jeudi 11 août 2016

MOJANG'S COMMERCIAL USE GUIDELINES UPDATED (FOR BUSINESSES, MAINLY)



Mojang is updating their commercial use guidelines!

Wait, don't worry just yet; these changes mostly affect advertising agencies and corporations relating to promotions, and has virtually nothing to do with end-user monetization (such as one uses for Youtube, servers, et. al).

Mojang's Owen Hill gives a breakdown on what this means:

Owen Hill

If you are an ad agency, corporation, non-profit, or politician, you can’t do these kinds of things or hire someone to do them:

  • Build a Minecraft mod or server that promotes unrelated products in playable form; e.g., if you are a restaurant chain, you can’t market your restaurant by releasing a mod that includes your restaurant built out of Minecraft blocks.
  • Build a Minecraft map or mod that markets a movie or TV show; e.g., if you’re a movie studio, you can’t make a map that uses Minecraft blocks to build out the fictional world of the movie or its characters, and you can’t make an official movie trailer out of gameplay footage from that map or mod.
  • It’s worth mentioning that fans of a particular restaurant, movie, or some other thing are still free to build things in Minecraft that represent or celebrate it so long as the goal or focus is not to promote or sell that stuff. The new rules only apply to companies or organisations that are using Minecraft to sell their products or promote their causes.

In short - companies that want to use the game as an advertising engine by building their fictional worlds, business locations, or similar for the sole purpose of advertising their product are not allowed to do that. However, players are still both allowed and encouraged to build whatever they want. That's a fairly broad simplification, but you get the idea, hopefully!

If you (the reader) are not a corporation or advertising agency, there is essentially nothing to worry about. Have a great day, everyone!

STORY MODE: EPISODE 6 INCOMING; WIIU: MINECRAFT (PHYSICAL COPY) COMING TO EU STORES





What is coming next Tuesday? “A Portal to Mystery,” the first of three new Story Mode episodes! The political chaos of Sky City is behind them, but as it so often goes, trouble yet lies in wait...

Marsh Davies

Fresh perils await them in an unfamiliar land, as does the sinister figure known as The Host. What can this pumpkin-headed hostelier have in mind for his new guests? Who are the strangers invited to attend The Host’s mansion party?! Can anyone be trusted?!! Who will survive?!!! Will Owen tell me off for using excessive punctuation?!!!! Who knows?!!!!!

(Spoiler: we may never know if Owen did, in fact, yell at Marsh for excessive punctuation)



WiiU: Discs Incoming

In other news, Nintendo Europe recently announced that Minecraft: WiiU Edition would be coming to stores on June 30th, 2016. If you have been holding out for a physical copy - whether as an avid media collector, or just someone who wants to conserve hard drive space - the wait is nearly over. The physical copy will also come with the Mario Mash-Up Pack included, so you can jump straight into Mario-making (heh) in Minecraft without delay!

OVER 100,000,000 COPIES OF MINECRAFT SOLD WORLDWIDE



One hundred million. It's a hard number to wrap one's head around. If we were to stack the average bill from nearly any currency in a 100,000,000 column, it would quite nearly reach the altitude that commercial jets fly in.

Without exception, Pocket Edition has outsold PC Edition in every country in the world. With few exceptions, Console Edition (for every platform considered) has surpassed PC as well. Neat!

This brings up an interesting question: what platform do you play Minecraft on the most, and why?

PE/WIN10: THE FRIENDLY UPDATE!




The Friendly Update is here!

Okay, I lied: the Friendly Update - 0.15 for Pocket/Windows 10 Edition - is not, in fact, out yet. However, it is coming soon, and has a host of goodies to look forward to!

As the video above shows, some of the new things are obvious (pistons, especially). However, there is a special emphasis on the "friendly" part of the update's name...what could that mean? We may never know!

Right, I lied again. Here's a list of the upcoming changes!

New Features

  • Mysterious, as-yet-unspecified friendliness
  • Pistons and sticky pistons!
  • Observer blocks: new blocks that can detect changes in neighboring blocks
  • Xbox Live Achievements on iOS and Android
  • Online multiplayer with Xbox Live friends!
  • Leads, horses and dyeable horse armor!
  • Fire charges
  • Pig riding!
  • A whole new UI for the main menu, shared with the Windows 10 Edition
  • You can now tip arrows using a cauldron and potions!
  • Husk zombies in the desert
  • Stray skeletons in tundras
  • Different villages in taigas and savannahs
  • Skeleton horse traps!

Tweaks

  • Online play uses less bandwidth now
  • Note blocks are a lot louder now
  • Walking far from spawn generates a lot less jittering now
  • Added more mob eggs to the creative menu

Bug fixes

  • Fixed a lot of crashes!
  • Fixed a couple of bugs causing data to be lost or world corruption
  • A whole bunch of redstone fixes from the community feedback
  • Lots of multiplayer desynchronization fixes
  • Nether wart looks different when planted
  • Less flickering of the block selection highlight!
  • Glass doesn’t become green anymore
  • Fixed chests generation in dungeons and desert temples

The 0.15 Friendly Update will go live on <REDACTED>, so get ready!

COMMUNITY CREATIONS: MINETREK






Way back in the dark ages of 2010, someone took on the ambitious project of building the Star Trek: the Next Generation Enterprise. These days, a project known as MineTrek has taken on that same ambitious project, albeit with more attention to detail in some ways, including custom resource packs. While still mid-project on that ship, they have apparently finished the Defiant and Voyager (from DS9 and ST:Voyager, respectively), with the Enterprise itself having a rough ETA of about one year, from its current state.

This would be pretty awesome on its own, but the project also accepts builders, allowing people to try their hand at helping construct a massive starship as well! Ever wanted to build on a megaproject? Sci-fi fan? This could be your chance to give it a go.

The MineTrek site covers everything from server requirements to resource pack acquisition, should you be interested. Enjoy!

1.10 PRE-RELEASE 2 AVAILABLE FOR TESTING!





Bug fixes! The fixing of bugs is glorious, and gives us all hope for a better future and a brighter tomorrow (in Minecraft)! 1.10 has a fairly short development cycle, and bugfixes are a crucial part of that cycle, as with previous updates. Every reported bug is a bug that won't see the light of day when the full version releases - your help is appreciated!

What bugs have been smashed so far?


BUGFIXES

  • [Bug MC-94576] - (Player) Head in inventory causes buggy rendering of certain inventory slots, potion effect display and attack cooldown
  • [Bug MC-94896] - Tab completion works incorrect when text is already selected
  • [Bug MC-95554] - Tab-complete doesn’t work correctly for /playsound
  • [Bug MC-98224] - JSON signs with scoreboard objectives erase their block data upon chunk load
  • [Bug MC-102043] - Auto-Jump does not work if there is a snow layer or a similar thing on the block
  • [Bug MC-102139] - Polar Bears eat wheat and give off hearts but do not breed
  • [Bug MC-102152] - Auto-Jump Directional Bug
  • [Bug MC-102177] - The End Stone Bricks crafting recipe is missing
  • [Bug MC-102360] - Auto jump doesn’t include jump boost
  • [Bug MC-102364] - Auto Jump starts flying in Creative mode
  • [Bug MC-102709] - Mobs cannot receive shields in mainhand with /replaceitem
  • [Bug MC-102835] - Hostile mobs can spawn on magma block
  • [Bug MC-102891] - /teleport (not tp) has a wrong tab-auto-completion.
  • [Bug MC-102894] - Item Frame’s and painting’s hitboxes are offset and dark
  • [Bug MC-103011] - Horses Still Use Their Entity Code Name
  • [Bug MC-103014] - Mob do not know how to bypass the magma block wall

Please report any and all bugs you find in Minecraft to bugs.mojang.com. If nobody reports a bug, there could be mass hysteria, cats and dogs living together! (Or just unfixed bugs, which no one wants.)

To get snapshots, open your launcher and press the “New Profile” button. Call it “snapshots” and check the box saying “Enable experimental development snapshots” and save. To switch to the normal version, you can select it in the dropdown at the bottom left corner of the launcher. Back up your world first or run the game on in a different folder (See the “new profile” dialog).

Snapshots can corrupt your world, please backup and/or run them in a different folder from your main worlds.

Cross-platform server jar: Minecraft server jar

1.10 NOW LIVE!



Polar bears and powerful zombies await players in the freshly minted 1.10 full release! While not the largest update for Minecraft, it nonetheless adds a number of awesome new things:


FEATURES

  • Many bug fixes
  • Added Polar Bear
  • Added Husk and Stray
  • An auto-jump option
  • Improvements to some commands
  • Structure blocks for custom maps
  • Underground fossils made from bone blocks
  • Added Magma Block
  • Added Nether Wart Block and Red Nether Bricks
  • Some huge mushrooms can be even larger
  • A rare chance to find lonely trees in plains
  • Find abandoned mineshafts filled with gold in mesa biomes
  • Villages generate better paths between the buildings
  • More variations of villages, based on the biomes they are built in
  • Endermen have been spotted in the Nether
  • Removed Herobrine

To test a snapshot, you...wait, this is a full release! Just load up the latest release, and you are good to go. Enjoy!