Minecraft

[TheGodBen]

They don't need to remove certain animals entirely from certain biomes, just make variants for each species so that they fit in better. Cows as they are now can continue to exist in plains and the like, cows in jungles can be white with horns, cows in the snow can be woolly brown, and so on. They would have the same drops, the same sounds, and the same AI, but the visual difference would help to make the biomes feel distinct. You can try and collect each variety if you want (for a zoo or whatever) but you don't have to if you just want a beef farm as all cows are functionally the same. It adds variety without increasing complexity.

Biomes were something I really looked forward to when they were introduced three years ago, but they were so half-assed at the time that I was left disappointed. There have been steady improvements since then, especially with the biome changes in the adventure update, but I still don't feel that biomes have lived up to the potential of the concept. If 1.7 is to be the biome update, I'd like them to go back and add some additional variety to the existing biomes, but I fear that all they're planning is to add some new biomes and some new blocks to go with them.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I'm liking the new biomes, but I hope they take this as an opportunity to add some new biome-specific mobs.

That's why I like RandomMobs as it gives a sense of variety, but I do wish it could be carried over to not just mobs, but to animals as well. But yeah, more variety in the types of mobs would help. I'd love to see bears and mountain goats. Bears could be found in small caves or nooks around the world, while you'd only find mountain goats on snowy peaks that could try to headbutt the player if they got too close to them. The problem with simply adding more biomes is that it doesn't make the game any more playable. It just fragments the gameplay even more, if that makes any sense. As it is, the biomes we have now just don't have the feeling of having many uses other than being for looks, and they don't feel very dynamic. They feel empty. We have villages, why don't we have explorers that you can sometimes find while exploring that you could possibly team up with for some spelunking now that it's gotten a bit harder? Players should feel like there's a return investment with the time they put into the game.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I've been playing Minecraft for about 2 months now, but I had to try out the latest snapshot with its new biomes. Loving it so far, especially using the AMPLIFIED world type when creating my new world.

 

[Cutter John]

Yes, the Amplified world is just nuts. Though its easy to become trapped in the mountains. They're just too darn big.

This is the first time I've acually been able to try out a new snapshot. Kudos to the new Launcher interface that makes it so much easier to switch back and forth between versions.

I'm hoping they'll find new uses for the various flowers other thn just dyes. Perhaps make them into new potion ingredients?

 

[TheGodBen]

That's why I like RandomMobs as it gives a sense of variety, but I do wish it could be carried over to not just mobs, but to animals as well. But yeah, more variety in the types of mobs would help. I'd love to see bears and mountain goats.

Notch seemed to have a rule that new items added to the game had to have a function somehow, so any new animals would either have to drop an item used for crafting or aid the player somehow (like wolves). He didn't seem to like the idea of implementing purely aesthetic animals or blocks. Jeb has begun to display a willingness to move away from Notch's vision for the game in that regard and has introduced some purely aesthetic blocks in recent updates, and bats are the first animal in the game that exist purely for looks. Hopefully this means some more animals will come with the biome update even though they probably wont have a use. I think some African animals would be cool in the new savanna biome.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Well, it could be said that pigs, cows and sheep were purely esthetics for a long time to the point that they're like the generics of Minecraft. This is even more true with the sheep which until the sheering, didn't have much of a purpose. Even wolves/dogs have more of a purpose than cats which are kind of just there and are able to scare creepers.

I can even think of many purposes for mountain goats. Limit the population of sheep and cows to lower ground, and if you build something on a hill like a house and farm, likely the only thing you should encounter are mountain goats which you could fence in and which could have a dual purpose of being milked and providing wool. The challenge would be in milking and sheering them due to their headbutting.

I see that the next update will allow multiple resource packs to be used, which is interesting. This means that you could essentially use one resource pack for its textures, and one resource pack for its sound if the first one doesn't have sound of its own. If your favourite pack doesn't have a complete set of textures, then it would select the next pack in the list in the order of priority to use as that set of missing textures.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/877-more-in-17-resource-pack-selection/

 

[Cutter John]

I love my new snapshot world. In my first trip to the Nether, I came out of a Netherfortress with two blaze rods six, gold ingots, and a dozen diamonds!

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Surprised to find that Minecraft 1.6.4 rolled out this evening. From the Twitter buzz, most people are having problems playing their usual servers with this right now.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Probably because the latest Bukkit is 1.6.2, not 1.6.4. They didn't used to break things on patch releases but I guess they do now!

 

[Zulu Romeo]

In the meantime I've been having a go at the latest snapshot, 13w38a. The Super Secret Settings button now does something! (as well as give a sound effect)

Spoiler: lots of images

It cycles through 20 "shader" presets - some subtle, others less so - although I think Post-Processing needs to be switched on in the Video Settings menu. For example:

(this one cycles through the palette among other things)

(I like this one )

EDIT: the shaders have names, visible with F3.

 

[B.J.]

How do you know if you've gotten back to the "original" video setting? I think some are very close to the original, with little tweaks, so it's hard to tell.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

In snapshot 13w38a, the F3 status doesn't really tell you if a shader is off (the status stops changing once you get to the default), but it does in 13w38b - the line describing the active shader file diisappears. Apart from hitting F3 to see the details, I can't really think of another way to tell.

Some of the shaders are fun if impractical - the greenscreen shader is very nice (and looks better in game than from the static screenshot) but in a dimly lit cave you are in almost complete darkness. Plus the extreme motion blur shader might give some people headaches. The black wireframe shader looks impressive stylistically, especially on the ore blocks and some of the monsters, but the effect is somewhat diminished on highly detailed objects such as trees which look almost totally filled in.

Hopefully once the final 1.7 is released, the super secret settings might expand and allow greater control of selecting graphics profiles and even let us create our own, Winamp style.


EDIT: As of 13w38c, press F4 to stop the current shader and reset the graphics to normal. Also, it seems the shaders were put in to test future gameplay effects, perhaps adverse effects that the player can suffer under certain conditions? (Some of these, such as flip mode and extreme blur, I can definitely understand.)

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Found this recently. Immense...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24177844

Ordnance Survey map data have been used to recreate the geography of Great Britain in Minecraft - the largest such map to use real-world information so far with over 22 billion blocks used.

You can get it from the Ordnance Survey website: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/innovate/developers/minecraft-map-britain.html It's a big file, though: 345MB compressed, 3.6GB uncompressed.

 

[TheGodBen]

From the new snapshot. Finally! I have a feeling a lot of temples and cathedrals will be updated when 1.7 comes out.

 

[B.J.]

What the.... how did I miss this?!? Looks like Minecraft Forum is being slow with the news again.

 

[Saturn0660]

FINALLY!!!!

I see me being very very busy..

 

[Owain Taggart]

From the new snapshot. Finally! I have a feeling a lot of temples and cathedrals will be updated when 1.7 comes out.

Finally! They've always said it couldn't be done, but I knew they'd eventually find a workaround.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Here we go!
http://m.pcgamer.com/2013/10/23/minecraft-1-7-gets-pre-released-will-change-the-world-on-friday

The world will never be the same again! The world, in this instance, being the cubic lands of Minecraft. The long-awaited 1.7 update has been pre-released, with a full and official launch due to follow this Friday. Titled "the update that changed the world", it earns its name by doubling the amount of biomes available to the world generator, changing the rules around terrain generation, and overhauling certain code in preparation for a plugin API.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Sounds good! A plugin API has been talked about for so long, so it should make things much easier for developers.

What I'd love to see out of the launcher is a resourcepack browser, centrally hosted resourcepacks and updates when they're available.

 

[Saturn0660]

Shit, what i'd love is for feed the beast to work..