Read the RED text at the top of the first post. Thank you.
I love how half the replies on the last 3~ pages are people telling people to "read the red text!!" and not a single one of these . . . people . . . actually think to read the last page of the thread for solutions to the problem.
Hi been around a while, but never had anything to say until now. Just here to throw some ideas out there for texture-packers, servers hosties, and map creators. I found a new way of using CTM that maybe not everyone knows.
I added Spoilers just cus the explaining got a bit long
Here is the Concept Explained.
I have been experimenting with using CTM for blocks that don't yet .. well 'exist' What I mean is blocks that can exist but do not naturally exist in minecraft. Here is an example wood planks with a damage value of 9. Wood planks exist and naturally have damage value 0-5, but 9 wont appear in minecraft. You can't craft it, but you can spawn it in using the commands.
Blocks with damage values will be preserved when the game is saved and wont revert to a normal block. A block that does not have damage values enabled but spawned in as having a damage will revert however. Granted I need to do some more research, but what does this all mean? Well more blocks to use.
Here is what I have done with this knowledge. With sand in 1.7 now having damage values enabled; I gave all the damage values the a colour scheme just like wool. The White (normal sand) and Orange (Red sand) appear naturally the other colors I have to spawn in using commands. If I didn't texture them with CTM they would appear like normal sand.
Now I checked other packs and found that Better Then Default had used this same idea already. He used a damage value of planks to add in a doctor who tardis with CTM. Now that is classic. Simply a good use for a block not being used. I don't follow anyone too closely but it seemed the tardis was meant to be an easter egg in the pack.
How about using this for Custom Maps. Plenty of play through maps require texture packs. Alot more creative freedom, and you wont have to change the "natural" blocks to reach that level of creativity.
Keep in mind damage values have the same attributes as their base blocks. I.E. sand has gravity and sapling need light.
I hope you guys out there can think of some awesome uses for these unused blocks. I never figured out how to post pictures or I would show you some of the stuff I did with this info. All this made possible by the CTM in MCpatcher. If you are good with World Edit or MCedit the things you can do will be awesome for maps.
Here are some ideas I have
-of course the sand I did
-Use a wood plank value to make ominous looking doors on my castle
-use a flower value to bring back the classic rose and add the cyan flowers for decorations
-use a silverfish block value to look like a wrapped up gift/present (a real surprise).
-See if I can use a crop and nether wort data values to add in decorative crops. Would be cool on servers. Will require World Edit or MCedit to get them into your world.
-see about using those tall flowers data value to maybe add in a mock version of the pocket edition camera (i think its possible)
-fences with sandstone, stone brick, and mossy stone brick looks
-Make some black quartz for decorations. I always felt quartz was more of a marble. or even greenstone a Maori traditional green marble-like stone that is very cool.
-Server Block Diversity = awesome. With the servers now able to have player use the same resource packs you could really do good. I don't think Hypixel's server has even tapped this concept yet, and that's the most innovative server I have seen yet.
Lots of cool stuff
Here is a simple list of some of the unused damage values you could use.
Here is a list of blocks and their damage values that aren't being used.
-dirt (1.7+ normal blocks look) 3-15 I believe grass can grow onto these blocks
-sand (1.7+ normal block look) 2-15 and all these values have the gravity effect as well.
-planks (normal block look) 6-15
-saplings (cross-texture) 6-15 I'm not sure if they will grow into oaks will need to experiment.
-sandstone (normal block look) 3-15
-block 31 (cross texture) 4-15
-The pistons can't be used even though they have unused damage values (can crash world if you hack in these, needs experimenting)
-flower 38 (1.7+ and cross-texture) 9-15
-wood slabs (ID 126) have 6-7 for your slab needs
-stone fences (Fence) 2-15 I personally will be adding in sandstone fences.
-Silverfish block (normal block look but will spawn silver fish when broken) 6-15
-Stone bricks (normal block) 4-15
-fence gate (need to experiment but I believe it possible)
-new woods (ID 162) 2-3 and these blocks have partial directional placement.
-new leaves (ID 161) needs experimenting but can definitely be done
-Quartz (normal block look) 5-15
-Haybales 1-3 again partial directional placement but you wont need an axe to collect the block.
There are more, but I'm tired of looking em up.
I am appreciating CTM more and more, as I use it. Please post if you already use this concept so I can take a look at your texture pack. Also if this gives you ideas I would love to read about them so post.
I love how half the replies on the last 3~ pages are people telling people to "read the red text!!" and not a single one of these . . . people . . . actually think to read the last page of the thread for solutions to the problem.
I know! It's infuriating isn't it?!
@Kahr: Not to rush you or anything, but do you think you could get an official 1.7 release out before I lose too much more of my mental stability?
Just kidding. But I do want to know if you saw my post about the problems with CIT. If you saw it, you didn't acknowledge it and since I'd really like those fixed I want to be sure. Thanks.
Can anyone figure out what's wrong with my CTM? Because there is something very wrong with it.
So i finally managed to make a mesa rock wall texture that i was happy with. I used repeat ctm and made it biome specific (the content of the file is below) and tried it out on a wall i made ingame. Now here's the weird part...
On one side of the wall, it tiles just fine. It's a nice working sheet of repeat ctm.
Now, on the opposite side of that same wall, there are tiling errors like crazy, almost as if columns of tiles are offset vertically. (view it at full size to see it properly)
Can anyone figure out what's wrong with my CTM? Because there is something very wrong with it.
So i finally managed to make a mesa rock wall texture that i was happy with. I used repeat ctm and made it biome specific (the content of the file is below) and tried it out on a wall i made ingame. Now here's the weird part...
On one side of the wall, it tiles just fine. It's a nice working sheet of repeat ctm.
Now, on the opposite side of that same wall, there are tiling errors like crazy, almost as if columns of tiles are offset vertically. (view it at full size to see it properly)
Could it be caused by the texture flipping bug? The bug effects standard CTM as well, flipped everything on 2 of the 4 sides. I assume it could do the same thing with repeat, so all those tiles that should be one big texture are probably all flipping around on the other side. https://mojang.atlassian.net/browse/MC-37106
If it is this bug causing it (my guess is yet) it's actually a 1.7.2 glitch, not MCPatcher. Have to wait until Lazy ole' Mojang stops fooling around at Minecon and gets back to what I loosely consider "work".
I believe this is a Minecraft issue and has nothing to do with MCPatcher or your CTM.
Minecraft on it's own has the same issues, it's using the same texture for opposite sides of a block, it's not horizontally flipping the 'back' one like it's supposed to, an example is the bed, fine on one side and flipped on the other.
It was fine in 1.7.1 but hopefully will be fixed in 1.7.3 (or maybe 1.8), see Kahr's response at the bottom of this post.
Wanted robot nice work on your pack. You definitely have what I was talking about well implemented. I haven't actually used a doku pack since early beta.
That world download is nice. Very useful.
Now that I have seen what you have done I've got a better understanding and some great ideas. I wish that I learned about this earlier.
Question: Is there a way to make things like pressure plates and buttons have a different custom texture when they're being pressed then when they're sitting dormant?
The reason they don't work is that the vanilla code for rendering crops doesn't have access to the block's x,y,z coordinates, which is what random ctm is based on.
Ahhh, okay. I can see why that would be problematic. That confuses me though. How then does the game know where crop blocka are located when saving/loading a world/chunks? o.O
Also, just wanted to point out (in case it hasn't been) that texture variants (random ctm) do not occur for the following:
- Slabs on the upper-half of a block.
- Stairs with their backs facing any direction but east. Backs facing east allows variants.
- Active pressure plates (Fixed by applying "symmetry=all" to properties file)
Umm, i need help... When I open MCPatcher (to patch in 1.7) all of the mod options are greyed out. I got the most updated version and tried deleting the bin. None worked. Please help.
Umm, i need help... When I open MCPatcher (to patch in 1.7) all of the mod options are greyed out. I got the most updated version and tried deleting the bin. None worked. Please help.
Read... oh heck... just about any post in the last three pages! Seriously, this question has been answered so often it should be in an FAQ!
Alternately, read the RED TEXT at the top of the first post.
Excuse is that when installing MCPatcher to install the (LiteLoader1.6.4-MCPatcher) had many errors look:
java.lang.IllegalAccessError: tried to access field net.minecraft.client.renderer.texture.TextureManager.field_110585_a from class com.prupe.mcpatcher.TexturePackChangeHandler
at com.prupe.mcpatcher.TexturePackChangeHandler.beforeChange1(TexturePackChangeHandler.java:135)
at net.minecraft.client.resources.SimpleReloadableResourceManager.func_110544_b(SourceFile:98)
at net.minecraft.client.resources.SimpleReloadableResourceManager.func_110541_a(SourceFile:87)
at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.func_110436_a(Minecraft.java:543)
at cpw.mods.fml.client.FMLClientHandler.updateResourcePackList(FMLClientHandler.java:647)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.FMLCommonHandler.updateResourcePackList(FMLCommonHandler.java:498)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.LoadController.buildModList(LoadController.java:98)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
at com.google.common.eventbus.EventHandler.handleEvent(EventHandler.java:74)
at com.google.common.eventbus.SynchronizedEventHandler.handleEvent(SynchronizedEventHandler.java:45)
at com.google.common.eventbus.EventBus.dispatch(EventBus.java:313)
at com.google.common.eventbus.EventBus.dispatchQueuedEvents(EventBus.java:296)
at com.google.common.eventbus.EventBus.post(EventBus.java:267)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.LoadController.distributeStateMessage(LoadController.java:266)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.Loader.loadMods(Loader.java:489)
at cpw.mods.fml.client.FMLClientHandler.beginMinecraftLoading(FMLClientHandler.java:183)
at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.func_71384_a(Minecraft.java:473)
at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.func_99999_d(Minecraft.java:808)
at net.minecraft.client.main.Main.main(SourceFile:101)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
at net.minecraft.launchwrapper.Launch.launch(Launch.java:131)
at net.minecraft.launchwrapper.Launch.main(Launch.java:27)
Hey but maybe not compatible with Optifine?
I want to put the resource pack of Misa Realistic.
Ahhh, okay. I can see why that would be problematic. That confuses me though. How then does the game know where crop blocka are located when saving/loading a world/chunks? o.O Also, just wanted to point out (in case it hasn't been) that texture variants (random ctm) do not occur for the following:
- Slabs on the upper-half of a block.
- Stairs with their backs facing any direction but east. Backs facing east allows variants.
- Active pressure plates.
- Buttons (either state).
Sorry if I'm being a pest.
I presume it does not work because the crop textures are actually shifted down one or two pixels to meet up with the farmland without a gap.
Not to rush you or anything, but do you think you could get an official 1.7 release out before I lose too much more of my mental stability?
Yeah, the main reason I've been waiting so long is that I keep expecting 1.7.3 to come out. I thought surely we'd get a snapshot last Thursday if nothing else. I guess there's no point in delaying it anymore, so I'll start wrapping things up for an official release.
Thank you and everyone else who's been patiently replying to these posts though, I really appreciate it.
But I do want to know if you saw my post about the problems with CIT. If you saw it, you didn't acknowledge it and since I'd really like those fixed I want to be sure.
I saw it, and I think I've fixed the problems but I'm not sure. I hadn't actually changed anything in CIT, but it may have been a side effect of whatever Mojang's been doing to transparency.
I presume it does not work because the crop textures are actually shifted down one or two pixels to meet up with the farmland without a gap.
I looked into this again and may have a solution. So hang on to those random crop textures everyone. You may be able to use them after all.
I mentioned earlier that I was moving some of the Information for Texture Pack Authors section from the OP into a wiki. It's only about halfway done, but here it is:
This next page I would recommend reading to learn how to refer to blocks and items in 1.7. (Short version: Old block/item ID numbers will continue to work, but future blocks and items may not have fixed ID numbers and should be referred to by name only.)
There are actually two new things here: The new colormap format as first proposed by Misa and a new directory structure for applying custom colormaps (old and new) to blocks. The old way of listing each colormap in color.properties will still work, but there's now a CTM/CIT-like way where you just drop them in a folder and the game loads them automatically. The second method works better when you have multiple resource packs.
Yeah, the main reason I've been waiting so long is that I keep expecting 1.7.3 to come out. I thought surely we'd get a snapshot last Thursday if nothing else. I guess there's no point in delaying it anymore, so I'll start wrapping things up for an official release.
Yeah, the main reason I've been waiting so long is that I keep expecting 1.7.3 to come out. I thought surely we'd get a snapshot last Thursday if nothing else. I guess there's no point in delaying it anymore, so I'll start wrapping things up for an official release.
Despite the fact that they have several good reasons to do so, I haven't seen anything to indicate they're even interested in a 1.7.3, unfortunately.
There are actually two new things here: The new colormap format as first proposed by Misa and a new directory structure for applying custom colormaps (old and new) to blocks. The old way of listing each colormap in color.properties will still work, but there's now a CTM/CIT-like way where you just drop them in a folder and the game loads them automatically. The second method works better when you have multiple resource packs.
This. This thing RIGHT HERE! *Squee* Guess what going to get to do when the next version comes out!
Thank you Kahr, both for this and for fixing the CIT thing. I'll let you know if there are still problems with it when you get the next version published.
MCPatcher version is 4.2.2
OS: Windows 8 6.2 x86
JVM: Oracle Corporation 1.7.0_10 (32 bit)
Classpath: C:\Users\Owen\Desktop\mcpatcher-4.2.2.exe
Fetching https://s3.amazonaws.com/Minecraft.Download/versions/versions.json...
java.io.IOException: No installed unmodded versions found
at com.prupe.mcpatcher.ProfileManager.rebuildLocalVersionList(ProfileManager.java:127)
at com.prupe.mcpatcher.ProfileManager.refresh(ProfileManager.java:56)
at com.prupe.mcpatcher.MainForm$18.runImpl(MainForm.java:568)
at com.prupe.mcpatcher.MainForm$UIWorker.run(MainForm.java:1058)
I love how half the replies on the last 3~ pages are people telling people to "read the red text!!" and not a single one of these . . . people . . . actually think to read the last page of the thread for solutions to the problem.
I added Spoilers just cus the explaining got a bit long
Here is the Concept Explained.
I have been experimenting with using CTM for blocks that don't yet .. well 'exist' What I mean is blocks that can exist but do not naturally exist in minecraft. Here is an example wood planks with a damage value of 9. Wood planks exist and naturally have damage value 0-5, but 9 wont appear in minecraft. You can't craft it, but you can spawn it in using the commands.
Blocks with damage values will be preserved when the game is saved and wont revert to a normal block. A block that does not have damage values enabled but spawned in as having a damage will revert however. Granted I need to do some more research, but what does this all mean? Well more blocks to use.
Here is what I have done with this knowledge. With sand in 1.7 now having damage values enabled; I gave all the damage values the a colour scheme just like wool. The White (normal sand) and Orange (Red sand) appear naturally the other colors I have to spawn in using commands. If I didn't texture them with CTM they would appear like normal sand.
Now I checked other packs and found that Better Then Default had used this same idea already. He used a damage value of planks to add in a doctor who tardis with CTM. Now that is classic. Simply a good use for a block not being used. I don't follow anyone too closely but it seemed the tardis was meant to be an easter egg in the pack.
How about using this for Custom Maps. Plenty of play through maps require texture packs. Alot more creative freedom, and you wont have to change the "natural" blocks to reach that level of creativity.
Keep in mind damage values have the same attributes as their base blocks. I.E. sand has gravity and sapling need light.
I hope you guys out there can think of some awesome uses for these unused blocks. I never figured out how to post pictures or I would show you some of the stuff I did with this info. All this made possible by the CTM in MCpatcher. If you are good with World Edit or MCedit the things you can do will be awesome for maps.
Here are some ideas I have
-of course the sand I did
-Use a wood plank value to make ominous looking doors on my castle
-use a flower value to bring back the classic rose and add the cyan flowers for decorations
-use a silverfish block value to look like a wrapped up gift/present (a real surprise).
-See if I can use a crop and nether wort data values to add in decorative crops. Would be cool on servers. Will require World Edit or MCedit to get them into your world.
-see about using those tall flowers data value to maybe add in a mock version of the pocket edition camera (i think its possible)
-fences with sandstone, stone brick, and mossy stone brick looks
-Make some black quartz for decorations. I always felt quartz was more of a marble. or even greenstone a Maori traditional green marble-like stone that is very cool.
-Server Block Diversity = awesome. With the servers now able to have player use the same resource packs you could really do good. I don't think Hypixel's server has even tapped this concept yet, and that's the most innovative server I have seen yet.
Lots of cool stuff
Here is a simple list of some of the unused damage values you could use.
Here is a list of blocks and their damage values that aren't being used.
-dirt (1.7+ normal blocks look) 3-15 I believe grass can grow onto these blocks
-sand (1.7+ normal block look) 2-15 and all these values have the gravity effect as well.
-planks (normal block look) 6-15
-saplings (cross-texture) 6-15 I'm not sure if they will grow into oaks will need to experiment.
-sandstone (normal block look) 3-15
-block 31 (cross texture) 4-15
-The pistons can't be used even though they have unused damage values (can crash world if you hack in these, needs experimenting)
-flower 38 (1.7+ and cross-texture) 9-15
-wood slabs (ID 126) have 6-7 for your slab needs
-stone fences (Fence) 2-15 I personally will be adding in sandstone fences.
-Silverfish block (normal block look but will spawn silver fish when broken) 6-15
-Stone bricks (normal block) 4-15
-fence gate (need to experiment but I believe it possible)
-new woods (ID 162) 2-3 and these blocks have partial directional placement.
-new leaves (ID 161) needs experimenting but can definitely be done
-Quartz (normal block look) 5-15
-Haybales 1-3 again partial directional placement but you wont need an axe to collect the block.
There are more, but I'm tired of looking em up.
For more info on damage (data) values see the wiki here
http://minecraft.gam...com/Data_values
I am appreciating CTM more and more, as I use it. Please post if you already use this concept so I can take a look at your texture pack. Also if this gives you ideas I would love to read about them so post.
@Kahr: Not to rush you or anything, but do you think you could get an official 1.7 release out before I lose too much more of my mental stability?
Just kidding. But I do want to know if you saw my post about the problems with CIT. If you saw it, you didn't acknowledge it and since I'd really like those fixed I want to be sure. Thanks.
So i finally managed to make a mesa rock wall texture that i was happy with. I used repeat ctm and made it biome specific (the content of the file is below) and tried it out on a wall i made ingame. Now here's the weird part...
On one side of the wall, it tiles just fine. It's a nice working sheet of repeat ctm.
Now, on the opposite side of that same wall, there are tiling errors like crazy, almost as if columns of tiles are offset vertically. (view it at full size to see it properly)
What exactly is going on here?
Here's the content of my .properties file.
Any ideas?
Could it be caused by the texture flipping bug? The bug effects standard CTM as well, flipped everything on 2 of the 4 sides. I assume it could do the same thing with repeat, so all those tiles that should be one big texture are probably all flipping around on the other side.
https://mojang.atlassian.net/browse/MC-37106
If it is this bug causing it (my guess is yet) it's actually a 1.7.2 glitch, not MCPatcher. Have to wait until Lazy ole' Mojang stops fooling around at Minecon and gets back to what I loosely consider "work".
Minecraft on it's own has the same issues, it's using the same texture for opposite sides of a block, it's not horizontally flipping the 'back' one like it's supposed to, an example is the bed, fine on one side and flipped on the other.
It was fine in 1.7.1 but hopefully will be fixed in 1.7.3 (or maybe 1.8), see Kahr's response at the bottom of this post.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1496369-172-164-and-earlierupdate-1030-mcpatcher-hd-fix-422/page__st__9360#entry25502301
https://www.johnsmithlegacy.co.uk/ - John Smith Legacy for Minecraft
That seems to be the case, thanks.
That world download is nice. Very useful.
Now that I have seen what you have done I've got a better understanding and some great ideas. I wish that I learned about this earlier.
CTM is the best
Also check me out on:
WordPress, Etsy, and Spore.
Ahhh, okay. I can see why that would be problematic. That confuses me though. How then does the game know where crop blocka are located when saving/loading a world/chunks? o.O
Also, just wanted to point out (in case it hasn't been) that texture variants (random ctm) do not occur for the following:
- Active pressure plates(Fixed by applying "symmetry=all" to properties file)Sorry if I'm being a pest.
Alternately, read the RED TEXT at the top of the first post.
at com.prupe.mcpatcher.TexturePackChangeHandler.beforeChange1(TexturePackChangeHandler.java:135)
at net.minecraft.client.resources.SimpleReloadableResourceManager.func_110544_b(SourceFile:98)
at net.minecraft.client.resources.SimpleReloadableResourceManager.func_110541_a(SourceFile:87)
at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.func_110436_a(Minecraft.java:543)
at cpw.mods.fml.client.FMLClientHandler.updateResourcePackList(FMLClientHandler.java:647)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.FMLCommonHandler.updateResourcePackList(FMLCommonHandler.java:498)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.LoadController.buildModList(LoadController.java:98)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
at com.google.common.eventbus.EventHandler.handleEvent(EventHandler.java:74)
at com.google.common.eventbus.SynchronizedEventHandler.handleEvent(SynchronizedEventHandler.java:45)
at com.google.common.eventbus.EventBus.dispatch(EventBus.java:313)
at com.google.common.eventbus.EventBus.dispatchQueuedEvents(EventBus.java:296)
at com.google.common.eventbus.EventBus.post(EventBus.java:267)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.LoadController.distributeStateMessage(LoadController.java:266)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.Loader.loadMods(Loader.java:489)
at cpw.mods.fml.client.FMLClientHandler.beginMinecraftLoading(FMLClientHandler.java:183)
at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.func_71384_a(Minecraft.java:473)
at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.func_99999_d(Minecraft.java:808)
at net.minecraft.client.main.Main.main(SourceFile:101)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
at net.minecraft.launchwrapper.Launch.launch(Launch.java:131)
at net.minecraft.launchwrapper.Launch.main(Launch.java:27)
Hey but maybe not compatible with Optifine?
I want to put the resource pack of Misa Realistic.
I presume it does not work because the crop textures are actually shifted down one or two pixels to meet up with the farmland without a gap.
Yeah, the main reason I've been waiting so long is that I keep expecting 1.7.3 to come out. I thought surely we'd get a snapshot last Thursday if nothing else. I guess there's no point in delaying it anymore, so I'll start wrapping things up for an official release.
Thank you and everyone else who's been patiently replying to these posts though, I really appreciate it.
I saw it, and I think I've fixed the problems but I'm not sure. I hadn't actually changed anything in CIT, but it may have been a side effect of whatever Mojang's been doing to transparency.
Definitely not.
I looked into this again and may have a solution. So hang on to those random crop textures everyone. You may be able to use them after all.
I mentioned earlier that I was moving some of the Information for Texture Pack Authors section from the OP into a wiki. It's only about halfway done, but here it is:
https://bitbucket.org/prupe/mcpatcher/wiki/Home
This next page I would recommend reading to learn how to refer to blocks and items in 1.7. (Short version: Old block/item ID numbers will continue to work, but future blocks and items may not have fixed ID numbers and should be referred to by name only.)
https://bitbucket.org/prupe/mcpatcher/wiki/About_Properties_Files
The new biome palette format (not fully working in 4.3.0-beta5, but will be in the final release) is described here:
https://bitbucket.org/prupe/mcpatcher/wiki/Biome_Palettes
There are actually two new things here: The new colormap format as first proposed by Misa and a new directory structure for applying custom colormaps (old and new) to blocks. The old way of listing each colormap in color.properties will still work, but there's now a CTM/CIT-like way where you just drop them in a folder and the game loads them automatically. The second method works better when you have multiple resource packs.
*happydance!!*
Hey, it's really the least we can do since you give artists and texture pack enthusiasts the best toy we could ever ask for. Case in point...
This. This thing RIGHT HERE! *Squee* Guess what going to get to do when the next version comes out!
Thank you Kahr, both for this and for fixing the CIT thing. I'll let you know if there are still problems with it when you get the next version published.