Mojang Blog

Minecraft snapshot 15w14a – The Love and Hugs Update https://mojang.com/2015/04/minecraft-snapshot-15w14a-the-love-and-hugs… "We’ve thought long and hard about this, but we finally feel happy to announce that we are now changing the general direction of the game Minecraft. Starting from the next update we will be focusing on the things that make life worth living, promoting healthy relationships with the environment and its inhabitants."

Wow, it just almost seems impossible that an indie game can be that successful. It's unfortunate that it's such a rarity, I'm sure there are hundreds of great games out there that languish. If anyone wonders, the PC version is not the best seller (currently) for Mojang. The XBox version sells more than the PC version and the Pocket Edition (iOS, Android) sells more than both combined[1]. [1] http://www.mojang.com/2013/01/christmas-stat-attack/

We recognized that problem pretty early on. Some of our favorite customers have been teachers using Minecraft in their classrooms and in cases like that having one person paying makes total sense. Working on it! We decided to launch with individual accounts first because that's what made most sense for us and our friends. Regarding Bukkit, we've been holding off support because of this: http://www.mojang.com/2012/02/minecraft-team-strengthened It's running in beta but the real value of Bukkit is being able to use mods. We're working on an experience that lets people enjoy mods without having to handcraft massive YAML files or run up SQL databases.

Amazing stuff. Honestly, when I saw this post I thought man I should have been a games programmer (and the desire to learn how to create games started to surface). Then, I went searching on Google and it seems that this guy has found his luck after working hard as a games programmer for around 10 years (http://www.mojang.com/notch/). After reading this, I smiled & felt happy for the programmer and went back working ;)

Following the link on that page to the "translated" version of the new EULA, their reasoning seems to still be "we don’t want our players to be exploited or to have a frustrating time unless they pay." [0] I find a lot of things wrong with this mentality, mostly in that it assumes that the servers that charge for gameplay have some kind of monopoly over the servers. If you don't want to pay for gameplay, just visit another server. You don't have to put up with them. Heck, if you really wanted to you could host your own. The bottom line is you don't need to pay anyone, they're not exploiting you. If you're getting frustrated because they're charging you then that's your own dumb fault for visiting that server and putting up with it. If you want to pay, go ahead, support the server hosts. All of this is under the false assumption that people are being forced into paying, which simply isn't true. [0] https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation/

There was an app called Minecraft Reality back in 2012 that would seem to prove otherwise: https://mojang.com/2012/11/announcing-minecraft-reality-for-ios/ It placed a Minecraft creation into your environment in realtime. Though it seemed mostly like a tech demo without much of a point, it was pretty impressive when I played with it.

Nice photo caption fail: "Minecraft is developed by Swedish company Mojang. Will future games be developed now that Microsoft is closing its borders?" In the light of: https://mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-being-bought-by-microsoft/

They brought on the Bukkit team years ago to develop the API but that never came about. https://mojang.com/2012/02/minecraft-team-strengthened/

Here's the minimal Mojang announcement: https://mojang.com/2015/11/minecraft-meets-hour-of-code/

A fix has been released: https://mojang.com/2015/04/minecraft-1-8-4-security-release/

I didn't see anything about paying for stuff. It seems to be run entirely by donation as far as I can tell. I think that means it kosher: https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation/

Notch 2006: [1] http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php/topic,12642.0 [2] https://mojang.com/notch/logichex/

I love this! When learning to program, I wrote a clone of a basic java game by Notch: Mine: http://codelucas.com/pages/island-overlord.html His: https://mojang.com/notch/ld12/breaking/ The code: Mine: https://github.com/codelucas/islandoverlord His: https://mojang.com/notch/ld12/breaking/BreakingTheTower.zip I also "cloned" a well known python article extraction library (goose) on Github with my own api & new functionality and my repo ended up doing super well (even better than the original). https://github.com/codelucas/newspaper vs. https://github.com/grangier/python-goose

Well, that's certainly true when we're talking about the underlying 3D graphics libraries, IO, etc. But it seems like there's still a lot more to the rest of it, and that it shouldn't fit in 500 lines of code. This one really gets me as well: http://www.mojang.com/notch/j4k/l4kd/

Not to mention 9. using their game as a platform for urban planning and development in poorer countries: http://www.mojang.com/2012/09/mojang-and-un-presents-block-by-block/ It doesn't get a lot of mention which only really adds to the idea that they're doing this out of honest kindness rather than marketing.

And on the server side, Bukkit[1] is pretty much the official API since the team behing the project got hired by Mojang[2]. [1]: http://bukkit.org/ [2]: http://www.mojang.com/2012/02/minecraft-team-strengthened/

> It’s been developed for iOS devices by 13th Lab – a bunch of clever augmented reality folks – with the help of Mojang. [1] > Created by 13th lab and Mojang [2] Looks like 13th lab is an augmented reality group Mojang contracted and worked with to build the product. Mojang may not have written the core technology, but they seem to have initiated and funded it, they're now publicizing it, and I'd guess they will be splitting profits with 13th lab. 1 http://www.mojang.com/2012/11/announcing-minecraft-reality-for-ios/ 2 footer image: http://minecraftreality.com/

Here's the Mojang announcement: http://www.mojang.com/2012/11/minecraft-is-coming-to-the-raspberry-pi/

Here it is: http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/417-bukkit-officially-joins-mojang/ Bukkit made it really far with community extensibility via non-official APIs. Now they get to help define the official API based on real-word experience about what developers want to do with customizing Minecraft. They also recently announced that they are merging single player and multi-player, creating a single mod-able codebase. http://www.mojang.com/2012/07/minecraft-1-3-info-snapshot-w27/

"UPDATE: Woohoo! Things are back up and running perfectly! Thank you all for being patient while things were fixed. Also major props to Grum, Dinnerbone, and Leo who were out of bed and in to action in the blink of an eye!"[0] [0] http://www.mojang.com/2012/07/houston-we-have-a-problem/

They are well aware: http://www.mojang.com/2012/07/houston-we-have-a-problem/

It's Xperia Play only for now: http://mojang.com/2011/08/16/say-hello-to-minecraft-pocket-edition/

I of course meant "most people", but thanks for calling me out. Shouldn't assume! If you check out http://www.mojang.com/notch/ , he's made a few (dozen) little Java games, and he's been doing it for many years. The only awards mentioned on that page are a win at Java4k in 2006 and a third-place at Ludlum Dare in 2008. I could have sworn there were one or two more, but since GDC 2011 it's become pretty impossible to research :P Incidentally, that win in 2006? That was for a Java Lemmings clone called... Miners4k. I'm sticking with "not a fluke."

The original[1] was made by the Minecraft guy. Like most of his projects, the levels are randomly generated. The levels themselves end, but there is no end to the actual game. It just keeps generating new levels. [1]: http://www.mojang.com/notch/mario/

Too bad, Notch just announced that he's giving up. His entry to Ludum Dare 19 won't be finished, but the source code of what he did so far can be found here: > http://mojang.com/notch/ld19/

I think it is very important to note that Notch (the creator) has developed many other games before minecraft. Just check out is resume: http://www.mojang.com/notch/ I think this is just more evidence that over-night success, takes lots of prior work.

If you're like me and still have no idea who "Notch" is.. http://www.mojang.com/notch/

Can anyone discern what tools he was using? I know the IDE was Eclipse. And Paint.net for the artowrk. He had something really cool for the sound effects, but I couldn't tell what it was. It's a fun little game with some neat ideas: http://www.mojang.com/compo/metagun/

Source code: http://www.mojang.com/compo/metagun/metagun-source.zip (linked from http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=preview&uid=3… I compiled (yucky) with (after unzip + mkdir build): javac -cp build src/com/mojang/metagun/{entity,level,screen,}/*.java -d build/ cp {src,build}/com/mojang/metagun/screen/exposition.txt jar -cf app.jar -C build . -C res . You need some html to run an applet; App.html just needs this: <applet code="com.mojang.metagun.Metagun" archive="app.jar" height="480" width="640"></applet> Run with: appletviewer App.html New to me (but probably standard to game writers) is: using a png to represent all the maps combined (like 10x10 maps), with each pixel's color representing a game tile type (eg. yellow for oil drum, purple for portal cube, red for spikes, green for signs etc). This representation is really cool, because it looks like what it represents (an isomorphism): you can "see" the level in a png editor, even though what you're seeing is not the actual level. Another aspect of how the data representation drives the game, is that there are no explicit arcs between game screens - instead, the screen design allows your character to walk off-screen, then that point enables you to transition to the next screen. I guess it's the most obvious way to do it: it's as if you are zoomed into a particular section of the 10x10 maps, and then you can move to adjacent maps. Maybe it's just that I've spent too much…