Also, this:

 Players carrying the same map (!) will clearly be marked on the map. You might be able to mark locations as well. Probably. Maybe.

Just picked this up on the weekend. No idea what I'm doing. Finally figured out how to craft stuff and built a nice little house, then lost it. I left it near a beach I'm pretty sure :) A map would definitely help Noobs like me.

Nice

" Just picked this up on the weekend. No idea what I'm doing. Finally figured out how to craft stuff and built a nice little house, then lost it. I left it near a beach I'm pretty sure :) A map would definitely help Noobs like me. "

Oh God yes. Finally!

More info:
 

I’m currently working on 1.6, which will be mostly a bug fix update. I will be going through bug lists (including the great one on the Minecraft wiki) and fixing as many as I can. There’s no set date for the update yet as I don’t know how long it’ll take to go through the list.

The only new feature that will appear is the mapping.

When you craft a map, you will be able to somehow select how “zoomed in” you want the map to be. It will be centered on the location where you craft it, and it will fill in as you explore the land. If you go outside the edges of the map, it will stop updating, so each map is of a specific area. (like real maps!)

Here’s a screenshot of a fully zooomed in map (good for town maps, for example):

And here’s a screenshot of a fully zoomed out map:

If you drop a map and someone else picks it up, they will be able to see your progress. You will also be able to (somehow) CLONE maps so that two separate map items link to the same map data. That means you can see what other players carrying the same map explores, and both you and them will show up as blinking dots or similar on the maps.

Currently, the map will only update if you’re holding it in your hands, but the map will kind of hide away when you’re looking straight forward. To see the map properly, you have to look down, thisly:

Any changes you make to the terrain will show up on the maps, but only once someone carrying the map gets near that area. In other words, you won’t magically get to see changes far away on the map.

At the moment the map doesn’t work at all in multiplayer, but that’s my next task. The code I write to support that will also be possible to reuse in the future for things like books and notes written by players, and possibly even custom paintings/hand drawn signs.

There’s a hard limit of 65536 unique maps per world, though, and I don’t think I can get around that without breaking the code very bad. I’m trying to figure out if the limit is high enough or if I should spend the time rewriting the code..

 

There were already Minimap mods. But this is cool.

Cool...I used to get lost when I played Minecraft on the massive levels and would get stranded outside when night arrived trying to find my base I made. This addition should make me go back to playing this game perhaps tonight (after I update it).

I am super excited for this. I wonder how you will craft it...reeds maybe? 

I just crafted a "clock", and thought, "what the shit is this?". I guess I hadn't gotten used to Minecraft looking so... you know... low-res. I tried actually reading the dial and whatnot, but now I know to either look for blue, or black.

" I just crafted a "clock", and thought, "what the shit is this?". I guess I hadn't gotten used to Minecraft looking so... you know... low-res. I tried actually reading the dial and whatnot, but now I know to either look for blue, or black. "