Minecraft is a silly video game that is not yet complete but can be yours for €9.95 until 20 December. The game world is rendered as a collection of blocks with 16×16 textures painted on them. You can replace the textures, giving the world a whole different look. I have one which I need to call something so I will call it GroovyStipple. Read more
I have updated my Minecraft texture packs, GroovyStipple and SmoothStipple texture packs. the main differences—apart from tweaking sone of the shadow colours—is that I redesigned the bedrock and tilled-soil textures. Read more
Spurred by a comment on Reddit I thought I would have a go at adding items to my Minecraft texture packs. So far I have added textures for signs and boats. Read more
Using a similar process to the sign and boat (as described in the previous post), I have managed to create a sheep: Read more
The latest release of Minecraft introduces several new things that need textures: coloured wool, sandstone, the displenser and some refinements to the appearances of trees and furnaces. I have had a go at adding them to my GroovyStipple and SmoothStipple texture packs. Read more
Mine-cart tracks in Minecraft have two textures: straight track and a 90° corner. You can run diagonal lines, and carts will happily travel on them in a straight 45° line, but because it is rendered using corner pieces, it looks like a wriggly line. This vexes people who do not think that train tracks don’t look right when they make abrupt turns. Read more
I have started working on a little utility program for assembling Minecraft texture packs. Its working title is Minecraft Texture Maker. With it I an do mundane tasks like assembling the files in a directory in to the ZIP archive that gets published, and also create new texture packs by remixing existing ones. I have a vague ambition to elaborate it in to a web app for remixing packs, but it is useful already. Read more
Minecraft Beta 1.3 was released yesterday and it includes some new items, which require support in your custom texture pack if you have one. I was quite pleased that I was able to concoct a usable version of my packs using my texture-pack-remixing work-in-progress, now named Texturepacker. Read more
In my previous entry, I described how Texturepacker can be used to create Beta-1.3-compatible texture packs from Beta-1.2-supporting packs. Now I have made it possible to streamline the process by passing packs as parameters to recipes. Read more
I have created a web app called Texturejam to host remixes of Minecraft texture packs. The idea is to host Texturepacker in a form palatable to people who might want to use it. Read more
One of the problems for someone wanting to use Minecraft texture packs is not that there is no central repository of texture packs, but that there are many. Read more
I have updated Texturejam to support Minecraft Beta 1.5. Read more
The latest release Beta 1.5 of Minecraft introduces several new things that need textures: powered rail, detector rail, and two new sorts of sapling. I added them first to Texturejam’s patches pack—used to upgrade other packs to Beta 1.5—and did not get around to doing GroovyStipple versions until today. Read more
Minecraft Betas 1.6 introduced tall grass and ferns. Read more
I am making some changes to the way the Texturejam web app works to improve the clarity of attribution in remixed texture packs. Here’s how the new system works (or will work, when it is done), and why. Read more