Verizon Creates Minecraft Mod To Let Players Video Chat On an In-Game Smartphone

Deathspawner writes: There's never a lack of stuff to be impressed by in Minecraft, but rarely does that impressive stuff involve a corporation. Recently, Verizon teamed up with some prolific Minecraft streamers to design a mod that takes interactivity to a new level. After building an in-game smartphone and cellular tower, the gamer is not only able to browse the Web on the device, but also video call, all in a humorously low resolution. Verizon has created a GitHub page to explain how the magic is done.

Per minute or bandwidth limit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will version be charging for the in game calls per minute or by monthly bandwidth? How many emeralds?

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[Joe_Dragon]

$15 a gig USD over your cap. More if roaming.

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[wjcofkc]

We probably won't know that until the next version.

You know the fad is long past ...

[UnknownSoldier]

... when a boring phone company tries to tap into something that was once a fad.

> ... until recently it was impossible to order a pizza from Minecraft. In fact, you couldnâ(TM)t make a phone call, send a text message or browse the web from the game even if you built a phone.

Around here we call that security and/or separations of concerns. The _last_ thing you want is some bug to be exploited by hackers that can have a negative impact on your finances.

/sarcasm Because the "first" thing I want from Verizon is being able to order a pizza from when I'm playing Minecraft on a phone. Gee, how about less price gouging, better cell coverage, better call quality, ending the shenanigans of deploying fiber, a straightforward billing statement without hidden feeds, better customer service, of the million other things [google.com] you could actually do to treat and respect your customers better. Nah, who would want that when "Dude, we can order a pizza from within Minecraft!"

Fucking morons.

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[zlives]

in the mineworld(?) fiber is there for you to lay... problem solved?

The question is ....

[PPH]

Because the "first" thing I want from Verizon is being able to order a pizza from when I'm playing Minecraft on a phone.

Will it be a virtual pizza?

Just because

[ITRambo]

Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. This mod fit's that old saying perfectly.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. This mod fit's that old saying perfectly.

The Minecraft ecosystem is the antithesis of that old saying. If it can be done, it will be done in Minecraft.

Do, or do not. There is no "should".

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[blazer1024]

It's like rules 34/35, but slightly different.

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[zlives]

you can do stuff without actually having to do anything physical or having the physical worlds constraints (reality) interfere. thus enabling you to twitch away as a mine craft junkie lost in the ethers of screen, oblivious to the world.

i think thats it... but i have never used it so kinda going off the minecraft hysteria vids.

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[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There's also the 'price' consideration: Unless you get really lucky and score somebody's cherished childhood collection at a yard sale from their parents who don't know that the lego secondary market is a well-oiled machine; enough lego(especially Technic/Mindstorms) to build something complex enough to be interesting to computer control gets pretty pricey. Cheaper than grabbing the McMaster-Carr catalog and ordering the moving parts from them; but still pretty expensive.

Perhaps there are people who acti

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[zlives]

tapping the vein is expensive regardless of the addiction :)
i assumed lego/minecraft is a tool to get started towards something more constructive noit an end on itself. Granted the vendor would prefer you hooked but then isn't that all of them?

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[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I don't know how they do/did it; but Minecraft somehow made the jump from being a moderately novel; but not obviously interesting, "8-bit-styled" 3d multiplayer sandbox game(with some optional combat elements), sort of the 'Duplo' to Dwarf Fortress' 'Technic'; to having an enormous amount of mod support, which has mostly eclipsed such original 'game' as there actually was.(And not just 'mod support' in the 'Bethesda builds a world; and then the players fix it' sense; the 3rd party components include things

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[UnknownSoldier]

> Can someone please break down for me what's so appealing about Minecraft?

Digital Lego

In 99% of all games, the world is static -- that means you can't permanently change it. In an MMO you can chop down a tree, but the tree will always grow back in the same place, every time. You can't plant your own tree where _you_ want.

The world in Minecraft is (almost) completely dynamic. See that mountain next to you? Want to dig a tunnel? You just mine (with a (iron+) pickaxe). Want to build a bridge over water

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[droneriot]

But time never ravages your creations, your tunnels never collapse and your cities never become ruins. Unless you play SMP.

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[UnknownSoldier]

Most people play SimCity with the disasters turned off too :-)

You a fan of "Das Rock" ? :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Defending my lawn!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I realize that this probably makes me a horrible person, whose shriveled soul is incapable of joy, and who was obviously never a child; but exactly how much external infrastructure are you allowed to use before "In Minecraft!" is no longer true in any meaningful sense?

The various redstone logic arrangements, while obviously perverse and inefficient, do implement various computational widgets "in minecraft". As best I can tell from reading the project documentation, this exercise uses an external helper program to do all the heavy lifting(digesting web pages and incoming video into an array of textures to be applied to blocks, implementing the MMS for the 'selfie' feature), with the only involvement from Minecraft being a large rectangular array of blocks that the external helper program re-textures to produce something similar to a framebuffer(it's not quite the same, since each block displays a multi-pixel texture, rather than acting as a single pixel).

You certainly couldn't do this with just any game(at least not as easily; if you have access to the game's memory, you can probably scribble on its textures; but doing that without bringing the whole mess down in a screaming heap is easier said than done); but that arguably makes it less interesting: Minecraft's support for external modification of server state is relatively robust, so there really isn't much that you can't do, if you are willing to do most of the work in an external program and then use Minecraft as a needlessly perverse frontend. Am I just a joyless asshole? A generation too old for this 'minecraft' stuff? Insufficiently impressed by a Verizion marketing exercise?

But terrorists?

[Kennon]

ZOMG another attack vector the NSA will have to monitor! We need to ban this, for the children!!!

My 6 year-old...

[netsavior]

My 6 year-old has said the phrase "you can have internet IN MINECRAFT" about 100 times so far today. At least this commercial is mildly interesting.

Does it also simulate the data cap?

[sethstorm]

Minecraft worlds can get quite large, as well as the data that goes through them.

Heh the linked video

[towermac]

That github page has an embedded youtube of the guy demoing. When the video is over the youtube related video blocks appear, like always.

The first one is "Verizon wireless can suck it!" and they go on from there.

I just really think that is funny.