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Verizon Creates Minecraft Mod To Let Players Video Chat On an In-Game Smartphone
Deathspawner writes: There's never a lack of stuff to be impressed by in Minecraft, but rarely does that impressive stuff involve a corporation. Recently, Verizon teamed up with some prolific Minecraft streamers to design a mod that takes interactivity to a new level. After building an in-game smartphone and cellular tower, the gamer is not only able to browse the Web on the device, but also video call, all in a humorously low resolution. Verizon has created a GitHub page to explain how the magic is done.
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Can you hear me--they are sunk by a Confederate submarine. BOOM! Glug, glug, glug.
Will version be charging for the in game calls per minute or by monthly bandwidth? How many emeralds?
... when a boring phone company tries to tap into something that was once a fad.
> ... until recently it was impossible to order a pizza from Minecraft. In fact, you couldnâ(TM)t make a phone call, send a text message or browse the web from the game even if you built a phone.
Around here we call that security and/or separations of concerns. The _last_ thing you want is some bug to be exploited by hackers that can have a negative impact on your finances.
Fucking morons.
Or did they just catch a clever idea early and decide to bite their fangs into it for marketing purposes, friggen leeches..
Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. This mod fit's that old saying perfectly.
...and I haven't been able to get into it at all. I was on Second Life for a year or two as well, and I could be more creative there with scripting, but even that didn't seem to have been the craze that Minecraft is.
Can someone please break down for me what's so appealing about Minecraft? I know what I can do from a technical PoV, but I want to understand... um... what it is that's so special about Minecraft that gets everyone flocking to it. Especially kids.
N.B. I grew up in the '80s in the UK when geeks attached Lego/Meccano to BBC microcomputers, and that shit seemed far more skilled and, err, real.
So if they have a phone in game that can make actual calls, it can do other stuff, like play games... I guess it's time for "Yo Dawg, I herd you like to minecraft, so I put an minecraft in your minecraft so you can minecraft while you minecraft."
Play minecraft on that phone in minecraft.
You can't handle the truth.
I realize that this probably makes me a horrible person, whose shriveled soul is incapable of joy, and who was obviously never a child; but exactly how much external infrastructure are you allowed to use before "In Minecraft!" is no longer true in any meaningful sense?
The various redstone logic arrangements, while obviously perverse and inefficient, do implement various computational widgets "in minecraft". As best I can tell from reading the project documentation, this exercise uses an external helper program to do all the heavy lifting(digesting web pages and incoming video into an array of textures to be applied to blocks, implementing the MMS for the 'selfie' feature), with the only involvement from Minecraft being a large rectangular array of blocks that the external helper program re-textures to produce something similar to a framebuffer(it's not quite the same, since each block displays a multi-pixel texture, rather than acting as a single pixel).
You certainly couldn't do this with just any game(at least not as easily; if you have access to the game's memory, you can probably scribble on its textures; but doing that without bringing the whole mess down in a screaming heap is easier said than done); but that arguably makes it less interesting: Minecraft's support for external modification of server state is relatively robust, so there really isn't much that you can't do, if you are willing to do most of the work in an external program and then use Minecraft as a needlessly perverse frontend. Am I just a joyless asshole? A generation too old for this 'minecraft' stuff? Insufficiently impressed by a Verizion marketing exercise?
Because the "first" thing I want from Verizon is being able to order a pizza from when I'm playing Minecraft on a phone.
Will it be a virtual pizza?
Have gnu, will travel.
ZOMG another attack vector the NSA will have to monitor! We need to ban this, for the children!!!
"All those moments, will be lost in time...like tears in rain..."
My 6 year-old has said the phrase "you can have internet IN MINECRAFT" about 100 times so far today. At least this commercial is mildly interesting.
Ahh Slashdot, where you go to see news that you had already forgotten you'd seen two days ago on another site.
I'll be impressed when they build one in Dwarf Fortress.
Why climb a mountain? Why go backpacking? Why archery? Why play video games?
Does it use your minutes and data plan?
Minecraft worlds can get quite large, as well as the data that goes through them.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That github page has an embedded youtube of the guy demoing. When the video is over the youtube related video blocks appear, like always.
The first one is "Verizon wireless can suck it!" and they go on from there.
I just really think that is funny.
For when you are feeling disconnected from your friends: just pull-out your virtual mobile phone and use it like a real mobile phone.
Where's the asshole who keeps posting about apps apping the apps? Minecraft'ss phoning the minecrafts! With apps! Moooo!