Use this tag for programming-related questions about the computer game Minecraft. Note: Minecraft questions are generally OFF-TOPIC on Stack Overflow unless they relate to creating mods/plugins or otherwise developing for the game. Questions related to gameplay are best asked on gaming.stackexchange.com.
Minecraft is a voxel-based sandbox game coded in Java with LWJGL (which includes OpenGL) by Markus "Notch" Persson and his company Mojang.
In September 2014 Mojang was bought by Microsoft and the founders including Notch no longer work for the company. Source.
In the game players interact with the world formed of blocks to gain resources that can be used to create tools, structures, shelter, and eventually, complicated machinery. The game comes with enough features of wiring to allow the complexity to build a full 16-bit CPU out of its wiring.
Multiplayer functionality can be used by downloading a server that runs in Java and takes commands from the command line or from users typing commands starting with a slash / in-game on the server chat.
Questions are also sometimes used with java bukkit to denote coding Bukkit plugins written in Java, which modify serverside behavior of the game (but cannot add new blocks or items, only new behaviours). Such plugins normally support the CraftBukkit and Spigot implementations of the API, although there are some with specific implementation dependencies. A Bukkit plugin's base plugin class must extend org.bukkit.plugin.java.JavaPlugin for the Bukkit Server class loader to recognize them. Note that as of August 21, 2014 at 8:42 AM, Bukkit has been discontinued, and both CraftBukkit and Spigot (implementations of Bukkit) has been taken down due to DMCA requests.
Clientside mods are usually written using [MinecraftForge] and are capable of adding new blocks and items. For more information about MinecraftForge, see minecraft-forge.
Minecraft is available on:
- PC May 17, 2009 (first public release as Developmental Alpha Version)
- Xperia Play - August 16, 2011 (Pocket Edition)
- Android - October 7, 2011 (Pocket Edition)
- iOS - November 17, 2011 (Pocket Edition)
- PC - November 18, 2011 (Official Release)
- Raspberry Pi - February 11, 2013 (Pi Edition based on the Pocket Edition)
- Playstation 3 - May 14, 2014
- Playstation 4 - October 3, 2014
- Xbox 360 - May 9, 2012
- Xbox One - September 5, 2014
- Nintendo Switch - May 12, 2017
The game has reached huge levels of popularity and has made a large sensation (Minecraft has now sold over 15 million copies for PC/Mac).
Official website of the game: Minecraft.net
NOTICE: Questions about playing Minecraft are generally OFF-TOPIC on Stack Overflow. Please post on our sister site, Arqade, using one of the following tags depending on which edition of Minecraft you have:
- Minecraft Java Edition,
- Minecraft Bedrock Edition,
- Minecraft Legacy Console Edition
- Minecraft Education Edition
Questions regarding developing mods are, however, on-topic.
