Minecraft The Game itself

Minecraft is a sandbox building indie video game written in Java originally by creator Markus "Notch" Persson and now by his company, Mojang, formed from the proceeds of the game. The game is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. The game has two variants – free Classic and paid Beta – where Classic is focused entirely on construction with unlimited material supply, while Beta requires players to acquire resources themselves, and contains mobs, player health, and additional features and items. The gameplay is inspired by Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, and Infiniminer.

The game is currently in development and Beta is the only continuously updated version of the game. Minecraft was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009 on the TIGSource forums, where it gained a considerable level of popularity. It has been continually updated and patched since then, and while it was still in alpha release, it garnered several hundred thousand sales and received critical notice and acclaim from many reviewers. It passed a million units sold on January 12, 2011, less than a month after reaching Beta.

Official releases for iOS, and Android are currently in development, and are expected for release later in 2011


Gameplay

The core gameplay revolves around construction. The game world is essentially made up of cubical blocks arranged in a fixed grid pattern, that represent different materials, such as, dirt, stone, various ores, water, tree trunks, etc. While the players can move freely across the world, objects and items can only be placed at fixed locations relative to the grid. The player can gather these material "blocks" and place them elsewhere, thus potentially creating various constructions.

Minecraft has two currently available variants, Beta and Classic, both with single-player and multiplayer options. Classic is the earliest free version and initially featured only creative game mode with only building (block placement and removal) aspects of the game and unlimited block supply. The Classic was then split into single-player survival mode (referred to as "Survival Mode Test"), which contained monsters and a much greater variety of blocks and items available, as well as requiring players to mine their own blocks. As of Beta release, only creative Classic mode version 0.30 is available in single-player and multiplayer modes.

Classic survival mode served as the base for development of single-player non-free Indev ("In Development"), and later non-free Infdev ("Infinite Development") versions, each expanding the number of features. Indev and Infdev were later replaced by the non-free Alpha variant which continued to add features to the game, including multiplayer mode. As of December 20, 2010 the game entered into Beta. It includes music by Daniel "C418" Rosenfeld.For multiplayer games, servers are currently hosted by individual players or groups; there are no "official" Minecraft servers yet, the only way to connect to a server is entering the hostname or IP address in-game.


Beta

The Beta version of the game is a successor to the earlier Alpha version via a sequence of updates. Minecraft moved from alpha to beta status on December 20, 2010. It is the only version of Minecraft continuously updated and is only available to users who have purchased the game. Beta is a survival game mode with both single-player and multiplayer variants playable as a stand-alone client and in web browsers.

The game starts by placing the player on the surface of a huge procedurally generated game world. The player can walk across the terrain consisting of plains, mountains, caves, and various water bodies. The world is also divided into climate zones ranging from deserts to snowfields. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle.

The player can acquire different resources and craft tools, weapons, armor, food, and various other items. By acquiring better resources the player can make more proficient items. For example, tools, such as axes, shovels, or pickaxes, can be used to chop down trees, dig soil, and mine ores. The game has an inventory system and the player is limited in the number of items they can carry.

During daytime different non-hostile animals spawn, which can be hunted for food and craft materials. Hostile mobs, such as large spiders, skeletons, and zombies will spawn in unlit areas, such as during nighttime and in caves. Armor can help mitigate damage from mob attacks, while weapons can be used to kill enemies and other animals. The player has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from monsters, falls, or environmental damage (such as drowning or falling into lava) and can be replenished by eating certain food items, or by playing on the easiest difficulty, at which health regenerates by itself. Upon dying the player is teleported to the starting spawn point and items in their inventory are dropped. The items can be recovered if the player reaches them in time.

Complex systems can be built using the in-game physics engine with the use of primitive electrical circuits and logic gates. For example, a door can be opened or closed by pressing a connected button or stepping on a pressure plate. Similarly, larger and more complex systems can be produced, such as a working arithmetic logic unit – as used in CPUs.

The game world is procedurally generated as the player explores it. Although limits exist on vertical movement both up and down, Beta allows for an infinitely large game world to be generated on the horizontal plane, only running into technical problems when an extremely distant locations are reached. The game achieves this by splitting the game world data into smaller sections, called "chunks", only created or loaded into memory when the player is nearby.

Some multiplayer servers offer fan-made mods that enhance or change the gameplay, such as providing unlimited material supply, new enemies or weapons, or enhanced transportation systems.