Another bundle of indie games has launched. This bundle includes Sanctum, a tower defense FPS, A.R.E.S extinction agenda, Gemini Rue, and Nimbus.

The price for the bundle changes as purchases are made, with high purchases knocking the price down for everyone.

You can view the bundle here.

UPDATE: 20,000 bundles sold, so two DLC packs are now available in the Bundle! If you’ve already purchased, they should show up on the keys page in 24hrs. Another DLC pack will be released at 70,000 sales.

First round of the Zenimax vs. Mojang case ended today in Mojang’s favor. Notch tweeted this eariler: “We won the interim injunction! We can keep using the name “Scrolls”. ZeniMax/Bethesda can still appeal the ruling, but I’m very happy. ” viaTwitter, followed quickly by Jahkob‘s comment: “The swedish courts seem to work! Scrolls, shall continue to be named Scrolls!”

Hopefully, this will be the  end of it. Scrolls is due to be shown to the public at MineCon next month.

You can download this pre-release from here. This includes the long awaited End, a new realm totally populated by Enderman (and Dragons, but not is this release, unless you have the edited class files) with obsidian towers dominating the landscape.

The are also a few nice visual effects, such as lava droplets leaking through blocks, to make you aware that a lava source is above you.

Enjoy this new pre-relase!

Just finished editing the next level’s video, Enjoy!

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You can download the map here. Requires Industry Craft.

Here’s a little something I whipped together. The 1st Level of Doom 2 in Minecraft! Kudos to dyljaybaker for the inital map design!

Here’s a video of a TNT session we did for testing how the 1.8 Minecraft server handles lots of TNT.

Turns out it handles it a lot better than it used to!

Yes, it is true. The founder of Apple, and tyrannical ruler of all things Mac, has kicked the bucket and ceased to be. But seriously folks, the man really was a visionary. He was a pioneer for a lot of cool tech stuff and without him we would not be where we are today in terms of computing. May you rest in peace Steve, keep on wearing that black turtleneck wherever you ended up.

Here’s a little tutorial I threw together on making a rebulding house using Pistons in Minecraft 1.8 creative. Enjoy!

Even though Minecraft 1.8 isn’t officially out till Tuesday (if @jeb_ keeps his schedule), @notch decided to release a pre-release version of 1.8. You can download that here, but be warned, there are bugs, and if you’re a Mac/Linux user, you’re most likely out of luck at the moment, because it apparently doesn’t work on those (yet) It works now. Ok, let’s get into it! You can now get the second pre-release of 1.8 here.

The New Sparkly stuff (Features)

As soon as you open Minecraft 1.8 up, you’ll see the brand new background (which moves). The is also a Multiplayer Server List under Multiplayer, so you can finally get rid of that Text Document on your desktop with all the server IPs in it. The Options menu has been seen similar improvements, with the addition of an Field of View setting, and a Brightness slider under Video options.

In game, you’ll notice the addition of a Hunger Bar, and an EXP bar. The Hunger Bar depletes over time (unless you play in Peaceful mode, where it just stays on full), and depletes more rapidly when you Sprint, use tools, or fight mobs. The EXP bar increases as you kill mobs (neutral or otherwise), but currently doesn’t lead to anything yet. We also get a Sprint option (activated by pressing W twice), which doubles your movement speed, at the cost of Hunger. You can also deal Critical hits on mobs, by either Sprint then attacking, or by Jumping and attacking. This of course will deplete more of your Hunger Bar. Once the Hunger Bar runs out, you’ll start losing HP, so make sure you keep it high by eating food.

Speaking of food, there are now more food items in the game. Killing cows will net you Raw Beef, chickens will drop Raw Chicken, and you’ll find that Grass Seeds and Mushrooms are much more plentiful now. However, remember to cook your food before you eat it, otherwise it might poison you! Eating food will replenish you Hunger Bar, and when the Hunger Bar is near full, you’ll slowly regenerate HP.

There are new animations, from the Chest opening, to the eating of food. You can also pull your bow back more and more to deal more damage.

There is also a new lightning system, where light begins white near the source, and becomes progressively orange as it moves away from it.

Now, onto the Creative mode!

Creativity Overload (Creative Mode)

You can now play in Creative mode, where you have access to every block and item in the game, can fly, and can’t die. Also, monsters do not spawn in this mode. This mode is effectively the same as the free version of Minecraft, with the new items from the Alpha/Beta. Be warned though, flying around will cause some slight lag, as Chunks are rendered/created rapidly.

The Bug List.

Here, I’m going to talk about some bugs I’ve noticed so far.

Creative:

Minecarts do not destroy with one hit

Lag

Survival:

Possible Duplication bug with the Furnace.

Finally,

The full version of Minecraft 1.8 is due out Monday, so use this weekend to try out the new features, and leave some comments. You can read about the full changes to Minecraft here.

Coming September 8th, 2011 (according to @jeb_‘s twitter anyway), is the release of the much fabled 1.8 Update to Minecraft, also known as the Adventure Update. It brings new features like NPCs and vilages, the return of creative mode (YAY!), and a new mob, just to name a few.We also see the inclusion of an experience point system, where you gain EXP for killing mobs (such as cows and creepers), a new lightning engine, rivers (we really only had lakes before…), BIG BIG oceans, new (and expanded) biomes, animations for eating food, and variable strength on bows, so you can cause more damage with your arrows by holding down the button longer. There are also a lot of small changes, a full list follows:

• experience orbs
• rivers
• oceans
• food-eating animation
• variable-strength bow (hold it longer for more damage)
• new (and expanded) biomes
• 1.8 will add Creative Mode
• Creative Mode will have flight
• New lighting
• Endermen DO place and pickup blocks
• New log in screen
• Cobwebs are randomly generated in caves
• Randomly generated MINESHAFTS

The 1.8 update will most likely be split up into multiple parts, with most of the main features coming in a 1.8 patch and the little details and other features in a smaller patch like 1.8.2. You can read some more details from PAX here, or the list fo changes here.

UPDATE: The update got delayed till Monday the 13th of September, but you can play the pre-release version now. See here for the link.

Minecraft Pocket Edition has been released, which is wonderful news to anyone who owns an Android device. However, it is not to be taken without several massive grains of salt. For starters, it is only available to people who own the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play gaming phone. And the biggest drawback (In my opinion) is that it costs $7. What I think should have happened, is that the App itself would be free, but you would need to buy a Minecraft account to use it. So those who already forked over the cash for Minecraft could play it. I can see how some people would be okay with this, but $7 is quite a lot to ask for an App. Especially one that is only in Alpha.

To me, I see this as just another port of Minecraft, not a new separate thing that we should pay such a large amount for. In my opinion I see this as them for example, releasing a port for another OS and making you pay for it, while the other ones are free. Like if they made the windows version paid, but the Linux and Mac free.

However, since the Android version is different, I would be okay paying some money for it, to support the costs of developing a mobile version. But really, come on, $7? That is a lot to ask for. Apps that are made for HD devices with advanced graphics don’t even cost that much.

Well, enough of the ranting, I will actually talk about the app itself now

This version isn’t as feature filled as the desktop version, it was modeled after Minecraft creative. So you have an unlimited amount of blocks and have a selection of them all as your inventory. It also supports multiplayer over wifi and saving of multiplayer worlds directly to your phone. As for visuals and graphics, since it is for phones and underpowered devices it looks like the creative version, where clouds are 2 dimensional and there is no transparency of trees.

Over-all the app itself looks decent, but the price is quite steep. Let’s hope they change their minds eh?

2CELLOS – the Croatian cello duo featuring Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser – hit the YouTube jackpot with their cover of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” and later the Guns N Roses classic “Welcome To The Jungle.” During a recent visit to the SiriusXM studios, they performed Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” during an interview with SiriusXM Pops host Paul Bachman.
For more information on SiriusXM Pops, go to www.siriusxm.com/siriusxmpops .

Can I admit a geeky love for all things cello. There’s something about the deep reverberation of the instrument that just oozes emotion. Doesn’t hurt that I’m a big Nirvana fan either. In fact I liked Nirvana before Nirvana was cool, I’m hip like that.

Hey guys, RedstoneMinecraft here

@geekhaven has allowed me to write an article about my Youtube channel to share with you guys. I’ll start by telling you a little about myself.

I learned about Minecraft from one of my friends. When I bought the game, it was in the Alpha Stage. I had a Youtube account before that, just not really popular, and had almost no views. I posted 1 Minecraft video to that channel, and now it has 4,000 views. I wanted my own channel, something that would be just for Minecraft. So 2 of my friends and I started a Livestream called RedstoneMiner.
Click here to watch a clip
We were doing the livestream mainly on friday nights for 2 or 3 weeks with an average of 10 – 20 viewers. Something came up, and we couldn’t do the livestream, anymore. So I made a Youtube account instead. That way I can upload what I want, when I want to. Along with the Youtube channel, I also made a Minecraft Forums account with the name RedstoneMinecraft, similar to my livestreams name.

I started off with a demo screen recorder and did 3 videos, that I later want on and posted on the Minecraft Forums. Today, those 3 videos have over 1,000 views. The account sat inactive for 2 or 3 months, until I re-discovered Youtube videos, and I started my own Lets Play Now I have 100 Subscribers, and I am posting videos every day.

My channel is mainly Lets Plays of Indie games including Minecraft and Terraria. Sometimes I will post other Real Life videos, but I have only done 2 of those so far. At episode 15 of my Minecraft Lets play, I decided to stop and wait for th 1.8 update to come out. So in the mean time I am working Custom Maps and other tutorials. I also do Livestream on occasion.

My last Livestream with some of my best friends on Youtube PimpingPanda, and Harv, Coe from CoesQuest posted about us on his Twitter and we had up to 40 viewers. I always take requests from my viewers. And I like to interact with them. You can always see what I am up to on my blog (www.rsmyoutube.tumblr.com) or my daily bulletins that I post on Youtube. Within the past week, I have been trying to upload at least 2 or 3 videos a day, to give you guys enough content on my channel.

Some of my favorite Youtubers include ZackScottGames, PaperBatVG, and Yogscast, and they all do a great job in what they do. So, I urge you to come on down to my channel and take a look at what I offer. Please tell me your opinion on my channel. I always like constructive critism. Thanks for taking a look at this. You can find my channel at www.youtube.com/RedstoneMinecraft

Markus “Notch” Persson’s hit indie game is about to pass 3 Million sales (2,999,684 at time of writing, increasing by about 3 every 5 seconds). Not Bad for a game which isn’t even fully out yet. The team of Mojang AB started working on this in Late 2009, and the game really kicked off in 2010, bypassing 1 Million sales in record time, starting a phenomenon among gamers around the world.

So, if your out tonight having a drink, remember to raise your glass to this momentous occasion.

For those of you extremely depraved people who are not aware what the Humble Bundle is, it is this wonderful package of 5 indie games. 5 games? Is that all you say? Here is the good part. You can pay whatever you want, and it goes to charity. If you wanna be a jerk and pay a penny, go ahead. Want to be awesome and donate several thousand? Go ahead! Act fast though, the humble bundle only lasts for 14 more days. Not interested yet? Let me take a look at the game lineup.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

Cogs

VVVVVV

Hammerfight

And Yet It Moves

I can vouch for a lot of these wonderful games, so give a couple dollars towards charity and get some good games in the process! If you don’t like the games, wait for the next one! There is always a new Humble Bundle every couple months or so.

So go here to give towards a good cause

http://www.humblebundle.com/

Enjoy everyone

This past week, Ubuntu has proudly released Ubuntu Alpha 2 for testing. As expected, Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 2 features the Unity desktop, built upon the sleek Gnome 3, although the shipped CD’s will contain Unity 2D to fall back upon (for those who have older GPU’s/CPU’s).
Recently I tested Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 2 on an old Dell Dimension 4100, and it actually worked. For those who are not familiar with older machines, the 4100 is intended to run WIN95/WIN2000. I found this amazing due the fact that the Dimension 4100 runs on 512MB of RAM and still utilizes a bulky AGP 2.0 videocard. Obviously the live CD falls back on Unity 2D, but there was no rendering problems or long waits as the live CD booted. Its booted in about 6 and a half minutes which is brilliant for such an old machine.

Back to Ubuntu Alpha 2….. Some of the changes which users will find are as follows:
Web Browser: Firefox 5
Back Up Utility: Deja Dup
Email Client: Thunderbird 5

Also, Synaptic Package Manager has been officially removed from Ubuntu (insert funeral music)…
Fortunately though, those who morn Synaptic can always go to the Ubuntu Software Centre and install it from there…

Ubuntu 11.10 has some really cool UI changes as well. GTK has now been updated to GTK3 and Ubuntu users will enjoy the new Overlay Scrollbars.
As usual, remember that Ubuntu 11.10 is only in alpha testing. DO NOT INSTALL AS PRIMARY OS!!! The release does break due to bugs which will be resolved between now and October.

To download visit: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OneiricOcelot/TechnicalOverview/Alpha2

[above] Deja Dup – Ubuntu’s Back Up Utility.

Thanks for reading!! If you liked this post, leave a comment, or donate!

Cheers!

The Lulz Boat has sailed. Lulzsec is a hacking group (in)famous for it’s takedown of minecraft.net, the EVE Online Servers, and the Login Server for League of Legends a few weeks back. They also responsible for defacing serveral websites, SQL injection hacks, and the basic but rather effective Distubited Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on many sites. There is no real reason for the group’s actions, besides “for the lulz”.

Taking advantage of the lack of security everywhere, LulzSec have even asked to wider public for targets, either via their twitter account or via IRC. In what seems to be a growing trend, a lot of their attacks are made easier by system administrators sharing their admin passwords with sites like Facebook, Paypal, and, in one quite amusing situation; Neopets. Yes Neopets. Interesting admin…

…Anyway; time to put the journo face back on. The majority of their attacks are simply just Denial of Service, taking down the site for a while. Other attacks are more sinister, ranging from admin rights to complete dumps of Databases.

Greetings internet, I have been gone for the past few days and upon my return, I was delighted to find out that Mac OS X Lion is to be released soon. I am really looking forward to using Lion, after all it is the world’s most advanced operating system.

Mac OS X Lion has a plethora of new features, all of which contribute to making it a really stunning piece of technology. First, and most importantly are the new Multi-Touch Gestures. Too often I find myself struggling with PC track-pads and such which lack handy and important hand gestures. Some PC track-pads don’t even have scrolling! Getting back to gestures… some of the new gestures are: “rubber-band” scrolling, page and image zoom, full-screen swiping, and a few more goodies which I’ll let you figure out for yourselves.

Second, Mac OS X Lion adds Full-Screen Apps. This means that you can utilize the entire screen for a fresh look at an app which you are running. For example, if you are creating a document using Writer, or browsing pictures in iPhoto, you can temporarily get rid of the clutter around the screen like the toolbars and the desktop bar. Don’t worry though, moving your cursor to the top of your screen unfolds the toolbars so that you can continue working.
The third feature is Mission Control. You’ve seen window-switching or dashboard before, but now you can enjoy a sleek combination of dashboard, expose, and spaces all at the same location, organized, clean, and sensible. Mission Control is truly the “Hub of your system.”

Fourth, the App Store. While this somewhat new piece of software made itself available during 10.6.7, the App Store is going to see expansion, including the option of purchasing Lion right from the App Store itself. Of course you’ll have to be running Snow Leopard, because if your running Lion, why buy it again…?!
Fifth, is a new feature called Launchpad. I am really excited for this one! For all you iOS lovers like myself, you now not only can swipe icons on your iphone, but you can now do it from your desktop. Don’t read this wrong, I am not trying to be condescending, I actually really wanted to do that badly, and now I can. Lauchpad when activated (with one of the new track-pad gestures) will display all your Apps for you to access. Think of Launchpad as the really quick way of starting an App, which will be helpful for those who like accessing their software really easily. Launchpad, like iOS also has the ability to create folders. See the picture below. And I must say, it looks quite sexy.

Sixth, Lion has a new built-in feature called ‘Resume’ basically, if you have to restart your mac for any reason, Lion will remember what software was being used, the position of windows as well as secondary windows like font settings or inspectors. This will be a huge benefit to us users who postpone important updates because they require us to restart our computers.

Seventh and Eighth, are probably the most important new features which are Auto save and Versions. Users will no longer be prompted to save their work when exiting programs, because Lion will constantly be auto-saving. The only thing you have to do is name the file. No saving every so often in order to prevent lose of data. Mac OS X Lion is doing it all! With Versions, you can also browse through every save point throughout your work. So if you liked something you did previously, just start up Versions, navigate backwards to the previous state of the document, and viola its there!
Ninth is a new feature called ‘Airdrop’ which allows Mac users to seamlessly and securely share files via wifi. The user just drags the folder he/she wants to share, drop over the airdrop users icon in the Finder, and you’ve instantly shared files with someone. And don’t worry, confirmation must be given at both ends for the files to be sent.

And Tenth, is Mail. Lion takes email, and puts it on a whole new level. Because of the Full-Screen App feature, Mail will utilize all the screen making it beautiful and easy to read. Mail now displays full-height messages along with snippets. Conversations also presents the user with a thread displaying an elegant timeline showing each message. There are many more new features, Mail is simply packed full of new options making it the best Mail App around.

These are just 10 of the 250+ new features in Mac OS X Lion.

I found this over at ectomo and brought it here for all to share.

Within a 13 hour period, Notch has released Minecraft Beta 1.6, 1.6.3, and 1.6.4.  Some new features are Multiplayer support for the infamous ”Nether”, craftable maps (very helpful). In addition to these new features, they (Notch and Co) have made booster track speedier, and fire spreading slower.

As for bugs, you can look forward to no longer dealing with memory errors which resulted in your Minecraft worlds becoming corrupt, and they have fixed placing doors next to cacti creating half-doors.

Also, rejoice Server administrators, CPU load issues have been resolved, as well as new fps rates (renderer caps at about 100 fps).

These are just a few of the many wonderful updates for Minecraft! I hope you like them as much as I do!  Don’t forget to comment this post. If you liked this post, why not send it to a friend!

Cheers!

Well hello there people of the internet! My name is Chris, and I am the newest addition to this awesome site. I hope to contribute cool stuff and I thank the awesome people who invited me here! I look forward to posting more!

Oh but before I end this mildly awkward introduction I will say a little about myself. I am a huge computer geek, I am in college for computer programming so I hope to do that. I am kind of a huge Google fanboy so a lot of my stuff will most likely be Google related or Android related, and I rather dislike Apple for the obvious reasons, so none of that please

I obviously enjoy Minecraft as much as everyone else, or I wouldn’t be here, and I am a pretty avid gamer.

Well that is all, have a frabjous day people of the internet!

- Chris