Minecraft 1.12.1
Some of us were perfectly happy playing by ourselves, actually
When Microsoft bought Minecraft for a brain-melting US$2.5 billion back in 2014, it seemed pretty obvious the code-monster from Redmond was getting a hell of a deal. But what it actually got at the time was a mess.
To be fair, from 2011 until 2016, Mojang found itself virtually drowning under an increasingly powerful cataract of pure cash. A gang of indie devs who wanted nothing more than to fiddle with their biome generation algorithms were instead having to deal with what must have felt like an endless series of ports to other platforms. Everyone (except Nintendo) wanted a piece of Minecraft, and by the time Microsoft came along, there was a Pocket Edition for mobiles and tablets, an Xbox edition, and a PlayStation edition. And all of them were slightly different.
And at first it seemed Microsoft was just adding to the problem, by creating the Windows 10 Edition of Minecraft. It was Minecraft, on PC, but it wasn’t the PC edition. Wait, what?
Three years later, we finally see the method behind this madness. While classic Minecraft trundled along with Mojang at the helm, getting core updates and being mercilessly pulled apart and forced to do weird tricks by modders (and especially by the third party multiplayer servers CraftBukkit and later Spigot), Minecraft Windows 10 Edition was quietly giving the game a serious rebuild.
A new renderer, called the Bedrock Engine, is much faster than the (unmodded) legacy Java client, especially when it comes to loading new “chunks” of the world as the player moves about. Bedrock supposedly has a bunch of mod and plugin support baked right into its heart - yet to be demonstrated - but most astonishingly of all, it offers simultaneous crossplay on PC, Xbox, mobile and Nintendo Switch. Yes, Nintendo. It’s a Microsoft product... and it’s platform agnostic.
And as soon as this Better Together update rolls out, it will be the version that is simply called Minecraft. The PC edition, that started it all, the version that actually adds new mechanics to the game (instead of just a bunch of $1.99 skin packs) will be renamed Minecraft: Java Edition. Why does this feel like a demotion? The true faithful - and I’m not ashamed to say I’m one of them - have always been able to sort of ignore the non-core versions of Minecraft. Mere ports, they lagged behind the latest Java content updates, their redstone system was more basic, and players had limited access to the command line.
PC advantages go further: players can set up third-party servers, configure them with mods, and various options exist to boost the graphics with renderer optimisations and shader support. Hell, the console editions didn’t even have infinite worlds!
Well, Bedrock makes infinite worlds possible, and it also makes it possible for players to set up their own servers... for a modest monthly fee. Minecraft Realms is a very easy system compared to other cloud-based custom multiplayer setups, but it’s also quite restrictive. Eight bucks a month buys server support for ten friends, but mod options aren’t open and they aren’t free.
Look, we get it. Bedrock is Minecraft for the masses, and it consolidates all the different versions into one. It’s the future of gaming, of course - one client, every platform (except PlayStation for some reason).
And the Java edition will keep on keeping on, at least for a few years yet. Yes, Java is fundamentally not awesome for high performance gaming, and the super-open nature of the application means it’s likewise super-easy to crash the thing or run out of memory. Achieving a truly optimal setup is a fiddle.
But when you get that setup just
yes, the game is at its best when multiplaying with a bunch of kids
right, Minecraft remains one of the most convincing procedurallygenerated environments in gaming today. Six years of subtle tweaks to its landscape generator have resulted in an algorithm that builds worlds that just feel like they could be real places. It’s hard to describe. It’s something about the scale - the relative height of the mountains to the distance of the horizon, that kind of thing.
Load up Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders under the Optifine HD renderer, and Minecraft can be one of the best-looking-games in your collection. And if you have a 4K monitor it will bring your 1080 SLI rig to its knees.
Okay sure, some of that is Java overhead. But that’s the price we pay for something unique - a game that is both supported by its devs AND fully open. Spigot plugin creators are even allowed to charge for their mods if they want, and in a non-Microsoft marketplace! How does THAT work?
And on top of all this, the game itself continues to offer a deceptively light RPG survival mode, that somehow manages to keep progression simple but also creates endless emergent gameplay moments. Whether it be desperately fleeing baby zombies as you try to reach a village just after sunset; or carefully digging down into the basement of a desert temple seeking loot but also knowing there’s a block of TNT on a hair-trigger down there; or jumping through a portal into the Nether to farm Blazes for their Blaze Rods which create Blaze Powder that makes potion brewing possible...
If you are a parent and you want your child to gain a thorough understanding of concepts like “versions” and server-side vs clientside content, or how resolution and post-processing affect framerate... hell, the concept of framerate itself and why it’s important... then purchasing Minecraft should be mandatory. If you have more than one kid, buy them an account each. Trust me: it’s more than worth it.
As for the lone gamer, consumer of AAA and defender of Indies, does Minecraft offer anything? I think so. Yes, the game is at its best when multiplaying with a bunch of kids, but even solo it can be sort of zen. To a Skyrim or Witcher 3 veteran, Minecraft offers an almost dreamlike pace. Graphical fidelity doesn’t matter, only sense-of-place matters. Crafting is weirdly satisfying. There are only four tiers of weapons and two of them are useless, but it just doesn’t matter (it’s all about enchantments, anyway).
The most common complaint heard from the Minecraft-agnostic is “But what am I supposed to DO?” The answer remains what it has always been: you do whatever you want. Don’t demand an adventure. Just be in the world, and the adventure will come.