Vanilla Minecraft News Discussion

[FlowerChild]

I think some may not realize it is two different issues and just assume that the slow speed of lava is why it stays forever. I think of the forever persistent the bug went away and the slow lava retreat stayed, people wouldn't think anything was wrong with it I'd feel natural.

If that's not what Mojang does, I'll likely set it up to work that way myself.

And yes, I agree with you.

[finite8]

This "Zombie spawning Zombies" thing is nothing but bad. I still remember the frustrating days of beds where if there was a dark spot too close by, a mob would spawn and attack you and this feels the same. It is inconsistent and is designed to dis-empower the player in an illogical fashion. Basically, no matter how secure your house is or how aware or good you are as a player, if you kill a zombie outside your house you can walk back into your house and find a zombie there, even though you had the door closed. Hell, your friend could be killing a zombie outside and all of a sudden a Zombie is going to burst out your closet.

This attempt to simulate some "Zombies around every corner" or "The Walking Dead" kind of thing is in my opinion their worst idea yet and is only going to annoy players rather than make it more challenging.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I don't disagree. So far, all their attempts at increasing difficulty, with the possible exception of zombies group attacking, have been rather artificial and act counter to immersion.

Unless they pull some kind of genius refinement on the zombie spawning thing, you can be fairly certain it'll be getting the axe in BTW.

[DaveYanakov]

I don't understand why they don't simply increase the number of zombies per spawn instead of spawning them in after the fact. If you want the player to fight a horde of ten zombies, just spawn in 10 zombies instead of 2-3. Is it really impossible to tie mobs per spawn to difficulty?

[FlowerChild]

I don't understand why they don't simply increase the number of zombies per spawn instead of spawning them in after the fact. If you want the player to fight a horde of ten zombies, just spawn in 10 zombies instead of 2-3. Is it really impossible to tie mobs per spawn to difficulty?

I don't think they want to increase the number of mobs in the world at once. The above would just change the ratio of zombies to other mobs as a result. By doing it only when they player is fighting, you just get localized spikes in the number of zombies, rather than really impacting the total number in the world.

I don't agree with it, but I believe the above is why they're doing it that way.

[DaveYanakov]

That kind of makes sense but shouldn't the shock infantry be of a higher ratio than the archers, calvary and sappers in the army arrayed against you? Mojang makes less sense to me every day.

[Eramus_the_5th]

That kind of makes sense but shouldn't the shock infantry be of a higher ratio than the archers, cavalry and sappers in the army arrayed against you? Mojang makes less sense to me every day.

Pretty sure Mojang doesn't know much about warfare. They are pretty good at Quake, though.

They are at least ignoring the 12 year old playing on peaceful, to a certain extent. If only they would slow down with the updates and actually plan something out.

[finite8]

That kind of makes sense but shouldn't the shock infantry be of a higher ratio than the archers, calvary and sappers in the army arrayed against you? Mojang makes less sense to me every day.

I was going to make the same point. More zombies / other mobs makes sense.

I would also prefer to see Zombies ATTRACT zombies and have them generally move as a group. I have this vision of a "Walking Dead" scenario where i make too much noise, look up and see i accidentally attracted a massive herd of zombies that was passing though. Sadly though, i don't think Minecraft can have enough chunks loaded to make that ever work. Damn these memory constraints.

[Vexalor]

It might be mojang's trying to shove the new features into the player's face. I don't like the idea of naturally generated overworld loot in nether dungeons. It feels too out of place. It's a big WTF to find a chest made of earthy materials in such a hellish dimension.

I think it quite likely is. Possibly they are just keeping the spawn rate high in the snapshot for testing reasons or to force players to come into contact with the new items to see if anyone finds any bugs. Anyhow, you're probably right about the loot chest thing. I almost do feel that netherholds need an up in value, but not like this. Maybe another potion ingredient? That seems to be their general purpose anyways.

If that's not what Mojang does, I'll likely set it up to work that way myself.

And yes, I agree with you.

Good to know that we can have bugfixes without the necessity of nerfing interesting mechanics.

That kind of makes sense but shouldn't the shock infantry be of a higher ratio than the archers, calvary and sappers in the army arrayed against you? Mojang makes less sense to me every day.

I'm not going to disagree, but I personally feel that all different types hostile mobs that spawn commonly should be getting at least equal attention from the developer. In terms of people playing on peaceful, I think Mojang, like FC, are beginning to focus their time on more specific modes of play. This is not necessarily a bad thing. FC has said in the past that he wouldn't have even made these modes of play, such as creative, in the first place.

[savagelung]

I don't think any feature that makes the game indiscriminately harder is necessarily a good feature. The slow disappearance of lava was apparently the result of an old block update bug -- it was never intentional, but nobody got around to fixing it until recently. It just doesn't make sense for lava to sit around indefinitely without a source block around.

I don't think that's true. There's two things with lava: a bug that showed up a few months ago where the neighboring blocks don't always update each other properly, and flows exist indefinitely without their source, and there's the slow speed of it, which has always been the case, and to my knowledge, is intentional.

Fixing the bug in no way requires fixing the other bit.

I mostly based what I said on the bug reportthat EvilSeph "fixed". Apparently, lava was designed to skip 75% of decay-checks, but the function failed to schedule another block update, so lava decay became subject to random world ticks. I don't know if that's an accurate explanation, it's just what I read on the bug report.

I would also prefer to see Zombies ATTRACT zombies and have them generally move as a group. I have this vision of a "Walking Dead" scenario where i make too much noise, look up and see i accidentally attracted a massive herd of zombies that was passing though.

That's an interesting idea. Mojang recently added a mechanic to zombies where they "call out" when attacked, and other zombies become aggro'ed (where previously they wouldn't). Having them hoard together exclusively might break the specialization of mob behaviors though.

[Vexalor]

I would also prefer to see Zombies ATTRACT zombies and have them generally move as a group. I have this vision of a "Walking Dead" scenario where i make too much noise, look up and see i accidentally attracted a massive herd of zombies that was passing though. Sadly though, i don't think Minecraft can have enough chunks loaded to make that ever work. Damn these memory constraints.

I'm not sure what changes would have to be made in the code to accommodate this. Being on a low-end computer, this would be cool, but it sounds like this could turn into a major performance sink if zombies are constantly having to send packets of information, no matter how small, to other zombies in the surrounding area and of course check a certain radius for others. What I wonder about the zombies spawning other zombies effect is: what factors other than distance and y-coordinate do the spawned zombies take into account before spawning? Do they avoid areas with high light levels or not? If they did, this would stop them from spawning in the middle of one's house when fighting at the door.

[Stormweaver]

Sooooo.....new snapshot: http://mojang.com/2013/05/minecraft-snapshot-13w19a/

I can honestly say I have absolutely nothing bad to say about this.

[Wafflewaffle]

I can honestly say I have absolutely nothing bad to say about this.

You are not trying hard enough =P

I cant say i really care about hardened clay but making it colored wouldnt lower the value of colored wool? In most texture packs Colored wool works for building in full color (banners, flags, carpets, crests images of any kind or ilustrative estructures), its probable that they will be replaced by clay now... but why?

There is nothing wrong per say with this snapshot but is just a bunch of "WTFs?" to be.

[Stormweaver]

You are not trying hard enough =P

I cant say i really care about hardened clay but making it colored wouldnt lower the value of colored wool? In most texture packs Colored wool works for building in full color (banners, flags, carpets, crests images of any kind or ilustrative estructures), its probable that they will be replaced by clay now... but why?

There is nothing wrong per say with this snapshot but is just a bunch of "WTFs?" to be.

You're trying too hard.

Coloured wool is cheap as hell - a small sheep pen gives you an infinite amount of each colour, on demand, for a small amount of the dye at the beginning. Stained clay is expensive as hell, between the awkward-to-gather clay as a base resource, and the amount of dye requires to actually stain each block. The only advantage it holds is a smoother colour, which is unsuitable for lot's of wools uses anyways.

....but works amazingly in all the places where you think 'wool looks weird here'.

See? Justified.

[logorouge]

Not to mention, you can't accidently set fire to your colored clay designs.

[Katalliaan]

It looks like the stained clay is a separate block ID from the hardened clay that you pull out of the furnace. Because clearly you can't just have the colored versions use the 15 remaining metadata values. [/sarcasm]

[The Phoenixian]

It looks like the stained clay is a separate block ID from the hardened clay that you pull out of the furnace. Because clearly you can't just have the colored versions use the 15 remaining metadata values. [/sarcasm]

There are 16 colors.

[FlowerChild]

Let's stay away from the implementation details guys, unless you really know what you're talking about, to avoid me having excessive face pain :)

[Taleric]

I am looking forward to see how the Donkey with inventory space will play out. I often make a ton of moves or setup projects that require many extra trips. Right now I build a path of markers to and from "stations" and it looks neat. I doubt having horse/donkey would change that just allowing faster transport/less trips. I would not trust mob transport enough for reliable nether and you can't afk so rail still has a place late/mid game.

Concern is not wanting to lose the awsome functional building that recent HC changes nessesitate. Makes the world feel "lived in", with structures telling a story.

[EtherealWrath]

The coloured clay is kinda awesome, There's been a few times I've wanted to liven my place up but wool always felt really out of place amongst all the stone.

[devak]

I am happy:

-that charcoal looks different now. Makes the coal/charcoal difference much more obvious.
-that coal blocks don't look so extremely ugly anymore.

[Eramus_the_5th]

The coloured clay is kinda awesome, There's been a few times I've wanted to liven my place up but wool always felt really out of place amongst all the stone.

The fact that each have their own texture also makes it a good tool for machinima/adventure map makers.

[ion]

someone please place a comparator near a donkey with a chest :)

[CreeperCannibal]

Seems like they're promoting coal blocks with the ability to now smelt 80 items.

someone please place a comparator near a donkey with a chest :)

I'll have to try, even if the results are doubtable ;)

[Taleric]

Just did a play on vMC to test out horses. Did hardcore to spice it up. Lol vMC Steve is such a light eater! Was thinking if this is hard core what is BTW classified difficulty wise? Insane?

Any ways wow they are fast. Had large map done in 5 min from departure. Only downside was sneaky ravines (good thing vMC horses can climb ladders I guess). They are a nice utility for sure but OP.

I would love to see those skele and zombie horses implemented to fight :)