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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.
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.
Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. This mod fit's that old saying perfectly.
you can do stuff without actually having to do anything physical or having the physical worlds constraints (reality) interfere. thus enabling you to twitch away as a mine craft junkie lost in the ethers of screen, oblivious to the world.
i think thats it... but i have never used it so kinda going off the minecraft hysteria vids.
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.
I don't know how they do/did it; but Minecraft somehow made the jump from being a moderately novel; but not obviously interesting, "8-bit-styled" 3d multiplayer sandbox game(with some optional combat elements), sort of the 'Duplo' to Dwarf Fortress' 'Technic'; to having an enormous amount of mod support, which has mostly eclipsed such original 'game' as there actually was.(And not just 'mod support' in the 'Bethesda builds a world; and then the players fix it' sense; the 3rd party components include things like the popular servers, the popular mod interfaces, and similar lower level than usual stuff).
I'm not sure how it came to that; but that vast availability of 3rd party features seems to have become the major draw.
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..."
There's also the 'price' consideration: Unless you get really lucky and score somebody's cherished childhood collection at a yard sale from their parents who don't know that the lego secondary market is a well-oiled machine; enough lego(especially Technic/Mindstorms) to build something complex enough to be interesting to computer control gets pretty pricey. Cheaper than grabbing the McMaster-Carr catalog and ordering the moving parts from them; but still pretty expensive.
Perhaps there are people who actively prefer virtual building blocks, I don't know; but it is undoubtedly the case that you can't get much lego for whatever Minecraft costs, and a lego habit can get punishingly expensive.
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.
> Can someone please break down for me what's so appealing about Minecraft?
Digital Lego
In 99% of all games, the world is static -- that means you can't permanently change it. In an MMO you can chop down a tree, but the tree will always grow back in the same place, every time. You can't plant your own tree where _you_ want.
The world in Minecraft is (almost) completely dynamic. See that mountain next to you? Want to dig a tunnel? You just mine (with a (iron+) pickaxe). Want to build a bridge over water? You just place blocks.
tapping the vein is expensive regardless of the addiction :)
i assumed lego/minecraft is a tool to get started towards something more constructive noit an end on itself. Granted the vendor would prefer you hooked but then isn't that all of them?
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.
But time never ravages your creations, your tunnels never collapse and your cities never become ruins. Unless you play SMP.
PRODUCTION HALTED
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.
Most people play SimCity with the disasters turned off too :-)
You a fan of "Das Rock" ? :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...