by Stone Marshall | Oct 17, 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 |
There's no shortage of Xbox One S bundles to pick from out there, and Microsoft is adding another to its lineup. The new Xbox One S Minecraft Creators Bundle will hit store shelves “soon” for $299 (£249) and includes a whole lot of extras to help you get started on your Minecraft adventure.
For the basics, the bundle includes a 1Tb Xbox One S, a controller, and a download code for the full Minecraft game. Additionally, you'll net 1,000 Minecoins, and a boatload of extra DLC packs, including:
Starter Pack DLC: Greek Mythology Mash-up, Plastic Texture Pack, Skin Pack 1, and Villains Skin Pack.
Creators Pack: Adventurer's Dream Mash-up and Winter Mini-Games Festival by Noxcrew, Relics of the Privateers by Imagiverse, PureBDcraft Texture Pack by BDcraft, Pastel Skin Pack by Eneija, and Wildlife Savanna by PixelHeads
Lastly, the bundle packs in a one-month trial for Xbox Game Pass and a 14-day trial for Xbox Live Gold.
There's no release date set for the bundle just yet, but it'll likely land in time for the holiday season.
by Stone Marshall | Oct 17, 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” is one of the most popular games in the world, and the second highest-selling game of all time.
Despite its wild popularity, even “Minecraft” struggled to find players on Apple's set-top box, the Apple TV.
As such, “Minecraft” is dropping Apple TV support and will receive no future updates. If you already own the game, you can still play it, but it's no longer up for sale.
You can play “Minecraft” on pretty much anything: Your phone, your game console, your computer, and even your tablets.
But, as of the recent past, you can no longer play “Minecraft” on Apple's popular set-top box, the Apple TV.
That's because the wildly popular “Minecraft” — the second best-selling game of all time, just behind “Tetris” — couldn't find enough players on Apple TV to be worth the investment.
“We need to reallocate resources to the platforms that our players use the most,” a pop-up states when you launch the game on Apple TV. It's a dire statement about gaming on the Apple TV; “Minecraft” on Apple TV was introduced to much fanfare under two years ago. It was played by so few people that Microsoft, which owns and produces “Minecraft,” discontinued support as of September 24.
apple tv
Apple/Business Insider
So few people were playing “Minecraft” on Apple TV, it seems, that most news outlets didn't notice it was being discontinued until this week.
That reality stands in stark contrast to Apple's supposed push into gaming with the latest iteration of the Apple TV (pictured above). The company made a whole show of gaming on Apple TV during a presentation in September 2015 — three years later, and there's been little progress.
And now, “Minecraft” is dropping support.
But if you're one of the few people playing “Minecraft” on Apple TV, don't despair: The game will continue functioning for the time being. “You can continue to play ‘Minecraft' on Apple TV, keep building in your world and your Marketplace purchases (including Minecoins) will continue to be available,” the in-game note says.
But perhaps you just want your money back? If you bought the game (or anything in the game) in the last 90 days, Microsoft is offering a full refund through Apple.
by Stone Marshall | Oct 16, 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 |
It’s been nine years since the initial release of Mojang’s Minecraft and four years since the two-billion-dollar buyout from Microsoft. Now, the Swedish developer has made snippets of the source code “open source.”
In a Minecraft Blog post titled, “Play with Minecraft’s inner workings”, the company released two libraries of the game’s code. The aim is to make other developers or up-and-coming programmers utilize these two libraries and use them in their own projects. Due to the libraries being MIT-licensed Mojang has stated that anyone will be free to “contribute and… help improve our game engine.”
The two libraries are called “Brigadier” and “DataFixerUpper“. The first is described as a, “command parser and disperser” while the latter’s main purpose is “incremental building, merging and optimization of data transformations… [to convert] the game data for Minecraft: Java Edition between different versions of the game.”
The release of Minecraft’s code may not be too exciting to anyone who is strictly a player of the game, but the ease-of-use this gives to programmers and mod developers is indescribable.
Mojang do plan on adding more libraries to this collection in the future. If you wish to download Brigadier and DataFixerUpper, go to Mojang’s Github page (It’s been nine years since the initial release of Mojang’s Minecraft and four years since the two-billion-dollar buyout from Microsoft. Now, the Swedish developer has made snippets of the source code “open source.”
In a Minecraft Blog post titled, “Play with Minecraft’s inner workings”, the company released two libraries of the game’s code. The aim is to make other developers or up-and-coming programmers utilize these two libraries and use them in their own projects. Due to the libraries being MIT-licensed Mojang has stated that anyone will be free to “contribute and… help improve our game engine.”
The two libraries are called “Brigadier” and “DataFixerUpper“. The first is described as a, “command parser and disperser” while the latter’s main purpose is “incremental building, merging and optimization of data transformations… [to convert] the game data for Minecraft: Java Edition between different versions of the game.”
The release of Minecraft’s code may not be too exciting to anyone who is strictly a player of the game, but the ease-of-use this gives to programmers and mod developers is indescribable.
Mojang do plan on adding more libraries to this collection in the future. If you wish to download Brigadier and DataFixerUpper, go to Mojang’s Github page (It’s been nine years since the initial release of Mojang’s Minecraft and four years since the two-billion-dollar buyout from Microsoft. Now, the Swedish developer has made snippets of the source code “open source.”
In a Minecraft Blog post titled, “Play with Minecraft’s inner workings”, the company released two libraries of the game’s code. The aim is to make other developers or up-and-coming programmers utilize these two libraries and use them in their own projects. Due to the libraries being MIT-licensed Mojang has stated that anyone will be free to “contribute and… help improve our game engine.”
The two libraries are called “Brigadier” and “DataFixerUpper“. The first is described as a, “command parser and disperser” while the latter’s main purpose is “incremental building, merging and optimization of data transformations… [to convert] the game data for Minecraft: Java Edition between different versions of the game.”
The release of Minecraft’s code may not be too exciting to anyone who is strictly a player of the game, but the ease-of-use this gives to programmers and mod developers is indescribable.
Mojang do plan on adding more libraries to this collection in the future. If you wish to download Brigadier and DataFixerUpper, go to Mojang’s Github page (https://github.com/Mojang)
by Stone Marshall | Oct 16, 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 new Minecraft spin-off game will delve into the blockworld as a dungeon-crawler in 2019, developers Mojang announced this weekend during their MineCon fan event. Minecraft: Dungeons is its name, and whacking monsters is its game. Inspired by “classic dungeon crawler games”, they say, it’ll send up to four players to whack and stab and thwipp and zap through Minecrafty levels and monsters, grabbing whatever loot’s not nailed down. Have a peek in the announcement trailer below.
“We’ve taken the combat mechanics of the core Minecraft game and turned it into an adventure game in which you fight monsters, explore environments, find treasure, and earn even better equipment,” Mojang chief creative officer Jens Bergensten explained.
That sounds a bit weird consider Minecraft’s combat is pretty eh, even after several updates aimed at improving it, but who am I to argue with one of the biggest games in the world? It’s not for me, and that’s fine.
Minecraft: Dungeons will visit new environments not seen in Minecraft before, complete with new monsters and new bosses.
The game slated to launch to launch some time in 2019. Mojang just say “PC” rather than specifying a version of Windows, so fingers crossed it won’t be one of Microsoft’s Windows 10 exclusives? Microsoft may own Mojang nowadays, but they do seem to keep them on a slightly longer leash than some other studios.
Minecraft has already spawned an episodic story doodad spin-off in Telltale’s Minecraft: Story Mode. Despite Telltale’s recent massive layoffs, that is supposedly still being converted to a magical interactive movie for Netflix.
Minecon this year (and last) was a livestreamed virtual event, rather than the days-long physical convention as it started as. MineCon Earth, they call it. The full thing is archived on YouTube for folks who want to watch.
Disclosure: Our weekend editor, Jay Castello, sometimes writes for Minecraft’s website.
by Stone Marshall | Oct 15, 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 |
Fortnite wasn’t the first game to start the cross-play conversation: it was actually Minecraft. You may remember Microsoft announcing the Better Together update for every system but the PlayStation 4, because back then the Japanese giant wasn’t playing ball. It’s slowly opening up its doors, and while it’s currently only running a beta test in Epic’s behemoth Battle Royale, the expectation is that more third-party titles will eventually utilise the feature.
So what’s the deal with Minecraft, then? Here’s what a spokesperson told Windows Central this week: “We are supportive of new scenarios that enable more people to play and have fun together while gaming. We would love to bring players on PS4 into our Minecraft ecosystem as well but have nothing further to share at this time.”
It’s a bit of a non-statement, and to be honest there may still be sticking points with this series in particular. Microsoft, rightly or wrongly, requests that anyone playing Minecraft’s big cross-play focused Bedrock Edition signs into an Xbox Live account, which Sony could very well reject. The company does accept third-party logins for EA Sports and Ubisoft titles, but this is a direct competitor and thus a different kettle of fish.
We’ll see.
by Stone Marshall | Oct 15, 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 is still going, still strong, and still relevant – the creative playground sees over 90 million monthly users, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft’s $2.5 billion (£1.9bn) purchase of Mojang back in 2014 was a huge sum to pay for what was, in essence, a one-game studio. But it’s paying off: in 2018 alone the monthly player count has increased by around 20 million.
With all this ongoing success, talk inevitably turns to a sequel – but Microsoft’s head of Minecraft, Helen Chiang, told Business Insider it doesn’t make sense for the game or community: “It's something that always fractures the community,” she said.
“We don't want to ask [players] to move from Minecraft 1 to Minecraft 2,” she explained, “We want them to just enjoy Minecraft. And there's other ways that we can expand that are more meaningful and authentic to what we want to be, rather than just releasing another iteration in the way that most other franchises do.”
Said ‘other way’ refers to Minecraft: Dungeons, the first new game developed in-house at Mojang since the original Minecraft’s release in 2011. It’s not a sequel, and it’s not the sort of thing Mojang would expect to eat into the 90m-plus player base.
While Minecraft’s numbers are still gigantic and it is managing to maintain interest even as it approaches a decade in age, the relative new kid on the block Fortnite is hot on its heels with dozens of millions of players a month for Epic’s battle royale.
