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Mojang Releases Minecraft: Pi Edition For the Raspberry Pi 93

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the now-with-smaller-blocks dept.
hypnosec writes "Mojang has officially released Minecraft: Pi Edition for the credit card sized Raspberry Pi. Back in November, Minecraft was ported to the Raspberry Pi, and it was revealed that Mojang would release a free version of the game. The game is completely free and is now available for download. Even though the game will carry only a limited set of features, the cost and complexity of building and hosting a Minecraft LAN-party has definitely dropped." From the looks of it, you should be able to run it on any ARM system that can run Debian Wheezy. More generally, the idea of a tiny box you can just turn on and have a server for a bzflag, Quake, etc. tournament is appealing.
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Mojang Releases Minecraft: Pi Edition For the Raspberry Pi More

Mojang Releases Minecraft: Pi Edition For the Raspberry Pi

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  • Processing power and scalability (Score:4, Funny)

    by loufoque ( 1400831 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @12:04AM (#42868519)

    How powerful is this device? Can it host a large enough server for less wattage than a normal PC?

    • Re:Processing power and scalability (Score:5, Informative)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @12:27AM (#42868615)

      best case, its equivalent to a cheap tablet, minus wifi and screen

      700Mhz ARM, 256 or 512 megs of ram

      so, it depends what your server is doing, if it sits there with its thumb up its ass most of the time, it might do the job

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        if it sits there with its thumb up its ass most of the time, it might do the job

        Which describes most home servers. But it's just not as fun if you're not spinning the power meter and heating the house.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I use my Pi to watch porn from the DMZ. Every morning I wash the sheets and re-flash the SD card.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by isorox ( 205688 )

          I use my Pi to watch porn from the DMZ. Every morning I wash the sheets and re-flash the SD card.

          Korean soldier porn with land mines?

          There's porn of everything nowadays...

      • Re:Processing power and scalability (Score:5, Informative)

        by kiddygrinder ( 605598 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @05:56AM (#42869751)
        pretty much, it's cheap as shit to run and mine is basically a torrent box, ssh/media server and i've got one on both of my main tvs as xbmc clients. probably worthwhile to note it has a graphics chip that can decode 1080p video and it can be pretty trivially overclocked to 900mhz without upping the voltage.

        • I've been looking for a how-to on this. Got any URL?

          • i kind of rolled my own and i can't really find any tutorials that i'd be happy to recommend, however there are a few here [snapdragon.ccr]. the xbmc clients are pretty simple you just grab raspbmc (or whatever) and dump the iso on an sd card with their installer.

            for the server i used the basic raspbian distro and grabbed an external 1 tb drive with a powered usb hub to power it and the pi.

            i used transmission-daemon as the torrent client as the web interface is really quite good but you do need to edit a config file to

    • Re:Processing power and scalability (Score:5, Informative)

      by arashi no garou ( 699761 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @12:51AM (#42868735)

      I've used mine as a simple file server and I think it uses around 5-6 watts at 100% CPU with both USB ports populated. It is picky about storage, but most USB flash drives and most good quality genuine SDHC cards work well in my experience. Get a good quality power supply (it uses a Micro USB port) and use a powered USB hub for any high-current peripherals, and you shouldn't have any power issues.

      Right now mine serves as a poor man's HTPC, a front end to my Plex server via Raspbmc, until I can replace it with a Roku. Then the Pi will become a private cloud server via OwnCloud.

      Of course, they are capable of much more than what I've done. There is a GPIO header, camera and LCD headers, and a couple of groups have even built budget supercomputers out of dozens of units. It can run Debian (Raspbian), Arch Linux, Plan 9, RiscOS, BSD, Gentoo Linux, and there is steady progress on an Android port. You can also do bare metal programming on it, of course.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by hattig ( 47930 )

      There's a reason the base raspberry pi is $15. It's not a powerhouse.

      It's impressive that Minecraft has been made to run on it. I presume it is based off the C Android version rather than the Java desktop version, and the graphics have been tuned down, as well as game features.

      Even with the overclocking feature, you still only have a 900-1000MHz ARM11, which isn't very powerful by today's standards (although twice as powerful as my first Android phone, the HTC Hero).

      The RPi Minecraft does have the interesti

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by hattig ( 47930 )

        $15! I meant $25, stupid cheap-ass work keyboard, and even stupider finger!

        • Too bad, though. At $15 it would cost what it cost me to have my Model A shipped to me. They'd probably still charge $15 for shipping though. The only thing worth owning with an ARM in it that I know of for that price is a pogoplug (dockstar actually) which is even more limited and which has even less GPIO. Still, it might be a good answer to some questions. Then again, another five bucks gets you an actual pogoplug.

        • It's actually $35.
          The problem is not your keyboard.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by hattig ( 47930 )

            There's a $25 model as well as a $35 model, or did you miss this?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mspohr ( 589790 )

              They announced a $25 model about a year ago but you can't actually buy it yet. It may be available "real soon now".

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by lga ( 172042 )

                The Model A Raspberry Pi has been available for the last week. [raspberrypi.org]

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by mspohr ( 589790 )

                  I know it's coming soon but I still can't order one. The link you gave for the announcement on RaspberryPi.org for Newark/Element14 only says it's "available" but if you try to order one, there is no order page.

                  • Re: (Score:1)

                    by hattig ( 47930 )

                    That's because you're in the US, and as the post says, there's a short delay there whilst they process the required paperwork (import related?).
                    I see the ordering page for the Model A, so it's available.

      • I wonder if Broadcom now have a more powerful SoC that could be used in a next generation RPi.

        I'm sure they do and assuming the Pi continues to be a success i'm sure that we will eventually see a second generation of Pi *. However it makes no sense for the foundation to do that right now. It would fragment the community and take the foundations resources away from other things like making the education push and getting the camera board finalised and released.

        * Which would pretty much be a redesign from scratch afaict.

    • How powerful is this device? Can it host a large enough server for less wattage than a normal PC?

      If what you want to serve can be delivered to the device efficiently from an SD card or USB2 peripheral connected to flaky USB, yes. Otherwise, no; buy a cubieboard or PogoPlug Rev.2 (which has USB3.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chihowa ( 366380 )

        How powerful is this device? Can it host a large enough server for less wattage than a normal PC?

        If what you want to serve can be delivered to the device efficiently from an SD card or USB2 peripheral connected to flaky USB, yes. Otherwise, no; buy a cubieboard or PogoPlug Rev.2 (which has USB3.)

        Yeah, the flaky USB subsystem was a real letdown. Every use case I had involved at least one USB port and (even with the polyfuses bypassed) you can't depend on it staying functional. The ethernet controller hangs off of USB, also, and it shows. If you need USB and ethernet, the Pi is right out.

        If you need any sort of unattended reliability, skip the Raspberry Pi and keep searching.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jandrese ( 485 )
          I have to admit that I was really interesting in the Pi for some network stuff until I read that it used USB Ethernet. I have yet to find a USB Ethernet controller that is reliable when subjected to constant or high speed loads. Plus, I've had so many bad experiances with USB Ethernet simply crapping out when put into a bridge or configured to promiscuous mode. I'm not even sure it's the hardware's fault, I think a good USB Ethernet driver is just harder to write than a regular Ethernet driver and hardwa

        • If you need any sort of unattended reliability, skip the Raspberry Pi and keep searching.

          That pretty much sums it up. The R-Pi is an adequate and inexpensive super-low-power nettop, and a pretty darned good platform for XBMC, especially the 512MB version which I don't have. A ~$5 USB hub and a $1.63 bluetooth dongle remedy or mitigate much of what is wrong with the device out of the box. If you want a server for shoveling bytes, I do not think there is a better buy than one of the platforms I mentioned above. Cubieboard (when in stock) has SATA, which is neato, and costs fifty bucks. Pogoplugs

  • Looks like I got my RPi model B just in time!

    More memory, more better.

  • Performance (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I struggle to host 3 people on a mini-ITX Intel Atom system, I can't imagine how poorly this would run a MC server.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by hattig ( 47930 )

      This is presumably forked from the C Android version, which is more optimised for lower power devices, at the cost of having fewer features.

  • Pi Edition? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Skevin ( 16048 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @12:34AM (#42868641) Journal

    I thought this meant your Minecraft session occurred in a boat trapped with a tiger.

  • My kid is learning (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sonoma Sam ( 2838835 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @02:11AM (#42868977)
    Wow, first he learned Linux and I got him a hosted server for MC. Next he was setting up other servers remotely. THen I found him customizing his world via VI editor from his phone. My kid learned so much computer stuff because of MC. I am really excited about this because this is something else he will learn that I may not. I learned what griefing is and how he adapted various methods to protect his world. For me, it was a C64 and cassette tape drive, for him it is the Universe and MineCraft is his hook. This is really cool because it did not have to be done but it was. Talk about doing great community service.

    • Seriously, I was halfway through your post before I caught up.

      On /. MC means Minecraft and not Midnight Commander now, apparently.

  • The Raspberry Pi isn't even remotely close to credit card-sized, especially not when it's cased up. It's closer to the size of a packet of playing cards.

    • I agree completely! When I put my Pi in my wallet, it makes sitting very uncomfortable! I really had to force the wallet to even close! I believe this truly is false advertising.

    • The hydrogen atom isn't even remotely close to Angstrom-sized, especially not when it's cased up. It's closer to the size of a packet of playing cards.

  • the cost and complexity of building and hosting a Minecraft LAN-party has definitely dropped.

    Really?

    My nephew (aged 11) invites his friends round with their laptops (or, more realistically, their dads' laptops). They all connect to the wireless network and then my nephew runs up the Minecraft server on his parents' main PC. Cost: 0, complexity: very low. Alternatively, he enables port forwarding on the firewall and they don't even need to come over. Cost: 0, complexity: quite low.

    I can't see how a redu

    • it's really just a this is geeky cool thing, full minecraft is a massive resource hog and would be pretty much impossible to run on anything this small.

  • I'm no programmer, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Legion303 ( 97901 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @07:17AM (#42870039) Homepage

    Isn't MC written in Java? And isn't Java supposed to be platform-independent?

    Followup question: Shouldn't it then run on any platform that has a JRE installed?

    • The PC version of Minecraft is written in Java. The other versions (XBLA, Android and now Pi) are written in C++.

  • I thought the point of this release was to support the teaching of python to children on the Raspberry Pi. My son and his friends are big minecraft fans and he is quite excited about the possibilities of the new programming interface. I don't know if it will be possible but he wants to have wars with his friends, where they program each other into traps. I have only had a few minutes to look at it but it looks like fun, you can do stuff like

    for myblks in range(10): world.setBlock(1,1,0+myblks,3)

    to make a bridge in front of you.

    The Raspberry Pi was only ever su

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