The Wii U version of Minecraft was basically put out to pasture when it wasn't included in the “Better Together” cross-play update. In summation, any version of the game that retains the “Edition” moniker will be limited to its own platform, while everything else can play together. Notable exceptions include PS4, Vita, and of course, Wii U.
This led to a lot of people naturally upgrading on Switch (where Better Together works), but they had to leave their save files behind. Well, that changes this week, as Nintendo has implemented a cross-save transfer from Wii U to the newest Nintendo generation. Just load the game up on Wii U, select your save, select transfer, then import it on Switch.
I never really got into the Wii U version (I kept playing Xbox One and only dabbled in the new Mario sandbox), but if I did, this would be a nice concession. Provided that you're okay with eating the cost to upgrade of course.
Minecraft, with its blocky Scandinavian charm, is not a game you’d expect to have the potential to hijack you mobile with malware and turn it into a botnet.
The game Microsoft acquired for £1.5bn is fairly secure, but despite that, cyber security firm Symantec has found a clutch of Minecraft-based add-ons in the Google Play Store that are harbouring malicious code for Trojan malware called Sockbot.
The Trojan links infected devices to a proxy server to surreptitiously generate advertising revenue and enslave the device as part of a botnet.
Symantec noted that the malicious add-on apps, which allow users to change the appearance of their in-game characters for Minecraft: Pocket Edition, appeared to be originally designed for generating illegitimate ad revenue, but now have more scope to power cyber attacks.
“This highly flexible proxy topology could easily be extended to take advantage of a number of network-based vulnerabilities, and could potentially span security boundaries,” Symantec’s Shaun Aimoto said. “In addition to enabling arbitrary network attacks, the large footprint of this infection could also be leveraged to mount a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.”
Aimoto noted that to date, Symantec has found eight Minecraft-based apps infected with the Trjoan that have a combined install base ranging from 600,000 to 2.8 million Android devices, and appears to be targeting gadgets mostly in the US but also in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and Brazil.
After discovering the malicious apps, Symantec informed Google which stripped them from the Play Store, so mobile Minecraft fans can rest easily for the time being.
However, the cyber threat looks to have been a fairly advanced one, having managed to sneak past Google’s vetting and security processes for the Play Store by posing as legitimate add-on apps. And once the malware was on a device, it used encryption to obscure its code and avoid basic-levels of detection.
With this in mind, Symantec advises the evergreen practise of keeping your mobile software up-to-date, avoiding apps from unknown sources, paying close attention to the permissions an app wants, and of course use mobile security services.
There are more than 6,000 languages on the planet but we're losing them at rate of one every two weeks. Globalization and mass communication made the world smaller and English, Mandarin, and Arabic have become lingua franca, pushing out smaller languages that connect minority communities. With a little help, some of those communities are fighting back.
Elfdalian is an ancient Scandinavian language spoken by around 3,000 people in the Älvdalen region in the middle of Sweden. It's a descendant of old Norse that developed in isolation throughout the Middle Ages. The Elfdalian people lived a semi-nomadic life traveling from a small town to country farms during the Summer. Here's what it sounds like.
The language is having a hard time in Sweden. Despite international recognition and support, Stockholm considers Elfdalian a dialect of Swedish and not its own official language. Despite its small native speaker base and status with the government, Elfdalian is experiencing a renaissance online. Thanks to the internet and the passionate Ulum Dalska—the Organization for the Preservation of Elfdalian—the language has managed not only to survive but thrive in recent years.
Chris Pennington and Emilia Stjernfelt hope to give it another boost with Minecraft. Pennington is passionate about languages and passionate about helping. “A people's history and culture is wrapped up in the language they speak,” Pennington told me over Discord chat. “So, one of the most important things you can do is pass that language along to your children.”
Pennington and Stjernfelt are using Minecraft to build a virtual world that'll make it easier for Elfdalian speakers to pass that language on to their kids. Stjernfelt is Swedish and Pennington is American. Neither are native Elfdalian speakers. The pair met and fell in love in a Swedish Minecraft server. Soon, the two had married and he'd moved across the ocean to be with her.
Image: Minecraft via Chris Pennington
Minecraft helped Pennington learn Swedish so he could better communicate with Stjernfelt and his other friends and now he thinks it could help people learn Elfdalian. “Most language learning methods it involves some rote memorization” he explained. If you've taken a foreign language class you know the drill—flash cards with pictures and labels, constant practice, and repetition. Minecraft, instead, offers virtual immersion, which is a much better way to learn.
The Elfdalian village of Älvdalen in Minecraft is complete with quests designed to help players learn about the culture as well as the language. “We plan to have one where the player goes to help out in one of the summer pasture farms, and another where they are tasked with picking up items from a grocery store,” Pennington said.
The project has excited the Elfdalian community. Ulum Dalska even flew the pair to town to put them through a Summer course on the language. The project is further proof that the language is unique and distinct from Swedish, something Elfdalian speakers have had a hard time making Stockholm understand.
Star Wars’ cinematic universe tale focused on young Han Solo has a name, and we found out thanks to director Ron Howard, who announced it using a placard in a video shared on Twitter. The name, in case you were wondering, is “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
It follows the “A Star Wars Story” model set by Rogue One, the first spin-out movie set in the Star Wars universe but occurring outside of the main franchise. These movies occur within canon or Star Wars fictional history, but they don’t center around the Skywalker family and its ongoing saga.
Howard also informed us via the video that primary shooting on Han Solo has wrapped, meaning it’ll now go into editing ahead of its May 25, 2018 release date. The movie actually lost its original directors, if you’ll recall, after The Lego Movie‘s Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (pictured with the cast above) departed the project citing creative differences with Lucasfilm president and Star Wars universe commander in chief Kathleen Kennedy.
The movie, which stars Alden Ehrenreich, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover and more, will hopefully still deliver the goods when it debuts next year.
Minecraft players will now be able to easily save their in-game creations as 3D models. A new update adds the capability, but it’s among the few features that can only be enjoyed by players on the Windows 10 edition of the game.
The feature was teased in a beta a couple months back, but is now a main-branch feature for the game. Exporting is done by putting a special block down near your sculpture, house or what have you, and giving it a few parameters: how many blocks in this direction to capture, etc.
The game then exports the resulting model directly to Remix 3D, Microsoft’s new platform for sharing 3D models and animations. From there you can share it with others or export again to Paint 3D, where you can further decorate it or export (yet again) to other, more interoperable formats.
(If that seems like too many steps to you, or a little too much Microsoft, feel free to use one of the third-party apps that have done this for years.)
Minecraft long ago made the switchover from niche indie game to global platform, and so far the various versions have more or less maintained feature parity. Versions running on Windows, however, have generally had the lead in advanced features like mods, app integrations and so on.
Windows 10 players should find the new feature next time they boot up the game.
Speakers from Minecraft, King and PopCap will take the stage at Mobile Games Forum Seattle 2017 during its two-day run on October 24th and 25th.
The event will host a number of talks and panels from members of the mobile games industry, along with a developer showcase and plenty of opportunities to network.
Speaker roster
Speakers include Minecraft‘s Product Marketing Lead Emily Orrson, King's VP of its Z2 studio Lou Fasulo and PopCap's Lead Producer Arjun Balaram.
Orrson will discuss how cross-platform play is working for Minecraft, while Fasulo will be giving a talk on using live ops and a game's community to improve their games.
Balaram will close out the conference with a case study on how PopCap moved from premium to free-to-play with its game Plants vs. Zombies 2.
Other speakers include Super Evil Megacorp's Taewon Yun, Game Insight CEO Anatoly Ropotov and Stugan's Jana Palm.
If the above sessions float your boat, we've got a special 20% off discount code for the event: just enter SeattlePG20 as your promo code when purchasing your ticket on the official MGF Seattle website, where you can also find out more information about the event.
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