We have a double shot of Minecraft: Pocket Edition news to go over this morning and the first chunk of news comes from one of the main developers working on Minecraft: Pocket Edition who goes by the name Johan Bernhardsson who just did a quick livestream on TwitchTV with Daniel Kaplan with both of them showing off some of the new features coming in the 0.6.0 update.
While we will get into the upcoming 0.6.0 update in our next article, there was some talking about the future 0.7.0 update which we have touched on a couple of times already recently. The main focus of conversation though regarding 0.7.0 was the multiplayer functionality that Mojang is currently working heavily on right now in order to bring a more true multiplayer experience to Minecraft: Pocket Edition.
Since this was the topic being discussed a bit during the livestream, some new details about the upcoming multiplayer functionality came out. First, the whole multiplayer experience will be coming in the 0.7.0 update. This was confirmed this morning during the livestream. There isn’t a date for the 0.7.0 update, but multiplayer is confirmed for it.
Initially it looks like multiplayer with run through WiFi only at first although 3G/4G support is also in the works. When it comes to actually playing in multiplayer, items and creations will be saved when you leave the game since everything will be server-side saved. However, details on how servers will work haven’t been released yet and it won’t really be anything like how the PC version of the game works in regards to multiplayer servers.
One other items touched on regarding multiplayer is player skins. Right now we can technically change skins through modding the game. Multiplayer will, however, support skins natively. Details on how to change skins haven’t been released yet either unfortunately. On the bright side of things though, we will know a lot more next week as Johan and Daniel plan to show off multiplayer in another livestream.
A few other features coming in the 0.7.0 update that the two developers touched on was the addition of the options menu being accessible while in-game instead of having to leave your world and head back to the main menu to adjust your settings. Also ‘smooth lighting’ will be added as an experimental option people can play around with as well in 0.7.0.
Developer Website: Mojang
