Vanilla Minecraft News Discussion

[ExpHP]

Well, I am confounded by the crafting recipes for the new stone types (yes, you can craft them).

Mostly because of this:
1 Nether Quartz + 1 Diorite = 1 Granite
2 Nether Quartz + 2 Cobble = 2 Diorite

Note that the diorite recipe requires twice as much input to produce... er, twice as much output. So in terms of resources, these recipes are not fundamentally different from each other. And yet they must have been implemented at the same time, so... why is one just a multiple of the other? Why aren't they the same?! I... I don't get it! ;_;


Edit: Not only that, the Diorite one is shaped!

[erikdk321]

I think using netherquartz to create rock types is pretty dumb. I feel like they made that recipe just to give quartz a use other than comparators (which is how alot of resources have wound up at this point.).

[CreeperCannibal]

netherquartz and lapis gaining usage in enchanting and more crafting looks like incentivised mining to me. I'm a little dissapointed that the granite and dolorite were treated as ores instead of layers of rock. They feel like the next gravel deposit now.

[ion]

all the new stones can be found in the game, you don't really need to craft them into another. that recipe is just dumb or was put in place for established worlds where you generated a big chunk of land before. while there was no balance in mind of the minecraft devs ever some new features do have a nice approach i like the new villagers but trading is still crap at best.

[ExpHP]

netherquartz and lapis gaining usage in enchanting and more crafting looks like incentivised mining to me. I'm a little dissapointed that the granite and dolorite were treated as ores instead of layers of rock. They feel like the next gravel deposit now.

Honestly, I'd prefer it the way it is over the possibility that there could be no regular stone nearby; as then they would need to implement alternate stone tools, and I can only see it going downhill from there. ("why can't we make different wood tools?")

I do wish though that they had at least made restrictions to where they can be available. The very first cave I entered, I had already found all three within 10 seconds. And they're not particularly spectacular to look at (the three new types of stone resemble the three things caves were already made of: Stone, Dirt, and Gravel), so the novelty wore off quick.

[Six]

netherquartz and lapis gaining usage in enchanting and more crafting looks like incentivised mining to me. I'm a little dissapointed that the granite and dolorite were treated as ores instead of layers of rock. They feel like the next gravel deposit now.

Honestly, I'd prefer it the way it is over the possibility that there could be no regular stone nearby; as then they would need to implement alternate stone tools, and I can only see it going downhill from there. ("why can't we make different wood tools?")

I do wish though that they had at least made restrictions to where they can be available. The very first cave I entered, I had already found all three within 10 seconds. And they're not particularly spectacular to look at (the three new types of stone resemble the three things caves were already made of: Stone, Dirt, and Gravel), so the novelty wore off quick.

Yeah, making the chunks of different rock differ based on biome could have actually made the underground a little more varied once below sea level. And I guess new aesthetics are fine, although in generation it just feels like more dirt/gravel patches of a different colour.

But the thing which bothers me most is actually the names. I really dislike the use of real world specific material names, because they carry with them all the real world geological connections. FlowerChild has always been very good at this, using some real world connections, but sticking to more generic terms. Things borrow some chemical properties of their real world counterparts, but aren't tied directly to them and are left much more open to interpretation. For example whitestone is pretty much marble, with endstone being similar to limestone or dolomite with sulfur impurities (the kiln acting as a substitute for the metamorphic transformation), but that is just my interpretation and generic names let it act more as a caricature of the real material. Heck, if I had my way in vanilla, it would have been 'light wood', 'dark wood', etc.

The villager change I do find interesting, expanding more defined villager roles and groups of trades, with new trades unlocking in chunks. As ion mentioned trading does still feel crap, but this might be a bit of an improvement.

Enchanting changes are mixed for me. I rather like the need for lapis, finally giving it a use other than a dye, though that is very random and out of left field in terms of vanilla 'consistency'. Costs seem to have been drastically lowered and repairing is super cheap. They also have tried to combat the random enchant hate by making the first enchant you will get visible before you click it. I actually think with the cost lowering, it may now be possible in vanilla to get nicely enchanted diamond gear by the end of the first day. GG.

I think my favorite change though in this snapshot is actually the addition of the 'Locked' tag for containers. A container with {Lock:"Hello"} can only be opened by an item with {display:{Name:"Hello"}}, which will be very handy for map makers (though I hope they can extend it to also work with any blocks you can activate (doors, levers, etc)). This, along with the adventure mode change to be able to define exactly what block types an item can break, will give a lot more freedom in terms of making adventure maps where players don't need to play pretend and stick to a self imposed ruleset.

[erikdk321]

I dislike all the updates they do for adventure maps.
Custom spawners were fine, but i honestly dont think mapmakers needed much else.
Just look at maps back in the days. Maps aren't much better now than they were a year ago, or maybe even 2 years ago. I honestly think all the cool mcedit shit you can do nowadays is making maps worse in some ways.

[Sarudak]

I dislike all the updates they do for adventure maps.
Custom spawners were fine, but i honestly dont think mapmakers needed much else.
Just look at maps back in the days. Maps aren't much better now than they were a year ago, or maybe even 2 years ago. I honestly think all the cool mcedit shit you can do nowadays is making maps worse in some ways.

Get off my lawn?

[FlowerChild]

Get off my lawn?

Hehe...damn kids :)

I can hear what he's saying though. I in no way follow the custom map scene, but I do think a bit more creativity was required in the past due to the restrictions in place.

Constraints inspiring creativity and all that. If you make things easier, you will of course attract more people, but the end result is that the kind of people you may attract won't produce the same kind of content you might hope for. Specific challenges will attract a particular kind of people to them.

In a way it's kind of a parallel for the gamplay in BTW, if you view the act of creating a map as a game in itself.

[Sarudak]

Constraints inspiring creativity and all that. If you make things easier, you will of course attract more people, but the end result is that the kind of people you may attract won't produce the same kind of content you might hope for. Specific challenges will attract a particular kind of people to them.

In a way it's kind of a parallel for the gamplay in BTW, if you view the act of creating a map as a game in itself.

While that's true if you view the act of creating a map as a game I think that's entirely the wrong way to view it. It misses the fundamental distinction between games and tooling. Blocks for mapmakers is tooling so they can create what they want to.

Games have no fundamental restrictions, constraints, or challenges they must be created by the game designer. And the goal of the game designer is to craft those in such a way as to provide satisfaction because the end result of playing the game has no intrinsic value beyond the experience.

Tooling is created to overcome a fundamental restriction created by reality as it is (ie I can't manifest a picture from my brain but photoshop could help me out). Thus the goal of the tool is to minimize the restrictions constraints and challenges. The reason for this is that the end product has intrinsic value.

This is basically what you've said before some people want minecraft to be a toy (or a tool for their creative expression) while others (myself included) want it to be a game. Which is fine because in many ways minecraft is both. But I don't think it's reasonable to apply a game designer mindset to tooling or you might end up with Mojang trying to create a 'challenging' game designing experience so that mod makers have to use their 'creativity' more. Oh wait. :P

[FlowerChild]

Ah, I agree, and it's not an easy problem, or one I can even offer a solution to.

However, there's a fundamental distinction to making game content professionally, in which case you want as full featured a tool as you can get to increase productivity, or making game content as recreation, where I think it basically becomes a game in itself.

I'm not saying I think that Mojang should intentionally decrease the power of map making tools or what have you, however, I do think I can see why improving them in the ways they have may not result in more interesting map content.

I think part of the reason people make these things is to pull something off nobody has before. This attracts a certain kind of people. Once things get too easy, I think you may reach a point of diminishing returns, where the people that were attracted to the constraints, even if they may not have realized it, move on to the "new frontier" and start working on content for something else entirely that really challenges them. Personally, I think those are also the type of people that will provide truly innovative and interesting content.

Again: I'm not presenting a solution here, or even saying Mojang even did anything wrong there. What I am saying is I can see the mechanism behind why this is happening.

[barcode]

I'm not saying I think that Mojang should intentionally decrease the power of map making tools or what have you, however, I do think I can see why improving them in the ways they have may not result in more interesting map content.

I think part of the reason people make these things is to pull something off nobody has before. This attracts a certain kind of people. Once things get too easy, I think you may reach a point of diminishing returns, where the people that were attracted to the constraints, even if they may not have realized it, move on to the "new frontier" and start working on content for something else entirely that really challenges them. Personally, I think those are also the type of people that will provide truly innovative and interesting content.

I agree with you on this one, I think we have to look at what kind of tools they have given us. From the top of my head (correct me if I'm wrong), all I can think of in terms of the tools the mapmaking community has gotten now from Mojang, is stuff that was entirely possible - but (much) harder to achieve - before. With the exception of command blocks maybe, but I think that was more luck when they discovered the extra possibilities themselves after a while, hence why functionality is still being added to it.

And I further agree that if you have to be creative to discover ways of achieving something you want chances are the outcome of what you are doing is going to be more creative than that of other people. However, even some not-so-creative maps can lead to some very good gameplay in the end... but ultimately, if you look at the maps, I don't think they have drastically improved with the new tools, and that's what we have to measure this by.

[Sockthing]

You can also now make baby animals grow up quicker..

[erikdk321]

For villagers to breed you now need to trade with them... I actually think this is a rather good update, as it breaks auto slave farms. I think feeding them diamonds (like in btw) is a better solution though. I guess you (fc) did that because the trades were valueable, and only using paper to get fortune enchants would be a bit odd... (correct me if im wrong!)

You can also now make baby animals grow up quicker..

This is pretty funny xD
Youtuber: Waiting for these things to grow is sooo tedious! Dinnerbunny plz
Dinnerbone: Fixed!

[MoRmEnGiL]

Holding or spamming right click is way more tedious :P

[EtherealWrath]

Hmm- this better breeding has a fair bit of potential, overall it could be a fairly nice addition to gameplay.
but it just looks like spam clicking for instant growth.

-I once had a rough mod design which used a similar mechanic, though for the opposite effect
(a baby HAD to eat before it got a chance to grow).

[MoRmEnGiL]

So. In the new schnappshot, zombie pigderps do not drop gold ingots, unless killed by the player.

*Facepalm*

One more mob type that you must punch glitchy masses of.

[Zhil]

One more mob type that you must punch glitchy masses of.

I guess we can't complain about that anymore, since it's consistent :(

They just don't want any mobtraps to happen. I used to play devil's advocate that Notch wasn't actually against mob-traps, but clearly Jeb is (he's far more clear about it) and I guess that's something Notch instructed him in. It's all very sad really :/

[FlowerChild]

They just don't want any mobtraps to happen. I used to play devil's advocate that Notch wasn't actually against mob-traps, but clearly Jeb is (he's far more clear about it) and I guess that's something Notch instructed him in. It's all very sad really :/

It's both sad in that they don't see the value of the gameplay there and even worse IMO, the methods they are using don't work. They aren't reducing the effectiveness of mob-traps, just making them lamer to use/construct by eliminating the effectiveness and desirability of the auto-kill mechanism, which in turn, also reduces the usefulness of their version of the hopper. Other than the many exploits in the vanilla design, wtf is the point of hoppers in legitimate play if they don't expect them to be used with mob traps?

Have I mentioned recently they aren't designers? :)

[gaga654]

Was anyone even making pigman farms anyway? As far as I know there isn't really a good way to build one in vMC and anyway, gold is useless enough that there is no reason to want one.

[Gunnerman21]

With all the so called "Adventuring" you're supposed to do in vMC these days, you might as well play Cookie Clicker instead.. :P

[MoRmEnGiL]

There are some legitimate ways to make a vanilla mob farm, and some legitimate uses for a lot of gold. (switching to gold carrots as a food source for e.g.)

There is also one way to make a ridiculously efficient pigman farm. It involves enderpearls and the roof of the nether (as in above bedrock.)

If the latter one is their problem, fix that! But no, they just do not like mob traps in general. They are stubbornly stuck with the stupid notion of adventuring and manually fighting mobs for loot. As Fc stated, the sad part is that their measures do not work in that direction. All the effect they have is making players amass mobs and punching them/potioning them.

They did the same thing with iron golems too, but not many people make iron golem farms, considering the weirdness of the village mechanics.

[RandomObj3ct]

New Snapshot time

Spoiler

Show

Desert temples now use clay instead of wool - via

New gamerule: logAdminCommands - via

Player heads are no longer only one layer - via

Screenshot

Debug tooltips now also show named item ids

Screenshot

Player selectors (@p, @e, etc) now support cubic areas

Example: @e[x=0,y=0,z=0,dx=10,dy=10,dz=10]

/clone to copy large areas to other areas

Up to 4096 blocks can be copied
Example: /clone 1001 3 1002 1011 3 992 1001 5 992 masked
mode can be masked or replace - replace will copy every block, masked will only copy non-air blocks

/fill to fill a large area with a block

Up to 4096 blocks can be filled
Example: /fill 1001 3 1002 1011 5 992 wool 6 replace
oldBlockHandling works like with, but with additional options: hollow to only fill the outer layer of blocks and fill the inner part with air, outline to fill the outer layer of blocks and ignore the inner part

A long requested feature

Skin improvements! - New skin layout
The hat layer is now full-body, can be transparent
Legs and arms can now be different between left and right
Backward-compatible
Screenshot
Skin customization options - Screenshots

A hidden feature

Screenshot

The radius value in selectors is now based on the block center

A radius of 0 works for exact block positions

NBT data in commands can now use block/item names in place of numerical ids

Old ids still work, but are being phased out slowly
Other occurences of blocks/items now need to be named ids

/tp can now be used to change players' rotation

Relative changes also supported
Example: /tp @a ~ ~ ~ ~180 ~

Villagers will now become witches when struck by lightning

Village roads will now generate with cobblestone underneath

Fixed some bugs

Fixed chicken jockeys causing lag and clogging up the mob cap - The chickens no longer lay eggs and despawn with their riders
Fixed /setworldspawn not update the compass
Fixedleaves not changing colour depending on biome
Fixed /clear not affecting armor slots and throwing an NPE
Fixed /spawnpoint not working with @a/@p/@r
Fixed endermen teleporting more slowly and rarely
Fixed command block @ selectors being off center
Fixed r=65536 in command blocks behaving weirdly
Fixed an NPE when rendering block entity
Fixed two NPEs with "Unexpected error"
Fixed an NPE when rendering screen

From Reddit as it's usually more complete than the one on mojangs site, i left it unedited so if you want to see screens and links check the comment.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comme ... ed/cer1nzh

Nothing much here, more command block stuff mostly.
Although i like the changes to skin, lots of cool new ways to customise your character, lots of new ways to make offensive and/or horrendous looking skins(it will happen reguardless).

Logging admin commands could be usefull to the handfull of people not running bukkit. Probably won't be used much because of that but nether the less handy.

[Sandrew]

There is also one way to make a ridiculously efficient pigman farm. It involves enderpearls and the roof of the nether (as in above bedrock.)

Enderpearls? Pfft, nowadays you can simply dig a hole through it using the new 2*2 tree's buggy growth pattern.

[erikdk321]

They "nerfed" gold and iron farms in the new snapshop as well...

Spoiler

Show

(this video only shows the goldfarm nerfs, but the same thing happened to ironfarms)
Not the best way to fix such farms imo, as you can still make them and get lots of resources. It just isn't automated anymore. I also really think "nerfing" gold farms was a bad decision in general, but hey, its Mojang, so i really shouldnt be surprised.