Here are the exact mesurments to what i have seen ingame. These are from the map coords. The map coords are measured from the head not the feet.
*** Measurement reads from 1 block above head So in theory u will read 3 at bedrock layer 1, 4 at bedrock layer 2 and 5 at bedrock layer 3. So if you read that gold is 5 layers above bedrock then the number on the map coords would be 8, 9 or 10 depending if u layer of bedrock you start your count at.
** There is an acutal layer of bedrock confirmed from multiple void videos where u use tnt in lava pools and it breaks threw these layers.
So
On the Map
X = West & East
Y = Height
Z = North & South
Player Size @ 2 Blocks
Bedrock @ 3 & 4 & 5
Sealevel @ 66
Clouds @ 110
Cloud Chunk @ 10L x 10W x 5H
Top Max @ 129
West End @ -432
West Seawall End @ -578
East End @ 432
East Seawall End @ 578
North End @ -432
North Seawall End @ -578
South End @ 432
South Seawall End @ 578
Center @ 0
Max Map Size @ 1174 Length x 1174 Width
Max Map Size Accessable @ 864 Length x 864 Width
View Distance Block Wise @ 310 Blocks or 155 Each Direction
View Distance Object Wise @ 15 Blocks
View Distance Animal / Player Wise @ 65 Blocks
** Spawn area is the highest block in the 20x20 area that doesnt have a water or lava source block in it. So if for example ur set to spawn @ 1,5 and there is something in that spot it will try another inside the 20x20 area. U cannot put water source blocks or lava blocks in the spawn area or near it aka the 38x38 protected area. You can spill water or lava into the area but the player will spawn in it and take damage. If you make a 1 layer 20x20 of dirt in the air at the spawn point you will spawn up there but if someone digs some of the blocks out they a player is set to spawn there will spawn down on the ground.
Spawn Area = 20x20 blocks
Protected Spawn Area = 38x38 blocks mostly 36x36 blocks but on some it goes to 38
If anyone has anything else they would like to add feel free to post it below if its possible to edit and update my post the whole time i will try and keep it updated.
Note: as the player is 2 blocks high, it means that when you read the map it's actually 2 blocks higher than the point you're trying to measure. For example, the highest point is actually 127, not 129, and sea level is 64, not 66.
Note: as the player is 2 blocks high, it means that when you read the map it's actually 2 blocks higher than the point you're trying to measure. For example, the highest point is actually 127, not 129, and sea level is 64, not 66.
if u read it all it says its actually 4 blocks high bedrock is layer 1 and it reads 4. hence the block ur standing on is 1 + the person(2) + the block to mesure(1) = 4
Note: as the player is 2 blocks high, it means that when you read the map it's actually 2 blocks higher than the point you're trying to measure. For example, the highest point is actually 127, not 129, and sea level is 64, not 66.
if u read it all it says its actually 4 blocks high bedrock is layer 1 and it reads 4. hence the block ur standing on is 1 + the person(2) + the block to mesure(1) = 4
I'd support 22tma's interpretation of elevations here, assuming that the Y coordinate is reporting the position of your head (which would be consistent with the PC version, which reports the position of your eyes).
So standing on the lowest level of bedrock, it shows Y=4. So your legs are in Y=3, you are standing on Y=2, and layers 0 and 1 are not accessable to you (presumably more layers of bedrock).
The highest block you can place is block 127. Standing on that block, it shows Y=129 (your head). You can jump and get it to briefly show Y=130.
"In Survival Mode, Bedrock appears on the very bottom 5 layers of a map and also at the top and bottom 4 layers of The Nether. It generates in a very rough pattern in both the Overworld and The Nether. In the Overworld, there are actually 5 layers even though it seems as if there are 4, this is because the lowest one you see is normally entirely Bedrock with little or no gaps. The lowest layer of Bedrock is layer 0, the highest is layer 4. It can also be seen at the top of the Nether, preventing you from going past layer 127."
"Originally, solid blocks could be placed from layer 0 to layer 127."
"Before 1.8, the sea level was at layer 63 instead of 62. Players who have maps created before this update will find one-block-high "waterfalls" at the edges of the terrain previously generated when moving into new, post-1.8 terrain."
im not arguing either. all my calculations are based off of the map and simple math.
As i stated i got a player is 4 blocks for measurement if bedrock was layer 1. cause a player isnt standing in the layer when it read its its on top of that layer. If you were next to the last layer of bedrock it would read 3. So if that 2nd layer is the last layer a player is measured at the 3rd block hence the 4 @ lvl 2 bedrock.
Dont bash my readings cause you simply cannot understand i clearly explained how i got my math adn where from. learn to understand how people come up with calculations based off of simple ingame response.
I dont care what someone else wrote on whatever page cause that was from a. a different game and b. their own ingame checking. This is minecraft xbla and for the most part people will be reading off of their map when looking at where stuff is for the exact locations. So why would i give u math that isnt based off of those numbers. its pointless.
Thanks for wasting my 15 mins to explain simple math calcuations and a science experiment.
I dont care what someone else wrote on whatever page cause that was from a. a different game and b. their own ingame checking. This is minecraft xbla and for the most part people will be reading off of their map when looking at where stuff is for the exact locations. So why would i give u math that isnt based off of those numbers. its pointless.
Thanks for wasting my 15 mins to explain simple math calcuations and a science experiment.
Mate, do you realise that the Minecraft Wiki is an officially supported documentation project for Minecraft, right? And that it has hundreds or even thousands of contributors who've been researching Minecraft longer than you probably knew the game even existed? Do you know that it references some of Notch's own internal documentation regarding Minecraft? Did you see that little message in the Xbox 360 game that comes up sometimes saying "Do you know there's a Minecraft Wiki?". The page I linked to ... IS the Minecraft wiki that is referred to, in game. It's not just some guy's page. It's as close to official documentation as you're going to get.
Do you also know that Xbox 360 Minecraft is, for all intents and purposes here, exactly the same game as PC Minecraft Beta 1.6.6?
Seriously, you should do a little more research before you start jumping on people and telling them they're wrong.
what you fail to realise is that it doesnt mater that why i said i dont care about it. I know what a wiki is. It has nothing to do with what i posted. What i posted for was anyone on the MCXBLA game for quick refrence of ingame readings. Not adjusted readings from other math.
Its called Science learn how it works and stop filling my thread with your nonsence. If you dotn agree with it then dont read it. I never said it was 100% or anthing cause i didnt develope the game. So get over yourself.
The minecraft wiki is comprehensive, detailed, and up to date for the current PC version. I have found quite a few issues, though, with trying to apply its data to the XBox version:
2. Other general-subject pages (see Food for a good example) have been kept up to date for later PC releases, so we've lost all the historical detail that I can only assume was there for Beta 1.6. Notice we have no chart for how many hearts each food type restores, which would be useful for the XBox version. Its a wiki, so I'm sure its there somewhere the page history, but I'm not going to go spelunking for it. There is a mention in the history section of how it worked before beta 1.8, but no particularly useful detail about healing properties of specific foods.
3. Other pages have not been annotated to include information that is different or specific to the Xbox version. Two excellent examples are Altitude (relevant to this discussion) and Map (Item). See this question I posted (and later answered) about differences in how the map item works on the Xbox.
I trust the information on the wiki to be accurate for the PC, but I'll take it with a grain of salt when it comes to interpreting that for XBox, especially when it is in regard to something we know is different (like world size, coordinates, controls, mods and maps, etc).
All this to say, the analysis that the OP made was entirely appropriate to do for the XBox version. In fact, I've done a very similar analysis in other threads.
That's not to say that I entirely agree with his interpretation of the Y-coordinate (elevation) numbers, but I'll conceed that most of the time the difference won't matter. When one player says "go to coordinates X, Y, Z", they are going to be understood to mean "what the coordinates show in my map when I stand in that spot", and they'll find it.
I also don't think there is any disagreement over what coordinates the map item shows for different elevations:
When standing on a beach the same height as the ocean, the map shows Y=66.
Stepping down with my legs into the ocean, the map shows Y=65.
Stepping down again with the water just covering my head, the map shows Y=64.
The question, then, is "what elevation is the ocean?" I think the best answer is probably "the top water block of the ocean is at elevation 64" (since I interpret the map Y coordinate as the height of your eyes/head, like the PC version). I would also probably accept "the surface of the water is at Y=65" (the top of block 64) or "the map shows Y=66" when standing at the ocean".
A few other important differences between the XBox and PC with regard to elevation, based on my testing:
Sea Level. Highest ocean block in PC is at layer 62. Highest block in Xbox is at layer 64 (by my interpretation, see above discussion).
Lava level. The wiki says the lava lakes are at layer 10 in the PC version. In the XBox, I've found that to be safe, your map needs to show Y=14 (which puts the lava lakes at layer 11).
Bedrock differences. The Xbox has only 2 (visible) bedrock layers, at layers 2 and 3 (not sure if we can presume that other unreachable layers are at layers 0 and 1). The PC has 5 visible bedrock layers (layers 0-4). For a dramatic illustration of the difference, dig down to bedrock in the tutorial map (which I presume was created in the PC version). You'll find 4 layers of visible bedrock, instead of the normal 2.
Quibbling about the ocean level is mostly just semantics, but knowing the ideal level to mine so you don't fall in lava is pretty important, and the Wiki just doesn't have the correct information there for the XBox version.
I've said it before, but I would LOVE for someone to take a newly-generated XBox world, explore the whole map, then run the save file on USB stick through one of the PC "minecraft map analysis" tools, so we can confirm whether the "resources found at different layers" graphs on the wiki are really accurate for maps on the XBox.
I suppose there is one more possible interpretation of the elevations, which I think is the approach that the original poster, silentjoker was taking: if we assume that there are only two bedrock layers, at elevations 0 and 1. Then the map is showing "Y=4" when standing on layer 0, which means that the coordinate display is really off by two (I think that they have confirmed a rounding issue for coordinates). This seems like it might resolve the sea level discrepancy (although it doesn't fix the lava difference). This might be useful for translating PC layers into XBox layers, but I definitely don't want to have to worry about adding/subtracting 2 if I'm just talking with another Xbox user about coordinates.
Personally, every single thing I've checked on the wiki has matched the Xbox version once you take into account the version differences. In other words, when you read a wiki page, check the "History" section to see when various changes were made. This is exactly why I directly linked to the History section of the Altitude page above, because if you take that into account the altitude information from the wiki/PC version matches up 100% with the Xbox version. For example, sea level dropped one layer when the PC version hit Beta 1.8.
I'm not quite sure about the sea level discrepancy above, but I would lean towards it being 63 as per the wiki and not 64, and definitely not 66. I suspect 64 is the level your feet are at when you are standing on the shore at sea level , which makes the first sea level block one below this, thus 63.
The only pure difference between the two versions that I am certain about is the world size limitation, and that actually calculates down to one "region" from the PC version, which again highly suggests that almost every in game measurement will be the same as the PC at Beta 1.6.6.
Changes to things like lava level and bedrock depth also seem unlikely, as this would have much larger implications when using known seeds from the PC version on the Xbox version. I haven't heard of anybody finding any major map differences between seeds on PC and Xbox (barring size limit), but I am open to being proven wrong. That will be very easy to test - take a PC with beta 1.6.6 on it, load the seed on it and the Xbox, and check what level the sea is, for starters. A difference in sea level should be pretty easy to spot. If it's off by one, then is the entire map off by one on Xbox? If so, is the map actually off, or is it the coordinate display in the game that's off?
I do concede that finding some of the historical information for Beta 1.6.6 can be mildly tricky to nail down on the wiki, but it's still by far my first point of reference than a forum post with questionable math and conclusions. As for things like how many hearts such and such a food gives you in 1.6.6, it's possible that this was simply never actually documented on the wiki in the first place, and so there was nothing to fill in on the historical section.
Incidentally, you could always contribute your own findings back to the wiki you know. Even the contents of this thread (assuming it has merit) would be better served there.
Last note: silentjoker - see how calm and reasonable I've been here? That's what happens when someone makes a reasonable argument rather than getting defensive and abusive. If a scientific method is what you're aiming for, then you also need to be open to people being critical of the method you choose to use. That's part of why science works. I'm not sure why you're attempting to explain your observations in such lofty terms really, but that seems to be part of your defensive reaction. How about this for a proper scientific approach: go read the wiki, and note down all the values that align or don't align with you observations. See if you can work out which ones are different, and test this observation by comparing results from the PC and Xbox versions. Then see if you can explain the differences, if any, by some error in either you observations, an error in the wiki or in the observations made by people there, or in-game information providing different information to the player. Then test your hypothesis in some way. Then come back to me and start talking about science again.
To be clear, I think the wiki is a great resource, but especially for someone like me that never played any PC version, you really do have to learn a whole lot about what doesn't apply to the Xbox to make any given wiki page useful (and very little of it is explicitly stated).
Out of curiousity, I went back and found the Food page from before the 1.8 update: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/index.php?title=Food&oldid=90668
It definitely contains the "hearts healed per item" that is now missing, but would still be useful to XBox users. I have a hunch that trying to put that table back would not likely be a welcome edit to the current page
It's probably worth having a meta-discussion somewhere on the wiki about how they should handle the fracturing of versions like this on general-info pages. I'm sure a lot of this is relevant to users of Minecraft Pocket, too.
I'm not quite sure about the sea level discrepancy above, but I would lean towards it being 63 as per the wiki and not 64, and definitely not 66. I suspect 64 is the level your feet are at when you are standing on the shore at sea level , which makes the first sea level block one below this, thus 63.
...
Changes to things like lava level and bedrock depth also seem unlikely, as this would have much larger implications when using known seeds from the PC version on the Xbox version. I haven't heard of anybody finding any major map differences between seeds on PC and Xbox (barring size limit), but I am open to being proven wrong. That will be very easy to test - take a PC with beta 1.6.6 on it, load the seed on it and the Xbox, and check what level the sea is, for starters. A difference in sea level should be pretty easy to spot. If it's off by one, then is the entire map off by one on Xbox? If so, is the map actually off, or is it the coordinate display in the game that's off?
I don't own the PC version to test and compare. I have, though, tested this extensively on XBox:
Standing on the ocean shore, the map shows Y=66
Standing in waist-deep water, the map shows Y=65
Standing with your head just under water, the map shows Y=64
Standing on the top bedrock layer, the map shows Y=5
Standing on the bottom bedrock layer, the map shows Y=4
Standing on the edge of underground lava lakes, the map shows Y=13 (so safe mining when Y=14)
Standing on top of the top-most block you can place, the map shows Y=129
Feel free to test these yourself, and let me know if your findings agree.
As for what it means when the map shows "Y=66" (standing on the shore), then that's where it gets a little complicated.
To clarify the terminology the wiki uses, "layer" and "elevation/coordinate" are related but different. The lowest bedrock block is "layer 0", but extends from coordinate 0.0 to 1.0. Layer 20 would extend from coordinate 20.0 to 21.0. So standing on "layer 40", the top of that block is actually 41.0, your waist is at 42.0, and the top of your head is 43.0.
I do appreciate you pointing out that sea level before Beta 1.8 was layer 63 (coordinate 63.0 to 64.0), a block higher than it is in the current PC version. That accounts for one of our blocks-off, and may resolve our dilemma, see my calculations below.
I think what is happening here is that the XBox map takes the (fractional) "player eyes" coordinate and rounds up to the next integer. I don't have a link, but do recall a 4J post in a thread here admitting to a rounding issue. If this is true, then the coordinate shown by the in-game map corresponds to the block that starts right above the player's head.
So standing on the ocean shore, the map shows Y=66. If we use the above assumption, then the top of your head is at 66.0, your waist is at 65.0, the soles of your feet and the top of the water is at 64.0, and the top ocean layer is "layer 63" (from elevation 63.0 to 64.0). This appears to match the 1.6 PC version.
Doing this calculation for lava, standing on the shore of a lava lake, the map shows Y=13. This means I am standing at Y=11.0, which makes the top lava block at layer 10 (from 10.0 to 11.0). This also appears to match the PC version.
Bedrock, though, is in fact different than the PC. This same calculation logic puts the two visible XBox bedrock layers at layer 1 and 2 (coordinates 1.0 to 3.0), meaning that the XBox has two fewer bedrock layers than 1.6 PC. Again, mine down to bedrock on the tutorial level to see the difference visually. This gives us some potential for more ore in these two layers, but other than that it shouldn't impact other aspects of map generation. Again, sorry not to have a link, but I do recall a comment in another thread confirming that the XBox has fewer bedrock layers.
So I think I've come around to silentjoker's interpretation, since this resolves the question about how we "convert" between XBox coordinates and the "layers" PC coordinates: subtract 3 to find the "layer number" of the block you are standing on. (Turns out this isn't that different from PC users having to subtract 1.6 for the player's height and 1.0 for the height of the block you are standing on.)
The only remaining open issue is then how we refer to these coordinates or layers. I certainly don't want to have to lay out the above argument each time I refer to coordinates. I think the easiest way is to simply say "when your map shows X=23,Y=71,Z=100" which should be pretty clear.
So the values listed in the original post are correct, if you understand they are showing "Y=" coordinate values of the in-game map, and not showing the underlying "block layer" values we get by subtracting 3, per my prior post.
Also, because the XBox is missing the top 2 layers of Bedrock, any discussion about finding stuff "X layers above bedrock" will not match the PC version.
One more unrelated point regarding X and Z coordinates: strangely, there are TWO zero-blocks in each direction, a positive 0 and a negative 0 (walk to the (0,0) point on the map and you can confirm this). This isn't the way the coordinate plane usually works, so can make for some weird math when you are trying to add or subtract coordinates
So each of the X and Z coordinates go from 0 to 431 in the positive direction and -0 to -431 in the negative direction. (To clarify, you can stand where X=432, but you can't place a block there, so that's not usable space). This doesn't change the total usable world size (432 + 432 = 864).
In the PC version, your coordinates for Y are generaly X.6 (ie 64.6) with .6 being your eye level. Rounding up goes above your head, rounding down is roughly chest level and the same level as the block directly in front of you and one level above the block you're standing on.
From what I follow between the numbers posted and the observations from MegaTrain is that it seems the 4J map displays your Y coord as 2 levels above the one you're standing on which would be the block directly above your head.
Players have reported that they have void holes in their maps. Someone mentioned an experiment involving digging to bedrock to only find 2 layers, but I'm pretty sure I have at least 3 layers in one of my Xbox maps. Maybe a more accurate way to verify this is by asking someone that has found a void hole to note how many layers of bedrock they can find nearby. Not that it matters much.
Players have reported that they have void holes in their maps. Someone mentioned an experiment involving digging to bedrock to only find 2 layers, but I'm pretty sure I have at least 3 layers in one of my Xbox maps. Maybe a more accurate way to verify this is by asking someone that has found a void hole to note how many layers of bedrock they can find nearby. Not that it matters much.
How do you get a void hole? When a dungeon spawns down in the bedrock? Any known seeds that generate this? Or is there a way to destroy bedrock?
All Xbox maps I've played have only two visible bedrock layers (at what we've determined is layer 1 and 2). There could be another solid layer at layer 0, but I've never seen a hole in layer 1 to know if that is true. The only exception I've seen is the tutorial map, that might be what you are thinking of.
Brilliant analysis and discussion of this topic that has confuzzled me to no end, trying to convert the wiki's elevations over to xbox version's in a consistent manner. The fact that the coordinates actually are the lines between the blocks sure doesn't help the situation any. Would be so much simpler if each block was just an integer coordinate, there's just no need for decimal fractions and all that. Thanks to everyone for the posts, and to the OP for the handy list!
Here are the exact mesurments to what i have seen ingame. These are from the map coords. The map coords are measured from the head not the feet.
*** Measurement reads from 1 block above head So in theory u will read 3 at bedrock layer 1, 4 at bedrock layer 2 and 5 at bedrock layer 3. So if you read that gold is 5 layers above bedrock then the number on the map coords would be 8, 9 or 10 depending if u layer of bedrock you start your count at.
** There is an acutal layer of bedrock confirmed from multiple void videos where u use tnt in lava pools and it breaks threw these layers.
So
On the Map
X = West & East
Y = Height
Z = North & South
Player Size @ 2 Blocks
Bedrock @ 3 & 4 & 5
Sealevel @ 66
Clouds @ 110
Cloud Chunk @ 10L x 10W x 5H
Top Max @ 129
West End @ -432
West Seawall End @ -578
East End @ 432
East Seawall End @ 578
North End @ -432
North Seawall End @ -578
South End @ 432
South Seawall End @ 578
Center @ 0
Max Map Size @ 1174 Length x 1174 Width
Max Map Size Accessable @ 864 Length x 864 Width
View Distance Block Wise @ 310 Blocks or 155 Each Direction
View Distance Object Wise @ 15 Blocks
View Distance Animal / Player Wise @ 65 Blocks
** Spawn area is the highest block in the 20x20 area that doesnt have a water or lava source block in it. So if for example ur set to spawn @ 1,5 and there is something in that spot it will try another inside the 20x20 area. U cannot put water source blocks or lava blocks in the spawn area or near it aka the 38x38 protected area. You can spill water or lava into the area but the player will spawn in it and take damage. If you make a 1 layer 20x20 of dirt in the air at the spawn point you will spawn up there but if someone digs some of the blocks out they a player is set to spawn there will spawn down on the ground.
Spawn Area = 20x20 blocks
Protected Spawn Area = 38x38 blocks mostly 36x36 blocks but on some it goes to 38
If anyone has anything else they would like to add feel free to post it below if its possible to edit and update my post the whole time i will try and keep it updated.
Thanks
if u read it all it says its actually 4 blocks high bedrock is layer 1 and it reads 4. hence the block ur standing on is 1 + the person(2) + the block to mesure(1) = 4
I'd support 22tma's interpretation of elevations here, assuming that the Y coordinate is reporting the position of your head (which would be consistent with the PC version, which reports the position of your eyes).
So standing on the lowest level of bedrock, it shows Y=4. So your legs are in Y=3, you are standing on Y=2, and layers 0 and 1 are not accessable to you (presumably more layers of bedrock).
The highest block you can place is block 127. Standing on that block, it shows Y=129 (your head). You can jump and get it to briefly show Y=130.
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Bedrock#Post-Classic_.28Indev-present.29
"In Survival Mode, Bedrock appears on the very bottom 5 layers of a map and also at the top and bottom 4 layers of The Nether. It generates in a very rough pattern in both the Overworld and The Nether. In the Overworld, there are actually 5 layers even though it seems as if there are 4, this is because the lowest one you see is normally entirely Bedrock with little or no gaps. The lowest layer of Bedrock is layer 0, the highest is layer 4. It can also be seen at the top of the Nether, preventing you from going past layer 127."
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Altitude
"Before Minecraft 1.2.0, the height limit was 127."
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Altitude#History
"Originally, solid blocks could be placed from layer 0 to layer 127."
"Before 1.8, the sea level was at layer 63 instead of 62. Players who have maps created before this update will find one-block-high "waterfalls" at the edges of the terrain previously generated when moving into new, post-1.8 terrain."
As i stated i got a player is 4 blocks for measurement if bedrock was layer 1. cause a player isnt standing in the layer when it read its its on top of that layer. If you were next to the last layer of bedrock it would read 3. So if that 2nd layer is the last layer a player is measured at the 3rd block hence the 4 @ lvl 2 bedrock.
Dont bash my readings cause you simply cannot understand i clearly explained how i got my math adn where from. learn to understand how people come up with calculations based off of simple ingame response.
I dont care what someone else wrote on whatever page cause that was from a. a different game and b. their own ingame checking. This is minecraft xbla and for the most part people will be reading off of their map when looking at where stuff is for the exact locations. So why would i give u math that isnt based off of those numbers. its pointless.
Thanks for wasting my 15 mins to explain simple math calcuations and a science experiment.
my calculation is from the view distance added to the edge of the map.
Mate, do you realise that the Minecraft Wiki is an officially supported documentation project for Minecraft, right? And that it has hundreds or even thousands of contributors who've been researching Minecraft longer than you probably knew the game even existed? Do you know that it references some of Notch's own internal documentation regarding Minecraft? Did you see that little message in the Xbox 360 game that comes up sometimes saying "Do you know there's a Minecraft Wiki?". The page I linked to ... IS the Minecraft wiki that is referred to, in game. It's not just some guy's page. It's as close to official documentation as you're going to get.
Do you also know that Xbox 360 Minecraft is, for all intents and purposes here, exactly the same game as PC Minecraft Beta 1.6.6?
Seriously, you should do a little more research before you start jumping on people and telling them they're wrong.
Its called Science learn how it works and stop filling my thread with your nonsence. If you dotn agree with it then dont read it. I never said it was 100% or anthing cause i didnt develope the game. So get over yourself.
1. The xbox-specific pages seem to have good, accurate info (yay!)
2. Other general-subject pages (see Food for a good example) have been kept up to date for later PC releases, so we've lost all the historical detail that I can only assume was there for Beta 1.6. Notice we have no chart for how many hearts each food type restores, which would be useful for the XBox version. Its a wiki, so I'm sure its there somewhere the page history, but I'm not going to go spelunking for it. There is a mention in the history section of how it worked before beta 1.8, but no particularly useful detail about healing properties of specific foods.
3. Other pages have not been annotated to include information that is different or specific to the Xbox version. Two excellent examples are Altitude (relevant to this discussion) and Map (Item). See this question I posted (and later answered) about differences in how the map item works on the Xbox.
I trust the information on the wiki to be accurate for the PC, but I'll take it with a grain of salt when it comes to interpreting that for XBox, especially when it is in regard to something we know is different (like world size, coordinates, controls, mods and maps, etc).
All this to say, the analysis that the OP made was entirely appropriate to do for the XBox version. In fact, I've done a very similar analysis in other threads.
That's not to say that I entirely agree with his interpretation of the Y-coordinate (elevation) numbers, but I'll conceed that most of the time the difference won't matter. When one player says "go to coordinates X, Y, Z", they are going to be understood to mean "what the coordinates show in my map when I stand in that spot", and they'll find it.
I also don't think there is any disagreement over what coordinates the map item shows for different elevations:
A few other important differences between the XBox and PC with regard to elevation, based on my testing:
I've said it before, but I would LOVE for someone to take a newly-generated XBox world, explore the whole map, then run the save file on USB stick through one of the PC "minecraft map analysis" tools, so we can confirm whether the "resources found at different layers" graphs on the wiki are really accurate for maps on the XBox.
I suppose there is one more possible interpretation of the elevations, which I think is the approach that the original poster, silentjoker was taking: if we assume that there are only two bedrock layers, at elevations 0 and 1. Then the map is showing "Y=4" when standing on layer 0, which means that the coordinate display is really off by two (I think that they have confirmed a rounding issue for coordinates). This seems like it might resolve the sea level discrepancy (although it doesn't fix the lava difference). This might be useful for translating PC layers into XBox layers, but I definitely don't want to have to worry about adding/subtracting 2 if I'm just talking with another Xbox user about coordinates.
Sorry for the treatise. Hope this makes sense.
I'm not quite sure about the sea level discrepancy above, but I would lean towards it being 63 as per the wiki and not 64, and definitely not 66. I suspect 64 is the level your feet are at when you are standing on the shore at sea level , which makes the first sea level block one below this, thus 63.
The only pure difference between the two versions that I am certain about is the world size limitation, and that actually calculates down to one "region" from the PC version, which again highly suggests that almost every in game measurement will be the same as the PC at Beta 1.6.6.
Changes to things like lava level and bedrock depth also seem unlikely, as this would have much larger implications when using known seeds from the PC version on the Xbox version. I haven't heard of anybody finding any major map differences between seeds on PC and Xbox (barring size limit), but I am open to being proven wrong. That will be very easy to test - take a PC with beta 1.6.6 on it, load the seed on it and the Xbox, and check what level the sea is, for starters. A difference in sea level should be pretty easy to spot. If it's off by one, then is the entire map off by one on Xbox? If so, is the map actually off, or is it the coordinate display in the game that's off?
I do concede that finding some of the historical information for Beta 1.6.6 can be mildly tricky to nail down on the wiki, but it's still by far my first point of reference than a forum post with questionable math and conclusions. As for things like how many hearts such and such a food gives you in 1.6.6, it's possible that this was simply never actually documented on the wiki in the first place, and so there was nothing to fill in on the historical section.
Incidentally, you could always contribute your own findings back to the wiki you know. Even the contents of this thread (assuming it has merit) would be better served there.
Last note: silentjoker - see how calm and reasonable I've been here? That's what happens when someone makes a reasonable argument rather than getting defensive and abusive. If a scientific method is what you're aiming for, then you also need to be open to people being critical of the method you choose to use. That's part of why science works. I'm not sure why you're attempting to explain your observations in such lofty terms really, but that seems to be part of your defensive reaction. How about this for a proper scientific approach: go read the wiki, and note down all the values that align or don't align with you observations. See if you can work out which ones are different, and test this observation by comparing results from the PC and Xbox versions. Then see if you can explain the differences, if any, by some error in either you observations, an error in the wiki or in the observations made by people there, or in-game information providing different information to the player. Then test your hypothesis in some way. Then come back to me and start talking about science again.
GT: xPray 4 Deathx
Twitter: @xpray4deathx
Out of curiousity, I went back and found the Food page from before the 1.8 update:
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/index.php?title=Food&oldid=90668
It definitely contains the "hearts healed per item" that is now missing, but would still be useful to XBox users. I have a hunch that trying to put that table back would not likely be a welcome edit to the current page
It's probably worth having a meta-discussion somewhere on the wiki about how they should handle the fracturing of versions like this on general-info pages. I'm sure a lot of this is relevant to users of Minecraft Pocket, too.
I don't own the PC version to test and compare. I have, though, tested this extensively on XBox:
As for what it means when the map shows "Y=66" (standing on the shore), then that's where it gets a little complicated.
To clarify the terminology the wiki uses, "layer" and "elevation/coordinate" are related but different. The lowest bedrock block is "layer 0", but extends from coordinate 0.0 to 1.0. Layer 20 would extend from coordinate 20.0 to 21.0. So standing on "layer 40", the top of that block is actually 41.0, your waist is at 42.0, and the top of your head is 43.0.
I do appreciate you pointing out that sea level before Beta 1.8 was layer 63 (coordinate 63.0 to 64.0), a block higher than it is in the current PC version. That accounts for one of our blocks-off, and may resolve our dilemma, see my calculations below.
I think what is happening here is that the XBox map takes the (fractional) "player eyes" coordinate and rounds up to the next integer. I don't have a link, but do recall a 4J post in a thread here admitting to a rounding issue. If this is true, then the coordinate shown by the in-game map corresponds to the block that starts right above the player's head.
So standing on the ocean shore, the map shows Y=66. If we use the above assumption, then the top of your head is at 66.0, your waist is at 65.0, the soles of your feet and the top of the water is at 64.0, and the top ocean layer is "layer 63" (from elevation 63.0 to 64.0). This appears to match the 1.6 PC version.
Doing this calculation for lava, standing on the shore of a lava lake, the map shows Y=13. This means I am standing at Y=11.0, which makes the top lava block at layer 10 (from 10.0 to 11.0). This also appears to match the PC version.
Bedrock, though, is in fact different than the PC. This same calculation logic puts the two visible XBox bedrock layers at layer 1 and 2 (coordinates 1.0 to 3.0), meaning that the XBox has two fewer bedrock layers than 1.6 PC. Again, mine down to bedrock on the tutorial level to see the difference visually. This gives us some potential for more ore in these two layers, but other than that it shouldn't impact other aspects of map generation. Again, sorry not to have a link, but I do recall a comment in another thread confirming that the XBox has fewer bedrock layers.
So I think I've come around to silentjoker's interpretation, since this resolves the question about how we "convert" between XBox coordinates and the "layers" PC coordinates: subtract 3 to find the "layer number" of the block you are standing on. (Turns out this isn't that different from PC users having to subtract 1.6 for the player's height and 1.0 for the height of the block you are standing on.)
The only remaining open issue is then how we refer to these coordinates or layers. I certainly don't want to have to lay out the above argument each time I refer to coordinates. I think the easiest way is to simply say "when your map shows X=23,Y=71,Z=100" which should be pretty clear.
Also, because the XBox is missing the top 2 layers of Bedrock, any discussion about finding stuff "X layers above bedrock" will not match the PC version.
One more unrelated point regarding X and Z coordinates: strangely, there are TWO zero-blocks in each direction, a positive 0 and a negative 0 (walk to the (0,0) point on the map and you can confirm this). This isn't the way the coordinate plane usually works, so can make for some weird math when you are trying to add or subtract coordinates
So each of the X and Z coordinates go from 0 to 431 in the positive direction and -0 to -431 in the negative direction. (To clarify, you can stand where X=432, but you can't place a block there, so that's not usable space). This doesn't change the total usable world size (432 + 432 = 864).
In the PC version, your coordinates for Y are generaly X.6 (ie 64.6) with .6 being your eye level. Rounding up goes above your head, rounding down is roughly chest level and the same level as the block directly in front of you and one level above the block you're standing on.
From what I follow between the numbers posted and the observations from MegaTrain is that it seems the 4J map displays your Y coord as 2 levels above the one you're standing on which would be the block directly above your head.
Players have reported that they have void holes in their maps. Someone mentioned an experiment involving digging to bedrock to only find 2 layers, but I'm pretty sure I have at least 3 layers in one of my Xbox maps. Maybe a more accurate way to verify this is by asking someone that has found a void hole to note how many layers of bedrock they can find nearby. Not that it matters much.
How do you get a void hole? When a dungeon spawns down in the bedrock? Any known seeds that generate this? Or is there a way to destroy bedrock?
All Xbox maps I've played have only two visible bedrock layers (at what we've determined is layer 1 and 2). There could be another solid layer at layer 0, but I've never seen a hole in layer 1 to know if that is true. The only exception I've seen is the tutorial map, that might be what you are thinking of.