How to get started in Minecraft

Your world in Minecraft is randomly generated, and you appear in a land surrounded by water, with mountains, valleys, trees and animals. It's not clear what to do except explore to begin with but as the sun sets, monsters appear, who will kill you. Survival is impossible in the open, so you need to build a shelter to hide out in for the first night.

Collecting wood from trees, coal and stone from cliffs, you have to use your inventory to create tools, planks and more. Once you know how, mining and building is pretty quick, and you can create some really cool structures.

Minecraft realms

A new realm has been added to Minecraft, which allows faster travel through the huge worlds. Called The Nether, it resembles Hell, and is full of flowing lava and monsters. You can access The Nether using portals made from Obsidian you have mined. Also, when you create a new Minecraft world, it will now be more varied, with 'biomes' of different landscape, like desert, tundra and snow. NPC (non player characters) now roam villages, which can serve as early shelters for you at night, if you can find them!

Version 1.0 has some nice cosmetic changes, including an HD texture pack, better lighting from torches and even prettier sunsets and sunrises! The game launcher also looks better. There is now a 'Creative Mode', which makes you invincible, gives you unlimited resources, allows you to fly, and fast forward/rewind time! This mode is ideal for players who just want to get on and build cool stuff, without worrying about staying alive.

Minecraft is a wonderfully inventive sandbox game that really deserves the title, as your creation in it is only limited by your imagination and time!

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Minecraft already offers a huge amount of creativity and Minecraft SkinEdit expands that but instead of building more buildings, you can make superficial changes to the look of characters in the game. Every character in Minecraft is based on a 64x32 pixel wide PNG image. Minecraft SkinEdit allows you to create another PNG image with the same dimensions and add it to the game.

You can edit character colors using a color palette using brushes and paint pots. The brush size can be adjusted and you can make your characters as multicolor as your imagination allows. Any mistakes you make can easily be undone. Finally, you can see the result of your work with an animated preview.

Minecraft SkinEdit isn't exactly essential but it's a lot of fun if you're bored of the generic characters in Minecraft.

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The main aim in KSP is to build a space-worthy craft, capable of flying it's crew out into space, without killing them. At your disposal are a collection of parts, which must be assembled to create a functional ship. Each part has a different function and will affect the way a ship flies:

Kerbal Space Program allows players to design, build and pilot a space vehicle from pre-fab modules. These modules or parts include engines, fuel tanks, and wings and to make things more interesting, additional parts such as bombs, payloads and landing gear have been added to the game by players.

Some of the most notable features of KSP are:

At the moment there is only one planet - Kerbin - which you launch from and its moon, known as the Mün. There is also a sun called Kerbol. Kerbin and the Mün travel along an orbit, with Kerbin orbiting the sun and the Mün orbiting Kerbin thus emulating the Earth, Sun and Moon.

Like Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program leaves a lot of room for imagination. Players can create almost anything which has lead to the creation of several mods for the game which allow vehicles and other craft to be added to the game.

Kerbal Space Program has a small but thriving community of players although this looks set to expand as the developers plan to add more planets and moons, extra-vehicular activities and a space station. At the moment, Kerbal Space Program is free to play but it will eventually require payment to play once it has reached a higher level of development.

Kerbal Space Program is a unique and fun game. If you're a fan of Minecraft and have an interest in Space, you will particularly enjoy it.

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