NEW VERSION: 1.8.2

Alright, everyone. This week has been exceptionally exciting. Starting tomorrow when I get off of work, I'm going to go to town on this puppy. I'm dividing the new features into two categories: important features, which are geography and topography related, and eh, that's nice, which have to do with making sandwiches and being able to fly.

Important New Features

The most important features to me (and this blog) have to do with the changes to the way the seeds generate terrain.

• NPC Villages - I can't tell you how excited I am for villages. This was the reason I started playing Minecraft on the X-box until I realized that the only village was in the tutorial. Now that they're here... I'm excited again.
• Abandoned Mine Shafts - Creepy.
• Stronghold - I like this less, but whatever.
• Ravines - Up until now, I have knowingly been referring to sheer parallel cliff faces as ravines. This will end as now there are actual proper ravines and I will refer to them as such.
• Sprinting - The faster I can unlock the map, the more of them I can post. Huzzah!
• New Biomes - Rivers, swamps, and ocean biomes. We'll see how well they are designed, but I'm especially keen on swamps and rivers.
• Upgraded Mining Speed - Very handy.
• Renaming Saved Worlds - This is huge for me and believe it or not will speed up how quickly I can post seeds.

Eh, That's Nice.

Hooray, we can fly and make complex food items. So what. Here is a list of meaningless things that I'm sure are nice to those who want to make a ham sandwich.

• Creative Mode - you can fly around the board assuming your X-box is in perfect condition and the RAM can handle building and ditching blocks that fast. If you use creative mode, you can't earn achievements or improve your rankings -- so at least THAT'S awesome.
• Stackable Foods - you can make sandwiches
• New Bad Guys - Enderman, Silverfish, and Cave Spiders... I care not for any of them.
• Superflat - I guess now I won't have to tell you about flat seeds since there's a mode now.
• Bow - They changed how the bow works so now it's more... bowie.
• Vines - It's nice that we have jungles and so it's nice that we have vines.
• Sword Blocking - I like to parry and thrust as much as the next guy.
• Icons on Maps - When playing with other players, there's an icon system now when you pull of your map. That's nice, I guess.
• Death Messages - Nice.
• Removed the Void - Yeah, how long do you think it's going to be before some intrepid bastard learns how to circumvent this one?

Meaningless Crap

Stuff that really they could have let slip by.

• TNT and mobs make new sounds
• huge mushrooms
• all the new foods and blocks
• dispenser upgrades
• quick equip for armor
• furnace upgrades
• fruit growing changes
• eating animations
• new noses for pigs
• animals don't despawn
• rotten flesh
• chicken spawning
• changed the sunrise and sunset
• clouds at top of map (which is stupid because playing above the clouds was awesome)
• pressure plates on fences for the crazy red stone guys
• new locks on chests
• autosave less annoying (we all turn it off anyway)
• when sprinting, you can see your little avatar
• updates to all the "How To"s

A Word on Modes

I really do not like the new modes. I didn't like them on the PC and now still on the X-box. I think they cheapen the game. Creative mode is for people who don't have enough creativity to build amazing things while having to account for gravity. I think the hallmark of an excellent architect is being able to build a castle or whatever while still standing on the ground and being an excellent architect myself, I now have no way to prove that the amazing things I build are done without floating.

I get that people like to build on flat land. I don't, but others do. However, "superflat" (nether or otherwise) is a cop out for people who don't want to take the time to dig out some space (which takes a half hour) or search for seed names that have naturally occurring flatland. And seriously... must we have a flat nether?

What It All Means

The grading system is going to change for how I judge seeds. I'm also going to have more to say about each one and will have some hopefully fantastic photography for you to see. Some of the terminology I use will also change. I will make all of these distinctions clear in my first post tomorrow. See you then!