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Whether it's being aired on The Simpsons or enabling a blacksploitation parody, Minecraft is one of the games that frequently finds itself in the media spotlight and being used continually in creative ways. Few projects however, have lasted as long as Paradise Decay's Minecraft-made Star Wars - A New Hope full length feature. The project, which was officially started three years ago, still has some lengths to go - but in the above teaser video, it's clear to see that the movie has come a long way.
Notably, the video itself is crafted from 100% in-game Minecraft footage with absolutely no modifications, save for custom textures and art being used here and there. The video is currently at about an hour and ten minutes complete, and is on-schedule for a completely free release on YouTube next year.
To avoid copyright issues, the video will be released without sound - fans of the film willing to watch it in Minecraft-vision will have to play a copy of the original 1977 version alongside it to keep up on the audio side of things. Quoth the creator himself.
As for the game itself, a noticeable change is coming for all gamers soon: Minecraft head developer Jeb Bergensten tweeted about reducing the size of the player model's arms by one pixel, a subtle change which admittedly gives the avatars a more androgynous body shape. Check it out for yourselves below:
When asked about the possible change, Jeb confirmed that it was to make female gamers feel more included in a world which was confirmed to have no genders over two years ago. While one pixel doesn't seem like much of a change, seeing it in action speaks louder than words.
"The reason why we wanted a 'slimmer' Steve [default Minecraft character] was because the broad-shoulder Steve would look masculine even with a feminine skin. Minecraft is played by both genders, but girls would sometimes feel left out... The same non-gender reasoning was one of the reasons why the male Steve sound effects were removed from the game a few years ago."
Though this was tweeted about before the lastest snapshot came to be released, the one-pixel arm change has yet to be included officially in any public Minecraft editions. The latest snapshot just includes to small fixes for errors that were introduced in last week's release:
- [Bug MC-62116] — Players loses CommandStats{} after Death
- [Bug MC-62134] — #players are taking up space on the sidebar display
Both snapshots have introduced a new thread batch system which should help system performance, which should help those on lower-end systems get better framerates and potentially even upsize their rendering distance.
What do you think about the Star Wars video and the updates, Ranters?
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Follow John Jacques on Twitter @Makelevi.