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Today, I cover an adventure map, "The Island of Dr. Gireaux" (no relation to Moreau, of course), made by PeligrosoBlanco! Based off of the highly popular H. G. Wells novel, this adventure leaves the player stranded on a strange island populated by all manner of oddities. With a rich back-story, clever layout and curiously disembodied NPCs, this map worth many hours of entertainment. In addition, I may or may not mess up hilariously along the way - check it out!






Be sure to check out this week's Weekly Round Up, where Pico gives us news on Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Rift and Nitronic Rush!
Posted in: News

Minecraft for PS Vita? Unfortunately...

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It seems that Minecraft will not be coming to Playstation after all. In a business meeting including Daniel Kaplan, it was confirmed that there were "no plans" to bring the indie title to PS Vita (Sony's handheld equivalent to the Nintendo DS), despite overwhelming success on the Sony handheld, Xperia.
Minecraft - Pocket Edition launched on Xperia Play last summer and quickly became the Android Market's most worldwide-downloaded app. Approximately 8500 people have played the game on the device since its unveiling. The recent Survival Mode update to the game makes Pocket Edition more of an action-oriented experience, with health bars, weapons and animals included, as well as the addition of more blocks from the PC version of the game.

The XBLA version of the game is still expected to hit consoles in March 2012.

Want to Code "Catacomb Snatch" Yourself?

With Mojam all wrapped up, Mojang's new title "Catacomb Snatch" is, technically, complete! However, Jeb has decided to encourage budding programmers by giving tips on how to use the open-source code of the game. He goes over his own history of getting into game development, as well as offering some helpful instructions to prospective game designers who might decide to take on the task of working on "Catacomb Snatch" further. He also offered sources for the development tools needed to code a Java game (using his examples), as well as positing a number of tasks and challenges for anyone brave enough to take them on. What can you add or improve on "Catacomb Snatch"?

UPDATE
It seems that TooSkilled has set out to answer the question set above! Check out his thread for "Catacomb Snatch" bugfixes, new features and more - and possibly to lend a hand!




Dead Worker's Party - The Eye



The Dead Worker's Party begins a new adventure this week, "The Eye"! What strange things await the entrepid trio? Can they solve the mystery of their amnesia? Will they ever get that minecart to work correctly? Give it a watch to find out!
Posted in: News Minecraft Mojang AB

Minecraft has hit over 5,000,000 (five million) sales, and over 20 million registered users! It seems like only yesterday that Minecraft was fully released at Minecon, and features were still being added even then. From beds to bedrock fog, Minecraft spent 2011 in a constant state of growth, and continues to do so well into 2012. As the game grows, so does the player-base; it wasn't long before over 4 million people bought the game, and now, even that number seems so far away.

Now, it seems that Pocket Edition has some catching up to do! Having hit 750,000 sales in January, the portable Minecraft port has quickly become a fixture in its own right - how long will it be before we see over 1 million sales for this ever-expanding game for the travelling builder? Every update brings more and more of the popular PC title to handhelds, with the most recent update bringing elements of Survival to Pocket Edition, including monsters, tools and even more blocks than before, to name just a few.

It's almost impossible to really grasp the totality of how far Minecraft has come, and how much Mojang has grown. What will the next major landmark be for the smash-hit sandbox game, and the blockbusting team behind it? We're not sure, but with Mojam still in full swing, there exists ample opportunities to aim ever higher.
Posted in: News Minecraft Mojang AB

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Mojang is in full swing with their Humble Bundle project, Mojam! What is it? Simple! Mojang is writing a fully complete, playable game from scratch in the span of a weekend! As with previous Humble Bundles, you can pay whatever you like to get the game upon completion, and all proceeds will go to your choice of four excellent charities. Taking feedback from their earlier poll on the topic (with over 100,000 votes!), Mojang is teaming up with Humble Bundle founding team Wolfire Games to create a real-time strategy shoot-em-up, with an Egyptian steampunk theme! Cobalt creators Oxeye Game Studios are tackling an equally ambitious project - a dungeon-crawler beat em' up set in post-apocalyptic World War 2!

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Graph updated: Mojam has completed!

Want to see these killer teams at work, live? Head over to the Humble Bundle site, where you can watch all available live feeds, chat with other viewers, and more! Is all of that still not enough? There's more - you can also hit up their Google Moderator session for some Q&A! We will be updating all links regularly (included below in a list for your convenience), so be sure to check back often. Good luck to Mojang, Wolfire and Oxeye on your upcoming titles, we're looking forward to it!







Updates!

  • In the early moments of Mojam, Minecraft cleared over 5 million sales! Congratulations, Mojang!
  • MinecraftChick confirmed during today's livestream that tomorrow (2/19/12), the stream will be "interactive", including tours of the office, giveaways and more
  • For users who have already donated, a new build of Catacomb Snatch has been released!
  • Oxeye intern Frall spent some time chatting directly with users on the stream!
  • Notch to arrive at 10:00 GMT +1 to work the remaining 12 hours - Oxeye gets some much-deserved rest!


Videos!

Mojang hits their $75,000 mark - so Notch & (shirtless) Jeb arm wrestle!


Jens Bergensten (Jeb) being fabulous!

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A sneak peek at Mojang's title, "Catacomb Snatch"!
Posted in: News Mojang AB



This week, the news duo talks about this weekend's Mojam game creation event, where they must create a fully playable, complete game in 60 hours or less (with themes and mechanics voted on by you guys!); the highly anticipated LEGO Minecraft release, which does include a tiny creeper and Steve, and a classic Minecraft landscape; and an in-depth look at this week's snapshot updates, such as villager updates, map generation details and more. Take a look - click the image above to watch!

Want to see the Mojang Mojam livestream? It's up now (and for quite awhile yet) - check it out!

THIS JUST IN:

Minecraft - Pocket Edition for iOS is now updated! You can get the update by starting the game up at any time - update your client now!
Posted in: News


Click the image above to watch!

Multiplayer servers are, in many ways, every bit a work of art as a good mod or texture pack, and they are possibly one of the most community-centric projects one can undertake. This week, we're going to take a look at the Killion Detention Center, hosted by Markillion and Starzeh. It is a prison-themed server, and the first in the series to be spotlighted - of course, it will not be the last. If you visit (or host!) a particularly amazing server, please let me know about it, and I'll see if I can spotlight it for you! I love seeing the amazing things people come up with, whether it's a themed server, an amazing build server, or anything at all, and I especially enjoy presenting it back to the community, so everyone can enjoy it.




Mojang's Mojam, LEGO

Starting this Friday, February 17th at 10 CET Mojang will be creating a new game LIVE with all of the money going to charity. In tandem with Humble Bundle, the Mojangstas will be producing a game in 60 hours or less, and they want your help!

Mojang said:

We want your help to choose the theme and the genre. The highest and lowest voted from each category will be combined for the game. Of course, you’ve always wanted to play a Shoot Em’Up Dating Simulator with a Candy Land World War II theme. Choose wisely!


So make your voice heard, and be a part of an exciting new game - tell Mojang what you want to see them create in their poll right here!

Minecraft LEGO, For the Win

It's been a long time coming, but we have news on the Minecraft-themed LEGO project! Today, Carl, Notch, Jeb, Jon and Lydia are at the Bella Center in Copenhagen for LEGOworld to unveil LEGO Minecraft! Additionally, they have a video to commemorate the occasion, which you can see (along with specifics on the project) right here. Check it out!




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Shapeways Sweepstakes

Don't forget that we still have a Shapeways 3D Printout Sweepstakes going on right now, where you can win your own 3D printout of your in-game creations, free! Just check out the details here for your chance to win!
Posted in: News

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This week's early-release Snapshot is out! The following changes are confirmed:

  • Added new world file format called 'Anvil' (256 max height and 4096 block IDs*)
  • Multi-player light calculations do no longer cause affected blocks to be transmitted to the clients, instead the clients will recalculate the light on their own
  • Villagers will repopulate villages based on how many houses there are available
  • Some nights in villages will be worse than others...
  • Added a redstone-controlled light source
  • Decreased chance for the rare mob drops
  • All animals use the new AI system now


*The game can't use the full range of IDs yet because there are still some assumptions that IDs above 256 are items.

NOTE: It is absolutely imperative that players back up their maps before testing the new format, just in case!

Jeb also had the following to say about the new save format:

Jeb said:

NOTE: This snapshot will convert the maps you load to the new file format. If you want to revert to the old format, you need to replace the 'level.dat' file with the file called 'level.dat_mcr'. The new format will write world regions to files called '*.mca', so your original regions will remain as '*.mcr'.




UPDATE: The client/server files are now 12w07b! If you downloaded the files earlier today, and want the most up-to-date version, download the updated files from the links below:

Get the updated client here!

Get the updated server here!

Updates:

  • Crash bug corrupting levels when spawning mobs above the 255th block
  • Sheep animation is correct in SMP




Are you a gamer of broad & diverse tastes? If so, we've got something you'll love - a weekly newsletter which covers news not just from Minecraft, but every game on our network! If you're interested, follow the link below and subscribe to the newsletter today! It's free - no catch! - and we'll keep you appraised of the latest news on all things gaming. In addition, anyone who subscribes to the newsletter before the February edition rolls out (on 02/21) has a chance to win a free month of Curse Premium - check it out!
Posted in: News Patch

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Jeb tweeted that this week's Snapshot will likely come tomorrow, instead of the usual Thursday release time. In addition, he released the following information for key changes likely to be seen in the coming update:


  • Maximum build height has been increased to 256 (was 128)
  • Empty sections of the world are not loaded into memory
  • Block ids have been increased to 4096 (was 256) by adding a 4 bit data layer (similar to how meta data is stored)
  • Block ordering have been changed from x/z/y to y/z/x in order to improve compression
  • Packets for sending chunks have been updated (a full 128-high chunk is smaller than the old format, and a chunk with lots of empty space is much smaller)
  • Biomes are saved per x/z column, which means they can be altered by tools


In addition, he offered a glimpse into a new map format, as well as changes to the file format for save games:

Jeb said:

Jon and I have been working on a new map format for Minecraft that we’ve dubbed “Anvil” (it’s just a name). The purpose of the new format is to prepare for modding, especially to allow for more block types, but also to improve other areas of the game (such as map height).

...The next snapshot, and Minecraft 1.2, will automatically convert worlds to the new format. The files of the current format (“McRegion”) will remain in your save folder, if you need to restore them for some reason.


  • The 16x128x16 “Blocks”, “Data”, “SkyLight” and “BlockLight” tags are removed
  • A “Sections” tag has been added with up to 16 compound tags
  • Each section has 16x16x16 “Blocks”, “Data”, “SkyLight” and “BlockLight” tags
  • Each section has a “Y” integer tag saying which section it is (note that some Y positions can be skipped). 0 is at the bottom of the world and 15 is the topmost section
  • Each section also has a “AddBlocks” tag, which is a DataLayer byte array just like “Data”. The “AddBlocks” tag is not included in the converter since the old format never had block ids above 255. This extra tag is created whenever a block requires it, so the getTile() method needs to check if the array exists and then combine it with the default block data. In other words, blockId = (addBlock << 8) + baseId.
  • Each chunk has a 16×16 byte array with biome ids called “Biomes”. If this array is missing it will be filled when the game starts. The converter doesn’t include any biome sources, though (it had too many dependencies to be included).
  • Note that the old format is XZY and the new format is YZX (see the difference between DataLayer and OldDataLayer).
  • The new format uses the extension “.mca” instead of “.mcr” (the old format is kept for safety, with the level.dat backed up as “level.dat_mcr”)


Finally, he wished to express recognition for forum-user Robinton for his hard work on his rather impressive list of mods.

Many of the upcoming changes have clear implications - a smoother game experience, larger worlds and better mod compatibility - while others seem to be a prelude to even larger changes in the future. Keep an eye open for the early release of this week's Snapshot, as well as news about the upcoming 1.2 Update right here!






Check out this weeks' installment of the Curse Weekly Roundup, for all your game-related news on Minecraft & more from around the gaming network - click the image above to watch!
Posted in: News

Should Minecraft Win the BAFTA Game Award for 2011?

The British Academy Video Games Awards have listed a number of hot 2011 titles (including LA Noire, Skyrim, Portal 2 and others) - included on this list is, of course, our favorite sandbox building game! Do you think Minecraft should beat out other, larger triple-A titles? If so, head on over here and make your voice heard - vote for Minecraft today! BAFTA will have a livestream of the awards ceremony on March 16th, so regardless of what title you vote for, feel free to give the ceremony a watch.

Pocket Edition Updates

Recently, Minecraft - Pocket Edition saw a major update, which included Survival elements, new blocks, monsters and more! While the Android version of the game is already updated (simply by starting up your game, if you haven't already), the iOS version update is still pending. It is expected to arrive in the very near future. In the meantime, you can check out the full list of updates, or view a list of the added features below:


  • New Game Modes
  • Creative (All worlds created before alpha 0.2.0 will be in creative)
  • You can fly. (Press the jump button twice) Press up or down arrows twice to ascend/descend.
  • Survival
  • There is no crafting yet
  • Caves have been worked on a little. (zombies get stuck in caves)
  • Some materials (Tools and anything that can not be naturally acquired) are in infinite stacks which is indicated by ? (infinity) symbols.
  • When an item you have 0 of is selected your fist is shown.
  • Added Hitpoints Bar same as computer version (health will slowly regenerate, similar to peaceful difficulty in the computer version).
  • Added Air Bar when under water (you can now drown and die)
  • Added Death with options to respawn or go to main menu.
  • Sand and Gravel still aren't affected by gravity.
  • Mobs
  • Sheep
  • Zombie
  • New items
  • Stone Shovel
  • Stone Pickaxe
  • Stone Axe
  • Stone Sword
  • Shears
  • Doors
  • Fences
  • Fence Gates
  • Cactus
  • Gravel


Bukkit Site Changes

Have you ever wished that the Bukkit site was a bit more user-friendly for downloads? Was the old interface counter-intuitive and difficult to understand? The Bukkit team seems to feel the same way, and has now updated their site to a more streamlined, user-friendly layout! Bukkit developer EvilSeph summarized the changes:

EvilSeph, Bukkit said:

On the surface, dl.bukkit.org, presents you with a landing page that gives you precisely what the average user of our product or prospective users of our product want: a link to the latest download and some helpful links in an attractive design. When designing the landing page, we wanted to appeal to the consumer, rather than the developer. We wanted to provide consumers with a clear indication of where they need to go to get the latest download link and feel we have achieved that with inspiration from Mozilla's Get Firefox page. On top of this, we wanted to provide users with obvious links to answer their most pressing questions so that no one feels lost when trying to get started with Bukkit.
Posted in: News

Computer Craft



This week's Spotlight focuses on the incredibly complex and diverse Computer Craft mod, created by dan200! This mod almost defies attempts to summarize it, although "fully programmable in-game computers" comes close. Aside from having unique, programmable, individual in-game computers, this mod also boasts high compatibility with SpaceToad's BuildCraft, Eloraam's RedPower and even the recently covered Laser Mod (by w3(r4ft), to name a mere handful.

I touch briefly on a few of Computer Craft's features, but to get the full experience, check out dan200's thread for everything you could ever need. In addition to being fully programmable, crafted computers come with a pre-installed suite of software to get you started, including (but not limited to) a Minecraft-inspired text adventure game, an arcade-style game, and much more.

Click the image above to check out this week's episode!
Posted in: News
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