Monthly Archives: September 2011

Back from Vacation and Catching up on Minecraft

Hello readers one and all, I have returned. Now that I’m back from my lovely 10 days of vacation I will try to return to my regularly irregular posting schedule.

On vacation my wife, daughter, and I flew on down to Florida for a visit to Disney World! My daughter is just about to turn 2 years old, and she loved almost everything. Anytime we came upon a costumed character she would just run up to them and give them a big hug. It was really cute and we got a bunch of really good pictures and video as well. The time in Disney World wasn’t super relaxing, however, due to the little one wanting to run off for something at every opportunity.

As I was exhausted when we got back I’ve spent the last two days just chilling out with my family and playing a whole bunch of Minecraft. I only had the opportunity to play for about an hour or two before leaving on vacation, so it was good to get some serious uninterrupted play in. Overall, I’m absolutely loving the new play style for 1.8. Hunger isn’t an issue after the first day or so and it really has helped me out a lot. I find I die much less often than before, and fall damage is now laughable in most cases since I’ll have regenerated before I even notice how much I was hurt.

For now I’ve got to plunge back into the work week, but very soon I need to get numerous things posted here on the blog. Firstly I’ve promised several people that I’ll upload the old map from the server. Second, I need to get a rendering of the new map posted, I’m really curious to see how it will look with the distances that most of us have spread out. And finally some screenshots of my constructions are on their way, since I’ve been trying to at least take a shot here and there as I go.

Who knows, might be that we get another chunk of the Adventure update in 1.9 this week as well! Until further posts, Happy Crafting!

Ben’s Vanilla Server: Updated to 1.8

After lots of waiting and refreshing, I was finally able to get my SMP server updated to Minecraft version 1.8!

So for anyone who has played on my server in the past, hop on and start exploring! I’ve started a new map and the world should be ripe for discovery! Also don’t forget to disable any mods or texture packs that aren’t 1.8 compliant, otherwise you might be missing some things.

For anyone who might like to join the server, it is private and whitelisted for the time being. I don’t plan on opening things up completely until Bukkit is back, bit I am certainly interested in getting a few more steady players into our community.

Now I’ll be off to explore and pillage the landscape of these beautiful new biomes. Happy Adventuring!

Minecraft Beta 1.8: Live!

I know I’m a few hours late in realizing it, but Notch tweeted earlier today that they’ve released the 1.8 update for Minecraft! woo!

If you haven’t updated already, this is an official release so the client will do it’s usual auto update when you launch!  I’m super excited to try it out, but I haven’t been able to get my server to update yet. I’ll keep trying throughout the day until it’s up though!

The change log for 1.8 is shown in the client as usual, or I’ve reproduced it here from the mcupdate tumblr page:

+ Added a brand new biome generation code that simplifies life a lot and makes things much more exciting for the future
+ Added new mob; Endermen
+ Added FOV slider
+ Added brightness slider
+ Added randomly generated ravines
+ Killing a monster makes it drop experience orbs
+ The player can level up by gathering experience orbs
+ Added randomly generated houses
+ Added huge mushrooms
+ Using bonemeal on small mushrooms grows the mushroom into a giant mushroom if there’s room
+ Rewrote the light rendering to use multitexturing instead of direct colors
+ Sky light and block light have different tints, cool colors for sky light, warm for block lights
+ Added critical hits that deal +50% damage, plus an extra point to make crits with weak weapons worth it
+ If the player hits a mob while falling, they always hit a critical hit
+ The game now keeps track of damage sources and types
+ Some damage type ignore armor now; drowning, being on fire (but not being IN a fire), falling out of the world
+ Ice now only spreads next to existing ice or from coast areas
+ Made the explosions prettier
+ Made level height depend on a single variable (the level height still is 128, but it’s more moddable now)
+ Added sprinting
+ Added hunger
+ Food is now stackable
+ Improved the logo
+ Added suspended particles to water
+ Added a server list so you can remember multiple servers
+ The player regenerates slowly while the food bar is high
+ Eating food now takes time
+ Skeletons hold their bows better now
+ Added melons
+ Made melons and pumpkins farmable
+ Animals that get hurt will flee randomly for a short while
+ Pigs have snouts now
+ Made a flashier title screen
+ Looking towards the sun during sunset/sunrise changes fog color
+ Added fence gates
+ Added a player list to multiplayer
+ Added Silverfish
+ Added Cave Spider
+ Added huge underground dungeons (stronghold)
+ Added underground mine shafts
+ Added melon
+ Added sprouts for melons and pumpkins
+ Added vines
+ Added iron bars
* Fixed mushrooms spreading infinitely
* Fixed caves generating with too many dead ends
- Removed Herobrine

 

Minecraft Adventure Update Leak! – Beta 1.8 Prerelease

Well all that’s happening in Minecraft lately… is that Beta 1.8 has leaked!!!

Anyone who’s been watching and waiting for the update has probably noticed the explosion of 1.8 videos and images throughout the internet. It looks completely amazing and I can’t wait to play it – however, I’ve decided I will wait for the official release.

Watching several of the videos people have posted it does appear that the update is pretty far from the final version. I saw several mentions about not all of the biomes being represented and that abandoned mines are literally everywhere. I suspect that the code is still in a testing state designed to generate all of the new features frequently. Best way to find terrain generation bugs with an infinitely sized world I imagine.

In other news I’ve been working very hard on my game programming project.  I’m not especially proud of the artwork I’ve whipped up for testing, probably gonna need help with that eventually, but I’m still working a lot on the back end pieces and making excellent progress! It has really detracted from my Minecrafting time though, and in turn from posting on the blog here. I’m determined to get this game made though.

I’ll post about Minecraft again after the official release of the 1.8 adventure update, which should be within the next couple of days, assuming the bugfixing at Mojang goes well!

Happy Crafting!