Monthly Archives: May 2011
By Ben Wochinski on May 31, 2011
I was checking out Reddit this evening before hopping on my Minecraft server and caught a submission from zerpa about the lack of clay under the 1.6.6 patch. The author discovered that the very few clay deposits that he found were located only at matching X and Z coordinates. Clay only has a chance of being generated currently in diagonal lines out from the center of the map (at 0,0).
Notch actually commented on this on Reddit and put the general question out there if doing a 1.6.7 patch tomorrow would be preferred. I’m not going to try and interpret the replies to determine if there’s a general “yes” or “no” feeling towards that question, but personally I would be fine with an update to fix that. I do have a fair bit of brick saved up already, so it’s not that I need the clay, but if patch 1.7 is going to be a while off it would be better to get this fixed sooner. Assuming it’s not a complicated patch that would screw anything else up.
Those in opposition on Reddit seem to be primarily concerned with the patch putting Bukkit out of date yet again. Based upon their website it looks like Bukkit just released a new stable build for version 1.6.6 a few minutes ago, so I can see how that would frustrate some. Just keep your eyes peeled tomorrow morning, as a patch could be coming.
Happy Crafting!
Posted in Minecraft Tagged 1.6.6, 1.6.7, 1.7, Clay, Minecraft, Multiplayer, Online, Patch, Reddit, Server, SMP, Update
By Ben Wochinski on May 31, 2011
Now that the Nether is working on SMP, it’s just about the most exciting thing you can do in Minecraft with a group of friends. I made a fairly short trip into the Nether this afternoon with a few of them.
My rooftop Portal, first on the Server into the Nether.
Continue reading »
Posted in Minecraft Tagged 1.6.6, Adventure, Beta, Ghast, Glowstone, Lava, Lightstone, Minecraft, Mushrooms, Nether, Portal, Slow Sand, Soul Sand
By Ben Wochinski on May 31, 2011
Notch got his last update for the Minecraft 1.6.x series out this morning, releasing version 1.6.6! He says he will be working just on the 1.7 update starting now, but he also has E3 coming up as well, so it probably wont be released all that soon.
Here are the patch notes as shown on Notch’s blog:
* Added a new use for bonemeal
* Changed the material of glowstone from “glass” to “stone”. This means you need a pickaxe to get resources from it
* Made glowstone drop more loot
* Made the recipe sizes for creating cloth blocks and glowstone blocks smaller (2×2 instead of 3×3)
* Re-introduced unlimited FPS, renamed the option again
* Fixed beds not working very well at all in SMP
* Fixed destroying a boat spawning the player too low, causing them to sometimes fall through the ground
* Boats float up to the surface quicker
* Boats falling down into water lose their vertical momentum very fast
* Removed Herobrine
Got my server updated, and now we can all look forward to 1.7, the adventuring update! I’m pretty excited to see what it will all bring.
Until then, everyone enjoy having a nice nap on your SMP servers and now’s the time to get some glowstone! Too bad I’d already mined so much!
EDIT: The new use for bonemeal is fertilizing grass to make wheatgrass grow (the new long grass that drops wheat seeds for farming). Occasionally a flower will grow instead of the wheatgrass.
Happy Crafting!
Posted in Minecraft Tagged 1.6.6, 1.7, Beds, bugs, Fixed, Fixes, Minecraft, Multiplayer, Notch, Notes, Online, Patch, Server, SMP, Update
By Ben Wochinski on May 30, 2011
I finally got to updating my texture pack to be compatible with Minecraft version 1.6.5. There were only a couple of new textures I had to select from the Painterly website, I just had to find them in the list. I’m glad to have my Painterly look back though, the default cobble is especially ugly in comparison.
Example of a few blocks.
I set the new wheat grass to the medium and tall height options, and one light and one dark color (both biome compliant). The desert shrubs I chose to be one of the short little cactus designs. And the only other big addition is the hatch, which I couldn’t really decide on. I don’t plan on using it for furniture or anything (they can make neat little tables on top of a fence post!), so I picked a design with 4 small openings almost like the default texture, but darker wood to match the doors in the texture pack.
If anyone’s interested in checking it out, you can download it from the My Minecraft Server page. And if you like the general feel, but not some of my choices, definitely check out the Painterly Pack official site, where you can choose from a wide selection of textures for each tile and item yourself.
I’ve got some more Mining to get done this evening, so until later, Happy Crafting!
Posted in Minecraft Tagged 1.6.5, Minecraft, Multiplayer, Online, Server, SMP, Texture Pack, textures, Update
By Ben Wochinski on May 29, 2011
Over the past few days I’ve seen a healthy increase in readership on my blog. So much so that I decided I wanted to invest a bit more time in working on putting out blog posts and improving the blog in general. The main obstacle to all this was being stuck on the wordpress.com free blog hosting. Their services are excellent, but real customization just isn’t possible there.
So I snapped up a domain name and migrated things out to a self-hosted WordPress site. And here we all are on the new Ben’s Blog at bwochinski.com! Now I understand that the decision to put ads on a site is never a popular one, but moving to a more versatile setup does bring additional cost. I’m sure they won’t be a bother, as I wouldn’t tolerate them long myself if any ads were to become obnoxious.
Coming up in the near future I have several ideas for more extended Minecraft content. I’ll be getting back to some posts that are of the construction-log type that I first started out with, plus adding in some tours of things others on my server have built. There are some amazing builds there that I’d love to cover. I am also tossing around the idea of moving into the occasional video, as not everything about Minecraft is properly experienced through a blog post.
Lastly I just want to say a big thanks to everyone who’s been reading, I appreciate it so very much. I’ve blogged on and off for years, but just never found that perfect subject that excited me until now. So please, take a look around here on the “new” blog, and be sure to let me know of any errors or broken links. The migration went well, but it may not be perfect yet.
Keep an eye out for more and more Minecraft news and Construction content, and Happy Crafting!
Posted in General, Minecraft, Personal
By Ben Wochinski on May 29, 2011
Well look at Notch go, practically setting a Minecraft update schedule! I guess I’m glad that the Mojang guys all took that Gaming Friday to play Terraria (even though we were all stuck with 1.6.4), since it seems to have inspired Notch, as he admits on twitter.
Coming up in the next week or so patch 1.6.6 is planned to finish up fixing a lot of the bugs still present in 1.6.5. This includes the problem with ghosts curling up in any bed they find. Or I mean beds always claiming to be occupied. It’s not that terrible a bug, as far as things have gone in the update to the 1.6.x series, and everyone got along fine without beds fine before they were added to the game. I haven’t run into any other bugs that bother me as of yet, other than some general lagginess sometimes.
The other patch we have to look forward to is version 1.7, which Notch describes as “the Adventure Update“. He doesn’t elaborate on exactly what it will contain, but I hear a lot of comparison to the Dwarf Fortress adventure mode. The update should make the adventure map crowd very happy, and hopefully there will be actual game mechanics enforcing the rules of adventuring. It would make building an adventure map much more attractive.
Since 1.7 is all about Adventuring I imagine that means still no pistons! Automating my gigantic wheat farm will have to continue to wait.
Happy Crafting!
Posted in Minecraft Tagged 1.6.5, 1.6.6, 1.7, Adventure, Beds, Beta, bug fixes, bugs, Dwarf Fortress, Fixed, Minecraft, Mojang, Multiplayer, Notch, Online, Patch, Server, SMP, Terraria, Update
By Ben Wochinski on May 28, 2011
Notch got the changes for Minecraft 1.6.5 posted on his blog, and there are a few more fixes than I was expecting:
There are some annoying bed bugs in multiplayer in this version, I’ll fix those next week.
1.6.5:
* Tweaked the connection reading code a lot. Hopefully this helps.
* Changed the “limit framerate” option to a “framerate cap” option.
* Added “Advanced OpenGL” again
* Players riding anything or sleeping in anything will stop doing so when they leave the game now
* Removed the minecraft version number from the main game window. It’s still available in the title screen
* Fixed some entities appearing to fall through the ground repeatedly in multiplayer (some might still do so)
* Fixed the server sometimes thinking the player hit a corner when walking when they didn’t
* Fixed dropped damaged items vanishing after a single use after being picked up
* Fixed dropped items not getting ejected from blocks properly
* Fixed the achievements window rendering some graphics outside the clip window
* Fixed players saving while sneaking being loaded too high up
* Fixed shift+click transferring items causing a crash when the target container is full
* Fixed lighting updates sometimes not happening correctly
* Fixed the players health appearing to be full when entering/exiting the nether
* Fixed a couple of instances where beds would act strange in multiplayer, primarily the “already occupied” bug
Besides fixing the major bugs there are quite a few tweaks to rendering to try and improve performance. I will have to mess around with those on my setup and see how they play.
As you can see, fixes on several crash bugs are included as well. I hadn’t done it yet but I certainly use the shift+click transfer on nearly full chests, and thank god for the lighting fix. There are torches as far as the eye can see on my server, and I need those to keep working!
Looks like we can expect some more patching in the coming week too, so be ready for lots of server updating. Now go an enjoy the new patch, I have some replacement diamond tools to go craft.
Happy Crafting!
Posted in Minecraft Tagged 1.6.5, Beta, bugs, Changes, Fixed, Minecraft, Multiplayer, Notch, Online, Server, SMP, Update
By Ben Wochinski on May 28, 2011
Notch just tweeted that he’s got the bugs taken care of and Minecraft release 1.6.5 is out! From Notch’s twitter:
Minecraft Beta 1.6.5 is out. Let me know how it is.
I’m going to update my server immediately and I’ll post again as soon as I can give things a good test and report back!
Happy Crafting!
Quick Update: All of the major game-breaking bugs seem to be fixed! No more chunk loading problems on my server makes me especially happy! Thanks so much to Notch for putting in the extra hours to get this stuff fixed!
Posted in Minecraft Tagged 1.6.5, Beta, Bugfix, bugs, Fixed, Minecraft, Multiplayer, Online, Patch, Server, SMP, Update
By Ben Wochinski on May 27, 2011
Well I guess Notch is not as omniscient as I was expecting over the last couple days. As now revealed on his twitter Notch was completely unaware of the game-breaking bugs we were all facing and had a nice long afternoon of playing Terraria! So congrats Minecraft community, we were not vocal enough regarding bugs! Not that we need to change that. But now we are promised that Notch will be going in to work tomorrow, on a Saturday, to work on the bigger bugs. Until that time, I have a couple workarounds.
As for tools breaking instantly after they have been dropped (either intentionally or upon death), I saw someone on Reddit saying that if you put them into a chest, and then close and reopen the chest dialog they should be fixed. I haven’t had the chance to try this, as I’ve been dealing more with the second, and possibly larger error.
The chunk loading problems I mentioned in my previous post I may have linked to my very large wheat farm. I noticed that every time I get stuck with only a couple chunks loaded, or even none at all, I could see the tilled dirt blocks from my farm loading very… very… slowly. I was able to make my way farther and farther away by walking into the abyss away from the farm and disconnecting and reconnecting until the chunk I had entered would load. Repeating this a dozen or so times I was finally able to get far enough away from my farm that the chunks containing it unloaded. Once it wasn’t loaded anymore, the rest of the world loaded normally. I tried going back towards the farm to see if the problem was resolved, but 20 or 30 seconds after it came into view the Minecraft client completely crashed. When I reconnected I was back where I started. I repeated the process and again made it to chunks that would load normally. If anyone else who is experiencing this issue can confirm if they are near a wheat farm when the world will not load, I’d appreciate it.
So I’ll keep an eye out for patch 1.6.5, or possibly more, coming tomorrow. Until then, Happy Crafting!
Posted in Minecraft Tagged 1.6.4, 1.6.5, bugs, Fix, Minecraft, Multiplayer, Notch, Online, Reddit, Server, SMP, Update, workaround
By Ben Wochinski on May 26, 2011
Just one last quick update for the day regarding the last Minecraft bug-fix patch, 1.6.4.
While the patch does seem to have taken care of a few bugs affecting server performance, one major thing it seems to have introduced is issues with chunk loading. I unfortunately am not at my own PC where I could take a video of the phenomenon, but let me describe what happens on my SMP server.
When logging on, for some players (but not all) no chunks will load. Entities such as animals, mobs, and players will show up but just jitter in place as the client and server fight over wether or not the ground exists. If you’re lucky and you are able to teleport to a distant player, the chunk loading process is triggered, but it takes place from farthest to nearest chunk. You are still stuck jittering while you watch the chunks load, until the chunk below you is finally loaded. Then everything seems to be fine. Logging out and back in seems to cause this scenario to repeat most of the time.
Until Notch is able to take a look into this, teleporting to another place beyond your current render distance seems to be the only workaround I have found. Not every player is afflicted with this problem, thankfully. Just a few hundred blocks from where a friend and I were stuck, another player was able to log in and work on his building normally.
Here’s hoping all this is sorted out by tomorrow. Happy Crafting!
Posted in Minecraft Tagged 1.6, 1.6.4, bugs, Chunks, Minecraft, Multiplayer, Online, SMP, Update