Ordnance Survey intern plonks houses, trees, rivers and roads on GB Minecraft map

Youtube Video Blighty’s Ordnance Survey organisation has updated the country’s map in Minecraft, adding roads, national rail networks and houses to the digital overview. A plucky intern at the mapping org stuck Britain into the vastly popular game this time last year. Now that he’s bagged himself a full-time position on the …

[ashdav]

The first thing Microsoft will do is replace the bricks with tiles.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Apple will replace Nokia bricks with slabs?

[NoneSuch]

Coming Soon: HALO:GB

[Destroy All Monsters]

Liverpool underground nightclubs!

Did they include REMAINS of druidic underground passages opening on stairways guarded by GIGANTIC STONES leading to VAST, HIDDEN abysses wherein waft NEPHITIC VAPORS of SHOCKING DECAY and the faint sound of MAD PIPING and DRUMMING coming from the UTTER DARKNESS below is just an indication that here lurks UTTER TERROR that is best left alone?

[magickmark]

Re: Liverpool underground nightclubs!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

[wolfetone]

Re: Liverpool underground nightclubs!

Doesn't Minecraft already have that in the form of caves full of creepers?

[Graham Dawson]

Re: Liverpool underground nightclubs!

Those are the nightclubs.

[Haynomonous]

Re: Liverpool underground nightclubs!

Well, that's easy for you to say.

[breakfast]

Re: Liverpool underground nightclubs!

Where Mersey the sacred river ran

Through caverns measureless to man

[Steven Jones]

Re: Liverpool underground nightclubs!

Down to a sunless sea.

Which accurately describes the Irish Sea on most summers.

[Kirstian K]

No Profit

'the game has yet to make any money and its developer Mojang has now been snapped up by one of the old guard, in this case Microsoft, for a whopping $2.5bn.'

correct me if im wrong, but selling it for 2.5 biiiilion IS a profit..! (a f'ing huge one)

[MrPSB]

Re: No Profit

Minecraft has made boatloads of money ever since it was released, Mojang made £69m profit for 2013, I'd imagine most of it from Minecraft sales.

[NumptyScrub]

Re: No Profit

Yep, Mojang has a decent revenue stream so I don't know where the idea of it not making a profit comes from. My concern is rather what on earth MS are intending to do with it, especially if they value it at $2.5b. I have a horrible suspicion we'll be looking at paid DLC replacing user mods, and in-app purchasing surfacing within the year, alongside a new-found platform exclusivity on Windows and XBox :'(

[Hellcat]

Re: No Profit

The Xbox version already has in-app purchases for skins and DLC based on having a xbox gold account (for downloading maps like skyden). I assume it is similar for playstation and apple/android versions.

[imanidiot]

Re: No Profit

I was about to post this, have an upvote. Since its release only the first few years were run at a loss. Since it has been in beta (which is already quite a while) Minecraft has made a tidy profit for Mojang each year.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: No Profit

This would mean the going price is 36x the YoY profit? Clearly a generational game.

"Who's your co-pilot?" asked PDP-1 Kenobi.

"Two Bacco, here, my Bookie."

"Odds aren't good," said the brownish lump beside him, and then fell silent, or over.

[Aqua Marina]

Dum dum dum dum dum dum dummmmm

Was I the only person singing the East Enders theme tune in my head while watching that video?

[Chewi]

Re: Dum dum dum dum dum dum dummmmm

I have the sound muted in the office but wondered if it really did feature that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sound of.. what? ;)

"The... hills... are alive, with the sound of Minecraft players"

More likely the sound of friendly mobs such as cows, sheep, pigs and chickens ;)

Esp. since players usually don't make much sounds, unless they got some nice TNT of course :)

[imanidiot]

Re: Sound of.. what? ;)

Or possibly the sounds of creepers. Massive unending amounts of creepers...

[bpfh]

Sound of TNT

Did Denmark not have some issues with some wanabee Blaster Bates having at the map with a lot of suspicious cases of woofbangohnasty?

[BonezOz]

Re: Sound of TNT

The nice thing about the GB map is that it's downloadable. Meaning that if you blow it up, no one will know.

[Pen-y-gors]

Hmmmm

Out of interest, who owns the copyright on material in Minecraft? (e.g. very detailed OS maps) - Maybe that's what Microsoft are after...

[ChrisC]

Re: Hmmmm

The VectorMap District data mentioned in the article is freely available as part of the OS OpenData collection of goodies.

[WraithCadmus]

Choice of blocks

So local roads aren't flammable, but motorways are?

Icon: Flint and steel

[Anonymous Coward]

Why/how are the lakes on slopes?

It's f-ing mental.

[Victor Ludorum]

Downhill water-skiing?

[arrbee]

"I’m looking forward to seeing if people eventually build a working railway system in game"

So not *that* realistic then.

[weebs]

Mojang make a fuckton of money. Who ever thought Mojang was running at a loss? The amount of sales is a tiny percentage of its income. Just look at the vast amount of other minecraft paraphernalia you can get.

[James 51]

Tescos are selling official minecraft books and clothing. Note that's books. One for building, one for resource gathering, one for fighting and I am sure there is more.

[Spleen]

A book on fighting in Minecraft??

Chapter 1: Swordfighting. Jump and bash, repeat.

Chapter 2: Bows. Hold down fire, release, repeat.

Chapter 3: Creepers. Dig a hole, lead them in, leave them there to starve. Bastards.

I know strategy books are always a rip off for those with more money than ability to Google, but really, surely everyone knows that Minecraft's complexity is in what you do with it, not the game itself. You can probably learn everything you need to know in about the basic game (down to how to get to The End) in five minutes on the wiki.

[Bonus]

The books/guides are aimed at kids, and my 6-yo enjoys reading them so no complaints from me. Like most books, they tend to retail at around half off anyway.

[Amorous Cowherder]

The only area that does benefit from a play guide is complex redstone devices, some of the Heath-Robinson type contraptions you can build using that stuff are quite stunning.

As to the rest of the game, one of it's joys is learning how the environment functions. Some fun to be had in building your own "nasties" safari park complete with rides through the areas to stare at the attractions!

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Source ?

I might be wrong but I'm sure that when I looked at it a few years ago the info page said that when the guy who wrote it either finished it or got bored he was going to release it as open source, although fair play to him, I'd have sold for that kind of money as well.

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others"

[Rikkeh]

Potential uses here

I imagine that an accurate 3D map of the UK available to everyone in a readily-accessible format has the potential to be extremely useful. Especially if it gets dynamic compenents like realistic(ish) trains.

[TchmilFan]

Dear Register hacks,

A basic hyperlink to somewhere non-Registery and more Ordnancey would be nice.

Tying us in that awful Youtube skin doesn't help things.

[Mark #255]

I'm not a Register hack, but...

here's the download page for the GB Minecraft 2 map, all 1.1GB of it (20GB uncompressed).

[emmanuel goldstein]

I'M NOT BEING FUNNY BUT...

what the fuck is the point of minecraft?

seriously, please can someone explain?

[James Hughes 1]

Re: I'M NOT BEING FUNNY BUT...

I'm not being funny, but what is the point of Emmanuel Goldstein.

It's pretty much the same question. I hope you know the answer to it.

[The FunkeyGibbon]

Re: I'M NOT BEING FUNNY BUT...

It's fun.