Anyone who’s spent a long time working on a project to little fanfare will have sympathy for Teng Fei.
He built an enormous city in Minecraft, spending over a year piecing it together. And when it was done… it was virtually ignored by the community.
But he didn’t quit. Over the next year, he live-streamed himself building another big city, this time a cyberpunk one, like something out of Blade Runner. Known as Aztter online, some days saw him stream for over 16 hours — from 10am to 2am.
The amount of blocks is used in this project is mind-boggling. (Picture: Aztter/Bilibili)
He didn’t get that many views — around 50 to 60 on an average day. But it was enough. That small core of loyal fans kept him going. Whenever he had doubts and felt like quitting, he’d think of his fans. Sometimes when he fell behind, they’d push him on — urging him to finish the project.
Teng, from Harbin, runs a local import-export business on the side — something that he says doesn’t require a lot of time. That’s how he ended up dedicating so much of his life to Minecraft.
Another reason? Lacking a formal background in architecture or construction, Teng was drawn to the ease of doing things in Minecraft.
“There’s almost no barriers to entry to building in Minecraft. But what it requires is just perseverance,” he said.
“The Chinese Minecraft community has grown a lot in recent years. There is a bit of a rivalry among elite players,” he added.
Teng doesn’t just build to pass the time. He says a lot of people build in Minecraft to make a statement. His cyberpunk city, dubbed Unknown, carries a message too: It’s a homage to the late Stephen Hawking, and his theory of the multiverse.
Teng’s video tour of the city includes several quotes from Hawking, reciting quotes from his book, The Brief History of Time.
Unknown is the 15th city he’s built in Minecraft. So what’s next for Teng? He’s still looking for new ideas, a critical part of the process.
“While it takes about a year to build a large-scale project like Unknown, it also takes quite a few months to prepare and research for it,” he said.
Minecraft: Dungeons, a new game set in the Minecraft universe, was announced during the Minecon Earth livestream this afternoon.
While details on the game are slim, the developer interviews in a short video that played before the official trailer claimed that Minecraft: Dungeonsis an adventure game where up to four players can team up to overcome challenges in new locations and environments that have never appeared before in Minecraft.
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The trailer was shown after a short on-stage presentation in which Lydia Winters, the Chief Brand Officer for Mojang, and a developer teased that there is more than one new game set in the Minecraft universe in development currently. As Winters said after the trailer was shown, “this is the beginning of our expansion of the Minecraft universe to new game genres.”
Update – 1:45pm: In a short discussion of Minecraft: Dungeons later in the stream event, Dungeons was described by Mojang employees Jens Bergensten and Owen Jones as a top-down dungeon crawler. The words “hack and slash” were also used to describe the game. They also showed another screenshot of a location from the upcoming game:
Minecraft: Dungeons does not currently have a release date, but it will appear on the PC platform in 2019.
Minecraft was released in 2009 and since then has been updated constantly. Updates have added new worlds, new creatures, modding tools and more. But finally, after 10 years of waiting, Minecraft finally has composting.
Sure, the last major update for Minecraft added cool underwater sea life, but can a dolphin turn useless plants into fertilizer? No. Instead you’ll need the new composter block. This new block, which was added in the latest PC snapshot update, allows players to turn old plants and veggies into useful bone meal, which in Minecraft can make plants & trees grow faster and bigger.Outstream Video
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The new composter can be built using a few pieces of wood and fencing. Once built players simply throw in some unwanted seeds, plants or food into the wooden box. Once enough organic materials has been added players are able to harvest some bone meal. How plants and seeds become bone meal is just another strange Minecraft mystery. Best not to think about it.
Fans had already created mods adding their own custom composter blocks into the game, like this mod added last year. But now composting is part of the vanilla Minecraft experience.
While the new composting block is useful for turning excess crops into bone meal, players are also using the new block for decorations purposes. Some Minecraft fans think they look like bee hives and are using the compost blocks as fake bee hives.
Currently, if you want to do some composting yourself, you’ll need to play the Java version of Minecraft and activate snapshots in the Minecraft launcher. Though like most snapshot features, these compost blocks will be added to other versions of the game eventually.
he big-screen re-telling of He-Man is closer to landing writers, Sam Raimi has signed on to produce the female-fronted horror film Behind, and the Minecraft movie is moving forward again in our latest development roundup.
Matt Holloway and Art Marcum, the duo behind the screenplay for Iron Man, which kick-started the MCU, might be tackling Eternia for Sony Pictures’ and Mattel Films’ Masters of the Universe. According to The Wrap, the duo is in talks to re-write David S. Goyer’s script, who is also executive-producing.
The project comes as part of Mattel’s new film division, Mattel Studios, which will dedicate itself to movies that directly tie into its toy lines, which obviously includes He-Man. The upcoming Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie is another Mattel Studios production currently in development.
The He-Man toy line was first launched by Mattel in the early 1980s. It was made into a film in 1987, which starred Dolph Lundgren. Coincidentally, it was also titled Masters of the Universe.
There’s no word on a release date just yet. In the meantime, you can check out He-Man’s twin sister She-Ra in her latest animated series on Netflix, which will be devoid of He-Man for the foreseeable future.
Next, the long-awaited Minecraft movie gets closer to becoming a reality. Variety reports that Peter Sollett, who directed the acclaimed Raising Victor Vargas, will helm the video game adaptation for Warner Bros.
The Minecraft moviewasfirst announced in 2014, with various talent attached at different points, including Shawn Levy and Steve Carrell. Most recently, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia co-creator and star Rob McElhenney was slated to direct, before leaving the project in August last year.
Mojang, who developed the initial open-world video-game-turned-global-phenomenon, will co-produce the film.
Finally, filmmaker Sam Raimi has signed on to produce the horror film Behind for Lionsgate. The Evil Dead creator will produce via his Ghost House Pictures banner with Robert Tapert, per The Hollywood Reporter. Raimi and Ghost House have a bit of a history with Lionsgate, which includes both The Grudge and Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe.
The feature is based on the short film by Angel Gomez, who will be returning to the director’s chair. Zak Olkewicz will write the script.
The original short (above), which scored several accolades during its festival run in 2016, centers on a woman going through a divorce who’s afraid she will lose her baby daughter. When a mysterious woman tells her that she’s being followed, an innocuous comment becomes a terrifying nightmare where she’s forced to do everything she can to save her daughter from unspeakable evil.
Mojang, the studio that develops Minecraft and is owned by Microsoft, wants to celebrate 2019 by seeing what builders create in 2019. This also celebrates the recent release of version 1.9, the second of the Village and Pillage updates, the latest of which adds bamboo, scaffolding, pandas, and new cats.
To make things even sweeter (not that they could be when you have pandas), the company is going to put its favorite creations to be featured on its website at Minecraft.net. The site has been needing a makeover now that the year is new, especially seeing as how the screenshots used are, well, from last year. So now’s your chance as a Minecraft fan to show the world what you really know how to build something great!
To help you and others get familiar with the new items, the developers are also giving players a few tips to get started.
Bamboo, the panda’s favorite food and hiding place, can be a great plant for your garden. That is, if you can handle its incredibly fast growth rate. In addition to its usefulness in foodmaking, it can also look really nice as decoration if you combine them with flowers here and there.
The new scaffolding blocks are, in a sense, like elevators, except more natural and better for the environment. That’s because it allows the user to move up and down tall structures without the risk of fall damage. And what’s more, if you don’t need them anymore, just break the block at the bottom and all of the ones at the top will come falling down.
The developers are also encouraging use of blocks from previous version as well, such as the coral blocks and dried kelp from the Update Aquatic version. What do you plan on building? Feel free to share below.
Warner Bros. finds a director in Peter Sollett for the long-awaited film adaptation after Always Sunny in Philadelphia co-creator left last year.
Peter Sollett, whose directorial credits include Freeheld and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, is now set to write and direct Warner Bros.’ film adaptation of Minecraft.
New plot details have also emerged. According to Variety, the story will revolve around a teenage girl and a group of adventurers attempting to save the Overworld from the evil Ender Dragon. Who will actually star as these characters have yet to be revealed. Steve Carrell’s name has been pushed around for quite some time but it seems he will not be joining the movie.
The movie will be produced by Roy Lee and Jon Berg. Additional producer credits will also go to Jill Messick — who had passed away last February — and Mojang. Jon Spaihts will be credited as an executive producer.
The Minecraft movie was expected to release this year. However, with the new directorial shift, a new release window has not yet been determined.
