Minecraft Monday – PAX Prime Is Over… I Can Has Patch 1.8 Nao?

It came and went.  But man was that a buncha news in a short amount of time!  I kinda feel spoiled, actually.  I mean, I summed up the two livestream videos they posted and mainly the first one gave me pretty much all the information they handed out the rest of the time there.  And that video was recorded before it even officially opened doors.  I’m glad for the information, I just was hoping for a bit more juicy bits to come down the line.  Luckily Ben found an IGN video with just enough new stuff in it to tide over my anxiousness for 1.8 to finally be patched in.

There is some great info in that video.  Notch mentioned the night will be much brighter than it currently is and even to help older monitors like the one I have, there will be a ‘dimmer switch’ of sorts that allows you to raise or lower the gamma and brighten up the place to your liking.

More footage of the click-to-charge bow and that it can even crit which is nice.  As he killed things they dropped plenty of xp spheres which leveled him up and granted him three skill points per Ding.  There is nothing to spend them on, but there will be.  (Likely the combat upgrades I mentioned a bit ago.)

Some new combat mechanics I was not aware of is that if you attack while nearing the ground after a jump, that attack will always crit.  He used it on some cows, but the point was made.  (Poor cows!) He also showed off how far you can punt people with the dash attack, which was a pretty sizeable distance.

He also mentioned that the patch is likely going to be split in twain and released in two segments as it is getting too big for a single update.  The things we saw will likely be in 1.8 which Notch said will likely arrive in “a few weeks.”  Note he said a few and not one or more, so we are looking at the very least, two weeks before it goes live.

One thing for the Creation-minded folk out there is that he quickly scrolled through the items available to place when you are playing around in Creative Mode.  Most of the stuff looked familiar, but I took a few screen shots and pasted them into a glob for you to take a gander’.

In the first section you can see new half blocks.  Likely sand stone (though it looks very much like sand) brick, and even a half block of that new gray stone brick that ruins or strongholds seem to be made of.  (Picture to compare if ya like.)  These look nice, and I’ve been wanting new half stone blocks for a while now.

The second section shows new stairs as well!  Brick, cobblestone, and possible that new gray stone brick stuff.  Kinda hard to make out even though it was a high quality recording.

The final section is the most exciting because it deals with food!  (My Chicago roots are showin’ don-cha-know!) Apparently the new ‘melon’ we can grow will actually be watermelon!  (I wasn’t sure if it would be honeydew or even cantaloupe when he first mentioned it, but now we know.)  Also you can see the new beef and chicken, as well as rotten flesh which zombies now drop instead of feathers.  (It looks like beef jerky next to the records.)  What I’m curious about though is the white and black fleckles beside the watermelon and meat.  New seeds?  Chocolate chips?  Perhaps the new items that you can add to your tools and make them stronger Jeb mentioned?  I dunno, but it intrigues me  ^_^

Quite the news well for most games out there, and Minecraft was not a disappointment in the slightest.  Seeing still images is one thing, but watching it ‘come alive’ in video and seeing the landscape from different view points really shows how the game is changing for the better.  I can’t wait to get in and charge around and spend skill points and all that with 1.8 or even 1.9 drops.  I’d like to explore the new biomes but even check out the NPC villages.  (The town well and blacksmith, in particular.) I’m still waiting to fight through a stronghold mingled with a ravine, but I’mma have to wait a bit longer.

How about you guys?  Anything you can’t wait to try out?  The improved and integrated Creative Mode got your interest?  Or maybe the vast new content for adventuring is more your style?

Minecraft 1.8 “Adventure Patch”: Sword n’ Board! Combat Updates and Additions!

Yesterday I mentioned that there is an experience bar and you can level up in the upcoming Adventure Patch to Minecraft.  I got a hankerin’ that these combat updates and new abilities are going to be *the* reason why you wanna level up at all.  But, and this is pure speculation on my part, but at this time I don’t know what else you’d earn from leveling.  Something to help you survive mo’ better seems about right, thus I came to this conclusion ^_^

Critical Hits and Sprinting

Critical hits meaning more damage, higher burst and all that.  I don’t know if he’s going the simple route of “2x damage” or the math-bending “1.5x damage” method.  I’m hoping the two times option because the brain processes multiples faster than fractions.  Mine does anyway.  It does ask the question though… eventually you’ll get the diamond sword and that nearly one-shots everything out right now.  So a crit of that would be beyond over kill… unless new mobs have a lotta more health.  Ah, ha!  Things to keep in mind folks, gotta work those angles -_^  Also, this ties into the perma death/lost items change he has planned.  Once you get that diamond sword with high crit chances you know more than anything you don’t want to lose it, making the fear of impending death even more harrowing.

And you thought the “Ssss…” of a Creeper was bad now.

As for sprinting, Notch seems to still be iterating this, but for now it’s a temporary speed boost that might also change our vantage point during the process:

So I added sprinting, just to try it out. Double tap forward to start running, like the fast jump move thing from Unreal, but it only works forwards, like sprinting in most modern FPS games. It felt slow and weird until I added a FOV change as well, but now it’s fun and addictive. I feel like there needs to be a drawback to doing it, though, or you’ll feel like you’re wasting time when you’re not sprinting. (source)

Field of view change.  Hmm.  Third person?  Increase the peripheral range?  Or just juxtapose the landscape during the process?  We’ll need more details before we can find out for sure.

Hold-to-Charge Bow Mechanic Added

In a tweet just about two weeks ago, Notch mentioned that bows will have a charging option.  You can hold down the fire button to add more ‘ummph’ to your shots.  I’m assuming higher the change, higher the range and likely increasing the damage as well.  They also mentioned two achievements related to bows for 1.8, one more realistic than the other.  One is to shoot the Moon (might just be a joke, but it sounds just goofy enough for him to actually add) and the other is to kill a skeleton at 50 meters, which Notch added “will not be easy.”

Blocking Attacks

Instead of just hopping in-and-out of combat like a one-legged pirate, attempting to dodge all attacks by merely being a mixture of ESP and nimbality, why not block stuff with your weapon?  (Technically, it’d be a parry, but it’s Notch so I’ll let the semantics slip this once   Hey, tank long enough in WoW and you’ll know the difference!)  Notch mentioned that doing so would be useless as there is no visual cue that the mob is about to attack, so he’ll add new animations as well!  Double bonus!

Maybe if we’re lucky we can stop arrows like a medieval Jedi!  Fueled entirely on bacon and rigorously trained by punching trees all day under the guidance of a hairy, old, and cloak-clad Creeper that can move blocks with his mind!  …But just being able to avoid damaging attacks while staying in melee range would be cool by itself, too.

So that’s about it on the combat front as far as we know right now.  There are a few more things that could tie into this of course, such as the food healing over time, new types of food via chicken, steak, and melons/pumpkins being farmable, as well as the new NPC villages and Strongholds.  How fun will those places be to clear out!  Just be careful you don’t sprint off into a ravine, of course ^_^  That would give you just enough time to curse to your heart’s content before turning to mush at the bottom and losing all those precious items and combat abilities!

-Edit-

Was watching Jeb’s conference and he actually mentioned the idea of doing double damage to mobs if you attack them and they fall down a block or so.  Like if you punch them not exactly off a cliff, but down a hill, they’ll take even more falling damage or something.  Which is nifty too!

There is quite a few more things, but these are the biggies and most likely to come out in my opinion.  Feel free to check out the whole list so far right here if ya like!