Vanilla Minecraft News Discussion

[DxPanxD]

So no need for Hardcore Pie it seems.

No, no, no. Hardcore Pie is absolutely needed. I will do everything within my power to make sure that "Hardcore Pie" is on my feature list ;)

Will it be warm apple pie or just the sort of lame pumpkin offering?

BLASPHEMY! Pumpkin pie is superior to apple in every way! *Goes into opinionated rage*

[Stormweaver]

BLASPHEMY! Pumpkin pie is superior to apple in every way! *Goes into opinionated rage*

Agreed.

[Svartwolf]

sorry if this is a little off-topic (though the thread have derailed a lot into off-topicness) but have it been oficially confirmed that the extended blocks IDs thingie will be released on the 1.4 haloween update? or is just wishful thinking?

[Foxy Boxes]

Sigh. It seems that the devs don't even read their own website:

I've got a few plans and visions, but my only true design decision is to keep it fun and accessible. There's no design doc, but there are two lists; one for bugs, and one for features I want to add but think I might forget.

I make sure to play the game a lot, and I've built my share of towers, and flooded my share of caves. If something ever doesn't feel fun, I'll remove it. I believe that I can combine enough fun, accessibility and building blocks for this game to be a huge melting pot of emergent gameplay.

I strongly believe that all good stories have a conflict, and that all good games tell a good story regardless of if it's pre-written or emergent. Free building mode is fine and dandy, but for many people it will ultimately become boring once you've got it figured out. It's like playing a first person shooter in god mode, or giving yourself infinite funds in a strategy game.. a lack of challenge kills the fun.

For survival mode, I'd rather make the game too difficult than too easy. That also means I'm going to have to include some way of winning the game (or some other climax) to prevent it becoming too exhausting.

But if it's no fun, I'll redesign.

[Six]

... no longer adding simple features with simple rules that when used right, make complex things - they're adding complex features with complex rules that end up doing fairly simple things.

This very succinctly sums up my problem with the current state of development, for both vanilla and many mods out there.

[MaxAstro]

... no longer adding simple features with simple rules that when used right, make complex things - they're adding complex features with complex rules that end up doing fairly simple things.

This very succinctly sums up my problem with the current state of development, for both vanilla and many mods out there.

That's because simple features with complex implementations are really hard to think of past a certain "low-hanging fruit" threshhold, and it's much easier (read: lazier) to invent complex-looking features that don't really do anything.

That's why FC is such an awesome game designer - he has the skill and patience to find the simple-yet-powerful features that AREN'T low-hanging fruit, which is a skill that even most AAA game developers lack.

[FlowerChild]

That's because simple features with complex implementations are really hard to think of past a certain "low-hanging fruit" threshhold, and it's much easier (read: lazier) to invent complex-looking features that don't really do anything.

Well, I don't even think it's a matter of laziness really: more the way you personally approach problems as a designer.

Jeb and Co. may pour a ton of programming work into a feature, only for it to have minimal impact on actual gameplay. That's because they're thinking about things from a programming perspective, so something that is tough to code must be good, right?

You actually see that in a ton of mods. People spend a shit-load of time programming super-complex features that only result in a "so, what can I do with it?" response from players once the initial "oh wow!" factor wears off. BTW on the other hands tends to consist of a shit-load of rather simple features with complex and interesting interactions between them.

If you're thinking primarily like a programmer, you'll be primarily interested in cool code, rather than cool game features. If you're primarily thinking like a designer, then the end result in terms of gameplay value is the only thing that matters, and if you can solve a problem in such a way as to minimize the quantity or difficulty of code involved, then all the better, as then you can spend that time implementing another cool feature on top of it.

It should be noted that a lot of game designers, professionals included, fail at that part because they don't have a good understanding of the work involved in implementing a feature, if they're not also programmers (and sadly...most game designers aren't).

So yeah, I don't agree that laziness is actually involved here. I think that Mojang are currently working quite hard on trying to improve the game. Unfortunately though, without an understanding of game design, a lot of that effort is wasted, or is even actually hurting the overall quality of the game.

[MoRmEnGiL]

I'm sure there is enough creativity left in all of them to do interesting stuff. The problem is, they do not have the same vision notch had. If they have any vision at all.

At this point it feels like they are turning minecraft into a generic platform, a bunch of broad and general features that is up to modders to focus in specific directions.

Also it's been almost a year since mc was officially released. I'm not expecting the free content to go on for much longer, though at least until spring if their current schedule is interpreted with mojang time in mind.

So this begs the question, what are they going to ask us to pay for? More weapons monsters and dimensions? Ridable dragons and pre generated forts with princesses to save? New modes? (CTF mode and siege mode were considered since the very early days)

EDIT:



*Sits high in the sails, wind blowing his hair, adopting classic swashbuckling look*

[morvelaira]

Okay. I think we're veering into Off Topic land, my dears.

*gently steers the ship back*

[Salmonella]

The new sounds are all great! Especially the minecart sounds, I see them being used a lot by FC. The new "aggressive/passive" sounds thing is really neat too, and the aggressive Endermen sounds are actually rather horrifying.

[Ferrus.Manus]

Some good news:

Today, lighting! I think I solved the half slab lighting glitch, and I had a late night revelation on how to greatly speed up lighting too.

I can't promise that any lighting glitches at all will be fixed. I just can't, this stuff is very unstable and hard to test properly.

I can, however, maybe promise that it'll be faster. Worst case slightly, best case a whole bloody lot.

[Ancilangeli]

Some good news:

Today, lighting! I think I solved the half slab lighting glitch, and I had a late night revelation on how to greatly speed up lighting too.

I can't promise that any lighting glitches at all will be fixed. I just can't, this stuff is very unstable and hard to test properly.

I can, however, maybe promise that it'll be faster. Worst case slightly, best case a whole bloody lot.

wait... im confused, the lighting in vmc might be getting slightly faster at not working? is that even news? let alone btw news?

i feel teased

[Ferrus.Manus]

wait... im confused, the lighting in vmc might be getting slightly faster at not working? is that even news? let alone btw news?

i feel teased

If you haven't noticed this topic is for vanilla MC new, not BtW ones. And Mojang actually improving the game engine instead of adding witches of potatoes or whatever is definitely a good news.

[Ancilangeli]

actually i hadnt noticed, as that was the first time i visited this thread (i actually thought it was a place where morv was sharing her update videos and was checking if one was made for the latest btw ver yet) and i agree that would be newsworthy, but the way he worded things (dinnerbone i mean) makes me feel like i was promised vanilla ice cream then told there might only be low fat chocolate, if any at all.

twas nothing against you sharing the news, was more about dinnerbone using the new carrot on a stick on we the players, a vmc news thread is an awesome idea though

[SterlingRed]

On twitter, dinnerbone claims to have solved lighting bugs. All of them. World gen black areas, half slabs, furnaces now cast light only in the direction of their furnace face. Unfortunately, Android twitter app gives me no way to provide a direct link.

I am very excited about this. It goes a long way in making aesthetic builds better, and fixing some lighting issues that have been present since beta.

[LaserCooled]

Source for above from SterlingRed:

Remember that silly lighting bug where world would generate with big black patches? Well you may not remember it in the future; it's fixed.

It only applies to newly genned chunks. Any previous chunks that have lighting bugs, you can just go up to them and place a block.

http://twitter.com/Dinnerbone/status/250952827608915969

[SterlingRed]

Remember that one time mojang fixed lighting? They didn't quite.

"Dinnerbone: Okay so turns out the fancy lighting is much harder than I thought, so that's still going to look wonky on stairs/etc for a while :("

[morvelaira]

This has to be the third or fourth time Dinnerbone has "fixed" lighting, only to admit he hadn't completely the next day. *sigh*

[SterlingRed]

I know. They always post absolute statements before play testing their own stuff. Its getting to the point where I don't believe anything they say anymore.

[walker_boh_65]

I know. They always post absolute statements before play testing their own stuff. Its getting to the point where I don't believe anything they say anymore.

I haven't believed what they have said in a good 9 months.

[Six]

So another snapshot has dropped, mostly with the lighting changes dinnerbone has been messing with. Sounds like jury is still out on if it's better or not, some lighting bugs are fixed, others created, and now the initial calculations take a lot longer, causing people some major lag when chunks are first loaded (Nether especially).

What did catch my eye in the changelog though:

• New values in debug screen: chunk number and player's coordinate inside that chunk.

Spoiler

Show

This exact thing has been discussed in the dev diary thread over the past few days, interesting to see it pop up now.

[SterlingRed]

It would appear the nether loading has major lag issues to the point they released a second snapshot which moves the lag from client to server significantly increasing chunk load time while increasing client fps. But dinnerbone said something about considering a rollback. How far I don't know.

[kjbrona]

So much for lighting fix.

Nathan Adams ‏@Dinnerbone
I think I'm going to revert the new lighting stuff and come back to it for 1.5. I'd rather get other (actually working) bugfixes in 1.4.

[Donzaffi]

So much for lighting fix.

Nathan Adams ‏@Dinnerbone
I think I'm going to revert the new lighting stuff and come back to it for 1.5. I'd rather get other (actually working) bugfixes in 1.4.

Like Walker said^^

I know. They always post absolute statements before play testing their own stuff. Its getting to the point where I don't believe anything they say anymore.

I haven't believed what they have said in a good 9 months.

The Lightningbug exist since I can remember

[Ferrus.Manus]

Actually problem is not the chunk loading but generation of new chunks. Once they are generated it's fine, but the generation itself is extremely slow.
The SMP nether lag is different bug that existed before.