Mojang has ramped up the possibilities for its famed game “Minecraft” with the new add-ons coming with its Pocket Edition.
Until E3, “Minecraft” players could only do modding through the PC version. Modding allows players to do the necessary stuff to perk up their “Minecraft” playing experience such as drawing up new character skins or even editing adversaries with proper edits to text files.
With the new “Minecraft” add-ons, players are no longer limited to doing that on PCs alone since they can do so now via their mobile devices.
Power at the Modder’s hands
There are multiple alternatives for “Minecraft” players to undertake in making their gaming experience better. All a player has to do is bring up a program like Windows “Paint” and draw up character skins.
With the add-on, players can do the same on their smartphone through files which will be in JavaScript Object Nation (.JSON). These are editable files where aspiring modders can easily make edits, depending on how creative and imaginative they may be.
In short, Mojang is exposing all their data and players can easily edit attributes such as size and/or speed of game characters such as animals or zombies.
“It’s really not that difficult,” Minecraft senior producer James Webster said via GamesBeat. “It’s just a matter of creating the geometries, which is just a bunch of points in space. And then adding the textures to that. It’s really simple to make these massive changes. Add-ons, we hope, are going to encourage people to be super creative. It’s a simple thing to change things, but then they can take things a step further by remixing all of these elements to come up with brand new ideas.”
Safer than downloading third party software
The move not only challenges players to be more creative but stands to be a safer route. “Minecraft” players normally look for some third-party software to do the necessary edits, some of which may be harmful to devices (i.e. malware, security issues).
The .JSON editor from the add-on will make things simpler and safer for gamers, not to mention the freedom to make their “Minecraft” playing experience according to a gamer’s preference as mentioned on Techno Buffalo.
“It’s going to be cross-platform on Windows 10 Edition and Pocket Edition,” he said. “You can share your add-ons. You can create a Realm and bring in your add-ons so that everyone who jumps on your server will see the same modifications as the host.”
