Minecraft Forums

Are you looking for a great way to spruce up your winter-y shelters? Want a pretty distraction for when the night comes? Look no further than a snowglobe! Snowglobes would be small items (around the scale of a flower pot) you can craft and place around the house. The crafting recipe would take 3 glass, 1 snowball, and 3 planks.
After crafting a snowglobe, you can place it on a block. It'll appear as a small little, well, snowglobe, about the size of other aesthetic blocks. A small little glass thing with a wood base and snow inside. Right-clicking it would cause the snow inside to shake!I hope you like this idea for a small little item to make a house a home. I feel like a small item like this would fit well into the game among other decorations, and it's small enough to not significantly impact the game. I hope you've liked this short idea, and if you did, leave feedback for how this could be improved!

Updates

• January 7 - Hexacore has made a great render! This should give you a good idea of how a snowglobe would look.

• January 8th - I've made a simple banner with Hexacore's render. It's not the best, but I hope you like it!

Minecarts are pretty cool in Minecraft. You can make chains of them, transport goods, make a troublesome moving explosion machine, and other things. However, they can be taken down easily just by holding down your left mouse button. This led me to come up with the idea of adding trains.

Appearance
Trains would be similar in design aspects to minecarts, but with several differences. The model for the train is 5 blocks long, a block wide, and has varied height- in the four 'blocks' in the back, it'd be roughly 1.5 blocks tall, and in the front, it'd be 1 block tall. The outside of the train is wooden and reuses the plank texture, with the front having a metal (think anvil or hopper) 'round' piece in the front to make it look like a real train.
Crafting
The train would be a fairly simple crafting recipe. 3 wooden planks on the top and bottom rows, a minecart with a furnace in the middle-left, a minecart in the center, and an iron block in the front. With this recipe, you can make yourself a train of your own!
Usage
Trains would work like a bigger minecart- with 3 slots instead of one. Unlike a minecart, which you craft items into to get things like storage carts, you place chests/TNT/hoppers inside of your train's seats. To do this, just sneak and right-click them into place. With 3 slots open, you can take friends for a trip, bring heavy loads on a long ride, or set up a dastardly dangerous trap with 3 blocks of TNT. Or you can just have fun pretending you're a cowboy in the west, or you're heading to Hogwarts or something. In addition to more space, the Train can take up to 18 hits- 3 times as much as a singular minecart!

However, with these advantages come some disadvantages. Just like the crafting recipe implies, the back of the train has a furnace, which you have to power to keep your big old train moving. The stronger the fuel, the faster you move. As well, due to the train's size, it cannot make instant turns- there must be at least three rails between each curve in the track before a train can turn again.

In closing, I think that trains would add a lot to Minecraft. Mass transportation of goods, a fun ride with friends, big moving explosions, or even a rollercoaster that can hold multiple people in one cart! I hope you enjoy this idea, and feel free to give feedback- I want this idea to become the best it can be!

I like that they've added a colored block that's more like a tint or a wash rather than fully colored. It adds a lot of potential to buildings and all sorts of maps!

13w18a is out! From the changelog, it's mostly bugfixes, but they added...

• New texture loading system
• Coal blocks (seen above)
• Horse armor in dungeons
• Hay bale and lead crafting recipes!

Just post your thoughts about it here, I guess, and if you find anything neat or figure out how new stuff works, that'd be great!

Quote from Conn1278

While this is true, the rarity of gear encourages players to actively fight for it, increasing the quality of PvP play. And I don't know about you, but I normally obtain a dozen pig saddles easily after a week of play, between stealing them and finding them myself

Edit: And like you said, pig saddles were a novelty, but adding this new level of usefulness will make them increasingly valuable and viable.

The game shouldn't be skewed entirely towards PvP- while balancing all elements of the game is good, they shouldn't mess with balance for the sake of just one style of gameplay. Besides, pig riding itself is a novelty, and riding a pig from point A to point B can be done even better on a horse or with minecarts.

Quote from Cruncheon

If we could just build a saddle out of easy materials, that would take the fun out of it. You find a saddle in a chest, and then you think "Wow, think of the possibilities!" Then you go on an epic adventure to find a horse, ride it back home and think to yourself "Yup, worth all the effort." If we could just make saddles easily it would be unbalanced slightly.

Actually, under current circumstances, craftable saddles would still be balanced. Horses are very rare already, so really, it's just making half of owning a horse less rare, which is actually a good thing since horses and their gear are both/will be pointlessly rare. Pig riding is mainly a novelty, and carrots are rare for those who want to control it with a carrot on a stick,

I've been an avid player of Minecraft since Beta 1.7.3, and I love the game for its creative charm and expansive options- you can explore, mine, fight evil creatures, and more. When I first heard 1.6 would be adding horses to the game, I was reluctant, but upon playing around with them I found myself loving to race people and see what kind of crazy stunts I could pull off. However, Jeb has announced that there will be only 1 saddle from now on and all horse gear will be dungeon-only loot.

These changes Jeb has announced, along with the crippling 1% chance of spawning for horses cripples the usefulness of the new mount. They're already rare enough (I'm op on a server with 20+ regular players and only a handful have located horses) and making the materials needed to maintain them exclusive to dungeon chests severely limits how useful they can be. While Jeb says they're supposed to be rare, there's a fine line between 'reasonably rare' and 'frustratingly hard to locate', and it's a line horses have crossed.

While I understand that horses are supposed to be rare and for use in the endgame, i feel like if you have to run around in a plain biome for a while (not to mention the long journey if you live far from a plain) is tedious, and putting all the equipment for making your new majestic steed useful in randomly generated dungeons is just plain boring and makes getting such a mount a tedious process. Another thing I would like to point out is that in this game, we can kill abominations that beat you up if you even look at them funny, get teleporting pearls, go to another dimension, get some powder with the very essence of fire itself, and put those together to go to a floating island and slay a dragon, yet we can't make a simple saddle out of leather.

I don't mean to be whiny, and I appreciate all the hard work Mojang puts into this game for the fans, but I feel like if you make one mob very rare and then shove all the equipment for riding it and keeping it safe in dungeons, you're making them more of a chore to maintain than a useful mount in the later portions of the game.

Meh, I don't particularly like the addition of horses. We already have a fine mount with pigs- they're balanced fine. Adding horses will either be redudant because they're just bigger pigs without the drops or OP due to being better than pigs (who, as I said, are well-balanced with their fast speed but rough control), which is a lose-lose situation.

I would like to suggest this for both the mod and the idea itself, but perhaps we could replace bone with Nether Quartz as an inset.

Cerealkiller made an amazing signature for this topic! Help us support by using it!

<a href="http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/suggestions/69158-dinner-plate-all-food-like-cakes"><img src='http://i48.tinypic.com/2nk2l2f.png' /></a>

The signature looks like this:

Another idea in mind: If you have smaller food items, like cookies or carrots, you should be able to fit multiple of them on one plate!



If you like this idea, don't forget to press the green arrow right below this post to give reputation!

See also:

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Table of Contents:

Overview
Changes in how things work
Frequently Asked Questions
[WIP] The Cubic Chunks Mod!
Gallery
Supporting this suggestion
Special thanks

[spoiler=Tl:dr]Q: Won't this increase lag?
A: Absolutely not. The title of this suggestion and big red letters at the top of this post aren't lying. If you want to know how, then I suggest you actually read this post.

Q: Will this change terrain? Will this break existing worlds?
A: No. Terrain change is not necessary. Existing worlds can be converted fairly easily with a process described later in this post.

Q: How can sunlight or rain work with infinite vertical space?
A: I suggest you read Coping with sunlight, because it's too complex for a tl;dr.

Q: I have a different question but still don't feel like reading this post. What do I do?
A: Too bad, read the FAQ. I put way too much work into this for the entirety of it to be ignored.[/spoiler]

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Overview:

In Minecraft, the sky is the limit - literally. It doesn't matter how many thousands of blocks a player has traveled, or what dimension they're in, or even if they're playing in creative or survival, the highest they can ever build is up to a height of 256. Why is that? If Minecraft can have a world that's infinite in the north, in the south, in the east, and in the west, why can't that world be infinite up and down too?

In Minecraft's earliest days, in Classic and Indev, the world was not infinite in any direction. This was because the entire world needed to be generated at the same time, and the entire world needed to be simulated at the same time as well. This led to a conundrum - the bigger the world, the more it lagged.
Notch didn't like this. He knew his players liked to explore and build large creations, so he found a way to make the world truly infinite. When the Minecraft '' class='bbc'>Infdev came out, it brought with it truly infinite worlds. Suddenly, players could travel hundreds of thousands of blocks in any direction, and never encounter a barrier, or become too laggy.
The Infdev update brought about a very large change to Minecraft worlds to accomplish this feat. For the first time, instead every world being just a single huge piece, they were broken up into a two-dimensional grid of pieces, called chunks. Through breaking the world up into pieces, this 'chunk system' enabled infinite worlds by letting Minecraft create new pieces and simulate them only when it needs to.

Why does that not apply to the vertical axis? Because the type of 'chunk system' Minecraft uses right now is a linear one, which, by using only a two-dimensional grid to map out chunks, means that it is impossible for chunks to stack on top of one another, and by extension, meaning that a single chunk must cover the entire vertical space. This brings back the problem that the Infdev update was supposed to eradicate, now only with chunks, instead of an entire world; the bigger a chunk is, the more laggy it is. You can't just increase the height limit and make chunks taller, because it will become laggier, and laggier, and laggier to do it.
That's why, to fix this, Minecraft must change over to a cubic chunk system. Under this system, 16³ block chunks are aligned on a three-dimensional grid, completely eliminating maximum height as an aspect of lag.

The immediate benefits:
•Minecraft worlds become as virtually infinite vertically as they are horizontally: The absolute limit being Y = ±30,000,000.
•A large FPS increase: Alpha testers report an FPS increase of 100~200%.
•Increase in running capability: Computers running Minecraft on Tiny render distance will handle only 30% the blocks they do now.

The possible features:
•Spherical render/load distance: Reduce handled blocks by up to 30% by cutting corners made of unneeded chunks.
•Server chunk occlusion/exclusion: Reduce bandwidth usage and defeat hackers by only sending data for visible chunks.
•Three-dimensional biomes: Save biome data per chunk rather than per block column, create volcanoes with magma chambers, underground rivers, tropical skylands floating over icy taigas, and more.

The disadvantages:
•Unloaded gravity-pause: Falling non-player entities and fluids will be forced to pause their fall if they reach unloaded chunks, but will resume falling when those chunks are loaded.
•Slow falling-pause: Players with slower computers and smaller render distances will have falling occasionally paused as they fall into unloaded chunks, until new chunks can be loaded.

The problems:
•Current sunlight and rain calculation methods cannot work with infinite vertical space: The solution to this is described here.
•Current BiomeDecorator cannot work with multiple vertical chunks simultaneously: The BiomeDecorator code must be altered to function correctly with this, or removed.
•Current cave generation method is executed an extra time for each vertical chunk created simultaneously, leading to lag spikes on world generation: Cave generation's method must be altered to suit this system more.
•Current grass/dirt generation algorithm forces additional chunk requests when chunks are loaded, causing chunks to load slower than they should: This algorithm must be replaced with something else.

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Changes in how things work:

Obviously, the implementation of this new chunk system will change quite a few things. These changes are mostly either necessary or in the interest of increased efficiency. Such changes are categorized and explained below.

How worlds will be stored:
[spoiler]How the current storage works, and what changes:
Interestingly enough, the current method of storage, the Anvil format, is derived from the storage method that the original Cubic Chunks mod used. The Anvil format stores individual chunk as a series of 16³ quasi-cubic chunks. These 'fake' cubic chunks allow for easier reference of specific data, but they still can't be separated from each other, meaning that it fails to reap the full benefits of this system. Even so, the change allowed Mojang to double the maximum height with no performance hit. Chunks are stored in groups of 32², inside 'MCRegion' files, for a total of 1024 chunks.
By nature, cubic chunks does away with the 'quasi-cubic' nonsense. In terms of chunk grouping, instead of using groups of 32³ chunks, new "3DRegion" files would contain groups of 16³. This means each 3DRegion file contains 4096 chunks, four times as many as MCRegion files. However, each 3DRegion contains only one fourth the amount of blocks. For per-chunk positional metadata, 3DRegion files would use the same number of bits as MCRegion files, after compression. Calculations show that the same area encompassed by a single MCRegion file would consume 64 kilobytes of extra space with 4 3DRegion files, which is nothing.

Converting existing worlds:
Most people are probably wondering something like "But won't this totally destroy all existing worlds?". Absolutely not; conversion could not be simpler. When a non-cubic world is loaded after the implementation of this system, a conversion process will begin and convert the entire world at once(To avoid making chunk loading take longer during play). First, all existing MCRegion files will be divided into quarters to create 3DRegion files. Then, all existing chunks are divided into sixteenths using the quasi-cubic properties to identify boundaries. After that, conversion is done.

The "isEmpty" flag optimization:
A 1-bit flag is added to each chunk, named "isEmpty". If the chunk consists of 100% air blocks, this bit is 1, any other case makes it 0. When the bit is 1, all data for the chunk besides the isEmpty flag is deleted and ignored, which reduces filesize. Empty chunks are never loaded, and locations where they occur are merely simulated as entities reside in them. The chunk will only load when something requires saving inside it.[/spoiler]

Changes to terrain, ores, etcetera:
[spoiler]Terrain:
By default, nothing will change. Small bits of terrain generation code need to be reconfigured to work properly with Cubic Chunks.

Biomes:
By default, nothing will change.

Ore generation:
By default, nothing will change.

Structures:
By default, nothing will change.

The Void:
After conversion to Cubic Chunks, the void and bedrock layer will still exist and generate as they always have. However, the void(Not the bedrock layer!) will not exist as a hard limit and is able to be moved, but not removed, by editing an associated NBT data tag inside a world's level.dat. This feature, that allows for increasing the maximum depth, is intentionally disabled without external programs, to prevent terrain change of any sort. It is intended to be used by experienced mapmakers and world generation mods only.

Superflat settings:
Existing superflat worlds will not change. However, new superflat worlds will gain a new decoration parameter, 'void'. Inclusion of this parameter will cause the void to form below the lowest defined layer. Exclusion of it will cause all layers below the lowest defined layer to copy the settings of that layer.[/spoiler]

Coping with sunlight:
[spoiler]There used to be a solution here, but it wasn't deemed good enough by Jeb. Suggest solutions in this thread.[/spoiler]

Changes to servers:
[spoiler]Settings:
There's a setting inside the Server.properties file called 'max-build-height'. The setting makes it impossible for any player to place or remove blocks above that height.
With the implementation of Cubic Chunks, a new setting named "maximum-generation-depth" would be added. The void, bedrock layers, and magma layers will generate normally at and above the Y level designated by the value of this setting.

Chunk occlusion/exclusion:
Using the raytracing methods already available in the code and used for explosion calculations, servers can identify which chunks are visible to a player, within safe assumptions, and only send the data for those chunks. This both reduces bandwidth usage, and cripples the usefulness of X-Ray cheats.[/spoiler]

Render/Load distance alterations:
[spoiler]After the implementation of Cubic Chunks, view distances' radii will apply to the vertical axis too. This reduces handled blocks in the cases of tiny and short render distances, and increases them in the cases of normal and far render distances. This can be optimized by utilizing a spherical render distance instead of a cubic one, which would reduce handled blocks in all distances except Far.[/spoiler]

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Frequently Asked Questions:

[spoiler=FAQ]Q: This is impossible.
A: No it's not. See below.

Q: Is this available as a mod?
A: Not yet! But it will be!

Q: I like X-ray! What if I don't want it to be broken?
A: First of all, breaking X-ray hacks will only be possible to do in multiplayer. That said, the system that would break X-ray would be possible to disable by the server owner. If the owner doesn't disable the system, then they don't want you using X-ray, and you should not be doing what the server owner doesn't want in the first place.

Q: I play on a PvP/Anarchy/Raid/Faction server. Won't this system let people pillar up into the sky and create a base thousands of blocks in the air and never be found?
A: No.

Q: I like Minecraft's current height limits. What if I don't want to have an infinite sky or infinite underground?
A: If this system is added, all worlds will not automatically gain an infinite underground. As stated below, the Void will remain in all worlds, even after the conversion to Cubic Chunks. The ability to remove the Void will simply be there. As for infinite space in the sky, the current build limit is over one hundred blocks above any terrain that vanilla Minecraft can possibly generate. It is ENTIRELY your decision on whether or not you take advantage of this height. If you play on a server, like stated above, the server owner can set a maximum build height. If s/he doesn't, then don't play on their server - you don't play on servers where the server owners allow things you don't like. Why would you play on an anarchy server if you hate being stolen from and killed?

Q: Will this affect Redstone at all?
A: No. This system will simply make it possible to make larger redstone circuitry than before.

Q: Won't this break existing worlds?
A: No. Existing worlds can be easily converted by dividing each MCRegion file into 4 pieces, then slicing the existing 256 block-high chunks inside them into 16 individual chunks.

Q: Won't this affect mods? Won't mod authors have a hard time updating their mods?
A: The answer to this question depends solely on the answer to the following two questions: Do parts of the modification code rely on chunk data/metadata? Does the mod author want to take advantage of the features of the new chunk system? If the answers to the first and second question are both "No", then updating a mod to this system should be very easy and quick. If the answer to the first question is "Yes", then those parts of the code will need to be rewritten somewhat, but in most cases, the changes should be fairly quick and easy. The only time that it should be hard to update a mod to this system, is if the answer to the second question is "Yes".

Q: Won't this require a total rewrite of the mod API if that's released first?
A: No. Whether or not even a small part of the mod API needs to be rewritten depends on the way that it is implemented and whether or not there are API inclusions for chunk handling and other chunk-related behavior.

Q: Could a player fall into unloaded chunks if chunks aren't loaded fast enough?
A: No, they could not, and for several reasons. Minecraft has a terminal velocity, though it might not seem like it. This velocity is slower than it should take to load new chunks below the player. In cases with exceptionally slow computers, even if the player did manage to reach an unloaded chunk, their fall would be paused until that chunk can be loaded.

Q: What would happen when water, sand, or a mob falls into an unloaded chunk?
A: Nothing. The water/sand/mob would freeze in place until the chunk is loaded and it can continue moving. You can already see this same thing happening on the horizontal axis.

Q: What will happen to the Void?
A: It will still exist, along with all its effects. The only difference is that the Void is no longer a hard limit and it can be moved. After the conversion to Cubic Chunks, the Void's location will be stored in a world's ' class='bbc'>level.dat, and this location can be changed with NBT editing tools. When and where the Void exists, chunks will cease to generate.

Q: Will this affect terrain?
A: No. However, terrain generators will gain the ability to use infinite height.

Q: Will this affect ore generation?
A: No. Ore is a part of terrain generation. As stated above, terrain will not be changed.

Q: Won't all current terrain generators be incompatible with this system and need to be rewritten?
A: No. Terrain generators work independently of chunks. When a chunk is generated for the first time, it calls the terrain generator and receives a specific section of the resultant terrain to save inside itself. Because of this, some custom terrain generators can generate steep terrain all the way to Y256, where you can experience a large, flat cut-off. Since there are no chunks above Y256 to call the terrain generator for terrain, no terrain exists there.

Q: What would happen if there's a huge solid ceiling so far above you that it is unloaded? Wouldn't you just see the sky, just with everything being completely dark?
A: Yes. This already happens on the horizontal axis, and it is an issue with sky rendering, not this chunk system. As such, this has nothing to do with this suggestion. Please do not post about this.

Q: If you go deep underground, will your plants grow/ores smelt/animals grow?
A: No, because those chunks would be unloaded, just as if you had walked far away. This is a flaw with any chunk system, regardless of shape. It is a necessary evil that allows Minecraft to have infinite worlds. The only way to fix this would be to introduce a separate new system that works with chunks as they are loaded and unloaded. This suggestion deals with the chunk system itself, and not sister processes. Because of that, that is outside of the scope of this suggestion. Please do not post about this.[/spoiler]

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[WIP] The Cubic Chunks Mod! (Tall Worlds Mod):

Cuchaz has taken it upon himself to bring us the glorious Cubic Chunks, since Mojang refuses to do so.

Cuchaz is using a API of his own creation to help assist in the making of this mod, and he's quite far along, as seen in these two tech demo videos:
[spoiler=T-Demo 1: Vertical chunk loading][/spoiler]
[spoiler=T-Demo 2: Broken height cap and no lag!][/spoiler]
With the basic functionality in place - a complete overhaul of the basic chunk system, and height limit removed - this whole concept can already be considered proven. What remains is making sure everything else functions correctly under the new chunk system. In any case, stay tuned for future updates if it interests you(If it doesn't, then you are the weakest link - goodbye!).

You can follow the mod's development in much more depth in its very own topic!

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Gallery:

[spoiler=A mountainside with an experimental engine using Cubic Chunks designed by Nocte. 960 block view radius, and 30 FPS.][/spoiler]
[spoiler=A different view of the mountainside with the same engine by Nocte. This time, with 1600 block view radius and 15 FPS.][/spoiler]
[spoiler="A video demonstrating Nocte's engine."]

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Support & Submission to Mojang:

If you support this, hit the rep button in the bottom-left corner of this post. It is the only good way of accurately measuring support here.

If you wish, you can put the following banner, courtesy of laz2727, into your signature. It helps to attract support from all parts of the forum!

 [url=http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1707097-cubic-chunks-infinite-height-elimination-of-x-ray-and-more-60-supporters/page__st__0][img]http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/443/hov.png[/img][/url]

Please help us get word out of this suggestion! Share this with your friends, with Minecraft celebrities if you're familiar with them, or even with Mojangsters like Jeb or Dinnerbone! (Do not share this with Notch. Notch doesn't work with Minecraft anymore.)

The purpose of this suggestion is to have Cubic Chunks implemented in Vanilla. Being available as a modification does not fulfill that purpose. The modification featured in this suggestion is to act as a proof-of-concept only(Note: Its being featured here is to act as a proof-of-concept. The modification itself is on its way to becoming a fully fledged modification).

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Special thanks:
Cuchaz, for taking Barteks' proof and running with it, to give us a truly functional Cubic Chunks mod.
Barteks2x, for updating the Cubic Chunks mod to 1.6.2, proving that it is possible.
Azraile, for posting the original suggestion and allowing me to take ownership of it.
Nocte, for helping resolve flaws and designing Hexahedra.
MineCrak, for a large amount of valuable insight and enthusiasm into the topic of Cubic Chunks.
aaronfranke, for helping resolve flaws.
PanJouda, for creating the original banner.
Flexico, for creating the predecessor to the current banner.
laz2727, for creating the current banner.
Robinton, for creating the original Cubic Chunks mod.
The_Watchman13, for answering all those stupid questions so I don't have to.

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Note: Many calculations and information can be found among the many posts of this topic. There are too many for me to cite here, but if you wish, you can search for them yourself.

This suggestion implements a rather useful feature to normal clay. Clay now has physics like gravel or sand, but with a big difference.

Clay now has a special feature. It falls like gravel or sand, but instead of being many different entities, it acts as a single entity if more than one clay block are touching. Yes, these snapshots were taken on pocket edition, don't ask.

In this image, the clay is falling.


Here, since one block of clay touched a platform, the entire wall of clay stopped.

Clay can be launched out a TNT cannon, but it requires it to be a falling entity. So it needs to be dropped off a piston.

The most special feature is that when using a block of clay, if a different type of block is placed on it, it will become part of the entity. This only works on sides and edges, not corners. All extra blocks need to be directly touching clay.


Ready to be launched out the cannon.

Yay!

A clay entity cannot carry bedrock nor obsidian. It cannot carry any natural blocks, grass, dirt, stone, etc. This is so when you launch a cannon you do not take the world with it.

The amount of blocks you can launch it limited to the power of your cannon. One tnt can launch one clay six blocks, so it takes four tnts to launch two clay blocks ten twelve blocks.

A falling clay entity can carry mobs, so you can have a cannon launch clay with you inside it.

Redstone does work while clay is in flight.

The possibilities are endless. A black plane that drops bombs with a redstone timer on the inside, or with a player at the button. Check. A flying saucer that launches fire charges. Check.

I think there should be a new biome that is a dune biome. meaning it is entirely made out of sand, with absolutely nothing on them. Now you might be thinking its useless, and a remake of the dessert biome, but to map makers and people that like creative, and people who are too lazy to take off the dead shrubs and cacti, its not. Anyways, unlike any other biomes, Dunes are really big, about the same size of jungle biomes, and mountain biomes. Also they contain no water, or caves. Only pyramid-like hills, that would make you go all "woaw, that is beautiful."

Here is a picture of how it is supposed to look in my mind. ignore the little teddy bear in the side.

/gamerule customization true

The gamerule commands are a nice way to put special conditions on a map. Whether you're a mapmaker, or just looking to tweak the difficulty of your survival map, I think we can all agree that they're pretty handy. They can also be kind of limited, though, can't they? The effects are pretty much all or nothing. Either mobs can't break blocks or they can. Either they spawn or they don't. They drop loot, or they drop nothing. Commands are all-encompassing, and affect all possible targets at once. They don't have to be, though, and maybe they should not be. What if you could specify a target on specific gamerules? For example...

• Add the name of a mob to "doMobSpawning" to specify if that mob spawns or doesn't.
• Do the same for "doMobLoot" and turn on or off specific drops.
• Customize "mobGriefing" rules to let some mobs "grief" but restrict unwanted behaviours.
• Name a block with "doTileDrops" to control what resources can be obtained.

Need an example of how it would work? Let's suppose that you wanted to make a map that has a "retro" theme. You want to set things up so players stay in the overworld, you don't want explosions to break the map, but you want to keep the challenge of enemies picking up items. Your gamerules might look something like this...

/gamerule doMobSpawning Enderman false
/gamerule doMobLoot Creeper false
/gamerule mobGriefing Creeper false
/gamerule doTileDrops Obsidian false
/gamerule doTileDrops Gravel false

So, let's take a look at what's going on here.

The first line prevents Endermen from spawning, obviously. This also means that the player has no source of Ender Pearls, and shouldn't be able access the End. They might still be able to buy Eye of Ender from village priests, of course. If one wanted to be thorough, you could turn off that spawn as well.

The next line turns off loot for Creepers. That means no Gunpowder, and no TNT. Another way a player might use this, assuming they hadn't just disabled villagers as in the previous example, would be to disable Iron Golem drops, to prevent easy iron farming. Now, we'll handle the next line together with this, since it's also Creeper-related. By turning off griefing specifically for Creepers, we ensure that there's nothing in the map at risk of being blown up, so players can't accidentally or deliberately break puzzles by triggering an explosion. In fact, exploding Creepers can be used as part of a puzzle without needing it to be a one-time function, but Skeletons and Zombies are unaffected. They can still do everything that they normally could, and if a Ghast or Enderman were used for a specific area, they would still behave normally as well.

What about the last two? Well, since tile drops aren't disabled for all blocks, players can still build and gather for the most part. However, they can't collect Obsidian, making it harder to form a portal frame. Even if they did manage to shape one by cooling lava, however, Gravel isn't dropping anything either, which means no ready source of Flint to make a Flint and Steel. An exceptionally determined player might still be able to access the Nether, but in practical terms, this will put it out of the reach of most players.

So...are targeted gamerules for you?

SLIDING AND YOU

This one is a quicky, and something that could help change the dynamics of PVP, escape and other concerns.

Sliding for position or safety.

To slide, press shift while running

When one does so, their height becomes 1.48m tall (able to pass below half-slabs) and they have an incredible burst of speed for 3 meters where they again slow to a crawl.

EDIT: There is now a poll about changing the speed of this ability, please vote to change how this mechanic works! Thanks!

Running - 4.3 meters/second
Sprinting - 5.6 meters/second
Flying - 10.8 meters/second

Sliding - 8.6 meters/second for 3 meters.

While sliding, you cannot jump, attack, or change direction. Also, if you get caught in a wall, you begin suffocating and have to mine your way out which makes it's usage less abusive. You also cannot be knocked back though you can still suffer damage.

This is also a useful knockback tool if enemies are in the way of the slide; while the target entity only takes half a heart of damage, he is also knocked back.

The pros: gives more skilled players an additional tool in PvP that doesn't totally break balance and also allows newer/lesser skilled players a defensive technique to evade persistent enemies.

Obviously there's conditions.

Sliding consumes food twice as quickly as sprinting.
You cannot slide with less than 3 hearts (6 health).
Sliding obviously cannot be used if submerged.
You will only slide until you run out of level ground, if you slide, you will stop at a ledge or 3 squares, whichever comes first.

USES:
Adventure maps
Evasion/Tactical use in PVP
Quick Travel
Creeper-run-away tool.

Notes:
1) I've done a quick search for this topic before posting; if I have accidentally stolen your thunder and taken a dump on your waffle, I apologize before hand.
2) There is nothing wrong with "no support"; but if you don't want the idea to stick around; don't bump the thread with your "no" spam. Either continue the conversation or press the back button. Your feedback is always important, if you don't support the suggestion; I'd like to see proposals on methods you would instead use to make it acceptable.

Thank you