Mojang's PC hit piles on the cash and the updates with creator Notch thinking about licensing the game for mod creation, plus an in-game map for Beta 1.6.
Minecraft's momentum seems to have no end in sight, if the recent news that it broke 2 million copies sold is any indication. The exploration/building game, currently priced at $20, continues to grow in popularity and mindshare, and this has only spurred the game's further evolution.
Bigger news for the game itself comes today from creator Markus Persson ("Notch") himself: a mod framework for Minecraft that would allow outside parties to create their own games or other modifications from the Minecraft ecosystem.
Minecraft already has one form of mod: its customizable texture packs, though that's obviously not nearly the same as changing the entire game however someone wants. The ever-transparent Notch shared the thoughts he and the rest of publisher Mojang had on mods:
It's still a bit vague and the details might change after we've run it by our lawyers, but here's what we want to do:
* Let players sign up as "mod developers".
This will cost money(edit: no longer costs money!), and will require you agreeing to a license deal (you only need one per mod team).
* Mod developers can download the source code from our SVN repository.
As soon as we commit a change, it will be available to all mod developers, unobfuscated and uncensored.
* Mod developers get a unique certificate for signing their mods. This means players can see who made what mod and choose to trust individual developers. The cost of signing up makes sure only serious developers have access to this certificate.
As noted above, the mod license will be free of charge following a wave of negative reactions. But otherwise, it seems like a promising, natural development for what is currently one of the fastest-growing PC games (and communities) out there.
Elsewhere in the world of Minecraft, Notch is putting together the addition on in-game maps for the next version of the game, Beta 1.6. Maps will have to be crafted just like virtually everything else in Minecraft, but once made, its "zoom level" can be set, showing however much of your progress you'd like to track.
Minecraft worlds stretch out incredibly far, though they're not quite infinite -- just really, really, really big. A way to track where you've been in a world hasn't been very intuitive without third-party apps that build maps for you. An in-game solution should be much appreciated.
Sources: Joystiq, The Word of NotchSource: Daily News from GamePro.com
Thursday, April 28, 2011