After architect Andrew McClure received a lesson from his cousin on how to use Minecraft, he went to work making a slick looking house in the sandbox game in just two hours.

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Chances are you've heard C418's music, even if you've never heard of him: he scored Minecraft. Now the Berlin-based producer and composer, aka Daniel Rosenfeld, has his first solo album on the way. Here's a single from it, titled Beton. [via Variety]

“All the big loud housey songs came from the idea of ‘I want to create the same song over and over again’,” Rosenfeld said, “Except that I’ve created each one in a different location, or a different mindset. And just purely based on that, they all turned out unique in their own way.”

The album, Excursions, is out in september; you can get the Minecraft soundtrack on vinyl for $45 at Amazon. Read the rest

Alice Maz was part of a small group of players who came to have near-total mastery over the internal economy of a popular Minecraft; Maz describes how her early fascination with the mechanics of complex multiplayer games carried over into an interest in economics and games, and that let her become a virtuoso player, and brilliant thinker, about games and economics. Read the rest

Last year, the Mirai botnet harnessed a legion of badly secured internet of things devices and turned them into a denial of service superweapon that brought down critical pieces of internet infrastructure (and even a country), and now its creators have entered guilty pleas to a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act federal case, and explained that they created the whole thing to knock down Minecraft servers that competed with their nascent Minecraft hosting business. Read the rest

Aditya Aryanto carefully photoshopped some animals to look like adorable escapees from the world of Minecraft. [via Kottke]

I tried visualising some animals in different form, which called Anicube or Animal Cube. I am interested in the cubical shape and trying to change some animal form into cubes. First, I was afraid if it would be nicer than the original shape. I was really curious about the results, so I tried to find some funny animal pictures to be changed into Anicube.

I found animal pictures from Unsplash and Pixabay. Once I collected, I started making these images in Photoshop. How to make a cube on animal body, I use the Liquify (Shift+Command+X). After it is formed and I think it is funnier than the original form, I uploaded to Instagram. I saw that many friends liked it, so I was challenged to make it more. So here is the result of my simple works. I hope you like it.

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Red Lava Toys is a Detroit-based startup that make super cool, low-cost custom Minecraft figs at a local makerspace: they CNC-milled their own injection molds for the body and joints, and have precision die-cut vinyl stickers that they print to order with long-lasting ink and cover with a clear adhesive coat, then place them on the body of the toy. Read the rest

You¹ can now explore the St. Kilda archipelago, a tiny collection of islands 40 miles off the Scottish coast, in Minecraft. This is great because it rains less in Minecraft, and the wind won't shear your face off.

The BBC reports that the 1:1 scale map of the islands took 125 hours to produce.

The last islanders left the main island of Hirta in 1930 after life there became unsustainable.

People only now live on Hirta on a temporary basis to work at the military site, or on wildlife conservation projects. ...

The map is available for public download to allow gamers all over the world to explore the archipelago's history, heritage, stories, people and landscapes.

St. Kilda really is perfectly-sized to be a Minecraft map: a main island about 2km long and some smaller outlying ones. I hope they made it so the Minecraft version is fully playable, and not just a vast block of stone under the surface.

1. Can anyone actually find the download? Am I going crazy?

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It takes more than eight wooden planks to build a real-life Minecraft chest; it also takes longer than a click. But the results seem worth it, so I know what I'll be doing next weekend! [via r/DIY]

Redditor dan2907 explains:

I made this minecraft chest as a gift for my neice, and since I probably wouldn't have attempted this if it wasn't for the other examples I'd seen when searching google images, I wanted to post it here in the hopes that if anyone else ever wants to give it a try, they might learn something from my attempt, or at least see it's possible even if you're not experienced.

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SethBling says: "I built an Atari 2600 Emulator in vanilla Minecraft using a couple thousand command blocks." Download the world and watch the technical video here. Read the rest

Seth Bling built a functioning Atari 2600 emulator in Minecraft. Not just the processor, or the box, but the whole thing, complete with cartridges and a television. The white flashing line you see in it is the television's scanning electron beam being emulated. You can watch dirt blocks turn to stone and back: that's the ones and zeroes in the Atari's memory. You can edit the memory, bit by bit, by punching it!

It takes Minecraft about three minutes to draw each frame, but Bling recorded a timelapse of it in action. Click through to the YouTube for a download of the Minecraft world housing the emulator. Here's a technical explanatory video:

I made an Atari 2600 emulator in vanilla Minecraft. It plays real Atari ROMs. Very. Very. Slowly. https://t.co/yDu9q8PVfb

— SethBling (@SethBling) December 6, 2016

Previously: Extremely Mundane Places In Minecraft Read the rest

An educational edition of hit game/toy/epic/religion Minecraft is in beta testing, reports The Verge, and teachers are invited to get their hands on it early.

Minecraft: Education Edition is almost identical to standard Minecraft, but it includes a handful of features designed for the classroom. A couple smaller features were announced in January — like an in-game camera for taking screenshots — and some more substantial ones are being announced today. That includes adding in-game chalkboards that can display large blocks of text and letting teachers place characters that'll say things when a student walks up to them.

The biggest new feature won't come until September, when the game launches. It's called Classroom Mode, and it's essentially a control panel for teachers. Teachers will be able to use the interface to grant resources to students, view where everyone is on a map, send chat messages, and teleport people to specific places, which will be useful should students run off or get lost.

Classroom mode alone looks great for improving multiplayer in general:

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If you're a Boing Boing reader with children, the thought of getting them into coding has probably crossed your mind. Summer is a great time to expose kids to new interests, and coding is no exception. But unlike traditional summer camps, coding camps are less familiar territory, and often demand a high price tag with uncertain outcomes.

A minecrafter, infered5, has decided to recreate all of Bungie's Destiny, inside of Minecraft. It is pretty amazing!

Kotaku shares the story:

Some Minecraft players like to build houses, or castles, or mazes full of monsters. Others prefer to recreate the entirety of Destiny.

Player infered5's pet project is to remake all of Bungie’s space dress-up sim in the blocky world of Minecraft, and he’s done a pretty good job so far. Check out this footage for a quick tour through Minecraft’s version of the Tower and even some of the Cosmodrome:

“We have the Cosmodrome built from the Steppes to the Divide, through the breach and through the Devils Lair, nothing Mothyards and beyond is made,” infered5 told me. “The Moon was made with worldpainter as a proof of concept, but has no underground areas. Very bland. The Cosmodrome was built by hand and has much more detail. The Tower and Reef are built in their entireties.”

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It's a shame that this Minecraft comic never happened. The art looks fantastic. Brandon Sheffield, video game director and webcomic writer, has sample character designs, screens, and a script on his website.

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The BBC reports on China's use of a "digital camo"—a pixelated look believed to offer superior concealment than traditional patterns—so exaggerated it resembles the video game Minecraft. (The United States deployed a less aggressive digital camo, but is phasing it out.) Read the rest

See sample pages from this book at Wink.

Shaped like a hexagon to mimic the dimensions of a cube, Minecraft: Blockopedia is designed for full-on Minecraft geeks, although those of us who have only watched the game over the shoulders of children and loved ones will find plenty to admire here too. After the briefest of introductions and a quick glossary to help noobs make sense of the stats that accompany each block’s name, it’s off to the races, with page after page devoted to blocks made from rocks, blocks made from plants, blocks that serve particular functions (a ladder), and blocks that do particular things (acting as a switch).

One of the coolest characteristics about Minecraft is how it chooses to observe the laws of nature and physics, or ignore them. Sand, we are told, can be a cave-in hazard, but when it’s smelted in a furnace, it turns to glass. Both statements are true, but don’t go looking for glowstone the next time you’re spelunking – it is only found in a sinister dimension of Minecraft called the Nether. And while sugar cane in both the real world and the Overworld of Minecraft can be used to make sugar, guess where it can also be used to block flowing lava?

Though the format and illustrations in Minecraft: Blockopedia are the book’s most prominent features, it’s still a book filled with lots and lots of, you know, words. Writer Alex Wiltshire mostly plays it straight (“Water is incredibly useful.”), but often he lets the language and logic of Minecraft add color, as in “Sticky pistons are made by crafting a piston with a slimeball…” and “If you dig podzol without the silk touch enhancement it drops dirt.” Got that? Read the rest

Minecraft's combat system always reflected its simplicity, and basically amounted to clicking things until they died. It's just been overhauled with a game update centered entirely on combat. Ideas that seem simple become more challenging when you have to account for lag. Read the rest