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Notch suggests Minecraft achievements, console ports in the future
Minecraft has already cemented its place as one of the best sandbox games of all time, but sometimes you need a little narrative with your creative impulses. Don't worry -- there's a solution for you: achievements. In an interview with Gamasutra, Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson says that achievements are one way he could add a little narrative structure to the title, by rewarding players for doing certain things in the game in a certain order (starting by chopping down a tree, for example, and moving on to "killing a dragon or something"). Notch also says he's still surprised by all the interest in the game, both his own and that of players, who've actually turned up in greater numbers after he recently decided to raise the price. Also, while he does agree that Minecraft could be ported to other platforms at some point and "become a franchise," he warns that, "if we make an Xbox version there should be a point to it being on Xbox." Sounds reasonable enough. Hopefully if he does go with the achievement model, we'll get a nice big reward for "Burning Down the House."
Minecraft beta 1.3 adds hospitality
The latest version of the still-unfinished (but super popular anyway!) Minecraft brings beds. Yes, beds. These comfy furniture items act as a mechanism for skipping the night. "If all players in a map [sleep] in a bed during night," according to the update notes, "the game immediately skips until morning." Just the thing for a complicated building project! This latest version of the beta (v1.3) also adds a new, optional lighting engine, enables more save slots and puts "three new half-size blocks" in the world. If you were holding out for a different block size before you took the Minecraft plunge, your time has come.
Minecraft clone coming to Xbox Live Indie Games: FortressCraft
Are you wildly in love with Minecraft, but your computer lacks the technoguts required to really process its cuboid contents? First of all, your computer is whack. Secondly: Independent studio Projector Games is working on an extremely similar title for the Xbox Live Indie Games platform. Check out the fan-made video posted after the jump to see just how extremely similar we mean. The game, which is (perhaps cheekily) titled FortressCraft, will be broken down into seven chapters to be released every four to six weeks. In a post on the Minecraft forums, a Projector representative explained, "Chapter 1 is basically Minecraft's Creative, Chapter 2 adds in crafting, Chapter 3 adds in life, Chapter 4 adds in machinery, Chapter 5 adds in Minions, Chapter 6 adds in PvP, Chapter 7 adds in Fortress Assault mode... (or whatever)." According to the FortressCraft Twitter account, the first chapter is due out next Friday, March 4 for 80 Microsoft Points ($1). Each of these Chapters contains the features of previous installments -- a workaround for the platform's inability to patch in new updates. It sounds like a pretty ambitious (if not fairly original) undertaking for the developer. Whether the studio receives the support needed to complete all seven chapters -- or whether litigious sources intercede -- remains to be seen. [Thanks, Styles!]
Minecraft documentary gets a 20 minute preview, needs you to chip in for the finished product
Do you love Minecraft? Wait, don't answer. We know the answer. Well, we know how you feel -- and so do the folks at 2 Player Productions, the documentarians that brought you the extra-special chiptune film, Reformat the Planet. The scrappy team of filmmakers has once again gone back to work, this time focusing their attentions on the gaming phenomenon and its creator, Markus "Notch" Persson, in a project entitled Minecraft: The Story of Mojang. 2 Player has taken its project to the streets (and by streets we mean internet) by posting a 20 minute teaser of the forthcoming documentary, and asking for funding via Kickstarter. Just think, you could be your very own Hollywood mogul. There are all kinds of goodies for those who lay down the cash; for instance, if you pledge more than $2,500, you'll get an actual pick axe mounted on a stand signed by the Mojang team. And for $10,000? You get an Executive Producer credit and your own profile page on IMDB. The project is aiming for $150,000 of funding, and has already scored $22,048 (at the time this article was written) with 32 days to go. If you were serious about what you said earlier when it comes to Minecraft, you owe it to yourself to put your money where your virtual mouth is. You can also take a look at a teaser clip after the break -- and that won't cost you a dime.
Took longer than expected: A marriage proposal in Minecraft
Wow, you really can build anything in Minecraft: To-scale models of the U.S.S. Enterprise, gigantic explorable globes, or relationships that last a lifetime. Check out the video after the jump to see one BioWare audio designer's super saccharine, equally nerdy request for betrothment.
Halo recreated in Minecraft somehow, probably using dark magic or something
We can't begin to understand how YouTube user SidolaTehNerd managed to recreate Halo using the rudimentary tools of Minecraft -- but our lack of understanding doesn't make this accomplishment any less radical. Check out a clip of the world-builder-turned-FPS after the jump.
2 Player Productions working on Minecraft documentary
Independent documentary outfit 2 Player Productions is making quite a name for itself with it's gaming oriented films -- you've probably already seen one of their works; a list which includes Reformat the Planet, season one of Penny Arcade: The Series and short behind-the-scenes videos for Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch Productions. The group is adding another high-profile name to their list of subjects with their next film: Mojang Studios, the creators behind the indie blockbuster Minecraft. We'll have to wait until next month before we can lay eyes on the film, but 2 Player Productions uploaded a few production stills to get the ball rolling. It might be too soon to say, but we're pretty sure that we're going to ... dig it?
Minecraft dispensers rigged to exchange cake for death
Need some inspiration for exciting applications of Minecraft's recently added Dispenser block? Why not use it to distribute delicious cakes to hungry adventurers? Also, why not hook up that cake machine to a ten-story-tall wall of flaming arrow cannons? Watch the video below for a deadly demo.
Minecraft becomes a million-seller
As of the writing of this post, the Minecraft stats page shows that 1,000,049 people have purchased Markus "Notch" Persson's indie construction sensation -- 31.5 percent of all of the registered players. The total currently doesn't count unredeemed gift codes, either, of which there are probably more than a few in this post-hoiiday season. That's an awful lot of copies sold of a game that just hit beta. Conversely, that's an awful lot of people willing to pay money to alpha- or beta-test a game. If you'd like to get in on this phenomenon on the ground floor (and then build the rest of the floors out of stone cubes), it's still on sale for €14.95, a 25% discount active for the duration of the beta.
Official t-shirts provide uniforms for Minecrafting
In what might be the first official merch release for a game that hasn't even hit beta, you can now express your appreciation for indie sensation Minecraft by wearing some real-world Minecraft ... crafts. ThinkGeek is selling two officially-licensed t-shirts, one featuring the Creeper and another bearing the logo of a fictitious Crafters union. Each shirt is available for $20 in sizes up to XL, with XXL and XXXL versions available for an additional dollar per X. Either is a great gift for the Minecraft fan in your life -- but if you don't have the money for t-shirts, you can always give the thoughtful gift of personal assurance that monsters can't knock your house over.
Mr. Minecraft is a god in Super Meat Boy
With players barreling through the PC version of Super Meat Boy, Minecraft's main character ("Steve") has been discovered to be ... more or less omnipotent. You could say he breaks the game ... or you could say he's totally boss. We're going with the latter.
Minecraft surpasses 500K sales, Persson explains how he did it
According to the official Minecraft stats page, more than 500,000 of the nearly 1.6 million registered players have already purchased a license for the game, which is still in the alpha phase of development. That's pretty much unprecedented in the history of game development -- certainly indie game development -- and perhaps only comparable to a big-budget marketing effort; one that might secure those kinda pre-release purchase numbers through pre-orders and offer a limited "beta" trial of the game through a highly-controlled channel. So, yeah, Minecraft's "alpha stage" success is unprecedented. Is it just luck? The one-man mastermind behind it all, Markus Perrson, doesn't think so. "I think originality and easy access is much more important than luck," he told Develop in a recent interview. "If you make a game that's genuinely good, and it's relatively unique, you can get a lot potential customers. If you make sure they don't have to jump through too many loops to play or even pay for the game, you can convert those into actual customers." Currently, almost 60 percent of Minecraft users are playing for free.
Deniedcraft: Minecraft server slammed by upset fans, creator takes action
If you've noticed that the server that's home to devilishly addicted indie darling Minecraft has been a little slow this week, there's a good reason why. A group of what are apparently disgruntled players of the game have orchestrated a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the hardware, overwhelming it and -- at least for a time -- bringing it to its knees. In a post on the notorious message board 4chan, a person claiming to represent the group said that the DDoS attack was designed to "send [Minecraft creator Markus Persson] a clear message of how the future of Minecraft will turn out unless he gets to work, namely by influencing the amount of sales taking place, due to the attacks." On his blog, Persson has stated that he's "signed up for a DDoS protection service, and took the chance to upgrade the server hardware to a much more powerful beast." The latter is still a work in progress. "I haven't migrated things over to that server yet, but that's coming soon," he wrote. We're sure someone will recreate the whole sordid event in Minecraft soon enough.
Anti-Aliased: How I mine for craft
This column was bound to come sometime. We've had legions of people asking us, "Why don't you cover Minecraft? It's totally an MMO!" The email barrage was so constant that I had nightmarish fits in my sleep, where I was drowning in oddly block-shaped emails pouring out of my ceiling. Now, after I've finally played Minecraft, my nightmarish fits have turned into scenes in which I'm being attacked by giant block-shaped spiders, but that's neither here nor there. I can see why people have fallen in love with this game, and they have every reason to. Minecraft may not be an MMO by our standards, but it is an example of gaming done right. It's the purest form of everything we love about gaming, and it's a game that could teach MMO makers a lot about design, should they care to listen.
Working 16-bit computer built inside Minecraft
Sure, lots of players are building memories and geek tributes in the incredibly popular indie sandbox game Minecraft, but here's something actually functional: a working 16-bit ALU (arithmetic logic unit) designed entirely in the game. The "wires" are made from Redstone, a unit in the game that can carry a fiery charge. So to calculate numbers, creator "theinternetftw" just lights torches representing binary numbers on one end, and then waits to see which torches (representing binary digits) light up on the other; giving him the mathematical answer he's looking for. Crazy? Yes. Nerdy? Very. Awesome? Indeed. All the hard work must have been worth it -- theinternetftw has been posting about the project on Reddit and reportedly got a job offer out of it. But he's not done yet: He wants to add some memory to the computer and even make it "Hack" compatible, which means it would compile and run actual code (albeit very, very slowly). Said Minecraft creator Markus Persson via Twitter last night, "I saw the ALU, and I wet myself! Seriously, I got a hose and wet myself. With pee."
Friday Livestream: Player's Choice edition [Updated]
This week we decided to do something different with the Friday Livestream. Frankly, I couldn't make a decision on what game I wanted to play in front of everyone today. I have so many games on my hard drive, and so little time to play them all! So, I did what any good confused editor does -- defer the decision to the community! I gave you four games to vote on: The Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest II, Aion, and Minecraft. The call went out over the Massively.com Twitter feed, and you guys didn't disappoint! The votes have been tallied, and the game has been chosen... but which one made the cut? Find out by checking out our livestream after the break, or just click the link above to be taken straight to the video! Come and join us for another great edition of the Friday Livestream! [Update: The livestream is over, but you can check out our recording of the event right after the break! The chosen game was Lord of the Rings Online! Grats to the LotRO community for so many votes for your game!]
Timelapse game programming brings you from concept to final boss in 06:38
We only managed to take a couple of programming classes in high school before we realized that you couldn't do Friendster and code the next Super Mario Bros. 3 at the same time--so we decided to become bloggers. Luckily, some folks stuck with it long enough to be able to show off what a strictly limited social networking policy can do for the gaming world. Many of the competitors in the annual 48-hour Ludum Dare 18 competition took time-lapse videos of their coding experiences, and they're almost as entertaining as the games themselves: check after the jump for the thrillingly compressed making-of documentary for Notch's addictive Metagun. SPOILER ALERT: Apparently, Notch had time to sleep and eat. Bummer.
