Minecraft Realms!

NEW ON REALMS: JOLLY HOLLY FOLLY

A sled-load of wintry treats: naughty, nice and all things ice

Welcome to the new home for the Minecraft Realms content blog! Thanks for coming over to Minecraft.net with us. We'll miss our home at Mojang.com, but look at all of the excellent, new content here!

Back in October, we decided that we'd like to try a themed bundle of maps for PC Realms. What followed was our successful Halloween launch, containing gems from community mapmakers such as Pumpkin Party and Forgotten Hamlet. Folks agreed that we needed to try another themed bunch of maps, and that brings us to our winter/holiday offerings. Strap into your sleigh and get ready to be amazed!

ICE WARS BY TEAM NOOT



For those searching for a bit more cerebral of an experience, we've got Logic&Elves, a map that proves that one of the most stressful parts of the holiday experience is finding gifts for the pickiest of people. The elves will judge you with the typical villager "Hurrrgh" until you give them the present they desire. "What do you mean if today's color is blue, you don't want a blue present? You should be happy with what you get!"

FROSTY WIND BY THETICMAN AND CHILDOFSTARS



One of the more unusual locations in Minecraft is the ice spikes biome, considered by villagers and most creatures to be an inhospitable place. Here, though, someone has built a refuge from the cold weather, and the village is ready for you to move in.

CHRISTMAS BRAWL BY MINEMAKERS



The winter holidays: a time for family, togetherness, and the last minute gift-giving efforts of a generous, crimson-clad man. However, not all of the winter wonderland's denizens are in a good mood this season, so this clearly means some bonks on the head are in order. There are several classes to pick, from the snowman who can melt to teleport around the map, to the reindeer who uses its antlers to make a point.

NAUGHTY LIST BY THE NAUGHTY ELVES



Created by a team of 21 talented mapmakers, The Naughty List was a surprise entry put forward by many of the current Realms-published mapmakers. The group divided the work between a seven different areas: a huge lobby to explore, and six different minigames. To find out just why you're on Santa's naughty list this year, gather your friends and dive into the challenges!

And Back by Popular Demand…

This week, we've got three returning adventures, updated for you to play in Minecraft 1.11:

Captive Minecraft IV: Winter RealmTerra Swoop ForceWestern Dodge

We also wrote a big article about the making of Terra Swoop Force! Read it. Go on!

Hopefully, you've soon got some time off from work, school, or other responsibilities, allowing you to try each of the above creations. If you enjoy them, let us know!

-Marc Watson (Customer Support Manager at Mojang)

Watch the videos here:  https://minecraft.net/en/article/new-realms-jolly-holly-folly 

Minecraft Festive Mash-Up Pack!

FESTIVE MASH-UP PACK 2016 IS HERE!

Jingling all the way onto Pocket and Win 10

The Ender Update has arrived on Pocket and Windows 10 bearing all kinds of gifts, but none more seasonally appropriate, jingly and jolly than the Festive Mash-Up Pack 2016! Expect it to roll out across various mobile platforms and geographies in the next few hours.

Weighing down the Update Sleigh are all manner of wintry wonders: a uniquely snowbound world for you to explore, featuring log-built chalets, frozen lakes, vast caves woven through with cart tracks.

It’s a magical place - and what better setting to get into the seasonal spirit and pelt your friends with hard, compacted snow? Dress up as one of many festive figures: peculiarly generous beardyman Chris Cringle, or one of his numerous reindeer chums. Feeling more naughty than nice? Then perhaps the creepy Krampus or dastardly Dishevelf skin might suit you. Or if you need an actual suit, try the toastmistress or toastmaster.



Those who just want to get away from it all and spend some quality time enjoying the natural splendour of the season might opt to drop into the Yuletide Yeti skin, or perhaps even Mistletoes the Bigfoot. (It’s not quite clear what’s so festive about Bigfoot. Just go with it.)

Those who are looking for something a little off-beat might try the Cool Claus skin - a blue alternative to the normal red and white Santa outfit that I was forbidden from naming “Subordinate Claus” even though that is a funny and clever joke and definitely not a lame grammar nerd pun.

Anyway! Enjoy! May the season bring you much cheer.

The Festive Mash-Up 2016 is available on Pocket and Windows 10 Edition for $3.99 or your local equivalent. You can try bribing us with mince pies, but I don’t think it’ll work.

-Marsh Davies (creative communications manager at *Mojang*)

Watch the video here:  https://minecraft.net/en/article/festive-mash-2016-here 

Minecraft Updates!

MINECRAFT 1.11.1 RELEASED

Rocket-propelled elytra flight is finally here!

Surprise! Minecraft is now at version 1.11.1!

The main purpose of this update is to fix a number of bugs, but we also took the opportunity to introduce a number of other features. Just in time for the holidays!

Added rocket-propelled elytra flightAdded Iron NuggetsAdded Sweeping Edge enchantment for swordsChanged the attack indicator to hint when you should attack

The update is available in your Minecraft launcher, enjoy!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Minecraft Team!

-Jens Bergensten (Lead Creative Designer at Mojang AB)

Source:  https://minecraft.net/en/article/minecraft-1111-released 

Minecraft News!

APPLE TV EDITION RELEASED!

We're on Apple's magical black box, just in time for the holidays

Do you own one of those fancy Apple TV devices? Maybe Santa has his elves cooking one up in their high-tech workshop?

If either of those are true, I bring good news! We’ve just released Minecraft for the slim black boxes. And, for a limited time, it comes with seven pieces of lovely DLC, giving you the chance to customise the fun to your liking. Minecraft: Apple TV Edition currently includes the Holiday 2015, Town Folk, and City Folk skin packs, along with the Plastic, Natural, Cartoon, and Festive 2016 mash-ups. It costs $19.99 and is rolling out in all regions as I type.

Apple TV Edition also includes the Ender Update. We’ve just posted about that on this very website!

One more thing - though Apple TV Edition doesn’t currently support Minecraft Realms or Xbox Live, we’ll update the game with those features in the near future.

Have fun, Apple fans!

-Owen Jones ( Director of creative communications at *Mojang*)

Source:  https://minecraft.net/en/article/apple-tv-edition-released 

Minecraft Add-Ons!

ADD-ONS: WHAT'S IN A NAME?

A short (but important!) guide to naming pack types

We’ve been overwhelmed by your response to Add-Ons in Minecraft Pocket Edition and Windows 10 Edition. You’ve already written tens of thousands of them! Some of my favorites are Ovo’s Rustic: Redemption, More Chairs, PC GUI, and Villager Guards.

For the uninitiated, an Add-On is basically a pack of files that lets you change how Minecraft's world works. Want 50ft chickens? You can have them! Want to create a pigman army to do your bidding and dress them all in frilly tutus? You can do that too, you weirdo! If you want more examples of what you can do with them, check out our dedicated Add-Ons page. They're pretty powerful things!

However, we've noticed some folk getting confused about the different pack types. It's a small thing, but it's easy to get wrong, and can lead to corrupted files. We thought it might be helpful to outline some of the basic types and file names, for easy reference:

1. RESOURCE PACKS

These allow the game to be re-skinned. Resource packs can contain images, sound, and descriptions of models, and are packaged as mcpack files. When you import an mcpack, you’ll see a message pop up indicating what is being imported and then, later, another message telling you the import is complete.



After importing the pack, you can enable it for all worlds here by clicking on the pack and the clicking the ‘+’ icon, or you can apply the pack to individual worlds in the world settings.



2. BEHAVIOR PACKS

These configure the behavior of the game. Right now, behaviour packs can configure the behaviour of entities, allowing recombination of built in entity behaviors (think: chickens you can ride or cool-headed creepers that don’t explode). Behavior packs can only be configured per world and not globally. Just like resource packs, they can be packaged as anmcpack file.



Here’s where you enable per-world resource and behavior packs. It works the same way as global resource packs, except applied only to world you’re creating or editing.

3. WORLD FILES

These are worlds packaged as mcworld files. They can be imported in the same way as mcpacks. When you import a world it is added to your world list right along with the worlds you’ve created. You can create them by just zipping up the contents of a world directory.

How about some other handy resources?

There are many places where you can learn more about Add-Ons. A couple of sites have appeared on my radar that you can discover and download Add-Ons from:

MCPEDLCurse

Per platform details on how to install can be found on our Add-Ons page under “Installation Instructions”.

You can also find more information on Add-Ons on the Minecraft Wiki.

We can’t wait to see what you make next!

-Michael Ott ( Executive Producer - Redmond Minecraft Team)

Source:  https://minecraft.net/en/article/add-ons-whats-name 

Minecraft Realms!

FIGHT IN A FORT OR TOSS A TUBER

Ah, Friday. For many, this signals the start of two free days to kick back and play their favorite games. To help you out with that, we’ve put some new maps on Minecraft Realms for PC, and have brought back some old favorites as well. Whether you’d like to quietly admire new builds by yourself, or frenetically compete with a group of friends, we’ve got something for everyone!

Hot Potato by Team Cryus

Gather your friends and grab a potato! Hot Potato is the kind of sport where you don’t want to be left holding the ball. Keep your eyes peeled for any agitators rushing you with a spud, and if you get hit, mash your mouse until you pass it off to someone else. These are exploding tubers, so toss them before they detonate!

Vaslen by Excessed



If you’d like to start a new survival game, but don’t want to stress over building up your farms, fire up this world template. In Vaslen, you’ll find a green mesa and five cozy shacks. Just be careful, this map starts at night!

Fort Craft by goCreative



Zombies gather to attack, beginning their approach to your fort. The narrow canyon walls make it difficult for the creatures to move in groups, and from your perch in the guard tower, you line up the perfect shot. With a quiver of arrows and a bit of luck, the sun will be up before the monsters reach you.

Other additions

We have another round of 1.11 compatibility updates for you! If you haven’t played these before, give them a try. This week, the following maps make their return to Realms:

Valley of KingsTrick or TreatSunburn PhoenixMakers Wars

We also have a special mention, for anyone that didn’t catch the Light Your Way Home blog post. The map, aptly titled Light Your Way Home, is part of the #MinecraftIRL campaign, designed to blur the lines between the real world and the crafted world. You can grab this map on Realms, under the adventure map category.

Winter is… on the way



Our next Realms content update, appropriately winter and/or holiday themed, is on December 16th! Make sure that you check in on that day for another blog post filled with all of the details.

If you’re curious about how to get your own creations on Minecraft Realms, check out our updated guidelines over at /r/Realms.

That’s all for now! See you next time!

Source:  mojang.com 
See more:  http://www.mojang.com/2016/12/fight-in-a-fort-or-toss-a-tuber/ 

Minecraft News!

POCKET EDITION IS 5 YEARS OLD! HAVE A TRAILER FOR 1.0!

What a long way we’ve come! At its inception, Pocket Edition was little more than an experiment by mega-brained Mojang coder, Aron Nieminen. It was pretty bare bones - just the most minimal Minecrafty features in mobile form, hammered together in a mere three months.

As Aron says: “It wasn’t even supposed to have multiplayer at first, and the first internal version only had an ASCII renderer!”

It’s since grown into one of our most popular versions of Minecraft, with over 40 million players, who are now able to enjoy the rich features of redstone, join each other on Realms, and across platforms, race each other on pigback, wail on witches and - with the upcoming Ender Update - battle the ultimate boss: The Ender Dragon.

The Ender Update will bring the game version up to the big 1.0, in honour of introducing Minecraft’s complete ‘gameplay loop’, as the devs like to say. But even though we’ve brought you The End, we’re a long way from finished with Pocket Edition. We have all kinds of interesting and exciting things planned - you’ll see!

In the meantime, prepare yourself for the showdown with the Ender Dragon by watching the trailer above, and get psyched about these other 1.0 features:

World Seed Library! We’re making it even easier for you to locate weird and wonderful worlds with this curated catalogue of superior seeds.Polar bears! Snowy biomes will now be prowled by these majestic beasts - but take care around cubs. The parents are very protective.Music! The original soundtrack finally arrives on mobile versions of the game, having already graced Windows 10. We don’t want our jams to jam up your internet pipes though, so it’s available to download separately from the main game.Oculus Touch support! Windows 10 players now have the option to use special VR waggle sticks to control the game! It’s well sci-fi!

Anyway, happy birthday, Pocket Edition! See you all in another five years!

Cheerio!

Source:  mojang.com 
Watch the video here:  http://mojang.com/2016/12/pocket-edition-is-5-years-old-have-a-trailer-for-10/