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

I still remember loading up a very early alpha of Minecraft for the first time of what would ultimately be thousands, spawning in the middle of a wide, dense forest, completely bewildered. I alt-tabbed across to my trusty Twitter client, begging for tidbits of help as my followers laughed at my ineptitude and threw me vague suggestions such as “build shelter” and “don’t die”.

Eventually, like most early Minecraft players, I ended up punching a tree for a while and the rest basically flowed through on its own. Over the next few months, I was enraptured with the idea of complete and pure freedom of movement, control, and almost limitless creation. Minecraft‘s story was my story, and the land I inhabited and built was based on my attempt at nirvana. This may or may not have included ridiculous amounts of rail.

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? Advances in technology over the past two decades have opened the possibilities of both situations, with titles like Dwarf Fortress representing the breadth of one end and crime simulators such as GTA and Saints Row the other.

The key for success usually lies in a rough middle ground, by making the opportunity available for exploration and creative exposition, with a strong narrative backbone that, even at very early levels, provides an incentive to explore. There will always be a market for titles that decide to go “complete sandbox”, but the key to success here is an absolutely spectacular set of tools to make things happen. If it’s too difficult to build, exploit, expand, or destroy, no-one will feel the ability to connect with your game and it becomes work. Developing these tools should be the #1 goal and cornerstone of any team dedicated to creating an engine “for” creation – even if the game is difficult, an interface that is easy to learn but difficult to master is essential.

A particularly good example of a sandbox that is loved or loathed is Little Big Planet on the PS3. One of the surprise early hits on the system, the game featured a short campaign mode but ultimately relied almost exclusively on players to use the tools at hand to develop their own levels, or in some cases, complete games. The ease in which materials could be placed and physics could be manipulated inspired both traditional platform fare but also experiments that surprised even the developers, such as a complete recreations of PacMan, Mario Kart and Buzz, a popular Playstation quiz show title. At the same time, many players felt cheapened that they were expected to seek out their own fun, especially when a lot of the quality was buried under piles of crap.

Not everyone feels the urge to become a creator.

So how do developers bridge the gap between those two types of gamers? Do they follow the successful run of EVE Online, where opportunity for success or mayhem is virtually unlimited but bound within a certain area of the game world? Or do they  follow Far Cry 3, allowing the player to simply choose between a linear and non-linear experience? It doesn’t always work as well as imagined either. In Fallen Earth, a F2P MMO, players are forced to imagine themselves in the harsh environment of a post apocalyptic landscape, to the point where they must fight and scavenge for everything. If you want to cruise the ravaged land in your very own hog, you’re in for hours of metal scavenging, fuel refining and skill bumping. Almost every element of your existence in the world relies in some element of level enhancement, eventually morphing what should be a fun experience into an exhausting chore.

But lets face it; almost every exciting experience, particularly the ones you describe to family and friends, comes from a sandbox. Stalking enemies in FC3, before being snuck up on and subsequently mauled by a tiger. Successfully convincing the leader of an enemy corporation in EVE to hire you so you can report on their location and assets. Building an automated factory that creates solar panels in Minecraft. Chasing around terrified NPCs with a giant purple dildo in Saints Row 3. Hiding in a dark corner of an old industrial site in DayZ. In my mind, the best experiences are those that no-one has thought of before, or those that start as tiny seeds in the back of your mind before blossoming into crazy projects that take up all of your time.

The problem? There’s a whopping 22 months to go until we can get our hands on Star Citizen. 8 months until Archeage. Roughly six months until Starbound and still no end in site for The Repopulation. Note to developers: While we enjoy playing your stories, we also want to create our own memories. Provide us more opportunities and we will reward you handsomely.

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

This is a cool idea! Minecraft Reality is an augmented reality app through which you can upload your Minecraft creations and then place them and view them in the real world through your iPhone’s camera. More than that, you can dump your models in public places where other users might bump into them and admire your work.

The app was created by AR developers 13th Lab, with the blessing of Mojang. It’s on sale on the App store for $1.99, but if you are going to pick it up be aware: It doesn’t support full functionality for anything but the latest iPhone, and won’t run at all on anything before the iPhone 4. So if you do have the latest iPhone, pick up the app and tell us where you leave all your creations so we can all go check them out!

Source: The Verge

While fans and developers alike are whooping it up at Euro Disney for MineCon 2012 this weekend, there is some serious business going on between all the attempts to steal Notch’s hat and/or buy him a beer. Mojang used the occasion to announce a new version of Minecraft Pocket Edition, previously restricted to mobile phones, for über-cheap mini-PC Raspberry Pi.

The new version was developed by Aron and Daniel and isn’t just a straight port; called Minecraft: Pi Edition, is boasts a revised feature set and support for multiple programming languages. Best of all, it will be entirely free and available “soon”. This enables just about the thriftiest, most portable Minecraft LAN party you’ll ever experience, but as well as playing the game, you can use the minimalist computer to learn how to code. Learn more about the not-for-profit Raspbery Pi on its website.

Source: Mojang

Have you guys heard of the latest thing sweeping the Internet? It’s a little game called Minecraft and it’s doing pretty well apparently. By ‘pretty well’ I mean, it’s just passed 8 million copies sold for PC and Mac.

Congrats, Mojang! This makes Minecraft the… (counting)… ninth best-selling video game for PC (including Mac and Linux, for what it’s worth, tee hee) ever, right in front of Guild Wars Prophecies and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, right behind Half-Life and Skyrim, but nowhere near The Sims or The Sims 2.

When asked to comment on the success of their baby, Jeb said, “I can’t think of anything clever to say. It’s simply amazing”, while Notch responded with a series of random characters. No, really:

“69I960EHE0A4A0IVG0EHE02500R4R0G1T30PLJ00V6V0EHE0V1U01V10U5U0VGV0V4R”, he said. They might not be random, knowing Notch’s love of cryptic puzzles, so if you figure out an explanation, do let us know in the comments.

Source: Mojang

Could your Minecraft project do with more glass bottles, glowstone dust, gunpowder, redstone dust, spider eyes, sticks, sugar or water bottles? I think it probably could, which means you’ll want to go about making your own witch farm. Witches, just released in the ‘Pretty Scary’ Halloween update, drop all these things when they’re killed — which makes figuring out exactly how to turn one of their huts into a spawning farm a tantalising, if difficult prospect. Settle in for this 15-minute video that shows you how to turn a simple hut into a 128 x 128 farming machine.

Source: PCGamesN

Although it may be all about AAA games right now, Splinter Cell: Blacklist director and Ubisoft veteran Patrick Redding thinks that’s not sustainable. The future, he says, is ‘aaa’ games.

I was confused too, but here’s his explanation: “The market as a whole is going to undergo a critical shift in priorities, a shift away from the absolute primacy of graphics and production values and content creation toward systemic depth. This trend is going to trigger a reality check for developers like me who work on established franchises with a large succession of sequels, and it’s also going to be a call-to-arms for smaller game creators,” he said at the Gamercamp festival in Toronto over the weekend.

Redding pointed to Minecraft as a good example of ‘aaa’ design, allowing for players to take control of the game and make whatever they wanted with it rather than having one “right” way to play the game. The shift, he claimed, would be primarily driven by digital distribution channels, the rising cost of game production, and players keen to embrace games that allow them greater control. If the sales of Minecraft and the staggering popularity of Day Z are anything to go by, he may be right.

Source: Games Industry International

I recently called the Far Cry 3/Minecraft cross-over the weirdest cross-over ever. And I stand by that. But coming in at a close, yet distinct second is this animated trailer for a fictional cross-over between Minecraft and The Matrix. I know this isn’t exactly a game trailer, but it’s well done, and you guys love Minecraft right?

By the way, this comes from the talented YouTuber HBruna who has made other entertaining cartoons — most of which are video game related. Go check him out, and subscribe if you like what you see!

Source: PC Gamer

Well, this is interesting, and kind of weird! Can’t wait for Farcry 3 to hit stores in late November? Why not pick up this Far Cry 3 inspired map for Minecraft? All tools, weapons and tools have been changed to fit with the Far Cry 3 theme as you wander the island trying to survive. There are key characters and locations reflected in Minecraft styles, including Vaas, Jason and Citra — not to mention more than 50 easter eggs for you to hunt out. Check out the trailer below, and if you’re interested, you can download the pack from our file library here.

Minecraft’s “Pretty Scary” update would probably have ended up a lot less scary if it had gone out without these patches: Mojang are delaying the release of the patch by a day to fix bugs including “suffocation of mobs”, “mobs glitching through wooden floors”, and “players glitching through beacons”. Accordingly, Jeb has issued a statement announcing it will slip to Thursday, October 25.

There is some good news for the faint of heart, though: wet wolves were apparently too scary and have had to be toned down.

The “Pretty Scary” update bring with it all sorts of excellent new things to Minecraft, including but not limited to: Wither and his army of minions, scary zombies that infect you, scary bats, scary witches, tougher AI, beacons, carrots on sticks, controllable pigs, carrots, potatoes, pumpkin pie, anvils and — “perhaps the scariest thing we’ve ever put in Minecraft – FLOWER POTS”.

Batten down the hatches, people.

If you think about it, Far Cry 3 and Minecraft have a lot in common. One is about a man stranded on an island who has to blow stuff up and get sweet tattoos, and the other is the sequel to Far Cry 2.

Jokes aside, there’s really not very much to bring the two together except perhaps the wacky dedication of the folks at Ubisoft, who apparently will be releasing a Far Cry 3-themed map and texture pack for the game. It’s not clear whether the pack recreates the entire island from Ubisoft’s title in Minecraft, but it’s certainly recreating the rest: Vaas, Jason and Citra will all be there, along with “key locations” from the game and “over 50 easter eggs” to find.

The map is being put together by Michael Lambert, creator of Newcraft City, and textured by Axel Janssen and Yohann Delcourt. It’ll be released on PC via the Far Cry 3 website on October 26.

Source: Press Release

Mojang have released a new snapshot for Minecraft, the primary addition of which is a clanking great iron anvil.

Crafted from six iron blocks and a single iron ingot (so 55 iron ingots in total), the Anvil can be used to repair and rename enchanted items (and even un-enchanted items, if you wanted to name your wooden pickaxe for some reason). Uniquely though, the anvil both retains existing enchantments and allows you to expand on them.

Perhaps most importantly, though, the anvil inflicts falling damage equal to the height from which it falls — leading to what, we suspect, will be same fantastically devious PVP traps. Get on it, people.

Other important and delightful changes in this upcoming patch are the addition of custom creeper explosion radius configs, experience for breeding animals (excellent!) and a few tweaks to the debug interface.

Source: Mojang

If you’re at all interested in things that are awesome, perhaps you’d like to know that the ambitious project to recreate World of Warcraft inside Minecraft has now been released in a beta stage. The Crafting Azeroth project is exactly that, and is now available via a 2.17 GB torrent that will extract to a monstrous 24 GB.

A Bukkit server is required to run the map yourself in order to transition between areas properly, and the comments in the Reddit thread announcing the release indicate that you’ll need to be careful or the map will begin to tear itself apart through lava and fire. Good to know! Google Map overviews are available if you don’t want to host it yourself, starting with Kalimdor and The Eastern Kingdoms. The whole process is apparently heavily-automated, assisted by custom software created by the developers, and the beta product alone weighs in at 275 square kilometers built from over 68 billion blocks.

If you’d rather just page have a quick flick through, a full image gallery of the recreation is available here, along with some before-and-after shots.

Noted game developer Markus “Notch” Persson, creator of Minecraft and current developer of 0x10c, has updated his Twitter account.

“It was a difficult decision,” confided Notch to games.on.net in an exclusive and entirely fictional interview. “But I figured, hey, that’s what Twitter is for, right? You say things on it.”

games.on.net watched as Notch — still wearing his trademark hat despite the fact that we were both indoors — tapped away carefully on the keyboard. He stopped several times, as if thinking to himself carefully. Then he wrote a bit more until he was finished.

Suddenly, he frowned. “I’ve hit 147 characters,” he said. “I’ll have to delete a word.” We held our breath as he scanned over his tweet, looking for spare characters he could remove. “Ah,” he said finally, highlighting and deleting the necessary characters. “That’ll do it.”

Cautiously and slowly, the legendary indie developer then leaned over and hit the ‘Tweet’ button, sending his tweet to his 905,000 followers.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever tweet again,” he said. “That one really took it out of me.”

Source: Twitter

Looking forward to witches teaming up with creepers to ruin everything you’ve ever loved? Nathan “Dinnerbone” Adams at Mojang has casually revealed the existence of this new ranged mob, which has “a magical nose that wiggles”, apparently. Presumably, while it’s shooting fireballs of some description at you.

“How do you even draw a witch anyway?,” he exclaimed. “Pointy nose? In a blocky world it’d look like Pinocchio!”

Due in time for Halloween, the ‘Pretty Scary’ update for Minecraft will also feature the Wither, a three-headed floating black skeleton boss mob. You can see the Wither King in action in this video. Nasty.

Source: PCGamesN