Minecraft video shows lovely 3D-printed Minecraft village
A little while ago we threw a spotlight on this gorgeous model of a Minecraft village, ported from Minecraft into a CAD program, and then built with a 3D printer. Now, there’s a video. A well-placed coin shows just how tiny the model is. It’s total dimensions are just 360 x 250 x 60 mm. D’aww.
If only 3D printing wasn’t so expensive, we’d find a way to carve a model of the glorious constructions on the PC Gamer server. We could stick some cogs in it, add some tilt-shift and shoot a pretty good reconstruction of the Game of Thrones intro, only with more Nyan cats. The model above was created with the Zprinter 650.
You can find plenty more images of tiny Minecraft worlds on the post apocalyptic research institute flickr account. Here are a few more choice picks from the recently uploaded sets.
The First Moments of Minecraft
On May 17, 2009, 04:24:07 AM, Markus Persson posted an alpha version of Minecraft to the Feedback forum on TIGSource.com. The image above was the screenshot, and there was a link to launch the in-browser Java applet. “The main inspiration for this game is Infiniminer, but it’s going to move in a more Dwarf Fortress way, gameplay wise. =)”.
You’ll often find articles that tell the “oral history” of something, with direct quotes from those involved telling the story of a band’s success, or a TV show’s creation. With Minecraft, to begin with, there was just Notch and the internet. Instead of an oral history, you have a messageboard history, as the game was rapidly updated and players commented.
When Notch posted that first Minecraft link, the game was only at version 0.0.11a. It took 7 minutes and 57 seconds for someone to post the first response: “Their animations pretty crazy,” said forum user Schtee. Over the next 24 hours, 4 pages of comments were posted. Looking through the full thread, it’s remarkable how quickly the game seemed to capture player’s imaginations.
We’ve quoted some of these comments below to try to tell the story of those first few moments with the game, including the first screenshot shared by a player, where the Minecraft name came from, and two game modes that were planned but never made the cut.
We’ve upgraded our Minecraft US server. Come build with us!
You all have built some amazing things on our Minecraft server over the past year, and we’re excited to keep things going! We recently upgraded our server’s hardware and software to boost performance and allow for more simultaneous users, and we added some new plugins to keep things interesting.
Check out the video that Jpang (one of the server’s volunteer moderators) made to showcase the awesome things the community has built, and then come join us!
Server IP address: 207.210.252.12:25566
Steam group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/PCGMCUS
Contact mdoerators: pcgmcusmods@gmail.com
Minecraft Lego gets official approval, in development now
LEGO are now in the process of developing Minecraft sets to be sold worldwide. Last month Mojang launched a pitch through the LEGO CUSOO site. Pitches that pick up more than ten thousand visitor votes are passed on to the designers and decision makers at LEGO for a closer look. Mashable mention that Minecraft Lego has now received a big fat APPROVED stamp after picking up 10k approvals in two days, a CUSOO record.
Lego say “we are now developing a concept that celebrates the best aspects of building with the LEGO system and in Minecraft and we can’t wait to show it to you — but we aren’t ready just yet.” Mojang will receive 1% of any profits gathered by the Lego sets bearing its branding, which they plan to give to charity. It’s odd to think that Lego-influenced Minecraft should inspire Lego sets. We caught up with Notch recently to see what he thought. “Yeah, it’s weird,” he said.
Notch: “It’s become hip to pay for indie games”
Are Mojang still indie developers? Since Minecraft’s inception years ago, Notch’s block builder has sold a price-tag-defeating 4,733,940 copies and been awarded 96% in our Minecraft review. An Xbox 360 port is incoming, and the touchy-feely Android/iOS ports are already available. They’re even making Minecraft LEGO.
“These days it’s become hip to pay for indie games. That’s partly down to people charging for it, like with the Humble Indie Bundle, and partly because of Steam doing awesome stuff,” Notch told PC Gamer last week.
“I don’t think [Mojang] are indie in the sense of how I used to work any more, because we have a payroll to worry about and we need to do stuff to ensure the company lasts,” he continued.
“We have other stuff which influences what we do other than trying to focus on the games. We make sure me and Jacob are only focusing on game development so the founders are still developing. But as a company, I don’t think we are indie in the sense that I used to mean it. But in the other sense of indie – as in we make games we want to play without having any external dependencies – then yeah, we’re indie.”
Minecraft jungle biome teased, “green jungle is green”
Jungles are coming to Minecraft. Lead designer, Jeb has thrown up a teaser shot on Twitter with the words “green jungle is green.” And green it is indeed, with some lovely tall canopies and vine-choked bark. “Jon (@jonkagstrom) wants to add jungle animals later, but they will not be included in today’s snapshot,” Jeb adds, filling us with hope for Minecraft monkeys.
You’ll find the full quick below. As our Tom Francis said when he first saw the picture, “that’ll burn soooo quick.”
Minecraft reaches 20 million registered users, 4.6 million sales
Most developers announce mind-blowing sales milestones with bone-dry press releases full of quotes that run the gamut from “We’re pretty great” to “Yeah, what that guy said.” Mojang is not one of those developers. In celebration of the latest jewel in Minecraft’s blocky crown, Notch tweeted the following:
“At 4 liters per day, it would take a million years to drink 20 million liquidized humans. Just saying.”
As of writing, the exact numbers have ballooned to 20,146,41 registered users and 4,670,64 sales. In other words, that’s a whole, whole lot of replica Death Stars. Probably enough that – given the same number of man hours in real-life – we could have constructed a real Death Star. Alderaan, you owe Mojang big time.
Mojang working on three unannounced games
The success of Minecraft is just the beginning for developers, Mojang. They recently published their first third party game, Cobalt, and say that they have plans for three new releases, two of which could arrive in the first half of this year.
Speaking to Edge, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh says that these new games “will have a big impact on Mojang over the next year,” though he can’t reveal much about them just yet. “We have NDAs with companies,” he says. “We want to be very transparent about everything we do, but in this case we can’t.”
Minecraft patch 1.1 adds better bows, apples, monster eggs and sheepier sheep
The Minecraft 1.1 patch has arrived! The video from Hat films above covers the new features nicely quite nicely, and they’ve been listed over on theMojang blog as well. 1.1 additions include better bows, a mysterious “Golden Apple recipe,” different coloured eggs that can be used to spawn mobs and multiple language translations.
Sheep are sheepier than ever, too, with the addition of a new behaviour that lets them gobble grass to grow more wool for you to punch. You’ll find the list of enhancements from the Mojang blog posted below.
Notch: “No sane person can be for SOPA”
A growing chorus of developers, publishers and even congressmen are voicing their opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act currently working its way through US Congress. Notch, creator of Minecraft, is one of those people.
Under existing legislation, the creators of copyright-infringing material can be sued by the copyright owners. SOPA would extend this liability to any site that carries the copyright-infringing material as well. If someone posts a film on Youtube, the film company that owns the film could sue Youtube for carrying it. If someone then links to the film on a forum, that would expose the forum provider to court injunctions from the copyright holders as well.
ISPs and search engine companies can gain immunity from prosecution by blocking sites accused of carrying pirated material, and as it’s unlikely that Google or Youtube would go to court to defend content creators they’re barely associated with, this would likely result in huge amounts of material being taken down based on the mere accusation of an infringement. This would have devastating implications for Minecraft’s thriving fan community, the e-sports streaming community, and any forum that posts screenshots or videos. Beyond gaming, it’s a scary bill for sites like YouTube and Reddit, too. You can read the bill in full here Read on for Notch’s take on the act.
Minecraft village made real with 3D printer
If you’re really fond of something you’ve built in Minecraft and want to find a way to preserve it forever, here’s one way to do it. Minecraft fan and Flickr user, post-apocalyptic research institute, has uploaded a series of photos showing a model of their Minecraft village created using a 3D printer. According to the description on the Flickr account, the 3D model of the village was exported into a CAD program for colouring before being printed using a Zprinter 650 machine. It’s a pretty expensive process, but the results are quite lovely. Take a look.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – PC Gamer’s game of the year
We didn’t see this coming. Stupid, I know. But when we got our hands on an early build of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I was certain it would be the game of 2011. Skyrim would be great, but it would just be Oblivion with a bit more snow. So now that it’s here, why does it feel like so much more than that?
Battlefield 3 – PC Gamer UK’s online game of the year
Launch bugs and connection problems can’t dent Battlefield 3’s sense of ambition. Call of Duty might have bagged the ‘modern warfare’ label, but Battlefield 3 shows us what a modern online shooter can really be. Developers DICE have tapped into the potential of modern PCs to create online battles on a massive scale, and with technology that makes its competitors look years out of date.
Notch makes Minicraft in 48 hours for Ludum Dare
The latest Ludum dare competition challenged developers to create a game in 48 hours based on the theme “Alone.” Minecraft creatory Markus ‘Notch’ Persson has turned in his entry already. It’s called Minicraft, a top down, 2D take on Minecraft. You have to roam the world, punching trees, blocks and zombies in your way as you try to find the only other sentient being in the world, the Air Wizard, so you can kill him.
Ultimate Christmas Giveaway: Win a Minecraft poster signed by Notch
Apologies: we’re facing some technical trouble. If the link above isn’t working for you, please click here
Welcome to the PC Gamer Ultimate Christmas Giveaway! This is the biggest competition we’ve ever done: packed with peripherals, games, and exclusive items signed by some very important people. Why are we doing this? Because it’s Christmas! And we love you.
The Ultimate Christmas giveaway will run until Christmas Eve. Every day we’ll be posting about a new prize that’s up for grabs, and you’ll have 24 hours after the time of publishing to enter. Sadly, we’re only able to open this competition to UK residents.
Our old Minecraft server was a wonderful place, full of amazing constructions. Sadly it was also laggy and unstable, so we were recently forced to hit the big red ‘reset’ button and start over again. Before we did though we created these enormous posters rendering our old spawn area to commemorate it. Better yet, we sent them to Mojang, where Notch and the guys all signed them, just for you. Now here’s your chance to win one!
Check inside for details:
