Gameplay



Gameplay in Minecraft consists mainly of adding and destroying blocks in a randomly generated world. There are several different types of blocks, some of which perform special functions like spreading or falling down because of gravity.

With these blocks, players create large constructions such as castles, roads, buildings and skywalks, along with forms of artwork. A chessboard or giant picture rarely goes amiss on a server. Not only have users designed buildings, pixel art, and caves, but also mini-sports. Using the current in-game features, users have put them to clever use. An example of a Minecraft sport is Spleef.

Notch has added a Survival and Creative modes, and is planning on adding Adventure mode and other modes to give Minecraft more gameplay. Minecraft is currently considered purely a sandbox construction game. Users who have bought the game have access to the full version of the game. This version is as bug-free as possible, and the user can still get updates. Crafting, farming, new blocks, and a more configurable map generator are all included in this version. This game used to be in Beta, Alpha, Indev, and Infdev, until the 18th of November, 2011.

Game modes
There are multiple modes in the game and these are survival, creative, adventure and hardcore. In the level.dat, survival mode is gametype=0, creative is gametype=1 and adventure is gametype=2. Hardcore is survival with the addition of hardcore=1 (for survival and creative, hardcore=0). This knowledge allows hacking to change game modes by editing your world's level.dat.

Survival
In this mode, players have to gather all their materials to build things, craft things and gain experience points. There is a health bar, a hunger bar, an armor bar, an inventory and, when underwater, an oxygen bar. Also you will lose health depending on the height you drop from areas or being attacked by hostile mobs.

Creative
The player will have access to an infinite amount of all blocks and items available, and can destroy blocks and items instantly. Players are invulnerable and do not have health, armor, or hunger and can fly. There are mobs in the world, as opposed to the original classic version. The player can also spawn almost any mob. The player can not eat but they can drink Milk, Water and Potions.

In Creative mode, the only way for the player to die is by falling into the Void.

Adventure
Players can interact with objects such as levers and buttons, and can interact with mobs. However, they can not break or place blocks, making this mode good for adventure maps. Although this gamemode was released, it is currently not finished, many new updates and ideas are to come, but it still functions and users can play it if they have updated their Minecraft to 1.3.1.

Hardcore
In this mode, which plays in the same way as Survival mode, the difficulty level is permanently set to "Hard" and the map must be deleted upon the player's death. Hardcore was introduced as part of the beta 1.9 pre-release and is playable in the full version of Minecraft.

Technically, Hardcore is a game mode modifier rather than a mode. However without cheating it is only possible to get "Hardcore Survival". To attain "Hardcore Creative" mode, the player must edit the game world with external tools. There is almost no visible difference between "Hardcore Creative" and "Non-Hardcore Creative", because in Creative mode the only way to die is to fall into the Void. Because of this, "Hardcore" usually refers to "Hardcore Survival". On a server, if someone dies, they will be banned. If everyone on a server gets banned, the world for the server will be deleted.

Player made
If you want you can actually make your own game modes in survival by giving yourself limits such as no tools, no mining, no farming, etc. Some types can be found on Youtube such as Noah's arc. It can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5nyLA_W0KY&feature=plcp These can be fun if you want to challenge yourself or just want to have fun.

Table of game modes
Below is a brief summary of the different available features in each game mode. This table also includes Classic, which is the older, free version of Minecraft.