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Minecraft's Developmentcheck_box
ImYourFwend_Development
Java Edition
Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson at GDC 2011
| 2009 | Pre-Classic |
|---|---|
| Classic | |
| Indev | |
| 2010 | Indev |
| Infdev | |
| Alpha | |
| Beta | |
| 2011 | Beta |
| Beta 1.8 & Release 1.0: "Adventure Update" | |
| 2012 | 1.1 |
| 1.2 | |
| 1.3 | |
| 1.4: "Pretty Scary Update" | |
| 2013 | 1.5: "Redstone Update" |
| 1.6: "Horse Update" | |
| 1.7: "The Update that Changed the World" | |
| 2014 | 1.8: "Bountiful Update" |
| 2015 | |
| 2016 | 1.9: "Combat Update" |
| 1.10: "Frostburn Update" | |
| 1.11: "Exploration Update" | |
| 2017 | 1.12: "World of Color Update" |
| 2018 | 1.13: "Update Aquatic" |
| 2019 | 1.14: "Village & Pillage" |
| 1.15: "Buzzy Bees" | |
| 2020 | 1.16: "Nether Update" |
| 2021 | 1.17: "Caves & Cliffs" |
Before coming up with Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson was a game developer with King through March 2009, at the time serving mostly browser games, during which he learnt a number of different programming languages.[90]
He would prototype his own games during his off-hours at home, often
based on inspiration he found from other games, and participated
frequently on the TIGSource forums for independent developers.[90] One of these personal projects was called "RubyDung", a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but as an isometric three dimensional game like Roller Coaster Tycoon.[91] He had already made a 3D texture mapper for another zombie game prototype he had started to try to emulate the style of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.[92] Among the features in "RubyDung" he explored was a first-person view similar to Dungeon Keeper but at the time, felt the graphics were too pixelated and omitted this mode.[92][93] Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, but otherwise kept working on his prototypes.[94][93][95]
Infiniminer,
a block-based open-ended mining game first released in April 2009,
sparked Persson's inspiration for how to take "RubyDung" forward.[92] Infiniminer
heavily influenced the visual style of gameplay, including bringing
back the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the
block-building fundamentals.[92] However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements.[96]
The original edition of Minecraft, now known as the Java Edition, was first developed in May 2009. Persson released a test video on YouTube of an early version of Minecraft.[92][97] The base program of Minecraft was completed by Persson over a weekend in that month and a private testing was released on TigIRC on 16 May 2009.[98] The game was first released to the public on 17 May 2009 as a developmental release on TIGSource forums.[99] Persson updated the game based on feedback from the forums.[90][100] This version later become known as the Classic version.[101] Further developmental phases dubbed as Survival Test, Indev and Infdev were released between September 2009 and June 2010.[citation needed]
The first major update, dubbed Alpha, was released on 30 June 2010.[102][103] Although Persson maintained a day job with Jalbum.net at first, he later quit in order to work on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version of the game expanded.[104]
Persson continued to update the game with releases distributed to users
automatically. These updates included new items, new blocks, new mobs,
survival mode, and changes to the game's behavior (e.g. how water
flows).[104] To back the development of Minecraft, Persson set up a video game company, Mojang, with the money earned from the game.[105][106][107] Mojang co-founders included Jakob Porser, one of Persson's coworkers from King, and Carl Manneh, jAlbum's CEO.[90]
On 11 December 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft was entering its beta testing phase on 20 December 2010.[108] He further stated that bug fixes and all updates leading up to and including the release would still be free.[109] Over the course of the development, Mojang hired several new employees to work on the project.[110]
Mojang moved the game out of beta and released the full version on 18 November 2011.[111] On 1 December 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead designer.[112] On 28 February 2012, Mojang announced that they had hired the developers of the popular "Bukkit" developer API for Minecraft,[66] to improve Minecraft's support of server modifications.[113]
This acquisition also included Mojang apparently taking full ownership
of the CraftBukkit server mod which enables the use of Bukkit,[114] although the validity of this claim was questioned due to its status as an open-source project with many contributors, licensed under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License.[115]
On 15 September 2014, Microsoft announced a $2.5 billion deal to buy Mojang, along with the ownership of the Minecraft intellectual property.[116][117][118]
The deal was suggested by Persson when he posted a tweet asking a
corporation to buy his share of the game after receiving criticism for
changing the game's end user license agreement (EULA).[119][120][121] It was arbitrated on 6 November 2014, and led to Persson becoming one of Forbes' "World's Billionaires".[122][123][124][125] The original version of the game was renamed to Minecraft: Java Edition on 18 September 2017 to separate it from Bedrock Edition, which was renamed to just Minecraft by the Better Together Update.[126]
Since the first full release of Minecraft, dubbed the
"Adventure Update", the game has been continuously updated with many
major updates, available for free to users who have already purchased
the game.[127]
The latest update is 1.16, the "Nether Update", which overhauls the
Nether dimension, adding new biomes and mobs, and was released on 23
June 2020.[128]
The next planned update, "Caves & Cliffs", which is set to be
released in 2021, will expand the game's underground biomes with more
types of blocks, mobs, and new archaeology features, and revamp mountainous world generation.[129]
The Bedrock Edition has also been regularly updated, with these updates now matching the themes of Java Edition updates. Other versions of the game such as the various console editions and Pocket Edition were either merged into Bedrock and/or discontinued and as such have not received further updates.[126]
Music
Main article: Music of Minecraft
C418, the lead composer of the game
Minecraft's music and sound effects were produced by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418.[130] The background music in Minecraft is instrumental ambient music.[131] On 4 March 2011, Rosenfeld released a soundtrack titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game.[132] Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011.[133] On 9 November 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Beta, which includes the music that was added in later versions of the game.[134][135] A physical release of Volume Alpha, consisting of CDs, black vinyl, and limited-edition transparent green vinyl LPs, was issued by indie electronic label Ghostly International on 21 August 2015.[136][137] In addition to Rosenfeld's work, other composers have contributed tracks to the game since release, including Samuel Åberg, Gareth Coker, and Lena Raine.[138][139] Raine's work was included in a separate album titled Minecraft: Nether Update (Original Game Soundtrack).[140]
Variants
For the tenth anniversary of the game's release, Mojang remade a version of Minecraft Classic in JavaScript and made it available to play online[141][142]
It functions much the same as creative mode, allowing players to build
and destroy any and all parts of the world either alone or in a
multiplayer server. Environmental hazards such as lava do not damage
players, and some blocks function differently since their behavior was
later changed during development.[143][144][145]
Minecraft 4K is a simplified version of Minecraft similar to the Classic version that was developed for the 2011 Java 4K game programming contest "in way less than 4 kilobytes".[146]
The map itself is finite—composed of 64×64×64 blocks—and the same world
is generated every time. Players are restricted to placing or
destroying blocks, which consist of grass, dirt, stone, wood, leaves,
and brick.[147]
Around 2011 prior to Minecraft's full release, there had been collaboration between Mojang and The Lego Group to make a Lego brick-based Minecraft game to be called Brickcraft. This would have modified the base Minecraft
game to use Lego bricks, which meant adapting the basic 1x1 block to
account for larger pieces typically used in Lego sets. Persson had
worked on the preliminary version of this game, which he had named
"Project Rex Kwon Do" based on the joke from Napoleon Dynamite.
Lego had greenlit the project to go forward, and while Mojang had put
two developers on the game for six months, they later opted to cancel
the project, as Mojang felt that the Lego Group were too demanding on
what they could do, according to Mojang's Daniel Kaplan. The Lego Group
had considered buying out Mojang to complete the game, but at this point
Microsoft made its offer to buy the company for over US$2 billion. According to the Lego Group's Ronny Scherer, the company was not yet sure of the potential success of Minecraft at this point and backed off from acquisition after Microsoft brought this offer to Mojang.[148]
Bedrock Edition
On 16 August 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released for the Xperia Play on the Android Market as an early alpha version. It was then released for several other compatible devices on 8 October 2011.[149][150] An iOS version of Minecraft was released on 17 November 2011.[151] A port was made available for Windows Phones shortly after Microsoft acquired Mojang.[152]
The port concentrates on the creative building and the primitive
survival aspect of the game, and does not contain all the features of
the PC release. On his Twitter account, Jens Bergensten said that the Pocket Edition of Minecraft is written in C++ and not Java, due to iOS not being able to support Java.[153] Gradual updates are periodically released to bring the port closer to the PC version.[154]
On 10 December 2014, in observance of Mojang's acquisition by Microsoft, a port of Pocket Edition was released for Windows Phone 8.1.[155] On 18 January 2017, Microsoft announced that it would no longer maintain the Windows Phone versions of Pocket Edition.[156] On 19 December 2016, the full version of Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. On 31 July 2017, the Pocket Edition portion of the name was dropped and the apps were renamed simply as Minecraft.[157] The Pocket Edition's engine, known as "Bedrock", was ported to non-mobile platforms Windows 10, Xbox One, Gear VR, Apple TV, Fire TV, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4.[158][159][160][161] Versions of the game on the Bedrock engine are collectively referred to as the Bedrock Edition.
Minecraft for Windows 10 is a version of Bedrock Edition currently exclusive to Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system. The beta for it launched on the Windows Store on 29 July 2015.[162] This version has the ability to play with Xbox Live friends, and to play local multiplayer with owners of Minecraft on other Bedrock
platforms. Other features include the ability to use multiple control
schemes, such as a gamepad, keyboard, or touchscreen (for Microsoft Surface and other touchscreen-enabled devices), virtual reality support, and to record and take screenshots in-game via the built-in GameDVR.[163]
On 16 April 2020, a beta version of Minecraft implementing physically based rendering, ray tracing and DLSS was released by Nvidia on RTX-enabled GPUs.[164] The final version was released on 8 December 2020.[165]
Education Edition
Minecraft: Education Edition is an educational version of the
base game, designed specifically for use in educational establishments
such as schools, and built off of the Bedrock codebase. It is available
on Windows 10, MacOS, iPadOS and Chrome OS.[166]
It includes a Chemistry Resource Pack,[167] free lesson plans on the Minecraft: Education Edition website, and two free companion applications: Code Connection and Classroom Mode.[168]
An initial beta test was carried out between 9 June and 1 November 2016.[169] The full game was then released on Windows 10 and MacOS on 1 November 2016.[170]
On 20 August 2018, Mojang Studios announced that it would bring
Education Edition to iPadOS in Autumn 2018. It was released to the App
Store on 6 September 2018.[171] On 27 March 2019, it was announced that the Education Edition would be operated by JD.com in China.[172]
On 26 June 2020, an Education Edition Public Beta was made available to
Google Play Store compatible Chromebooks. The full game was released to
the Google Play Store for Chromebooks on 7 August 2020.[173]
Console editions
An Xbox 360 version of the game, developed by 4J Studios, was released on 9 May 2012.[174][175] On 22 March 2012, it was announced that Minecraft would be the flagship game in a new Xbox Live promotion called Arcade NEXT.[175]
The game differs from the home computer versions in a number of ways,
including a newly designed crafting system, the control interface,
in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and the ability to play
with friends via Xbox Live.[176][177] The worlds in the Xbox 360 version are also not "infinite", and are essentially barricaded by invisible walls.[177]
The Xbox 360 version was originally similar in content to older PC
versions, but was gradually updated to bring it closer to the current PC
version prior to its discontinuation.[174][178][179] An Xbox One version featuring larger worlds among other enhancements[180] was released on 5 September 2014.[180]
Versions of the game for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 were released on 17 December 2013 and 4 September 2014 respectively.[9] The PlayStation 4 version was announced as a launch title, though it was eventually delayed.[181][182] A version for PlayStation Vita was also released in October 2014.[183] Like the Xbox versions, the PlayStation versions were developed by 4J Studios.[184]
On 17 December 2015, Minecraft: Wii U Edition was released. The Wii U version received a physical release on 17 June 2016 in North America,[185] in Japan on 23 June 2016,[186] and in Europe on 30 June 2016.[187] A Nintendo Switch version of the game was released on the Nintendo eShop on 11 May 2017, along with a physical retail version set for a later date.[188] During a Nintendo Direct presentation on 13 September 2017, Nintendo announced that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition
would be available for download immediately after the livestream, and a
physical copy available on a later date. The game is only compatible
with the "New" versions of the 3DS and 2DS systems, and does not work
with the original 3DS, 3DS XL, or 2DS models.[17]
On 18 December 2018, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions of Minecraft received their final update.[189]
The PlayStation 4 version of Minecraft was updated in December 2019 to support cross-platform play with all other Bedrock editions, though users are required to have a free Xbox Live account to play.[161]
Raspberry Pi
A version of Minecraft for the Raspberry Pi was officially revealed at MineCon 2012. The Pi Edition is based on Pocket Edition
Alpha v0.6.1, and with the added ability of using text commands to edit
the game world. Players can open the game code and use the Python programming language to manipulate things in the game world.[190]It
also includes a scripting API to modify the game, and server software
for multiplayer. The game was leaked on 20 December 2012, but was
quickly pulled off.[191] It was officially released on 11 February 2013.[192] Mojang stopped providing updates to Minecraft: Raspberry Pi Edition in 2016. It is preinstalled on Raspberry Pi OS, and can be downloaded for free from the official website. There is still an active community who develop mods and other tools for the game.
Minecraft China
On 20 May 2016, Minecraft China was announced as a localized edition for China, where it was released under a licensing agreement between NetEase and Mojang.[193]
The PC edition was released for public testing on 8 August 2017. The
iOS version was released on 15 September 2017, and the Android version
was released on 12 October 2017.[194][195][196] The PC edition is based on the original Java Edition, while the iOS and Android mobile version is based on the Bedrock Edition. The edition is free-to-play, and had over 300 million players by November 2019.[197]
Virtual reality
Early on, Persson planned to support the Oculus Rift with a port of Minecraft. However, after Facebook acquired Oculus in 2013, he abruptly canceled plans noting "Facebook creeps me out."[198][199] A community-made modification known as Minecraft VR was developed in 2016 to provide virtual reality support to Minecraft: Java Edition oriented towards Oculus Rift hardware. A fork of the Minecraft VR modification known as Vivecraft ported the mod to OpenVR, and is oriented towards supporting HTC Vive hardware.[200] On 15 August 2016, Microsoft launched official Oculus Rift support for Minecraft on Windows 10.[200] Upon its release, the Minecraft VR mod was discontinued by its developer due to trademark complaints issued by Microsoft, and Vivecraft was endorsed by the community makers of the Minecraft VR modification due to its Rift support and being superior to the original Minecraft VR mod.[200] Also available is a Gear VR version, titled Minecraft: Gear VR Edition.[201] Windows Mixed Reality
support was added in 2017. On 7 September 2020, Mojang Studios
announced that the PlayStation 4 version of the game would be getting PlayStation VR support in the same month.[202] The only officially supported VR versions of Minecraft are the PlayStation 4 version, Minecraft: Gear VR Edition and Minecraft for Windows 10 for Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.[203][202]
From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#:~:text=Minecraft%20is%20a%20sandbox%20video%20game%20developed%20by,has%20since%20been%20ported%20to%20several%20other
