Looks like Minecraft beta 1.8 has been officially released.

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with the pre-release versions, and can’t wait to get my hands on the full copy.  I think I might even need to dust off my old Minecraft server…  Of course, that’ll have to wait until MCMA and bukkit have updated to the new build.

Still, some exciting stuff to play with.

Spent some time playing the new Minecraft 1.8 pre-release the last few days…

Generated a new world, since the new features will only show up in newly-generated chunks.  First thing I noticed is that terrain generation is far more interesting than it used to be.

There’s now a very distinct difference between hills and mountains.  Mountains suddenly jut up out of the ground and tower over you, while hills are more gentle things.  There are rivers that wind through the countryside.

Biomes are bigger, and more interesting, and seem to join together more smoothly than they used to.  I didn’t see any situations where I’d have just a single chunk of desert stuck right in the middle of some green meadows.

There are genuine oceans.  Huge, expansive bodies of water that are incredibly, frighteningly deep.  I don’t know if the height limits were actually changed for 1.8 or not…  But between the mountains and the oceans, the world feels much larger.

Endermen are present.  They’re some very creepy monsters.  They come out at night and move blocks around…  They’ll ignore you, as long as you don’t look directly at them.  If you do, they become angry and start shaking with rage.  They’ll charge at you, teleporting periodically, and kill you.  If you kill them they’ll drop an “ender pearl”, which is currently useless.

Just about everything drops meat now – cows, chickens, pigs, zombies…  You can eat that meat to recover your hunger bar, and it’ll heal you.  You can also cook most of that meat.

There’s an experience bar, but I’m not sure what it does.  Seems kind of useless at the moment.  Maybe it’s just there for modders to use?  Maybe the real release of 1.8 will use it for something?

There are some interesting structures scattered around the world…  Dungeons, ruins, abandoned mineshafts…  I stumbled across some kind of deserted village while I was wandering the countryside.  There was some kind of a blacksmith shop, and a number of houses, a couple gardens, something that looked like a church…  Eventually there should be NPCs populating these villages.

Unfortunately, the pre-release is still pretty buggy.  Furnaces, especially, are having issues.  It’s basically impossible to use a furnace without crashing the game.  So that severely limits what you can do for now.

I’ve given up on the 1.8 pre-release for now, simply because it’s so hard to get anything done without a working furnace…  But I can’t wait for the full release now.  Absolutely awesome stuff in there.

Notch has a very cool blog post on the new “enderman” creature he’s adding in 1.8 – I can’t wait to play that release.  Sounds like great fun.

Looks like the new update is out, and it’s a big one!

This update requires both a client and a server update.

Changelist:

1.6:

New features:
+ Added Nether support to multiplayer
+ The client will ask minecraft.net if the current login is valid. If the server says “no”, a warning message appears in the client. You can still play the game even if this happens.
+ Added craftable maps
+ Added hatches
+ Added tall grass in some biomes
+ Mushrooms now spreads (very) slowly
+ Added server property view-distance. Sets the radius of terrain updates (in chunks) to send to the players. Range 3-15, default 10.
+ Added dead shrubs in deserts
+ Added allow-nether (set to true or false) in server.properties
+ Blocks destroyed by other players in multiplayer now shows the breaking block particle effect
+ Doors make sound for other players in multiplayer
+ The record player now supports more than 15 different songs (you can’t get the records yet, though)
+ Activated dispensers make sounds and trigger particles in multiplayer
+ Players stuck in walls will slide towards the nearest gap if there is one

Changes:
* Disabled Advanced OpenGL until we can fix some bugs with it
* It’s no longer possible to build solid blocks on the top layer of the maps (sorry!)
* Made booster tracks speedier
* Severely nerfed fire so it spread slower, and doesn’t spread infinitely
* Seeds are now found in tall grass, using a hoe on the ground no longer works
* Compressed network traffic more agressively
* Blocks that don’t change appearance when the data changes don’t send block updates when their data changes now
* Arrows shot by players can now be picked up by all players
* Nothing riding anything or being ridden by anything can enter portals

Bugfixes:
* Fixed running out of memory corrupting the current level
* Fixed the side textures of grass getting extra dark when mining them
* Fixed anaglyph 3d rendering mode having severe visual bugs
* Fixed the crash screen vanishing immediately
* Fixed not being able to target blocks when at x or z pos 1000
* Fixed the achievements screen messing up the sky color
* Fixed saving while sneaking dropping the player through the ground
* Fixed a system clock change messing up the game speed
* Fixed rain sounds not playing with fast graphics enabled
* Fixed hair and cloaks being rendered in the wrong locations on sneaking players
* Fixed the attack/swing animation not being applied to the armor layer
* Fixed player rotation not being loaded correctly when loading a saved game
* Fixed arrow physics, making them not get stuck midair when you open a door
* Fixed arrows hitting reeds, portals, and other non-solid blocks
* Fixed keybindings not getting saved properly under certain conditions
* Fixed the player not being able to sneak off lowered blocks like cacti
* Fixed a bug where the player could mine without swinging their arm
* Fixed boats placed on snow being placed too far up
* Fixed submerged boats rising very very fast
* Fixed sand dropping onto boats getting stuck in a falling animation
* Fixed a game crash when riding a vehicle or animal into the nether
* Fixed falling while riding not dealing damage to the rider
* Fixed buttons and levers too close to the player being impossible to use
* Fixed dispensers shooting through walls
* Fixed fire hurting through wall corners
* Fixed entities reaching water through wall corners
* Fixed placing doors next to cacti creating half-doors
* Fixed buttons and levers being placeable on leaves in “fast graphics” mode
* Fixed furnaces and dispensers not dropping their contents when destroyed
* Fixed dispensers biasing later slots
* Fixed farmland taking too long to dig
* Fixed tilling below some blocks being possible
* Fixed tilling the underside of blocks somehow working
* Fixed fences and stairs sometimes becoming invisible
* Fixed walking on top of fences not producing step sounds
* Fixed fire sometimes existing mid-air as an invisible block of pain
* Fixed fences and wooden stairs not being flammable
* Fixed fire effect on burning entities sometimes getting rendered in the wrong location
* Fixed fishing rod rendering being a bit lacking
* Fixed fishing rods being stackable
* Fixed mining glass hiding the clouds behind the glass
* Fixed rain falling through liquids
* Fixed items in glass blocks not getting ejected properly
* Fixed water interacting strangely with glass
* Fixed glass not blocking rain sound
* Fixed fences and signs preventing grass from growing
* Fixed rain and snow being incorrectly lit
* Fixed grass staying alive below stair blocks
* Fixed the achievement screen not pausing the game
* Fixed some screens breaking the sky tint color
* Fixed fullscreen mode switching causing mouse issues and screen closes
* Fixed chat messages surviving through game switches
* Fixed ice so it regenerates regardless of whether it’s snowing or not
* Fixed rain falling too slowly
* Fixed levers being placeable on weird locations
* Fixed floor levers sometimes not delivering a signal downwards
* Fixed floor levers sometimes not being removed when the floor is removed
* Fixed rail tiles sometimes not properly connecting to a new neighbor
* Fixed minecarts next to each other causing extreme velocities (sorry!)
* Fixed wolves not following their owner if the name has different caps
* Fixed creepers retaining charge level when they can’t see their target
* Fixed dying in the nether spawning new portals
* “Fixed” beds in the nether
* Fixed inventory acting weird when portaling by making the portal close all screens
* Fixed wooden pressure plates being mined with pickaxes
* Fixed redstone repeaters having the wrong particles
* Fixed saplings being plantable through snow onto non-grass blocks
* Fixed ore density varying per quadrant from the center of the world
* Fixed dispenser graphics being one pixel off. ONE PIXEL!!!
* Fixed mushrooms spawning everywhere during nights
* Fixed animals only spawning near light during the night
* Fixed the multiplayer join screen input field being too short
* Fixed IPv6 addresses being parsed wrongly. To connect to a specific port in IPv6, use the format [1234:567::1]:25565
* Fixed network packets being sent unbuffered, causing huge amounts of packets being sent
* Fixed entity positions going out of synch sometimes. They get re-synched every 20 seconds now.
* Fixed inventory icons not animating after being picked up in multiplayer
* Fixed mushroom soup not leaving a bowl in multiplayer
* Fixed entities above the map height limit becoming invisible
* Fixed healing not flashing the health bar in multiplayer
* Fixed arrows being animated really strangely in multiplayer
* Fixed arrows triggering too many entity move updates in multiplayer
* Fixed the compass not pointing at the spawn location in multiplayer
* Fixed fires being impossible to put out in multiplayer
* Fixed record players spawning client-side fake records in multiplayer
* Fixed records not playing for other players in multiplayer
* Fixed players spawning in the wrong location and quickly lerping to the correct location
* Fixed monsters not being visible for players with their difficulty set to peaceful
* Fixed pigs getting hit by lightning in multiplayer spawning client-side zombie pigmen
* Fixed loads of exploding tnt generating way too many particles, possibly crashing the client
* Fixed bonemeal use in multiplayer sometimes spawning fake client-side trees
* Fixed saplings sometimes spawning trees client-side in multiplayer
* Fixed weather sometimes changing client-side in multiplayer
* Fixed grasscolor.png and foliagecolor.png not being read from texture packs
* Fixed stats getting saved to different files in offline mode if the caps in the player name differ from the true spelling
* Fixed fireballs not being visible in multiplayer
* Fixed ghasts’ fireing animation not being visible in multiplayer
* Fixed receiving more items than the maximum stack size sometimes causing an oversized stack in the inventory

Finally got around to updating MCMA and Bukkit last night.  Got my SMP server back up and running.  Didn’t actually get it set up as a service though…  I’ll just have to start and stop it manually for now.

I’ve been playing around in a little SSP world since 1.5 came out, and this was my first time looking around our old SMP world with 1.5 installed.

I’m using a slightly different texture pack now, so biome grass works properly.  And it looks very cool.

I’ve got a couple ladders I’m going to have to fix…  One of them goes all the way down to bedrock, which will be annoying.

I took a look at my minecart track…  I’ve got a fairly long track that goes down to my mob grinder.  It’s been kind of problematic from the start.  I tried to use a powered minecart to push a train up to the surface…  And then just relied on gravity to get back down.  I’m thinking I can probably throw in some of the new powered tracks and make it all work much better.  Maybe.  I didn’t exactly design this minecart track with future expansion and modification in mind.  We’ll have to see what I’m actually able to do with it…

Played around with the advanced OpenGL setting…  Turned it on and off…  Didn’t really see much of a performance difference either way.  I’m going to assume this is largely because my computer is doing more than just running the client (I’m also hosting the server) and that video is not the bottleneck.

Got a nice storm while I was wandering around my house.  No thunder, but it rained for a long time.  I was initially concerned that my netherrack bonfires would be put out by the rain, but that didn’t happen.  I guess that’s a good thing…  But I’m a little confused.  I thought rain was supposed to put out fires.  Maybe netherrack is treated differently?

I trekked off to a nearby snowy biome and watched it snow for a while.  That was pretty.  Grabbed some snowballs while I was there, but the snow didn’t fill back in.  This also left me a little confused – I thought snowfall was supposed to cover blocks up with snow.

On my way back to my house I encountered a wolf, and threw a snowball at it.  In retrospect, that was a bad idea.  I didn’t think much would happen since snowballs don’t actually do damage…  But the wolf took it as an attack and turned hostile.  Killed me.  And I wasn’t really paying much attention to my surroundings, so I lost all the equipment I was carrying at the time.  Nothing irreplaceable, but it was annoying.

I also looked around to see what I might be able to do with pistons, when they’re eventually available…  Unfortunately, there’s no way I’ll be able to do a piston-powered bridge to my house.  It’s just way too high up there.  If I want to use pistons for a bridge I’ll have to do it elsewhere.  Oh well.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about more-or-less abandoning my old house anyway…  I’m not terribly happy with it these days.  I’m not sure if I just want to grab some TNT and level it, then rebuild in the same place…  Or leave it there, and find a new place to build.

The Word of Notch | The cost of the mod api

Because of overwhelming feedback, the cost of the mod api access will be 0 dollars.

Our intention wasn’t to make money off selling the access, only to ensure some level of quality. Obviously that wasn’t the most popular idea in the world.

Can I go back to working on the maps now?

I knew there’d be outrage.

So…  The developer API registration/SVN access/whatever is now going to be free.  That’ll make it easier for mod developers, obviously.  But that also dramatically reduces the disincentive for malicious mods.

Sure, the agreement still says that a mod can’t be malicious…  But it doesn’t actually cost you anything to apply for developer access.  So you can apply, make a malicious mod, get your mod shot down and your access pulled, and then just go and apply again with a different name or email address.

Oh well…

As Minecraft has certainly proved, you can’t please everyone.