It’s hard to believe, but it has been nearly a decade since Minecraft first appeared. On May 10, the game will see the 10-year anniversary of its original pre-classic release. Through years of additions, changes, and being sold to Microsoft, Minecraft became a worldwide phenomenon, selling about as many copies as the Bible.

The development team at Mojang has just released the newest update to the game, version 1.14. This version is formally known as the Village and Pillage Update. It adds loads of new blocks, mechanics, and bugfixes, as well as a new lighting system and reworked textures. On today’s episode of ShackStream, we continue our progress on the homely mountain love shack and will begin to venture outwards into the unknown wilderness.

The fun kicks off at 4:15 PM EDT (01:15 PDT) on the Official Shacknews Twitch Channel.

Watch live video from Shacknews on www.twitch.tv
As always, we’d like to take a moment and thank our subscribers and followers. These streams only happen due to your support and regular viewings. Another big thanks to those who participate in the Twitch chat. Your interaction means a lot to the streaming folks and is always appreciated. Viewers who have Amazon Prime are given one free Twitch Prime subscription a month if Amazon and Twitch accounts are linked. Check out our guide for more information on how to link your accounts.

I weird bug is preventing owners of the Minecraft video game on Nintendo Switch from backing up their games to the Nintendo Online cloud service.

Many gamers on Reddit and Twitter had begun to wonder if the feature had deliberately been disabled due to Minecraft also using the Xbox Live cloud service for cloud saves and transferring data between devices but a Minecraft community manager chimed in on Twitter and confirmed that it is in fact a bug. A fix will likely be pushed out with an update in the near future.

@HelenAngel I see that cloud saves are no longer supported, why is that?

Uhhhhh that would be a bug312:12 PM – Apr 28, 2019 · Bellevue, WATwitter Ads info and privacySee Helen ‘s other Tweets

Minecraft is an incredibly popular video game made by the, now Microsoft-owned, Mojang game studio. The game is available on most gaming platforms and supports cross-save and crossplay between the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows 10, VR, and mobile devices.

A Minecraft movie is currently in development.

Do you play Minecraft on the Nintendo Switch and have you been affected by this bug? Let us know in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more gaming content.

It’s safe to say Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame” won’t be done breaking records any time soon. Up next, the Marvel box office behemoth has its sights set on securing the biggest domestic second weekend of all time.

That crown currently belongs to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” with its mighty $149 million sophomore outing in North America. “Avengers: Endgame” is already in uncharted territory after its jaw-dropping $357 million opening weekend, making it all the more difficult to predict just how big of a second weekend the superhero blockbuster is heading for. Even so, “Endgame” could endure a massive 57% decline in box office receipts from its debut and still surpass the benchmark set by “The Force Awakens,” which dipped 39.8%.

By comparison, “Avengers: Infinity War,” the precursor to “Endgame,” saw a 55% drop in sales during its second frame. It’s undisputed that the superhero finale will assemble sizable ticket sales this weekend, but even if “Avengers: Endgame” falls short of that particular goal, it will still be in rarified company. Admission for the blockbuster could plunge by 68% (a number that would be dire for many other movies) and still come in ahead of the second weekend’s of “Avengers: Infinity War” ($114 million), “Black Panther” ($111 million), and “Jurassic World” ($106 million).

On Tuesday, “Avengers: Endgame” collected $33 million, bringing its domestic haul to $427 million. After just five days, it’s already the highest-grossing movie of the year in North America, dethroning “Captain Marvel’s” $414 million and counting. Overseas, the tentpole just crossed the billion-dollar mark.

With $1.48 billion globally, “Avengers: Endgame” has now passed “Black Panther” ($1.34 billion) and “Avengers: Age of Ultron” ($1.4 billion) to become the eighth-biggest movie in only seven days in theaters. That stunning bounty has pushed Marvel Studios over $20 billion in ticket sales from the 22 films that comprise the comic-book empire’s cinematic universe.

Despite the clear chokehold “Avengers: Endgame” has over the exhibition industry, there are three new wide releases brave enough to take on Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Lionsgate’s “Long Shot,” a comedy starring Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen, is banking on moviegoers needing a fix of laughter to cope with the devastating conclusion to the current phase of Marvel movies. Sony and Screen Gems are releasing psychological thriller “The Intruder,” while STX has “UglyDolls,” an original animated musical featuring Kelly Clarkson, Nick Jonas, and other familiar voices. All three are targeting opening weekends in the low-teens.

“Long Shot,” one of this summer’s few funny movies aimed at adult audiences, is expected to earn between $9 million and $16 million when it opens in 3,100 North American locations. The raunchy R-rated romantic comedy stars Rogen as a journalist trying to win over his former babysitter (Theron), who is running for president. Jonathan Levine, who previously worked with Rogen on the Joseph Gordon-Levitt drama “50/50,” directed the movie, which was penned by comedy writer Dan Sterling and “The Post” scribe Liz Hannah. Rogen produced “Long Shot” with his longtime partner Evan Goldberg, as well as Theron. Reviews were mostly positive (it has an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes), though critics like Variety’s Peter Debruge cautioned that the “undeniably funny” movie fails to reflect a post-#MeToo world.

“UglyDolls,” targeting a much different audience than that of “Long Shot,” is an animated adventure based on the popular children’s toys. STX’s first foray into animation should collect $12 million to $16 million from 3,600 screens. “UglyDolls” takes place in Uglyville, where colorful fabric dolls long for the day they will meet their perfect human match. When Moxy (Clarkson), the group’s fearless ringleader, takes her pals on a journey to Perfection, a town filled with more conventionally appealing dolls, the band of misfits learn to embrace what it means to be unique. Clarkson, Jonas, Janelle Monae, and Pitbull recorded all new music for the musical movie. STX and Alibaba Pictures co-financed the project for $45 million. It was directed by Kelly Asbury, who previously helmed animated movies “Shrek 2” and “Gnomeo & Juliet.” The next few weeks will be especially competitive on the family front, with essentially all ages still purchasing tickets for “Avengers: Endgame,” and Warner Bros.’ “Detective Pikachu,” Universal’s “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” and Disney’s “Toy Story 4” debuting this summer.

“The Intruder,” a PG-13 thriller, anticipates a start between $9 million and $16 million from 2,200 venues. The movie follows a young married couple, who after buying their dream house, realizes the seller (Dennis Quaid) has some shady intentions. It carries an $8 million price tag. Sony’s Screen Gems division has recently found success serving up modestly priced thrillers like “The Possession of Hannah Grace,” “Searching,” and “Slender Man.” Those three titles, which all all brought back solid box office receipts, cost under $10 million to produce. Talk about scary-good.

The band Traffic has probably been getting its heaviest web traffic ever this past week, thanks to the use of a 50-year-old song, “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” that plays briefly but inescapably in the first 10 minutes of the superhero epic. It’s the most prominent of the handful of pop songs that show up during the three-hour running time, at least before an even older oldie, from 1945, brings up the end credits.

And boomers who are well familiar with the Traffic tune as an FM staple for the last half-century may not be that much less initially puzzled by its appearance than millennials: Why isSteve Winwood warbling aboard the starship Benatar?

(Warning: Our answers include mild thematic spoilers, for the hundred or so arthouse partisans and shut-ins who haven’t seen the film.)

Of all the movies you might walk out of saying, “Man, music supervisor Dave Jordan really earned his salary on that one,” “Endgame” does not rank high. Like other “Avengers” movies, it doesn’t interrupt Alan Silvestri’s score for much else, usually throwing in pop only during a few key “Guardians of the Galaxy” crossover moments are happening, referencing the all-but-constant stream of ‘60s and ‘70s songs that figure into that universe as actual story points. So it’s inevitable that even more fanman and fanwoman scrutiny goes toward what few picks there are from Jordan (presumably) in a film like this one that doesn’t much sweat to the oldies. “Dear Mr. Fantasy” is a resonant enough pick that maybe he merits his paycheck after all.

The obvious tonal explanation: Traffic’s observation that (to quote the Eagles) most of us are sad is apropos, coming on the heels of an introductory scene that reminds us half of civilization went ashes-to-ashes at the end of the previous movie, a mass disappearance overseen by the malevolent rapturer Thanos (Josh Brolin). The literal explanation, clear to anyone who’s a little bit up on the Marvel universe: Glum Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) are playing flick football and awaiting certain death in deep space aboard the Benatar, where the Microsoft Zune belonging to absent Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) would have to be their source of tuneage.

(As “Guardians” viewers will recall, Quill/Star-Lord had his mother’s precious Walkman full of vintage songs smashed to bits in “2,” but quickly inherited from the late Yondu an equally dated and emotionally fraught piece of music hardware, the playlist of which will figure into “Guardians of the Galaxy 3,” James Gunn has promised.)

That leaves only the symbolic question to consider: Who’s Mr. Fantasy, in the Marvel, not Dave Mason, universe? Well, he’s Iron Man, of course — who in this sequel merits a more somber theme than either Black Sabbath or AC/DC could provide. “Endgame” may be an ensemble piece, but by the end of it he’s achieved something close to Main Character status. Tony Stark is the class clown whose melancholia creeps up only sarcastically and around the edges — the troupe’s go-to entertainer as well as constant savior, who maybe can’t juggle being both the wisecracking kid and genius-father-knows-best figure forever. “Sing a song, play guitar, make it snappy,” sings Winwood, maybe referring — 50 years ahead of time — to Stark’s role as joker. “You are the one who can make us all laugh, but doing that you break out in tears.” Is Tony still an emotionally warped guy, despite all the domestication he’s been through since first appearing as a playboy billionaire in 2008? “Please don’t be sad — if it was a straight mind you had, we wouldn’t have known you all these years.” Maybe the filmmakers are trying to tell us that Tony is still so messed up, even Pepper Potts couldn’t reasonably say, “I will fix you.”

The needle is up almost as quickly as it was dropped: three hours doesn’t mean there’s time to fetishize a record (or MP3) collection. There are a couple of choices that don’t require a lot of overthinking— Steppenwolf’s “Hey Lawdy Mama” gives Stan Lee a chance to go out on a sleazebag cameo, and the Rolling Stones’ “Doom and Gloom,” from a few hits collections back, finally gets some sync love during a time-travel prep scene.

The most fun pick, though, is the Kinks’ “Supersonic Rocket Ship,” which doesn’t just push the obvious button in accompanying the scene where Rocket Raccoon and the Hulk travel to re-recruit Thor, but does actually describe the spirit of inclusiveness the “Guardians” franchise is meant to embody: “On my supersonic rocket ship, nobody has to be hip,” Ray Davies promised in the swingin’ jet age of 1967. “Nobody’s gonna travel second class / There’ll be equality / And no suppression of minorities / Well alright.”

The artists who gets the most audio time in “Endgame,” though?  Harry James (and his orchestra) and Kitty Kallen, who get a reprise of Jule Styne’s and Sammy Cahn’s end-of-WW-II-celebrating “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” reprised from a “Captain America” movie for a twist on bringing the boys back home. It doesn’t seem like Steve Rogers’ taste, necessarily, but it’d be nice to think he took advantage of his time-travel sojourn to take in a Traffic show.

It’s the bittersweetly cheerful bookend to that bummer-iffic opening. “Dear Mr. Fantasy” resonates in part because it was one of the early songs to make the Summer of Love feel like winter was coming. That it can serve a similar, lightly ominous purpose in a comic book franchise laden with heartache in 2019 is an interesting addition to the zeitgeist in a year when we’re trying to decide whether resuscitating Woodstock is a good idea or not. Tony Stark, hippie jester in billionaire-industrialist-superhero’s clothing, we hardly knew ye.

Looking for a great new Minecraft 1.14 seed to try? Here are a few of our favorites

Minecraft’s much-anticipated Village and Pillage update (1.14) released this week, and what better way to get into the spirit of the new content than with some brand new seeds. With Village and Pillage just releasing, we’re sure to see a ton of new 1.14 seeds cropping up in the upcoming weeks and months. For now, we’ve put together a list of seven cool Java seeds to use in the latest Minecraft version 1.14. Enjoy!

Best Minecraft 1.14 Seeds: 7 New Java Seeds To Try

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 10101010MICROSOFT

Double Village Seed – 10101010

Coordinates –  x: -500 z: 263

This is a beautiful new 1.14 seed has two villages right by spawn.  This is the more cool looking one. The seed includes a castle with a drawbridge. The terrain is beautiful and varied and both villages are within eyesight of an iceberg. More photos of the seed can be found, here. 

Taiga Seed – 1456770887

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 1456770887MICROSOFT

If you’re looking for a seed that will spawn you inside a Taiga village, this one is quite good. The seed includes a mineshaft at coordinates x: 163, y: 33, z: 245 and a zombie village at coordinates x: -816, y: -192.

Savannah Village Seed – 8610880672223669423

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 8610880672223669423MICROSOFT

Coordinates – x: 276, y: 1049

This stunning seed has a Savannah village that climbs up a mountainside The seed even includes a pirate ship nearby.

Desert Well Seed – 2209676534823432504

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 2209676534823432504MICROSOFT

Coordinates x: 2247, y: 281

This seed spawns you near a village to the northeast. Exploring this seed, you’ll find things like a desert well, pyramid and a ship with a couple of chests.

Stronghold Seed – 6338394802327870500

MInecraft 1.14 Seed – 6338394802327870500 REDDIT

Stronghold Coordinates – x:1432, y: 952

This seed is a Taiga spawn. There is a ravine to cross and players can find a stronghold and a mineshaft here.

Frozen Polar Biome Seed – 2646137890119988483

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 2646137890119988483REDDIT

Coordinates- x: -1637, y: 63, z: 1416

If you’re looking for a frozen wonderland, complete with polar bears, this is your seed!

Large Mountain Seed – 8229589436093457009

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 8229589436093457009REDDIT

Coordinates –  x: 329 z: 267

If you love a detailed terrain, you won’t be able to resist this large mountain seed. You can check out additional images, here. https://imgur.com/a/9p3mqPp

Multiple Biomes Seed -7358942493423380506

Minecraft 1.14 Seed -7358942493423380506REDDIT

Coordinates – x: -175, y: 90, z: -245

This seed is perfect for the biome explorer. It includes a swamp, plains, savanna, and desert all right near the spawn point.

Gaming news these days often revolves around Fortnite, PUBG, and the other battle royale clones that have sprung up because of those two. That was a prestige once enjoyed by Minecraft, which helped bring about other voxel-based survival and building games. It may no longer have the spotlight but Minecraft’s latest update has just started to roll out to prove that it still has what it takes to be popular and profitable, without the shooting mayhem that seems to be the fad these days.

As the name not so subtly points out, this update is all about the new villages that have popped in plains, deserts, and other biomes. These aren’t just simple villagers, though, as each has their jobs and lives, denoted by the clothes they wear. They can even sleep on beds because why wouldn’t they.

No peaceful in-game village would be complete, however, without someone messing things up. Thankfully, these pillagers are not the sharpest knives in the drawer but you’ll still want to equip yourself with the new crossbow and shield items.

Non-humanoid mobs have also been given an update, making them behave more realistically in the process. Pandas can roll and foxes can leap. And Ravagers can headbutt anything in their path, including you. A bit unfair that illagers can ride on them.ADVERTISING

Village and Pillage is such a big update to the Minecraft world and, thankfully, it’s available on all supported platforms. That means both Bedrock (Xbox One, Windows 10 Edition, iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch) and old-school Java editions will get the update, though exact arrival times may vary.

Here’s an odd change to Minecraft on Switch. Apparently the game has had its save cloud data backup option removed. The feature was in there recently, but has now been yanked without any explanation. We’ll keep tabs on the situation to see if an explanation is given, or if the feature returns.

Earlier this year, we supported charity: water, an incredible organisation that’s on a mission to bring clean water to every person on the planet. You can read about the $10,000 donation we made here. But that’s enough.

Wait a minute, no it isn’t! 663 million people currently lack access to clean water (that’s almost 1 in 10 people), which makes the great work of charity: water absolutely essential. They want to bring clean water to as many people as possible, and we want to help them more.

So we teamed up with the excellent content creators Jigarbov Productions. They’ve crafted together a fantastic new map and skin pack, The Travelling Trader. Go to the Minecraft Marketplace on Xbox One, Windows 10 Edition, iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch and you can download it for free! Shall we watch a trailer of this terrific new Minecraft adventure? Let’s!

“But hang on,” I hear you cry. “Does this mean I get a free llama skin? Also, what does this have to do with charity: water?” Well, to answer both your questions, you actually get two llama skins, and as soon as The Travelling Trader has been downloaded from the Minecraft Marketplace 100,000 times, we’ll make a new donation to charity: water of $90,000. That’ll bring us to $100,000 donated, which means ten water projects supported by Minecraft!

Charity: water estimates that the number of people impacted by a $100,000 donation is over 3,300. So all you have to do is download a great map and skin pack, and you’ll help us help a fantastic cause! Every time we call on you to do something like this, you always smash the target in an incredibly short amount of time, and once you’ve downloaded the map 100,000 times, we’ll share the great news on Twitter!

Head to the Minecraft Marketplace now and thank you for helping us help charity: water!

I didn’t think one of the biggest stories of the year for TweakTown would be something covering Minecraft with ‘ray tracing’ style effects with the SEUS Renewed mod that uses path tracing that provides ray tracing-like effects. First we had screenshots and small videos, but now there’s a detailed video of Minecraft with the ray tracing-style effects and it looks awesome.     The shader pack provides beautifully realistic lighting, shadow and reflection effects to shiny surfaces, light shafts, and more. The demo video from Digital Foundry was run on an Intel Core i9-7900X, 32GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. Even with this horsepower running Minecraft with the path tracing effects at 1080p was still struggling to hit 60FPS.   The team at Digital Foundry do an amazing job at showing off the different effects that path tracing brings to Minecraft, with one of the best uses seeing light hitting a wall, and then shining light again behind it causing different shadows to be cast. This can’t be done with pre-baked lighting, and is only achievable with path tracing or real-time ray tracing effects.   It makes for a beautiful experience in something like Minecraft, which has otherwise basic graphics. This makes Minecraft the perfect playground for developers to play around with path tracing to see what real-time ray tracing would be like in a world where you can literally build it from building blocks right in front of you with real-time adjustments to the lighting.   If you want to check more out on SEUS Remastered for Minecraft, download the mod, or support the developer – check out the Patreon page.

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/65690/minecraft-ray-tracing-mod-shown-new-video/index.html

TechSpot regulars may recall that earlier this month, Minecraft — one of the most popular games of the modern generation — got its very own version of ray tracing in the form of a third-party shader pack. The pack adds “path tracing” rendering to the game, which creates effects that are remarkably similar to what we’ve seen in Nvidia RTX-powered titles like Metro Exodus and Battlefield V.

The shader pack adds reflections to shiny surfaces, light shafts, and more. To give us a deeper glimpse of the pack in action, Digital Foundry’s Alex Battaglia and John Linneman have decided to take viewers on a 30-minute in-game ray tracing tour.

Prior to publishing the video, Battaglia constructed a number of rooms, each of which were designed to show off the power of path tracing in a different way. We see specular bounce lighting as light pours into rooms and hits various blocks, and one room even shows the differing levels of reflectivity for various block types – light bounces of metallic blocks more easily than wool blocks, for example.

As Linneman says, this approach to creating ray tracing-like effects is more software-driven than hardware-driven, but it still takes a pretty big bite out of performance. Despite the beefy specs of Linneman’s rig — it was powered by an Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti, 32GB of RAM, and an Intel Core i9 7900X — he still struggled to achieve a smooth 60 FPS at 1080p.

Battaglia’s system was considerably weaker, with a GTX 1070, AMD’s Ryzen 1700X, and 16GB of RAM. As you might expect, his performance was even worse – indeed, he had to knock Minecraft’s resolution down to 720p and cap the FPS at 30 to make the game playable.

Apparently, even that level of playability is only possible because of the very nature of Minecraft: the entire world is made up of blocks, which aren’t very complex. They’re either deleted or existing and remaining still. With very few exceptions (such as sand or gravel, which fall straight down), almost every block in Minecraft is completely static.

Due to these unique qualities, if one were to try to implement this tech in another ordinarily non-performance-intensive game, such as Fortnite, there’s a good chance it’d be near-impossible to run on modern rigs without some form of hardware-based optimization.

Still, performance aside, it’s interesting to see Minecraft from such a different perspective. If you have a rig that can take full advantage of this mod (created by Sonic Ether), you can download it from the modder’s Patreon page right here (https://www.patreon.com/sonicether ) .