be the reserve of hardcore Lego fans more than anyone else.
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
Conan Exiles, Funcom’s survival-based foray into Robert E. Howard’s world of Hyperion, will receive a full release on both PC and consoles early next year following the conclusion of its Early Access period.
Funcom provided the details of the title’s roadmap in its most recent financial report, with the game set to launch on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in Q1, 2018. Before then, however, the developers will continue to update the game on Steam, with plans to implement new patches every two weeks and more significant updates, including siege machines and mounts, at less regular intervals. In addition, as previously announced, Conan Exiles will launch as part of the Xbox One Game Preview Program in Q3, 2017
At present, the developers plan to incorporate between four and six major updates before launch, with one of them, featuring an entirely new region with different terrain, monsters, and equipment, set for launch alongside the Xbox One Preview.
Conan Exiles has been an unanticipated for Funcom, selling more than 480,000 copies within its first month of availability—almost matching the developer’s estimates for first-year figures—and recouping its development costs of $4.5 million. Funcom expects continued development on the game to cost between five and ten million dollars.
The game itself is a survival title, in much the same vein as DayZ, though it does have some unique features. Furthermore, although Conan Exiles is designed primarily as a multiplayer title, it is not, as with its predecessor Age of Conan, an MMO, and can be played solo.
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We call Minecraft today’s Super Mario because the level of excitement and engagement this game has is just like Super Mario. Based on the cultural formula, the game is not just a game but an educational tool. Too much of our excitement, the sale milestone has just crossed 121 million copies!
From 121 million sold copies, every month 55 million people play this game on average. This is the first official sales and engagement update since June when Microsoft confirmed 100 million sales and 40 million unique monthly players.
Minecraft – 121 million copies sold
Back in the year 2014, Minecraft was taken over by Microsoft for just $2.5 billion. At the time of the deal, Persson mention in the news that “It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.”
Minecraft is available on PC and all major consoles, as well as smartphones. Looking ahead, Minecraft and Minecraft: Story Mode is headed to Nintendo Switch. In 2014, Xbox boss Phil Spencer addressed the possibility of developing a Minecraft sequel.
I don’t know if Minecraft 2 if that’s the thing that makes the most sense,
he said at the time.
The community around Minecraft is as strong as any community out there. We need to meet the needs and the desires of what the community has before we get permission to go off and do something else.
A few months ago Minecraft was in the news for its update on Windows Phone on which Marsh Davies spoke to a newspaper, saying that
We stopped shipping Minecraft updates for Windows Phone 8 back in October last year, Of course, players can still carry on building and explore their worlds as they always have, but, to get access to the newest Minecraft goodies, DLC, and other fun stuff, you’ll have to upgrade to the Windows 10 Mobile version of the game.
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.
