by Stone Marshall | Mar 2, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Halo‘s Master Chief is (finally?) heading to a Nintendo system. No, the Switch is not getting a port of a Halo game. Instead, the Xbox’s beloved mascot is coming to everyone’s favorite handheld/console hybrid by way of Minecraft. The “Halo mashup pack” will soon be available on Switch and every other edition of Minecraft (minus the PlayStation version, of course).
Master Chief isn’t the only Xbox character making his way to Switch. Expect to see pixelated versions of characters from Fable, Gears of War, and Banjo Kazooie. The inclusion of Banjo characters is interesting given how the franchise originally started on the Nintendo 64. The Switch is Nintendo’s main console these days, but if you own Minecraft on Wii U, you’ll also have access to these characters when you download the new skin pack. Master Chief is simply too big for one single Nintendo console to hold.
As EuroGamer points out, the Halo mashup pack has been available on Xbox for a number of years now. Microsoft’s systems (in this case the Xbox 360 and Xbox One) used to have the Minecraft: Xbox Edition, but this version was discontinued sometime ago. It was replaced by the current edition of Minecraft, which is available across many platforms. Interestingly enough, the now-defunct Minecraft: Xbox Edition recently got a new skin pack based on the Disney film, Moana. Because… why not?
Master Chief’s Nintendo sojourn can be seen as the only way to play a “new” Halo game. Microsoft hasn’t said anything regarding when a new entry in their most well-known series will release. Given the lukewarm reception to Halo 5, it’s possible 343 Industries (the current developers of Halo) are taking extra time to ensure the next game is everything fans of the franchise want. Perhaps we’ll get some type of Halo announcement during this year’s E3. For now, Halo fans will simply have to make do with this low-res version of Master Chief to tide them over.
Master Chief Lands on Nintendo Switch via Minecraft
by Stone Marshall | Mar 2, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Late last year we posted about a somewhat surprising bundle that popped up on the Apple Store which featured a SteelSeries Nimbus MFi Controller and Minecraft: Apple TV Edition. Well, if that piqued your interest but you're more into playing on mobile than you are Apple TV, you'll be happy to learn that Gamevice now has a very similar bundle featuring their expandable controller and Minecraft for $89.95.
If you're new to the Gamevice, we reviewed it when it was the hip new thing all the way back in 2015. (We also reviewed an even earlier unit for the iPad mini.) Basically, it's an expandable controller that clips your iOS device in the middle, ending up with an arrangement that's sort of like the Switch. (Amusingly enough, they're also suing Nintendo.)
If you're curious what other games (besides Minecraft) you can play with MFi controllers, the Gamevice Live [Free] app does a great job at aggregating all of them. Chances are you already own more than a few games that could benefit from Gamevice or any other MFi controller.
Gamevice Just Launched a $89.95 ‘Minecraft' Bundle
by Stone Marshall | Mar 1, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Minecraft will receive an influx of new underwater content this week, and more slated to arrive in the near future, as we continue down the road to Update 1.13 (or the Update Aquatic if you’re a Steve Zissou fan). Additions include seagrass, kelp blocks and an equippable trident. But Minecraft’s new turtles will probably absorb the most attention from the community.
It’s always exciting when Mojang adds new content to Minecraft. The sandbox game is very mod-friendly and the community has added plenty to it over the years. Still, millions of gamers prefer “vanilla” Minecraft. Now, they finally have more reason to spend time exploring large bodies of water than the ocean monuments added in 2014. Longtime Minecraft developer Nathan “Dinnerbone” Adams says more aquatic content is on the way in upcoming snapshots. Mojang still hasn’t determined the final slate.
Snapshot 18w07a also introduces the Phantom, formerly known as the Monster of the Night Skies. The flying, manta-like creature will spawn at high altitudes and prey on players who go “many days” without sleeping. Phantoms currently drop leather, which suggests they aren’t meant to be especially tough to fight. However, Mojang says that reward could change in the future, presumably in response to feedback from the Minecraft community.
Here are the complete patch notes for Minecraft snapshot 18w07a:
Sea grass
- Generates in all oceans, but this is temporary
- Also exists as tall sea grass
Kelp blocks
- Kelp doesn't generate in deep oceans, but this is temporary
- Kelp can be smelted to get dry kelp
- Edible for half a hunger bar – can be consumed much faster than regular food
- Fuel source
- Craftable into dried kelp blocks
- Grows upwards into multiple blocks tall plant
Stripped logs
- Strip logs by using an axe on them
- Stripped logs act like regular logs
Squids now shoot ink particles when attacked
Added stairs and slabs for all 3 kinds of prismarine
Maybe: Underwater stone brick structures
Turtles
- Only spawn on warm beaches, but this is temporary
- They lay eggs on their home beach throughout various biomes for baby turtles to hatch from
- Baby turtles will scamper down to the water
- Can be picked up using silk touch
- Cracking texture in 3 stages
- Up to 4 eggs per turtle egg block
- Hatch during the night
- Can be trampled, will be trampled intentionally by zombies
- Zombies will also attack baby turtles
- Turtle shells wearable as helmets
- Constantly give 10 seconds of water breathing effect (while not underwater)
- Crafted from turtle shell pieces
- “Turtles are known for their strength, not their speed”
- Drop sea grass
Maybe: Cavern-like structures with wooden walkways
Maybe: Features that affect combat
- Maybe: Shields disable when used frequently
Swimming animation
Maybe: Warm, cold and frozen ocean biomes
- Different kind of terrain
- Ice bergs
Bubble columns
- Underwater magma blocks will produce bubbles
- Items and other entities fall down into bubbles
- Items float on the surface otherwise
- Shakes and sinks boats
- Underwater ravines/deep sea vents
- Hearsay: allow breathing
- Doesn't generate anywhere currently
Trident
- Throwable and melee weapon
- Works under water and when raining
- Enchantments
- “Loyalty” makes tridents come back to the thrower
- “Riptide” pushes the player forward when thrown while swimming
- “Impaling”: “very useful against creatures of the sea”
- “Channeling”
- Player model animation for throwing
- Currently unobtainable in survival, that will change
- Super overpowered, to be balanced later
- UI icon is not yet implemented
Water rendering
- Slabs, fences, tall grass, etc share a block space with water
- Not fully designed yet
- Implemented using minecraft:hacked_water block tag
Maybe: Multiple variants of shipwrecks
A new mob, one of four options voted on at Minecon 2017
- “The Phantom” – old names: “The Monster of the Night Skies”, name not final, titled mob B for the Minecon vote
- Manta-ray-like flying monster
- Spawns at high altitudes
- Attracted to insomnia: seeks out players who haven't slept for many days, swoops down in groups and bites
- Hearsay: only attacks players high above sea level
- Maybe: Dying resets time awake statistic
- “Bad things happen to those who don't sleep… they start to hallucinate, and see what's really there.”
- Spawns in the overworld and the end
- Drops leather, but this may change
Fixed some bugs
- Fixed the big tree generator handling tree height variable incorrectly
- Fixed being unable to insert charcoal into furnaces
- Fixed the “Balloon oak” tree variant generating upside down
- Fixed furnace recipes working in crafting interfaces and interfering with crafting recipes
- Fixed a random crash in snow biomes: java.lang.NullPointerException: Exception ticking world
- Fixed horses, rabbits, parrot, llamas and sheep generating in their default color/variant only
- Fixed chorus plant generation being broken
- Fixed the game crashing when pressing “show craftable” in the furnace recipe book
- Fixed large oak trees not generating with the new generator
- Fixed the debug world not generating
- Fixed the world generator not being fully cleaned before making new world
Minecraft is available on pretty much anything that plays video games, from PS3 and Xbox 360 to iOS, Android and the Switch. Snapshot 18w07a is available via the Minecraft launcher.
Be sure to check back with Player.One and follow Scott on Twitter for more Minecraft news in 2018 and however long Mojang supports Minecraft in the years ahead.
Minecraft Snapshot 18W07A Adds Turtles, Other Underwater Content
by Stone Marshall | Mar 1, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Minecraft: Education Edition has received a new resource pack designed to let students learn chemistry within the game itself. Resources also include new lessons and activities, a teacher lab book, a downloadable world and community support.
The Chemistry Resource Pack includes a range of features for teachers and students to explore science within the game, including an Element Constructor, which allows users “to create elements based on their atomic structure with sliders to choose the number of protons, neutrons and electrons. By using the Element Constructor, you can create 118 elements from the Periodic Table as well as over 400 stable isotopes,” according to the developer.
Other tools include:
- Compound Creator, which lets users build 30 different compounds (like soap and hydrogen peroxide);
- Lab Table for making items “by combining elements and compounds in a grid. For example, adding water and sodium hypochlorite makes bleach, which a player can use to turn wool white”; and
- Material Reducer, which lets students explore the components of items within Minecraft.
Lessons and activities range from tips for the classroom, such as watching out for hazards in the lab and using Minecraft, to full-blown instructional resources covering topics like properties of matter, chemical reactions, atomic structure and the scientific method. (As of this writing, there were 10 individual lessons and activities available.)
The Teacher Lab Book is a resource to help educators teach with the Chemistry Resource Pack.
The Chemistry Resource Pack also includes a complete, downloadable world for using the chemistry resources. It can be downloaded at aka.ms/chemistryworld.
According to Minecraft: “Science education is driven by hands-on learning, but only half of fourth graders in the U.S. do hands-on science once a week. In low income schools, the numbers are even lower, as students have less access to labs and equipment. Chemistry in Minecraft allows teachers to introduce chemistry concepts without the costs of lab equipment in the engaging Minecraft world that will inspire more girls and boys to explore the subject.”
The Chemistry Update for Minecraft: Education Edition is available now globally. Complete details can be found on the Minecraft Chemistry portal.
Minecraft Chemistry Update Goes Live
by Stone Marshall | Feb 28, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
A pair of new Minecraft snapshots are out this week, offering a more complete (but still unfinished) preview of what to expect when the Update Aquatic rolls out later this year. But there’s still no word on when Minecraft Update 1.13 will be ready for the general public.
Last week brought our first look at some of the most exciting content developed for the next Minecraft patch. Mojang’s beloved sandbox game received an influx of new material, including turtles(!!), wearable turtle shells and a new Trident weapon that can be thrown or used as a typical melee weapon. This week, Mojang followed that release with another pair of snapshots that introduce 10 new ocean biomes, new underwater features and a plethora of fish we’ll now see scurrying around below the water’s surface.
Water visibility also got a second pass during the creation of Minecraft snapshots 18w08a and 18w08b. Players’ ability to see underwater will improve over time, mimicking our own eyes’ ability to adjust to new lighting conditions, and will diminish quickly after resurfacing. Ocean floors will also have greater variation determined by the temperature of the water. Puffer fish have also been reworked in the new snapshots, receiving new spawn points and a slight change in behavior.
Here are the complete patch notes for Minecraft snapshot 18w08a, via Jens Bergensten:
More ocean biomes
- 10 different ocean biomes
- Oceans are now split into five temperatures: frozen, cold, normal, lukewarm, warm
- In addition to deep vs shallow
- World generation should stay the same, but old chunks will only have normal oceans
- “We'll be using these for something real soon!”
Underwater ravines/deep sea vents
- Caves under the ocean can be filled with water
- Ravines will appear in all oceans
- Some ocean ravines cut deep, exposing lava to the seas
- Some of the lava is turned into magma blocks instead of obsidian
- Added a clickable link to the /locate command output
Fixed some bugs
- Fixed items getting deleted when the inventory is overflowed by using the recipe book to return items from a crafting table
- Fixed items laying on the ground for a long time when not picking them up after /give
- Fixed /enchant being usable by non-ops
- Fixed a crash when generationg woodland mansions (Exception generating new chunk “Not yet implemented”)
And here are patch notes from snapshot 18w08b:
Actual fish
- Added new fish item icons
- Some fish items exist as mobs
- Cod will spawn in moderate oceans (cold/normal/lukewarm)
- Salmon will spawn in frozen/cold oceans and rivers
- Puffer fish will spawn in lukewarm/warm oceans
- Expand when near players, give poison on expanding
- Shrink down to their normal size after expanding, three sizes in total
- Cod and salmon are sideways when on land
- Cod and salmon are very social and prefer to swim in groups
- Can be caught with water buckets, yields a bucket with water and non-despawning fish inside
- Concept art
- Not complete yet, more changes coming soon (tropical fish, clownfish!)
Changed natural water visibility
- Respiration & Water Breathing no longer directly change your visibility underwater
- You can see better the longer you stay underwater
- Maximum visibility is achieved after less than a minute
- If you go back out of water, you'll quickly lose your water vision
Warm and lukewarm oceans now have sand floors
- Removed deep warm ocean biomes, warm oceans can only be shallow now
Fixed some bugs
- Fixed testing for a score of x or a minimum of x doesn't work in execute if/unless score
- Fixed taking an item out of the output slot of a furnace giving the player the recipe for the item in the input slot
- Fixed clicking into the first seven inventory slots cancelling the smelting recipe preview
- Fixed dried kelp block not being craftable
- Added recipes to turn dried kelp into storage blocks and back again
- Fixed a crash when logging into multiplayer without logging into single-player first
- Fixed the furnace experience rewards depending on the item in the cooking slot, rather than output slot
Minecraft is currently available on every major gaming platform and pretty much anything else with a screen attached to it.
Be sure to check back with Player.One and follow Scott on Twitter for more Minecraft news in 2018 and however long Mojang supports Minecraft in the years ahead.
Minecraft Snapshots 18w08a, 18w08b Deliver More Aquatic Content
by Stone Marshall | Feb 28, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Minecraft Bedrock Edition also known as cross platform Minecraft appears to be undergoing the finishing touches for Nintendo Switch version and Microsoft has decided to show almost two hours of footage.
Microsoft have also announced the Minecraft Bedrock Edition for Switch will be free to all players who own it on the console before release. The Switch edition is nearly done and is in late stages of development where polishing is the main focus.
Justin Woods, the Bedrock producer, noted that the Xbox version may have come out too soon and was not as finished as he hoped so they are taking things slow with the Switch version.
MojangThis Mario may have had one too many blocky mushroom.
This time around they are focusing on making the launch smoother, as well as making the transition from easier from Switch Edition. This appears to be true and not just empty talk, as the Bedrock Edition seemed to run at steady 60 FPS on stream, and Microsoft said it can display 14 chunks of game world compared to only 6 in the current Switch Edition.
Several Bedrock features are shown to be operational during the stream, like the store. Hurry, get the microtransactions working or the world might explode any second! Microsoft have also confirmed you will need a Microsoft account in order to play with people on other platforms, but the same limitation does not apply when you want to play with other Switch users.
MicrosoftGameplay looks smooth and steady.
There is also a part of the stream that shows touchscreen support for Switch's handheld mode where you can navigate menus, type with the on-screen keyboard or manage your inventory.
Throughout the stream, a lot of emphasis was put on the release being handled ”by the book” in order to provide a smooth launch instead of a rushed product like it was on Xbox. An official release date has not been mentioned but Microsoft have confirmed that the game will be coming to Switch ”soon”.
Minecraft Bedrock Edition revealed for Nintendo Switch