According to Jeb at Mojang, the long-awaited update to 1.3 will be released on August 1st! It’s been an agonizing wait for us hardcore Minecrafters, so at least knowing a date is a big relief.
According to Jeb’s post, a lot of cool stuff will be added and a few things have gotten a little, say, “problematic” because of the changes. SSP is effectively gone, becoming a “shell” of SMP. I don’t know how I feel about that. Pistons now update slower, which could break the complex machines some people have built. I worry about my own.
I have a couple mod ideas that I’ve wanted to write but was waiting for the API. Now I have to decide if I want to give it a shot using the current (somewhat janky) system for writing mods or wait for 1.4.
Not that that’s going to stop this from sucking up even more of my life when it comes out.
Essentially something to let mods “talk” to Minecraft, rather than the rather sketchy way they have to modify game files and such at the moment. Essentially, when done, this should allow mods to be loaded in a way similar to the way texture packs are now.
My concern with 1.3 is that it might put Minecraft beyond the power of my not exactly new laptop to run. And I had just gotten back into it a few weeks ago.
API stands for “Application Programming Interface”. A mod API gives a programmer the ability to hook their own code into the original program without having to modify (or even really know much about) the original program’s code. Web browser plugins are a good example.
Right now, if you want to change minecraft’s behavior or add new features, you have to find the minecraft.jar file (which is a standard way to contain a java program, kind of like a zip file), unstuff the whole thing, de-compile the entire program, find the source code that you want to alter, make your own copies of it, then use your new files to build a new jar file that will basically replace the original versions.
The whole process is rather janky, even though people have made a minecraft mod toolkit it still has a lot of pitfalls and gotchas. If Mojang changes the code your mod relies on, it’ll break. If the user installs another mod that touches the same code, it might break or it might just behave very strangely.
One of the things I want to do in minecraft is add some new blocks based loosely on old school lego bricks. Things like a 45 degree up angle and down angle brick, arch bricks, etc. Basically, the really simple bricks you’d find in a Lego kit circa 1978. This will require both making the new blocks and possibly changing the behavior of current blocks depending on how they interact with the new blocks.
They changed the texture of gravel! It looks too much like smooth stone! Now I hate the game with the heat of a thousand buckets of lava!
Just kidding.
Survival single player hasn’t really changed that much. I was looking forward to trading with villagers, but in the few hours I’ve been able to play, I haven’t yet found a village to trade with.
The multiplayer server I played on had a hard drive meltdown and the admin doesn’t have time to fix it, since she now has a 3 month old baby that apparently needs to be fed and stuff. I guess that’s a legit excuse.
I got hooked into playing the Yogbox package (and it’s sister mod, Tekkit). I looked at 1.3.1 vanilla, but didn’t hang around long. I didn’t see anything new in the vanilla except getting xp while mining and smelting.
Man, this game gets better and more complex with each update. Part of me is almost disappointed that all these additions weren’t sorted out before the actual release, but the game is still pretty fun.