Sunday, April 3, 2011

Minecraft

Minecraft is a sandbox building indie video game written in Java originally by creator Markus "Notch" Persson and now by his company, Mojang, formed from the proceeds of the game. The game is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. The game has two variants - free Classic and paid Beta -  where Classic is focused entirely on construction with unlimited material supply, while Beta requires players to acquire resources themselves, and contains mobs, player health, and additional features and items. The gameplay is inspired by Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, and Infiniminer.

The game is currently in development and Beta is the only continuously updated version of the game. Minecraft was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009 on the TIGSource forums, where it gained a considerable level of popularity. It has been continually updated and patched since then, and while it was still in alpha release, it garnered several hundred thousand sales and received critical notice and acclaim from many reviewers. It passed a million units sold on January 12, 2011, less than a month after reaching Beta.

The core gameplay revolves around construction. The game world is essentially made up of cubical blocks arranged in a fixed grid pattern, that represent different materials, such as, dirt, stone, various ores, water, tree trunks, etc. While the players can move freely across the world, objects and items can only be placed at fixed locations relative to the grid. The player can gather these material "blocks" and place them elsewhere, thus potentially creating various constructions.

Minecraft has two currently available variants, Beta and Classic, both with single-player and multiplayer options. Classic is the earliest free version and initially featured only creative game mode with only building (block placement and removal) aspects of the game and unlimited block supply. The Classic was then split into single-player survival mode (referred to as "Survival Mode Test"), which contained monsters and a much greater variety of blocks and items available, as well as requiring players to mine their own blocks. As of Beta release, only creative Classic mode version 0.30 is available in single-player and multiplayer modes.

Classic survival mode served as the base for development of single-player non-free Indev ("In Development"), and later non-free Infdev ("Infinite Development") versions, each expanding the number of features. Indev and Infdev were later replaced by the non-free Alpha variant which continued to add features to the game, including multiplayer mode. As of December 20, 2010 the game entered into Beta. It includes music by Daniel "C418" Rosenfeld. For multiplayer games, servers are currently hosted by individual players or groups; there are no "official" Minecraft servers yet, the only way to connect to a server is entering the hostname or IP address in-game.

15 comments:

  1. I've heard about it but I haven't played it. Seems it's getting a lot of buzz lately.

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  2. minecraft is awesome, those monster things that track you down are creepy

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  3. i like your blog. keep up the good work

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  4. everyone's getting into minecraft!!!

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  5. Ya I know, a few of my friends just started playing it too, seems to have just blown up out of no where! Reminds me of this game my friend used to play called Dwarf something... your little workers could randomly go insane and wander off, or like pull a Columbine and just murder all the other workers... Bears would randomly snatch workers and run off with them, crazy stuff haha

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  6. This game is definitely starting to get big. I could never get into it though due to its graphics.

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  7. Minecraft is awesome, thanks for the suggestion!

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  8. Yeah, i thought the graphics were sub-par, until i got a few texture packs. Now i lauve this game.

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  9. So that's what it's all about huh? I've always wanted to try. I hear so many people talking about it lol. I'm following! Come check me out at: alphabetalife.blogspot.com

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  10. Minecraft!!! Awesome game. Chilling while digging a hole... cannot trump that.

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  11. Alot of my friends love that game, but i can't afford it right now. you're blog made me want it though, soon as my next paycheck comes in i'm gonna get it!

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