Editor’s Note: Before reading this review, we highly recommend checking out our review for Episode One: The Order of the Stone,  Episode 2: Assembly Required,Episode 3: The Last Place You Look and Episode 4: A Block and a Hard Place as there are spoilers ahead.

Telltale Games has a way of making games based off of characters or stories that already have impressive stories and making them better.  With Minecraft: Story Mode, however, they managed to create an entire universe and story based off of a game that didn’t necessarily have either of those.  We’ve seen our hero, who is meant to play the role of your average Minecraft player, traverse the overworld with his friends, each who represent different types of players, in order to meet his favorite band of heroes.  Of course, not everything goes as planned as chaos ensues and Jessie and his friends are put in a position as the only ones capable of saving the world from the Wither Storm.  This episode, though, is much after those events with Jessie being in charge of the new Order of the Stone, fighting monsters and searching dungeons for loot.  They’ve become what the old Order used to be and are loved by the common folks but hated by other adventurers who do the same thing but aren’t as well known as them.

The game begins with the newly formed Order of the Stone infiltrating a dungeon that Ivor tipped them off to.  They manage to find a treasure room that contains what appears to be an enchanted flint and steel.  After escaping the booby trapped dungeon, they come across the former Ocelots and their leader Aiden.  They don’t seem too happy with the fact that you reached the dungeon before they did, Aiden mostly, and they begin to spew hurtful comments to the new team.  Ambushed by the former Ocelots, now known as the Blaze Rods, Jessie and his friends explore an entirely new area only known as Sky City where resources are plentiful but nothing exists below the world.  the world is conceived using what is only knows as the Eversource, a material that has the power to create all materials.  Aiden convinces the city’s ruler that the Order is up to no good so that they can be punished and he could take the Eversource for himself.  While this episode may be jam-packed with story and new characters, be warned; this will not be the last we see of Minecraft: Story Mode.

The episode in itself offers a lot of promise for the rest of the announced episode, but it also cuts them short.  The next slew of episodes will be adding new story arcs to the new Order of the Stone as they go on new adventures to build up their legacy.  That being said, in the two hours it took to finish the episode to its completion, it made the entire premise feel very unimportant.  So much had happened and so much story and character development was involved that Telltale could have made the entire plot itself into a single season if they wanted to.  Some characters could have definitely used some development to give the story a little more depth and the entirety of Sky City itself has so much more that could have been explored.  It’s a little bit of a shame that what could have become a great season based on the new Order of the Stone’s adventures was downgraded into a single episode that takes place over the course of about two days.

The episode also alludes to death; a lot.  Considering the fact that both Olivia and Axel are completely omitted from the episode save for the prologue, there is basically no comic relief.  Not that you should play a game simply for its humor, Minecraft: Story Mode has a reputation for having humor and making friendship stand above all else.  While this episode does focus on friendship and how your decisions can shape the future, death always seems to be around the corner and everyone you come in contact with seems to want you to die, or at last Aiden openly expresses it.  It also doesn’t help that Aiden and the Blaze Rods were basically considered obsolete until now, so it’s difficult to really believe that he would want to do this to the citizens of Sky City just because he’s jealous.  Had this episode focused on why they are being brought back rather than throwing them into a whole new story, the episode would have made a little more sense.

The episode in itself offers a lot of promise for the rest of the announced episode, but it also cuts them short.  The next slew of episodes will be adding new story arcs to the new Order of the Stone as they go on new adventures to build up their legacy.  That being said, in the two hours it took to finish the episode to its completion, it made the entire premise feel very unimportant.  SO much had happened and so much story and character development was involved that Telltale could have made the entire plot itself into a single season if they wanted to. The entirety of Sky City itself has so much more that could have been explored and so many more characters could have been introduced, but the story was limited to a couple of hours of gameplay.  It creates a new kind of gameplay that forces you to pay attention and actually play the game rather than just putting your controller down and making a decision every once in a while.

Closing Comments:

Minecraft: Story Mode – Episode 5: Order Up! shapes up to be an incredible introduction to the Order of the Stone’s newest adventures, but still manages to fall a little short.  Telltale introduces new concepts, characters and worlds, but their biggest mistake was shoving it all into a single episode.  Had they created a separate season talking about the events of Sky City and expanding a little bit more on the environments and characters, this episode would have been much more successful.  That being said, however, this episode does deviate from previous installments as being much more adult and changes the characters as once being small time builders to being full-fledged heroes risking their lives to save common folk.  Hopefully Telltale will continue to capitalize on that aspect of the characters and convey it in the following episodes.

Review: Minecraft: Story Mode – Episode 5: Order Up!

A new Minecraft version for PC has been released and it comes with many new features, combat options and monsters. With other words, if you ever wanted to simultaneously wield a sword and a shield in Minecraft, you can do it now.

The Minecraft 1.9 patch brings a new inventory slot that’s named “off-hand” and can be used in a few ways. As we’ve told you above, the “off-hand” slot can be used for holding a shield, but you will also be able to hold a torch or arrows. The shield can be used to protect yourself from arrows, which is quite good, while the arrows can be used when you shoot with your bow.

The new patch also upgrades the combat system as it adds cooldown for attacks. With other words, from now on, Axes will deal big damage, but instead, you will attack very slowly with them. With other words, each weapon has now a cooldown and depending on the damage it deals, the lower its cooldown will be. So, if you will use an axe and you will attack with it by spamming your mouse’s left button, you will notice that it will not hit as fast as it used to. In addition, Mojang has added different timing of each type of weapon depending on the material it’s created from. With other words, attacking with a wooden axe won’t feel the same as when attacking with a diamond sword.

Minecraft’s two main weapons (axes and swords) will now have some unique attack abilities. The sword will have “sweeping” attack that will damage multiple enemies, while the axe will come with a “crushing blow” attack that has the same effect. Unfortunately, the developer hasn’t detailed how these new weapon skills will work, so you will have to test them yourself.

However, even if the Minecraft 1.9 patch is called “Combat Update”, it’s not only about the combat. The new patch also expands the End biome, which now hosts a new type of dungeon that’s named “End Cities”. There is also a new mob called “Shulker”, a new flying cape named “Elytra”, new blocks and more.

Minecraft 1.9 Update – Combat Update Dual-Wielding and New Improvements

Deliciously Minecraft arrives Nintendo’s Wii U Edition – Billings Tech Week

One Irish primary school thought outside the box and created this Minecraft music video to commemorate the Easter Rising.

CBS Primary School, Mitchelstown kickstarted their project by using the GPO and Dublin city world built by the MindRising team in Dublin.

The school’s pupils then got together to build all the other sets included.

They created the music video for the song ‘Grace’ by Sean and Frank O’Meara and, in another streak of creativity, sang the soundtrack themselves.

MindRising: Cork primary school creates impressive Minecraft music video to tell the story of ‘Grace’

BRIDGETON – Cumberland County Library’s Children’s Club recently met for a Minecraft Night. The participants enjoyed building new worlds with Legos and learning the beginning steps of the Minecraft video game.

The club meets from 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesdays at 800 E. Commerce St.

For library information, call (856) 453-2210 or visit www.cclnj.org.

A few minutes into exploring a Minecraft world in Samsung’s Gear VR head-mounted display, I started digging a hole in the ground. After getting a few meters into the earth, I faced dirt in every direction. Despite knowing in my heart that I was in a safe room with Oculus representatives and dozens of media professionals, I started to panic.

This is Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Oculus VR held a special event during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week to show off a nearly complete version of the block-building phenomenon running in Samsung’s phone-holding virtual reality device (it’s also coming to the high-end Rift). I spent around 30 minutes exploring the game, and that experience made it clear that this is an application that could instantly show people the promise of VR. Minecraft is notoriously simple looking, but that didn’t prevent it from giving me moments of exhilaration and panic, and that’s something a lot of people will respond to. Analysts are already expecting mobile VR to generate $861 million in spending this year, and it should also keep pace with console devices like Sony’s PlayStation VR as well as PC peripherals like HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. By 2020, research firm SuperData suspects mobile VR will represent $15.6 billion of a $40.4 billion virtual reality business worldwide.

Unlike Rift, Vive, and PSVR, Gear VR is not a high-end device that tracks your body or the tilt of your head. The result is that it is technically “less immersive,” but that’s not something you’re thinking about when digging through caverns in Minecraft.

Instead, Minecraft: Gear VR Edition puts you into its low-fi world better than any previous version. I played with an Xbox-style controller, and I had no issues walking around and digging up dirt and fighting off enemies. Instead of aiming with the analog stick, I controlled my targeting by looking around. This is something I’ve done in other VR games, but it was nice to see how quickly it made sense in a game I’ve already played for dozens of hours outside of VR.

Above: That’s a long fall, and it feels like it when you’re in VR.

Image Credit: Microsoft

At the event, Oculus had me sit in a swivel chair. This mean I could spin around to do a quick 180-degree turn to look the other way. Having a chair that can pivot along with a controller is probably the ideal way to play, but I also tested out what it’s like if you can’t swivel (like if you were in an airplane chair, for instance). And the game uses the standard snap-turning function that you’re going to see in a lot of VR games. This has you changing where you’re looking by jumping the camera in 10-degree increments. You might think that you’d want the camera to move smoothly when you use the right stick, but most people get motion sickness when they do that.

Beyond the movement, Minecraft in VR gave me some incredible sensations I never really had playing the game on PC. When I first started walking around in the world, the scale smacked me right in the nose. I could see huge mountain peaks and deep valleys flowing with water. It made me feel like a tiny person in a sprawling world. The level Oculus had us in had some Iron Golem creatures walking around, and it was something else to approach them and have to look up to see their faces. I have a memory of one standing right in front of me that I’m recalling right now. That’s imprinted on my brain as if it was something I truly experienced.

After my run in with the Golems, I started digging my aforementioned hole in the ground. And I can’t get over the real sense of claustrophobia I was feeling. It was dark, and I could only barely make out the low-resolution textures a few digital inches in front of me. Like with the creatures I met, I have a memory of having my body crammed into a small pit. On the verge of panic, I thankfully remembered the torches I started the demo with. I popped one onto the wall, and that brought me back from the edge. I’m delighted that I did not have to rip off my headset screaming in embarrassment.

That might sound like a nightmare, but I can honestly say that enjoyed it. It introduces a level of immediacy and presence to something that has a million other things going for it. And having the option to pop on a Gear VR anywhere you want is going to make this game an excellent showpiece for early virtual reality.

Minecraft for Gear VR in 2 words: pixelated claustrophobia

It’s already on practically every other gaming system, and now Minecraft is finally coming to a Nintendo console.

Nintendo announced today that the insanely popular brick-builder is coming to Wii U on Dec. 17, priced at $30. Minecraft: Wii U Edition will be available to download from the Nintendo eShop and will feature off-TV play, so you can build and fight on your console while someone else is watching TV. It will come complete with some of the most popular current add-on packs, and additional DLC will be available to buy through Nintendo’s online store.

Microsoft paid $2.5 billion for Minecraft developer Mojang last year, and that’s because Minecraft is such a strong, popular brand with millions of fans worldwide. It’s sold over 20 million copies on Mac and PC, over 30 million on mobile devices, and 20 million on Xbox One and Xbox 360 combined. It’s also available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. Finally having Minecraft available on Wii U could help give Nintendo a massive sales boost with families this Christmas.

“With so many included add-on content packs, Minecraft: Wii U Edition brings an exciting collection of Minecraft content and experiences to Nintendo fans,” said Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America’s president. “Wii U players will have plenty of reasons to keep coming back to this iconic gaming experience.”

Even better is that we won’t have to wait long at all! Minecraft: Wii U Edition will be debuting on the Nintendo eShop on December 17th, just over a week from now. This marks the first new console port of the open sandbox game since Microsoft purchased Minecraft developer Mojang.

Nintendo was fairly quiet on all the details of Minecraft: Wii U Edition, but did confirm that the game can be played solely on the console’s GamePad controller, eliminating the need for a TV. In addition, several content packs will be included with purchase, while another 16 will be available to buy individually, with more on the way. Also interesting is that Nintendo said it was working directly with Mojang on developing its own unique theme packs, most likely skins and textures based on Nintendo’s own games and characters.

While Microsoft has direct ownership of the Minecraft franchise, in addition to its own Xbox One and Xbox 360, it continues to support development on rival platforms, including PlayStation 4, PS3, iOS, Android, and now the Wii U.

The one notable difference, however, is that Minecraft on Wii U will support off-TV play, so that you can play it on the Gamepad when your TV is otherwise occupied. The game will also be launching alongside a bevy of downloadable content, including skin packs based on everything from The Simpsons to Star Wars. Nintendo also says that it is working with developer Mojang to create “new content for Nintendo fans to be released at a future date.” Expect to hear news on that soon.

Deliciously Minecraft arrives Nintendo’s Wii U Edition – Mesquite Tekno Time

“Microsoft Monday” takes a look back at the past week of news related to Microsoft. This week, “Microsoft Monday” includes details about a potential Yahoo deal, the “Holoportation” research project, the Surface Hub progress, the Tay chatbot catastrophe, the Health app update, the Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools becoming open source and the new Minecraft Story Mode Episode 5 coming tomorrow.

Microsoft To Meet With Private Equity Companies About Potential Yahoo! Deal

Microsoft executives are reportedly in talks with Yahoo! investors about potentially providing funds to acquire the Sunnyvale-based Internet company, according to sources with Reuters. The talks are in the preliminary stages. Microsoft has an interest in Yahoo! because it has search and advertising agreements with the Internet company. Yahoo! is expected to be auctioning off its core Internet businesses, including Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! News.

Recently, investment company Starboard Value LP has been soliciting support from Yahoo! shareholders to get rid of the whole board including CEO Marissa Mayer. Back in 2008, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer attempted to push for a $45 billion acquisition of Yahoo!

Microsoft Research Team Working On “Holoportation” Research Project

The Microsoft Research team is using the HoloLens to work on a research project called “Holoportation.” Microsoft Research described “Holoportation” as being a new type of 3D capture technology that allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed and transmitted anywhere in the world in real time.

Essentially, Microsoft’s research team is able to create a live hologram of a person to be placed in another room. Using mixed reality displays like the HoloLens, the “Holoportation” technology lets users “see, hear and interact with remote participants in 3D as if they are actually present in the same physical space. Communicating and interacting with remote users becomes as natural as face-to-face communication.”

Here is a video demo of “Holoportation”:

Microsoft Has Started Shipping The Pricey Surface Hubs

Microsoft Surface Hub / Photo Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft has delayed the release of its Surface Hub touch-screens twice, but now it is finally shipping. The Surface Hubs are available in two sizes — a 55-inch version and a 4K 84-inch version. The 55-inch costs $8,999 and the 84-inch costs $21,999.

The Windows 10 powered Surface Hub supports 100 points of touch input and digital pens, according to The Verge. The Surface Hubs have Core i5/i7 processors, 128GB SSD and 8GB RAM. And the 84-inch has an NVIDIA Quadro graphics card. The Surface Hubs also support Bluetooth and NFC. And the Hubs also have a dual webcam with noise-cancelling microphones and a bezel for teleconferences.

Microsoft Shuts Down Tay, An AI-Powered Chatbot That Became Racist And Misogynist

Screenshot Credit: Amit Chowdhry

One of the biggest Microsoft stories this past week was about Tay, an artificial intelligence powered chatbot that said racist and misogynist comments on Twitter, Groupie and Kik. Microsoft quickly shut it down after the project went haywire.

Tay was originally described as “Microsoft’s A.I. fam the internet that’s got zero chill!” and it was supposed to talk like a teenage girl. Within 24 hours, “TayTweets” started making racist and misogynist comments.

“Unfortunately, in the first 24 hours of coming online, a coordinated attack by a subset of people exploited a vulnerability in Tay. Although we had prepared for many types of abuses of the system, we had made a critical oversight for this specific attack,” said Microsoft in a blog post. “As a result, Tay tweeted wildly inappropriate and reprehensible words and images. We take full responsibility for not seeing this possibility ahead of time. We will take this lesson forward as well as those from our experiences in China, Japan and the U.S. Right now, we are hard at work addressing the specific vulnerability that was exposed by the attack on Tay.”

Then Microsoft shut down Tay and apologized for the incident:

“We are deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay. Tay is now offline and we’ll look to bring Tay back only when we are confident we can better anticipate malicious intent that conflicts with our principles and values.”

Before Tay was shut down, the chatbot tweeted over 96,000 times. Tay is not the first artificial intelligence application that Microsoft released. Microsoft’s AI-powered chatbot Xiaoice became popular in China and is used by over 40 million people.

Tay may sound like it could be a setback for artificial intelligence as a whole, but Google has been having better luck with its AlphaGo AI-powered application. AlphaGo became the first Computer Go program to defeat a professional human Go player without handicaps on a 19×19 board.

Tay was supposed to tell jokes to users and comment on pictures it received. Even though Microsoft deleted most of the tweets, a website called Socialhax.com posted many screenshots of Tay’s tweets.

It has been pointed out that the failure of the Tay project supported the Godwin’s law Internet adage. Godwin’s law says that the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler becomes more likely as an online discussion grows longer.

What’s the lesson here? Tay serves as a lesson that it is important for engineers to design a system with filters in place.

Microsoft Updates Health App With New Social Features

Microsoft Health App / Photo Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft has updated its Health app so that you can compete with your Facebook friends in terms of exercise goals. When you connect your Microsoft Health and Facebook accounts, you can see your friends who also have connected accounts. Then you can set up Social Challenges and monitor Leaderboards. The Social Challenges supports challenges for steps, cardio minutes, longest runs, bike rides, etc. Those challenges are expected to be accomplished in one, three, five or seven days. Even if you do not have a Microsoft Band wearable, you can still compete with each other using the Microsoft Health app on iOS, Android or Windows Phone.

Microsoft Is Publishing Numbers About “Revenge Porn” Removal

Microsoft has recently started publishing its figures related to the removal of “revenge porn,” according to Forbes contributor Emma Woollacott. Revenge porn is when sexually explicit content of someone who has not given their consent for the images or videos to be shared is uploaded publicly.

Last week, Microsoft published its Transparency Report and revealed that it received 537 requests to remove links to revenge porn photos or videos from the Bing search results, OneDrive or Xbox Live. And Microsoft complied with 338 (63%) of those requests.

“In cases where we have not yet accepted a request, it is usually either because we have asked for more information to be able to make a determination on the request, or because the content in question does not contain nudity, identify the victim in the image, or otherwise meet generally accepted definitions of ‘revenge porn,’” stated Steve Lippman, Microsoft’s director of corporate responsibility.

The removal rate of “revenge porn” is rather paltry when you compare it to copyright infringement removal requests. Microsoft received requests to remove about 60 million URLs and Microsoft complied with 98% of those requests.

Microsoft Is Preparing To Release A Universal Windows Skype App

Skype / Photo Credit: Skype

Last year, Microsoft replaced the Skype Windows client with three separate apps, which was a surprising move. However, Microsoft is preparing to launch a new Universal Windows Platform app for Skype that would consolidate the calling, messaging and video features into one place, according to ZDNet. The Skype Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app will be released in preview mode for Windows Insiders soon. And eventually, Microsoft will offer the UWP app in the Windows Store.

Microsoft will continue developing the three separate Skype Messaging, Calling and Video apps for certain devices. And the Skype team will continue gathering feedback to determine the best course of action between the three separate apps and the Universal Windows Platform Skype app.

Microsoft Reportedly Invests Millions Into A Startup That Turned Down An Acquisition

Microsoft reportedly offered to buy Mesosphere for $150 million last year, but the deal was turned down. Mesosphere is known for developing a data center operating system that makes it easier to organize cloud machines.

Mesosphere has recently announced it has raised $73.5 million in funding led by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Microsoft was listed as a “significant participant,” according to Business Insider. Mesosphere has now raised $122 million in funding with a valuation of over $1 billion. Mesosphere’s Data Center Operating System (DCOS) is used by many large customers including Verizon and Apple.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 And Dark Souls Now Available On Xbox One Through Backwards Compatibility Program

This past week, the Xbox One has received some new games as part of the backwards compatibility rollout. Now the original Dark Souls and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has is available through backwards compatibility service. And the backwards compatible version of Dark Souls will be available for free for consumers that pre-order a copy of Dark Souls 3.

Paul Allen Launches The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group Fund

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has announced this past week that he will be committing $100 million to launch the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group. The initiative focuses on exploring biosciences and advancing science. The first funded projects are known as the new Allen Distinguished Investigators (ADI) and the Allen Discovery Centers which are located at Stanford University and Tufts University. The Allen Distinguished Investigators focuses on “exceptional creativity and catalytic impact” and the Allen Discovery Centers will be based on “compass-guided research.”

“To make the kind of transformational advances we seek and thus shape a better future, we must invest in scientists willing to pursue what some might consider out-of-the-box approaches at the very edges of knowledge,” said Allen in a statement. “This of course entails a risk of setbacks and failures. But without risk, there is rarely significant reward, and unless we try truly novel approaches, we may never find the answers we seek.”

Microsoft Power BI Hits 5 Million Subscribers

Microsoft Power BI / Photo Credit: Microsoft

Last week, Microsoft announced that its cloud-based business intelligence service has hit 5 million subscribers. Microsoft is also adding several new features to the Power BI service, including an option to import data from an Excel spreadsheet to be converted into live-updating visualizations including graphs and charts. The ability to use an Excel connector to pin live-updating data from the Excel desktop app to a Power BI dashboard will be added tomorrow. Power BI will also gain role-level security for cloud models and tenant-level usage reports will show how people are using different features.

Microsoft Makes Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools Open Source

Microsoft recently said it would be releasing SQL Server for Linux soon. This past week, Microsoft also announced it would be making Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools open source on GitHub said ZDNet. This news follows Microsoft announcement several weeks ago about the integration of Visual Studio with Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

The Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools were released in 2010 and it helps improve productivity for developers. The Power Tools were downloaded over half a million times across several versions. And some of the features built into the Power Tools were actually merged into Visual Studio.

“Minecraft Story Mode” Episode 5 Arrives Tomorrow

Minecraft Story Mode – Episode 5: Order Up / Photo Credit: Telltale Games

Mojang will be releasing “Minecraft Story Mode” Episode 5: Order Up tomorrow. Forbes contributor Andy Robertson said that Episode 5 sets up the context for the upcoming three chapters, which are add-ons to the season. This means that players will only need to have the first episodes of Minecraft: Story Mode to purchase and play episodes 6, 7 and 8.

Episode 5: Order Up will be available on PCs, Macs, Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, iOS and Android starting tomorrow. In the game, Jesse and friends go to an abandoned temple that has mysterious treasures. But Jesse and friends are ambushed by Ocelot Aiden and they find themselves in a new world called Sky City.

Microsoft Monday: ‘Holoportation,’ Racist Tay Chatbot Gets Shut Down, Minecraft Story Mode Episode 5

Minecraft Story Mode series will get a huge update this week. Owen Hill, the guy behind the wildly popular sandbox video game Minecraft, has made a huge announcement on March 22 that episode 5 of Minecraft Story Mode will be available to download on March 29.

“I’m happy to announce that Episode 5 of Minecraft: Story Mode, ‘Order Up,’ will be available to download on PC/Mac, Windows 10, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and iOS and Android-based devices from March 29th!,” Hill post on Mojang’s website.

Hill also announced that three more “post-season” episodes will follow and that all these three episodes are expected to be out this year.

On the company’s official website, Hill said that the episode 5 of Minecraft Story Mode will feature a new world called Sky City. Gamers will see Jesse and company explore the new world, which Owen Hill described in his blog as an “awe-inspiring and an intriguing” place. In the story, Jesse and his buddies will find themselves in abandoned temple, where they meet the ruler that is said to be up to no good.

“Episode 5 will not be the last you see of Jessie and the gang. We can now confirm that three extra episodes will arrive sometime in 2016,” Hill wrote on his blog, via the Australian News Network.

Episode 5, which also called “Order Up!”, will bridge the gap from Episode 4’s concluded Wither Storm story arc to the new content.

The voice cast will be joined by Sean Astin, which known as Sam Gamgee in the “Lord of the Ring” movie. Other voices featured are those of Catherine Taber and Patton Oswalt as Jesse and Paul Reubens of Pee-Wee Herman.

While the three extra episodes will not be a part of the existing season pass, gamers can still buy the upcoming episodes 6, 7 and 8, provided that they have already downloaded at least one of the older episodes.

Launched in October 2015, Minecraft: Story Mode is an all-new narrative-driven game series developed by Telltale Games in collaboration with Mojang. Three more episodes are planned this year, but no official announcement has been issued by Telltale Games and its partner Mojang

“We’re not going into detail about the content of those yet, but we can confirm that they’ll be great, and maybe come with a slightly different flavor to the previous season,” adds Hill, via the Mojang’s website.

Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 5 unveiled, three more coming this year

Minecraft, one of the world’s most popular video games, is being used as an educational tool at a Rockhampton school.

Year 8 students at Emmaus College are studying medieval times in history class, and are building worlds within Minecraft that correlate with what they are learning.

The concept was introduced to the school by history teacher Seamus Toman, after a visit to his home country of Ireland.

Mr Toman said the idea came through his old school.

“They alerted me to the possibility of Minecraft for spatial learners here at Emmaus,” he said.

“We’ve picked up within this group there are a lot of spatial learners.

“They’re very hands-on. They don’t learn through chalk and talk and traditional learning, they like to discover.”

Mr Toman said his students had wholeheartedly embraced using Minecraft in class.

Photo: Students at Emmaus College in Rockhampton are being taught history with the aid of computer game, Minecraft. (ABC Capricornia: Blythe Moore)

“Once they got into the Minecraft, it just went completely crazy,” Mr Toman said.

“They kept going and going. I had to hold them back a little bit.

“They’ve really immersed themselves in it, they’re all just really engaged … we’re trying to have a lesson tailored to their educational needs.”

However, he said Minecraft had not replaced traditional learning tools.

“They have to do their normal research, they have to learn how to use the normal library … but we hope that with the likes of Minecraft and other things, it would enthuse them and drive them on a bit further,” he said.

“There’s a few boys there too and boys are sometimes hard to reach, and we also thought if we introduce this element of playing and gaming through education, it would motivate them as well — and it has.”

Students excited about history class

Photo: Jackson Smith, 13, says he enjoys helping other students with Minecraft in history class. (ABC Capricornia: Blythe Moore)

Minecraft as a learning tool seems to have been unanimously well received by students in Mr Toman’s class.

Thirteen-year-old Jackson Smith said he had not enjoyed history class last year, but that had changed.

“It wasn’t that fun, but this year I’ve always been looking forward to going to history,” he said.

Jackson said he also liked that Minecraft allowed him to take on a different role in class.

“I play Minecraft as a hobby. It was a fun thing to teach other students too,” he said.

“It’s good that I know a lot more about something than other people do.”

Classmate Vincent Ramirez said he was also glad Minecraft was being used in class.

“Last year in history we were just writing and researching about the topic and not playing anything,” he said.

“I’m more interested [in history] because there’s a lot of fun things to do when I research.

“And then when I learn about more things I can add more stuff in my Minecraft world.”

Using Minecraft to help teach history a hit with Rockhampton students

Oculus attended the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and held a special event, where the company has presented almost a complete version of the Minecraft game running on Samsung’s Gear VR headset. The participants were allowed to explore the game and some of them shared their impression through IT websites.

Samsung has released its Gear VR mobile virtual reality headset at the end of November 2015, being manufactured in collaboration with Oculus. Minecraft doesn’t need any introduction, as this sandbox video game was launched in 2011 by Mojang, but three years later, Microsoft has purchased it for 2.5 billion dollars. The game can be played on smartphones running on Android, iOS and Windows Phone, on computers running on Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux or and on Raspberry Pi, and on consoles such as Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Wii U. Soon, Minecraft will be played in virtual reality, and sometime later this year, it will be available for the Oculus Rift and Gear VR.

Those who were curious to play Minecraft on the Gear VR had this opportunity at the Game Developers Conference and they were impressed with the effects, saying that they were able to walk around and fight off enemies without struggling too much. While playing the game, the participants at the GDC have stood in a swivel chair, being able to spin around and to do a 180-degree turn. Likewise other VR games, Minecraft uses a snap-turning function, but many players get motion sickness when jumping the camera quickly.

Overall, the players loved how the huge mountains look in the virtual world and they felt like they were part of a magic landscape with deep valleys flowing with water. One of players remembered how Iron Golems were walking around and had a face-to-face moment with a creature. After this experience, that player started digging a hole in the ground, but he became claustrophobic when he had his body crammed into a small and dark pit. He didn’t like the low-resolution textures and when he was about to panic, he used the torches and calmed down.

Minecraft Gear VR Edition – How The Players Described It

A few minutes into exploring a Minecraft world in Samsung’s Gear VR head-mounted display, I started digging a hole in the ground. After getting a few meters into the earth, I faced dirt in every direction. Despite knowing in my heart that I was in a safe room with Oculus representatives and dozens of media professionals, I started to panic.

This is Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Oculus VR held a special event during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week to show off a nearly complete version of the block-building phenomenon running in Samsung’s phone-holding virtual reality device (it’s also coming to the high-end Rift). I spent around 30 minutes exploring the game, and that experience made it clear that this is an application that could instantly show people the promise of VR. Minecraft is notoriously simple looking, but that didn’t prevent it from giving me moments of exhilaration and panic, and that’s something a lot of people will respond to. Analysts are already expecting mobile VR to generate $861 million in spending this year, and it should also keep pace with console devices like Sony’s PlayStation VR as well as PC peripherals like HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. By 2020, research firm SuperData suspects mobile VR will represent $15.6 billion of a $40.4 billion virtual reality business worldwide.

Unlike Rift, Vive, and PSVR, Gear VR is not a high-end device that tracks your body or the tilt of your head. The result is that it is technically “less immersive,” but that’s not something you’re thinking about when digging through caverns in Minecraft.

Instead, Minecraft: Gear VR Edition puts you into its low-fi world better than any previous version. I played with an Xbox-style controller, and I had no issues walking around and digging up dirt and fighting off enemies. Instead of aiming with the analog stick, I controlled my targeting by looking around. This is something I’ve done in other VR games, but it was nice to see how quickly it made sense in a game I’ve already played for dozens of hours outside of VR.

Above: That’s a long fall, and it feels like it when you’re in VR.

Image Credit: Microsoft

At the event, Oculus had me sit in a swivel chair. This mean I could spin around to do a quick 180-degree turn to look the other way. Having a chair that can pivot along with a controller is probably the ideal way to play, but I also tested out what it’s like if you can’t swivel (like if you were in an airplane chair, for instance). And the game uses the standard snap-turning function that you’re going to see in a lot of VR games. This has you changing where you’re looking by jumping the camera in 10-degree increments. You might think that you’d want the camera to move smoothly when you use the right stick, but most people get motion sickness when they do that.

Beyond the movement, Minecraft in VR gave me some incredible sensations I never really had playing the game on PC. When I first started walking around in the world, the scale smacked me right in the nose. I could see huge mountain peaks and deep valleys flowing with water. It made me feel like a tiny person in a sprawling world. The level Oculus had us in had some Iron Golem creatures walking around, and it was something else to approach them and have to look up to see their faces. I have a memory of one standing right in front of me that I’m recalling right now. That’s imprinted on my brain as if it was something I truly experienced.

After my run in with the Golems, I started digging my aforementioned hole in the ground. And I can’t get over the real sense of claustrophobia I was feeling. It was dark, and I could only barely make out the low-resolution textures a few digital inches in front of me. Like with the creatures I met, I have a memory of having my body crammed into a small pit. On the verge of panic, I thankfully remembered the torches I started the demo with. I popped one onto the wall, and that brought me back from the edge. I’m delighted that I did not have to rip off my headset screaming in embarrassment.

That might sound like a nightmare, but I can honestly say that enjoyed it. It introduces a level of immediacy and presence to something that has a million other things going for it. And having the option to pop on a Gear VR anywhere you want is going to make this game an excellent showpiece for early virtual reality.

Minecraft for Gear VR in 2 words: pixelated claustrophobia

Microsoft and Oculus VR held a press event yesterday to demo Minecraft on the Gear VR for the first time. Oculus’ chief technical officer, John Carmack, was on hand to give his thoughts, and it turns out he’s been strapping smartphones to his face for a while now. But the demonstration showed that the game is still not quite performing up to its potential.

“About a year ago I got Minecraft on the Gear VR and I couldn’t tell anyone about it,” said Carmack. “And it was extremely frustrating because I was playing this game and I could spend hours playing. […] I thought it was the best VR experience that we had available. For anything.”

The reason the Gear VR is the ideal platform for Minecraft, Carmack said, is because there are no wires tethering the user to a computer. With all the processing power built into the headset itself — in the form of a Samsung smartphone — there’s nothing holding the user back from moving in any direction.

“In VR, I want to go explore the world,” Carmack said. “I think that the ability to be wireless, to spin around and have that freedom, really makes this a unique experience. […] Minecraft hits all of those buttons very, very well. It is the quintessential open-world game, and being able to explore that world in VR was what I always thought the core of this was all cracked up to be.”

To enable that kind of experience, the demo space was littered with spinning office chairs and Gear VRs fitted with Samsung Galaxy S7 phones.

But while Minecraft has been up and running on the Gear VR for some time, it still has no release date. Looking at Minecraft: Pocket Edition side by side with Minecraft on the Gear VR, it’s easy to see why; right now, the view distance is remarkably shorter in VR.

The play space designed for journalists to experience was very narrow. While the frame rate was acceptable — I had no issues with nausea — the grand vistas I’ve come to appreciate in Minecraft were almost entirely absent.

Once I broke free from the prepared environment and ran off into the world, I immediately noticed how details were only visible out to a stone’s throw away, a distance of perhaps 40 or 50 blocks. Past that, the edge of the rendered space manifested itself as an opaque white wall. Underground, in the pitch dark, that wall actually lit entire caves, meaning I could glitch the game into giving me enough light to see.

RIGHT NOW, THE VIEW DISTANCE IS REMARKABLY SHORTER IN VR

Inside the prepared environment, it seemed as if I could see farther up and down than I could see out into the distance.

Despite these technical issues with view distance, the locomotion system was particularly well-refined. Jumps had been smoothed out, and felt more like mantling obstacles in a third-person shooter than leaping into the air.

That freedom of movement was a recurring theme in Carmack’s short speech.

“Knowing that you don’t simply control your character to turn 90 degrees this way, to move over here and turn around, but instead to actually turn your body all the way around [is powerful],” Carmack said. “You know that you’re 200 meters away this way down the hill and around the bend from where you started, and that sense of being in a big world is wonderful.”

Carmack closed by reaffirming his belief that Minecraft would be available in VR for consumers very soon.

“I said this was my grail for VR, that this was the most important gaming application that I could do, or that I could be involved with, and so I’m very proud for the part that I’ve had and I’m happy to have worked with Microsoft and Mojang to get this at the point that it’s at. I’m excited to be supporting it in the coming years as things continue to improve.”

Hands-on with Minecraft for the Gear VR, and why it’s John Carmack’s favorite platform

Computer scientists at Microsoft have developed a new artificial intelligence platform atop the hugely popular video game Minecraft. Dubbed AIX, the platform hooks into Minecraft and allows the AI to take control of a character and learn from its actions. It’s early days for the project; so far, the scientists have been hard at work getting the the AI to learn to climb a hill.

It’s a simple enough task to program directly, but for an AI that starts out knowing nothing at all about its environment or what it’s supposed to be doing, that’s a big ask. The AI not only needs to understand its surroundings, but it also needs to figure out the difference between day and night, why walking on lava is probably a bad idea, and when exactly it has achieved its goal via a system of rewards.

Microsoft’s AI isn’t quite there yet, but those wanting to program their own can do so this summer when the AIX software will be released for free and as open-source code. Budding programmers and researchers need only purchase a licence for the Java version of the game, which currently goes for £17.95 ($26.95/€19.95). AIX will run on Windows, Linux, or Mac OS, and researchers can programme their AI in any programming language they like. The only proviso is that AI experiments won’t be able to interact with other players online—at least not yet.

“People build amazing structures that do amazing things in Minecraft, and this allows experimenters to put in tasks that will stretch AI technology beyond its current capacity,” project lead Katja Hofmanntold the BBC. “But eventually, we will be able to scale this up further to include tasks that allow AI agents to learn to collaborate with humans and support them in a creative manner. This provides a way to take AI from where it is today up to human-level intelligence, which is where we want to be, in several decades time.”

While Microsoft says it’s entirely possible to program an AI, stick it inside a robot, and have that try to climb a real-world hill, it’s an extremely costly experiment—particularly if (when) the AI fails and the robot tumbles down the hill. Minecraft also offers a number of different AI learning opportunities that aren’t always easy to try in the real world, including combat and building. Sure, the odd physics of theMinecraft world might not be reflective of the real world, but the complex decisions and consequences inherent to playing Minecraft may make it easier for AI to learn similar concepts.

AI research has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, but it typically focuses on having a computer learn a specific task, whether that’s beating humans in Jeopardy, or, uhh, beating humans at the game of Go. Microsoft says that by using Minecraft researchers will be able to create AI that’s more adept at “general intelligence,” learning in a similar way to humans by parsing information from light, smell, sound, and touch.

“[Minecraft] allows you to have ’embodied AI’,” AIX software engineer Matthew Johnson told the BBC. “So, rather than have a situation where the AI sees an avatar of itself, it can actually be inside, looking out through the eyes of something that is living in the world. We think this is an essential part of building this kind of general intelligence.”

This post originated on Ars Technica UK

Microsoft is using Minecraft to train AI and wants you to help out

Minecraft fans all over the world were elated to hear that the latest update scheduled for March 29 will not be the last chapter in the widely successful Minecraft game series. Telltale Games has recently announced that it will be adding three more episodes to its Minecraft: Story Mode series to the delight of fans of the game. The update that is being released on March 29 is now being speculated that it will act as a bridge to tie the remaining story together. While the three new episodes do not have release dates yet, players who wish to purchase episodes 6, 7 and 8 will have to have purchased at least the first episode in the series that came out in October 2015 called “The Order of the Stone”.

Minecraft’s fifth installment, “Order Up!” will see the protagonist, Jesse and his group to an abandoned temple where, following an ambush by the former Ocelot Aiden and his crew, the team will enter an entirely new world called Sky City. The ruler of Sky City finds out that the new Order of the Stone are up to no good, and the catalyst to bridge the next three episodes will be set forth in the game.

According to the Telltale Games blog, the upcoming three episodes will continue the adventures of the New Order of the Stone and will see Jesse and his team in new worlds that have never been experienced before, sure to thrill fans of the game series.

The fifth installment will also see a new character added to the team, voiced by Melissa Hutchinson, who is known as Clementine in Telltale Games Walking Dead game adaptation. While the three additional episodes do not have release dates yet, the update on March 29 will hold fans over until the new dates for release are announced.

Minecraft Introduces the New Order of the Stone in Latest Update

Soon “Minecraft Story Mode” episode 5 will arrive on several gaming platforms such as Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, Mac, and PC. Moreover, the game is also expected to be launched on the mobile platform, with both iOS and Android devices.

On the Swedish video game’s official website, Owen Hill of Mojang, who is the developer of the game said that episode 5 will be released for download on March 29, and gamers can experience a unique land called Sky City. Jessy would be exploring this new location along with his friends, and the creator has described it as “Intriguing” and “awe-inspiring.”

“Episode 5 will not be the last you see of Jessie and the gang. We can now confirm that three extra episodes will arrive some time in 2016,” Hill wrote on his blog.

The company has revelead much about the new episode called as “Order Up” as the developer of the game want the gamers to play and discover the title all by themselves. However, reports have suggested that “Lord of the Rings” star Sean Astin will give his voice for the game.

The company has launched the “Minecraft Story Mode” in October 2015, and it the roots to the sandbox video game “Minecraft”.  The game has features of episodic adventures with a point-and-click story gameplay. Telltale Games and Mojang AB have collaborated to create the entire game.

Currently, “Minecraft Story Mode” has episodes such as 1 “The Order of the Stone”, “Assembly Required” for episode 2,  “The Last Place You Took” for episode 3 and “A Block and a Hard Place,” for episode 4. Previously, the company intended to include the episode 5, however, latest news have claims otherwise.

Engadget notes that the company will also release three more seasons soon, and it will contain unique content which has not been introduced in the current Season Pass.

Gamers can buy “Minecraft Story Mode” episode 6, 7 and, 8 provided that they already downloaded, at least, one of the older episodes. Albeit, the content of these episodes has not been divulged as of now but according to Mojang claims the “game will be great, and will come with a different flavor.”

Minecraft Story Mode Episode 5 to Release on Mar. 29, Episodes 6, 7, 8 Coming Soon

Shaped like a hexagon to mimic the dimensions of a cube, Minecraft: Blockopedia is designed for full-on Minecraft geeks, although those of us who have only watched the game over the shoulders of children and loved ones will find plenty to admire here too. After the briefest of introductions and a quick glossary to help noobs make sense of the stats that accompany each block’s name, it’s off to the races, with page after page devoted to blocks made from rocks, blocks made from plants, blocks that serve particular functions (a ladder), and blocks that do particular things (acting as a switch).

One of the coolest characteristics about Minecraft is how it chooses to observe the laws of nature and physics, or ignore them. Sand, we are told, can be a cave-in hazard, but when it’s smelted in a furnace, it turns to glass. Both statements are true, but don’t go looking for glowstone the next time you’re spelunking – it is only found in a sinister dimension of Minecraft called the Nether. And while sugar cane in both the real world and the Overworld of Minecraft can be used to make sugar, guess where it can also be used to block flowing lava?

Though the format and illustrations in Minecraft: Blockopedia are the book’s most prominent features, it’s still a book filled with lots and lots of, you know, words. Writer Alex Wiltshire mostly plays it straight (“Water is incredibly useful.”), but often he lets the language and logic of Minecraft add color, as in “Sticky pistons are made by crafting a piston with a slimeball…” and “If you dig podzol without the silk touch enhancement it drops dirt.” Got that?

Minecraft: Blockopedia – for full-on Minecraft geeks, as well as over-the-shoulder admirers