tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15800293725703593632024-02-07T18:39:34.285-05:00Game GenusGames: Commentary and analysis, often about Minecraft.Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-63919401123239123272014-04-23T16:59:00.000-04:002014-11-25T12:58:39.665-05:00Ryan Holtz fixes old chunk loading bug in MinecraftToday Ryan Holtz tweeted:
Finally nailed down the issue that was causing far-away chunks to render when there were still a lot of nearby chunks not showing up.
— Ryan Holtz (@TheMogMiner) April 23, 2014
This bug has been around for almost two years, arriving with version 1.3 released in August, 2012. Everyone has encountered this bug and it can been seen in numerous Let's Plays on YouTube Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-31571451948366084242014-01-27T11:17:00.000-05:002014-01-27T11:17:55.429-05:00Minecraft's EULA gets less hazyThe latest ruckus involving Minecraft modders was resolved yesterday when Mojang developer Grum had a dialog on reddit with EnDeLe, who posts on MCF under the name EnzerDeLeo. In the course of this exchange it was discovered that Mojang's Marc Watson responded incorrectly to a question that EnDeLe asked him last month via Twitter.
The question that EnDeLe asked was whether the section of the Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-70564903349859965472014-01-26T10:38:00.000-05:002014-01-27T11:31:38.218-05:00A purge of Minecraft moddersI am not making this up.
The friction between modders and players has escalated into war. From a post on the Minecraft Forums:
The community seems to be losing sight of what I have started our path on. We are getting caught on petty things like open source or closed source, weather sub programs count as a mod, and EULA being unclear. These are not the issue we are facing.
The main issue is Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-19187681674421426042014-01-02T12:46:00.000-05:002014-01-02T12:46:25.583-05:00Minecraft has sold 13 million copies on PC
Minecraft recently achieved another sales milestone:
Woho! Minecraft (PC) has now sold over 13,000,000 copies! \o/
— Jens Bergensten (@jeb_) December 13, 2013
This puts Minecraft in 4th place of Wikipedia's list of best-selling PC games, just behind World of Warcraft's 14 million. Note that the number for WoW is for box sales. It won't be long before Minecraft passes WoW to take 3rd placeStratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-3026584284802171962013-12-21T07:54:00.000-05:002013-12-21T07:54:21.945-05:00Minecraft books are now a thing—about 500 of them!Back in the days of bookstores you used to be able to tell what was hot in technology by looking at the shelves in the relevant section of the store. The current trend or fad would have dozens of associated titles filling the shelves, to the point that it became difficult to choose one.
Even though there aren't as many bricks and mortar bookstores as there used to be, the publishing industry Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-77789836034383228462013-12-20T10:40:00.000-05:002013-12-21T05:40:24.649-05:00Don't put harmful code in your Minecraft modIt's a fairly rare occasion when Mojang addresses modder conduct in Minecraft, but it has once more:
@Marc_IRL Is it against the EULA for a mod to have a blacklist that detects certain player names & forces a crash and world save corruption?
— Enzer (@EnzerDeLeo) December 19, 2013
@EnzerDeLeo Yes. Yes it is.
— Marc Watson (@Marc_IRL) December 19, 2013
@Marc_IRL Should I report mod Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-24984158565711317372013-11-10T16:27:00.000-05:002013-11-10T16:27:43.651-05:00A long time ago in a big MMOOnce upon a time back in March, 2005 I subscribed to World of Warcraft and started questing. This was in the days of patch 1.3
before things like battlegrounds, fishing contests, and the Darkmoon
Faire existed. Molten Core was the endgame instance and Diremaul was brand new. WoW was a little more than four months old at that
point, so it was still early days.
Although I'd been a
gamer for Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-91452401815624157302013-11-09T16:01:00.000-05:002013-11-09T16:04:01.782-05:00Notch on TV—more mainstreaming of MinecraftOn November 7, Notch appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson:
Notch has previously appeared on Swedish television of course, since he's basically a national hero these days in Sweden. This is his first appearance on network television with a nation-wide audience in the United States.
During the interview Craig Ferguson, speaking about Minecraft, says, "Anyone below the age of 20Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-72758856990052190202013-11-07T09:47:00.000-05:002013-11-07T09:50:10.952-05:00Notch doesn't really mind direct ripoffs of MinecraftNotch said something of interest while being interviewed onstage as part of Minecon 2013:
Q. When I kind of look around on Xbox or PC, or any platform, really, there's a lot of games which are kind of inspired by Minecraft. There are some games which are arguably kind of clones of Minecraft. Where do you draw the line between those things? Where do you think the--when does it become something Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-74834922798884215432013-11-02T18:09:00.000-04:002013-11-07T09:52:21.029-05:00Text of Jeb's slides from The Future of Minecraft panel at Minecon 2013Last year at Minecon 2012 Jeb gave a presentation about the plug-in API (see Jeb's Minecraft API slides from Minecon 2012).
This year, since there hasn't been much perceptible progress on the plug-in API, Jeb opted to fill the majority of the time with a retrospective of the Minecraft releases since Minecon 2012. Thus although the panel was called The Future of Minecraft, it was a look backward.Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-50326125938080354722013-05-05T10:02:00.000-04:002013-05-05T10:02:15.126-04:00The Minecraft Generation: A distinct demographic cohortRoughly every other year I travel a few states over to visit my sister's family. I enjoy visiting with her and my brother-in-law and seeing my two nephews. I usually bring something for the kids, often in the form of a computer game. I recall in late 2011 thinking that on the next visit I'd introduce my nephews to Minecraft.
I never got the chance—early in 2012 my sister emailed me saying Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-19144019953821833122013-05-04T11:01:00.000-04:002013-05-04T11:01:15.426-04:00Minecraft is the third largest city in the worldSales of Minecraft continue and the number of players keeps climbing. Here's the latest tally:
Minecraft — Pocket Edition: 10 million
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition: 6 million
Minecraft PC: 10.3 million
Total: 26.3 million
Let's remember that these figures are paid sales. We're not talking registered accounts on some free-to-play title here.
We can put these numbers in perspective by comparing Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-18914401608804818102013-04-08T06:45:00.000-04:002013-04-11T19:55:00.225-04:00Minecraft is going mainstream (vote for Notch in the TIME 100!)Signs are everywhere that Minecraft is going mainstream. I'm not talking about mainstream among gamers—most gamers are aware of Minecraft, whether or not they play it.
I mean that Minecraft is going mainstream in the sense that non-gamers are becoming aware of it. Just in the last few days two major old media outlets have recognized Notch (Markus Persson) for Minecraft—both TIME and the New Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-71277613652639528502013-03-07T21:14:00.000-05:002013-03-07T21:22:34.163-05:00Twitter is broken—tweets are missing
Currently the following is displayed prominently at the top of Twitter's I'm Missing Tweets or DMs page:
Bug Alert:
Some users are not currently able to see all Tweets posted within the past week from accounts they follow. These Tweets might still show up in third-party applications or in your Mentions tab.
Some users are currently experiencing an issue with direct messages disappearing, Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-24921894658499147802013-01-06T09:16:00.000-05:002013-01-06T09:16:09.492-05:00Minecraft is still selling like hotcakesBoth the Xbox and the Pocket Edition recently hit sales milestones recently, which allow us to easily calculate total sales across all platforms:
PC/Mac: 8.7 million
Xbox: 5 million
Pocket: 5 million
Total: 18.7 million
In early December it was reported that the XBox version was selling 40-60K copies every week, and Notch himself tweeted that Minecraft sold 453k copies on all platforms on Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-19076253915552949602013-01-03T07:07:00.000-05:002013-01-03T07:07:23.689-05:00When Notch stepped aside, legions of young Minecraft fans missed daddy
[Another post exhumed from deep in the drafts folder.]
In December 2011, Notch announced that he was stepping aside from Minecraft development:
Notch tweeted "As of yesterday, @jeb_ is the lead developer on Minecraft! notch.tumblr.com" [Link no longer works due to Twitter's link rot.]
So although it had been telegraphed for weeks, when Notch himself finally announced it on Twitter and hisStratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-34462397130820120232013-01-02T07:58:00.000-05:002013-01-02T07:58:31.454-05:00Autograph lines at Minecon, is this a kid thing?[This is one of several posts that's been sitting in draft form for way too long.]
One thing that struck me when watching videos of November 2011's Minecon was the large number of young attendees at the conference. Minecon 2011 was crawling with kids!
I'm
not sure how Minecon 2012 compared to 2011 regarding the age of attendees. I
only watched a single video from Minecon 2012 covering the APIStratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-13258794926630007452012-12-28T00:09:00.000-05:002012-12-28T15:05:23.338-05:00Even Valve can act shamefullyVia Hacker News I recently ran across a piece on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's site called First Sale Under Siege — If You Bought It, You Should Own It.
In the piece EFF explains the concept of "first sale":
…once you've acquired a lawfully-made CD or book or DVD, you can lend,
sell, or give it away without having to get permission from the
copyright owner. In simpler terms, "you Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-63593386527386067962012-12-21T02:42:00.000-05:002013-04-15T18:21:52.490-04:00Minecraft: The Lighter block from SDK's ModsFrom the General Information spoiler in the topic for SDK's Mods on the Minecraft Forums:
The lighter block lights on fire when power is applied to it.
According to the Block and Item IDs spoiler, the Lighter currently has block ID 131, but it had block ID 112 when this Mod Compatibility List was published in January, 2011.
This video from March 12, 2011 shows Lighter blocks in use:
Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-67915639265210528732012-12-20T01:08:00.000-05:002012-12-20T01:08:39.192-05:00Jeb's Minecraft API slides from Minecon 2012At Minecon 2012 in November there was a session on The Future of the plugin API. The session opened with a presentation by Jens Bergensten (Jeb) which consisted of ten slides. Below are the text of the slides.
Slide 1
Minecraft Plugin API
Scope and Development
Slide 2
What is a Plugin?
It's a file package in your game folder
It has unique information that identifies it
It's loaded with your Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-25721225777035036132012-12-19T03:15:00.000-05:002012-12-19T03:15:38.021-05:00Minecraft: The excommunication of [person4][Note: Names are disguised here but are present in the linked material, using the same scheme as in Minecraft harasser says he'll continue abuse.]
[person4] was a well-known member of the [mod A] forums and used to interact frequently and warmly with [person1]. Lately [person4] had started doing Let's Plays, and in the process of building her YouTube presence had apparently started drifting awayStratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-86862217998066594152012-12-16T22:25:00.001-05:002013-04-16T06:06:33.767-04:00Minecraft harasser says he'll continue abuseWhile updating my blog today I ran across a comment that caused me to start searching. This is what I found.
(Note: names have been disguised here but are present in the linked material, same with expletives.)
From an IRC chat log:
<[person3]> besides, to be honest, i dont think your in a position to moan about this after your mission to 'Destroy [person2]'<[person1]> mission "[Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-49932156853090187692012-12-16T12:52:00.000-05:002012-12-16T21:57:27.096-05:00Riot Games bans League of Legends player for bad behavior
Riot Games has banned a professional League of Legends player for "persistent toxic behavior."
Here is the post from the League of Legends Community forums:
Hi Summoners,Today I’ve got some tough news to share with you. We take sportsmanship and player behavior very seriously, and we fundamentally believe that pro players should not be exempt from scrutiny over their behavior. In fact, we Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-38161350176961440472012-11-28T07:19:00.001-05:002013-01-03T04:55:19.759-05:00Mojang addresses copying and Minecraft modder conductFinally, almost a year after I posted A statement on Minecraft mods copying features from each other, Mojang has publicly addressed the issue. Speaking in front of a large audience at this year's Minecon panel on The future of the plugin API, Jens Bergensten (Jeb) said the following during his presentation:
The next thing is more complicated. And that is you can't say that just because you've Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1580029372570359363.post-32673311309752253922012-11-23T04:52:00.000-05:002012-11-23T04:52:22.574-05:00Google weighs in on how gamers use searchI didn't know it when I posted Measuring MMO popularity with Google Trends, but Google had earlier issued a white paper and blog post on how gamers use search. Both the blog post and white paper are in support of Google's ad business and aim to convince game publishers to advertise with Google.
The blog entry, How the digital era has changed video game launches, summarizes the white paper.
The Stratagermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16674545127540735737noreply@blogger.com0