James Charles is returning to Minecraft Monday after taking last week off.

The event hosted by UMG and Keemstar continues for Monday, August 12th with its eighth week of the tournament. For this week, the competitors will compete in Hunger Games (Spark City), TnT Run, Hunger Games (Breezy), Hunger Games (Par72), KitPVP, Hunger Games (Holiday), Hunger Games (Wyvern), Bingo, and Hunger Games (Spark Apokalypse).

Minecraft Monday has switched between all Hunger Games contests and several other mini games. For this week it looks like it will mostly be Hunger Games (Battle Royale) events.

ShotGunPlays & Technoblade won Week 1, Technoblade & iBallisticSquid won Week 2, traves & cscoop won Week 3, Vikkstar123 & Preston won Week 4, Skeppy & BadBoyHalo won Week 5, Technoblade & Schlatt won in Week 6 and Badboyhalo & Skeppy won in Week 7.

When does Minecraft Monday start?

• Date: August 12th
• Time: 4 p.m. EST, 1 p.m. PT

How to stream Minecraft Monday Week 8

UMG will be streaming the event live above.

You can also watch live from individual streamers on their respective platforms (some stream on Twitch, others stream on YouTube, a rare few choose other outlets).

Minecraft Monday Week 8 teams, rosters

Minecraft Monday Week 8 results

The leaderboard above will update throughout the tournament, and you can check at the end of the event who won.

After announcing a plan to completely overhaul Minecraft‘s visual engine in 2017, the game’s developers at Mojang have finally come clean: the “Super Duper Graphics Pack” is no longer coming to the hugely popular sandbox game.

The update’s E3 2017 announcement sent tongues wagging thanks to an incredible trailer, which bathed the game’s familiar, blocky environs with a newly dynamic shadow-and-light model, crepuscular rays, screen-space reflections, material-based lighting, and more. Keeping in line with its description as a “pack,” the update left the game’s raw assets untouched, which made it seem similar to other existing “texture packs” sold within modern Minecraft games. All of this would even run in 4K resolution on supported hardware, Mojang said, and it promised a free launch by “fall 2017.”

Once that date slipped, Mojang became wholly mum about the pack’s existence until Monday. That’s when Mojang confirmed the project’s cancellation in a brief, official blog post. In it, the company told fans, “Unfortunately, the pack proved too technically demanding to implement as planned.” Instead of offering technical details, Mojang went on to blame the update’s problems on “how the pack performed across devices.”

Thanks to this brief statement, we’re forced to read between the lines and remember that the Super Duper Graphics Pack was originally announced as a free update for Minecraft on Windows 10 and Xbox as opposed to power-starved platforms such as Nintendo Switch or smartphones. And we learned in December 2018 that Microsoft was officially done supporting the game on Xbox 360 consoles. This may very well have been a crucial brick to lay in moving forward on “Xbox One-only” console support for the pack.

So that “across devices” line may very well point to the non-X version of Xbox One as a performance sticking point. But neither Mojang nor Microsoft is saying.

Shortly after the pack’s 2017 announcement, Microsoft rolled out a Minecraft “beta test” channel via the Xbox One Insider channel. But that test version of the game never included any hints of Super Duper Graphics Pack bonuses or even a jump to 4K resolution. However, that doesn’t mean Microsoft is done pushing Minecraft‘s limits on its existing platforms. The Monday blog post included a tease of some technical upgrade possibly coming: “We’re constantly trying to make the most of the technical architecture of each [platform]. We’ll be able to share more on that subject very soon.”

And in good news, some of the Super Duper update’s graphical touches appear to have found a home in the promising spin-off game Minecraft Dungeons, slated to launch sometime next year.

Listing image by Mojang / Sam Machkovech

Minecraft fans have been expecting a major update to the game since 2017. But the update has proved “too technically demanding,” Microsoft said Monday, leading the company to cancel production.

The update, called Super Duper Graphics Pack, was expected to bring more with lighting effects like shadows and fog, new motion for some game elements like leaves, and new textures for characters. Microsoft unveiled the “ambitious” update at the massive E3 video game conference in 2017, but on Monday conceded that the update “proved too technically demanding to implement as planned.”

“We aren’t happy with how the pack performed across devices,” developer Mojang said in a company blog post. “For this reason, we’re stopping development on the pack, and looking into other ways for you to experience Minecraft with a new look.”

Minecraft has come a long way since its introduction a decade ago. It remains one of the top paid mobile games in Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store, while Minecraft: Education Edition has become a popular way to teach kids things like computer coding, engineering, architecture, urban planning and math.

It’s also been used to help kids with autism engage in school and build healthy social lives.

Microsoft, which bought Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014, celebrated the game’s 10th anniversary in May by revealing Minecraft Earth, a Pokemon Go-style augmented reality phone game.

Minecraft will be keeping its block-based look for the foreseeable future as plans to update its graphics are cancelled.

In a statement Minecraft developer Mojang said it had ended development on what was known as the Super Duper graphics pack for the game.

The pack would have given the game realistic textures, lighting effects and all-round better graphics.

The pack has proved “too technically demanding” so has been ditched.

‘Disappointing’

The plan to make Minecraft look more realistic was unveiled in 2017 at the E3 games show. The ambitious plan was to make a downloadable add-on that all but did away with the basic, blocky look of the massively popular game.

In 2017, Mojang said its work also would produce an add-on for the Xbox version of Minecraft that let the game run at a resolution of 4K on the console.

Originally the Super Duper add-on was due to appear in autumn 2017 but the release date was pushed back to 2018 before being cancelled altogether in 2019.

The technical demands of the update have proved too much, it said in a short apology.

It added: “We realise this is disappointing to some of you – there was a lot of enthusiasm for Super Duper from inside and outside the studio – but unfortunately, we aren’t happy with how the pack performed across devices.”

Mojang added that it was not entirely finished with improving the look of Minecraft on different game-playing gadgets and said it would share more information about this work soon.

In his August 3 Minecraft video, YouTube star Felix ‘PewDiePie’ Kjellberg was gearing up to take on an epic mob boss when he got extremely lucky with his item drops.

PewDiePie’s recent Minecraft videos have been blowing up on YouTube, as almost every single video in the series has gone on the trending page on the platform.

On August 1, The YouTube star assembled an army of 96 million pigs to help him take on a notorious boss called ‘Wither’. But in order to summon the enemy, he needed to collect several extremely rare items – which he managed to do during his August 3 video.

What is a Wither?

A Wither is a floating undead boss mob that attacks players with skulls that explode. He is the only hostile boss that can be created by players in the game currently.

Making the enemy, requires 4 blocks of soul sand that have to be arranged in a T shape, as well as three ‘Wither Skulls’ that are placed side by side on the top three blocks. However, obtaining Wither Skulls is pretty hard as they are a rare drop.

MICROSOFT / MOJANGThe three headed boss is what PewDiePie is working towards.

Wither Skulls can be found in the Nether after killing a Wither Skeleton. However the drop rate for them is as low as 2.5%, but can go up to 5.5% depending on buffs. The low drop-rates can make it extremely difficult to create the enemy. 

In his August 2 video, PewDiePie managed to get the first skull from his first skeleton spawn. “Whoa! Whoa, I’m so lucky dude. Already!” he shouted with glee.

As if he wasn’t already lucky enough, a skeleton dropped another rare item immediately after the first one. “Oh my god. Dude. Looting three, baby!” the YouTuber beamed with excitement.

YOUTUBE: PEWDIEPIE / MOJANGPewDiePie has incredible luck.

PewDiePie then gets three more Wither Skulls

PewDiePie then ended up getting the third skull after being rushed by two Wither Skeletons at once in a frantic battle.

“AHHHHH!” he screamed as he hacked away at the enemies until they died, leaving behind the item. “YESSSS!”

Then to top it all off, the Swedish YouTuber even ended up getting a fourth one. “Oh. My. God.” he breathed in total disbelief when he realized how lucky he was.

(Timestamp of 00:01:07 for mobile viewers.)

The Swede’s battle with the Wither and his army of 96 million pigs is gearing up to be an epic showdown.

What’s new in the latest Minecraft 1.14 Java update and Minecraft 1.12.0 Bedrock update.

Just how big is Minecraft? In early 2019 it passed 176 million copies sold, which puts it in a tussle with Tetris as the best-selling game of all time. Today there are two versions of Minecraft still being updated, each with millions of players: Minecraft Java, the original, and Minecraft Bedrock, the modern version built to run across Windows, mobile, and consoles. Minecraft Bedrock is still playing catch-up with Java’s features, but it’s getting there. Meanwhile, every new Minecraft Java update brings new things to Minecraft.

This is our running catalog of what’s new in both versions of Minecraft. On this page, we have the latest Minecraft Java update, while on page two we’ve collected Minecraft Bedrock’s latest patch notes.

Looking through the Minecraft update 1.14.4 patch notes, minor adjustments and a variety of fixes dot the landscape. Adjustments to villager behavior, the new sieges, and some multiplayer settings changes are the highlights.

MINECRAFT JAVA UPDATE: 1.14.4 PATCH NOTES

For access to the full patch notes including bugfixes, check here.

• Fixed bugs.
• Performance improvements.
• Suspicious stew made from poppies now gives you night vision instead of speed.
• Added /debug report for getting more detailed information.
• Fixed a memory leak.
• Removed camera pivot offset in first-person.
• Improved chunk loading when traveling at high speed.
• Fixed incorrect Pillager texture.
• /reload and /forceload are now available to gamemasters.
• function-permission-level is a new setting in server.properties that controls which commands functions have access to.
• Villagers now stock more items.
• Villagers will now remember their gossip after becoming a Zombie Villager .
• Improved performance of Villager pathfinding.
• Villagers can now work without also restocking at the same time.
• Gossip about players who converted a zombie villager will now last longer.
• The Player Activity button on the Realm screen has been removed.
• Villagers now wait with restocking until they have trades that need restocking.
• Village sieges no longer occur on mushroom islands.
• Mobs will no longer try to pathfind their way through bamboo.
• Pinged the human.

MINECRAFT JAVA UPDATE: 1.14.3 PATCH NOTES

Check here for the full patch notes, including bugfixes

• Items can now be repaired by crafting them together again.
• Reverted the enchanting system to how it was before 1.14.
• Torches, lanterns and pressure plates can now be placed on glass panes and iron bars.
• Lanterns can now be attached below iron bars and glass panes.
• Saturation is no longer required for the “How did we get here?” advancement.
• You can now turn off raids with ‘/gamerule disableRaids true’
• Villagers that are panicking now have a bigger chance of spawning Iron Golems, assuming they can occasionally work and sleep
• “Last slept” and “last worked” is now saved properly for Villagers
• Farmers now spend more time farming when they are working
• Farmers can now always give away food even if other villagers don’t need it
• Improved performance
• Fixed bugs

Patrol Changes:

MINECRAFT JAVA UPDATE: 1.14.2 PATCH NOTES

You can find the full patch notes, with bugfixes, over here.

• All light will now be re-calculated the first time you open a world saved in a previous version
• Errors encountered while loading regions now print more diagnostics to the log file
• Fixed so parrots can spawn on grass blocks and not only on grass
• Added server-side chunk count to debug screen
• Modified raider spawning so they can only ever spawn in fully loaded chunks
• Increased search radius for bell when starting a raid from 48 to 64 blocks
• Fixed bugs

MINECRAFT JAVA VILLAGE & PILLAGE UPDATE: 1.14.0 PATCH NOTES

Minecraft – Village & Pillage – 1.14.0 patch notes

For the full listing, including technical changes and bug fixes, check here.

General Features Overview

• Lots of accessibility improvements.
• Added bamboo blocks into the game.
• Added bamboo jungles in the world.
• Added barrels.
• Added the bell.
• Added yummy sweet berries and sweet berry bushes to the game.
• Added blast furnace.
• Rewrote the book & quill editing to be more intuitive.
• Added campfire.
• Added cartography table.
• Split cats and ocelots to their own creatures and updated cats with new features.
• Added composter.
• Added crossbows.
• Added lots of new blocks.
• Added lots of new decorative blocks.
• Added fletching table.
• Added new dyes and flowers.
• Added some community suggestions.
• Updated the credits list.
• Added in-game buttons for reporting bugs or giving feedback.
• Improvements to invisibility to allow it to correctly work in many cases where it didn’t but you’d expect it to.
• Added grindstone functionality.
• Added ‘Hero of the Village’ effect.
• Added leather horse armor.
• Added lantern.
• Added lectern.
• Added loom.
• Existing special banner patterns can now be crafted into a new item that is not consumed when used, Banner Patterns.
• Added a new “Globe” banner pattern and item.
• We’re now using the new textures.
• Added new noteblock sounds.
• Added pandas.
• Added foxes.
• Added Illager patrols.
• Added Pillagers.
• Added Pillager outpost.
• Added raids.
• Added Ravager.
• Added Wandering Trader.
• Added scaffolding.
• Rewrote the sign editing to be more intuitive.
• Added smithing table.
• Added smoker.
• Added stonecutter.
• Added suspicious stew.
• Trading changes.
• Villager changes.
• Biome based architecture for villages.

Accessibility

• There’s a new Accessibility menu which provides a useful place for all of our accessibility features to be toggled.
• When the narrator is turned on, buttons will be narrated on focus.
• Most screens allow tab and shift+tab navigation through buttons, edit boxes and other UI elements.
• Most lists allow up/down arrow keys to navigate through them.
• We’ve added a new option for turning up the background of all transparent text elements, which should help make them more readable for some people.

Bamboo

• Can be found in Jungles and the two new biomes: bamboo jungle and bamboo jungle hills.
• Can grow to a max height of 12 to 16 blocks.
• When sprinkled with bone meal, bamboo will grow with one or two bamboo blocks on the top.
• When struck with a sword, bamboo will instantly break.
• Two bamboo can be crafted into a single stick.
• Can be used as fuel, with four bamboo required to smelt a single item.
• Bamboo can be placed into flower pots.
• Bamboo can also be found in shipwrecks and jungle temples.

Barrels

• Store things in them!
• Rotate them!
• Find them in villages!

Bells

• Trade with certain villagers to obtain the bell
• Use the bell to alert villagers of nearby danger
• A villager will ring the bell to alert other villagers of an impending raid
• Ringing bells reveals all nearby mobs that can appear in raids

Berries

• Delicious!
• Not very filling!
• Plant your berries in the ground and look with your special eyes as they grow up into a strong, independent bush!

Berry Bush

• Commonly found in taiga, taiga hills, and taiga mountains
• Rarely found in snowy taiga and snowy taiga hills and snowy taiga mountains
• You can stand inside them, but be careful, it will hurt to move
• Has four stages of growth: sapling, no berries, some berries, full berries
• Drops one or two berries in younger stage, then two or three in full growth stage
• Supports bone meal!
• Doesn’t support silk touch!

Biome-based Architecture for Villages

• Villages have recieved an updated look, with several new themes
• The theme depends on the biome the village is in, taking both climate and to available resources into consideration
• Uses the new mysterious jigsaw block for generation
• Adds new structure files, quite many actually

Blast Furnace

• A new furnace upgrade that allows for smelting ores and melting metals faster than the traditional furnace
• Can be crafted via three smooth stone, one furnace, and five iron ingots
• Added to world gen in some villager buildings

Campfire

• A decorative fireplace without fire spread
• Cooks up to four foods, but slowly
• Acts as a smoke signal you can see very (VERY!) far away when a hay bale is below (hint: think note blocks!)
• Cosy light source
• Can be lit/unlit

Cartography Table

• New functional block that provides an easier and simpler way of cloning, extending, and locking of maps
• New map functionality with cartography table
  • Map Locking: allows you to lock maps in the cartography table with a glass pane so that they can no longer be modified
• Map Locking: allows you to lock maps in the cartography table with a glass pane so that they can no longer be modified
• Fancy UI to more closely represent what the recipes actually do functionally
• Crafted with two planks and two paper

Cat and Ocelot Split

• Stray cats can be tamed
• Tamed cats can give lovely (or less lovely) morning gifts to their owners
• Ocelots can’t be tamed, but might start trusting you if you feed them with fish
• Phantoms are terribly scared of cats – how convenient!
• Cat collars can now be dyed
• Added several new cat skins!

Community Suggestions

• Leaves now have a small chances to drop sticks
• Chorus fruit flowers now break when shot by an arrow
• Dead bushes can now be used as furnace fuel
• Rabbit stew and beetroot soup have been changed to a shapeless recipe
• Creepers will now drop records when killed by Stray in addition to skeletons
• Dispensers with shears in them will now shear sheep that have wool in front of them
• TNT and TNT minecart explosions now have 100% drop rate

Composter

• Instead of eating your veggies you can make fertilizer from it!
• Crafted with 3 planks and 4 fences

Crossbows

“To charge the crossbow, hold down the “Use” button. Once the crossbow string has been pulled all the way back, let go. Your crossbow is now loaded and ready to shoot with a single click of the “Use” button.”

• Shoots arrows with base power slightly stronger than the bow, but has less durability
• Three unique enchantments
• Fun, challenging advancements
• New loading mechanics
• Unique load animation

Enchantments

Three new enchantments for Crossbows.

Decorative Blocks

• Changed all existing stone slabs to smooth stone slabs (same look, new name!)
• Changed all existing signs to oak signs (same look, new name!)
• Made smooth stone slabs craftable from smooth stone
• Added spruce, birch, jungle, acacia and dark oak signs
• You can now right click on signs with dyes to change the text colour
• Added stone stairs and slabs
• Added granite stairs, slabs and walls
• Added polished granite stairs and slabs
• Added diorite stairs, slabs and walls
• Added polished diorite stairs and slabs
• Added andesite stairs, slabs and walls
• Added polished andesite stairs and slabs
• Added sandstone walls
• Added smooth red sandstone stairs and slabs
• Added smooth quartz stairs and slabs
• Added brick walls
• Added stone brick walls
• Added mossy stone brick stairs, slabs and walls
• Added nether brick walls
• Added end stone brick stairs, slabs and walls
• Added prismarine walls
• Added red sandstone walls
• Added red nether brick stairs, slabs and walls
• Added smooth sandstone stairs and slabs
• Added mossy cobblestone stairs and slabs
• Made smooth stone obtainable by smelting stone
• Made smooth sandstone obtainable by smelting sandstone
• Made smooth red sandstone obtainable by smelting red sandstone
• Made smooth quartz obtainable by smelting quartz block
• Changed the recipe of nether brick fence to four brick blocks and two brick items
• Changed the recipe of signs to require all of the same wood type, not any wood type

Dyes

• Separated bone meal, ink sac, cocoa beans, and lapis lazuli into their own dyes
• Unified all dye names (red, yellow, and green dyes no longer have special names)
• Added new recipes to obtain coloured stained glass and coloured carpet

Fletching Table

• Crafted with four planks and two flint
• Villagers use it as a work site

Flowers

• Added cornflower, wither rose and lily of the valley
• Be careful of the wither rose!

Foxes

• Foxes come in two variants: red and snowy
• Foxes are nocturnal
• Foxes will hunt rabbits, chickens, and fish
• Foxes are hunted by wolves and polar bears
• Foxes are nimble and quick, so sneak up on them carefully!
• Breed foxes with berries
• If you breed two foxes, their offspring will trust you forever
• Trusting foxes will defend you, but will still eat your chickens
• Foxes like to eat any and every food item they find on the ground
• You may find a fox exploring a nearby village at night

Grindstone

• Moved inventory and crafting table repairing into the grindstone, this will be its new home
• Has the ability to remove all non-curse enchantments from an item; for each enchant removed some XP is reimbursed

Hero of the Village

• Hero of the Village effect causes the cost of trades with villagers to be reduced by a percentage and scales with level of the effect.
• Hero of the Village additionally causes Villagers to occassionally toss items to you to thank you!

Horse Leather Armor

• Added a new armour type for horses
• Dye it in lots of different colours

Illager Patrols

• Spawn in the world as a pack of five random illagers
• Spawn in all variations of the Plains, Taiga, Deserts, Savanna
• Scary-spooky new banner can be found a top the patrol leaders head

Lantern

• The lantern is a new light source
• The lantern can be placed either hanging under a block or on top of a block
• It gives slightly more light than the torch

Lectern

• Right-click an empty lectern to place book
• Right-click a lectern with book to open
• Current page is persistent and shared between all readers
• Emits redstone pulses when page is changed
• Use a comparator to get book reading progress

Loom

• New and easier way of being able to apply patterns to banners, can still only apply six max patterns to a banner
• Generic patterns now only require one dye in order to create patterns, instead of one to eight (depending on the pattern)
• Special banner patterns (oxeye daisy, creeper skull, wither skeleton skull, enchanted golden apple) can now be crafted. These patterns don’t consume the pattern item when used in the loom
• Old pattern recipes in the crafting table for apply patterns to banners have been removed

New Blocks

• Added barrel
• Added smoker
• Added blast furnace
• Added cartography table
• Added fletching table
• Added grindstone
• Added lectern
• Added smithing table
• Added stonecutter
• Added village bell

New Textures

• Renovated the old textures of Minecraft and polished them for a new beginning
• If you’re feeling nostalgic you can always enable the old “Programmer Art” textures in the resource pack menu

Noteblock

• 5 new Noteblock sounds have been added: Iron Xylophone, Cow Bell, Didgeridoo, Bit, and Banjo
• 1 previously existing, but unused, sound effect has now been made available: Pling
• The new Noteblock sounds can be heard by using Iron Blocks, Soul Sand, Pumpkins, Emerald Blocks, Hay Blocks, or Glowstone

Pandas

• Pandas come in different types and personalities! 
• Pandas love bamboo! They kinda like cake as well
• Pandas can be bred, and the cubs can inherit traits through a special panda inheritance system
• Pandas spawn naturally in the new bamboo forest biome
• Pandas drop bamboo when killed.

Pillager

• A new type of illager that, well, pillages!
• Pillagers wield a new weapon, the crossbow!

Pillager Outpost

• As if finding pillager patrols out in the wild wasn’t scary enough, keep an eye out during your explorations and you may just find one of their outposts
• Can be found in any biome villages generates in
• Takes advantage of the new mystery block, the jigsaw, for generation

Raids

• If you find an illager wearing a banner on its head, be careful not to kill it!
• If you do kill it, you might find yourself facing a ‘Bad Omen’
• If you find yourself with a bad omen buff, be especially careful not to walk into a village
• If you do walk into a village with it? Best of luck!

Ravager

• A fearsome new foe who packs quite a wallop. Grab your sword and shield and prepare to get knocked around!

Rewrite of Book and Quill Editing

• Movable cursor for free text editing
• Selection support
• Copy & paste
• Keyboard and mouse handling
• Improved page filling and line wrapping
• Increased book length (100 pages)

Rewrite of Sign Editing

• Movable cursor for free text editing
• Selection support
• Copy & paste

Scaffolding

• Easily buildable
• Easily destroyable
• Easily climbable
• Easily the best use of your Bamboo

Smithing Table

• Crafted with 4 planks + 2 iron ingots
• Villagers use it as a work site

Smoker

• New furnace upgrade that allows for the smelting of foods faster than the traditional furnace
• Can be crafted via four Logs, and one furnace
• Added to world gen in some villager buildings

Stonecutter

• New functional block that provides a simpler way to craft various stones (stairs, slabs, chiseled, and more)
• Crafted with three stone + one iron ingot

Suspicious Stew

• Found in buried ship treasure chests
• Also craftable!
• Whoever eats this stew will be imbued with an unknown effect for several seconds!
• Whoever crafts the stew will know what effect they gave it

Trading Changes

• Lots of new trades have been added
• Villagers now level up in a new way
• The trading UI is updated (WIP)
• The trading prices now depend on your reputation and on demand
• The villagers will restock up to two times per day (if they can work at their work station!)
• Added visual trading; villagers will display the item they want to trade for your in-hand item

Villager Changes

• Villagers and zombie villagers now have new fancy skins
• Added mason profession
• Cured zombie villagers retain their trades
• Villagers now have a daily schedule. They will for example go to work and meet up at the village bell
• Each villager will try to find their own bed and work station
• Each profession has a specific block that works as a work station for them (e.g. lectern for the librarian and cauldron for the leatherworker)
• Village detection is now based on beds, job sites, and meeting points instead of doors
• Iron Golems will spawn when enough villagers meet

Wandering Trader

• A mysterious trader that can be randomly found around
• Provides various random trades from a variety of different biomes
• Is escorted around by a few llama with some sweet new decorations! (Careful! They can be temperamental)

Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek poked fun at fellow streamer Tyler ‘Tyler1‘ Steinkamp’s height, after encountering a tiny zombie during his Minecraft playthrough.

As one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, shroud can usually be found showcasing his world-class FPS skills in games like PUBG, Apex Legends, and even Overwatch.

Yet, sometimes, the former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive professional opts to try his hand at a less-challenging game like The Sims or, more recently, Minecraft. Of course, he can’t use his human aim-bot abilities to wow fans in those titles and instead has to find something else to entertain them with. That’s where his comedic side is on full show.

TWITCH:SHROUDShroud is usually stoic on-stream, but can pull out jokes.

During his August 3 stream, shroud had been playing some Minecraft VR with Hannah ‘Bnans’ Kennedy when the pair found themselves stuck in a cave and searching for a way out. With Bnans’ health running low, shroud tossed over a cooked porkchop in a bid to give her a boost. 

Of course, immediately after she had done so, Bnans was set upon by a fast-moving baby zombie, who began whittling away her health. “You got Tyler1 behind you, you got Tyler 1,” called out shroud once he realized what was happening. 

“I got him, I got him, come here Tyler,” the former CS:GO pro added, as he poked the tiny zombie to death with a sword. “Don’t fucking hit my girlfriend like that.” 

Yet, it wasn’t just Tyler1 who caused disruption during the couples stream. In fact, shroud himself did damage to Bnans – completely by accident – with a hilarious outcome. 

The Canadian had been gifting his girlfriend some armor and tools before he started dancing, clearly happy with his work. Yet, he left his sword equipped and he swung his arms in the air, the game decided to attack Bnans and take some health away.

Recognizing his mistake, shroud immediately ran and hit in a corner, going completely silent and looking pretty solemn – despite his viewers laughing about the whole exchange. 

If the couple decide to keep up their Minecraft adventures moving forward, shroud might just need to be aware of friendly fire. 

Who knows, he might even run into a spider that he can mock for being a Dr Disrespect look-a-like.

How do I upgrade champions in Teamfight Tactics? To win a match of League’s version of Auto Chess, you need to use all your resources and gold wisely to assemble the most effective lineup. But, while you might initially assume that ensuring you have a variety of champions in your team is the way to win, having multiple copies of the same character is a crucial way of sticking it to your seven real-world rivals.

Now that the Teamfight Tactics release date is here, you can finally get into Riot’s take on the autobattle genre without needing Honour Level Three to access the closed beta. Now that it’s out, you have the chance to see what all the fuss is about, and it’s heavily inspired by the original Dota Auto Chess mod from Drodo. So, if you’re in any way acquainted with that, you’ll know that upgrading champions in Teamfight Tactics is very important in securing victory.

If you know how to upgrade Dota Underlords heroes in Valve’s rival and official spin on the autobattler, you’ll probably know the basics of this system already. Combining duplicate heroes together upgrades them into a special soldier with a significantly buffed health pool and DPS (damage per second) capabilities. Since this is a very important part of turning the tables on your enemies and crafting TFT tactics, here’s how to upgrade champions in Teamfight Tactics.BEST PC GAMING HARDWARE DEALS TODAYLogitech G502 HERO High Performance Gaming Mouse

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HOW TO UPGRADE TEAMFIGHT TACTICS CHAMPIONS

Autobattlers feature mechanics that can be tough for newcomers to get their head around, but this one certainly isn’t. At the beginning, each champion you choose has a 1-star rating. Then, once you have three of the same champion on the field of battle at once, they’ll automatically be upgraded to a 2-star character. You don’t need to do anything and the change is immediate.

However, your health-boostin’, damage-buffin’ journey does not end there. If you’ve managed to combine your way to a third 2-star hero, they will merge to form a fearsome 3-star one. This is the highest rank a champion can get to, so get ready to unleash them when they get to that point.

If you’re holding out to upgrade one Teamfight Tactics champion in particular, bear in mind that the shop with which you purchase them is affected by what your opponents are doing. In other words, if everyone else is working on one unit, it’s less likely they’ll appear in your shop. In that case, you might want to change tack and boost someone else, so you’re not wasting your time and money on undesirable shop re-rolls. If you have spare units lying around, make them useful and sell them for gold for further re-rolls and team strengthening.

In the end, it’s all about making sure you’re specialising – as that’s how to upgrade Teamfight Tactics champions, naturally – without neglecting the chance to have as many units as possible of tactically-sound class and origin combinations to form good TFT comps. Knowing your Teamfight Tactics recipes is important, but taking time to consider when and how to upgrade your champions can turn the tide of a match, so keep an eye on the opposition and do what they’re not doing to create a powerful squad to exploit their weaknesses.

Roblox recently announced the milestone of 100 million active monthly players, which puts it 9 million ahead of Minecraft. To celebrate, its developer is giving away a free gold bar shoulder accessory.

At 91 million (as of March), Microsoft’s blocky adventure is hardly trailing behind, but for many, it doesn’t have the consistent draw it once had. Though a new wave of YouTubers and Twitch streamers has led to more attention, vanilla Minecraft’s lack of frequent, significant updates means there’s less to be excited about.

Despite this, it still appears to hold the public record for the best-selling video game of all time. Roblox Corporation has yet to reveal how many total copies its title has sold, while Mojang’s had sold 176 million as of March 2019.

“We started Roblox over a decade ago with a vision to bring people from all over the world together through play,” said founder and CEO David Baszucki in a press release. “Roblox began with just 100 players and a handful of creators who inspired one another, unlocking this groundswell of creativity, collaboration, and imagination that continues to grow.”BEST PC GAMING HARDWARE DEALS TODAYMSI Gaming GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 192-bit HDMI/DP 6GB GDRR6 HDCP Support DirectX 12 Dual Fan VR Ready OC Graphics Card (GTX 1660 TI Ventus XS 6G OC)

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As well as its active players, Roblox Corporation shared stats on character creation and diversity. It says 50% of its players update its avatar every month, and half of its players do so with their friends. Meanwhile, 40% of its userbase is female and it has fans in over 200 countries.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the fact Minecraft’s stats are outdated. While Microsoft would have made a fuss if it hit 100 million, its recent attention means it probably isn’t too far off. It’ll be interesting to see how things compare at the next stat reveal.

Roblox has overtaken Minecraft with an incredible 100 million monthly active users.

Back in March, Microsoft said Minecraft had 91 million monthly players.

Roblox is one of the biggest video games in the world, although it goes relatively undiscussed in the games media. The free-to-play multiplayer game launched in 2006 and has steadily gained in popularity with a younger audience on PC, Xbox One and mobile. Roblox is a cross between sandbox and MMO, and there are plenty of similarities with Minecraft. Players can design their own worlds and games, which others can access via the official website. There are more than 50m user-created experiences on Roblox, and 40 per cent of players are female.

(For more on Roblox, check out our Emma’s wonderful feature, I spectated prime minister’s questions – in Roblox, in which she reports on her adventures in the game’s political role-playing community.)

“We started Roblox over a decade ago with a vision to bring people from all over the world together through play,” said founder and CEO David Baszucki. “Roblox began with just 100 players and a handful of creators who inspired one another, unlocking this groundswell of creativity, collaboration, and imagination that continues to grow.”

While Roblox is currently more popular than Minecraft based on latest official figures, Microsoft won’t be too bothered as the latter is enjoying something of a surge in popularity, with a number of high-profile YouTubers and streamers returning to the game. And Microsoft has Minecraft Earth, the Pokemon Go-style spin-off, nearly ready to launch.

Educating developers about cloud communications isn’t an easy task, and that’s why Twilio turned to a video game to do the job. TwilioQuest 3 is launching today with a mission of training developers to create cloud communications solutions.

It may sound like “gamification” rearing its ugly head again. But Kevin Whinnery, lead developer of the game, said that description isn’t a good one because it doesn’t reflect the effort that has gone into creating the game-themed tutorial application with animations that are done in classic 16-bit arcade style. Developers go on quests to complete programming challenges in desktop training sessions that replace live training.

Whinnery has been at Twilio for 6.5 years. He spent a lot of that time as a developer evangelist, teaching developers how to use JavaScript so they could be more successful. But the game turned out to be a better way to engage people, and the new version is a ground-up rewrite of the game. Whinnery and his team spent about six months on the latest version, which has about 10 hours of content.

“Over the years we’ve added more capabilities for developers to use that they wouldn’t have been able to build themselves,” Whinnery said. “It’s similar to Amazon Web Services where you pay for usage. Our success is predicated on developers being successful with our API. If developers can’t figure out how the API works, or if it doesn’t work well for them. They won’t use it. And Twilio doesn’t get paid.”

“We can justify a large investment in the game over many years, because essentially, when developer communities are healthy and growing, Twilio tends to do well,” Whinnery said.

Above: Twilio Quest 3 debuts on August 5.Image Credit: Twilio

Twilio’s long-term goal is to teach a million developers how to code. What started as a tutorial for teaching coding has now turned into a full game. The company has invested in the game because it found that people from all different backgrounds (not just professional programmers but self-taught developers from across the globe) engage more when learning to code is fun.

Instead of focusing on Twilio-specific skills only via a game-themed tutorial web site, Twilio Quest 3 is now a fully-fledged desktop video game for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s a top-down adventure set in a 2D environment (a nod to the developers’ love of old school games like Legend of Zelda and Pokémon). And it teaches technical skills beyond just what developers need to implement Twilio.

Twilio is a big public company that focuses on cloud communications, and it has worked with millions of Twilio developers who use the company’s applications programming interface (API). Those APIs enable developers to send and receive text messages, make and receive phone calls, and add two-factor authentication to their applications. Over time, Twilio API-related content will represent the minority of training missions in TwilioQuest.

“The intended audience for this is much wider, as we want to increase the number of developers rather than teach only existing developers,” Whinnery said.

The biggest technical and user experience change to TwilioQuest will be moving from a browser-based web application to a downloadable desktop application. The company did this in the third version to tightly integrate with the player’s development environment. Now it can create auto-validated code challenges that teach a huge variety of concepts from PowerShell commands to Elixir macros. By using developer tools installed on a player’s computer, Twilio can rapidly create lessons that would be difficult or impossible to implement in a cloud-based environment.

Why TwilioQuest became a full-fledged game

Above: TwilioQuest 3 evokes the 16-bit eraImage Credit: Twilio

TwilioQuest started as a gamified badge tutorial system. Now it provides a path for learning complex topics that users can learn at their own pace. Based on what the feedback so far, the narrative structure, feedback loop, and opportunity for exploration offered by video games (specifically those in the RPG genre) will help more people, from all backgrounds learn to code.

TwilioQuest 3 is for anyone interested in leveling up their programming skills and getting familiar with Twilio. The goal is to build out the game so that anyone, regardless of their programming background (or lack thereof), can learn to code by playing the game. Twilio will roll out new chapters that make TQ3 more accessible to all skill levels.

Twilio partnered with Misty Robotics to build Cedric, the robot guide. Cedric is a non-player guide, inspired by Misty, a personal robot platform for developers. Misty provides developers access to the potential of personal robots for business and personal use without having to have knowledge in robotics.

Twilio has been working with the Misty robot platform, building skills for her to enable a “real life” Cedric experience for attendees at Twilio’s annual Signal conference, which takes place this week in San Francisco and draws thousands of developers. Misty Robotics was founded by Ian Bernstein, a cofounder of Sphero, which was an early user of the Twilio SMS API. Sphero used Twilio’s API to control and navigate Sphero balls.

The game’s music adds another element of old school game nostalgia. The team at Twilio worked with a group of hand-picked, independent chiptune artists to build an original soundtrack. Artists include Robby Vocke, Danimal Cannon, Corset Lore, Cheap Dinosaurs, Joey Michalina and more.

Why gamification sucks

Above: TwilioQuest 3 is out to beat inauthentic gamification.Image Credit: Twilio

“I kind of hate the word gamification because it implies that you’re like trying to trick people, like, it’s not really a game,” Whinnery said. “You’re trying to make it look at feel like a game. What I aspire to you with TwilioQuest 3 is to actually be a game. A major inspiration for me is when I think back on playing Oregon Trail back in grade school. That never felt like I was being tricked. That was just fun, I happened to be learning at the same time. Having a good time playing this game was already intrinsically satisfying. So I think over time, we will introduce some gameplay elements that work in non-educational games. Like we’re working on a simple RPG combat system.”

In that version, you’ll run into minions of legacy systems.

“I think like the difference between gamification, and a game is that a game is intended is designed to first and foremost to be fun, and to provide some kind of meaningful value. The term ‘gamification’ has fallen out of fashion because it was associated with inauthentic marketing tactics or inauthentic growth hacking tactics.

What’s next for TwilioQuest 3

Above: Twilio Quest 3Image Credit: Twilio

The company will add new chapters in perpetuity to build out the adventure and continue making it a tool to help anyone learn to code. Over the next year, players will be able to team up with non-player character (NPC) party members to take on larger missions. Eventually, the players will be able to do even more fun activities like crafting items and facing the minions of the Legacy Systems in RPG combat. There will be more non-Twilio content coming soon.

This content beats traditional developer education and live training, which was one-size-fits-all. By contrast, the game can be customized to the user’s own state of knowledge. Players can learn at their own pace.

“The role-playing game metaphor seemed to make a lot of sense,” Whinnery said. “The version out today is an evolution of the original tool, which I used primarily for live training. But what I didn’t really anticipate was how powerful is going to be for to just make technical education, a little bit more fun. And I didn’t know how powerful it would be to make education more accessible.”

“We wanted to double down on the gameplay mechanics that had made Twilio classes successful before. So that is what we have, we have a PC game for Mac, Windows, and Linux, that should feel very much like a PC RPG sort of inspired by Zelda and Pokemon and other classics of the 16-bit era,” Whinnery said.

So far, the results are telling. TwilioQuest users spend about 25 minutes on the website, or much more than for other educational materials.

“Thus far, we’ve been mostly teaching people how to use the Twilio API. And this is kind of our first foray into teaching non-Twilio topics. But what we found is that developers who, onboard to our platform through TwilioQuest are 25% faster to get to a milestone we call product active, which is where a user of the Twilio API has successfully used a product in a meaningful way.”

THQ Nordic announced today that Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition is coming to Nintendo Switch on September 26, as Gematsu reported.

Darksiders II first came out back in 2012 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC. This Deathinitive Edition — which came out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in 2015 — includes all of the post-release downloadable content created for the action role-playing game.

The original Darksiders already made its way to Switch in April. Darksiders III, which came out in November 2018, has yet to find its way to Nintendo’s home console/portable hybrid. Although we do not have specific sales numbers for the game, THQ Nordic has said that the title was profitable.

THQ Nordic is also working on a new entry in the series, Darksiders Genesis. It will be a top-down cooperative action RPG that takes inspiration from games like Diablo. It is coming out at an unspecified date later this year for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Stadia, and PC.

On July 31, the Game Boy celebrated the 30th anniversary of its U.S. launch. Sadly, Nintendo didn’t do much to mark the occasion. That’s a shame, because I’m feeling a ton of nostalgia toward the classic portable machine.

Nintendo is usually smart about turning people’s fondness for its older consoles into money. The NES Classic Edition and SNES Classic Edition were giant hits. But Nintendo hasn’t made a new micro-console since 2017.

It’s strange to see Nintendo abandon this market after making it so successful. Sega, Konami, and others are getting ready to launch their own retro machines. Nintendo, meanwhile, seems to have taken a break.

That’s nuts. Nintendo still has so many great systems that deserve their own classic revival. I already talked about how great a Nintendo 64 Classic would be, but a Game Boy Classic could be even more interesting.

I love my Switch, but it is only so portable. Yes, I can take it with me anywhere, but I have to keep it in a case. Even the upcoming Switch Lite is still too big to put inside your pocket. That’s what I miss about the Game Boy and DS machines. I could play those anywhere. If I had a a few minutes to kill while I waited in a line, I could take my Game Boy out of my pocket.

Above: The Switch Lite is smaller, but it’s not pocket-friendly.Image Credit: Nintendo

A Game Boy Classic could bring that kind of experience. Nintendo could make a new version of the system that is even smaller and more portable, and it could come with a built-in library. Not having to worry about swapping out cartridges would make it an even more convenient device.

The Game Boy had so many great games. You had classic 2D sidescrollers like the Super Mario Land series, the fantastic puzzle-platfromer Donkey Kong, and the iconic Tetris. Also, I know that it’s getting a remake for the Switch, but I’d still love to the original version of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.

Above: A classic.Image Credit: Nintendo

Nintendo would have an easy time coming up with a library of 30 games for a Game Boy Classic. Heck, it could even do more. Aside from other Nintendo classics like Kirby’s Dream Land and Pokémon Red and Blue, you have third-party entries from classic series like Castlevania and Mega Man.

Those are just some of the great games for the original Game Boy. If Nintendo wanted the device to include Game Boy Color titles, the potential library gets even more amazing. You have more awesome Zelda games with Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, a forgotten but surprisingly great portable take on Metal Gear Solid, and the original, charming genie-starring sidescroller Shantae.

A Game Boy Classic makes all the sense in the world. I just wish Nintendo would hurry up and make one.

Take-Two Interactive Software reported revenues today that beat analyst expectations for the first-fiscal quarter ended June 30. This means that revenues were surprisingly strong at a time when the video game publisher had no major releases.

This also means that ongoing stalwarts such as Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V continue to prop up sales, even as the hot release of the fall, Red Dead Redemption 2, isn’t doing as well as might be expected. The company’s stock price fell 5% today after U.S. President Donald Trump called out video games for contributing to a culture that glorifies violence. But the stock has risen to $123.05 a share, up 6.7%, in after-hours trading.

Analyst had expected non-GAAP earnings per share of 4 cents on revenue of $356.9 million. But Take-Two reported GAAP net income of 41 cents a share on revenues of $540.5 million, up 39% from $388 million a year ago. On a non-GAAP basis, the company reported net income of about 27 cents a share on revenue of $422 million, way above guidance, said Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, in an email.

The company credited revenues from NBA 2K19, Grand Theft Auto Online, and Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2, Red Dead Online, the Borderlands franchise, Social Point’s mobile offerings, and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. Take-Two increased its full-year revenue estimates as a result of the better performance in the first fiscal quarter.

Above: NBA 2K19 is one of Take-Two’s strongest performers.Image Credit: 2K Games

Red Dead Redemption 2, the Western epic from Take-Two’s Rockstar Games label that was more than seven years in the making, has been a big part of revenues since the title debuted on October 26, and it sold 23 million copies in the holiday quarter. But it has stalled since then, as the company said today it has sold-in 25 million copies to date.

Red Dead Online and Grand Theft Auto Online are also contributing to revenues, and Take-Two said that recurrent consumer spending was up 31% and accounted for 58% of GAAP net revenue, thanks to Grand Theft Auto Online and NBA 2K performance.

But neither Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online seem destined to repeat the unprecedented success of Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online. GTA V has now sold 110 million units to date. NBA 2K19 sold more than 12 million units. Previous Borderlands series games also helped boost the quarter, with the launch of the Borderlands: The Handsome Collection.

“Fiscal 2020 is off to a terrific start with first-quarter operating results that beat our expectations,” said Strauss Zelnick, CEO of New York-based Take-Two, in a statement. “We delivered significant net bookings and cash flow growth driven by the performance of Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V, NBA 2K19, the Borderlands franchise, and Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online.

“As a result of our better-than-expected first-quarter operating results and increased forecast for the balance of the year, we are raising our outlook for fiscal 2020, which is anticipated to be another great year for our organization. We aim to build on this strong start by delivering a robust array of titles throughout the year, including Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, NBA 2K20, Borderlands 3, WWE 2K20, and The Outer Worlds, as well as new and innovative ways for consumers to remain engaged with their favorite entertainment experiences.”

And Zelnick said, “Looking ahead, Take-Two has the strongest development pipeline in its history, including sequels from our biggest franchises as well as exciting new IP. We are exceedingly well-positioned to capitalize on the positive trends in our industry, and to generate significant growth and margin expansion over the long-term.”

Above: Fix the economy, or I shoot!Image Credit: Rockstar

Even with the weak summer quarter result, Take-Two is looking forward to the September 13 release of Borderlands 3, the new title from Gearbox Software.

Digital revenue was up 36% to $427.8 million, and it now accounts for 79% of total GAAP net revenue. On August 27, Take-Two will release Patrice Desilets’ Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey via Take-Two’s Private Division label for indie games.

For the full year, GAAP net revenue is expected to hit $2.83 billion to $2.93 billion, with net income ranging from $425 million to $454 million.

There’s a lot of things to do in Minecraft, but few know that you can actually make fireworks. The recipes can’t be found in the recipe book even when the player has all the required items, which can be a bit frustrating for the casual player, because it requires going into the Wikipedia page of the game and looking for the information.

Have no worry however, because we’ve got you fully covered with all the tips and tricks you need to know about making fireworks and all of their quirky uses. Let’s get right into it.

10For Decoration

The first use for fireworks is obviously for pure decorative purposes. Maybe you’d like to have a celebration of sorts or just light up the night skies with beautiful colors.

Either way, if you craft fireworks and use them at night time against the darkened sky, you’ll be able to see various colors and patterns depending of the kind you’ve crafted. The fireworks are visible during the day as well, but it will be more difficult to spot them against a brighter sky.

9Elytra Fuel

After defeating the Ender Dragon, you’re granted access to the End, an alternate dimension where Endermen live among Chaurus Fruit trees and End Cities. If you happen to come across a particularly large one with an End ship, you’ll discover the Elytra, which essentially let’s the player glide and fly around.

In order to maintain your flight, fireworks without any charge are used to propel you into the skies. Although flying machines can be made as well, having a stack of fireworks is a lot more convenient in general.

8Ammunition For Crossbow

If you come across an Illager settlement, chances are you’ll probably pick up a crossbow off of one of these evil versions of Minecraft villagers. The crossbow can be loaded up with fireworks as ammunition, and the higher the charge is the longer the range will be.

As soon as the firework comes into contact with a target, it will detonate in an explosion, making it a great mini cannon for anyone looking to deal with some serious damage on mobs at night time while defending their homestead.

7Ingredients Needed

Fireworks are not the cheapest of items to make. The two ingredients needed are paper and gunpowder. Paper can be made from three pieces of sugar cane, which is widely available in the wild.

Gunpowder, on the other hand, is found in chests in Desert Temples and Buried Treasure locations, as well as in dungeons and mine shafts. If you manage to kill a Creeper before it explodes, it will also drop a bit of gunpowder depending on how good your sword is.ADVERTISING

6Crafting Recipe

Once you have the needed ingredients, the recipe is fairly straightforward. You’ll need one piece of paper anywhere on the crafting table grid and 1-3 pieces of gunpowder. The more gunpowder you use, the higher the charge of your firework will be and the longer their range or flight duration will be.

If you’re making the fireworks for Elytra, it’s recommended to always use three pieces of gunpowder to take advantage of the longest possible flight duration. If you’re planning on using the fireworks for decoration only, the recipe also calls for a Firework Star, the most basic one being a combination of glowstone, brown dye and gunpowder.

5Using Fireworks

Once you have your fireworks prepared, you can either use your crossbow to shoot them or place them on the ground to send them up in the skies. When using with an Elytra, it can be a bit more difficult to activate the flight.

It’s recommended to get to a high spot such as a mountain or even the roof of your Minecraft house and then jump down. While falling, engage your Elytra’s glide and then look upwards into the sky before shooting a rocket. This should propel you away and off the ground.ADVERTISING

4Creeper-Shaped

For this decorative firework, you’ll need a Firework Star made of one magenta dye, any mob head and one gunpowder. You can use any other type of dye as well. The mob heads can be obtained if a mob is killed by the explosion of a charged Creeper.

Alternatively, the easiest mob head to find is the Dragon Head found on End ships. Then combine the star with one piece of paper and as 1-3 charges of gunpowder to determine the length of the effect. Once you shoot this firework into the skies you should be able to see a magenta colored Creeper face.

3Burst

In order to get an orange burst kind of effect, you’ll need one piece of dye, one gunpowder and one feather. Feathers are dropped by chickens when they’re killed.

If you want to add a fade effect to this firework, combine the Firework Star with any dye of your liking before then combining it with one paper and as many gunpowder charges as you need. The result is a simple burst like firework with orange fading into red.A

2Twinkle Burst

The green twinkle burst effects can be crafted by combining any available dye, one feather, one piece of glowstone and one gunpowder.

If you want to add a fade to another color, the process is still the same: combine the Firework Star with yellow dye and then combine it once again with a piece of paper and as many charges of gunpowder as you need. You should now have a beautiful green twinkle burst fading into a yellow shade.

1Star-Shaped Twinkle With Trail

The final type of firework is a star-shaped blue twinkle with a trail, and is undoubtedly the most expensive one. In order to craft this Firework Star you’ll need any dye of your choice, one gold nugget, one diamond and one piece of gunpowder.

If you to add a fade to a color, combine the Firework Star with any dye before combining it with one paper and as many pieces of gunpowder as you need. The crafting price of this item might be high, but it definitely creates the most beautiful firework.

Who knew Minecraft offered such a rich training ground for AI and machine learning algorithms? Earlier this month, Facebook researchers posited that the hit game’s constraints make it well-suited to natural language understanding experiments. And in a newly published paper, a team at Carnegie Mellon describe a 130GB-734GB corpus intended to inform AI development — MineRL — that contains over 60 million annotated state-action pairs (recorded over 500 hours) across a variety of related Minecraft tasks, alongside a novel data collection scheme that allows for the addition of tasks and the gathering of complete state information suitable for “a variety of methods.”

“As demonstrated in the computer vision and natural language processing communities, large-scale datasets have the capacity to facilitate research by serving as an experimental and benchmarking platform for new methods,” wrote the coauthors. “However, existing datasets compatible with reinforcement learning simulators do not have sufficient scale, structure, and quality to enable the further development and evaluation of methods focused on using human examples. Therefore, we introduce a comprehensive, large-scale, simulator paired dataset of human demonstrations.”Recommended videosPowered by AnyClipHope for quadriplegia patients in pilot with video gamersPauseUnmuteCurrent Time 0:03/Duration 0:57Loaded: 20.14% FullscreenUp Next

For those unfamiliar, Minecraft is a voxel-based building and crafting game with procedurally created worlds containing block-based trees, mountains, fields, animals, non-player characters (NPCs), and so on. Blocks are placed on a 3D voxel grid, and each voxel in the grid contains one material. Players can move, place, or remove blocks of different types, and attack or fend off attacks from NPCs or other players.

As for MineRL, it includes six tasks with a variety of research challenges including multi-agent interactions, long-term planning, vision, control, and navigation, as well as explicit and implicit subtask hierarchies. In the navigation task, users have to move to a random goal location over terrain with variable material types and geometries, while in the tree chopping objective, they’re tasked with obtaining wood to produce other items. In another task, players are instructed to produce objects like pickaxes, diamonds, cooked meat, and beds, and in a survival task, they must devise their own goals and secure items to complete those goals.

Each trajectory in the corpus consists of a video frame from the player’s point-of-view and a set of features from the game-state, namely player inventory, item collection events, distances to objectives, and player attributes (health, level, achievements). That’s supplemented with metadata like timestamped markers for when certain objectives are met, and by action data consisting of all of the keyboard presses, changes in view pitch and yaw caused by mouse movement, click and interaction events, and chat messages sent.

To collect the trajectory data, the researchers created an end-to-end platform comprising a public game server and a custom Minecraft client plugin that records all packet-level communication, allowing the demonstrations to be re-simulated and re-rendered with modifications to the game state. Collected telemetry data was fed into a data processing pipeline, and the task demonstrations were annotated automatically.

The researchers expect MineRL will support large-scale AI generalization studies by enabling the re-rendering of data with different constraints, like altered lighting, camera positions, and other video rendering conditions and the injection of artificial noise in observations, rewards, and actions.  “We expect it to be increasingly useful for a range of methods including inverse reinforcement learning, hierarchical learning, and life-long learning,” they wrote. “We hope MineRL will … [bolster] many branches of AI toward the common goal of developing methods capable of solving a wider range of real-world environments.”

Microsoft has kicked off its Minecraft Earth beta, serving a tease of its upcoming mobile spin-off of the hit adventure blockbuster. Fusing mapping and location data with augmented reality (AR) technologies, the game brings the voxel world to life, attempting to mirror the success of Pokemon GO.

While Minecraft Earth remains locked down to an invite-only beta, lead Mojang figures recently hosted a Q&A session via the game’s official Discord channel. Fielding community questions, we received an insight into the current status of Minecraft Earth and future ambitions the title.

The Minecraft Earth beta and tackling Android

Minecraft Earth’s initial beta is limited to a select pool of registered beta participants, randomly selected among those in five eligible cities, and using iOS-based devices. While Microsoft has sights set on worldwide availability, the pre-release client only spans Seattle, London, Tokyo, Stockholm, and Mexico City for July 2019. Committed to a broader rollout in the weeks ahead, budding players are understandably clamoring for the chance to play.

“At this time we don’t have plans to expand the beta beyond the current 5 cities,” said Minecraft Earth Community Manager when questioned on expansion plans. “We’re being thoughtful about our release and want to make sure that we roll the game out in a very thoughtful way.” Mojang instead aims to expand more players in existing regions throughout the beta, with a wider footprint after testing concludes.

The team also reaffirmed plans to hit Android “later this summer,” on track for a future stage in testing. “I know it’s the ‘typical saying’ that you hear, but really, we want to get the Android folks into the beta as well.” Minecraft Earth Software Engineer, under the moniker “Murtag,” also confirmed plans for iOS and Android cross-play and cross-saves, allowing players to shift progress between multiple devices.

Mojang remains uncommitted to a release date for the final version of Minecraft Earth, instead advising players to “stay tuned” throughout ongoing tests.

What the future holds for Minecraft Earth

Mojang also outlined plans to diversify the Minecraft Earth world, including existing locales from the vanilla package. Design Director Craig Leigh touched on “eventually” implementing the hellish Nether underworld, likely bringing new blocks and mobs too. “Yes you can build an Obsidian portal, but currently you can’t light it.”

Leigh also confirmed plans for biomes in Minecraft Earth, bringing further variation to the overhead map. “Per our announcement trailers, we want to create different Biomes that will provide different resources,” said a fellow staffer. While in the closed beta, exploration is limited to basis grasslands packed with flora and chests, dynamic biomes and rewards could soon take influence from real-world surroundings.

However, Mojang was fast to rule out modding support, a prior lifeline that propelled vanilla Minecraft one decade ago. Although built on Microsoft’s reworked “Bedrock” engine and sharing underlying DNA, Minecraft Earth adopts a more closed, tailored experience.

Moderation garnered noteworthy attention too, including the steps Mojang is taking to combat toxicity. Expanding on the existing foundation of resource collection and construction, community-sharing hooks into location features to drop digital creations in public spaces.

Questions touched on the potential of overcrowding the augmented reality world with digital structures and how Mojang looks to ensure enough real estate. “[W]e are working on a new exciting system to deal with this,” state Leight. “Don’t worry, if you want to show you build off to the world you will be able to. More news soon.”

And the topic of user-generated content and keeping kids safe from those who seek to exploit gameplay, the team has committed to moderating publicly shared content. Mojang also pledges to crack down for cheaters across Minecraft Earth, including GPS spoofing to fake their physical locations.

For those looking for a chance to pick up Minecraft Earth ahead of launch, registration for the closed beta remains live on the official site. In the meantime, don’t miss on our early impressions from E3 2019, which dives into the full scope of Microsoft’s mobile block-building ambitions.

Minecraft may be having a moment again thanks to newfound interest from popular YouTubers and an uptick in nostalgia-induced playing, but even the world-building crafting game can’t compete with Roblox.

Roblox, a popular digital playground similar to communities like Habbo Hotel and games like Second Life, has hit a new milestone — 100 million monthly active users. The company celebrated by released an exclusive, limited-edition accessory for players, which can be redeemed for free.

“Roblox began with just 100 players and a handful of creators who inspired one another, unlocking this groundswell of creativity, collaboration, and imagination that continues to grow,” CEO David Baszucki said in a press release today.

The company has been slowly building its user base since the game first launched in 2005, four years before one of its biggest competitors, Minecraft. Roblox has become increasingly popular in recent years, though. The game has a big following on YouTube, and was even parodied in a Kanye West music video, where he and Lil Pump dressed up as Roblox avatars.

To compare, Minecraft has 91 million monthly active players, according to Microsoft. The game has seen a recent uptick in interest thanks to more YouTube creators, like Jacksepticeye and PewDiePie devoting lengthy videos to gameplay sessions. New tools, like ray tracing, also caught the interest of players who had walked away from the game. Other factors, including a new weekly series called Minecraft Monday from YouTube creator Daniel “Keemstar” Keem, have helped to bring Minecraft back to the forefront of gaming conversation.

“Nine years later those children are older teens or adults and nostalgia has set in,” Keem toldPolygon. “Over the last two years, Minecraft has been added to meme culture, making it also cool again.”

The new interest in Minecraft could mean that the Microsoft-owned game will surpass Roblox. It’s also possible augmented reality game (and Pokémon Go competitor) Minecraft Earth could be the thing to push Minecraft past Roblox when it launches later this year. Until then, Roblox is on top.

Avengers: Endgame scribes and Marvel Cinematic Universe veterans Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus expect Marvel Studios’ upcoming Phase 4 to be more eclectic than past phases and head in “a lot more directions.”

“I know nothing. I literally know nothing,” McFeely told the Los Angeles Times at San Diego Comic-Con. “I read things in Los Angeles Times and all these other sites, and I go, ‘Well, I don’t think Marvel announced that.’ There’s all these little rumory things, but I don’t know them.”

“All I know is Phase 4 can go in a lot more directions than any of the preceding three phases,” added Markus.

“Because of, one, just because of the doors that three successful phases have opened. Now they have cosmic Marvel available, they have Doctor Strange cosmic Marvel available. There are so many directions you can go in now.”

Phase 4 of the interconnected MCU will also be the first to include productions debuted exclusively on coming streaming service Disney+, future home to Marvel Studios-produced series WandaVision, Loki, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye and What If…?

“Plus if you throw in the Disney+ streaming thing… I think it will be a phase that is shaped differently than the preceding ones. Something that can spread out in more directions at once,” Markus said.

“It’s almost inevitable, when you keep making these things and they’re all connected, it cannot be on one straight line or you’re gonna get incredibly repetitive after a while. So it has to spread.”

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced Marvel’s Phase 4 slate at Comic-Con, confirming Black Widow, The Eternals, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder. Also announced was the Mahershala Ali-starring Blade, planned for Phase 5.

Alluded to, but not yet announced, were the coming additions of recently reclaimed IPs Fantastic Four and X-Men — blockbuster franchises in the making under Feige.

“It’ll be fascinating to see what Kevin Feige does with the properties he’s now getting from the Fox merger with X-Men and Fantastic Four,” Markus told the LA Times in May.

“And to see what the MCU version of those things is, because I very much doubt it will be something that resembles what you’ve seen before. So that will be very exciting.”0COMMENTS

Avengers: Endgame is now available to own on Digital HD and releases to 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray August 13.