A modder by the name of StellaArtois has released some very rough and completely unofficial but totally working drivers to enable you to play Minecraft through the Oculus Rift VR headset (even though he currently doesn’t even have one of his own to test it on!).

The mod is very clearly in alpha state and requires quite a few steps to get it to work successfully, including opening your .jar files and mucking around with the contents, as well as changing Windows environment variables. But you’re a proud PC gamer! Don’t let that stop you.

Our forum user Mekon has already got it running on his machine, and says that head tracking works fine, “although I can’t recommend strongly enough that you turn mouse sensitivity down to at least 30% or lower, or you will blow chunks – the simplest nudge of the mouse at 100% seems to spin you around 720 degrees in a nanosecond”. Good advice!

Download the mod and get the instructions here.

Source: Thanks, Mekon!

Last night, Funko mercilessly killed and resurrected the games.on.net free-for-all Minecraft server. No longer the ’3FL’ or ‘Wild West’ server, it’s now called the games.on.net PVP Minecraft server.

What’s it all about? Glad you asked! You can find all the rules governing the server by clicking here — there aren’t many, since the whole point of the server is to go nuts and murder and betray each other in creative ways. If you’re looking for a safe place to build and trade with people, try our regular, white-listed Minecraft server instead (details here).

Connect to the games.on.net Minecraft PVP server at minecraftpvp.games.on.net. We’re currently running CraftBukkit 1.5.2 and we’ve already noticed a few bugs, so please contact us or post in this thread if you notice anything weird.

Approximately one hojillion children (and just as many adults) are playing Minecraft at any given second, and it’s those Minecraft-playing families that Mojang is targeting with a new, paid Minecraft server-hosting service they will soon be offering.

Known as Minecraft Realms, the service is expected to cost between $10 – $15 a month and offer a simple, private server where players have full control over who has access, with only one person per world actually required to have a Realms account. Other players only need a copy of Minecraft and an internet connection as normal.

“In the end I think this will get Minecraft new players, since there is a viral aspect of Realms,” said Mojang CEO Carl Manneh to GamesIndustry International. “Kids will probably invite friends who don’t have Minecraft yet to play with them.”

“But since we have about 10 million paying PC gamers and, soon, as many mobile gamers, there’s definitely potential. And yes, if we look ahead, I do think [Realms will] be the biggest source of income in the future, and to bring in more money in total than the game itself.”

A beta launch of the service is tentatively planned for May.

Source: GamesIndustry International

Queensland has seen some terrible flooding of late, resulting in a disruption to work, school and leisure pursuits, not to mention random looting, injury and loss of life. One group of students and their professor though, took it as an opportunity to explore a new kind of learning environment — a virtual one.

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, yeah, this is all just fancy talk for recreating their campus in Minecraft, isn’t it?” And you’d be right. The students and their professor built their campus, classrooms, library and all in Minecraft. But the concept goes so much further than that. Their library, for example holds the lecturer’s notes and the student’s research reports!

A few days ago, the creators of the MinecraftUni project found themselves locked out of uni for the second day in a row, due to storm damage, flooding and the dangers posed to everyone involved. What better opportunity to try out their ‘Mineclass’?

Student started logging on at 10am, slides were reviewed and questioned asked and answered. Students even received XP for their participation. I’m sure it must have felt bizarre and surreal sharing a classroom space with Ash Ketchum and what looks like Sauron and Gimli, but the class was a complete success and after an hour and a half, class broke up and all went out to enjoy celebratory fireworks.

The future is now, people!

Source: MinecraftUni

The sandbox is a risky move for developers, mostly because you’re relying on your game being flexible enough for players to make their own fun. Minecraft was obviously not the first cab at the rank, with early titles like Sim City providing you with nothing but an empty space and a world of opportunity.

But what has changed is the defining principles of what constitutes a sandbox: Is it something that provides almost complete avenue for whatever your mind can muster, or can it be encased in arbitrary borders and attempt to tell a story?

Every day, Minecraft seems to creep a little bit closer to being a full-on MMO, and the announcement of this new Central Lobby System from dedicated modders HighlifeTTU and lazertester takes this a step further: creating a full 3-D lobby/server browser that allows you to wander around and explore while choosing which server to join.

The whole setup includes a relaxation lounge as well as zoned-off PVP brawling areas, with hundreds and hundreds of players wandering the hallways, reading server descriptions, jumping in and out of them through portals, chatting with each other and swimming in pools.

As you may have guessed, the mod itself is basically a tiny Minecraft world which then connects to other worlds, but the way it works is apparently very intuitive and helps to bind people together into a greater community. It’s currently only available in the US, but the team plan to expand it to Australia and Europe too.

Check out photos and descriptions of how it all works by clicking right here.

Source: PCGamesN

If you don’t like Minecraft even just a little bit I am very sorry to hear it, as it means you are increasingly alone: everyone else loves it. Mojang has released sales figures for all three current versions of the sandbox adventure crafting thing for the month of December and the whole of 2012, revealing they made over 15 million sales last year.

Of these, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was the most popular, managing over 5.8 million downloads across both Android and iOS in 2012. More than 706,000 of these were in the Christmas week alone, with over 280,000 on Christmas Day. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition was the next most successful, pulling in over 5 million sales in 2012, including more than 325,000 in the holiday week and 100,000+ on Christmas Day.

The PC and Mac version, most dear to our hearts, only generated a bit over 70,000 sales on December 25 and more than 241,000 over the course of the week. It also came in last for the year’s totals with 4.1 million sales.

Still, it’s a staggering accomplishment for what began as a tiny indie affair. Congratulations, Mojang!

Source: Mojang

Ever wanted to run around in a 1:1500 scale version of Australia, as rendered in Minecraft? Well, your desires are soon to be fulfilled as a person named lentebriesje is working on a 1:1500 scale version of planet Earth, and has already knocked off Australia from the list along with Europe, North America and South America.

The Australia map, which you can download and see renders of here, includes deserts, different types of forests, as well as custom tree designs. A list with coordinates has been created to help you find (or teleport to) where your hometown would be.

Lentebriesje warns that the map is best used in creative mode, as “underground everything is stone”. You are warned!

Source: PC Gamer

Minecraft: The Story of Mojang is the long-awaited documentary for the Swedish studio behind Minecraft. Created by 2-Player Productions, it’s finally out — and they’ve taken the unusual step of uploading it directly to The Pirate Bay themselves straight away.

“We wanted to come here first because we knew the movie would end up here eventually, and the best thing to do seemed to be opening a dialogue. Torrents and piracy are a way of life and it probably won’t be going anywhere anytime soon,” reads the listing. “There are many people that want to punish you for that, but we have a more realistic outlook on things.”

“We’ve been there. We’ve all needed to do it at some point. Maybe you don’t have the money. Maybe you want to try before you buy. Maybe you’re pissed at us for premiering the movie on Xbox Live. These are all fine reasons. But if you feel that piracy is, in Gabe Newell’s words, “a service problem,” please consider that we are selling DRM free digital downloads that you can watch in whatever manner you please.”

“Watch the movie. Hopefully you’ll like it, and understand what we’re trying to do. Please consider supporting us by buying the $8 DRM-free digital download of the movie at www.theminecraftmovie.com, or the $20 DVD from www.fangamer.net.”

If you’re playing Minecraft on Christmas Day, then not only do we here at games.on.net salute you for doing away with all that pesky “family interaction” nonsense, but we also have a surprise: your storage chests will turn into Christmas presents, presumably as some sort of Christmas present.

The new skin, discovered by an eager Redditor in the latest snapshot, shows both red and green Christmas-present themed skins waiting to be unlocked on December 25. If you’ve got the snapshot set up and working, you can set your system clock to December 25 and fool the game into unlocking them early and spoil Christmas for yourself.

Skis have also been spotted lurking in the code or the next snapshot, although how they work, what they do or where they’ll even show up is so far not known.

Source: PCGamesN

Information about the next Minecraft snapshot has been released, showing that the game is set to get a number of substantial new additions.

Users with their graphics set to ‘Fancy’ will be treated to items rendered in proper 3D when dropped on the ground, rather than the current 2D sprites.

In addition, Fireworks — which were added last snapshot — have now been improved to have ‘more pop’ and look prettier. Also coming are several other tweaks: a new ‘Thorns’ enchantment that reflects melee damage, the addition of enchanted books to dungeons, to villagers for trading with, and in other places. You can now drop a whole stack of items if you’re crouched while doing so, and shears can be enchanted to harvest cobwebs.

Hit up this Minecraft thread on Reddit for the full changelog, with some instructional videos and a list of bugfixes.

Source: Reddit

Do you like building outrageous things with redstone in Minecraft? Of course you do. Well, Mojang have announced that Minecraft updates from now on are going to be smaller and more focused around specific single features — and the first one, 1.5, is going to “The Redstone Update”.

Announced to great cheer at this year’s Minecon, the Redstone Update will give redstone a variable signal strength and introduce a new capacitor block. The block will work in a similar fashion to a repeater, but will only produce full output when the input reaches a specific strength. Jeb used the example of weighted pressure plates that could change their output signal strength depending on pressure, couple with detector rails that have a stronger output when a minecart is filled.

This could then be forwarded to a capacitor block, which in turn would activate on the cart being full. Jeb claimed that minecarts currently “could be so much better”, and is looking at huge overhauls to the system. Also being worked on is a sunlight detecting block, fireworks, and a new Nether-based ore that the capacitor block will require.

Source: Gamespot