While it’s possible to translate the hours and hours spent building worlds in Minecraft to real objects, we wouldn’t say the results always match the initial vision — they’re more likely to involve either a miniature 3D printout or the time and money spent on a whole lot of Lego. Mojang and 13th Lab have developed what’s arguably a smarter solution with their new Minecraft Reality for iOS. After scanning the environment, the app can insert anyone’s uploaded cuboid masterpiece into a perspective-correct augmented reality for viewing from any angle. Interaction is mostly limited to resizing objects, but the title will display the handiwork of anyone nearby and take a shareable screenshot for posterity. There’s no word of an Android version just yet; if that’s no obstacle to making dreams a (virtual) reality, however, the $2 to pay for Minecraft Reality is a much cheaper and faster alternative to a mountain of plastic bricks.
If you’ve ever caught yourself wishing that real life was like Minecraft, then boy does Mojang have the app for you. Developed primarily by studio 13th Lab, Minecraft Reality is a new augmented reality iOS app that allows you to drop your most cherished Minecraft creations into the real world. Do you particularly like that towering Pikachu pixel art you made with Minecraft blocks? Why not place it into the real world and see what it would look like if a giant Pikachu invaded New York City?
It’s definitely a cool idea, but there’s more to Minecraft Reality than simply seeing your Minecraft creations show up in the world around you. You can actually walk around them to view them from all different angles, and if your friends have Minecraft Reality installed on their iDevice, they’ll be able to track down your creations and check them out too. That’s made possible by the app’s use of GPS tracking to remember where in the world you placed your creations, which is an awesome feature if you ask us.
You can resize the object before you place it, letting you make sure that it fits in with the surrounding well enough before plopping it down in the real world. The app also comes with a few pre-made models ready to be placed, so you can begin using this app right away even if you don’t have anything of your own waiting to be uploaded. Speaking of uploading, players can head to http://minecraftreality.com to upload their own Minecraft worlds for use in the app. Check out Minecraft Reality in action below.
Minecraft Reality is available now on the iTunes App Store for $1.99 [download link]. The listing on the App Store says it isn’t compatible with the iPod Touch 4G or earlier and that it most of the app’s functionality isn’t available on the iPhone 4, so keep that in mind if you’re planning to buy. Do you think you’ll be picking up Minecraft Reality?
Tis the seasons for ghouls, ghasts, and perhaps most importantly, candy. Halloween is right around the corner, and to celebrate, Mojang and 4J studios have released a pack of 55 Halloween-themed skins for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. The skins were put together by a number of different studios, including Mojang, 343 Industries, and Rare.
Even better is that this skins pack is cheap – we’re talking just 160 MSP, of $2 for those of you who prefer real-world terms. All of the money made from this DLC will be going to charity, so not only can you get 55 Minecraft skins on the cheap, but you can feel good about the fact that the money you paid will be going to a good cause. PlayXBLA says that the profits will be split up four ways, going to Block by Block, SANDS Lothians, Child’s Play, and Macmillan Cancer Support, and you find out more about each by clicking here.
The list of skins is long and varied, with a number of different developers (both indie and big-time) contributing to this pack. Have a look at the full list below, which includes the developers and each of the skins they’re responsible for:
• 343 Industries: Vampire • 4J Studios: The Grim Reaper, Devil, Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy, Werewolf, Ghost, Evil Wizard, Bride of Dracula, Bride of Frakenstein, Ghoul, Scary Clown • Army of Trolls: Dracula, Frakenstien, Pumpkin, Skeleton, Mummy, Wolfman • Climax Studios: Zombie Businessman, Cyclops, Evil Clown, Evil Robot, Vampire Girl, Grey, Headless Horseman, Lizard Man, Scarecrow, Scary Nom, Mad Scientist, Skeleton, Witch Doctor, Zombie • Mojang: Evil Robot • Owlchemy Labs: Zombie Jack Lumber • Press Play: Evil Lemmy, Evil Max • Rare: Gregg the Grim Reaper, Ancient Mummy, Zippy Zombie • Ronimo Games: Zombie Lonestar • Ska Studios: Cyborg Pumpkinhead, Mara • Tequila Works: Mining Unit 010, Jacko, Bonny • The Behemoth: Hatty • Toylogic: Happy Zombie Cleric, Happy Zombie Mage, Happy Zombie Warrior • Twisted Pixel Games: Captain Zombie, The Gunstringer, Ms. Splosion Man Mask, Skelly, Splodeton
That certainly isn’t bad for just $2, but to be honest, we think 4J could have charged more, considering the fact that 55 skins are included in this pack and the profits are all going to charity. The pack goes on sale today, but if you want it, you’ll have to act quick – it’ll only be available until November 26. Are you picking up the Halloween Skin Pack for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition?
When it comes to the Xbox Live activity chart, we’re used to seeing some kind of Call of Duty game at the top. This is not an occasional thing either – week after week, you can expect the latest Call of Duty title to rank at number one in terms of Xbox Live activity. These days, however, Minecraft is on the scene, and it has something to say about Call of Duty‘s continuing dominance.
Major Nelson has shared the activity chart for the week of October 15, which shows Minecraft snatching the top spot away from Modern Warfare 3. That has to be a pretty big achievement for Mojang and the folks at 4J Studios, as it isn’t often that Call of Duty gets unseated, and this time around, the unseating was done by an Xbox Live Arcade game. Sounds like it’s time to bust out the champagne.
Indeed, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has been well received by gamers. Just earlier this month, Mojang and 4J announced that the game had passed 4 million sales, which definitely isn’t bad for an Arcade title that launched in May. Have a look at the top 20 most popular games on Xbox Live for the week of October 15 below.
1. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition 2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 3. EA Sports FIFA Soccer 13 4. Call of Duty: Black Ops 5. Borderlands 2 6. Halo: Reach 7. Battlefield 3 8. Modern Warfare 2 9. Madden NFL 13 10. NBA 2K13 11. Happy Wars 12. Skyrim 13. Gears of War 3 14. RESIDENT EVIL 6 15. GTA IV 16. FIFA 12 17. Forza Motorsport 4 18. Dishonored 19. EA SPORTS NHL13 20. Halo 3
Of course, Minecraft also came in first on the list of top Arcade titles, managing to come in above titles like The Walking Dead and the freshly re-released Sonic Adventure 2. Can Minecraft keep it up? It’s hard to make that call – on the one hand, Minecraft is proving to be incredibly popular with Xbox 360 gamers, but on the other, Modern Warfare 3 has a ton of players, so it’s going to be hard to keep it out of the top spot. We shall see soon enough, but for now, we’ll just let Mojang and 4J revel in their victory.
Get ready, Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition players, because you’ve got a massive update headed your way. Update 1.8.2 is scheduled to launch tomorrow, and it adds a ton of new stuff for you to see and do. PlayXBLA originally reported an October 16 launch date for update 1.8.2, which was later confirmed by 4J Studios, the developer that handled the porting duties when Mojang decided it was time to bring Minecraft to the Xbox 360.
Perhaps the most important addition in update 1.8.2 is Creative Mode. Yes, you’ll finally be able to build with infinite numbers of every item type in a world with no enemies whatsoever, which is a feature Xbox 360 players have been asking for right from the very beginning. Survival Mode is in for a quite a few additions itself, as 4J Studios has tossed strongholds, ravines, abandoned mineshafts, and villages into the mix. Sounds like it’ll be time to start a new world once update 1.8.2 lands.
Not enough for you? Update 1.8.2 also adds a ton of new items to the game, including things like Ender Pearls, chain armor, and melons. You can now sprint if you’re playing in survival mode, and 4J has even made a few biome code additions with this update, adding rivers and oceans. Have a look at the changelog below, but we warn you: it’s really long.
Additions
• Added Creative Mode. • Disabled Achievements and Leaderboard updates if the player is in Creative Mode, or if the world has been previously saved in Creative Mode. • Added a simple tutorial for Creative Mode. • Added sprinting to Survival Mode. • Added flying and sprint-flying to Creative Mode. • Added new items to the game – Melon, Melon Slice, Melon Seeds, Pumpkin Seeds, Raw/Cooked Beef, Raw/Cooked Chicken, Rotten Flesh, Pumpkin Seeds, Iron Bars, Fence Gate, Stone Bricks, Stone Brick Slabs, Stone Brick Stairs, Brick Slabs, Brick Stairs, Ender Pearl, Web,Vines, 10 more Music Discs, and Chain Armor. • Added new items to the crafting menu – Melon, Melon Seeds, Glass Pane, Fence Gate, Iron Bars, Stone Bricks, Stone Brick Slabs, Stone Brick Stairs, Brick Slabs, Brick Stairs. • Added terrain generation features – Strongholds, Villages, Abandoned Mineshafts and Ravines. • Biome code additions, including rivers and oceans. • Changed the bow to have drawing and firing action. • Added a quick move to the dispenser. • Added a quick equip for armor to the inventory interface. • Added a quick move for ingredients and fuel in the furnace interface. • Brought forward the mining speed changes from 1.2.3 • Brought forward apples dropping from leaf blocks from 1.1 • Brought forward change from 1.2.3 to make pumpkins and melons grow from stems much faster, and not require farmland around the stem to grow on. • Fix to vines brought forward from 1.2.3 to stop them spreading too much. • Added the Food Bar to the HUD. • Added stacking for food items. • Added the eating animation. • Enabled crafting mushroom stew without a crafting table. • Added the blocking move with swords. • Changed all the text descriptions for food to show how much they refill the food bar. • Passive mobs will now flee when hit. • The snout on pigs now protrude from their head. • Skeletons now hold full size bows. • Animals no longer despawn which makes it possible to capture them. • Zombies now drop Rotten Flesh instead of Feathers. • Updated some mob sounds. • Shears can now collect Tall Grass and the new Vine. • Improved sunrise and sunset. • Improved the rain edges (when looking up in rain). • User-placed leaf blocks no longer decay. • Cloud height raised to the top of the map, so clouds can no longer phase through blocks. • Cloud movement syncs with the game’s time. • Both Wooden and Stone pressure plates can now be placed on fences. • Improved chest model with a 3D lock, and opening and closing animation. • Added a countdown timer to the autosave to stop it being such a surprise. • Added the ability to rename an existing saved world. • Added map icons to the in-game player list to match their color in the map. • Added a confirmation dialog on the player choosing to exit without saving. • Added a character display when sprinting or flying. • Updated the How To Play HUD with the Food Bar information. • Added descriptions for Creative Mode and Sprinting to the How To Play menus. • Updated the Download Content menu with pictures of the DLC available. • Removed Herobrine.
Options Changes and Additions
• Changed the Gamertags Display option to mean display/hide gamertags in-game and on maps. • Added an option to select Creative Mode or Survival Mode on creating or loading a world. • Added an option to disable clouds. • Added additional options to the world creation – Superflat land (creates a flat world near bedrock in both the Overworld and the Nether), enable/disable Structures and Bonus Chest. • Added Host options – toggles for Player Versus Player, Trust Players to stop players being able to mine without permission from the Host, Fire Spread, TNT Explodes, and Host Privileges. • Added in-game player options for the host – Can Build and Mine, Moderator, Kick Player, Can Fly, Disable Exhaustion, Invisible. • Store the Online, Invite Only, and Friends of Friends options in the player’s profile. • Tutorial World Changes: • Changed the Tutorial world to enable the new terrain features in it. • Added mini tutorial for sprinting in the Tutorial world. • Added mini tutorial for eating in the Tutorial world. • Added Music Disc Quests in the Tutorial world – players can search the world for the 12 chests, each containing one of the Music Discs that can be played in a Jukebox.
Fixes
• Fix for duplication glitch. • Fix for aspect ratio of things in hand when in splitscreen mode. • Fix for issue with player data not saving (player starting world with no items they had when they saved). • Fix for redstone tiles burning out when they shouldn’t. • Fixed issue with Minecart with Furnace not being able to move another Minecart. • Fixed particle code for flipped 3rd person view.
Oh, look at that – it appears 4J Studios has removed Herobrine with update 1.8.2. It’s a shame too, as Herobrine was really awesome, but what can you do? 4J Studios says that the update will begin rolling out at 2AM Pacific tomorrow morning (October 16), but warns that it may take a few hours before every region has the update. Get ready Xbox 360 players, because you are definitely in for a treat.
Creator of the insanely-popular sandbox game Minecraft has been working on another title for a few months now called 0x10c (pronounced “10 to the C”), and today he revealed some more details about the upcoming game and even released some early gameplay footage to demonstrate the various aspects of the game, like the physics, graphics, and lighting.
0x10c is a first-person space simulator currently being worked on by Mojang, with Markus “Notch” Persson as the lead designer who is the infamous creator behind Minecraft. Notch says the game is inspired by the TV show Firefly, as well as the video game Elite. Gameplay will involve different aspects, such as exploration of other ships and planets, various space battles, and even mining, trading, and looting similar to what you would find in Minecraft.
Notch says that the game will features some interesting twists, like if your ships crashes while you’re trying to land on a planet, it just doesn’t explode, but rather the spacecraft will simply break down and you’ll have to explore for different resources in order to fix it. Currently, there’s no multiplayer, but Notch says that it’s on the to-do list.
We first heard about 0x10c back in April, when Notch first announced the game. It was in its early-development stages and not a lot of details were given at that point, but it looks like the developing team has made a lot of progress so far. However, Mojang says they’re still in the early stages of development, so we definitely won’t see the game’s release before the holiday season.
Gamers have been waiting on tenterhooks for Markus “Notch” Persson’s next offering, titled 0x10c, and while the Minecraft creator has detailed some aspects of the upcoming game, even he’s not sure exactly how it’ll end up. Newly released video footage (after the break) shows a first-person shooter aboard a spaceship, and the creators told PC Gamer that they’d “really like for stuff to go wrong,” so that players can use creativity and resource-gathering, Minecraft-style, to fix it. Persson also said that the ship would contain a fully-programmable 16-bit computer (which sounds a bit like a recent Minecraft mod), and that multiplayer would be added early in the development. Apart from that, though, the team admitted “we don’t know where 0x10c is really headed,” and that they shouldn’t “raise too many people’s expectations.” Based on the rampant speculation so far, it seems like that ship may have already sailed.
Ever since Notch announced that he was handing off the main development duties on Minecraft to Jens Bergensten, Mojang fans have been waiting with bated breath to see what he’ll do next. Earlier this year, Notch announced a new passion project called 0x10c, but in the time since that announcement, he’s been relatively quiet on the game’s progress. We’ve been given small updates here and there, but nothing all that substantial. Today, however, we’re getting a peek at the first footage from the game, and you can check it out after the jump.
What you see below is nothing more than a bare-bones tech demo, and the video is actually unlisted on YouTube, which suggests that Notch may not have wanted to share this with the masses. In any case, it’s been discovered, and it offers a good look at the engine Notch has developed for the game. In the video, we get to see 0x10c‘s physics at work, and also get to watch as the player character fires off his gun numerous times.
0x10c is still obviously in the very early stages of development, but this should do something to satiate the players who are hungry for Notch’s next game, at least for a little while. The style looks similar to that of Minecraft, but the game should be sporting a different art style by the time Notch releases it. Regardless of the artwork, this is definitely something to get excited about, so have a look at the video below:
0x10c is something of a space management sim set in the far distant future. It will take place in a persistent in-game world, and each player will have a fully programmable 16-bit computer at their disposal. Notch plans to release 0x10c in the same way he released Minecraft, launching an alpha version early and then providing frequent updates, but there isn’t a solid launch date for the game just yet. If you’re interested in finding out more about the game, you can follow development updates on 0x10c‘s official website.
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