Taking a note from BioShock: Infinite, Minecraft creator Markus Persson (aka Notch) has been toying with Minecraft islands, ones that don't float in the water but way up in the clouds.
While Notch works solo on the Minecraft 1.6 update while the rest of Mojang concentrates on other projects, he's been fixing bugs and working on the mini-maps and as he forewarned, it's been taking a quite some time and could still be a while longer.
After posting the following screenshots of the Minecraft "Sky Dimension," there was positive response from fans and media so Notch took it a step further, explaining to his Twitter followers that everyone can consider the inclusion of the Sky Dimension "confirmed."
From what Notch revealed previously, the 1.6 update wouldn't add much in terms of new content but instead would focus on cleaning up as many bugs as possible. It will however, add mini-maps if they are able to get them working as desired. If Notch is now playing with the Sky Dimension, perhaps this is another feature that will debut with the 1.6 update.
[gallery columns="2" exclude="85441"]
Will the Sky Dimension be a world of its own that must be loaded or does it simply live high above the earth (Minecraftia?). Perhaps it can be fast-traveled to similar to using portals to travel to the Nether. Those portals will become active and usable in multiplayer with the 1.6 update so that functionality will be there. In his tweets, Notch describes it as if it were a separate "dimension" and he's got it working great, but is not impressed from a visual standpoint just yet.
It's been a month since the Minecraft 1.5 update added weather and powered rails among other tweaks and additions, so fans are eager for more. The modding API, which has become quite an obstacle to implement will be a while aways, but once that releases, adding more features and content will be much more accessible to Minecrafters and the game will open up drastically.
Minecraft exits beta status on November 11, 2011 and the 90-minute Minecraft demo is available now.
-
Follow me on Twitter @rob_keyes.
Source: Notch