Vanilla Minecraft News Discussion

[Noshery]

Dinnerbone said this a little while ago.

"Lily pads are a renewable resource in 1.7. Not through bonemeal or any farmable means though."

first oceans get nerfed, and now there's almost no reason to go to swamps anymore.
I'm sad now.

[Chomamonka]

I just realized that if FC decides to not update anymore (which looks pretty likely) this thread probably belongs in off topic.... that's kinda weird.

[Six]

Dinnerbone said this a little while ago.

"Lily pads are a renewable resource in 1.7. Not through bonemeal or any farmable means though."

first oceans get nerfed, and now there's almost no reason to go to swamps anymore.
I'm sad now.

Read a bit deeper into this, apparently he's doing the 'random rare fishing results', including old shoes and lillypads.

[Stormweaver]

Kinda sad when you consider that vMC fishing consists of suspending an infinite spring on four signs, standing under it and putting your coffee mug on the mouse button.

...or some variation therof. I know it's something similarly immersion-breaking anyways.

[barcode]

I have just watched the first two minutes of this, and quite frankly, I really like what I see there in terms of terrain generation. Not sure my server could handle this, but o well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZmKYtRM6iU

Watching the rest right now. But I have to say, from what I've seen, I am positively impressed, for the first time since 1.0, really. Watching the rest of the video right now...

Edit: tested it out, generated a world - nice, really nice. However, went on, punched some wood, made a wood axe and pick, went to town. Holy shit, I forgot how ridiculously easy vanilla is......

[Gears]

I have just watched the first two minutes of this, and quite frankly, I really like what I see there in terms of terrain generation. Not sure my server could handle this, but o well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZmKYtRM6iU

Watching the rest right now. But I have to say, from what I've seen, I am positively impressed, for the first time since 1.0, really. Watching the rest of the video right now...

Edit: tested it out, generated a world - nice, really nice. However, went on, punched some wood, made a wood axe and pick, went to town. Holy shit, I forgot how ridiculously easy vanilla is......

The snapshot is interesting, I'll give them that. Seeing as how I've pretty much divorced vanilla minecraft, this is at least letting me leave on better terms.

[FlowerChild]

Edit: tested it out, generated a world - nice, really nice.

Are you just talking about the amplified terrain generation? Because I tried the regular and was far from impressed.

The amplified bit is just an option that has very little to do with the new terrain gen, and would probably be exceedingly simple to implement.

[MrLemon]

Can now find other items other than fish by fishing, including enchanted fishing rods, damaged fishing rods, enchanted Bow, Enchanted Books, name tags, Lilypads, Water Bottles, saddles, Rotten flesh, String, Leather, Bowl, Stick, boots or damaged boots.

Infinite string, leather, name tags, saddles, enchanted books, and enchanted bows all from a little pool of water and 2 prices of string.

Either I'm missing something major, this list is totally wrong, or this is one of the worst changes since mobs dropping iron tools and bows.

[FlowerChild]

It's just typical amateur design man. You see it a lot with mods where they implement a new feature, and make it the most powerful thing on the planet in a "ISN'T IT COOL!?! LOOK HOW MUCH STUFF YOU GET!!!" fashion. I think if you're lacking in confidence, there's a tendency to want to give players a ton of bonuses to ensure they'll like a new feature. He did something similar with the witches when they were added, giving them half the resources in the game as drops (which I then promptly ripped out).

Contrast that to when I revamped fishing and threw in an old leather boot as a VERY occasional easter egg drop, just as a gag. I think it was weeks before someone even noticed it was in there.

[Calo290]

Wait, enchanted fishing rod? What?

[Taleric]

I hold false hope that the secret option setting will be some challenging mode that will make vMC fun again :(

Have to be thankful BTW saved what it could have been and move on.

[barcode]

Edit: tested it out, generated a world - nice, really nice.

Are you just talking about the amplified terrain generation? Because I tried the regular and was far from impressed.

The amplified bit is just an option that has very little to do with the new terrain gen, and would probably be exceedingly simple to implement.

Actually had a look at both, while the amplified one was kind of cool, it did have quite a performance hit. I like how there's a lot of mountains that you can't just jump up but have to actually dig into it or ladder up. I think it might get old quick if the entire world is like that. Unfortunately, I spawned on an amplified island in the middle of a rather large body of water so I didn't get to explore much - the world generating so slowly didn't help either.

However, the normal world gen was quite impressive in my opinion, as it mixed several elements of terrain and biome generation that didn't happen previously. I like the mix of things, and the new biomes like roofed forest actually were kind of neat. Not sure what the giant mushrooms are doing mixed in randomly, but the rest of the vegetation like the new flowers made it more interesting, although purely from an aesthetical point of view. The general variation of terrain seemed to me like a vast improvement over the previous world gen. I for one would like to see that in BTW, even the amplified one could be quite cool, making more use of elevators etc. However, completely and entirely up to you. Just my 2 cents... ;) From what I read it seems like 1.7 is a major refactoring of code, so not sure if worth the effort.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I had the opposite reaction. The giant mushrooms in the forest were just right out there, and I find the new flowers to be rather garish and out of place. Just didn't see anything that impressed me, and quite a few things that felt distinctly off.

Not my cup of tea, and certainly not the miracle that would have been required for it to justify people's worlds getting trashed in my books.

[CreeperCannibal]

Just saw swimmingbird's two new videos covering the new features... did I just see all reason of exploration of biomes and other features tossed out the window? The new cold and dry system allows access to snow in all biomes as long as they are high enough in the world ( realism blah blah blah), fishing up lilly pads makes swamps obsolete as their primary resource (Actually, fishing rod changes make a lot of things obsolete, including dungeons), giant shrooms in the roofed forest, melons now spawn in a jungle biome variant allowing the player to skip mineshaft exploits, oceans are now covered in gravel instead of sand, making them even less desirable given that gravel is regarded as useless and ugly to the VMC community. Then there's the complete loss of crafting dyes due to the new flowers. If I want any of these new biomes from this update I'll build them in my world for funsies. Not sure if I like the item frame tweak either. From my point of view they're meant to be used as a display device of your grand achievements, not for temporary single item storage. One would think that the annoyance of both the frame and item dropping would have made this clear.

[TheGatesofLogic]

Just saw swimmingbird's two new videos covering the new features... did I just see all reason of exploration of biomes and other features tossed out the window? The new cold and dry system allows access to snow in all biomes as long as they are high enough in the world ( realism blah blah blah), fishing up lilly pads makes swamps obsolete as their primary resource (Actually, fishing rod changes make a lot of things obsolete, including dungeons), giant shrooms in the roofed forest, melons now spawn in a jungle biome variant allowing the player to skip mineshaft exploits, oceans are now covered in gravel instead of sand, making them even less desirable given that gravel is regarded as useless and ugly to the VMC community. Then there's the complete loss of crafting dyes due to the new flowers. If I want any of these new biomes from this update I'll build them in my world for funsies. Not sure if I like the item frame tweak either. From my point of view they're meant to be used as a display device of your grand achievements, not for temporary single item storage. One would think that the annoyance of both the frame and item dropping would have made this clear.

Not to be a dick to Adubbz here, but several of the things you just mentioned were present in the BoP add-on. I quickly learned that the addon he made lacked any semblance of balance whatsoever.

But overall: yeah, nail in the coffin for me too

[TallTyrionLannister]

Just saw swimmingbird's two new videos covering the new features... did I just see all reason of exploration of biomes and other features tossed out the window? The new cold and dry system allows access to snow in all biomes as long as they are high enough in the world ( realism blah blah blah), fishing up lilly pads makes swamps obsolete as their primary resource (Actually, fishing rod changes make a lot of things obsolete, including dungeons), giant shrooms in the roofed forest, melons now spawn in a jungle biome variant allowing the player to skip mineshaft exploits, oceans are now covered in gravel instead of sand, making them even less desirable given that gravel is regarded as useless and ugly to the VMC community. Then there's the complete loss of crafting dyes due to the new flowers. If I want any of these new biomes from this update I'll build them in my world for funsies. Not sure if I like the item frame tweak either. From my point of view they're meant to be used as a display device of your grand achievements, not for temporary single item storage. One would think that the annoyance of both the frame and item dropping would have made this clear.

Trying to think about this objectively. I have to be honest I was pretty biased against anything added by vMC as I've thorougly partaken of the BTW kool-aid at this point, but I'm started to feel a little persuaded by the Mojang camp. I think the changes really help break up the sameness that was once vMC terrain generation. In BTW, you explore because you MUST in order to survive and advance, and while, sure, this update would remove certain components from that by opening other avenues, I'm not really seeing the criticisms being bandied about here. If you have to explore vertically for snow rather than horizontally, how does that necessarily lessen the experience? I think that having to scale potentially dangerous mountains for snow is a good alternative to searching the world for it (and prior to this update there was NO risk or search factor involved in finding snow). My gripe here is that if I have a base at a high altitude I'm not sure I'm keen on it being covered in snow... although maybe thematically that would feel appropriate. And who really wants to spend all that time fishing? From what I've seen the good drops are pretty rare. Honestly melons aren't that valuable and it was strange that they never naturally spawned in a biome. Wish the changes FC made to jungles there would be a nice risk vs. reward there anyway. The giant mushrooms don't bother me... I think those were planned in an earlier terrain build and I think the bit of color adds a nice touch. With forests being a home for wolves I think there is a good risk vs. reward here too. And I'm not sold that coming by flowers as a means for dye is any more or less difficult than the current options for each color. I'm sure it makes it easier overall but I'll take it for the increased variety in the world. I may be in the minority here but this is the first vMC update in a long time that actually makes me want to crack open vanilla.

[Stormweaver]

I have to admit, there are a few things I really like in this update. The fishing particles are a nice touch, podzol and packed ice look awesome, gravel beaches! are back, the tall ferns and long grass are nice, the item frame change is brilliant, and finally, sprint.

A part of me that remembers buying minecraft and enjoying it is really hoping that they take advantage of the snapshots to really polish what they've added and actually impress me. The rest of me is looking at all the different flowers and wondering where the hell they came from.

[Roflpofl]

The rest of me is looking at all the different flowers and wondering where the hell they came from.

Surprisingly, i found those new 2 blocks high flower bushes to be quite good looking. They don't really have any gameplay value, but whatever. Flower biomes on the other hand.....just waiting for Mojang to add white bunnies and unicorns -_-.

But appart from the flowers, the new world gen just seems so...right to me. I really like the general direction, despite some awkward details.

[dawnraider]

There are definitely some things that aren't great, like the items from fishing, but I genuinely like this snapshot. It is the first one in a long time that I haven't gone, "Wow, that's terrible." The terrain gen is not perfect, but it's definitely better than before. The one thing I hate is the mesa biome. It looks like complete shit, and has no purpose at all. The item frame change I like, as it was really annoying the way they worked before, and the two block tall flowers actually look really nice.

[barcode]

...glad I'm not the only one who likes the new world gen... yeah, granted, the mesa looks extremely weird right now, I think it is the completely parallel high-contrast stripes that just makes it weird. It's particularly strange in the amplified world. But nothing really strikes me as off-the-chart strange in the rest of the world from what I've seen until now. This is defenitely the first snapshot I've put my hands on where I didn't constantly facepalm.

[woeuntoyou]

I expected a lot more. It looks like they just added a bunch of new biomes, with a few changes to snow biomes and biome placement. I was glad when they said they weren't including the new terrain to the snapshot because that would mean they want to work on it more, but then decided they're pretty much done and just add it in. I know it's just the first snapshot, but judging by the past, they don't change newly added features that much. Anyways, despite all that, it's still better than the one that we had...

[Six]

Surprisingly, i found those new 2 blocks high flower bushes to be quite good looking. They don't really have any gameplay value, but whatever.

Amusing thing I saw on reddit the other day, tall flowers and grass actually break line of sight for mobs, so if ever in danger you can pop a bonemeal down, then bonemeal one of the grass that appears to get a safe spot to stand on and be invisible.

I do actually like the tall fern, grass and rosebush, but adding so many other flowers feels wired to me. It's kind of just adding things for things sake, and what it has actually achieved is to make the existing dye combination system largely irreverent. I personally feel a better path would have simply been adding one new blue flower, with a blue dye analogous to lapis.

As for terrain generation, I've always felt that most new terrain generation just ends up being a 'new distraction' that simply captivates the player for a short period till they get used to it again. It's more just the canvas on which the game is painted, and if the painting isn't very good it'll only be so long till you're bored of the new canvas.

[FlowerChild]

Amusing thing I saw on reddit the other day, tall flowers and grass actually break line of sight for mobs, so if ever in danger you can pop a bonemeal down, then bonemeal one of the grass that appears to get a safe spot to stand on and be invisible.

Not in BTW. I changed that quite awhile ago when I realized that mobs couldn't see the tasty animals in tall grass ;)

[barcode]

I expected a lot more. It looks like they just added a bunch of new biomes, with a few changes to snow biomes and biome placement. I was glad when they said they weren't including the new terrain to the snapshot because that would mean they want to work on it more, but then decided they're pretty much done and just add it in. I know it's just the first snapshot, but judging by the past, they don't change newly added features that much. Anyways, despite all that, it's still better than the one that we had...

I've seen that they changed it from 36a to 36b already when I reloaded my amplified world, different biomes, different terrain, so I wouldn't put my money on it being finalized yet. We'll see how much more work will go into it until release, though.

[woeuntoyou]

I expected a lot more. It looks like they just added a bunch of new biomes, with a few changes to snow biomes and biome placement. I was glad when they said they weren't including the new terrain to the snapshot because that would mean they want to work on it more, but then decided they're pretty much done and just add it in. I know it's just the first snapshot, but judging by the past, they don't change newly added features that much. Anyways, despite all that, it's still better than the one that we had...

I've seen that they changed it from 36a to 36b already when I reloaded my amplified world, different biomes, different terrain, so I wouldn't put my money on it being finalized yet. We'll see how much more work will go into it until release, though.

I'm still a little bit hopeful. I've been waiting for a terrain update since I started playing Minecraft back in 1.2.5. Hopefully, they'll at least add new trees for the new biomes and fix "beaches."