Minecraft 1.2

Minecraft 1.2 hasnt been announced yet but there have been two weekly snapshots (pre-releases) added. This is what has been added over these two snapshots:

Quote :

-Ladders regained their collision box
-Vines are climbable if you push into a solid block while next to them
-Added jungle biome (requires a new world) with ferns and new wood and leaf types
-Updated language files
-Dispensers dispensing Spawn Eggs will place Mobs instead of simply dispensing the eggs
-Spawn eggs are now stackable
-Zombies have new path-finding AI
-Wolves have new AI and can be bred by using Chicken (Raw or Cooked), Porkchops (Raw or Cooked), Steak/Beef, and Rotten Flesh when tamed
-New jungle-specific Ocelot mob that can be tamed with Raw Fish into Cats.
-Mobs in general have new a AI with new and improved behaviors.
-Skeletons and Zombies burning from sunlight will flee to darkness, jump in water, or get onto any non-full-height block.
-Mobs no longer attempt to jump over fences.
-New Items:
-Fire Charge
-Jungle Sapling
-Bottle o' Enchanting (Creative Mode)
-Spawn Ocelot (Creative Mode)
-Changed Dispenser and Oak Sapling textures.
-Added Desert Wells, which are newly generated structures.
-Players are slowed when going through Vines due to their nature of being a collisionless ladder.

Rather than commenting on each new item, I'm going to write about my experience with the new snapshot.

Welcome to the new Jungle Biome. It took me two single player maps to actually find one, but here I am on top of one of these gigantic trees.

You might be wondering how I got up here. Vines now give you the ability to climb up them if there is a solid block behind them. Using vines and by cutting through a few leaves, I was able to reach the top.

If you were wondering what it looks like below, it is basically an overgrown jungle, just like you would imagine.

Once in a while you might find a cow stuck in the bushes on the floor.

After spending one night in a dark cave, looking for coal and finding none, then finding a dungeon and making a home out of it. I went searching for the new creature that was apparently tamable. It took me forever to find this thing. According to the Minecraft Wiki, they are called ocelots and if you tame them, they turn into household cats (which is stupid in my opinion). They seem to fall into the bushes and dont make any noise at the moment, so they are really hard to find.


I'm an idiot. If you look at the picture, I'm trying to tame it with a bone. After finding out it didn't work, I realized there must be another item. According to the minecraft wiki, that item is raw fish. I end up killing this ocelot to see if it drops anything, but it doesn't. I cant actually find another, so i make a creative map and spawn one in. Apparently they run away if you are not crouching and sneaking up on them. I never actually was able to tame one, even after catching it in a corner.

After giving up with the ocelot, I found a well in the desert. I expected more of a town but it was just a well. (This was before I read the patch notes)


I also did a little testing with the new tree saplings. If you place one, it creates a tree just like a birch sapling, always the same size, except sometimes it can be a little taller. If you place four saplings next to each other and use bonemeal on one sapling, it will create a giant tree.


Before
After

Might add more later if i have time.

The new AI is the best addition to the game in awhile
The survival part of the game was just annoying, after the first night theres no point in playing survival because the survival game just turned into creative with resource collecting while some monsters mildly poked at you or griefed part of your building
Once they work out the bugs it should actually be like survival (especially with hardcore mode)

The jungle biome is nice, as are vines
I said vines should be climbable back when they were first introduced
I like how they ended up implementing it, you cant climb up vines unless theres a block supporting it, but you can climb down them without the need for a block

The dispensers being able to spawn monsters is good, its about time they added something that can be used with redstone (the last time was pistons, and that was basically a copy and paste of a mod that already existed)

The cats are just stupid
They change species when you tame them, which is just weird
I can accept floating trees/land, infinite water, wheat acting as the most powerful animal aphrodisiac in the world, and even the key to hell being a piece of flint and a bit of steel
But when cats change species after eating fish, thats where i draw the line
Also they dont do anything useful, they rarely attack enemies and when they do its usually a creeper

Pat1487 wrote:

The new AI is the best addition to the game in awhile

I noticed the new AI when i tried to lure the skeletons out of their dungeon into the sunlight, they didn't seem to want to come out. If they are in the light during the day, they run into the water or into some shade, I haven't seen it personally yet.

Pat1487 wrote:

The jungle biome is nice, as are vines
I said vines should be climbable back when they were first introduced
I like how they ended up implementing it, you cant climb up vines unless theres a block supporting it, but you can climb down them without the need for a block

The jungle biome is my favorite addition. I have wanted to make a real treehouse for a long time. The abundance of huge trees makes this very possible.

Pat1487 wrote:

The dispensers being able to spawn monsters is good, its about time they added something that can be used with redstone (the last time was pistons, and that was basically a copy and paste of a mod that already existed)

This could lead to some good traps and adventure maps, however, there is no way to get the spawn eggs in survival mode so it is almost useless except for on a server where some players can be in creative, and some players can be in survival.

Pat1487 wrote:

The cats are just stupid
They change species when you tame them, which is just weird
I can accept floating trees/land, infinite water, wheat acting as the most powerful animal aphrodisiac in the world, and even the key to hell being a piece of flint and a bit of steel
But when cats change species after eating fish, thats where i draw the line
Also they dont do anything useful, they rarely attack enemies and when they do its usually a creeper

The cats do suck, they only attack chickens. Its like you have your average household cats following you around. They are a pain in the ass to catch too. Its not the fact that they change that bothers me. I guess I just haven't been a huge fan of taming in general

Quote :

-Lava sounds now function.
-Many mob-related bug fixes (and some new behaviors).
-Ocelots are easier to tame, and Cats can be told to sit.
-Many small bug fixes and tweaks.
-Villagers will try to detect village houses and live in them.
-Updated language files (now with 50% less profanities!)
-Removed some offensive translation text.
-If your home bed is missing/obstructed while you are on Canadian English, it will say "Sorry, -your home bed is missing or obstructed, eh?"
-Creepers run away from cats.
-Creepers now have new AI - they stalk the player.
-Abandoned mineshafts now bridge over ravines[4]
-Enchantment tables no longer require experience in creative mode
-All previous crafting recipes that would give off 4 of the finished product was reduced to 2. (Ex. -It now takes 2 wood blocks to give you 4 wooden planks)

Cats actually have a function now! They are still completely stupid but a good way to keep those creepers away. And apparently creepers stalk? (i thought they already did this)

There are some glitches with the villagers opening doors and entering a house, but its a step in the right direction. I want to see villagers pose more of a purpose.

Mark would like the language update for Canadian english.

What is this about taking 2 blocks of wood to make 4 wooden planks? Thats just stupid. Makes it so much harder to get started. Does that mean it take four planks to make four wooden sticks? I havent tested the new snapshot yet so idk.

BackseatDriver wrote:

Cats actually have a function now! They are still completely stupid but a good way to keep those creepers away. And apparently creepers stalk? (i thought they already did this)

All enemy mobs (except endermen) had the same "AI" before this update, and it was basically just a simple "if then else" check
They just ran in a straight line up to the player (regardless of what was in the way) once the player came within a certain range of the mob (or when the mob came within a certain range of the player)
Endermen "AI" was slightly modified, instead of a range around the mob enderman are based on player line of sight, and instead of running up it teleported behind the player to within range and then ran up to the player in a straight line (regardless of what was in the way)

This update gives some mobs actual AI
The creepers now wont just ran at you once your in range, instead they will follow you, "stalk" implies that it will try to stay out of player line of sight (probably will try to stay behind the player), and will come at you and explode once the AI says it has a good chance of getting to the player and blowing up based on the pathing
I havent actually seen it though

BackseatDriver wrote:

What is this about taking 2 blocks of wood to make 4 wooden planks? Thats just stupid. Makes it so much harder to get started. Does that mean it take four planks to make four wooden sticks? I havent tested the new snapshot yet so idk.

I think its a glitch with crafting, sometimes when you shift click you dont get all the stuff your supposed to, and it also uses more materials then its supposed to, like if you make a 2x2 square of wood with 5 wood (2 in 1 of the spots) to make a crafting table all 5 wood is used
Hopefully they arent making it so you need 2 coal to make 4 torches, stuff like that doesnt make it harder, it just needlessly pads the game out and prolongs you from doing what you really want to do without adding any actual challenge

So i tried the newer snapshot

Creepers dont stalk at all, or at least not how i described it
From what i can tell they work exactly the same as they always have (other then being afraid of cats)

The recipes are still the same (1 log makes 4 wood, 2 wood makes 4 sticks, etc)
I havent run into the glitch where it incorrectly uses the amount of materials

Jungle biomes freeze up my game when im playing with fancy graphics
Its the leaves, when theres 1000s of leaf blocks being rendered my game cant handle it and starts to freeze up every few seconds
I hate the way leaves look on fast graphics, so im going to have to figure out a way to fix that

This video shows some of the features included in the screenshot. You just have to skip past the mojang news.

I played the snapshot some more and creepers do act differently
If you manage to out run them it will stop chasing you and just start staring at you, no matter where you go until you get near it again
They do the same thing when your inside
Its pretty creepy at first to see them constantly looking at you from a distance or from outside your windows

Also trying to survive on the flat world type is really fun and challenging
Put it on hardcore survival with the world type of super flat
You got to find a village and scavenge materials from there while constantly dealing with slimes
Since you can starve to death on hardcore mode you have to secure the wheat farm first
The slimes got to be so much that i ended up making a tunnel system under the npc village and blocking all the doors
The npcs kept opening the doors and letting slimes in, so i had to block the doors
Once an npc let a creeper in and it blew a hole in the side of my house, the explosion left me with 2 hearts, and then slimes and zombies flooded in, had to build a dirt pillar and escape through the roof
I ended up dieing when i was collecting dirt, i dug into 1 of the gravel roads, the 1 piece of gravel fell and a creeper happened to be on the exact block and exploded

Pat1487 wrote:

Its pretty creepy at first to see them constantly looking at you from a distance or from outside your windows

Hence Creeper

The lighting in the newest snapshot is screwed up for me
The only light that works is the sun
In the daytime its bright everywhere, even in caves that have no connection to the outside, when the sun sets the inside of caves get darker as if they were exposed to the sky
Looking at the water from above during the day you can clearly see the bottom as if the water has no effect on the lighting like it normally does

It even effects the world generator, wild grass is generated on underground dirt blocks where there should be no light at all
Mobs wont spawn in caves during the day either
Torches provide light at night but wont stop mobs from spawning, it thinks it should be dark as if the torch isnt there

I cant figure out how to fix it
I have a bunch of mods installed for 1.1, including some shader mods, but it shouldnt be effecting a new jar, it never has before

I havent updated to the new snapshot yet. The higher world seems cool but Im gonna wait for some of the bugs to be fixed in the next snapshot. Actually, I dont think there is a new snapshot this week, the one you have is a week old i think.

Im talking about the new one, 12w08a, the one that changes the lighting, adds upside down stairs and iron golems
Whatever lighting changes they made messed up my stuff some how, played it a bit today and still cant fix it
I think this one was supposed to fix a bug with the lighting in the last snapshot, but i didnt have that bug so the fix caused something weird to happen


If you're wondering how i got it earlier than it was even announced (i didnt know it wasnt announced until today), you can get next weeks snapshot here: http://assets.minecraft.net/12w09a/minecraft.jar
Just wait about a week and it should exist

Unfortunately that link will never work, this weeks snapshot is a preview of 1.2, which will be released tomorrow. If you want it 1 day early here you go: http://assets.minecraft.net/1_2/minecraft.jar

A full change log will be released tomorrow on mojang's website. You can always get a change log for each update on the minecraft wiki.

This update will include everything added in the past few snapshots.

Also in minecraft news, the four main developers of bukkit will be working on updating the official minecraft server to "bring you the same flexibility and versatility to the official Minecraft server."

any idea if that means that the official server will slowly be replacing bukkit?

Quote :

Now that we have an opportunity to design the official Minecraft API, we intend to make it a suitable replacement for Bukkit, if not a significantly better one, while bukkit.org will remain a community for modders for the foreseeable future.

I got that quote from this article on the bukkit website: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/bukkit-the-next-chapter.62489/

This is what Mojang released on the matter: http://www.mojang.com/2012/02/minecraft-team-strengthened/

The bukkit article is long and gives a history of how it got to this point (I didnt read it all). Near the bottom is the announcement where i got the quote from above. I would imagine it will take a while to catch the official server up to the capabilities of bukkit. Chances are they will update bukkit for 1.2 while they work on the official server for the next release.