Patch 1.8 is "leaked"

[Stormweaver]

I was most looking forward to the new terrain generation, but it's so buggy at the moment, I don't think abandoned mineshafts should intersect with ravines or caves, and they are too random and huge, they should be a rarity, not everywhere! Ravines on their own are cool though, and villages seem okay, but again the order they are generated needs some work, villages shouldn't intersect ravines, or be underwater or embedded in hillsides (so doors and windows are buried or inaccessibly high).

The new biomes are awesome though and increased size is a welcome change.

Have to agree here. It seems that it generates in the order:
-caves
-strongholds
-ravines
-villages/mineshafts

When it should probably be

-mineshafts
-caves
-strongholds
-ravines
-villages

But that'd just be a case of changing the order they generate - a mod could probably do it.

[Miss_Kat]

I agree that mineshafts should be far more rare. When I was poking around in MCedit to try and find a stronghold, mineshafts were everywhere. It was absolutely ridiculous; they practically covered the entire underground.

[Tekei]

While I agree that mineshafts are rediculously easy to find, I do find them more fun than regular caves. That said they also give me way too much string and rails so I guess it's a good idea to make them a bit more uncommon.

[screally]

I eagerly await the "better than strongholds" update. Anyone who's seen these pillars of uselessness must surely agree with me. I don't understand their rarity either.

Mineshafts aren't completely rubbish, but I (personally) don't really like them that much. Perhaps when they're cleaned up a bit, but at the moment it just doesn't feel like minecraft anymore.

Yogscast are actually right, its a whole new game :(

[gftweek]

While I agree that mineshafts are rediculously easy to find, I do find them more fun than regular caves. That said they also give me way too much string and rails so I guess it's a good idea to make them a bit more uncommon.

Plus the large quantities of wood, and they overly simplify access to ores, and the chests in them can contain overly powerful supplies.

Has anyone seen a wild growing melon, or can you only grow them from seeds found in dungeon/mineshaft/stronghold chests?

Strongholds are supposed to be improved by 1.9, possibly something to do with an endgame quest I'm guessing (hence why there is only one of them), but with caves and ravines intersecting these and mineshafts they are so messy to navigate.

[Tekei]

Plus the large quantities of wood, and they overly simplify access to ores, and the chests in them can contain overly powerful supplies.

Has anyone seen a wild growing melon, or can you only grow them from seeds found in dungeon/mineshaft/stronghold chests?

Strongholds are supposed to be improved by 1.9, possibly something to do with an endgame quest I'm guessing (hence why there is only one of them), but with caves and ravines intersecting these and mineshafts they are so messy to navigate.

I'm not sure I care much for the wood as harvesting trees is far easier and far more effective and I'm not sure what you mean with the ores. My shafts so far has been full of coal and iron only, I guess it depends on the height. Still it's not easier than digging down to diamond level and just digging in all directions from there considering that mineshafts have plenty of monsterspawners at least.
And the rewards I've gotten so far have not been "overly powerful". Melon seeds, 7 pieces of lapis, some bread, some iron, about 10 units of redstone dust, a few units of sulphur and a a few buckets is all ive gotten from 2 shaft chests and one regular dungeon chest. Sure, I've heard that someone has found a diamond or two in those chests but even then it's easier to just dig for the stuff imo. Mineshafts are at least fun to explore imo.

Maybe I should stick to my 1.8 world for now and start a new one in 1.9 since I guess that altering strongholds means altering the world generation so that my current world wouldn't benefit from the new changes?

[darahalian]

-snip-
(BTW cauldron's original purpose is defunct now)
-snip-
The new biomes are awesome though and increased size is a welcome change.

The biggest aspect of the original purpose of the cauldron is defunct, but there is still the fact that you can still cook just about the same amount more food in a cauldron than you can in a furnace as before. ("just about", as you can't fill the cauldron entirely with full stacks of food, you have to leave one space open for the cooked food from the first stack to go; when that space is full, the first stack is now empty, and the process repeats)
There is also the fact that you can cook all your different types of meat at the same time, and you don't have to worry about fuel, and it is way easier to automate food production with the cauldron. So yeah, the cauldron is still quite useful for cooking food.

I have to agree with you about the biomes. Having larger deserts, forests, plains, and such looks a lot more natural and visually pleasing than the previous biome generation, and, as a result it is also way easier to tell when you are in a different biome. Add to that the awesome looking mountains, the rivers, and ocean as far as the eye can see, and you get some pretty amazing looking worlds! This is of course ignoring the occasional weird bugs caused by ravines cutting through things and leaving floating bits of land here and there. The ravines are kind of cool, but they could use some work imo.

[finite8]

I don't understand the "Was leaked by a beta tester"...

Aren't we ALL Beta testers. I mean... we bought it in its Beta phase... I've been playing it since alpha... Why do i have to wait for a Beta-Beta phase to be completed before i get to test it as, well, a Beta tester. The whole "1.8 being leaked" is bullshit IMHFO as we, as people who purchase a beta product should be able to mess around with the latest version.

It is seriously unusual.

[gftweek]

There is also the fact that you can cook all your different types of meat at the same time, and you don't have to worry about fuel, and it is way easier to automate food production with the cauldron. So yeah, the cauldron is still quite useful for cooking food.

Yeah, forgot about the automation/fuel aspect, and the cauldron has more uses than just cooking food, but it's so easy in vMC to get large quantities of cooked food now, assuming you don't wipe out your local populations of passive mobs.

Until animal breeding comes in though, leather armour is going to be so much harder to keep stocked.

I don't understand the "Was leaked by a beta tester"...

Aren't we ALL Beta testers. I mean... we bought it in its Beta phase... I've been playing it since alpha... Why do i have to wait for a Beta-Beta phase to be completed before i get to test it as, well, a Beta tester. The whole "1.8 being leaked" is bullshit IMHFO as we, as people who purchase a beta product should be able to mess around with the latest version.

It is seriously unusual.

Yeah, the alpha/beta labels are really just stage names rather than test phases of the final product, the way I see it:
Minecraft original/creative - proof of concept block placing game
Minecraft alpha - initial stages of survival gameplay additions
Minecraft beta - More coherent Multiplayer support implementation, and fleshing out into an actual "game" (as in having an endgame goal)
Minecraft full release - "Game" is complete, but really an arbitrary definition to get over the beta testing label confusion.

There is a fair bit of overlap though, I think instead of the labels though, a more coherent numbering system would have avoided some confusion. Creative 0.1, Alpha 0.5, Beta 0.8, Full 1.0 or something.

The whole 1.8 beta testers is really just selective UAT testers, they could do overnight builds, but the forums would just be full of complaints every day about last nights build and there wouldn't be the anticipation for new features.

[finite8]

There is also the fact that you can cook all your different types of meat at the same time, and you don't have to worry about fuel, and it is way easier to automate food production with the cauldron. So yeah, the cauldron is still quite useful for cooking food.

Yeah, forgot about the automation/fuel aspect, and the cauldron has more uses than just cooking food, but it's so easy in vMC to get large quantities of cooked food now, assuming you don't wipe out your local populations of passive mobs.

Until animal breeding comes in though, leather armour is going to be so much harder to keep stocked.

I don't understand the "Was leaked by a beta tester"...

Aren't we ALL Beta testers. I mean... we bought it in its Beta phase... I've been playing it since alpha... Why do i have to wait for a Beta-Beta phase to be completed before i get to test it as, well, a Beta tester. The whole "1.8 being leaked" is bullshit IMHFO as we, as people who purchase a beta product should be able to mess around with the latest version.

It is seriously unusual.

Yeah, the alpha/beta labels are really just stage names rather than test phases of the final product, the way I see it:
Minecraft original/creative - proof of concept block placing game
Minecraft alpha - initial stages of survival gameplay additions
Minecraft beta - More coherent Multiplayer support implementation, and fleshing out into an actual "game" (as in having an endgame goal)
Minecraft full release - "Game" is complete, but really an arbitrary definition to get over the beta testing label confusion.

There is a fair bit of overlap though, I think instead of the labels though, a more coherent numbering system would have avoided some confusion. Creative 0.1, Alpha 0.5, Beta 0.8, Full 1.0 or something.

The whole 1.8 beta testers is really just selective UAT testers, they could do overnight builds, but the forums would just be full of complaints every day about last nights build and there wouldn't be the anticipation for new features.

In that case, there really should be two versions available at any time: "Stable" and "In Development".

[BigShinyToys]

In that case, there really should be two versions available at any time: "Stable" and "In Development".

Stable 1.7.3
Development 1.8

[gftweek]

In that case, there really should be two versions available at any time: "Stable" and "In Development".

Stable 1.7.3
Development 1.8

Unfortunately everyone will always want the latest, very few will be happy staying on the stable build if they can get new features, and most people won't test properly, they'll just bitch about the same thing that's been reported 100 times. I think the world is slightly saner with Mojang only releasing when they think it's readyish. It's bad enough when a new release comes out and they have to work overtime to get fixes out in the post release patches.

[PuppetRebel]

So, who wants to take bets wether they actually release tomorrow or not?

[Mrchaim]

I have to say i'm in agreegment with the need to tweak the strongholds/mineshafts/villages. They're very cool in theory, but the current implementation is just... nuts. (To be specific, they suffer too many werid spawning issues that leave me wondering what the archetichts were smoking - things like iron doors stuck open, or the ilk, or rooms that dont work/passages that go nowhere).

This map in particular drives things home, i think:



Taking each of those grid squares to be 5000 blocks by 5000 blocks, i think it'd be far better if you had _one_ of each feature within em. This dramaticalyl increases the likelyhood you'll find a village or a stronghold, while dealing with the "mineshafts, mineshafts _everywhere" problem currently. Or at least, cut down the sheer amount of mineshafts, because they're just a leedle crazy.

I mean, i do like them, but i really fear they're going to be a bit of an abandoned feature, and not get the retouching they deserve - which would be a shame, because exploring is definitely a 110% more fun with them around.

[Urian]

Those grid squares are 500 by 500 blocks if the labels are correct, 1 block = 1 meter. Does starting a world without the option for generating structures (villages, stronghold) also disable mineshafts? I'm still undecided about them, they are a bit too numerous at the moment but at the same time they sort of fit if they're not generated in some weird way (hanging in the air, etc)

Edit: d'oh 500, not 400.

[Mrchaim]

Those grid squares are 400 by 400 blocks if the labels are correct, 1 block = 1 meter. Does starting a world without the option for generating structures (villages, stronghold) also disable mineshafts? I'm still undecided about them, they are a bit too numerous at the moment but at the same time they sort of fit if they're not generated in some weird way (hanging in the air, etc)

....

Okay, Brain of Mister Chaim. You need to explain why the hell you added an extra 0 into your reading of that. (Thanks for catching that, Urian.)

Yeah, one of each of those features per 400 by 400 square would be too much. One per 5/6/7 hundered could work nicely though.

And yes, i believe it does disable mineshafts.

[Stormweaver]

Those grid squares are 400 by 400 blocks if the labels are correct, 1 block = 1 meter. Does starting a world without the option for generating structures (villages, stronghold) also disable mineshafts? I'm still undecided about them, they are a bit too numerous at the moment but at the same time they sort of fit if they're not generated in some weird way (hanging in the air, etc)

500 by 500. Really? *facepalm*

But yeah, that map's kinda crazy. I didn't think mineshafts were supposed to be that common :| explains how they keep stacking on top of each other though.

[grimper12341]

Ravines on their own are cool though, and villages seem okay, but again the order they are generated needs some work, villages shouldn't intersect ravines, or be underwater or embedded in hillsides (so doors and windows are buried or inaccessibly high).

Underwater villages are cool though D:

It's like your an archeologist finding some long dead civilization of Steves, whose home was swallowed up by the ocean in a changing climate. Half buried and crumbling villages could work for that too, though not if parts of it are floating.

[gftweek]

Underwater villages are cool though D:

It's like your an archeologist finding some long dead civilization of Steves, whose home was swallowed up by the ocean in a changing climate. Half buried and crumbling villages could work for that too, though not if parts of it are floating.

But they are only abandoned till 1.9, then they'll be populated by NPC's with pathing problems, drowning trying to get through their front door.

[grimper12341]

...previously abandoned, then repopulated with a race of semi aquatic pigmen <.<

[Battosay]

Still haven't tried the 1.8, and I won't until BTW is 1.8 ready :)

[Urian]

Some interesting changes Jeb posted should make it into the release version of 1.8:

* 1.7 worlds should get structures
* Farmlands rejecting melon and pumpkin seeds
* Bonemeal on melons and pumpkins
* Bonemeal on mushroom only works on dirt or grass
* Added item drops for cracked and mossy smooth stone brick

[Tekei]

Jeb just posted this list of what he's been working on today:
http://pastebin.com/gtAczURg

EDIT: Might have been the same list Urian posted lol.

[Stormweaver]

Some interesting changes Jeb posted should make it into the release version of 1.8:

* 1.7 worlds should get structures
* Farmlands rejecting melon and pumpkin seeds
* Bonemeal on melons and pumpkins
* Bonemeal on mushroom only works on dirt or grass
* Added item drops for cracked and mossy smooth stone brick

I don't honestly understand what that first one means, but the second....no more mushroom towers? That's annoying. A stack of ladders, 10 or so bonemeal and grey mushrooms and you can make a multi-tier observational platform and ladder. It's the only thing those big mushrooms are good for >.>

[Urian]

I don't honestly understand what that first one means, but the second....no more mushroom towers? That's annoying. A stack of ladders, 10 or so bonemeal and grey mushrooms and you can make a multi-tier observational platform and ladder. It's the only thing those big mushrooms are good for >.>

Not certain about the first but as for the second, you just need to bring some dirt blocks with you and replace the block where you plant the mushroom with a dirt block.