Minecraft

Minecraft is a sandbox-building[2] [3] independent video game written in Java originally by Swedish creator Markus "Notch" Persson and now by his company, Mojang.

Minecraft is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a3D world. Gameplay in its commercial release has two principal modes:Survival, which requires players to acquire resources themselves and maintain their health and hunger; and Creative, where the player has an unlimited supply of resources, the ability to fly, and no concept of health or hunger. A third gameplay mode, named Hardcore, is essentially the same as Survival, but the difficulty is locked on the hardest setting and respawning is disabled, forcing the player to delete his or her world upon death. An outdated Classic version is also available for free, although it is no longer being developed. Creative Minecraft resembles Classic, but with many more features.

The gameplay is heavily inspired by Infiniminer by Zachtronics Industries,[4] and Dwarf Fortress by Bay 12 Games.[5] [6]

Minecraft was released as an alpha on May 17, 2009,[7] with a beta version on December 20, 2010.[8] Official releases for iOS[9] and Android have been released and the full version of thePC game was released on November 18, 2011 at MineCon 2011. The Android release was temporarily exclusive to the Xperia PLAY but is now available to the rest of the Android Market.[10] [11] A version of the game for the Xbox 360 with Kinect support is under development by 4J Studios, to be released as part of the Xbox Live Arcade Next promotion in May 2012.[1] The game was officially released at MineCon on November 18, 2011. Minecraft was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009, on the TIGSource forums, where it gained a considerable level of popularity. It has been continually updated and patched since then, and while it was still in alpha release, it garnered several hundred thousand sales and received critical notice and acclaim from many reviewers. It passed a million units sold on January 12, 2011,[12] [13] less than a month after reaching Beta. By February 18, 2012, the game had sold more than 5 million units.[14] ==Gameplay== A screenshot of a randomly generatedMinecraft terrainA player in Minecraft has a lot of freedom to choose how to play the game, with the primary goals being surviving attacks by monsters (known in-game as "hostile mobs") and building shelter. The core gameplay revolves around construction. The game world is essentially made of cubes arranged in a fixed grid pattern which represent different materials, such as dirt, stone, various ores, water, and tree trunks. While the players can move freely across the world, objects and items can only be placed at fixed locations relative to the grid. The player can gather these material blocks and place them elsewhere, thus potentially creating various constructions.

Minecraft has three gameplay modes: Survival, Hardcore and Creative. Classic is the earliest free version and initially featured only the Creative game mode with only building (block placement and removal) aspects of the game and unlimited block supply. The game was then split into single-player survival mode (referred to as "Survival Mode Test"), which contained monsters and a much greater variety of blocks and items, as well as requiring players to mine their own blocks.

The game starts by placing the player on the surface of a huge procedurally generated game world. The player can walk across the terrain consisting of plains, mountains, caves, and various water bodies. The world is also divided into biomes ranging from deserts to snowfields. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle. Throughout the course of the game the player encounters various non-human creatures, referred to as mobs. During the daytime, non-hostile animals spawn, which can be hunted for food and crafting materials. Hostile monsters, such as large spiders, skeletons, zombies and the dangerous exploding Creeper will spawn in unlit areas, such as in caves or during the night.

Complex systems can be built using the in-game physics engine with the use of primitive electrical circuits andlogic gates. For example, a door can be opened or closed by pressing a connected button or stepping on a pressure plate. Similarly, larger and more complex systems can be produced, such as a working arithmetic logic unit – as used in CPUs.[15]

The game world is procedurally generated as the player explores it. Although limits exist on vertical movement both up and down, Minecraft allows for an infinitely large game world to be generated on the horizontal plane, only running into technical problems when extremely distant locations are reached.[† 1] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-NotchExplain1_16-0">[16] The game achieves this by splitting the game world data into smaller sections, called "chunks",<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-persson1_15-1">[† 1] only created or loaded into memory when the player is nearby.

Credits
Official Minecraft Wiki: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Minecraft

Minecraft Wikia: http://minecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Minecraft_Wiki

Minecraft Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft

All information, references, and citation can be found on these Wiki's.