Minecraft – How to find the Minecraft seed on Xbox 360

The map item on the XBox 360 version of Minecraft works similar to the PC version, with three main differences:

1. XBox version gives you a free map at the beginning of the game. In the PC version, you must gather the necessary resources to craft a map item.

2. The PC version world size is (essentially) unlimited. The entire world in the XBox version is less than 1024 x 1024 only 864 x 864. The PC version of the map extends to the edges of the paper, the XBox version has wider "margins":

3. Every map crafted on the PC version is different; it covers a 1024x1024 area centered where the map was originally crafted. All crafted maps in the XBox cover the entire 864 x 864 world, centered at (x=0, z=0). In fact, each crafted map in the XBox version is an exact copy of your original map, including all mapped areas. Even if you throw your map in lava or lose it after respawning, any new map you craft will be populated with all areas you'd previously mapped.

Regarding the other questions:

• How many game blocks make up a map pixel?
  8 game blocks per map pixel.

• How big is the map/world?
  Now that the update has been released, we can confirm that the world is 864 x 864 (although you cannot mine or place anything in the outermost block, making it effectively 862 x 862). That makes the map 108 x 108 pixels.

• What does each color represent?
  Each pixel has a primary color based on what material is most represented in the 8x8 blocks (as visible from above). Most should be obvious (snow, ice, water, sand, grass, trees), but see the chart on this page for the materials that correspond to each base color. This base color is then shaded based on terrain elevation.

• How is it oriented?
  There are two conflicting evidences for orientation: if we assume that the top of the map is North, then the Sun on the XBox version actually rises in the North and sets in the South (in the PC version this was fixed in beta 1.9.4). Alternately, you could say that the Sun behaves properly (rises in the East and sets in the West), and that you are holding the map so that North is on the left (but this would be an unusual way to hold a map). As such, any discussions that use cardinal directions (N, S, E, W) should clarify which they mean.

• Is there any way to determine an approximate map location from (X, Z) coordinates?
  Since the game update was release on June 15, 2012, the map shows the coordinates of your current location. Here's a brief explanation:

  • The center of map is (x=0, z=0) (the crosshairs are slightly below that point, don't use the crosshairs to determine the center point).
  • Unlike normal integers, there is both a +0 and a -0.
  • X coordinate is left-right on the map: right is positive, left is negative.
  • Y coordinate is depth/height: 0 is the bottom-most bedrock layer.
  • Z coordinate is up-down on the map: down is positive, up is negative
  • Since the xbox map/world is only 864 x 864, that means that the max reachable coordinates are only +/- 432. In addition, the edge of the XBox world nearly always ends in the ocean (see map image above), so I suspect that some of these furthest outside blocks may not match those same locations in the PC map.

Here is how maps work in multiplayer:

• Each player has their own, independently drawn map.
• If a player crafts a map, it becomes a copy of their own original map.
• You can "share" map contents with another player by giving them your map and having them view it. Both player's maps will update with all visited areas.

The full changelog is listed on Mojang's website (copied below).

The line you mention, "Added a few other things for players to discover," is in the Tutorial World section. Therefore I suspect it just means they added some cool touches to the tutorial world to demonstrate the use of new items (pistons, stacked fences, etc), to add to its charm. They may have added some little easter eggs to this world too, but I can't say for sure.

Minecraft: XBox 360 Edition July 2012 Update Changelog: http://www.mojang.com/2012/07/minecraft-xbox-360-edition-update-is-out/

Features:

• Added Pistons & Sticky Pistons.
• Added Stackable fences.
• Added Shears – required to get wool from sheep, and to collect leaf blocks.
• TNT needs Flint and Steel or Redstone to detonate.
• Redstone wire will now connect to a repeater.
• New textures for Cobblestone and Brick.
• Added Character Skin Selector to allow players to choose their skin from the default skins, or from Downloadable Content skin packs.
• Added lighting improvements (brought forward from 1.8.2 update) and snow & rain improvements.
• Added a save file cache to improve the speed of displaying the saves list.
• Added ban list functionality to allow players to self-ban from levels they feel contain offensive content.
• Added a ban list section to the How To Play menus.
• Added an option for the host to limit online games to only players in their friends list (no friends of friends).
• Added a seed display to the level load screen (requires existing levels to be saved out again to add the display).
• Changed the tooltip display setting to in-game tooltip display, so that tooltips always display in menus.
• Added the crosshair to the list of things affected by the opacity slider.
• On using the quickselect bar, the opacity of the quickselect, tooltips, splitscreen gamertag display, and crosshair will be set to 80, and will fade back down to the user opacity setting after 6 seconds of no quickselect bar use.
• Added some more Tips & Trivia to the loading/saving screen display.

Tutorial World changes & additions:

• Added optional tutorial for Pistons and Redstone.
• Added a self-building bridge to the castle using Pistons.
• Added some sugar cane, cactii and clay to the world.
• Added a few other things for players to discover.

Fixes:

• Fix for only the host being shown the pop-up when any player attempts to place lava near the spawn point.
• Fixed tooltip for Flint and Steel.
• Fix for Note blocks not showing notes.
• Fix for Leaderboard reads taking too long.
• Fix to block players re-entering a level they have been kicked from, until the level is restarted.
• Fix to stop players being able to join a game when they are not a friend of any player in the game.
• Fix for Netherracks re-appearing after being mined.
• Fix for a rare crash on entering the Nether.
• Fix for attacking enemies at a different level not damaging them.
• Fixed a problem causing some save games not to load.
• Removed Herobrine.