Minecraft tree ‘probably’ the tallest tree in the Tropics
A tree the height of 20 London double-decker buses has been discovered in Malaysia by conservation scientists monitoring the impact of human activity on the biodiversity of a pristine rainforest. The tree, a Yellow Meranti, is one of the species that can be grown in the computer game Minecraft.
The Yellow Meranti stands 89.5m tall in an area of forest known as ‘Sabah’s Lost World’ — the Maliau Basin Conservation Area, one of Malaysia’s last few untouched wildernesses. Its height places it ahead of the previous record-holder, an 88.3m Yellow Meranti in the Tawau Hills National Park.
The giant tree was discovered during reconnaissance flights by conservation scientists from the University of Cambridge working with the Sabah Forestry Department to help protect the area’s biodiversity. It comes at a crucial time, as the Sabah government takes measures to protect and restore heavily logged areas in the region.
Measuring a tree’s exact height is tricky when the tree is quite possibly the tallest tree in the Tropics. The only way is to climb it, and to take a tape measure with you. This is precisely what Unding Jami, an expert tree-climber from Sabah, did recently. When he reached the top, he confirmed the tree’s height and texted “I don’t have time to take photos using a good camera because there’s an eagle around that keeps trying to attack me and also lots of bees flying around.”
The tree actually stands on a slope: downhill it’s 91m tall, and uphill it’s around 88m tall. “We’d put it at 89.5m on average,” explains lead researcher Dr David Coomes, from Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences. “It’s a smidgen taller than the record, which makes it quite probably the tallest tree recorded in the Tropics!”
At this height, the tree is roughly equivalent to the height of 65 people standing on each other’s shoulders, or 20 double-decker London buses. It’s just a few metres short of London’s Big Ben.
“Trees in temperate regions, like the giant redwoods, can grow up to 30m taller; yet around 90m seems to be the limit in the Tropics. No-one knows why this should be the case,” adds Coomes.
The tree was spotted using a LiDAR scanner — a machine that’s capable of producing exquisitely detailed three-dimensional images of rainforest canopies over hundreds of square kilometres. Its laser range finder hangs from the undercarriage of the research plane, peppering the forest with 200,000 laser pulses every second, and calculating distances in 3D from each reflected pulse. The researchers then ‘stitch’ the images together, enabling them to map the forest tree by tree.
Threatened by habitat loss, the Yellow Meranti (Shorea faguetiana) is classified as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature ‘Red list’, the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species.
“Interestingly, there may be more of this tree in cyberspace than in the world. It’s one of the trees that players can grow in the computer game Minecraft,” adds Coomes.
“Conserving these giants is really important. Some, like the California redwoods, are among the largest and longest-living organisms on earth. Huge trees are crucial for maintaining the health of the forest and its ecology. But they are difficult to find, and monitor regularly, which is where planes carrying LiDAR can help.”
Globally, around one billion hectares of degraded forest might be restorable, enabling then to continue to contribute to the planet’s biodiversity and its carbon and water cycles. However, a major problem faced by conservation managers is how to survey extensive areas in which conditions can vary in just a few hundred square metres and are continually changing through natural regeneration. “LiDAR scanning together with digital photography and hyperspectral scanners now provide us with unprecedented information on the state of the forest,” explains Coomes.
With funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Cambridge scientists worked with the Sabah Forestry Department, the South-East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership and the NERC Airborne Remote Sensing Facility.
“The Sabah government is extremely proud of this discovery, which lays credence to the fact that our biodiversity is of global importance,” says Sam Mannan, Director of the Sabah Forestry Department. “Our international collaboration, as in this case, has brought great scientific dividends to the state and we shall continue to pursue such endeavours.”
Adds Coomes: “The discovery of this particular tree comes at a critical moment because, set against a backdrop of decades of forest loss, the Sabah government has decided to protect and restore a huge tract of heavily logged forest just to the east of the Maliau Basin. It’s exciting to know that these iconic giants of the forest are alive and well so close to this major restoration project.”
TURNS OUT MINECRAFT IRL IS THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES
Who doesn’t love Minecraft? It’s the light-hearted game of a lone survivor making his way in a pixelated world. The monsters aren’t too scary, and because the game can be as easy or as challenging as the player wants it, Minecraft is one of those rare games that adults and kids can both love and spend hours playing. So it would stand to reason that a real-life version of the game would be just as happy-go-lucky and mellow, right? I mean, how can you not feel calm with those mellow C418 tones coming at you?
Well, friends, it turns out realistic Minecraft is actually pretty solid nightmare fuel, as YouTubersNukazooka prove. Things start out with some lighthearted, chuckle-worthy stuff like chopping a tree down with NOTHING BUT YOUR FISTS (Steve’s a badass, y’all), and somehow being able to craft a pickax with nothing more than a bit of rock and wood. But the situation gets kicked up a notch when Steve is out exploring and spots some diamond in a cave wall. Hidden from the sun, monsters come out in droves to chase after our poor explorer.
The zombies are definitely a lot more terrifying than what we see in Minecraft, sure, but with shows like The Walking Dead on the air, we’re pretty used to seeing the shambling hordes of the undead. The spooky factor really gets kicked up when we see the “realistic” version of a Creeper–which is apparently a horrifying bug-like creature that has basically ruined my weird love of those little exploding bastards forever. It’s a fun and simultaneously terrifying adventure, and really makes you look at the world of Minecraft differently. I won’t spoil the very end of the video for you, but lovers of Minecraft lore will be pretty excited–and simultaneously terrified–about how this realistic Minecraft journey ends.
What Minecraft monsters would you like to see morphed into a more “realistic” version? What was your favorite part of the Nukazooka video? Let me know in the comments!
GET A LOOK AT MINECRAFT STORY MODE?
Minecraft in real life looks a lot more scary
If you’ve ever found yourself sadly logging out of Minecraft, wishing you could just live in it, the experience may not be quite as fun as you think. YouTube channel Nukazooka, by filmmaker Andrew McMurry (who does all the VFX) and his friends, has created a video of what Minecraft might be like in the real world.
At first, everything seems fine. Certainly making hammers and smashing up rocks is a lot easier than anything you might find in the real world. Being attacked by monsters? Maybe not so much…
Minecraft hits milestone, Pebble’s Core likes Alexa, Google’s podcars hit the horn
If you’re addicted to fighting off zombies while designing soaring architectural wonders, there’s a pretty good chance you’re a fan of Minecraft. Turns out you’re not the only one playing: Minecraft maker Mojang says the blocky game of blocks – and the occasional blocky sheep – has passed the 100 million mark in terms of copies purchased. For just this year, Mojang says the game is downloaded 53,000 times – each day.
First released in 2011, Minecraft has been a surprise hit, and Mojang was scooped up by Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion. Mojang says Minecraft is played on every continent on the planet – including Antarctica – and that nearly half of the players are crafting away on mobile devices. It’s also one of the few video games parents feel good about letting their kids play – for hours on end. There are a lot of future architects out there.
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Smartwatch pioneer Pebble has been busy rolling out new stuff lately, including the unusual Pebble Core, a little box of tech that allows users to leave the phone at home but still listen to Spotify, record that moment of inspiration, track fitness data – and chat up Amazon’s helpful A.I. assistant Alexa, apparently. Not bad for just $69. The Core connects using 3G and there’s also a version for hackers who’d like to develop more core… stuff.
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We’re keeping a close eye on Google’s autonomous car efforts and it looks like they just gave their self-driving pod-mobiles a very human-like quality: knowing when to honk the horn. Up until now, Google says their cars only honked discreetly at the interior occupants as a warning about an exterior danger. They say they want their robot cars to be polite, considerate and only honk when it makes sense for safety.
And just what kind of horn does a law-abiding, courteous, self-directed people-mover have? Google didn’t say, but seeing how the roads seem to be filled with highly distracted human auto-pilots, we have some rather loud suggestions.
Minecraft hits milestone, Pebble’s Core likes Alexa, Google’s podcars hit the horn
Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 6 “A Portal to Mystery” to arrive next week
Mojang just announced a new episode of Minecraft: Story Mode to come next week. The 6the episode of the series is going to be called “A Portal to Mystery,” and it will arrive on June 7th to PC, Xbox One and Xbox 360.
The new episode will follow events from the previous one, but it will also be the very first Minecraft: Story Mode game developed by Telltale Games to be centered around the original title, developed by Mojang. The company released a new blog post announcing the new episode, and here’s what it says:
“In Episode 6: ‘A Portal to Mystery’, continuing their journey through the portal hallway, Jesse and crew land themselves in another strange new world – one completely overrun by zombies. With a timely invitation to take refuge in a spooky mansion, they find themselves thrown into a thrilling mystery alongside famous members of the Minecraft community. Fresh perils await them in an unfamiliar land, as does the sinister figure known as The Host. What can this pumpkin-headed hostelier have in mind for his new guests? Who are the strangers invited to attend The Host’s mansion party?! Can anyone be trusted?!! Who will survive?!!! Will Owen tell me off for using excessive punctuation?!!!! Who knows?!!!!!
Several special guest stars from the Minecraft community join the cast in this new episode, all playing characters from their own YouTube videos. Players will get to interact with Joseph Garrett as Stampy Cat, Stacy Hinojosa as Stacy Plays, Dan Middleton as DanTDM (The Diamond Minecart), Lizzie as LDShadowLady, and Jordan Maron as CaptainSparklez!”
As you can see, Jesse is still the main character of the story. He and his friends fight zombies in a world behind the portal hallway, but they’re going to have support for some known characters for the first time ever. Namely, some stars of the Minecraft community will play as their own characters, including Joseph Garrett, Stacy Hinojosa, Dan Middleton, Lizzie, and others.
The new episode will be available for the price of $4.99, but also as a part of the new Adventure Pass, which will contain episodes 6, 7, and 8. The Adventure Pass will cost $14.99. Also, keep in mind that you need to have at least episode 1, or the previous Season Pass to be able to purchase episodes 6, 7, and 8.
Tell us in the comments, what do you think about the new Minecraft: Story Mode episode? Will you buy it, or you’ll buy the Adventure Pass, and make sure you don’t miss anything?
Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 6 “A Portal to Mystery” to arrive next week
Minecraft’s PC share shrinks as users stampede to cheaper console and mobile versions
Microsoft’s simply offering too much value in its console and mobile versions for the average consumer to wrestle with the PC edition.
If you still think Minecraft is a PC game—well, you’re flat wrong. According to new numbers released by Mojang and Microsoft, the original version for the PC is the least popular platform, in almost every region worldwide.
But if you dig into Microsoft’s numbers, they reveal that far, far more users are buying Minecraft on platforms other than the PC. In fact, in the United States, the number of traditional copies of Minecraft sold on the PC is just 19 percent. Console sales represent 41 percent, just topping the 40 percent of users who have bought the Pocket Edition for mobile and the UWP version of the game. That’s much the same worldwide, too.
Mojang
Why this matters: For many years, Minecraft offered elements of the game on the PC that simply weren’t available elsewhere, with mods and shared servers being the chief appeal. Mojang and Microsoft also prioritized the PC, launching new features (special “redstone” blocks, potions, new enemies and skins) on the PC first, and then later porting them over to other platforms. Over time, some of these key PC-centric features have been pushed to other platforms. Today, Minecraft’s console and mobile versions might not offer quite the same flexibility, but they’re a good compromise.
The PC as just another device
This all might come as a surprise to PC gamers, given that Minecraft was one of the games that, for a while, was synonymous with the PC. From 2009 to 2011, Minecraft existed solely on the PC as pre-release software, gaining an audience by word of mouth. Creator Markus “Notch” Persson also committed to offering the full version of the game to those who purchased it while in its beta state.
In 2011, however, Persson released an early alpha of the game to the Google Play app store, and in 2012 he ported the game to the Microsoft Xbox 360. Today, you can find Minecraft everywhere: as a PC game written in Java, but also for OS X and Linux; for Android and iOS; the PlayStation 3, 4, and PlayStation Vita; and the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Microsoft also has rewritten Minecraft in C++ as a so-called UWP app, capable of being run on the PC as well as Windows phones. (Minecraft for the PC exists in two versions: the traditional Win32 Java app, and the more limited beta of the Pocket Edition UWP app.)
When you think about how Microsoft now pushes apps and services like Outlook or Cortana across multiple platforms, Microsoft’s purchase of Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014 makes much more sense. But it also highlights the rocky road that Microsoft’s business will bump over as it tries to make its UWP vision a reality.
Take pricing, for one. Microsoft charges $26.95 for the traditional PC version of Minecraft, $19.99 for the Xbox One version, and just $6.99 for the Pocket Edition app and similar versions on mobile platforms. (Microsoft charges $9.99 for the Windows 10 Pocket Edition.) That itself is helping to drive gamers to the other platforms.
Microsoft has justified the relatively high price of its legacy Win32 app by highlighting its flexibility, which allow users and designers to do practically anything they want with the platform (except sell stuff) via software modifications. But over time, Microsoft has cherry-picked some of the most popular content and ported it to its other, cheaper platforms, including “redstone” to the Pocket Edition and shared servers. (Fans still complain that Mojang still has yet to add the “Ender Dragon” and other legacy gameplay elements to the Pocket Edition, however.)
Mojang also added cross-platform play to Minecraft via a 2015 update, allowing Pocket Edition players on PC, iOS, Android, or Windows Phone to play together on a local network or five PC players to play together over Xbox Live. But so far that cross-play capability has eluded the original Java-based version of the game, and saved games still can’t be shared among platforms. There are now essentially three major, incompatible versions of Minecraft: the legacy PC edition, the console versions, and the new UWP/mobile apps.
In many ways, that’s evidence of the messy, messy legacy that Microsoft must deal with as it tries to unify decades worth of apps under its new Windows 10 banner, especially with initiatives like Project Centennial.
While Win32 apps like Minecraft were written during a more freewheeling time when they could be modified at will, Microsoft’s UWP apps under Windows 10 sacrifice that flexibility for compatibility across as many platforms as possible. Now Microsoft is working to bridge the gap between old and new with pledges to allow some mods, frame rate counters, and the like in UWP apps. But the only recent modifications to UWP apps like Quantum Break have been tweaks to allow them to work with GSync and FreeSync monitors.
Eventually, Microsoft may be able to strike a balance between the flexibility of modifications and allowing a consistent Minecraft experience across multiple platforms. But for now, gamers appear to be simply throwing up their hands and moving on.
Minecraft’s PC share shrinks as users stampede to cheaper console and mobile versions
Piston Contraption Featured in Minecraft: Pocket Edition Update Trailer
Minecraft is taking over the world as we know it one piston at a time and soon these magical blocks will finally be making their way to Minecraft: Pocket Edition and the Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta.
“The Friendly Update” as it’s titled will bring the top-requested piston block to the Minecraft Community on these platforms. This will add draw bridges and trap doors to your repertoire of building blocks for use. Be sure to check out the video below to see how advanced your creations can get when you add a little steam action into the game.
The update doesn’t yet have a release date but it will include the Rube Goldberg machine from the trailer.
Piston Contraption Featured in Minecraft: Pocket Edition Update Trailer
Control the Real World with an Arduino-Enabled Minecraft Mod
Control the Real World with an Arduino-Enabled Minecraft Mod
Minecraft modding has become almost as popular as the block-based game itself, with tons of editors and tools available to create new kinds of blocks, mobs, and weapons. And now, with this mod framework that can talk to an Arduino, modders can build blocks that break out of the Minecraft world to control the real world.
While turning on a light from Minecraft is not exactly new, the way that MCreator for Arduino goes about it is pretty neat. MCreator is a no-code framework for building Minecraft mods, which allows modders to build new game capabilities with a drag and drop interface. The MCreator Arduino toolkit allows modders to build custom Minecraft blocks that can respond to in-game events and communicate with an Arduino over USB. Whatever an Arduino can do – light an LED, sense a button press – can be brought into the game. It’s all open-source and free for non-commercial use, which is perfect for the upcoming STEM-based summer camp season. We can think of some great projects that would really jazz up young hackers when presented through a Minecraft interface.
Control the Real World with an Arduino-Enabled Minecraft Mod
Minecraft now sells 53,000 copies a day
Minecraft is very popular. So popular in fact that its total global all-format sales have now exceeded 106 million copies – and the most popular format for the game is mobile.
In a blog update, Minecraft developer Mojang has broken down some of the more impressive stats surrounding the game. Accounting for sales on PC, console, and the Pocket Edition, the game has sold 106,859,714 copies.
Most surprisingly, given the game originated on PC in 2009, the desktop version of the game is now the least popular in all regions except Asia and Asia-Pacific. Minecraft Pocket Edition tops the charts for most users overall, and for most users by region, with the exception of South America.
Europe has the most even spread of Minecraft players across formats though – 36 per cent on mobile, 35 per cent on consoles, and 29 per cent on PC. Globally, console figures combine the game’s release on all platforms, so actual users across Xbox One, PS4, Wii U, and other formats fragment the numbers further.
Credit Mojang
Sales haven’t slowed down, either, despite the fact roughly 1.5 per cent of Earth’s 7 billion-strong population has already bought the game. Minecraft has averaged around 53,000 copies sold each day through 2016 so far.
Mojang puts the player base numbers into perspective by contrasting against actual population figures. If every person who’d bought the game formed one brick-loving country, it would be the 12th most populous on Earth, coming just behind Japan.
“We’d like to offer our heartfelt thanks to every one of you who’s bought Minecraft over the past few years, no matter which platform you play on,” wrote Mojang’s Owen Hill. “We’re constantly in awe of our community and the amazing things you achieve together. You really are the best. <3”
Given Minecraft Pocket Edition is the reigning champ of all things mining and crafty, it’s only fitting that Mojang has announced a wave of improvements coming to the game in its next update. The upcoming 0.15 release (a beta version of which can be signed up for now) upgrades both Pocket and Windows 10 editions of the game, and will integrate Xbox Live achievements on iOS and Android, use less bandwidth for online play, and introduce a whole new user interface for the main menu.
Known as ‘The Friendly Update’ – Mojang promises “mysterious, as-yet-unspecified friendliness” – it will also introduce new block types, more villages, and ridable pigs, while fixing almost a dozen bugs.
Minecraft Tops 100M Copies Sold
We get it—Minecraft is popular: 100 million games sold popular.
Specifically, game maker Mojang has sold more than 106,859,714 copies of its game to date, as of June 2, or approximately 53,000 copies sold per day.
“We’d like to offer our heartfelt thanks to every one of you who’s bought Minecraft over the past few years, no matter which platform you play on,” Mojang Creative Communications Director Owen Hill wrote in a blog entry. “We’re constantly in awe of our community and the amazing things you achieve together. You really are the best.”
Mojang created an infographic to mark the occasion (below), in which it revealed that people from every country and territory have tried out Minecraft, including four sold to crafters in Antarctica.
Inspired by roguelike role-playing titles, Minecraft was created by Markus “Notch” Persson and released to the public as a developmental version in May 2009. More than two years later, it shed its beta skin and launched a full PC version in November 2011.
It quickly caught on, topping 3 million Xbox 360 sales by July 2012; the game later hit PlayStation 3, PS4, and Xbox One, before Microsoft acquired Mojang for $2.5 billion in the fall of 2014. Minecraft finally reached the Wii U in December
Last summer, fans also got a taste of the exploration game in augmented reality when Microsoft demoed Minecraft on its futuristic HoloLens headset.
This isn’t the first milestone for the fast-selling title: In April 2015, Mojang introduced its first female character, a red-haired woman known as Alex, companion to blue-shirted man Steve—the game’s only other pre-loaded figure.
Just don’t hold your breath for Minecraft 2: Mojang recently revealed that it has never even discussed the possibility of a second-gen title; the company is content to continue developing the existing game.
Fallout 4: Far Harbor’s PlayStation 4 add-on has new update with crucial fixes
Bethesda is once again struggling to get its game running well on consoles. And while it has a fix, the company probably cannot wait for that allegedly upgraded PlayStation 4 Neo.
Far Harbor, the first big expansion for Fallout 4, does not run well on PS4, and the publisher has pushed out an update in North America to patch it up. Gamers playing the open-world adventure’s add-on pack on Sony’s console are reporting a rough framerate that produces a choppy, unsightly image. Bethesda has done the work to improve that, but you’re going to need to follow some instructions to ensure you get the update. Fallout 4 is one of the biggest games in the world, and is continually one of the most played releases in the $99.6 billion gaming industry, according to data from the Steam digital-distribution portal.
The well-regarded tech investigators at DigitalFoundry found that the foggy areas of the Far Harbor often caused dips down to 15 frames per second. You can see how ugly that looks in the clip below:
But Bethesda has unleashed the update in North America, and you can get it by overcoming the following obstacle course:
- Boot up your PlayStation 4 and ensure that Fallout 4 is closed. You can do this by hovering over the game, hitting the Options button on your controller, and selecting “Close application” if it’s available.
- Go back to the Fallout 4 icon on your PS4 dashboard, hit the Options button again, and this time select the “Related items” menu.
- Select “My Add-ons.”
- Find the Far Harbor DLC and click on the arrow right next to it to download the newest version.
- The content should download and install, and you should have the updated version the next time you boot up the game.
If you’re outside of North America and are wondering when you’ll get the patch, well Bethesda is only saying that it’ll have “more information” soon for European Union players. Everyone else will just have to keep dealing with low-framerate fog.
Fallout 4: Far Harbor’s PlayStation 4 add-on has new update with crucial fixes
Minecraft for Android, iOS, and Windows 10 is getting pistons
Pistons are coming to Minecraft. No, not the Detroit Pistons — although that would be pretty great.
Minecraft developer Mojang announced today that it will release piston blocks for free for the Pocket and Windows 10 versions of the building-focused game. Pistons can push away other blocks, which can create complex machines like automatically opening doors. Pistons will be in the upcoming The Friendly Update. It doesn’t have a release date, but Mojang says it is coming soon. Free updates like this keep players engaged and entertained. It’s one of the reasons Minecraft has sold over 100 million copies on all of its many platforms, which also include PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U.
Pistons released for the original PC version of Minecraft in 2012. The console versions have pistons, too. The Pocket and Windows 10 Editions of Minecraft have fewer features than the PC release. Mojang has made an effort to bring more complex tools from the original to the these versions.
“Pistons have been a top feature requested by the Minecraft community, and we are excited to deliver the feature to players soon, which will allow them to create even cooler buildings and contraptions in their Minecraft worlds,” Mojang noted in a press release sent to GamesBeat.
You can watch pistons in action in the trailer below.
Minecraft for Android, iOS, and Windows 10 is getting pistons
Paul Reubens Talks Voicing a MINECRAFT: STORY MODE Character (Exclusive)
While some (okay, most) are familiar with Paul Reubens because of his portrayal of the iconic Pee-wee Herman in Pee-wee’s Playhouse, the actor has also lent his voice to several animated characters. One of his recent ventures is Ivor, from Telltale Games‘ new episodic game series Minecraft: Story Mode. For those who are unfamiliar with it, the star-studded title takes the same graphic adventure formula made famous by the developer’s previous games (The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, Tales From the Borderlands), and brings it to the iconic world of Mojang‘s Minecraft. In the exclusive video above, Reubens discusses his role in the game, how he got the part, and more. Check it out!
According to Reubens, he was approached about voicing a character for the game while at a party in L.A. during the week of E3. With his acting background, and the vibe Telltale was going for (it evokes a bit of The Goonies and, aptly, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure), Reubens was the perfect fit. “To do those voices and watch the finished show and see your voice come out of an animated character’s mouth is a trip. It’s really cool,” he noted.
But, the curious thing about voice acting is that actors don’t have facial expressions and body movement to rely on. Reubens pointed out, “When you’re doing a voice, all of those other factors are up to the animators, so you try to do as much with your voice as you can.” To Reubens, giving the developer as many takes to play with as possible is really important.
Like Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Minecraft was created to encourage young people to think creatively and celebrate originality, which is a great message if you ask us. Seeing the world brought into Telltale’s stable has been nothing short of thrilling. With the first of three brand new DLC episodes, “A Portal to Mystery,” set to release on June 7, we’re excited to see what’s next.
Have you played Minecraft: Story Mode? If so, what do you think of Reubens’ character? Let us know in the comments below, join the conversation on Facebook, or start one with me on Twitter: @Samantha_Sofka.
And in case you haven’t yet checked out Pee-wee’s Big Holiday on Netflix, here’s the cast chatting about the film, as well as their favorite vacation movies.
Paul Reubens Talks Voicing a MINECRAFT: STORY MODE Character (Exclusive)
We’ve sold Minecraft many, many times! LOOK!
We’ve sold Minecraft many, many times! LOOK!
Feel free to share this thing with friends, family, and the internet. We’ve prepared a high resolution version for that very reason. Download it at the following link.
AMAZINGMINECRAFTSTATSGONEWRONGYOUWONTBELIEVEWHATHAPPENNEXTCOMPILATION2016.jpg
Have a great day, y’all!
Owen – @bopogamel
Minecraft sales top 100 million
Minecraft sales top 100 million
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Microsoft acquired Minecraft maker Mojang nearly two years ago, and at the time it had sold more than 50 million copies across PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and other platforms. Microsoft is revealing today that Minecraft has now reached the 100 million sale milestone, having sold 53,000 copies per day during the course of 2016. It’s a phenomenal achievement for a game that started off as a bedroom project, distributed initially as a Java applet on a web forum.
Minecraft quickly captured the imagination of thousands of gamers who loved the indie game’s concept of allowing players to shape an environment by crafting and building constructions out of blocks. It has spawned a giant community that creates replica objects and YouTube tips on how to play Minecraft that are regularly shared with millions of viewers.
Alongside the 100 million milestone, Microsoft is also sharing a break down of exactly how Minecraft players engage with the game across the world. There are Minecraft players in every country and every territory on the planet, and Microsoft says four copies have even been sold to people in Antarctica. There are now an average of more than 40 million unique Minecraft players each month across all the various platforms the game is available on. The split of PC / console / pocket edition usage across Europe is roughly even, while in North America the pocket edition and console versions are the most popular.
Microsoft’s acquisitions haven’t always worked out (Nokia’s phone business), but it’s clear Minecraft is a big success. Microsoft’s video games revenue has been climbing steadily since the Minecraft acquisition, and it increased by $367 million in the 2015 financial year “mainly due to sales of Minecraft.” Microsoft is now turning the game into an education business, launching a special Education Edition that’s customized for schools. Microsoft researchers are even allowing computer scientists to use the game to train up AI programs, and the software maker is also developing a holographic version of Minecraft for its HoloLens headset.
Minecraft To Let Players Fight One Another To The Death
Minecraft To Let Players Fight One Another To The Death
Minecraft, the world-building game which has captured the hearts and minds of young people (and plenty of older people) everywhere, is finally getting into the fighting business. According to Minecraft’s owner, Microsoft, which bought the franchise for $2.5 billion in 2014, has announced that it is releasing a new mini-game for consoles called Battle.
Jaime Limon, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Minecraft, describes it as a “competitive multiplayer fight for survival, where speed, strategy—and sometimes just pure luck—will make you the winner.” Players rely on resources placed around the maps to fight each other. Once they’ve fallen victim to another player, they’re free to hang around—literally, because they’ll be flying around as a bat—and watch the death match until it’s over.
The mini game, which is coming in June, marks a turning point for Minecraft, which became such a sensation precisely because, unlike so many other hit games, it wasn’t about violence or killing opponents. Instead, players thrived on the open-ended creativity encouraged by Minecraft’s world. Now that there’s an officially sanctioned forum for battle, it’s bound to change the nature of the game.
Get the full version of Minecraft running on a Raspberry Pi
Installing Raspbian on your Raspberry Pi means you’ll find Minecraft Pi in the Games section. Minecraft Pi is a bare-bones version of the popular survival game designed to help teach users various programming languages.
Sure, it’s fun, but it’s not the Minecraft game we’ve come to know and love. As with all things Raspberry Pi, a group of users have figured out how to install the full version of Minecraft on your Raspberry Pi 2 or 3.
As with all things Raspberry Pi, there’s a lot of editing and tinkering with files and Terminal commands. Just be sure to take your time, read through each step and you should be fine.
Keep in mind
Before you dive in, there’s some things you should know:
- You will need to know your Mojang account log-in info, along with your Minecraft username.
- Naturally, you’ll need a paid license for Minecraft. You can purchase one from Minecraft.net
- The guide is specific to Minecraft 1.8.9. However, with a simple tweak you can run the latest version, currently 1.9.4 (more on this below).
- Running Minecraft on a $35 computer isn’t going to be the smoothest experience, but it’s definitely playable.
- Plan on spending an hour getting everything up and running.
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
I suggest opening this guide in your Raspberry Pi’s browser, with a Terminal window next to it. There are some altered log files stored in Dropbox accounts you’ll need to download, and I’d hate to post the commands here, only to have the links changed at a later day.
The process is simple, mostly requiring you to copy various Terminal commands from the browser, pasting them into the command line. After pasting each command in, press enter on the keyboard and your Pi takes care of the rest.
Tips to make the process as smooth as possible
Here are some tips I came up with to make the process go as smooth as possible:
- Step 1 does not apply to Raspberry Pi 3 users. Currently you cannot overclock the Pi 3. Besides, the Pi 3 is actually faster out of the box than the suggested overclock speed of the Pi 2.
- After entering Step 4’s command, use the arrow keys on your keyboard to highlight Advanced options and press enter. Next, highlight GL Options, select Enable.
- I got a bit confused by Step 7 of the guide where it says to click on “edit profile,” You actually need to click on Profile Editor, then double-click on the first (and only) listing. Under Version Selection click on the drop-down next to Use version and select a build number. Keep in mind, the guide defaults to 1.8.9. For now, use that version and then we can change it after everything is working.
- Step 10 tells you to edit the “run.sh” file, without any further instructions. To do this, open the Minecraft folder located in your Pi directory and right-click on the run.sh file, then select Text Editor.
- To launch Minecraft, you have a two different options. The guide will tell you to use “./run.sh” in Terminal to launch Minecraft. While that works, before entering the command you’ll need to enter “cd Minecraft” into a Terminal window. The other option is to open the Minecraft folder, double-click on the run.sh file and select “Execute.”
Run the latest version
Alright, so once you get everything up and running, you can start tinkering with the installation. In order to jump to the latest version of Minecraft, you’ll need to relaunch the Minecraft.jar file.
- In a Terminal window, enter: cd Minecraft
- Next, enter: java -jar Minecraft.jar
- Click on Profile Editor then change the version to 1.9.4 (or whatever the latest version is).
- Save your change and click on the Play button, forcing Minecraft to download the latest version.
- Next, open the Minecraft folder.
- In order to eliminate any headaches should you make a mistake, take two-seconds and make a copy of the run.sh file. Rename it to something alone the lines of “runcopy.sh”.
- With a copy safely tucked away, open the run.sh file by right-clicking on it and selecting Text Editor.
- Press Ctrl-F on your keyboard, and enter 1.8.9 in the text field. There should be two — and only two — instances found. Replace each one with the current version of Minecraft (this should be the same version number you selected in step 3).
- Save the file, then reboot your Raspberry Pi.
- Launch Minecraft as you normally would and enjoy.
Minecraft Education Edition beta goes live (for schools only)
Minecraft Education Edition beta goes live (for schools only)
An early version of the education edition of the hit video game is available for download.
Mojang
Now for a game that you won’t mind your children spending hours glued to the screen playing.
A beta version of the education edition of hit video game Minecraft went live on Wednesday, tech news site Thurrott reported. The version is designed for schools and offers a few extras like educational skins.
Minecraft has grown into a phenomenon thanks to its ability to allow players to build whatever they imagine using digital resources they accumulate by “mining.” It’s been found to help children tap into their creativity and learn things like computer coding, math and engineering.
There was a link to download the beta, but that has been disabled.
Updated at 11:51 am PT:To note that the public link to the beta is no longer available.
Minecraft Education Edition beta goes live (for schools only)
Minecraft-like Dragon Quest Builders is launching in October
Minecraft-like Dragon Quest Builders is launching in October
No longer just for Japan
Dragon Quest Builders — a game that mashes up the sandbox building elements of Minecraft with the story and world of Dragon Quest — is coming to North America.
Today Square Enix announced that the game, which first launched in Japan in January, will be releasing in the West in October, coming to both the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita (though the handheld version will only be available digitally). The news comes on the same day that the long-running fantasy RPG series marks its 30th anniversary; the original Dragon Quest launched on the Famicom this day in 1986.
Builders is a departure for the series, swapping turn-based combat for world building. Much like in Minecraft, you’ll be using a variety of tools to gather resources and build structures. It even looks like Minecraft, with a similar blocky art style. There’s a story that has you rebuilding a fallen kingdom, and it’s actually an alternate take on the events of the original game. Here’s the set-up:
In this story the realm has been destroyed because the Hero (from DQ1) who was supposed to save the world by defeating the evil Dragonlord, actually got tempted into accepting a sham deal with him. This plunges the land into darkness and despair and the few survivors scattered around the world no longer understand the concept of creativity and live through scavenging what remains among ruins.
While the gameplay will be different, you can expect to see lots of DQ mainstays, from characters to items to monsters. Yes, there will be plenty of cute blue slimes.
Minecraft-like Dragon Quest Builders is launching in October
Gear up for Battle Mini Game, Coming to Minecraft on Consoles in June
Hi everyone!
Team Minecraft at Mojang, 4J Studios and Microsoft have been working on some cool free content for Minecraft: Console Edition, and we’re really excited to introduce mini games to you today. Of course, coming up with improvised rules and new ways to play with friends is already a popular activity among Minecraft: Console Edition players – and long may it continue! But with our new mini games, we’ll be helping you quickly and easily jump into competitions with tailor-made rulesets, so you can have fun straight away without having to fuss around with manual count-downs, laboriously prep loot chests or keep score. Sound good? Great – you won’t have to wait very long for this to come out, so get your enchanted fishing poles ready. The first mini game we’ll be rolling out, called Battle, will be here in June.
Battle allows you to set up a competitive multiplayer fight for survival, where speed, strategy- and sometimes just pure luck- will make you the winner. Players in Battle matches use randomly generated resources found in chests placed in specially designed PVP maps and combat one another in a free for all death match until the final victor is determined. The fun’s not all over after you are defeated though, as fallen players can spectate the combat among remaining players in the match by freely flying around each arena as a bat. Battle matches can be played with up to four players in split-screen and up to 8 players online via Xbox Live. Or, you can find other community members to join your game via an in-game matchmaking system.
In June, Battle will be rolled out for free to all owners of Minecraft on Xbox 360, Xbox One and other consoles via a game update, and the free update will include three maps for you to try out. If you like Battle and want more, we’ll be supporting it with additional Map Pack add-ons periodically after release for $2.99 USD or local equivalent.
See you in the arena!
Gear up for Battle Mini Game, Coming to Minecraft on Consoles in June
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