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The update to 1.8 was painful for modders of Minecraft, with so much code in the backend of the program changing that a lot of mods would have required a complete restructure to continue working. Thus most modders just didn’t update, which has resulted in a lot of modpacks using 1.6.4 or 1.7.2 versions of the game to keep everything working.
With the 1.9 update coming, Mojang have decided that there won’t be such a big leap this time. Taking to Twitter staff member SeargeDP assured players that because there will be mainly gameplay changes in this patch, it will be “less painful” for modders.
This of course still mean that you need to update mods to work with 1.8 first, but at least there won’t be too much more work to be done to make your mods work with the next version. Heck, you can probably update to work with 1.9 when it comes out, ‘skipping’ 1.8 entirely.
One of the gameplay changes that was mentioned will be an update to the Ender Dragon, making it behave more like its console counterpart.
So there’s been some demonstration of the Xbox app that will be coming with Windows 10, and depending on your gaming needs you either know you’ll be making use of it (Lone) or couldn’t care less (Digm). Or possibly you just don’t know (me).
One of the functions it will come with though will be useful to small content creators who wish to grab footage of their games. The Game DVR that is included with the app will allow for the use of Windows to capture said footage, eliminating the need for a third-party program to do that very task.
The app will capture either the most recent 30 seconds or can be set to start and stop manually. There’s a few options for length and audio/visual quality and having it built-in seems like a very good thing. The only question mark over it as far as I’m concerned is how much of a performance hog it’ll turn out to be. Maybe also ones over how good the quality capture can be set (and whether it does capture at that quality) and the format of the video/audio output. Also, can you separate game audio from microphone audio?
… Okay, so maybe there’s more than one question mark over it.
Either way, sounds like Microsoft are observing what gamers want, so that’s good. Hope it works decently.
By now most if not all of us have heard about the Steam Workshop’s new initiative to let modders charge for their mods. Like a lot of things, it has both good sides and some not so good sides but the Internet has largely reacted negatively. Yesterday Gabe Newell himself, head of Valve, took to Reddit to answer questions that users might have about the paid mods.
What we can gather from the AMA is that Newell believes in the modding community of Steam and wants to see them get paid fairly for work that in some cases is extremely well-made and might as well be called game development in its own right. And I’m pretty sure that this is a sentiment that we can agree is a good one. He said that “With the Steam workshop, we’ve already reached the point where the community is paying their favorite contributors more than they would make if they worked at a traditional game developer. We see this as a really good step… The option of MOD developers getting paid seemed like a good extension of that.”
Tackling some issues people could see arising Newell stated that Steam will not demand exclusivity of mods calling such practices “basically a financial leveraging strategy that creates short term market distortion and long term crying.” He also said that he was confident that the community’s policing along with Valve’s own would crack down on people trying to make money off mods that they had stolen off another modder.
Some people also noticed that people speaking about the paid mods on Steam were getting banned or having discussions removed. When presented with this information Newell said that if Valve was doing that it was “stupid” and he would get it to stop, noting that such tactics don’t really work anyway in getting people to stop talking about topics.
I personally can see what Valve is going for, I really can. This has the potential to be a great thing, but knowing that Valve is not going to be too hands-on (no matter what was said about policing for stolen mods) still gives me a little cause for concern.
I, like everyone else, can only wait and see what will result.
The Xenoblade series is known for expansive vistas, giant monsters and insanely deep mechanics. Xenoblade Chronicles X, coming out on April 29th in Japan and slated for release sometime later in the year for the rest of the world, looks to be no different. And now, thanks to Nintendo Treehouse, we have an update look at the game, showing off the various continents, gamepad functionality and…giant flying/driving/fighting mechs.
