Minecraft Archives - Argyll Free Press

Code.org is a relatively new but now popular organization (founded in 2013) whose purpose is to not only motivate people all over the world, especially school children, to learn how to code, but to also help them do so by giving free coding lessons online.

They do this via their eponymous website (www.code.org) where anyone can take free lessons of his or her choice from the offered curriculum.

But another important part of their efforts is the Hour of Code challenge. Which they first held in December 2013, during Computer Science Education week (9th of December to 15th of December) when they launched the concept. The Hour of Code consists of a tutorial that teaches the basics of computer science to anyone who is interested, in under one hour, using a visual programming language called Blockly.

Since its launch in 2013, a new tutorial teaching the same concepts was modeled for each year. In 2014, for example users could learn to make and then customize their own Flappy Bird game.

And now, in 2015, the Hour of Code tutorial is Minecraft-oriented. Meaning that potential learners will use Blockly to give instructions to one of two characters of their choice Steve (male) or Alex (female) so that they can perform increasingly difficult tasks over the course of 14 levels in an interface visually similar to the Minecraft environment.

The emphasis behind this being that Minecraft uses the same basic programming and computer science concepts being taught in the Hour of Code, this enticing potential learners because of Minecraft’s huge popularity and appeal, a fact which incidentally has been consistently confirmed by learner’s requests that Code.org kept receiving to make a Minecraft-themed tutorial up to now.

And speaking of enticing learners, Code.org designed the last of the 14 levels in this Hour Of Code Minecraft tutorial to be a free play experience, without a pre-determined set of tasks to do, similar to Minecraft, allowing them to choose from several actions and make their own decisions, in the hope that it would have replay value and they would return to play.

But this would not have been possible without Microsoft (who owns Minecraft, having bought it last year). Because Microsoft, apart from being one of Code.org’s high-profile and generous backers (along with Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, Apple and others), with more than 3 million $ donated to Code.org so far, gave the company the right to use the Minecraft name without charge. And also pitched in with a few developers of its own to write this new tutorial.

It also says it was more than happy to help make this tutorial a reality because they had the intention of somehow using Minecraft for education since January and this is a perfect opportunity.

Image source: 1.

Get hyped – Minecraft on Oculus Rift just got real.

According to Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus Rift, Minecraft is headed towards the highly-anticipated VR platform this spring. The built-it-yourself game is popular than ever and its growth doesn’t seem to dwindle.

During the Oculus Connect event that took place in Hollywood this morning, Luckey went on stage and unveiled some of their plans for 2016, Gamasutra reports. However, fans that wish to play Minecraft on Oculus Rift will need the game’s Windows 10 Edition, according to Lydia Winters of Mojang.

It looks like our fantasies of digging huge caves and battling mythical blocky nether-drakes just got real – well, virtually speaking.

This hints at a new step forward for the gaming industry. Luckey took to explaining how we move, slowly but surely, to the metaverse i.e. an intense virtual reality world. With the help of Minecraft, Rift will build a sturdy foundation for VR enthusiasts.

Microsoft’s Hololens also takes to Minecraft to help them sell their headset – which is a fusion between augmented reality and virtual reality, but with more AR elements present.

There are a ton of devs that work on gearing up games so they can be easily played in VR. Yet, the majority of titles that are set to be released in 2016 feature realistic worlds that use small amounts of space. We are more than curious to see how VR developers are going to make exploring a virtually limitless world with minimal issues from the get-go.

Luckey and his team seem to be excited about the whole virtual reality trend and this gives us some sort of assurance that the end product will at least be passion-driven.

Fighting dinosaurs in ARK sounds superb, and flying an airplane in War Thunder is more than rad, but there’s something about exploring Minecraft with a VR headset that just makes me want to jump up and down out of pure excitement.

Oculus Rift is shaping up to be a huge ecosystem filled with all sorts of virtual reality experiences.

However, let’s not jump on the bandwagon so fast. Next year will be all about VR and VR pioneers trying to take a huge chunk out of the virtual pie. In theory, Minecraft sounds awesome, but we don’t really know how this will equate to real world standards. It has to be fun, and more importantly, it has to be comfortable and easy to use.

There’s a reason why Kinect failed – nobody wants to commit to standing up just to play a video-game when they can just jump on the couch and relax after a hard day’s work.

Yet, Wii was a huge success, mainly because it is gimmicky.

Regardless if it’s going to be a hit or miss, I can’t wait to try Minecraft on Oculus Rift when the time comes.

Image Source: 1, 2

Code.org Hour Of Code Minecraft Tutorial

Get Ready for Minecraft on Oculus Rift

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