A new Snapshot is out and about, ready for your testing pleasure! Here's what is on offer this week:
[snapshot]13w06a[/snapshot]
Snapshot Bugfixes:
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The following items were corrected, test them and see!
- Some lighting optimizations, no bug fixes yet sorry
- Pigs constantly jumping, when player control them on half slabs and stairs.
- Z-fighting of iron bars / glass panes with the block below / above
- Leaves replace transparent blocks
- Clouds have a transparency when you are above/in them but not when you're underneath them.
- Baby mob collision boxes are too large.
- Village lamp post floating torches
- Corner Fence Has Incorrect Collision Box
- Wither skeletons have wrong hitbox
- Double Trapped chest, makes two sounds when opening and closing.
- No sound from some trapped chests
- Villager trade menu missing name
- Placing a block East of the Hopper makes the inside appear black
- Piston pushing piston bugs / piston duplicating piston
- Comparators do not update their output signal
- Team option "friendlyfire" is not saved to disk; resets upon map reload
- Scoreboard name duplication
- FallingSand support for block IDs > 128
Testing the Snapshot:
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Users who wanted to test Snapshots and Pre-releases in the past had to manually download the files, copy over existing files, and run the risk of ruining their single-player games. Want an easier way to test Snapshots, that also guarantees the safety of any and all of your worlds? The Curse Client now has Snapshot support, and using it couldn't possibly be easier! Check it out:
Literally two steps, that's it. Click the image to see the video!
That's it, you're playing the latest Snapshot! There are also filter options to only see Snapshots, Pre-releases, or full releases. Wait, full releases?! That's right, you can even use the Client to play on older versions of Minecraft, at any time! This feature is good for those who want to roll back to earlier versions of Minecraft for testing, nostalgia, or if their favorite server is still running on an outdated version number. Sweet!
So let's say you're running the Client, but don't want to open it up. What is a fast, easy way to get this Snapshot? Well, if you click the button on the banner below, the Client will do all the work for you (or, if you don't have the Client installed, will help with that as well).
Yes, both times
Anyways, neat snapshot. Though, there's still a LOT more to fix, you guys are doing very good. Keep it up!
I suggest that if anyone wants to test snapshots, just backup your saves and use the .jar download instead. Curse Client is complete crap.
It was fine before, but then it was tinkered with for a problem that didn't exist. I still have more than enough bonemeal, but now I have to randomly right-click the same square between 2-3 times now (instead of just once before), but why? In what way has this enhanced or bettered the game?
I would love to hear a strong argument for why the game is better now because of this change, and how the game was suffering before without it.
The game is better because now you can't have insta-farms, therefore adding a slight bit of difficulty to Survival (if any at all.. I still have a surplus of bones)
Anything that makes the game take longer or more difficult is better. Nobody wants to play an easy game!
I wouldn't expect to be able to punch a plant with my fists and have 0-3 seeds and a single unit of wheat to pop out either. I don't expect anything in Minecraft to behave just like it would in real life; I understand that it is a game, not a simulator. I expect games to be fun, and I expect those who develop games to understand what makes a game fun, and not to arbitrarily alter these games without that focus in mind.
If Mojang has taken on some new initiative to make Minecraft more realistic, where each game action is to be held up to some sort of standard based on real world logic, I am certainly unaware of it. That seems to be the basis behind why you support the alterations to bonemeal, since, as you have described, the manner in which in-game plants respond to fertilizer/bonemeal does not accurately reflect how plants in the real world respond, and thus the change is warranted.
How long does it take to kill "one single skeleton"? Two hits with a stone sword or better I believe will take them out (on Hard difficulty). I imagine it'd be fairly easy to swing a couple times in one second, so one second of actually attacking with your sword, and however long it takes you to run from your current location, when you decide "I want to kill a skeleton", to where the nearest skeleton is. With this new system, where you'd need to kill an addition 1-2 skeletons for the same effect or "power", that would maybe increase this total time from maybe 10 to 30 seconds? I suppose that time frame would be much more in line with your comfort level in regards to Minecraft's expected cohesion with reality?
And in regards to being "overpowered", what sort of consequences were there for this previously enjoyed, but clearly excessive, level of power? After all, when something is "overpowered", in regards to games, there is usually a corresponding adverse effect on the intended challenges the game is supposed to impose on the player. I didn't realize that Minecraft was some deep role-playing game, where extra attention needs to be paid to each and every game mechanic, as to not upset the delicate balance of risk vs. reward.
You continue to show why this change was unnecessary with your exaggeration of how few would be impacted by it. My concern is that this may indeed be a new direction the current developers are considering going with Minecraft. What will be the next arbitrary change that doesn't serve to make the game more enjoyable, and what about the one after that? And so on....
Perhaps there is a "realism", or "tedium" mod out there already that caters to those who like these sorts of changes. Are you aware of such a mod, and does it have a large following? If these changes are wanted by a large number of Minecraft users, and the developers at Mojang want to incorporate this into vanilla MC, then perhaps it would be best to incorporate this into the game as a toggleable option at world creation. As it stands now, it appears that these forced changes aren't being well received by a large percentage of current Minecraft users.
You can't? So holding down the right mouse button, and consuming 2-3 pieces of bonemeal in less than a second, as opposed to the previous one piece consumed in also less than a second has made "insta-farms" (which I can't be certain what your definition of that is) unattainable?
Perhaps they should just make a tenfold increase in ALL block mining times then? Whereas currently, with a diamond pickaxe, it takes 0.4 seconds to mine a single cube of cobblestone, but using your "longer is better" approach, jacking that up to 4 seconds per block is an improvement, right? After all, holding my right mouse button down for 4 seconds definitely puts more stress, and therefore is "harder", on the middle finger of my mouse hand. And if that really is an improvement, why stop there? Why not 20 times, or make every block take a full minute to mine?
Although I'm not sure if it's clearly defined, there is an obvious difference between unnecessary tedium (which I gave an example of above) and "difficulty".
I'm not talking about artificial time like that. I'm talking about how you don't get enough bonemeal to grow a whole farm in one night anymore. Is it REALLY that bad that you now have to go to your double chest full of bones for once?
How long had you been wishing for this change before it happened? Was it REALLY that bad before?
I've been wishing for Survival to be harder since it came out. Yes, it was bad before. 1 bonemeal to instantly yield a crop? That makes it too easy.
I was actually hoping for a situation where bonemeal only increased growth speed, and it didn't stack.
That would be awesome. However, if you want to see a Reddit suggestion plummet in popularity, suggest ANYTHING that does anything to Bonemeal other than make it more powerful. It's sad.