Quote from sleezymcwheezy
Wait, what? MC360 only has features from Beta 1.6? I never knew that, and I was so pumped about being able to play Minecraft on the Xbox, but now that I know it isn't even the full released game, I'm not even going to buy it.
What's the point of "finishing" Minecraft and "releasing" the "full version", when the Minecraft for Xbox isn't even the full game? What a horrible idea. To think I was actually excited for it, and I'm just receiving an unfinished piece of trash that I've already paid for and enjoyed to a further extent.
Minecraft 1.0 was more unfinished and unbalanced than Beta 1.6 in many respects, not limited to the End, Enchanting, terrain gen, and basically every other new feature Notch/Jeb threw in after Beta 1.7.3, many of which Jeb and the rest of Mojang team are still tweaking to this day. Beta 1.7.3 was probably the most polished and balanced Minecraft could be, since the core gameplay mechanics that existed then had several game dev cycles to perfect. On the major plus side is the older terrain generator, god forbid Mojang and 4J Studios from changing the older gen to the "piece of trash" we have now.
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I apologize for any confusion you may have had in reading my obviously verbose OP, so I'd like to clear up any and all misconceptions you may have as well as respond to some of the issues you perceive concerning the aims of the thread.
1) I never would want terrain generation for any biome, structure, and such that contains even a modicum of sand to be flat, or restricted to a certain height level. This especially applies to Desert biomes; I enjoy the fact that it isn't completely flat as it is now and even would have prefer it more if it still occasionally generated mountainous dunes as it did prior to Beta 1.8. The height restriction stated would apply only to beach-related generation and nothing else, as it was prior to Beta 1.8. That was a mistake on my part; I suppose I didn't elaborate clearly enough.
tl;dr - Said height restriction would be limited to beaches only. Deserts and other pertaining features would be precluded from this.
2) I suppose using arbitrary aesthetics isn't much of a good argument when dealing with underwater terrain. But it does not look pleasing at all when you have patches of clay, sand and dirt dotting beds of water. I can't say I agree with the counter-arguments you present either; Gravel can't be clearly observed in a mountain or even outside of it in the repetitive patterns you see with underwater gen; Your point concerning Cobblestone is only due to the fact that it is the most mined and accessible block available in the entire game (aside from maybe dirt) and most people using it as a building material have questionable aesthetic senses. Any block misused can make structures ugly and vice versa.
And how would there be any less variation if underwater generation more akin to that of the one used prior to Beta 1.8? As I see it, there isn't much variation in the first place; whether you go to a lake, a river, or even the bottom of the ocean, you can see the same repetitive pattern: circular patches of dirt, sand, or clay. Using something along the older generator would probably increase variation in the formation of said deposits; you could go to one area and see a lake bed of dirt, at another, gravel, and so on. The point is that you'd be able to see something a little different with each body water, shaped differently as well.
tl;dr - Gravel does not generate in the same way and isn't as apparent; Cobblestone can and is misused, the block itself isn't ugly; Current underwater generation is as unvaried in the first place as it is terrible to look at.
3) As for the variation of beaches themselves, the point of the screenshots and such is to depict the general inconsistency of beaches in that they often break and randomly rise in height level, often in the same beach, to relatively great heights. I guess I would be fine with beaches that were somewhat higher than your stereotypical one if they didn't do so as if it looked like it was a sine wave with random patches of grass dotting the waterline. I suppose I also tried dealing with the problem of coastal generation in general with suggesting the re-addition of gravel beaches.
However, this is one of those issues where 'realism' isn't necessarily the best way to go in dealing with these problems. People largely play Minecraft to escape from the drudgery of reality to a surreal, aesthetically-pleasing world where they can lose themselves in the immersive environment. Why can't these people have idealistically-resort-styled beaches?
tl;dr - Beaches are generated in height, composition, and length so randomly it is not appealing. At least some uniformity would be nice.
** You've also pointed out that one should not expect beaches to work flawlessly with the new terrain generator. The thread remains to exist to point out that that has certainly not been the case ever since they were reimplemented. However, I would think that it would be easier to modify and improve with the current terrain generator since it is no longer noise-based. Each biome is separated with its own coding (with beaches being its own biome now), so it should logically be easier to edit said coding without having to muss up the entire code base, as it would have entailed if it were with the older gen. I can recalling Notch himself stating the new generator would be easier to work with at the inset of Beta 1.8. Why hasn't this shown to be the case with the new beaches?
tl;dr - The new biome coding should allow for easier editing of beach biomes so they can be perfected. Why hasn't this happened?
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Sorry! I was away from the forums for quite a while, so I didn't see your comment. I'm not sure what happened with the poll myself, but it's back now and it is looking fine to me. Thanks for bringing it up!
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I agree with the point you are trying to make with this; realism, I suppose, is a flawed argument for reimplementation or addition of a feature in a game like Minecraft. However, the real life pictures were meant to show that the aesthetics of realistic beaches were far more appealing than those of the current beaches in the game, not necessarily to say that reality alone is better.
And apparently reality seems to be more agreeable with the forum community, probably for the reason that many probably envision beaches as the aesthetically appealing type one would find on a tropical island or whatnot. The appearance of the terrain gen, as you may well know, contributes greatly to the fun factor of the game. And so I believe that further improvement of beaches would be great since it does contribute to one's enjoyment of Minecraft and would also be realistic. That is more or less the point I was trying to convey with the photographs.
I'll admit though that I didn't really mention that the purpose of the photographs was to display how realistic beaches were, to a degree, better than the ones the current terrain gen produces. Thanks for bringing this into light and elucidating me on how the photographs that have been used may not be proper evidence. I'd happily take any suggestions on how I can improve how the information in the OP is conveyed.
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I believe these people are referring to server/multiplayer lag. Your case is an unusual one and is probably due to the recent fixes/adjustments that have boosted general performance, like the current snapshot's decreased memory usage. I truly do hope that Jeb does implement a fix before 1.3 is released, or he'll have to answer to innumerable complaints from the vast majority of startled players who (not only use lower- to mid-end computers from "99'" but also) do not bother to try out the snapshots or follow game development.
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Perhaps you haven't seen the screenshots of the beaches that generated prior to Beta 1.8? They were certainly more "epic" than the ones we have now, so there's no reason why we can't continue to petition for the improvement of the current beach generation. Of course, as you say, we can always make our own beaches as one could, perhaps, make their own waterfalls? Only a thought of course.
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Also, torches can be placed on top of string, creating the illusion that they can float.
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My only question is why Mojang doesn't change its advertising accordingly. I realize that there couldn't possibly a new "This is Minecraft" video for every little change but I have seen Mojang-sponsored (though not in a monetary sense, I know that Mojang spends little to no money on actual advertising) images and videos that seem to depict older versions of Minecraft. Why is that? Perhaps the older versions of Minecraft are more iconic and resonate more within players?
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Please explain how the newer terrain generator is an improvement over the older one. The inclusion of pictures that supports said argument would be preferable. I'd like to also mention how some people might want to play using the older terrain generator but with the newer game mechanics as well. You can't do that on older versions of Minecraft.
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Minecraft 1.0 was more unfinished and unbalanced than Beta 1.6 in many respects, not limited to the End, Enchanting, terrain gen, and basically every other new feature Notch/Jeb threw in after Beta 1.7.3, many of which Jeb and the rest of Mojang team are still tweaking to this day. Beta 1.7.3 was probably the most polished and balanced Minecraft could be, since the core gameplay mechanics that existed then had several game dev cycles to perfect. On the major plus side is the older terrain generator, god forbid Mojang and 4J Studios from changing the older gen to the "piece of trash" we have now.
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Ironically, beaches being a biome in the new level format and terrain generator should make it easily editable, at least so that beaches can be restricted to a specific height limit, three (or two?) blocks above sea level as it was prior to Beta 1.8, instead of having ridiculously-tall sand dunes on high coastal areas. Apparently either Jeb is very lackadaisical when it comes to terrain gen coding or having the new fractal-based gen instead of the older noise-based one does not simplify matters as much as Notch and Jeb claimed it would.
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I'm in the process of farming leather for cheap, dispensable leather armor and I have noticed that it is rather difficult to produce a good deal of it even in a relatively long period of time. I feel that leather armor is a great thing to use as a disposable defense when one has to go leave one's base for a quick dip in the nearby mine, especially when you can easily throw on a Lvl. 1 enchantment on each armor piece. Having leather as a new ingredient for books would only make it more difficult for a player to stock up on surplus armor.
Again, I don't really care if I'm going to have farm a while longer, but even one leather per book can become a few dozen when a player needs to make enough bookshelves for an enchanting room. Thankfully, this doesn't seem to matter much since books and by extension, bookshelves, really only need to be crafted once. I don't wish to end this with a tangential remark, but I feel the real question is: Why hasn't Jeb made saddles craftable with leather? It would seem like the logical thing to do.
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The main concern of this topic is the way in which beaches generate. Granted they are back, but you admitted it yourself; they do not generate the same way. The old beach generator is undoubtedly superior to the current one.
The picture I used to illustrate the current problem concerning their generation is still valid. As far as I know, beach gen has been virtually unchanged up to 1.2.3. Or perhaps I should get yet another screenshot from a seed out of the many hundreds that has this same problem?
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Perhaps you cannot read; That is no longer the concern.
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That's probably true, but Jeb did change the terrain quite a bit in order to satisfy people who thought it was too bland by adding greater topographical variation, better transitions, etc. Changes did occur, so in a sense, this and other topics may have influenced some to go tweet Jeb about it. However, the impact of this particular topic may have been negligible as complaints relating to terrain gen have been appearing in large amounts ever since Beta 1.8 was introduced.
In any case, you are right; if people want implementation of new features, they would probably have to start a new topic and somehow garner a large following, one large enough to tweet Jeb in droves so that the changes relating to that topic will occur.
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Perhaps the the topic in my signature proves otherwise? Or maybe it is a mere coincidence that the re-introduction of beaches (a rather specific feature addition, mind you) occurred in only weeks after the posting of the "Bring Back Beaches" topic, something that did garner great attention and popularity? You are correct that Twitter may be the only thing that can persuade Jeb (or Notch, Jon, etc.) to work on certain features/bugs, but topics like these can influence people to go tweet about said features.