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