As always, rules for this thread:
-DO NOT post suggestions.
-DO NOT critique unreleased features. Wait until you've had a chance to try them before passing judgement.
With that out of the way, let's open with an in-game screenshot:
That aside, I just realized it's been over a month since the last dev diary (yikes!), so I figured now would be a good time for one!
The above image represents the new nether rail line I am building out in my usual manner, taking me to a totally unexplored area so I can "start fresh" and play through the early game experience in my usual manner.
In this case, it's to do an early game playthrough of Hardcore Hunger. I did a middle game play-through yesterday on the official server, but given the server is on hard difficulty (I like to test these things on default), and given other players have explored out to a sufficient radius that starting entirely fresh is a bit of a difficult proposition, I decided to do this part in SSP.
Obviously, Hardcore Hunger is the big thing right now, with it having radically changed the overall gameplay experience. There's still tweaking to be done to be sure, but I think it's gone a long way towards bringing back the "game" to Minecraft, so I'm extremely pleased with the initial results.
Over the next little while, I basically plan to play an awful lot of BTW to really nail the balance down, and continue working on polish items moving towards my goal of considering BTW a complete gameplay experience.
My big concerns at present that I wish to address, is that currently there's way too much of HC Hunger's progression jammed into finding a single village, which basically gives you every crop in the game. I had a bit of a brainstorm earlier though, so I suspect that one shall be resolved shortly.
Otherwise, I just keep on trucking. I think everyone is pretty aware of the things I'm working on these days from the various discussions going on, so I don't think I have much to add to what has already been said.
Oh, but to address the elephant in the room: 1.5. Yeah, there it is...that plump bastard.
Well, last week I wasn't particularly motivated to update given that 1.5.1 was announced pretty much immediately after the release of 1.5. Now, there's all this talk of major performance issues with 1.5, so I'm even less inclined to waste my time inflicting that on BTW players.
So yeah, to reiterate my stance on 1.5 from last week: "whatever", except it's an even more emphatic one.
It'll happen when it happens. Right now, some extremely interesting changes are happening with the mod, and if anything, given more casual players tend not to update the mod during times like this, it just gives me more of a chance to refine and balance Hardcore Hunger before the kiddies really start bitching about it ;)
Guess that's about it for now :)