It's an 8bit adventure!
Sep. 17th, 2011 03:57 pmThis last week has seen the release of version 1.8 of Minecraft after much anticipation: the Adventure update!

Villages, NPCs, mines, levels, proper dungeons and food playing a bigger role have been promised and so I set out to see how it actually holds up.
It begins
The first hurdle I encounter is a lack of a craftbukkit update (it's apparently tricky to code). Never mind, thinks I, I'll just run a vanilla solo map. If I can remember how one of those goes, and cope without a teleport to home function. And so after generating a new world I was thrust into the thick of it. Immediately there's UI changes to note: an XP bar and a food bar (that jiggles now and then which I find to be fairly distracting actually). I spy a cow and after punching some trees to make a sword, I get my psycho on with some leather armour in mind. First thing I notice, animals panic and run away when you start to attack. Second thing I notice, sometimes I one-shot them. Critical hits are now here.
Killing animals drops little greenish yellow bead thingers that's actually your XP, and other animals besides pigs drop raw meat too, all of which can be cooked ot increase the food value. Food means your HP regenerates. After killing everything that moves for a bit, I have absolutely no idea what level I am and I can't seem to find anything in the UI that tells me, though I understand that at the moment it's irrelevant.
Time to build a boat and cross the oceans. I also notice that clay is now more readily found in watery areas such as lakes and seas. No more cheating for that brick fireplace! I spy what look like Vines hanging off trees but I suppose I need some shears before I can do anything with them, like leaves. I noticed another little change: water now has little dots of stuff floating in it so it looks like there's actually something there.
Finally I spy what looks like it could be a cave system and head on in hoping for a mine. Another discovery is that torch light giving things a slightly yellow hue as opposed to daylight which lends a slightly bluish cast. Sadly I find nothign else new in the sprawling mass of dead ends and tunnels filled with lava tubes and running water. At this point, I've spent over an hour exploring this ocean planet biome with mountains for islands and found absolutely nothing of interest. None of these mines or villages or dungeons. Perhaps I picked a rubbish seed word so I gave it another go. Another oceanic biome with mountainous islands popped up. A large cave system was all of interest I could find here too. Bah!
If at first you don't succeed, cheat like a bastard
At this point I cheated and asked some friends for seed words for the biomes that'd given them the new fancy stuff in the hopes that the third time's the charm. Well whaddya know? It works. I spawn in an NPC village right next to a smithy. There's a well there too, a guard tower, houses with tables and chairs and windows, irrigated crops, lampposts and a workshop with what looks like a library. There's even a small cave out back to explore. This is more like it!
Some experimentation revealed brick stairs, glass panes and iron grills now existed, so after claiming a spacious pad as my own in this eerily uninhabited village and installing some chests (now with opening animations) I set off to find myself a mine. After stumbling on a second village, very similar to the first in terms of building design and contents and how many of each are present, I continue onwards and fall down a chasm into what looks like an underground building with a new kind of stone brick and iron doors. Sadly it looks like this one was malformed as the walls are more like hanging pillars, there's no flooring to separate it from the caves below and there's nothing else there. Still, it's all progress and it looks to me like it's a proper dungeon but I'm told it's called a Stronghold, and thus I can tick that off the discovery list.
With only Mines left to find for the meat of the additions, it was time to set off once more. Following a tip I find a hole in the bottom of a lake and riding the waterfall down I land squarely inside what I assume must be a mine: wooden supports lining a tunnel, cobwbs that give string, random sections of minecart track, torches here and there and so on. Something else new to play with are melon seeds found in one of the chests in said mine, but I don't appear to have much in the way of a green thumb when it comes to growing any. Ah well.
Fin
So with all the major additions checked out and a bunch of smaller tweaks noted, I'm all minecrafted out for the day and I shall now await the coming of the Craft Bukkit update so I can fire up my usual server maps and see about wedging in some of this new stuff.

Villages, NPCs, mines, levels, proper dungeons and food playing a bigger role have been promised and so I set out to see how it actually holds up.
It begins
The first hurdle I encounter is a lack of a craftbukkit update (it's apparently tricky to code). Never mind, thinks I, I'll just run a vanilla solo map. If I can remember how one of those goes, and cope without a teleport to home function. And so after generating a new world I was thrust into the thick of it. Immediately there's UI changes to note: an XP bar and a food bar (that jiggles now and then which I find to be fairly distracting actually). I spy a cow and after punching some trees to make a sword, I get my psycho on with some leather armour in mind. First thing I notice, animals panic and run away when you start to attack. Second thing I notice, sometimes I one-shot them. Critical hits are now here.
Killing animals drops little greenish yellow bead thingers that's actually your XP, and other animals besides pigs drop raw meat too, all of which can be cooked ot increase the food value. Food means your HP regenerates. After killing everything that moves for a bit, I have absolutely no idea what level I am and I can't seem to find anything in the UI that tells me, though I understand that at the moment it's irrelevant.
Time to build a boat and cross the oceans. I also notice that clay is now more readily found in watery areas such as lakes and seas. No more cheating for that brick fireplace! I spy what look like Vines hanging off trees but I suppose I need some shears before I can do anything with them, like leaves. I noticed another little change: water now has little dots of stuff floating in it so it looks like there's actually something there.
Finally I spy what looks like it could be a cave system and head on in hoping for a mine. Another discovery is that torch light giving things a slightly yellow hue as opposed to daylight which lends a slightly bluish cast. Sadly I find nothign else new in the sprawling mass of dead ends and tunnels filled with lava tubes and running water. At this point, I've spent over an hour exploring this ocean planet biome with mountains for islands and found absolutely nothing of interest. None of these mines or villages or dungeons. Perhaps I picked a rubbish seed word so I gave it another go. Another oceanic biome with mountainous islands popped up. A large cave system was all of interest I could find here too. Bah!
If at first you don't succeed, cheat like a bastard
At this point I cheated and asked some friends for seed words for the biomes that'd given them the new fancy stuff in the hopes that the third time's the charm. Well whaddya know? It works. I spawn in an NPC village right next to a smithy. There's a well there too, a guard tower, houses with tables and chairs and windows, irrigated crops, lampposts and a workshop with what looks like a library. There's even a small cave out back to explore. This is more like it!
Some experimentation revealed brick stairs, glass panes and iron grills now existed, so after claiming a spacious pad as my own in this eerily uninhabited village and installing some chests (now with opening animations) I set off to find myself a mine. After stumbling on a second village, very similar to the first in terms of building design and contents and how many of each are present, I continue onwards and fall down a chasm into what looks like an underground building with a new kind of stone brick and iron doors. Sadly it looks like this one was malformed as the walls are more like hanging pillars, there's no flooring to separate it from the caves below and there's nothing else there. Still, it's all progress and it looks to me like it's a proper dungeon but I'm told it's called a Stronghold, and thus I can tick that off the discovery list.
With only Mines left to find for the meat of the additions, it was time to set off once more. Following a tip I find a hole in the bottom of a lake and riding the waterfall down I land squarely inside what I assume must be a mine: wooden supports lining a tunnel, cobwbs that give string, random sections of minecart track, torches here and there and so on. Something else new to play with are melon seeds found in one of the chests in said mine, but I don't appear to have much in the way of a green thumb when it comes to growing any. Ah well.
Fin
So with all the major additions checked out and a bunch of smaller tweaks noted, I'm all minecrafted out for the day and I shall now await the coming of the Craft Bukkit update so I can fire up my usual server maps and see about wedging in some of this new stuff.