Minecraft is now out for iPhone. It is $6.99 on the appstore. I am now downloading it so I don’t have a full reveiw of it yet. More later.

As some of you may know, Minecraft 1.0 is going to be released on the 18th (tomorrow). There are many new things in this update that will dramatically change the adventure aspect of the game, while still introducing some blocks that’ll interest the creative folks. There are too many changes to list in this post, but here are some things that stood out to me:

• Weapon and armor enchantments (eg. fire resistance)
• Nether Fortresses with new block types (bricks, fences, stairs)
• Two new nether mobs (Magma Cube and Blaze)
• New world type called “The End” where Endermen and Enderdragon live, and a new block: End Stone.
• Tons of new items (Ghast Tear, Blaze Rod, Nether Wart, Gold Nugget, Glass Bottle, Spider Eye, Fermented Spider Eye, Blaze Powder, Magma Cream, Glistering Melon, Eye of Ender, plus nine more music discs)
• New sound effects
• Mushroom biome (including Mooshroom Cows and Mycelium block) and the return of the Snow biome
• NPCs in NPC villages
• Constructible Snow Golems
• Animal breeding (make baby animals!)
• Moon phases
• Item repair
• Potions (eg. Haste)
• Some balance changes: weapons do less damage without enchantments, armor lasts longer, mob health has been adjusted, etc.
• One exciting pick/shovel/axe enchantment is called “Silk Touch”. When you mine a block it’ll drop itself instead of what it’s supposed to. (eg. glowstone will drop the block, not glowstone dust)

This time around it looks like Bukkit will be updated on the same day that Minecraft 1.0 is released. They’ve had plenty of time to prepare and have a known date and time. You can probably safely expect to be playing 1.0 in the evening Pacific time. You can watch the whole MineCon event live over at IGN.

** Please note (once again) that the nether for the Final City world will be regenerated so that people can experience the Nether fortresses. In addition, this will give people more glowstone to harvest! **

The Stargate plugin developer has moved his support thread to another location and seems to be offering continued support. I did find one possible alternative to the plugin (Wormhole X-Treme [great reference], which I think actually inspired the Stargate plugin), but it doesn’t seem to offer enough advantages to warrant the work of changing all the stargates over. I’ll continue to look at other transportation methods, but I really like this networked gate method and everyone else seems to as well. So, I enabled the creation of Stargates again.

We have the ability to create custom portals that go to any location (rather than to just another stargate) but they’re fixed to that destination. (it’s a Multiverse module, and they look like normal nether portals, just with a sign) Would people be interested using that as well?

UPDATE: This has been disabled now. It was fun times.

Want to dress up for Halloween? Hold a block in your hand and type “/hat” to put it on your head! It should work for any solid block (and more). For even more fun, try dressing up as a scary monster or cute animal! Use “/costume [mobname]” and everyone ELSE will see you as that mob. Type “/costume” again to go back to human form. Type “/costume types” to see all the mobs you can dress up as. Have fun!

Duddy316 (aka Kephas) just posted this video of him wrangling some animals for his farm. He also demonstrates the temporary “breeding” mechanism, so people can get their farms up and running.

I did a bunch of little stuff and wanted to post an update. For starters, I’ve been testing out market plugins and going through a process of elimination. I have two decent options that I’ll present to you shortly — iConomy/ChestShop and/or PhysicalShop — as well as some possible plans on how to manage the economy. There’s no plans for tolls, fees, loans, interest, taxes, etc. The primary goal is just to lubricate the bartering process for people.

I’m starting to fill out the /help command. It’s a good starting point to get the easy stuff out of the way. Then I can tackle some of the more complicated things with guides.
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[NOTE: This poll is over. I’ll be posting more later. Thanks to the 18 people who participated. I’m getting some useful information.]

I’m going to add some polls occasionally here (instead of the forums) to get some opinions on various server decisions. Your votes help, but don’t feel you have to answer every one of them. Some of these polls require some extra information. I’ll do my best to provide that, but I may miss some things.
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