Minecraft Windows 10 Edition undergoes rebranding + Better Together Cross-play update

[AlTech]

Minecraft Windows 10 Edition has been rebranded as "Minecraft for Windows 10" and quite a few things have changed.

 

First of all, the requirements for the game via Windows Store are Windows 10 Build 14393 or newer.

32 Bit PCs seem to no longer be supported and Windows 10 Build 10240 and 10586 users need to update Windows to get new versions of the game.

 

Changes:

Spoiler

New Features:

• Stained Glass
• Fireworks (with Elytra boost!)
• Parrots
• Banners
• Armor Stands
• Jukebox and music discs
• Recipe Book
• Book & Quill
• Ravines
• Coarse Dirt
• New world start options: Starting Map; Bonus Chest; Trust Players
• New game rules: Show Coordinates; TNT Explodes; Natural Regeneration
• Added '/tickingarea' command to create areas that still update when no players are there
• Player permissions
• Zombie Villager spawn egg
• In-game host options
• Paper doll viewer
• Outline selection toggle
• In-game player names toggle
• HUD opacity toggle
• Expanded Xbox Live multiplayer world settings
• New loading screens with funny and helpful tips
• How to Play screen
• Remix 3D export functionality (Windows 10 only)
• New achievements
• Server Partners
• Realms invite links
• Mash-up Packs and Texture Packs will now decorate the main menu and in-game HUD

Tweaks:

• Rebalanced most of the game sound effects and music, such as rain being much quieter
• It is now much easier to see underwater after drinking a Potion of Water Breathing and Potion of Night Vision
• Blaze Powder is now needed to fuel brewing stands
• Ice blocks are now transparent
• Maps can now be held off-hand and show the heads of players' skins
• Locator maps now track the owner's position, regardless of dimension
• Worlds can now be set to Invite Only, Friends Only, or Friends of Friends
• Various improvements and changes to navigating the user interface
• Redesigned button mapping and added Pick Block for controllers
• Render Clouds and Fancy Leaves can now be toggled in Video Settings
• Skins can now be changed from the pause menu
• Chat messages can now be muted
• Items picked up are now animated on the hotbar
• Stained glass and banners will now spawn on End Cities
• Increased the default player limit on worlds from 5 to 8 on higher-end devices
• Block placement speed now matches the player's movement speed
• Temperature decreases with height and it can now snow at high elevations
• Observer blocks have updated textures and will now blink red when outputting a redstone pulse
• Adjusted the color that flashes when mobs are attacked
• Brick Blocks, Nether Brick Blocks, and Clay Blocks have been renamed to better differentiate from other items
• Underwater particles
• Jungle leaves are now transparent on higher-end devices when Fancy Leaves are enabled
• Changed the sound effects for Creeper explosions
• Added sound effects for placing Eyes of Ender into portal frames and opening The End portal

Bug fixes:

Too many to mention. My favourites are: making cats purr again, preventing bats from swimming underwater and stopping llamas from creepily turning their heads to stare at you while riding them.

 

Quote

You can get this fancypants new version of Minecraft for free if you already own an edition of Minecraft for Xbox One, and you’ll get the Better Together Update automagically on Android, iOS and Windows 10. If you own the Xbox One Edition of the game on disc, be prepared for a short wait before your free download of the new Minecraft is available - we'll work as fast as we can, but it may take a day or two to process all the requests!

We’re still working on getting this new version of Minecraft ready for players on Nintendo Switch. We want to make sure that everything is ready to bring this platform onboard, and there’s a lot of work to do to make that happen. After all, no one has ever done anything like this before in the history of gaming. We expect to be ready with the free Better Together Update on Switch this winter.

 

If the plethora of changes for the UWP edition of the game weren't enough, the Better Together cross-play update is here with support for cross-play with Xbox One users, Windows 10 users (All Editions), IOS users and Android users.

 

Nintendo Switch customers will have to wait until Winter 2017 for the Better Together Update.

 

Minecraft versions not using the Bedrock Engine are not cross-play compatible and Sony Consoles are not compatible as well (due to Sony refusing to let Children play Minecraft online with others LMAO ).

 

So yeah, I was hoping for more graphical options like a Toggle On/Off VSync and a resolution scale slider but i have a feeling it'll be added at some point. It's Minecraft after all, Minecraft Java has been updated with useless stuff for years .

 

Sources:

https://minecraft.net/en-us/article/better-together-update-here

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/minecraft-windows-10-edition/9nblggh2jhxj

[shermantanker]

I have been out of the MC loop for awhile. Are all these features already in the standard PC version, or is MS migrating that into the W10 Store?

[themctipers]

1 hour ago, shermantanker said:

I have been out of the MC loop for awhile. Are all these features already in the standard PC version, or is MS migrating that into the W10 Store?

Already in standard PC. Long live standard PC (code rewrite pls though)

[vanished]

All I want is for them to get it up to date to match the java one, and allow importing existing maps and texture packs from the java one.

Quote

32 Bit PCs seem to no longer be supported

oh damn how will I play it on my Pentium II with MMX!?  Bastards never support things for long enough... always jumping to the next big thing 

/s

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

All I want is for them to get it up to date to match the java one, and allow importing existing maps and texture packs from the java one.

And possibly a decent modding system (Doubt it as Java was far easier for 3rd parties to make mods)

Edited September 21, 2017 by Guest
possible -> possibly

[vanished]

19 minutes ago, tjcater said:

And possibly a decent modding system (Doubt it as Java was far easier for 3rd parties to make mods)

Yeah given that it's all compiled code now and assuming they don't make it open source, which would basically require making it free, the only way mods could be done are through an API they provide, which would be work for them and would end up being more limiting no matter how inclusive it tries to be.

[RGProductions]

Can we just kill 32 bit desktops and laptops yet?

[vanished]

1 hour ago, RGProductions said:

Can we just kill 32 bit desktops and laptops yet?

I think they were killed long ago.  Most computers supported 64 bit even before 64 bit OSes started to catch on, and there's been no real reason to stick with 32 since Vista launched imo, so at this point the only people using it are doing so either for a very specific reason that they understand but that I cannot fathom, or they're clueless and installed the wrong version by mistake  Besides that there's no reason for it since any computer so old that it doesn't support a 64 bit OS would be so under-powered that it's totally useless for anything modern.

[goodtofufriday]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I think they were killed long ago.  Most computers supported 64 bit even before 64 bit OSes started to catch on, and there's been no real reason to stick with 32 since Vista launched imo, so at this point the only people using it are doing so either for a very specific reason that they understand but that I cannot fathom, or they're clueless and installed the wrong version by mistake  Besides that there's no reason for it since any computer so old that it doesn't support a 64 bit OS would be so under-powered that it's totally useless for anything modern.

Ive run into niche applications that dont run on 64bit computers. Extremely few n far between though. 

 

In topic: had minecraft in beta. Havent played in a few years though. Nice to see its still going strong

[Zodiark1593]

4 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I think they were killed long ago.  Most computers supported 64 bit even before 64 bit OSes started to catch on, and there's been no real reason to stick with 32 since Vista launched imo, so at this point the only people using it are doing so either for a very specific reason that they understand but that I cannot fathom, or they're clueless and installed the wrong version by mistake  Besides that there's no reason for it since any computer so old that it doesn't support a 64 bit OS would be so under-powered that it's totally useless for anything modern.

For some reason, OEMs use 32 bit Windows on 64 bit compatible Intel Atom bargain basement systems. My laptop is one such specimen. Its stupid really, even if there's under 4GB of RAM.

[vanished]

9 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

Ive run into niche applications that dont run on 64bit computers. Extremely few n far between though. 

 

In topic: had minecraft in beta. Havent played in a few years though. Nice to see its still going strong

 

9 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

For some reason, OEMs use 32 bit Windows on 64 bit compatible Intel Atom bargain basement systems. My laptop is one such specimen. Its stupid really, even if there's under 4GB of RAM.

Interesting, sounds like one of each of my possible reasons  

[RGProductions]

29 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I think they were killed long ago.  Most computers supported 64 bit even before 64 bit OSes started to catch on, and there's been no real reason to stick with 32 since Vista launched imo, so at this point the only people using it are doing so either for a very specific reason that they understand but that I cannot fathom, or they're clueless and installed the wrong version by mistake  Besides that there's no reason for it since any computer so old that it doesn't support a 64 bit OS would be so under-powered that it's totally useless for anything modern.

I have a tablet that came with W10 tat only supports 32 bit.

[GDRRiley]

2 hours ago, tjcater said:

And possibly a decent modding system (Doubt it as Java was far easier for 3rd parties to make mods)

yeah modding MC is supper easy for the java version 

[Drak3]

2 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

For some reason, OEMs use 32 bit Windows on 64 bit compatible Intel Atom bargain basement systems. My laptop is one such specimen. Its stupid really, even if there's under 4GB of RAM.

UEFI locking. With Windows 8, in order for OEMs to ship their systems as "Ready for Windows 8" and getting a rebate for shipping Windows 8, they had to use completely unlocked UEFI if they used the 64bit version of the OS.

[AlTech]

8 hours ago, themctipers said:

Already in standard PC. Long live standard PC (code rewrite pls though)

Cross-play update is not available on Java Edition.

 

4 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

For some reason, OEMs use 32 bit Windows on 64 bit compatible Intel Atom bargain basement systems. My laptop is one such specimen. Its stupid really, even if there's under 4GB of RAM.

Some Intel Atom SOCs didn't play nicely with 64 Bit Windows.

 

4 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

Ive run into niche applications that dont run on 64bit computers. Extremely few n far between though. 

 

In topic: had minecraft in beta. Havent played in a few years though. Nice to see its still going strong

The Java Edition is on Life Support at this point. It's obvious that most of the resources are not being used on the Java Edition.

 

Which is a shame cos Linux and Mac people deserve a Bedrock Engine based Edition.

7 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Yeah given that it's all compiled code now and assuming they don't make it open source, which would basically require making it free

Not necessarily, They could use a proprietary toolchain or something to build it and then it wouldn't be freeware.

7 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

, the only way mods could be done are through an API they provide, which would be work for them and would end up being more limiting no matter how inclusive it tries to be.

The code was always compiled.

 

Java and C++ are compiled languages. Java has always been easy to reverse engineer or de-compile. The problem with Java (and C# for that matter) is that it uses JIT compiling in a virtual machine or something similar (not so much with modern C# if i understand it correctly).

[Jito463]

20 hours ago, RGProductions said:

Can we just kill 32 bit desktops and laptops yet?

18 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I think they were killed long ago.  Most computers supported 64 bit even before 64 bit OSes started to catch on, and there's been no real reason to stick with 32 since Vista launched imo, so at this point the only people using it are doing so either for a very specific reason that they understand but that I cannot fathom, or they're clueless and installed the wrong version by mistake  Besides that there's no reason for it since any computer so old that it doesn't support a 64 bit OS would be so under-powered that it's totally useless for anything modern.

We have an Asus Transformer here at work that's 32-bit (due to the Atom chip).  Also, we use 32-bit Windows for some of our refurbished laptops that are low spec (e.g. 2-3 GB of RAM).  I agree in principle, but there are plenty of reasons for 32-bit Windows to still exist.

18 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

Ive run into niche applications that dont run on 64bit computers. Extremely few n far between though.

We use a HDD diagnostic tool that absolutely will not run in a 64-bit environment, due to the ATAPI driver it utilizes.  It's an old program, but it does a really good job so why replace it?

[ltguy]

Sigh, so irritating that microsoft bought minecraft. For no reason other than MICROSOFT, the non-java version of minecraft will never make it to older verisions of windows or linux. Cross-play is good, but not if you alienate those playing on the most popular version of minecraft. I'm okay with them phasing out the non-java version... but you have to open up the new version to people outside of windows 10. I tried their realms... they block pop and lag. The minecraft servers I run on my my own hardware run great, regardless of what remote location i connect to them from. Windows 10 is the kick in the pants we all need to stop using microsoft products.

[jagdtigger]

14 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

The Java Edition is on Life Support at this point. It's obvious that most of the resources are not being used on the Java Edition.

Thats funny in light of the fact that it is still the most popular version...

[AlTech]

It looks like the Pocket Edition for Windows 10 has also been re-branded to "Minecraft for Windows 10 Mobile".

 

It also requires Build 14393. Interesting stuff .

[Sauron]

"halo 2 for windows vista"

 

Oh Microsoft, when will you learn?

 

In other news, UWP is garbage and needs to die like games for windows live.

[ScratchCat]

On 22 September 2017 at 2:09 AM, Ryan_Vickers said:

I think they were killed long ago.  Most computers supported 64 bit even before 64 bit OSes started to catch on, and there's been no real reason to stick with 32 since Vista launched imo, so at this point the only people using it are doing so either for a very specific reason that they understand but that I cannot fathom, or they're clueless and installed the wrong version by mistake  Besides that there's no reason for it since any computer so old that it doesn't support a 64 bit OS would be so under-powered that it's totally useless for anything modern.

I use a 32 bit Windows tablet daily. The reason 64 bit is used even though the processor supports it is the memory usage of the different versions. As it only has 1GB of single channel RAM and the 32 bit version is lighter it is worth it.