Oh Minecraft, you can't simply just update and disappear for five months like SOME of these developers? Always shoving your new features, updates and bug fixes down our willing throats. It's why we love you so much. More information has been released on what will become Beta version 1.6, which will mostly consist of bug fixes. However the mapping feature will make it into this update, and some details on it have surfaced.

  • Maps will have a finite mapping area, similar to real maps.
  • The center of the map will be where you craft it.
  • The map will only update while you are holding it. You will walk around with the map "down", out of view and to actually view it you have to look down.
  • If others pick up the map you drop, they can view it and there will be a way to clone them.
  • Maps will "update" to terrain changes, but you have to take it near the new change to do so.
  • Maps don't currently work in multiplayer but that's being worked on.
  • There's a hard limit on how many maps you can craft... 65,536, so make them count.

For more information check out Notch's blog, as well as some more pictures.