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Minecraft

Sam Cooper, Matthew MacLaine, Connor Fullarton, Damien Wright

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Inspiration

2.1 Dwarf Fortress

2.2 Infiniminer

3. Gameplay

3.1 Basic Gameplay

3.2 Game Types

4. Community

4.1 Player Base

4.2 Mods

4.3 Custom Maps

4.4 YouTube

5. Mojang

5.1 Notch's Development History

5.2 History/Future of Mojang

5.3 Notch's Personal Life

6. Spinoffs

6.1 Fortresscraft

6.2Terraria

7. Conclusion

Introduction

This report covers everything which was talked about by the group and generally goes over what was said and the order in which it was said. The content goes over the ins and outs of Minecraft from the game itself to the Community. The report will also cover the background of the founder/previous lead developer for Minecraft Markus Persson.

Inspiration

Dwarven Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is a 2D based role playing game with ASCII graphics where the user controls a Dwarven Fortress and it’s vertically challenged inheritance. It was developed by Bay 12 Games but the original idea for the game came from Tarn Adams; his idea for an insanely complex game regarding Dwarves trying to forge an existence in an inhospitable environment was unprecedented. There is a wide variety of random events that can happen to and within your Dwarf Fortress, from blood thirsty Elephants getting in through the water supply system and goring hundreds of workers before they’re taken down, to Magma men coming to life in your Blacksmith’s forge. There are three game modes included in Dwarf fortress, first being the namesake of the game; Dwarf Fortress mode lets you control your own little, but soon to be big, Dwarven Fortress and it’s workers on their quest to build a great fortress. The second mode is more of an adventure type game where you wander around exploring the world, slaying monsters and completing noble quests in your lust for fame. Third being not to much a gameplay mode at all really, Legend mode lets you read of tales and happenings that have occurred in your world; all written from the point of view of an observing Dwarf. Dwarf Fortress was released on the 8th of August 2009 and is currently available online for free for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Infiniminer

Infiniminer was a large inspiration for Notch while creating Minecraft; if you compared the two side by side you can clearly see the large amount of similarities between the two, they’re both block based building games where you can excavate massive caverns, create wild and wonderful structures as you please, or simply run around digging holes. Developed by Zachtronics Industries whose founder Zachary Barth came up with the idea for the game. The source code for Infiniminer is currently open-source which means it’s available for anyone to download and tinker with to their heart’s content, this means lots of user created content and mods. It is currently available to download online along with its source code.

Gameplay

This section of the report will be presenting the game portion of Minecraft, discussing basic gameplay mechanics and game types.

Minecraft is an almost endless, procedurally generated sandbox consisting of blocks which behave similarly to Lego. The two core activities in Minecraft as the name implies are mining and crafting.

Basic Gameplay

Mining involves holding left click on a block until it breaks, causing it to yield a material. However there are rules to mining, such as using the correct tool on the correct type of block will mine it more quickly. For example, using an axe on wooden blocks or a shovel on dirt blocks and a pick axe on stone blocks. Higher quality tools, that is to say tools made with rarer materials, will also break blocks more quickly as well as take longer to wear out. Some blocks will not yield anything unless you use a certain quality of tool or above on them, for example in order to mine gold the player will need to use an iron pickaxe or better.

Crafting in Minecraft involves arranging the materials that the player gathered onto a grid. There are two types of grid, one available on players at all times which is a 2x2 grid and another which is only available at a workbench, which is a 3x3 grid. Players must arrange the materials into patterns in order to craft, however these patterns usually resemble the object that will be crafted. For example; a wooden stick with 2 iron bars placed on top of it will produce a sword. There are also furnaces that the player can use to turn blocks and materials into other blocks, but the furnaces require fuel in order to do so and some things work better as fuel than others (example, a lump of coal versus a sapling).

Building is the simplest aspect of the game, simply requiring the player to have the block selected on their quick-bar and then right clicking. Where the block will appear when placed is indicated by a black square highlighting a side of a block already present in the world.

To summarize this section on the basic gameplay, players can mine resources and then use those resources to craft things. Left click is to destroy, right click is to create.

Game Types

This section of the report will be presenting the game types present in Minecraft.

There are two game types at present, namely creative mode and survival mode. Survival mode also has a sub-type called hardcore mode.

Creative mode is a mode aimed at people who wish to build large scale projects, such as a really large building (like the replica of the starship enterprise), pixel art projects, or complicated machines such as working computers. As such, the player is granted an infinite supply of almost every block type in the game, which means in creative mode there is no need to mine or craft. The player is also granted the ability to fly, which means there is no need to build scaffolding to construct larger structures. Environmental hazards are also disabled in this mode, so there is no need for the player to be concerned about falling off large structures or other hazards such as lava, drowning or monsters.

In survival mode, the player starts with nothing and has to gather all materials manually. While doing this, they also have environmental hazards to deal with. Generally, players will want to spend their first day punching down trees to craft basic tools to build themselves a shelter before the first sunset, because monsters spawn at night. Initially, the player will stand no chance against them, so early on the goal is to avoid them by hiding in shelters when it's night time in the game. Monsters will also spawn anywhere where the light levels fall below a certain value, meaning that caves become dangerous places to explore as well as presenting a hazard while mining. If the player fails to adequately light their shelters, then monsters can also spawn inside those. Later on in the game, after the player has gathered more resources and crafted some armor and weapons they will be able to turn the tables on the monsters and fight back, which will reward them with materials which can only be obtained from monsters.

Another aspect to survival mode, recently added in the beta 1.8 update, is the need to find food. Two ways of doing this include hunting animals (which spawn on the surface during the day) for their meat and planting seeds to grow crops.

A recent addition to survival mode is a sub-mode named hardcore mode. Hardcore mode turns the game into something like a rogue-like by introducing a concept named permanent death. Permanent death in rogue-likes tends to mean that when a character dies the save file associated with that character is deleted. In Minecraft, permanent death means that when the player dies the world that was attached to that save file is deleted, meaning that the next play session would take place in an entirely new world.

This concludes this section of the report on the gameplay. The basic mechanics are mining and crafting, where left clicking destroys things and right clicking creates things. The two game types are creative mode and survival mode, each offering very different things for the player to do.

Community

Player Base

The part of community was done by Matthew MacLaine. The community section was broken down into 4 sections; the section of user base, the section of Minecraft mods, the section on user created maps and the section of Youtube and the community as a whole. The section of user base covers the statistics of Minecraft from users who’ve registered with the game to users who’ve actually paid for an account. It also covers facts about gross revenue.

Mods

The section of Minecraft mods talks about all of the user created modifications which have been created to alter the vanilla version of the game into a far better game as well as allowing the user to customize the game to their own preference. The two main mods which are discussed are the millianer and the equivalent exchange mod both which are very different and impact the game in totally different way. After the mine mods are discussed in what they do, It gets talked about in a more in-depth way in how it actually alters the game in positive ways.

Custom Maps

The section of user created maps goes over actual maps which have been created by members of the community, in sometimes funny ways and also in stunning effect. The main maps which are talked over is the map which re-created the game portal, a successful game created by valve. The map covered all levels from their puzzles and also uses a mod within the puzzle to full effect allowing the “portal device” allowing the user to transport them self from one place to another in the same way the original game did. The other main map which is talked about it the map recreation of Jurassic park which is a map which recreates the whole island in a realistic way and uses the film as reference points. This is then followed by a brief discussion about other user created content from 16bit art to houses.

YouTube

The final section is YouTube. In this section the users who produce successful content about Minecraft are talked about. The stats of some commentators are revealed from how many users have subscribed to them to how many views they’ve received. Then then partnership between YouTube and Minecraft are talked about in how mine craft wouldn’t be as big as it is without it and how YouTube itself have benefited from Minecraft gaining over 1 Billion views.

Once all topics have been talked about there is a pause from the speaker as the slide backs out into the whole presentation. At this point the speakers asks the audience if they have any questions or if they would like something explained more in-depth. After this a swap from community to Mojang will occur. All information was obtained from and

Mojang

Notch’s Development History

Markus "Notch" Persson has been programming since a very early age. Markus' first expierience with programming was when he was seven years old and he was using his Dad's newly bought commodore 128. Markus was using this personal home computer in order to experiment with different type-in programs, by doing this, after a year when Markus was eight he managed to make his first ever game which was a text based adventure game.

After this experience Markus decided to make programming his hobby and he decided to take part in game programming contests. One of the main contests that he takes part in is Java 4k, which is a contest that requires it's participants to make the best game they can using Java. Markus has made at least seven game a couple of them being "Left 4K Dead" and "Mega 4K Man". As well as Java 4 K Markus took part in a contest called Lundum Dare, for this contest Markus was required to make the best game he possibly could from the ground within a time limit of 48 hours.

Markus has been a part of multiple different companies during his proffesional career. One of

Markus' longest lasting careers was working as a game developer at , this placement had lasted for just over four years. Afterwards Markus took up a job placement for a small developing company called Jalbum, for this Job he got to choose from different titles e.g. programmer or developer. The placement at Jalbum only lasted for a short period of time since Markus was getting under way with Minecraft and he would soon start his own company called Mojang.

Markus was a co-founder of Wurm Online. Notch no longer works on the game itself but he is still considered as a co-founder for the infamous MMORPG Wurm Online.

History/Future of Mojang

The company Mojang was officially started by Markus Persson on 16th October 2010. At this point in time it had been a year since Markus begun development on the indie game Minecraft, and the game had already sold a respectable five hundred thousand copies worldwide. Before notch Started Mojang the company was previously known as Mojang specifications.

The company itself is located in Sockholm, Sweden and is comprised of thirteen members. one of the main members is Jens "Jeb" Bergensten who has taken markus' place as the lead game developer. Jens took up the position of lead developer on the 1st December 2011, the reason for this is because Markus believes that Jens thinks on the same wavelength as him and also that Markus wants a break from this since he wants to work on other games that he's developing.

At the moment there's a film being made by 2PlayerProductions called "The Story of Mojang". This movie is going to be a documentary on Mojang's first year as a buisness. 2PlayerProductions had previously intended on just making a short twenty minute documentary on Mojang's first week, though halfway through filming they realised that there could be a lot to talk about so they decided to wait a year in order to give time for Mojang to grow as well as to allow time to get the $150,000 funding that's required. To date the amount of money that's gathered has exceeded their expectations mostly due to the Minecaft community donating money for the cause.

As well as Minecaft Mojang also develop other independant video games. One of the main games that mojang is developing currently is Scrolls, which is an online strategy game. The game Scrolls has had a lawsuit filed against them by Bathesda since the title Scrolls conflicts with Bathesda's popular "The Elder Scrolls" franchise. In the end Mojang won the lawsuit.

Notch’s personal life

At the moment Markus lives with his wife in the Sodermalm section of Stockholm in Sweden, and he's a very avid user of twitter. It can be said that Markus tweets more than your average Twitter user Mostly because he enjoys putting up whatever he's thinking, and that he enjoys other people knowing about it. Recently however this proved to be disadvantageous for him since he almost started a small war with the people from Yogscast since they were being disruptive at Minecon and Markus had reached his peak point of stress. Luckily the situation was resolved quickly, and at the moment Markus has just over half a million followers on Twitter.

Markus also makes use of the Blogging site Tumblr. Markus has named his blog on Tumblr The Word of Notch, this is where he posts his more serious topics for instance games that he's currently developing and about the company Mojang, e.g. he used Tumblr to announce that he's handing the lead developer position to Jens Bergensten.

Markus is also a part of some groups. One of the groups that he has joined is the Swedish Chapter of Mensa which is a group that can only be joined if the individual has an IQ that's in the top 2% in Sweden. Markus is also a part of the Swedish Pirate Party since he's strongly against the piracy of video games.

Spinoffs

Fortresscraft

FortressCraft has been widely prosecuted as a complete and utter rip-off of MineCraft in every way; where this is true in many aspects, it differs on a couple of key points. Firstly it is for Xbox 360 and not for PC, and secondly it has vastly superior graphics that include, but are not limited to: reflective water, high definition textures, and a superior shading engine. FortressCraft was developed by Projector Games and the idea for the game came from one Adam Sawkins. Within the first 48 hours of its release it was downloaded 40,000 times, making it the most successful Xbox Live indie game launch ever. Being largely a rip-off on Minecraft, the games creator actually cites MineCraft as one of his inspirations during the development of the game, yet he still insists that the two games are nothing alike; MineCraft's player base however disagrees. FortressCraft is currently on sale in the Xbox Live market place for 240 Microsoft Points.

Terraria

Terraria is the odd one out of all of the spin offs of MineCraft as it happens to be 2D instead of 3D, going back to the roots of Dwarf Fortress. It is also more based around the action and killing of monsters than building and digging. To support this there are a lot more monsters, weapons, armour, and even bosses in the game than in MineCraft and massive cave systems are mostly already open and there for you to delve into rather than having to mine them out yourself. In addition to the cave systems there is also a rather large and complex dungeon guarded by a mysterious old man...but enough about demonic old men. You could call Terraria a blocky adventure game with destructible environments whereas you'd call MineCraft a blocky building game with monsters. Terraria is currently on sale for £6.40 on Steam for PC.

Conclusion

Overall this report covers the main aspects of the game Minecraft, which included the player community surrounding the game, the company Mojang and the founder of the game, the inspirations that Markus used as well as the core aspects of the gameplay.

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