Minecraft Forums

I don't think it even matters really. An easy to handle mechanic wouldn't make the game worse, only add depth. You could say that the extra depth is unnecessary and it probably is. That's a valid argument.

There isn't a lot of point to it... It could make your food go down faster when you're thirsty, and when you're really dehydrated you can't sprint and the FOV starts to change. It would have some nice dehydration effects.

Those effects wouldn't be hard to remedy. either find some water source blocks, or drink a bottle or two. Drinking would only restore so much, while submerging yourself would restore gradually like health regen.

But if we just keep them stupid, we'll forever be safe behind the lightest of defenses. Mojang should be tailoring the AI to fit the game, not some stereotype of zombies. There are games that have smart zombies (left 4 dead). Those things can climb over things twice their height! Zombies also like to aggro and so far that happens only rarely around villages and even then they get stopped by the lightest defense/wall.

So far I see building and survival as separate mechanics. Shouldn't minecraft be combining the mechanics into a fleshed out experience? Building should have an effect on survival, and survival should have an equal effect on building. So far only the first part of this is true, and it's causing a lot of the exploits that the hard mode players are complaining about.

We shouldn't be taking exploits for granted and the game shouldn't have exploits that are natural sideeffects of everyday gameplay. My point is that the AI will never be challenging if the player has 2000 blocks of impassable objects at his disposal. With this regard it should be a high priority to create AI that is capable of dealing with the natural features in the game.

I'll end this point with an example.

Would a shooter game be exciting if the enemies just got stuck behind the first obstacle they came across or just flatout couldn't find the player at all? What if you had to physically get close enough to the enemy for it to attack you and there was no reason to get that close and nothing else(not even firing at it) would make it go after you. That's what Minecraft enemies are like. They can't properly adapt to their suroundings and so they can't reliably engage the player on their own.

There are two main issues I want to cover in this post. The first is how easy hostile mobs are blocked by obstacles and 2 how broken the bed mechanic is. Both are very related to my overall suggestion about AI mechanics. I propose that zombies break down dirt, and use it as a platform to get over obstacles if it's pathfinding cannot get to you / villagers.

This mechanic can be used in conjunction with other hostile mobs as well. I would like to see zombies gathering material to assist other mobs to get over the wall in order to create a quicker breach. I can imagine that a hierarchy of mobs could be established.

A creeper will do more damage than a zombie, so the zombie will allow the creeper to go over the breach first. Mob ganging should also be established. What I mean is that mobs should have the ability of luring other hostile mobs to them for a joint assault. This should increase mob to player interactions to some degree.

Breach Mechanics

Pathfinding can be used to find dirt/grass blocks. It can also determine how many blocks will be needed to get over an obstacle. Zombies will break dirt in two ways. The first is hitting it and the second is kicking it. That way it doesn't matter if the block is reachable by the zombie's arm or not.

Acquiring a block would take some time for balance reasons. Placing a block would have similar restrictions. A zombie will only break a dirt block if there isn't a torch, minecart track, button, pressure plate, anything that people might not want destroyed by a zombie on it. Zombies could even spawn with blocks on them.

If it was done this way, then we would be forced to build smarter defense walls. People would actually have to tackle a problem creatively instead of derp, derp, stone wall around a bed. I want to build an anti mob defense as a necessity instead of an option. Survival shouldn't just be a single block tower.

This leads to my next change. Beds are just ridiculous. Beds were proper when they had to be walled in, but now they are just cheap. I almost want to call the current bed system as cheating. It seems like a complete disregard to the survival aspect of the game. Beds should only work if walled in, and there is not a spawnable area within x number of blocks from your bed that isn't separated by iron doors. And if a mob can't spawn where your bed is at, it will wake you up and spawn where it can spawn. (You know, because you can't sleep because mobs are nearby- the mob alerted to you woke you up.)

If your bed is on a pillar a skeleton will spawn on the ground below it and wake you up.

If we did it this way a lot of the exploits for beds would be fixed and we would be encouraged to find more secure areas for our beds. The bottomline is, the middle of a plains biome with no walls at all is and should not be a secure place to use a bed. I don't know who thought it was a good idea, but it has to change. It has to go back to the old spawning algorithm, but I want them to go one step further and make it more robust and take advantage of the new door breaking algorithm. I was considering including the block placing algorithm as well, but it wouldn't make much sense if they got to you and the blocks weren't there. (walled in areas would spawn spiders instead)

We need to start building smarter... Mojang needs to encourage us to start playing creatively and purposefully. It needs to be more than senseless building.

This should be in the normal Discussion board and not here, but whatever.



People who have that opinion often have a point. Some ideas are just too different to work well in Minecraft. It really depends on how specific it is. Usually game mechanics get this argument more than other suggestions.

You have to understand that people want to play Minecraft roughly the way it currently plays. They don't feel comfortable if your idea changes a lot of how the game works/feels. Your idea may be how you want to play Minecraft, but it's not how they want to play Minecraft, and within reason you should respect that. That doesn't mean they always have a valid argument.

SMP is in DIRE need of attention.

It's been ignored since Notch made it. Notch only gave it enough attention to make it playable. I think his attempt at SMP was lazy. He made little attempt at all to improve it beyond allowing us to save servers to a list and adding a working playerlist. That shouldn't even be counted as an achievement, because every good game should have that.

Minecraft SMP is very insecure. You just can't properly manage a large server in vanilla. It's almost like SMP is supposed to be 10 players maximum and only consist of your most trusted friends. Don't even bother having a public creative mode server without a whitelist, they have done nothing to give us options.

It is unacceptable. It really is. Creative mode cannot be restricted at all in vanilla. You can't restrict anything from OPs, there is nothing in place to expand groups or for advanced users. There are no anti-grief measures and no options apart from whitelist/no whitelist. If there was ever a game feature that defined "No Support" Minecraft SMP would be that feature.

I didn't even mention the bugs yet. Boats meander through blocks at random, the game can spawn you in the ground, portals are buggy, chunk loading can overload the server (chunk leaks), there's no action prioritizing (immediate actions like placing a block/getting in a minecart are delayed because of chunks loading/updating in the background), enchanted items don't glow when viewed by other players, chest lids stay glitched open more often then they close properly. That's just a small amount that I can recall.

The code is horribly inefficient and outdated. It needs to be fixed.

Quote from deadscion

Jeb said he was working on a mod API sheduled to be out in March. What has he done? a new jungle biome and a new world save config. No word on the API, no word on any type of work towards backward compatibility, just a continue of Notch's programming habits.
A converter was made to convert the old world format, which will have bugs and will break some of the older worlds.

Any stable API must contain an instruction set for at least most of the older content with any new content or improvements added on WITHOUT CHANGING any current content.

Work arounds? deal with it? why blunder through programming like this and expect the user to adjust?

This is supposed to be a full version of a gaming program. A full version has a stable API for modding and a stable world/map save system all of which is backward compatible with older versions.

Until this happens Minecraft is still BETA, Minecraft is NOT a game, Minecraft is just an experiment at the expense and frustration of the the USER.

It is still in Beta. The only reason why it termed full release is because Notch set the date in stone regardless of how much polish still needed to be done on the game. It is not uncommon for games to have to release a buggy final product due to stringent deadlines. It is usually those games that get bad reviews due to broken/bad mechanics. Most of the time the developers just didn't have enough time/money to finish it. After the game is released there is little they can do to patch the game if it's a console setting.

Minecraft has that flexibility. The developers can update the game as often as they want. Notch was a little too optimistic when he set the date, but he had little choice in the matter. He had to schedule MineCon at some point. Because of these circumstances Full Release did not equal a finished product.

You seem to be confusing a game's full release and the game's final version. There is really nothing that says a game cannot add new features to their game after it is fully released. Most games don't release their beta to the public and so any additional features are added after they fully release.

Also you complain about the converter being buggy when the converter hasn't officially released yet. You should heed the warnings given to you about the snapshots. The bugs that come along with the converter will be ironed out eventually. There is no way he can absolutely be sure that the converter will be stable 100% of the time. There are a LOT of variables to consider. The new format was needed for Minecraft to evolve and 16 x 16 x 16 was the better way to manage chunks.

The next thing you mentioned is the API. Games aren't required to give the users a platform to create content. It is a feature like any other feature. Not every game needs to have multiplayer to be considered feature complete, but that doesn't mean multiplayer wouldn't add content if it were added. Some games require that you script everything from scratch.

Furthermore if you did your research Jeb said that Anvil was made as a component for the API. The modding API will be based around this new format. You should also realize that Jeb is working with people from bukkit, and I think Forge to make the API. Lastly the new Anvil format increases block Ids to 4096. That's really not important to modders or the game in general at all. People should just settle with the old restricted 256 block IDs that Notch had originally. I think you need to get your facts straight.

You most likely spawned in the ground and there was lava where it pushed you out of the ground. It happens.

Some villagers should spawn with their own tamed wolf. If that villager gets attacked the wolf could defend the villager.

This idea could go even further by giving wolves the ability to defend any villager nearby. This will allow wolves from different NPC owners to band together against a threat. Once the threat is eliminated they will go back to their owner.

I think group based AI has potential. What do you think (about the AI and the suggestion in general)?

It's stupid. The clay doesn't even form naturally. It forms in grid like patterns across the floor, and it's always at a certain level. I've hated it ever since they included it.

1. In wrong section of forum. 2. It was added for adventure mode. It also adds more creative into making bridges and fallen down trees. Don't expect them to get rid of it just for you.

Quote from zourath

Don't think anyone has mentioned it, but the Wither will ride minecarts, so that is one possible way to trap it.

Thou art a god among men for this discovery... UNLEASH THE MINE-CARTS!

So, wondering what people think of the new beacon block now that it's properly craftable in Survival.

This block seems..... like a very strange idea to me. Normally, I have no trouble finding uses for pretty much any item in the game, but this one has me a little baffled. I can see the use for the actual light beam itself, sure. But what about those buffs? This block is the most ridiculously expensive item in the game, requiring a downright silly amount of iron/gold/emerald/diamond in order to activate, not to mention requiring that you summon and defeat a boss to get the Nether Star.

....yet the actual EFFECTS of the block really dont seem to match up to the cost. Even at it's strongest, the beacon's buff effects have a radius of only a mere 41 blocks. That's..... really not much. Particularly considering the utterly insane amount of items necessary to build the largest pyramid size. Heck, I wouldnt even be able to use the buffs while exploring caves, as the height is taken into account as well; the only way to use the buffs down there would be to build it way down deep, and drill a hole above it to reach the sky.

And the SMALLEST pyramid size provides a buff with a radius so small it may as well not exist. And these weak, very limited effects for something that requires TONS of effort to get. So yeah, I'm a little lost on the point of the thing beyond just it's light beam. And heck, even the light beam is expensive in it's own right, still requiring defeating the Wither and using 9 full iron/whatever blocks.


However, I havent had the chance to REALLY experiment with this in my own survival world. I'm wondering if some of you might have found some creative uses for this thing, both the beam effect and the screwy buffs. And also just interested to see what opinions people have on the thing itself, as it's currently implemented. (I'd also love to hear what the devs have to say about it, as I'm really wondering WHERE they're going with this strange addition).

I mean none of this as complaints, mind you. The ideas behind this thing, and the whole update in general, I like. This seems a darned good update. I just find the current balance of this particular item to be very bizarre and restrictive.

The exp change was done primarily so that people didn't feel the necessity of constructing an EXP farm or mob grinder to get anything above level 1 enchantments. From a server balance standpoint this is actually BETTER since you are less likely to have only a handful of players hording all the enemy spawns and subsequent enchantments to the point where they are even running around and blowing up mob farms of other players just so they get a more regular spawn.

With exp being easier to get, it levels the playing field alot more, and removes the necessity of someone monopolizing a mob spawner while making the base resouces, like diamond and iron, more valuable since players are having to deal with more than just basic equipment and fights aren't as short lived (making weapons and armor wear out more). It actually adds MORE challenge and difficulty to a game when you don't have such a large power-gap between players. If anything, the only place where difficulty is a little lacking is in regards to mobs... But that has always been a case, even before enchantments.


The problem isn't the game changes... It's that you or your players have this notion that they should have a clear advantage over everyone else on your server simply because they were first to get a few diamonds and a working mob grinder. Or this faulty belief that Minecraft should be hard.

Pretty sure Notch hasn't been making any changes to the game lately...

Yuk Yuk., alpha nastalgia... this is not a revert, they changed some serious code with fire that is just horribly wrong.
Examples. You can no longer contain a fire inside a brick fireplace like you could before. 1 block of fire surrounded by bricks use to be okay for a fireplace. it would not spread, even with the front of it open. Now the fire will detect anything within 5 blocks up. and 1 OUT from the fireplace and start it on fire. Even if you put an iron gate block infront of the fireplace which would effectively make it completely contained and surrounded by nonflammable blocks it will still catch burnable blocks on fire above the fireplace.

my calculations show that regardless of non-flammable blocks around a fire. a single fire block will and can ignore any blocks adjacent or kiddy-corner from it and 5 blocks up from those. that's a 6 block square, 5 blocks up. so 1 fire can detect and ignite a 30 block cuboid area regardless of precautions. this pretty much makes all fireplaces completely useless. You got to use mods like towny just to keep them from burning your houses down.

Fire should burn good, but not entire biomes or burn forever, my issue is with how stupid the fire logic is for even starting fires.

Few people know this, but there is an unused block texture already in the game's code which I'll call the "seamless doubleslab". It's a stone doubleslab that uses the top of the slab texture on every face, instead of having a fissure down the middle. It's still created by stacking two seemingly normal stone slabs, but those slabs have a different data value so they get this texture instead of the normal one.



Here is a tower of seamless doubleslabs, alongside stone and regular doubleslabs for comparison:



As you can see, it has a variety of aesthetic uses:





Now it is possible to get this block through inventory hacking, or through the newly discovered transmutation glitch. (The glitch was patched! )

But why not allow this block to be created through regular crafting? It's already in the game after all. My suggestion is simple: Craft two slabs together, create a seamless doubleslab block. When seamless doubleslabs break they should turn back into two regular slabs, which would then have to be recrafted to make a seamless block instead of regular doubleslab (as opposed to how they currently work, which is that they look like regular slabs, but don't stack with regular slabs)

This has nothing to do with them not caring. It simply has to do with the fact that the game is expansive and complex and, outside of AI changes, one guy is doing all the work. The only testing that happens is from this community via the snapshot builds. Nobody reported this issue in the snapshots so it was probably caused by a fix to one of the other bugs that was reported. There's no way that they can test everything, and there's no way that the can fix everthing.

Now, I'm not excusing the fact that a very large bug like this got through. It shouldn't have. But it's not like Jeb doesn't care and I have a feeling we'll get a fix in short order.

No.



Do you think Jeb will add a bathroom meter to the game next?

Oh no, looks like you have to interrupt construction on your awesome castle (again) because your Tiredness meter needs refreshing.

How about a Fun meter?

If you want to have a tedious time balancing 10 different life gauges ad nauseum go play the Sims ...

OK, I'll make this short, sweet, and to-the-point.

Fixing SMP needs to be a priority of future updates. While new features are nice, Minecraft should have a less-buggy multiplayer. Amen.

THAT IS ALL