Seeing Redstone: Mojang Details Minecraft's 1.5 Update

While we slept off traditionally fatal turkey venoms or, you know, did non-festive things, Mojang took over Disneyland this weekend. No, no, Notch and co didn't buy Disney (yet; that won't happen for another couple years, at least), but they did host MineCon at Disneyland Paris. And though I imagine there was plenty of magic and childlike wonderment involved, they did - at certain points throughout the show - put on their business Mickey Mouse hats. Shockingly, Minecraft got the bulk of the attention during those rare instances, and 1.5 - now dubbed The Redstone Update - was the main attraction.

VG247 reports that it is - again, with a shock so powerful as to rival that of Zeus himself - focused primarily on Redstone, a mighty material that players have already used to pull of some rather impressive feats. Now, though, it's getting variable strength, which will cause it to react only once a specific level of input has been met or exceeded. Taken in conjunction with a new capacitor block, this allows for advanced builds like weighted pressure plates and pressure-sensitive detectors.

The Minecraft maestros are also crafting better minecarts, daylight detectors that can be used to make what are essentially solar panels, and a bunch of bug fixes.

Beyond that, Mojang spoke a bit about the long-awaited modding API, which will get its own central add-on hub on Minecraft's website. Anything will be free game so long as it involves adding or removing functionality, but altering the core game engine is a no-go.

The update's going live in January, and the plan is to churn out more rapid, single-element-specific updates along similar lines after that. And then Mojang will buy Disney, obviously. But you already knew that. This will, however, open the door for Minecraft Lego Star Wars, which will immediately cause some form of all-consuming void to engulf the universe. So, um, just a heads up.