The next update to Minecraft seems to be about to bring in a few tweaks to the video options of the game.

Mojang dev Dinnerbone has been tweeting about some of them, mentioning mainly the new options for clouds: off/fast/fancy as well as the option to turn on or off entity shadows. The graphics button for fast/fancy will now control some of the particles too; namely the transparency of leaves and rain particles.

These updates separate the clouds and shadows from the rest of the graphical options which at the moment are all tied together. This will help less powerful computers run the game without having to disable absolutely everything graphics-wise.

For the next pre, I’ve changed some video options around. Clouds is now “on/fast/fancy” and there’s a new option for entity shadows “on/off”

— Nathan Adams (@Dinnerbone) October 28, 2014

And the latest in news of Youtube DMCA and how it sometimes doesn’t quite work as intended…

Microsoft have admitted that a bunch of videos that were recently hit by DMCA notices and taken down were in fact not infringing at all. The videos in questions came from bloggers FrugalTech host Bruce Naylor, and LockerGnome founder Chris Pirillo, who took to Twitter using the hashtag #Microstopped to protest the notices. The notices were filed against the videos purely because people in the comments of the videos were posting product keys for the game. Really.

Microsoft have at least apologised for the gaffe and are now taking “steps to reinstate legitimate video content and are working towards a better solution to targeting stolen IP while respecting legitimate content”. So credit where it’s due, at least they have admitted they made an error and are trying their best to fix it and have it not happen again.

However, it once again highlights the issue with automatic takedown where there’s little to no checking for the infringing content. Of course, it’s not possible to check so many videos by human either. It’s unfortunately a system left open to exploitation and a lack of penalties in place for those who wrongfully and sometimes maliciously take down content doesn’t help matters; but possibly this is the ‘best’ solution at the moment.

Possibly.

Those of us worried about how Microsoft will handle Minecraft now that the bigger company has acquired the indie studio might be able to breathe a little easier when they hear this news. At the very least, Microsoft are not considering making a ‘Minecraft 2′ to attempt to milk the game’s popularity to death. They also are interested in consulting the community for what we want to see.

On an IGN podcast, Microsoft Studios’ Phil Spencer said “I don’t know if Minecraft 2, if that’s the thing that makes the most sense… We need to meet the needs and the desires of the community before we get permission to go off and do something else.”

He has also said that the direction the game will take will be in part dictated by the game’s strong community, but warns that it won’t mean everything they do will meet with a 100% approval rating from the community “because I don’t know if there is any topic where 100% of people agree”. But he assures us that their first job will always be to go out and meet the needs of the community first and think of ways to grow the game that will sit favorably with the players.

Microsoft bought Mojang for around $2.5 billion, and this meant that Notch and other founders were to leave the small company behind. In Notch’s case it was to keep his sanity as he had found himself becoming a symbol of something and had never intended to be that at all.

Currently Evolve is delayed until early in 2015, but the Alpha for both Xbox and PC is fast approaching for those who pre-ordered the game as well as a few who will be chosen from registering for it on the website before October 31st.

With that in mind Turtle Beach have released the specs they recommend for playing the game and to be honest, they’re not too bad.

MINIMUM SPECS

• CPU: Intel Pentium D 3GHz or higher
• AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 6400 2.4 GHz or higher
• RAM: 4GB
• GPU: AMD Radeon 5770 or higher
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 or higher
• HDD: 15GB Install OS: Windows 7 64-bit

RECOMMENDED SPECS

• CPU: Intel Core i7 920 2.67GHz or higher
• AMD A8-3870 3GHz or higher
• RAM: 6GB RAM
• GPU: AMD Radeon R9 280 or higher
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 or higher
• HDD: 15GB Install OS: Windows 7 64-bit

The space taken up by the install isn’t really too high given that previous big games have sometimes exceeded 60GB of space. It goes without saying though that this is an Alpha – expect change even if none ever comes.

Ultra Street Fighter IV is soon to receive a free update that will alter every character’s moveset.

It’s called the Omega Mode and it tweaks each character’s moves either by altering them or giving them new moves entirely. The update was detailed in a blogpost on Capcom Unity where developer Tomoaki Ayano breaks it down for a number of the characters.

It seems each change to the movesets is a reference to some part of the franchise before, for example Ryu’s new moves harken back to the old Street Fighter games, grappler Zangief will have more ways to get close and personal with opponents and so on.

There will also be some more new stuff added, mostly in the form of new rules. It’ll be a new edition selectable in the character select screen. The new addition brings the total amount to a whopping six. It’ll be entirely unique, and so won’t include the new features for Ultra such as Red Focus or Ultra Combo Double.

You can read the full blogpost here: [x]