Minecraft

[Robert Maxwell]

Hmm, doing a Nether portal to a new area wouldn't be a bad idea.

[TheGodBen]

It took me about an hour to mine a 1x2x1000 tunnel (which I did near the upper bedrock layer to avoid the main caverns) and it takes almost 4 minutes to walk from one end to the other. I'm estimating that I should exit somewhere around here:



Part of me thinks it's overkill, another part wants to go another 500m.

[Owain Taggart]

China must not be far off then...

[Cutter John]

Oh lord. Do I need to start another rail line?

[Owain Taggart]

Nah, I'd consider this trail to be an adventure trail, where you can stay in NPC houses along the way.

[TheGodBen]

A pre-release version of 1.8 has leaked. I'm a little wary since the source is 4chan, but it looks like it comes from Minecraft's own server and plenty of people have tried it and are saying it's legit. It's possible that it was intentionally leaked as Jeb wanted to release a beta version of it this evening for "advanced users" but couldn't as there was some major bug he couldn't fix on time.

I downloaded the jar file just in case the link gets taken down later and I'm considering trying it out on my laptop.

[Robert Maxwell]

I just tried it out. It's legit. I found a swamp biome!

[TheGodBen]

I tried it on my laptop, which was a bit slow. Now that Notch has given consent to use the link and confirmed that there's nothing malicious about it, I may as well try to run it on my desktop so that it wont lag so much.

Swamps don't look much like swamps but they do look very nice. However vines + surface lava = lots of fire. Biomes are much bigger. They're still not as big as I'd like but they'll do. Oceans are huge, it took me about three minutes to cross one in a boat (although, remember, the game was lagging a bit). I didn't find any NPC villages or dungeons, or see any Endermen, which I guess means I need to do some more "bug testing" later.

[Owain Taggart]

We should all venture out together when we have the update and see how long it takes us to find a village.

[Hoser]

Still no village, but two swamps and an ocean. I am so happy about the ocean, I built one on my last map and I wasn't for doing it again.
Also, the Endermen were fun, and there's a bunch of new crap to collect (Ender Pearls, raw chicken, beef.......)

[Itisnotlogical]

How am I supposed to do this? I've never operated a server before...

EDIT: Nevermind, figured it out.

EDIT 2: Damn, loving the new NPC villages. I found one in a sand biome, so far I've found crops, a smithy, a temple, and several generic houses 3x3x4 blocks in size.

[Itisnotlogical]

Took a few screenshots while I was in the village. I didn't catch a pic of the short Creeper or my fight with the Enderman, but I'm sure you've all experienced that.



Looking down on the village from a nearby hill.



I'm assuming that the door on the second story is some kind of glitch (there's no other entrance that I noticed). Behind the building with the second-story door is some kind of farm area.

[Cutter John]

It figures this would happen on a weekend when work is kicking my ass and I don't have time to play! *rage*

Think I'll wait a few days anyway to give them time to work any bugs out.

[TheGodBen]

I started another new world on my desktop and went hunting for a village. After spending the first night in a small cave I made in a mountain, I went out searching the next day and found this...



I can't wait to meet the guy that lives in this house.



I found an abandoned bar/library and turned that into my new home. One night a family of Endermen appeared nearby and started stealing the wood from the farm.



Knowing that strongholds are supposed to generate near villages, I went out in search of one. I eventually found this on the border between a swamp and a desert:



The planks and cobweb indicated something was down there. I went back to the village, got prepared, came back and jumped in. There was a huge, dark ravine under there with abandoned mine tunnels intersecting with it.



Shortly afterwards I saw a small flame in the distance with no light emanating from it. Assuming this came from one of the new blue spider spawners, I freaked out and ran away like a coward. I will never go spelunking again.


My favourite part of the update so far is the new jump/critical hit mechanic, there's something deeply satisfying about jumping up in the air before hitting a cow right between the eyes with your sword. It just makes you want to yell out "By the power of Grayskull!"

[Itisnotlogical]

I was hoping the sprint mechanic would be available, but I guess not. I'm going to have to try survival mode in this version, I was just messing around on Creative on that other one. My favorite part is that you can now apparently block with the sword. Finally, you don't have to sit there and take it when you're getting glommed by half a dozen spiders at once