Mojang

Minecraft on Windows 10 is one year old!

Thu, 28 Jul 2016 13:00:00 +0000

Happy OS-specific birthday to us! Today is the anniversary of Minecraft’s arrival on Windows 10. It’s been a busy year: 12,000 code check-ins, 6000 bugs squashed, 15 major updates and oodles of new features.

We’ve bred bunnies of many colours, given squid a fear of mortality and set baby zombies astride squawking avian steeds. We unleashed the power of Redstone and found new ways for players to devise elaborate devices. We introduced our cross-platform Realms service, so players could own always-online worlds just for them and their friends, and play on them with minecrafters on mobile devices. We crafted special skinpacks - like the Villains pack we are releasing today! - and texture packs, too, allowing for even greater levels of customisation.

And our work is not done: soon we’ll be introducing add-ons which let you dramatically modify the rules of the game, and, in the coming weeks, we’ll enable support for the Oculus Rift, giving players a whole new perspective on their favourite game. There’s so much more planned.

In celebration, the supercool crafters over at Blockworks have made the amazing roller coaster map featured in the video above, which you can download for yourself right here! Trippy stuff!

Just a quick reminder to those not yet playing on Windows 10: up until July 29 you can upgrade your operating system to Windows 10 for free. And just why should you care? Because anyone who already owns Minecraft PC / Mac edition gets the Windows 10 Edition beta completely free - just log in to your Mojang account and click the redeem button.

Rest assured, more cool stuff is in the pipeline for Windows 10 and Pocket Edition - we can’t wait to show you!

Cheerio!

Marsh - @marshdavies

Villains skin pack ruthlessly conquers Pocket Edition

Thu, 28 Jul 2016 07:30:00 +0000

Got an evil streak? Let your inner demons out with the latest skin pack to hit Pocket / Win 10 edition! It costs $1.99 - although, as with all our skin packs, you get a few for free! The evilest of all giveaways!

The Villains Skin Pack will be rolling out across devices at some point today. Grab it and join forces with Minecraft’s most dastardly denizens: slink from the shadows as the sinister Stronghold Seer, unleash the fury as the ferocious Lava Fiend, or, er, sell silverfish as the monstrous Silverfish Monger. The evilest of all mongers!

Then there’s the grotesque Patchkin, the enigmatic Endergaunt, the chilling Eyece, the Terror Spawner, Dungeon Spectre, Slymime and Cake Maniac. There’s evil of every flavour: 17 skins in total - the evilest of all numbers!

What demented schemes will you devise? What corrupt conquests will you attempt? Which cakes will you eat (but, you know, really evilly)?

Evil cheerio!

Marsh - @marshdavies

Double DLC coming to consoles today!

Tue, 26 Jul 2016 12:02:00 +0000

Hello!

I’m happy to announce that two pieces of DLC are landing on all console editions of Minecraft today! Grasp your digital wallet and prepare for purchase!

First up, there’s Battle Map Pack 2. This competitive bundle includes three maps created exclusively for the Battle mini-game - Atlantis, Ruin and Siege. The pack costs $2.99 USD or equivalent, and comes with guaranteed good times. You can see some hot Battle action taking place in the screenshot below.

In case you didn’t get the memo, Battle came to console versions a few months ago - it’s a free mini-game that tasks you with taking down friends and enemies in ferocious combat. You can play online or locally in split-screen with up to three victims.

We’re also adding the Redstone Specialists skin pack to all console editions. Pocket/Windows 10 players might already be familiar with these hot looks. If you’ve been yearning for way to express your love of Redstone or just like the quirky styling of these technical wizards, pick up the pack for $2.99 USD or equivalent. As always, everyone gets a few of these skins for free.

Thanks for playing Minecraft, everyone! Have fun with our new DLCs. Be friendly to your fellow players (unless you’re playing Battle).

Owen - @bopogamel

Story Mode Episode 7 live next week. Here’s a trailer!

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 15:00:00 +0000

Having barely escaped the murderous mansion-dwelling maniac in Episode 6, new and even weirder hazards await Jesse and the gang as they explore the Portal Hallway. Doorways lead to a multitude of worlds - but each proves more dangerous than the last. How will the New Order of the Stone ever find their way back home?

Perhaps the secrets of the Old Builders lie in a world of redstone riches. Surely such a place might conceal the incredible tech necessary to see our heroes home safely. But are such clever computing powers so easily contained?

(No.)

You can play this latest episode, titled “Access Denied”, next Tuesday July 26th.

Episode 7 can be purchased as part of the $14.99 Adventure Pass - three extra DLC episodes that follow Jesse and crew after the conclusion of the first Story Mode season. Episodes 6, 7 and 8 can also be bought individually for $4.99. You’ll need to own Episode 1 to be able to get them, though. “Access Denied” will be available to download on PC / Mac, Windows 10, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and iOS and Android-based devices. You have a week to prepare yourself to face the true power and peril of redstone!

Cheerio!

Marsh - @marshdavies

Pocket and Windows 10 changelog 0.15.3 incoming

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 12:00:00 +0000

EDIT DUE TO A TECHNICAL FAULT CAUSED BY SMALL MONSTERS INFILTRATING MOJANG OFFICE AND DISTRACTING THE WORKFORCE: THIS UPDATE IS CURRENTLY ONLY ROLLING OUT FOR GOOGLE PLAY USERS. IT’LL BE WITH EVERYONE ELSE IN A FUTURE UPDATE.

Hello everyone,

Changelog time! We’re rolling out an update to all versions of Minecraft: Pocket Edition and the Windows 10 Edition Beta. It should be available to download on your phone, tablet, or Windows 10 machine soon.

This update is mostly concerned with tweaks and bug fixes. It’s still worth downloading though, especially if the odd positioning of zombie jockeys was getting you down.

Tweaks

Multiplayer invite screen text alignment fixed
Tweaks to moving blocks to make them work better & more consistently
Fixes to horse breeding to make it consistent with other versions
Tweaks to atlas generation
Tweaked some Realms purchase functions
Small tweak to mouse controls
Store screen layout scales better now

Bug Fixes

Players can now scroll through the list of friends in the Add Realm window using the controller.
Inventory can now be opened when a player mounts a pig or horse/donkey/mule
Zombies now spawn with correct textures in desert biomes
Nether brick fence fixed- attaches to cobblestone walls
Fixed issue with friends list being cleared on signing out
Fall damage for horses fixed
Pressing X on the intro page signs the user out
Removed phantom image of the currently equipped block when toggling a daylight sensor
Fixed item duplication on fences bug
Fixed some bugs with pistons (crashing, overwriting, taking power from wrong sources, syncing issues)
Observer block placement fixed
Glass and leaf blocks no longer going invisible when placed next to carpet, pressure plates and accumulated snow
Fully grown crops now pop out of farmland when cut-off from light
Fixed position of zombie jockeys
Fixed crash when shooting an arrow from a dispenser at a TNT minecart
Fixed assorted issues causing games to crash

That’s it for now, people! Thanks for playing our game!

Owen - @bopogamel

Project Malmo uses Minecraft to make AI smarter

Fri, 08 Jul 2016 04:00:00 +0000

We already knew that Minecraft could make players smarter - but now it’s being used to make computers smarter, too. The folks over at Project Malmo (two of whom, Katja Hofmann and Matthew Johnson, are pictured above) are using Minecraft as a platform to develop better Artificial Intelligence, and they’ve made their open source tool-set available to the public today.

AI is already pretty good at specific, limited tasks: it can be taught to understand or translate speech, identify faces and generate text. How clever! But to make them smarter still, AIs need to be taught how to learn by themselves. The ambition is to achieve “artificial general intelligence” - not simply computers with an ability to solve individual problems, like beating squishy human brains at chess, but digital minds that absorb all sorts of information from the world and combine this knowledge creatively. You know, like we meat-people do. A robot with artificial general intelligence might still beat you at chess, but it’d also know how annoyed you’d be afterwards and that it might be able to cheer you up with a cinnabon.

Minecraft, it turns out, is a pretty great proving ground for AI: it’s an open-ended game with hugely diverse challenges and opportunities for creative solutions, spatial and temporal reasoning, collaboration and more. In other words, it shares a lot of the challenges we face in the real world and to be good at it you need to combine a lot of different kinds of knowledge - from the basics of navigation to understanding social dynamics.

Getting AI to combine strategies for different problems in the creative way humans do is one of the major hurdles on the way to achieving similar levels of smarts. Minecraft is an ideal platform for this sort of learning, and the hope is that, through Project Malmo, the game will provide researchers the world over with a single richly interactive test-bed, across which it is easy to compare different approaches or foster collaboration.

You can read more about the project here or simply jump in and try out the mod for PC / Mac edition. You do need to be able to code, but the team say it’s pretty accessible for novices - they are really excited to see what the community do with it, as well as the academics.

Go make a mastermind!

Cheerio!

Marsh - @marshdavies

Cobalt is 65% off in the Steam Summer sale!

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 13:09:00 +0000

Hello!

The PC version of Cobalt is featured in the Steam Summer sale! It’s got a whopping 65% off it’s standard price! If you’re a fan of crisp combat, cute robots, slick combat and absolute bargains, click the handy button below.

I’ve embedded a trailer above but it you prefer promotional materials in written form, check out this unbiased piece on why Cobalt is so great.

Thanks for ready everybody! Enjoy Cobalt!

Owen - @bopogamel

Calling all Agents: help us run MINECON 2016!

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:00:00 +0000

MINECON couldn’t happen without Agents: a super-special crew of awesome volunteers who dedicate ten hours of their weekend to helping the conference run smoothly. This year’s MINECON is bigger than ever, so we’re looking for even more fine folk to give us a hand. Sound like something you’re interested in? Over 18? Then apply right here! If accepted, you won’t need to pay for a ticket.

You’ll need to apply by July 10, and you’ll hear back from us by email by July 18. You do have to put a deposit down of $60 which we’ll refund after you’ve successfully volunteered at MINECON. You only have to work one full day - outside of that you are free to enjoy MINECON as you please.

Join us! Go on, go on, go on!

Cheerio!

Marsh - @marshdavies

The Minecraft movie has a release date!

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 17:30:00 +0000

Hello future Minecraft movie-goers!

I know you’ve been thinking just about every day, “When’s the Minecraft movie coming out?” Luckily for you, we can finally say!

The Minecraft movie will be released on May 24, 2019! The film will also be released in 3D & IMAX.

Yes, that might seem like a long time away, but it just so happens to be the right amount of time to make it completely awesome. And we all want an awesome Minecraft movie, right?

That’s it for now, but as time goes on we’ll share loads more. Loads!

-Vu (@vubui)

Check out our new site for Block by Block!

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 13:00:00 +0000

You might have heard this already, but Minecraft is a pretty cool, fun, popular game. We could have just stopped there and felt reasonably proud of ourselves. But we at Mojang also passionately believe that Minecraft is a Good Thing - not just an inspiring, delightful, mind-expanding pastime, but something that brings real, positive change to people’s lives the world over. That’s why we encourage Minecraft’s use as an educational tool and it’s also why we set up Block by Block - a partnership with UN-Habitat which uses Minecraft as a way of engaging communities in the development of public space, allowing locals to take control of their environment.

Public spaces are super important. They’re the backbone of any community and a vital measure of its health. They’re a key part of urban infrastructure - water, energy and communication - and well-planned public space promotes civic identity, socialisation and security. But in places of poverty, conflict or rapid urbanisation, these essential spaces often fall by the wayside, important amenities are overlooked and locals are disenfranchised.

UN-Habitat and Mojang are committed to reversing this where we can - and Minecraft has proved an invaluable way of communicating proposals to develop the environment, engaging locals in these challenges and taking their feedback to city planners. Nobody knows what a community needs better than those who live in it, and with Minecraft they’re given an easy and rapid way to express their ideas.

So far, Block by Block has initiated projects in 18 locations across 13 different countries, with many more underway in 2016. Have a look at our newly re-launched website to see the work we’ve done in places like Nairobi, Mumbai, Kosovo and Mexico City.

And, if you can, donate.

Marsh - @marshdavies