I spent about 10 minutes just now trying to work out precisely how Most Influential Markus Persson and Jens Bergensten are, but it seems Time have de-numbered their list. Instead, according to Will Wright and a magazine who have been doing this for a very long time, the two men of Minecraft are ‘Titans’.
Submissions for the Independent Games Festival 2013 have been open for, ooo, two-and-a-half months now. Soon, they’ll be turned over to a cabal of developers, journalists and assorted experts for judgement. And it turns out that one of those shadowy council figures will sport a familiar orange beard.
The Pretty Scary Update we’ve been keeping a wary, roving eye on for some time is actually more of a Pretty/Scary update, it transpires. It’s out today, and its features are an even split of decorative niceness and horrible new mobs - but the scary wins out thanks to improved monster AI that will see you slain by your own sword.
Hold on to your temporal tuning fork as I attempt to explain what’s going on here. Minecraft 1.4, the Pretty Scary Update, was due tomorrow. Its pre-release build has been available for testing since Friday, however - long enough for Mojang to identify a hilarious but major issue, necessitating another update. That update is named 1.4.1, and it now has a pre-release build. Minecraft 1.4 meanwhile, the Pretty Scary Update proper, has been delayed until Thursday to incorporate the new update.Our Spotlight units plug content our journalists have made, that our advertisers want to promote. Sometimes the promotion is paid for, but the content they go to is always independent with no client oversight or approval.
Being a Minecraft player can be a little like living on a fault line. Every update represents a seismic shift in one area or another, and a longer wait often means a bigger shake-up once the quake finally hits. The wait for 1.3 has been the longest in Minecraft’s history, largely because of significant changes made to the game’s engine. “I was a little scared to push it to the public," says Jens Bergensten. “But waiting even longer is not a solution." Oo-er.
Jens of Mojang has just revealed a new block type coming to Minecraft that allows players to run commands on a redstone signal. Jens says that “with proper commands, many things can be scripted." Examples include giving players enchantment points, or changing the difficulty of an adventure map.
