What’s happening with redstone on Pocket / Win 10?
Hey there everyone!
As you may have heard, we’ve been making a few changes to the way redstone works in Pocket / Windows 10 Edition – just part of our ongoing mission to give minecrafters as many cool tools as possible. Most recently, we’ve been trying to simplify the peculiarities of redstone without compromising on the power.
Talking of power, right now a block can:
- give off power (often referred to as a strong signal or directly powered signal)
- be powered (often referred to as giving off a weak, or indirectly powered signal)
- be unpowered
In the image below you can see this in action. The redstone block on the left gives off a strong signal, lighting up the adjacent lamp. But the lamp diagonal to the redstone block and the one next to that remain unpowered. Over on the right, a redstone wire has been placed on the middle lamp, allowing it to carry the strong signal from the redstone block and light the lamp next to it.
Pistons get powered the exact same way!
Of course, Redstone engineers from PC / Mac may note something missing here: something our community calls quasi-connectivity!
What’s quasi-connectivity? In a sense, it’s a bug. But it’s one that’s become so useful to crafters that it’s become a feature! In the PC edition of Minecraft, pistons can receive redstone power from a distance of two blocks when they are placed in a very specific diagonal position, rather than from a block right next to it. But blocks only get updated when something affects adjacent blocks. It means that you can power a piston and then remove the power without the piston detecting it! It puts the piston in this state where it actually needs to be deactivated, but doesn’t know yet. Clever minecrafters exploit that to build elaborate trigger mechanisms known as Block Update Detectors: when something happens to a block next to a piston – like a block being placed or destroyed, gravel falling, fire igniting, rails re-orientating or even cake being eaten – the piston will “wake up”, notice that it isn’t powered any more, retract and trigger something else.
We never really intended this – but the community quickly showed us its potential, using it to build automatic farming contraptions, flying machines and so much more.
When remaking Minecraft for Pocket, we had to rethink how redstone works: we decided it’d make more sense to remove the bug – or, rather, never put it in – but offer an alternative, official way to achieve the same result. And so we’ve introduced the Observer block. It checks for changes in the environment and, if triggered, switches between emitting a strong signal and an unpowered state – but without relying on a bug to do so.
We’ve tested this with lots and lots of different builds, and we can’t wait to see what you lot do with it. We’ve also added some other cool stuff: pistons can now push chests and many other things!
We’re not done yet, either! We’ll continue listening to what you folks have to say and refine redstone accordingly. PC crafters can rest easy, too: we aren’t planning to remove quasi-connectivity from that version. But stay tuned for other exciting developments there, too!
Cheerio!
Mojang is making changes to how redstone works in Minecraft Pocket and Windows 10 Edition
Mojang today announced that they are making changes to the way redstone works in Minecraft Pocket and Windows 10 Edition. They are trying to simplify the peculiarities of redstone without compromising on the power. Minecraft community discovered a bug and called it as a feature called quasi-connectivity. Before Mojang team fixed it, the community showed us its potential, using it to build automatic farming contraptions, flying machines and so much more.
What is quasi-connectivity?
In the PC edition of Minecraft, pistons can receive redstone power from a distance of two blocks when they are placed in a very specific diagonal position, rather than from a block right next to it. But blocks only get updated when something affects adjacent blocks. It means that you can power a piston and then remove the power without the piston detecting it! It puts the piston in this state where it actually needs to be deactivated, but doesn’t know yet. Clever minecrafters exploit that to build elaborate trigger mechanisms known as Block Update Detectors: when something happens to a block next to a piston – like a block being placed or destroyed, gravel falling, fire igniting, rails re-orientating or even cake being eaten – the piston will “wake up”, notice that it isn’t powered any more, retract and trigger something else.
Instead of fixing this bug, now Mojang team is bringing this feature to Minecraft Pocket Edition. They are introducing a new feature called the Observer block. It checks for changes in the environment and, if triggered, switches between emitting a strong signal and an unpowered state. Also, pistons can now push chests and many other things.
Mojang is making changes to how redstone works in Minecraft Pocket and Windows 10 Edition
The latest Pocket Minecraft update news
It’s official, Pocket Minecraft finally has Oculus Rift support; this is great news for Windows 10 PC gamers as the VR headset is now compatible with that version of Minecraft. For mobile gamers, this is not very good news.
The Oculus Rift support is exclusive to PC’s that have Windows 10 and are playing on the new Windows 10 edition of Minecraft. This is a free update for this platform and all users with the Oculus Rift VR headset can now experience the world through that headset.
While this is not the first VR headset to be compatible with Minecraft, the Oculus Rift does offer more services such as external camera tracking which gives Minecraft Pocked Edition players a different experience.
Gamers also have the option of using a Samsung Gear VR which was made compatible with Minecraft earlier this year; both headsets use a Xbox One controller and there is no Touch Motion Controller support for either headset just yet.
The next big update for Minecraft Pocket Edition is Update 0.16.0 which will be released this Fall; the developers have been releasing various hints and have teased a variety of screenshots. Several upcoming features and adjustments have been confirmed by the developers however, there are also various potential features that could be in this update.
It was revealed on Twitter that Minecraft Pocket Edition will be receiving Deep Oceans and also the Ocean Monuments which should also contain Guardians; players also expect that Polar Bears will be added to the game in this update. The Polar Bear mod has been hinted at for several months but has yet to be added to the game, it would make sense for the team to release this mob for the Fall/Winter period.
Some new hints from the developers have suggested that an in-game Crafting Guide Book will be added with this update; in addition to this, players can look forwards to Loot Tables which will impact item drops in the world.
New information shows that Minecraft Pocket Edition will be receiving a version exclusive where the maps use a variety of colors to represent the different biomes in the world. As a bonus, players can expect to see new Resource Packs and potentially even Custom Resource Packs.
Minecraft is getting some redstone changes for Windows 10 and Pocket versions
Developer Mojang will be making some changes in how redstone works in its popular sandbox game Minecraft for Windows 10 and Pocket edition gamers.
For those of you who don’t play Minecraft, redstone (not to be confused with the Windows 10 update that has the code name “Redstone”) is a special substance in the game’s world that can transmit power. PC and Mac users also have another way to use redstone called quasi-connectivity, and it’s actually a bug that, in Mojang’s own words, has turned into a feature.
In the PC edition of Minecraft, pistons can receive redstone power from a distance of two blocks when they are placed in a very specific diagonal position, rather than from a block right next to it. But blocks only get updated when something affects adjacent blocks. It means that you can power a piston and then remove the power without the piston detecting it! It puts the piston in this state where it actually needs to be deactivated, but doesn’t know yet. Clever minecrafters exploit that to build elaborate trigger mechanisms known as Block Update Detectors: when something happens to a block next to a piston – like a block being placed or destroyed, gravel falling, fire igniting, rails re-orientating or even cake being eaten – the piston will “wake up”, notice that it isn’t powered any more, retract and trigger something else.
The Windows 10 and Pocket versions of Minecraft did not add this “feature” but Mojang decided to create an Observer block that basically does the same thing:
It checks for changes in the environment and, if triggered, switches between emitting a strong signal and an unpowered state – but without relying on a bug to do so. We’ve tested this with lots and lots of different builds, and we can’t wait to see what you lot do with it. We’ve also added some other cool stuff: pistons can now push chests and many other things!
PC and Mac users will still have this redstone bug in place; Mojang does not intend to “fix” it.
Minecraft is getting some redstone changes for Windows 10 and Pocket versions
Microsoft updates Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition to support the Oculus Rift
Microsoft first announced that Minecraft would eventually be playable with the Oculus Rift last year. Since then, Minecraft has launched for Samsung’s Gear VR, giving a taste of what a full-fledged VR experience would be like for the game. Gamers that have waited for a full Minecraft VR experience can finally breathe a sigh of relief as the Windows 10 version of the game has received an important update.
Microsoft made the announcement today that Minecraft Windows 10 Edition Beta now supports the Oculus Rift. The team supporting Minecraft detailed some of the new features and thought processes going on in the Windows 10 variant of the game. Some of those new features include:
- Stutter view: Fast and smooth view changes made by moving a player’s head proved to be disorienting, so the VR version of the game will use a “stutter view” that, when a player wants to rotate their horizontal orientation beyond a standard anchored aspect, a 22.5 degree turn can be made using their controller of choice.
- Controller choice: Minecraft Windows 10 Edition with an Oculus Rift will support either an Xbox One controller or the keyboard & mouse input when playing the game.
- Visual upgrades: In the updated Windows 10 version of Minecraft, players can sharpen details in view by enabling MSAA as well as increase view distances. Note that you’ll need a competent video card within your PC or enabling these video settings will likely result in reduce frame rate performance.
- DirectX 11 optimization that allows the inclusion of both the new visual features with Oculus Rift as well as those that were introduced in the Minecraft Gear VR Edition.
- Custom tuning for performance and comfort while playing using the Oculus Rift.
Lots of thought went in to making the VR version of Minecraft. With all of the new features and capabilities, the Minecraft team wanted to make sure that no competitive advantages were given to people that played using the Oculus Rift while providing a richer experience when building and playing through the worlds created by players.
If you want to experience Minecraft in all its VR glory, you’ll need the Oculus Rift headset and an updated Minecraft Windows 10 Edition game to enable VR features. If you have an older video card you will run the risk of not being able to play the game as intended. The team over at Oculus recommends graphics cards that are equivalent or more powerful than a NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD 290 for smooth gameplay. The VR update is free to anyone that already owns the Windows version of the game.
Microsoft updates Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition to support the Oculus Rift
Why We’re Anxious for the Results of Educator-Testing of Minecraft: Education Edition
Minecraft is the second-most popular game in the world, second only to Tetris; on average, 53,000 copies of Minecraft get sold per day.
As with most things that capture the minds of our children, educators tried to find the game’s educational value early on-and succeeded.
In 2011, before Microsoft likely even seriously considered purchasing the best-selling game, teachers created MinecraftEdu, a school-ready version that featured classroom management tools, moderation tools, and access to teacher-created lessons and activities. h
When Microsoft purchased Minecraft from its creator, Mojang, Microsoft realized the massive potential of the game as a learning tool and decided to revamp the education version and re-release it with new features. Currently in its beta version, Minecraft: Education Edition is being tested by schools and educators all over the world.
Here’s why we’re anxious to find out how this testing is going:
To Learn More About the Potential of Game-Based Learning in Teacher Training.
If Minecraft’s education edition is as successful as we predict it will be, that could completely change how the education community views game-based learning.
For instance, even though the product is still in its beta version, one professor is nonetheless using it to teach his education technology students techniques.
According to The Toledo Blade, Mark Stevens, professor at Bowling Green State University, is using the still-in-development version of Minecraft to teach students why gameplay has a place in the classroom. Stevens is committed to using Minecraft to show current students the impact of emerging technologies on learning, whether it’s the beta version of not.
If all goes well, Minecraft could soon become a staple in how teachers’ learn to teach.
To See What Kinds of Lessons and Activities Teachers Have Developed.
Part of the reason Microsoft released the beta version of the education edition this summer is so teachers could have time to test out the new features, but also so teachers could have time to develop lesson plans and activities for the fall.
What teachers have come up with could very well be indicative of a break-through in how learning happens in the classroom. Everyone- not just us- is excited to find out how teachers are able to experience success using game-based learning to teach a variety of subjects.
To Find Out If Minecraft’s Education Community Can Be a Valuable Tool for PLN Development
Because developing creative and useful lesson plans for Minecraft can be a lengthy task, Microsoft has created a portal of resources that is designed to help educators begin their journey.
Microsoft has even created Minecraft Mentors, a program that connects beginners with seasoned users of Minecraft’s educational features to guide use.
This can represent a valuable opportunity for educators to connect with individuals who can become staples in their Professional Learning Network (PLN), which will help them continue to grow as they receive support and feedback throughout their career.
And, Of Course, to Hear About How Students React.
We know that students love Minecraft outside of the classroom, but how are they reacting to Minecraft as an educational tool? What kinds of student responses have come up since testing has begun, and what do these responses mean for future involvement? We can’t wait to find out more.
The wait is almost over. Beginning in September, Microsoft: Education Edition will be available for schools to purchase at a price point of $5 per user.
Why We’re Anxious for the Results of Educator-Testing of Minecraft: Education Edition
‘No Man’s Sky’ Vs ‘Minecraft’: So NMS Isn’t A ‘Minecraft’ Killer
No Man’s Sky has been out for a week now, and the Internet has devoured the game to a degree the developers never predicted. It’s a huge hit—although, as expected, the game has been divisive because the real game we can play now is quite different than the super-hyped version of No Man’s Sky we imagined. For one thing, a lot of earnest and eager fans expected the game to be some kind of a Minecraft killer. It was probably never to be in the first place, but one thing’s for sure—No Man’s Sky isn’t a Minecraft killer. And that’s for a pretty obvious reason. The games just aren’t that much alike.
Why No Man’s Sky Isn’t A Minecraft Killer
O, the halcyon days of 2015, when the hype about No Man’s Sky reached its maximum levels compared to the amount of actual information we had. Absent much detail about the gameplay in No Man’s Sky, players and lazy journalists projected every little thing onto the game, from imagining it was a massive multiplayer game of space alliance building like EvE Online to dreaming up a game where we all could build massive planetside installations of our own design, a sort of Minecraft set on infinite earths.
Of course, it turns out No Man’s Sky isn’t anything like that. For one thing, it doesn’t have base-building, one of the core components of Minecraft (although the feature is coming in a future patch). For another, while you can tear down many of the environments in No Man’s Sky, you can’t put them back together like you can in Minecraft. NMS has loads of destructible environments, but not only is there no base-building… there isn’t much building at all.
After all, No Man’s Sky is a game about moving continuously… not about standing in one place and slowly building up a world. And while No Man’s Sky does have a developed crafting system, what you create is about helping you move forward faster and more safely—not about helping you build a cooler and better base.
When it comes down to it, No Man’s Sky isn’t a Minecraft killer because it doesn’t really compete with Minecraft. The games set out to do very different things. Tons of indie games do pursue similar angles as Minecraft, and are far more in its purview: Don’t Starve, Terraria, Starbound, Stardew Valley and even Super Mario Maker and Fallout 4 are closer to Minecraft’s wheelhouse. No Man’s Sky, on the other hand, does a great job at what Sean Murray and Hello Games always said it would do. It has its problems—some of them big ones—but it’s a stunning science fiction visual epic sandbox. Minecraft is an open world base-building adventure sandbox. They just aren’t even in the same realm.
‘No Man’s Sky’ Vs ‘Minecraft’: So NMS Isn’t A ‘Minecraft’ Killer
What is Minecraft?
Find out about the best-selling PC game.
Minecraft is a video game for single or multi-player use.
The game allows players to create constructions out of cubes in a three-dimensional generated world.
Minecraft was released in November 2011 after being designed by the Swedish programmer Markus Persson.
Kristoffer Zetterstrand and Markus Toivonen are the artists of the game, whilst Daniel Rosenfeld is the composer and sound developer.
Swedish company Mojang are the developers of Minecraft. The Stockholm based business was bought by Microsoft in November 2014.
Minecraft has various versions such as survival mode, in which players have to maintain the health of their created world. The creative mode is where unlimited building resources are available, whereas adventure mode allows multi-player usage as players explore the created maps of other gamers.
Minecraft is categorised as a Sanbox game since players have more freedom than typical video games. There is less structure to sandbox games as players can essentially create their designs from a blank template.
Minecraft gets the full virtual reality treatment: Hit game lands for Oculus Rift ahead of the headset’s UK launch
Lovers of sandbox explorer game Minecraft will be able to lose themselves in its world of blocky graphics, as the game launches on the Oculus Rift.
Global Xbox and PC users with the headset already playing the game will be able to get a free Windows 10 beta update to enter into the VR world.
The game is one of the first big titles to launch on the much hyped Facebook-owned Oculus Rift, which is set for its European launch next month.
Minecraft’s developer, Mojang, trumpeted the game’s arrival with an excited blog post: ‘How’s your face? Is it ready? Is it ready to have Minecraft right up in it? It’d better be: today we’re releasing a free update to Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta which will enable you to play Minecraft on Oculus Rift.’
Writing on Xbox Wire, the game’s AR/VR developer Mike McGrath, said: ‘For new and experienced players, we hope the VR experience in Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta will illuminate just how powerful, evocative, and utterly immersive VR can really be.’
Included in the VR version of the game is a Minecraft ‘living room’ in which players can zoom out of the first person perspective and step back through a screen into their very own virtual room and continue to play the game on a screen.
This is the second bite of the VR cherry for Minecraft, with fans already able to play a limited version of the game on Samsung Gear VR.
But the new Oculus Rift version provides players with a new set of features.
According to Mojang, this includes tweaks to the in-play turning – making it more comfortable for players to look around their new VR world – as well as improved graphics.
A blog post on the Oculus Rift site said: ‘Build, explore and battle mobs from a fresh perspective.
‘With a VR headset on, coming face-to-face with monstrous mobs takes on new meaning; creeping into dark caves inspires even greater trepidation thanks to 3D audio; and the light of a gorgeous sunrise seems to envelop you more completely.’
Alamance County students learn from Minecraft
ALAMANCE COUNTY, N.C. — During one of the hottest summers in recent memory, students at Hawfields Middle School are finding a unique way to beat-the-heat and enjoy their last remaining days of “summer freedom.”
In the world of ever-growing technology, the popular open-world building game Minecraft is finding its way into one middle school classroom.
FOX8’s Cindy Farmer shows us several ways that the game is being used and how it will affect students during the upcoming school year.
‘Bioshock Remaster’ Release Date, News & Update: New Game Trailer Released, Updated Graphics Showcased; How To Avail Free Version?
The belief that the original is better than the sequel is one of the focal points being debated about as “Bioshock Remaster” nears its impending release date. Gamers are surely awaiting the game’s release like hungry sharks awaiting the prey in the form of “Bioshock” immediate predecessor.
The developers of the game have released a video trailer showing an ashen setting imbibing an overall eerie feel that the original “Bioshock” has given its players. “Bioshock Remaster” is expected to clean up and polish the sloven areas of the previous “Bioshock” game.
Some players liken the game as a stress reliever in times that they want to go all out wild and psycho because “Bioshock Remaster” gives players a chance to use high end weapons and shoot them relentlessly. It’s been a long time since the first “Bioshock” game has been released and players have truly missed the presence of the game.
Players who bought the “Bioshock” game almost ten years ago can get their hands on “Bioshock Remaster” for free. The developers of the game have announced this wonderful offer recently and the owners of the original “Bioshock” game are very pleased to hear the news. Who wouldn’t be pleased with a chance to get a brand new and improved game resurrected from a game that they have patronized a few years back?
The much talked about “Bioshock Remaster” will have high-end graphics and visuals that will take the players to a whole new level of action. The resolution itself proves to be a great difference from its predecessor. The “Bioshock Remaster” will be rolled out on most gaming platforms. There will be different release dates in specific countries but the worldwide release for ‘Bioshock Remaster” is scheduled on Sept. 16.
How Minecraft can teach children about religion
Two groups of children − one Muslim and one Christian – are planning their next construction projects. The Muslim children wonder how they are going to create the stained glass windows depicting Jesus feeding the 5,000, while the Christian children worry about creating the large dome of a mosque using nothing but square blocks.
These students are using the computer game Minecraft to consolidate what they have learned about each other’s religions in class by building virtual houses of worship.
As he places individual prayer mats, a Christian child asks: “So what’s up with going on your knees and facing east when you pray?”
One of the Muslim children replies: “Going on our knees to pray is called sujud. And we face east because that’s where Mecca is.”
“Oh, just like how we put our hands together and face the altar,” the Christian child says.
Immersive learning
I am exploring the uses of Minecraft in education as part of my studies at the University of Sussex. Minecraft has dominated the internet in recent years, but it is now often also used in schools as a tool for facilitating education by immersing children in a game they love at the same time as curriculum-based knowledge.
This upcoming academic year will see the release of the new Minecraft: Education Edition, aimed specifically at teachers and their students. But even without a dedicated education version, teachers have found that their students sometimes learn more from playing Minecraft in class than they originally intended them to.
Stephen Elford, a seasoned Minecraft educator who is known to his students as “Elfie” describes having this experience in one of his blog posts.
While exploring a giant version of an animal cell in a Minecraft map, two of his most challenging students started hitting one another in the game. One student jumped on to a teleport block to flee the fight while the other shouted: “Yeah, you better run. I was about to pick you up and throw you into the lysosome!” In doing so, the student demonstrated that he had retained knowledge of the waste-recycling functions of the lysosome − something that he had experienced and learned through Minecraft.
Cultural understanding
Supporting the retention of knowledge is only the start of what Minecraft can do, though.
Back in the RE classroom, the children continue to discuss their religious practices, finding more comparisons and differences as they start to gain a better understanding of one another. By immersing children in these virtual worlds of thought, we allow them to explore and question them and to develop tools such as cultural understanding.
After a while, the Christian child returns to building a minaret, while the Muslim child chases a giant slime out from between the pews he has been making. And as they talk, a large square sun sets on the cathedral and mosque they are building.
‘Halo Wars 2’ Latest New & Update: Second Beta Happening in 2017
“Halo Wars 2” will be having a second beta filled with major changes in 2017. Most of the changes were derived from the feedback collected from the release of the first beta of the game.
343 Industries and The Creative Assembly made the announcement of the second beta of “Halo Wars 2”. The question now though is how drastic the changes will be. The best way to find out is to await the second beta.
Some of the possible improvements in the second beta
Among the likely changes for the second beta of “Halo Wars 2” could include the population cap. The feature was kept low in the first beta so seeing that raised in 2017 is a strong possibility. Unfortunately, there is no definite number tied up to that as of this writing.
Also possibly improved would be the Leader Powers. Gaming Bolt hints that they may be made easier to understand. Bases are an aspect of “Halo Wars 2,” possibly coming out with better display highlight the damages they take from attacks.
Game Stability, UI improvements and more
The “Halo Wars 2” team has apparently been busy monitoring the first beta and one of the important things that will be addressed as well is game performance. Through a blog post from the Xbox.com, the developers bared that they were aware of the connectivity issues, de-synchs and so on. 343 Industries Dan Ayoub was happy to note that they have addressed the issue for the final version.
In all, the post also revealed that there are five main areas that will undergo adjusting. That includes controls, leader abilities, bases, resources and energy and the population. Several of those were already tackled earlier.
Ayoub promises more updates aside from the seemingly heavy work they have ahead of them. Just the same, the massive changes should be something to look forward to. They will likely be on full display when the second beta of “Halo Wars 2” comes out in 2017 for the Windows 10 and Xbox One platforms
‘Halo Wars 2’ Latest New & Update: Second Beta Happening in 2017
‘Minecraft’ News & Update: Game Will Feature Virtual Reality Support; What Is Hardcore Mode For Vanilla ‘Minecraft’?
“Minecraft” players have developed all types of ways to test their abilities to battle the merciless and blocky world of “Minecraft.” The famous sandbox game is one of the most played games by kids nowadays. “Minecraft” is also available on android apps on Google Play.
Soon the famous sandbox game or “Minecraft” will be playable on Oculus Virtual Reality Visors. As stated on our previous report, Oculus rift support for the game “Minecraft” means that Redmond will use its most loved brand to make PC owners upgrade to the latest desktop Operating Service.
Virtual reality in the game “Minecraft” is a dream for fans. According to TechRunch, the virtual reality version for “Minecraft” will be available in the next few weeks. But the said game will only run on Windows 10 Edition Beta. And it was supposed to be released with the 0.15.6 version of the beta.
On other news, the main element for survival in vanilla “Minecraft” is through hard core mode. The difficulty of hard core mode is up to max by increasing the strength and spawn rate of mobs, but most importantly by instituting permanent death.
According to Kotaku, the hard core mode feature has been around since the 1.0.0 update. But before that, players developed their own rules for a hard core mode, and these were based on an honour system rather than game mechanics.
Players who have previewed the Virtual Reality “Minecraft” experience seem to generally enjoy it. So it is likely to be a launch Virtual Reality fans follow pretty closely. It could even be big enough to drive some additional headset sales.
Minecraft for Oculus Rift is out today
After months of waiting, Minecraft is now available on the Oculus Rift, via a free update to the game’s Windows 10 beta edition. You could already play Minecraft on the Rift via a mod called Minecrift, but this is the first official version of the game for desktop virtual reality — a Gear VR version was released in April. (Vive users can still use a mod calledVivecraft, which also supports the Rift.)
The Minecraft team says that Windows 10 users will see some features that aren’t in the Gear VR version. That includes support for a mouse and keyboard, as well as graphics settings that take advantage of VR-capable computers’ power. Since the game can be played both inside and outside a headset, it will preserve some settings for each mode separately, so players can tweak in-VR movement or graphics without affecting their flatscreen game experience later.
Of course, one of the biggest differences between the Rift and the Gear VR is the Rift’s Touch motion controllers, which are set to come out later this year. Microsoft doesn’t mention whether Minecraft will eventually support motion controls, but an image of Touch on the Minecraft VR page appears to have been removed since we last checked in July — so for now, enjoy your controller or keyboard.
The Most Hardcore Ways To Play Minecraft
For years now, masochistic Minecraft players have developed all sorts of ways to test their mettle against a merciless and unforgiving blocky world.
For vanilla Minecraft, the core element of the survival challenge is Hardcore mode, which cranks the difficulty up to max by increasing the strength and spawn rate of mobs, but most importantly by instituting permadeath. This feature has been around since the 1.0.0 update, but before that, players developed their own rules for a hardcore mode, and these were based on an honor system rather than in-game mechanics. Eventually, Minecraft’s actual hardcore mode stopped challenging more ambitious players and they had to come up with more inventive ways to add difficulty to the game.
In 2011, the popular YouTube channel Yogscast tried their hand at a “Survival Island” custom map, which spawns you on an inhospitable patch of dirt and tasks you with staying alive. The original map gives you the bare minimum that you need to survive—one tree, some food, and a place to dig. Staying alive long enough to grow or hunt more food while dodging creepers and zombies is brutally difficult even on regular difficulty, and requires solid grasp of game mechanics and Minecraft lore. This map proved so popular that it spawned an entire genre of play, and it remains one of the most challenging ways to play even in 2016.
The popularity of the survival island gave rise to a growing number of survival-challenge maps. Many of these, like the ever-popular Skyblock (and offshoots like SkyGrid, OceanBlock, etc.), tasked you with surviving on a tiny island in the sky with limited resources and challenged you to use your knowledge of Minecraft to combine materials to create the items you needed. This differed from ‘Survival Island’ in that you couldn’t just dig down to find more dirt and ore — you needed to use the items provided by the chests in very specific ways (like combining lava and water to create obsidian) in order to survive and thrive. Though these maps have fallen out of favor after years of mod madness, it’s sort of amazing how difficult the game can be with a few self-imposed restrictions and limited resources.
Survival challenges have since thrived on YouTube — a search for any of the challenges I’ve mentioned above will yield at least one video to watch, if other people’s suffering is your thing.
The Yogscast, again, has some of the best survival series around, including a set of videos about their crack at SkyBlock on Hardcore, a multiplayer series, and one particularly hilarious game set on the back of a flying whale. Graser10 is also a great source of survival challenges, and he has uploaded intense videos where he races to kill a Ghast in 25 minutes, starting from scratch. SethBling has some videos worth checking out as well, including one of my favorites (to watch, not to play, because you’ve got to draw the line somewhere), The Floor is Lava.
One of the coolest long-running series is Mindcrack’s Ultra Hardcore, which places a bunch of YouTubers on a limited map with natural regeneration turned off and player combat encouraged. The PvP element is at least as important as the survival element here, but if you want to see the most brutal survival mode that Minecraft has to offer, this is a great place to start.
It would be impossible to discuss anything about Minecraft without mentioning mods, and in this case, there are plenty that are aimed at the survival challenge crowd. Mods like ‘Better Than Wolves’ makes the game more realistic and adds challenges like different move speeds on different surfaces, whereas mod Blood and Bones, ramps the difficulty up across the board. Some mods, like TerraFirmaCraft, take the idea of ‘survival’ to the extreme. TerraFirmaCraft actually closely mirrors the feel of Minecraft survival without adding too many extra mechanics. Instead of being able to mine and gather by punching things, in TerraFirmaCraft you have to painstakingly gather sticks and rocks to make tools, plant seasonally, eat from multiple food groups, and agonizingly make your way up the tech tree in order to achieve the same security that you might reach in an afternoon in vanilla Minecraft.
I fancy myself a pretty hardcore player, but TerraFirmaCraft made me feel like a filthy casual. I starved to death almost immediately after starting the mod, because I had planted incorrectly and failed to lay up enough food for the winter. If you think you’re Minecraft-tough, I strongly recommend you give it a try and test your mettle.
Even with so many mods and customs maps for Minecraft players, the most interesting survival challenges are the ones that the players impose on themselves within the restriction of vanilla Minecraft. Having to work within the constraints of the original game has produced some truly grueling, inspiring, and jaw-dropping challenges, many of which have been documented with screenshots or via YouTube. You could spend weeks digging through all of the challenges that players have set up for themselves and others, but I’ll dive into some of the best here.
One thread from early in Minecraft’s lifespan institutes a series of restrictions and milestones that must be met before advancing to the next stage, called the City Construction Challenge. This forces the player to slowly, carefully, and deliberately build their settlement (rather than, say, digging straight down and making diamond armor right away). It’s not especially unforgiving, except in the sense that it’s time consuming, but it’s fascinating how it produces a radically different result from most free-form Minecraft play. Other construction based challenges add increasing degrees of difficulty, like The Tree Spirit, which forbids you from ever leaving your home tree, or the no-craft challenge, which tasks the player with defeating the Ender Dragon without ever using a 3×3 table.
Survival challenges run from the simple to the irritatingly complex, but adding just one self-imposed restriction can radically change the way you play the game. A ‘naked’ playthrough, where you don’t wear armor, or a fists-only attempt, or a vegan playthrough, or a pacifist playthrough, or a nomad playthrough, can feel like entirely different games (Logdotzip’s nomadic survival series is a particularly awesome example). One of the most interesting restrictions you can place on yourself is limiting yourself to no mining — meaning that you only look for ore and gems in natural caves or ravines, rather than strip-mining everything (which is much easier and safer). This forces you to explore and encounter more dangerous foes, extending what many (myself included) consider to be the most interesting and exciting part of Minecraft.
Recent updates to Minecraft allow players to tweak settings which opens up even more brutal survival opportunities, too. One of the best ways to ramp up the difficult of Minecraft (especially if you’re playing in Hardcore mode) is to set the game to be always nighttime, vastly increasing your risk of running into mobs and removing any sort of reprieve from the onslaught. Turning off natural regeneration forces you into a sort of ‘Super Hardcore’ mode—the only way to regain health is through Golden Apples or Health Potions, meaning that you need to know exactly what you’re doing or you’re going to die very quickly. From personal experience I can tell you that ‘always night’ and ‘no natural regeneration’ are not for the faint of heart.
These changes have also spawned an entire subcommunity of hardcore fanatics who hang out in /r/flatcore. These players know that setting the world to flat not only adds a whole new set of challenges to the game, it also works exceptionally well as a framework for adding other restrictions on top of that. The best variation that I have found is Swampcore, which places you on an infinite flat swamp with an eternal thunderstorm. The only place to get stone is from lava pools and the only way to find villagers to trade with is by curing the zombified ones who come after you.
Swampcore wrecked me when I tried it. I was repeatedly overwhelmed by zombies and creepers, carelessly dug into lava and was melted, and generally had a rough time. It was madness. If you think that Minecraft is too easy, I strongly encourage you to give this a shot.
Though it rapidly departed from this vision, Notch initially conceived ofMinecraft as more of a survival horror game. He described a much scarier, more desperate version of the game in a 2009 Tumblr post that envisioned a challenging scrabble for life in a hostile game world.
Over the years, the community proved to have a mind of its own regarding what Minecraft was ‘about,’ but thanks to the popularity of survival challenges, that original vision for a more grueling Minecraft continues to live on through fans.
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.
‘No Man’s Sky’ Vs ‘Minecraft’: So NMS Isn’t A ‘Minecraft’ Killer
No Man’s Sky has been out for a week now, and the Internet has devoured the game to a degree the developers never predicted. It’s a huge hit—although, as expected, the game has been divisive because the real game we can play now is quite different than the super-hyped version of No Man’s Sky we imagined. For one thing, a lot of earnest and eager fans expected the game to be some kind of a Minecraft killer. It was probably never to be in the first place, but one thing’s for sure—No Man’s Sky isn’t a Minecraft killer. And that’s for a pretty obvious reason. The games just aren’t that much alike.
Why No Man’s Sky Isn’t A Minecraft Killer
O, the halcyon days of 2015, when the hype about No Man’s Sky reached its maximum levels compared to the amount of actual information we had. Absent much detail about the gameplay in No Man’s Sky, players and lazy journalists projected every little thing onto the game, from imagining it was a massive multiplayer game of space alliance building like EvE Online to dreaming up a game where we all could build massive planetside installations of our own design, a sort of Minecraft set on infinite earths.
Of course, it turns out No Man’s Sky isn’t anything like that. For one thing, it doesn’t have base-building, one of the core components of Minecraft (although the feature is coming in a future patch). For another, while you can tear down many of the environments in No Man’s Sky, you can’t put them back together like you can in Minecraft. NMS has loads of destructible environments, but not only is there no base-building… there isn’t much building at all.
After all, No Man’s Sky is a game about moving continuously… not about standing in one place and slowly building up a world. And while No Man’s Sky does have a developed crafting system, what you create is about helping you move forward faster and more safely—not about helping you build a cooler and better base.
When it comes down to it, No Man’s Sky isn’t a Minecraft killer because it doesn’t really compete with Minecraft. The games set out to do very different things. Tons of indie gamesdo pursue similar angles as Minecraft, and are far more in its purview: Don’t Starve, Terraria, Starbound, Stardew Valley and even Super Mario Maker and Fallout 4 are closer toMinecraft’s wheelhouse. No Man’s Sky, on the other hand, does a great job at what Sean Murray and Hello Games always said it would do. It has its problems—some of them big ones—but it’s a stunning science fiction visual epic sandbox. Minecraft is an open world base-building adventure sandbox. They just aren’t even in the same realm.
‘No Man’s Sky’ Vs ‘Minecraft’: So NMS Isn’t A ‘Minecraft’ Killer
Experience Minecraft in a whole new way with Oculus Rift Today
Welcome to Minecraft again… in VR!
Last fall, we announced that we were working with our partners at Oculus to develop Minecraft for VR. Finally, the time has come where we are ready to have everyone experience Minecraft in a whole new way through virtual reality on Oculus Rift. Starting today, as a thank you to our community, we’ll be releasing a free update to Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta which will enable gameplay using Oculus Rift devices. We’d like to welcome you to the game all over again, because it’s a fantastic new experience in VR, even if you’re a Minecraft veteran. For new and experienced players, we hope the VR experience in Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta will illuminate just how powerful, evocative, and utterly immersive VR can really be.
We at Team Minecraft have worked hard on making Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition’s new VR feature a comfortable, engaging VR experience. The Windows 10 DX11 performance has been optimized even further to augment the VR experience, and along with the VR features we added previously to the Gear VR Edition of Minecraft, there are a ton of new options. There is innate support for keyboard and mouse (for those who know their keyboard that well!), and a variety of VR control options for immersive comfortable turning with the Xbox One controller. We’re also supporting MSAA in VR for crisp visuals, and there are new render distance settings that will put your powerful VR graphics card into good use. Many VR-specific options which affect comfort or rendering performance are recorded separately, so you can customize your VR experience, and still retain your traditional Minecraft experience exactly how you left it… when you left the real world, for the world of VR Minecraft!
In the accompanying video, you can learn more about Minecraft in VR, and our journey to create it. We hope you have as much fun with it as we did making it!
Cheers, Crafters!
Experience Minecraft in a whole new way with Oculus Rift Today
Meet ‘Minecraft’ Builders Who Craft Impossibly Detailed Virtual Worlds
It’s enthralled an entire generation and sold more than 100 million copies, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that for some hyper-skilled players, the open-ended, Lego-like building game Minecraft has become an actual, money-earning occupation. Just as the most-talented Lego architects earn a living showing off their blocky creations, there’s good money to be made by anyone with the skills to craft Minecraft‘s cube-shaped digital blocks into beautiful sculptures and stunning worlds.
This March, Warner Bros used a slice of its $165 million Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice marketing budget to hire several YouTube stars and a company called BlockWorks to create Minecraft renditions of both Gotham City and Metropolis – with the former including a Batmobile that players could drive around the virtual city. This was business as usual for BlockWorks, which is headed by Cambridge University architecture student James Delaney. The professional mapmakers previously built a Minecraft map of Tomorrowland for the Disney film of the same name, which likewise was played by popular YouTubers to the delight of hundreds of thousands of fans. They’ve also built worlds for Microsoft, The Guardian and the Royal Institute of British Architects, among many others.
It’s been a meteoric rise for Delaney and his three co-founders. “I started playing Minecraft about four or five years ago,” says Delaney, who isn’t scheduled to graduate from Cambridge until 2019. “I was just a regular school kid. I was interested in architecture, and it sort of grew from there.”
The four friends played just for fun. Then they noticed that Minecraft-focused YouTubers and the larger, more popular multiplayer servers were starting “to get a decent amount of payment” from donations – by 2013, many servers were pulling in tens of thousands of dollars every month.
Back then, these Minecraft-centric industries were just getting started, and in order to grow they needed a constant stream of new and interesting worlds to play with. Delaney sensed the opportunity. “We thought if we provide these guys with really good builds, there could be a business here,” he explains.
That was three years ago. Now that team of four has become 42, and BlockWorks is a legit business – albeit one for which the “office” is split between Skype and a private Minecraft server. Delaney is managing director, which sounds like it would be hard to juggle with his studies. But he has a handle on it. “The good thing about university is that you spend half the year on holiday,” he says.
BlockWorks’ business is anchored by Minecraft‘s corporate owners, Microsoft, which reached out to Delaney and his team in June last year after nine of them published a 31,752,348-block map that depicted a futuristic civilization deep beneath the surface of the ocean. The tech giant has since commissioned BlockWorks on several projects, including the elaborate map that starred at this year’s Microsoft’s E3 briefing and a set of replicas of the seven wonders of the ancient world – the latter so that school kids could visit them in Minecraft: Education Edition.
When not building Minecraft maps for Microsoft or big-name brands and YouTube stars, the team at BlockWorks busy themselves with projects such as Ireland 2066 and Climate Hope City. These were both conceptual builds with an educational bent – Ireland 2066 was made to inspire school-aged children in conceiving their entries for a competition celebrating the past and future of Ireland, while Climate Hope City was a collaborative effort with fellow Minecraft professional creative Adam Clarke and The Guardian to envisage a fully-sustainable city using only existing green technologies. This sustainable city build ranks among Delaney’s favorites. “They didn’t give us a plan,” he says. “Just design and build a sustainable city, which is kind of an architectural student’s dream.”
BlockWorks is the most prominent Minecraft “build team,” as they call themselves, but there are dozens of others. Most are led by teenagers or 20-somethings like Delaney – though at least one well-known professional mapmaker, Adam “Wizard Keen” Clarke, is over 40 – and the rewards run the gamut from pocket change to checks big enough to keep full-scale creative agencies in business. Delaney only knows of three or four build teams that operate at the upper end of the scale, however.
“You’ve got kids who might be really great at Minecraft,” he says. “They’ve been doing it for four years, but they’re still just doing it for fun. Maybe occasionally they make a few hundred dollars from a server that wants to have a really nice looking spawn [starting area for players] from them. Then on the other side of the spectrum you’ve got people who are taking it incredibly seriously and they’re working with some of the largest companies in the world – huge advertising budgets.”
“And so the scale of work in what is a relatively niche industry is absolutely enormous. I don’t know if I can give any figures,” he continues. “But enough to make a profitable business.”
Take GoCreative, for example, which was founded by a German teenager and Brandon Relph, an enterprising 15 year-old from the UK. Relph made £10,000 last year building scene recreations from a film and scale replicas of famous landmarks – all the while maintaining good grades at school and setting aside only a few hours a night for his Minecraft-centric business. GoCreative is now a small multinational company with around two dozen employees and commissions coming from the education and non-profit sectors as well as entertainment and tourism. In March, a charity that aims to combat declining honey bee populations hired them to help visualize the science in Minecraft. They created a model that depicts gun-toting ants assaulting a giant, peaceful beehive.
Another successful group, Everbloom Studios, has an origin story similar to BlockWorks’. Co-founder Matthew Banks parlayed his love of Lego and model making into a Minecraft addiction early in the game’s life. He got good just as Minecraft was entering the stratosphere, and he and a few friends he’d met online started getting offered money to build maps for multiplayer servers. Their first paid project, published in February 2013, was a small Nordic-style seaside town where players could rest and recuperate before heading back out to battle against the wilderness. (It was also where their character would “spawn” on arrival to the server or respawn upon death.)
Fast forward to today and they have 40 members, 25 of which handle building (10 work on videos and the rest fill “niche roles”). Everbloom still gets “over 90 percent” of its work from servers. They build player hubs, starting areas, and maps for special mini-games. Popular mini-games include a Minecraft spin on laser tag or The Hunger Games, castle battles, boat races, Minecraft renditions of popular sports, and much more.
The most profitable commissions come from brands, though. Or rather, they did – until a recent Minecraft policy shift that shook the world of pro builders.
A change to Minecraft‘s Commercial Usage Guidelines announced at the end of May prohibits companies from commissioning Minecraft maps or modifications that are meant for promotional purposes – so no more Minecraft adaptations of a big set-piece from the latest blockbuster movie and no in-game Verizon smartphones. In essence, anything that exists solely to promote a brand is off-limits.
“We want to empower our community to make money from their creativity, but we’re not happy when the selling of an unrelated product becomes the purpose of a Minecraft mod or server,” wrote Owen Jones, Mojang’s director of creative communications, in a blog post explaining the new rules. Glixel reached out to Microsoft for more detail on these new policies but did not receive comment.
Build teams at the lower end of the market won’t be affected much – they weren’t getting these lucrative promotional commissions anyway. But for those at the top it means uncertain times ahead.
Banks says they’ve had to scramble to find companies and organizations that can pay for builds that won’t be construed as marketing.
Their best bet going forward may be education, which is where Delaney says BlockWorks now gets the bulk of its commissions. Minecraft and Minecraft: Education Edition are used in thousands of schools around the world, and one flavor or the other is now a standard part of the curriculum in many schools across Scandinavia, the U.S., Australia, and elsewhere. These schools often need help designing and building the maps for Minecraft-centric lesson plans to help teach kids about everything from biodiversity and deforestation to sustainable living and city planning.
Some things are clear-cut no-go zones. Disney definitely can’t pay a build team $10,000 to make a map of the climactic scene from the next Avengers movie. But there are grey areas. Can museums fund the creation of maps based on exhibitions they’re running? Or could that be construed as promotional? One such project, Tate Modern’s Tate Worlds, which features Minecraft re-imaginings of famous paintings, has already been taken down from popular server Hypixel because of the new rules, according to the map’s builder.
The bottom line, as far as Banks is concerned, is that no matter how the blurred edges turn out under the microscope, this sets a worrying precedent for the future of professional Minecraft map making – and shows the precariousness of economic ecosystems built around corporate-owned games. And it could chase away – or force out – some of the best builders.
Banks says that if the build scene contracts, the servers will suffer – and so, in turn, will the game as a whole. “Minecraft is only limited by the creativity of the people who play it,” he argues. “The only danger it faces is if the ability for its player base to be creative is taken away.”
Meet ‘Minecraft’ Builders Who Craft Impossibly Detailed Virtual Worlds
Kids Who Built New York Wheel on Minecraft Get First Dibs on Ride
ST. GEORGE — Student engineers who built a virtual version of the New York Wheel on the online game Minecraft will be among the first to ride the real thing when it opens next year.
The 10 students built the New York Wheel on the popular computer game during a summer STEM program. Wheel CEO Rich Marin gave the digital engineers free VIP tickets to ride the attraction on the first week it opens to highlight their work.
“When we came over we saw that there were 10 who had, of their own volition, included the wheel as part of their vision of sort of the ideal community. We thought that was noteworthy,” said Marin.
“To give that sort of pride to Staten Island children where they can say, ‘Yeah we got the Ferry, we got the wheel, we got some neat stuff here on Staten Island,’ that meant a lot to us because to us building a wheel is about building an icon and building pride.”
The Department of Education “STEM Summer in the City 2016” program involved second to 10th graders around the city doing weekly challenges like coding and game design, field trips and Minecraft.
The students who decided to build the wheel for the program were all in the 7th to 11th grade Staten Island program.
Fatin Iftekhar, 14, of West Brighton, said it took him hours, and a lot of math, to create the wheel in the game, but it was worth it to be one of the first to try out the ride.
“It’s amazing,” said Iftekhar, who attends Brooklyn Technical High School and only found out he was getting a ticket a few days ago. “I want to show off at home too. I got a ticket playing a video game.”
Iftekhar built a sculpture park and theme park in the game for his summer project and chose to add the wheel to help bring more recognition to the borough and give his friends a chance to — digitally — ride the attraction.
“It would bring more recognition to Staten Island and the wheel project itself,” he said about his idea to make it in the game.
“Other people would get to see it, hear about it, and it all comes out to something great in the end.”
He said the hardest part of the project was trying to create the round wheel itself because Minecraft only uses square blocks. Marin said a lot of the problems the student designers worked through were the same ones his team dealt with.
“It’s causing them to think through issues that we have to think through in building this huge wheel,” said Marin.
The 620-foot observational wheel — expected to be one of the tallest in the world — is expected to open next year.
Aside from the tickets given to children in the STEM program, all students in the city will get a free ride on the wheel during its first year in operation, Marin said.
Kids Who Built New York Wheel on Minecraft Get First Dibs on Ride
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