Minecraft is going into Beta on December 20!

Well the titel does pretty much say it all, doesn't it?

Here is what Notch said.

The next epoch is upon us! The skies are trembling, pigs are growing wings, and the nether is turning awfully cold, as Minecraft slowly crawls out of Alpha..


Minecraft will reach Beta status on December 20th, 2010.


With Beta comes a larger focus on polish and content, and we’ll start early on with adding proper modding support with a stable API, and we’d love all input we can get on this from the modders out there. We’ll also add some kind of non-intrusive narrative to the game to help drive the game experience early on, and to provide some kind of late game goal. There will be a bigger focus on testing and stability as well, with more time between updates.


When the game enters beta, the price will rise to 14.95 Euro.


We will also change the license to remove the line that promises all future versions of the game for free. Please note that this change only affects people who buy the game after December 20, so if you got the game for during alpha, you will still get all future updates for free, despite this change. A promise is a promise.
Buying the game during beta will include all updates up until release, of course, and bug patches will be free.


Soon, you will be able to buy gift codes for Minecraft, perfectly timed for the holidays! Even better, if you buy those before December 20, accounts created from these codes will count as alpha accounts, and will receive all future updates for free.


And the next game update (with server-side inventory) is coming next week, before Beta


Merry holidays happy! :D

Refered too

Today was the first time I saw a random Minecraft video on youtube when someone refered to me, it made my evening! That means someone really liked what I had done!

Here is the video in question.


And here is the video where I am showing it.

Yet another update!

Just after I had posted the lat post, Notch updated his blog with yet another post.

So many emotions, so little space!

Last night, I finally got inventory to the stage where it can run without any client side code at all, all through a tiny two-method interface. That means moving it server side is trivial. I expect to have most of it done today, and I feel happy as a duck! :D

There’s a really awesome Friday mood here in the office as well, with a Starcraft 2 semifinal playing in the background (we seem to have a SC2 nerd or two here, and there’s a Swede in the semi finals)

(That’s @jeb and @kappische to the left, joined by @grapefrukt visiting the office)

In addition to my joy, I also feel searing pain. I had Phal for dinner yesterday.

Minecraft piggy in concert

Notch updated his blog one hour ago with this video where you can see some minecraft piggys at around 1:34 into the video.

The new minecart booster

So here is my tutorial of the new sort of booster that was invented a few days ago.

Redstone triggering sounds?

Yesterday notch twittered about the possibility that we soon will be able to trigger sounds, or tones with redstone. He gave us this highly illustrative picture.

With C, C# and D being tones. And I can simply guess that the box at the bottom is showing that different materials will give off different sound. And ofc course SP + SMP means that it's gonna work on both singel- and multiplayer. Woho! cool stuff!

Videos

Hello everyone!

Finaly I got some new videos in queue for uploading!

First off I am going to upload the new kind of minecart booster that I have learned about. It's a vertical booster where the booster cart falls on top of the traveling cart, whick is good if you don't have that much vertical space to build on. Also it's the kind of booster that stops once every cykle, this reduces the carts momentum so it doesn't bug out when it travels at high speeds.

The second thing I am going to upload is a series of movie tutorials where I explain the basic logic gates. Most people that have contacted me have had questions about the very basics of minecraft redstone. Therefore I am going to make one short movie of all of the logic gates and post them every other day, starting with the NOT-gate aka inverter.