Notch Shows Minecraft Adventure Update

jjp9999 writes "Markus 'Notch' Persson, the creator of Minecraft, showed off some features of the upcoming v1.8 at PAX, which includes the long-awaited adventure update. The video shows off villages, which Notch says can usually be found near the player's spawn point, as well as improved graphics and a few other gameplay tweaks. Notch says he and his team plan to release the update soon, but may release it in increments, since 'there's so much we need to clean up.' Regardless, the next version of Minecraft looks stunning, with some much-needed direction to the gameplay that could rekindle interest."

Minecrack

[anchovy_chekov]

Man.. just release it so my kids will stop asking me "when will 1.8 be out". I woke up last weekend with my youngest's face about three inches from mine, saying "has Minecraft been updated?" We've had to ban discussion about Minecraft from the dinner table, it's just gets too much.

But seriously, Minecraft has been an absolute boon for tech education in our house. My young kids now have their own hosted server for playing with friends, discuss the merits of Java over other languages and have generally replaced a "consumerist" attitude to technology with a much more investigative one. And the story of Notch kicking it all off by himself inspires them. It's all good.

Now kids, go write a mod or something. Mummy and Daddy want to have a sleep-in.

Re:Fix the crashes

[Anonymous Coward]

http://celeron.55.lt/minetest/ [55.lt]

Furthermore, the crashes aren't due to Java inherently. Nor is the absurd resource bloat (especially with the server). The crashes and the bloat are caused by inefficient programming within Minecraft itself and abuse of resources. Think of it as "lack of application of KISS concept". Notch has admitted his design methodology equates to doing malloc(size_of_available_userspace_ram) and using that, while any programmer worth half his weight knows you only allocate what you need (and free when done).

For a good laugh, open up the JAR files sometime and ask yourself what kind of programmer would design something with that JAR structure. These problems really aren't Java's fault, they're Notch's fault, and they're exacerbated by the fact that he refuses to let other members of Mojang work on Minecraft. There was a brief period where Jakob did some work on it fixing bugs left and right which Notch had created only weeks prior -- I believe this was during one of Notch's 6-decade-long vacation spats -- and the improvements were fantastic. When Notch got back, his access was nixed. Notch only permits himself to work on Minecraft.

But hey, it's all okay, because he's a Mensa member......