Thomas Basham Powerpoint Presentation Computer Applications 11/1/11

Minecraft is a sandbox construction game made by Markus Persson, also known as Notch. He originally made the game by himself, but created Mojang, his company, to assist him in creating it. Minecraft became open for Alpha testing on June 28, 2010, but had been in private testing before that. The game is cureently in Beta. Early Production

What is Minecraft? Minecraft is a sandbox construction game where you can build anything you want. The game also has a survival side to it. When the in-game time becomes night, monster come out and try to kill you. To survive you place blocks to create a shelter to wait out the night.

Minecraft: The world The world of Minecraft is made of blocks of various materials. Basic elements exist such as dirt, sand, wood, and stone. You can harvest these materials using tools such as pickaxes, hatchets, and shovels. Once you get a basic shelter built, you can start to mine. Deep under the surface exist many treasures, like diamonds and gold, but also dangers like zombies and skeletons. After you get enough resources, you can begin to play less to survive and more to have fun. Perhaps you can build a medieval castle or a home in the clouds. Whatever you can think of is possible. Minecraft is actually a very large world, though it exists inside your computer. If you could see a map of the entire Minecraft realm, it would be 8 times the size of Earth! If you tried to walk in-game, it would take you 2 straight days of walking!

Minecraft: Inhabitants In addition to you, there are many other creatures inhabiting the world of Minecraft. They range from harmless to extremely dangerous. There are two types of creatures: Passive and Hostile Passive mobs will not harm you even if you harm them. They include sheep, which can be sheared to get wool blocks, pigs, that can be slain for food, wolves, for companions, chickens, which lay eggs, cows that can be milked for, you guessed it, milk, and squids that just swin in deep oceans Hostile mobs will attack you on sight and will give you no mercy. They include spiders that can climb up walls to find you, skeletons that can shoot arrows, zombies that can chase you down from any distance, creepers which are giant exploding death machines, ghasts which are fireball-shooting monsters from another realm, and the deadly race of Endermen that kill you instantly on sight.

Other planes of existence Other than the Overworld, there are currently two other planes of existence in Minecraft, both of which are accessed by portals. The first is known as the Nether, as seen on the right. It is a land full of lava, fire and unfriendly ghasts. This is place full of very dangerous obstacles, but the rare blocks that reside within may outweigh the risks The second plane other than the Overworld is know only as the End. Thought to be where all things go to die, it is the most desolate of places. Its only residents are the very deadly Endermen. Once you enter the End, the only way out is death, which will return you to the Overworld.

Multiplayer and Creative building Once you conquer the challenge of playing Minecraft alone, you can also try to survive with other players, too. Multiplayer servers allow almost any amount of people to connect from anywhere around the world. This allows players to collaborate on large building projects or just have fun! Others think that surviving isn’t very interesting, so they play a game mode called Creative. Creative mode allows players access to all blocks and resources without having to find them. This opens the door for many larger building opportunities. Some Minecraft geniuses have even managed to create working computers in Minecraft. Though a computer with a 16-bit processor and a 300 pixel screen may not seem impressive, it is when built INSIDE of a computer game, it is a huge deal. And example of what a computer looks like is the background of this image.

In conclusion Minecraft may seem a humble computer game, but it is actually much more than that. Over 3 million people have bought this game and more buy it every second. It has gained countless awards for being an innovative and all-around fun game. Perhaps you should try it?