In contrast to previous updates and despite its size, nearly double that of TMCWv4, TMCWv4.5 is mainly an optimization and bugfix update of the sort that vanilla so desperately needs, including fixing major bugs such as MC-2025 (mobs glitching out of and suffocating in blocks) and MC-43968, MC-68129, and MC-138211 (multiple issues with smooth lighting, including the addition of smooth lighting for blocks like water). Many bugs present in vanilla 1.6.4, and consequently previous versions of TMCW, have also been fixed or mitigated, such as MC-1018 and MC-80966 (lighting errors) and MC-119 (mobs visually sinking into the ground), along with dozens, if not hundreds of other fixes (I did not keep track), some still not fixed as of 1.16, or having become much worse since then, such as MC-161823 (IMO, 1.16 shouldn't have been released with such a major bug. Note that I've never actually seen this particular bug happen in 1.6.4 but it is possible that the greater multithreading in newer versions made a file I/O synchronization bug more apparent (e.g. MC-119971). I also previously fixed an issue with the internal server not being properly shut down when quitting - in TMCWv1, yet vanilla still does not, as evidenced by bugs like MC-315).
As for optimizations, much of the rendering and world generation systems have been rewritten with performance and resource/memory usage in mind; world generation is more than twice as fast as TMCWv4, even faster in "mega forest" biomes due to a highly optimized lighting engine, while memory usage and object allocation has been minimized - you should only need to allocate 512 MB even at maximum settings, and I recommend changing the default JVM arguments to the ones provided in the Readme (more memory will slow things down. Even 256 MB will work for low-mid-range settings; I've seen memory usage as low as 60 MB on 8 chunks in a default world). Here is the game output from creating a new world with the seed "TMCWv4" with render distance set to 8 (the spawn radius is one more than this); the area around spawn is mostly Mixed Forest and Jungle:
The rendering of blocks, entities, particles, and tile entities has also been improved and/or fixed; for example, wall signs are now rendered as blocks, with only the text being rendered as a tile entity, and closed chests use a simplified model which renders 2-3 times faster. Particles now properly render in front of/behind water, along with the selection box and breaking animation. Particles which did not render due to the server not sending them to the client also now render, such as water/lava mixing (changed to use white steam particles instead of black smoke, except when lava destroys a block). Fancy clouds render faster than Fast clouds in vanilla, and clouds properly blend in with the terrain (e.g. you can see blocks above them, which were hidden in vanilla).
Complex blocks like fences are far faster, especially with smooth lighting enabled, which also now only has two settings as there was almost no difference between "min" and "max" (this only fixed some glitches with slabs and stairs. These do still have some minor visual glitches since they are partial blocks but opaque, but overall much less than in vanilla), many blocks have proper face culling (e.g. vanilla renders the sides of snow layers and carpets and the top of the block below; by culling these hidden faces the number rendered dropped from 6 to 1).
Chunks are now rendered in a circle instead of square, removing the normally invisible corners for a 20% reduction in rendered geometry, along with the addition of a custom culling method which hides chunks below the surface when you are above ground and vice-versa.
Notably, a light level of 0 is now totally dark, no matter the brightness setting, in-game or monitor, - you better make sure you always have a light source on hand when caving! Fog also darkens and the sun/moon/stars are hidden when below sea level and in the absence of sky light (similar to void fog in vanilla but occurring anywhere below sea level; fog distance is not affected).
Many changes and additions have been made to video settings, including fine control of render distance and framerate limit, individual fast/fancy options for various things, and additional settings such as biome blend:
Here are some screenshots:
While not primarily a content update, there are many more additions and changes, including some that significantly impact gameplay, at least, if you are the typical player who heavily relies on mob farms; many of these changes were backported from TMCWv5 (and as such, are no longer considered to be features it will add), a full list of which can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xhq7o28tk4igrhd/tmcwv4.5_changelog.txt
(this is a very long list, hence I provided a link to a separate file, which can be viewed in the browser)
Another notable change is not to the mod itself but to the included utilities; rather than providing a patch that enables AMIDST to be used, but only showing basic landmasses and climate zones, I made my own biome mapping tool which makes a fully detailed biome map, as well as providing a list of the biomes present and their frequencies, and the number found out of the total (making it easy to find "all biomes within x blocks" seeds; these are not as common as you may think despite the much more varied biome generation in TMCW):
As for optimizations, much of the rendering and world generation systems have been rewritten with performance and resource/memory usage in mind; world generation is more than twice as fast as TMCWv4, even faster in "mega forest" biomes due to a highly optimized lighting engine, while memory usage and object allocation has been minimized - you should only need to allocate 512 MB even at maximum settings, and I recommend changing the default JVM arguments to the ones provided in the Readme (more memory will slow things down. Even 256 MB will work for low-mid-range settings; I've seen memory usage as low as 60 MB on 8 chunks in a default world). Here is the game output from creating a new world with the seed "TMCWv4" with render distance set to 8 (the spawn radius is one more than this); the area around spawn is mostly Mixed Forest and Jungle:
2020-06-23 13:56:55 [SERVER] [INFO] Starting integrated minecraft server version 1.6.4
2020-06-23 13:56:55 [SERVER] [INFO] Generating keypair
2020-06-23 13:56:55 [SERVER] [INFO] Converting map!
2020-06-23 13:56:55 [SERVER] [INFO] Scanning folders...
2020-06-23 13:56:55 [SERVER] [INFO] Total conversion count is 0
2020-06-23 13:56:55 [SERVER] [INFO] Preparing start region for level 0
2020-06-23 13:56:56 [SERVER] [INFO] Preparing spawn area: 14%
2020-06-23 13:56:57 [SERVER] [INFO] Preparing spawn area: 47%
2020-06-23 13:56:57 [SERVER] [INFO] TheMasterCaver[/127.0.0.1:0] logged in with entity id 117 at (2.5, 69.0, -215.5)
The rendering of blocks, entities, particles, and tile entities has also been improved and/or fixed; for example, wall signs are now rendered as blocks, with only the text being rendered as a tile entity, and closed chests use a simplified model which renders 2-3 times faster. Particles now properly render in front of/behind water, along with the selection box and breaking animation. Particles which did not render due to the server not sending them to the client also now render, such as water/lava mixing (changed to use white steam particles instead of black smoke, except when lava destroys a block). Fancy clouds render faster than Fast clouds in vanilla, and clouds properly blend in with the terrain (e.g. you can see blocks above them, which were hidden in vanilla).
Complex blocks like fences are far faster, especially with smooth lighting enabled, which also now only has two settings as there was almost no difference between "min" and "max" (this only fixed some glitches with slabs and stairs. These do still have some minor visual glitches since they are partial blocks but opaque, but overall much less than in vanilla), many blocks have proper face culling (e.g. vanilla renders the sides of snow layers and carpets and the top of the block below; by culling these hidden faces the number rendered dropped from 6 to 1).
Chunks are now rendered in a circle instead of square, removing the normally invisible corners for a 20% reduction in rendered geometry, along with the addition of a custom culling method which hides chunks below the surface when you are above ground and vice-versa.
Notably, a light level of 0 is now totally dark, no matter the brightness setting, in-game or monitor, - you better make sure you always have a light source on hand when caving! Fog also darkens and the sun/moon/stars are hidden when below sea level and in the absence of sky light (similar to void fog in vanilla but occurring anywhere below sea level; fog distance is not affected).
Many changes and additions have been made to video settings, including fine control of render distance and framerate limit, individual fast/fancy options for various things, and additional settings such as biome blend:
Render distance is now in chunks, ranging from 2-16 and defaulting to 8 (instead of 2,4,8,16) and render distances above 10 work properly (even Optifine did not increase the server view distance past 10 or chunk render distance past 12 until you exceeded 16 chunks). The server view distance ranges from 8-16, avoiding issues like MC-2536 (mob (de)spawning is within 6 chunks while random block updates are within 7 chunks).
Framerate limit is now adjustable from 30-200 FPS in intervals of 5 FPS, with the lowest setting enabling vsync and highest setting unlimited.
Added a slider to control the time allotted to chunk updates, from 0-100% of the frame time (worst-case FPS reduction is 50%; if you can get 200 FPS (5 ms frame time) but limit it to 100 FPS then up to 10 ms will be allotted, giving a worst-case frame time of 15 ms or 67 FPS; the default setting of 25% will not cause a reduction if uncapped FPS is at least 33% higher than the limit unless a single update takes longer). This is superior to Optifine's "chunk updates per frame" since the number of chunk updates is based on how long they take and how much time they have (at least one will be done even if the time is 0); with Vsync enabled a minimum of 60 or the actual framerate is assumed so it scales with higher framerates.
Smooth lighting now only has two settings, on or off, as performance improvements negate any need for a "min/max" setting, which also only affected certain blocks like stairs (it had no effect on most blocks, including performance).
Added an ambient occlusion setting which controls the shadows that appear in corners (distinct from smooth lighting, the setting for which toggles both effects).
Brightness now defaults to Bright instead of Moody and an additional "gamma offset" slider was added which adjusts how light levels are rescaled for a smoother transition to total darkness (this was a debug setting I used when tweaking lighting but I decided to keep the slider in; the effects are similar but different from "brightness". Note that total darkness is unaffected by either setting).
Clouds can now be set to Off, Default, Fast, or Fancy, where Default is determined by the main Fast/Fancy setting, and cloud height can be adjusted from 96 to 256 blocks (defaults to 128).
Items, rain/snow, and translucent blocks (e.g. water) can individually be set to Default, Fast, or Fancy.
Leaves can be set to Default, Fast, Fancy, or Fancy (fast), the last of which removes interior faces more than 1 block deep to improve performance while giving a better appearance than if only the outer faces were rendered.
Grass can be set to Default, Fast, Fancy, or Full Side, the last of which is similar to Optifine's Better Grass option (the side textures of grass, mycelium, and podzol are replaced with the top texture; if there is snow on top the snow texture is used instead of the normal snowy side texture).
Added individual on/off settings for potion particles, water particles, lava mix particles (e.g. when water touches lava), and entity shadows.
Added a setting for biome blend, defaulting to 5x5 (vanilla is fixed at 3x3) and adjustable from 0 (off) to 15x15; note that this setting only affects the time chunk updates take, not static framerate, same for many other settings like smooth lighting. This also smoothens sky color transitions between biomes.
Changed the range of FOV from 70-110 to 30-110 to accomodate users who need a lower FOV.
Fog distance can be varied from 0 to 0.9, and off, defaulting to 0.8, similar to vanilla 1.7+, which greatly improves the appearance of the game (vanilla 1.6.4 uses 0.25).
Replaced "Advanced OpenGL" with "Culling", which has 3 options, Off, Advanced OpenGL, Height Based, with the last being my own culling method which does not render the underground unless you are below sea level or the lowest solid block is lower, or above sea level if you are underground and the sky light level is 0 (this can cause rendering artifacts under overhangs, deep buried ravines that extend above sea level, but generally not common, or in Superflat worlds with a ceiling, it is also disabled in the Nether).
Added an "AO Fix Mode" setting to change how faces are rendered to fix MC-138211 (example of correct AO: https://i.imgur.com/MLUVCUy.png); this is necessary because different GPU drivers split "quads" into triangles differently (mode 1, the default, appears to be correct for NVIDIA. You can also use the "wrong" setting to make shadows more apparent around corners (appearing as a square instead of octagon around a block).
Added a "Fast Render" option which uses a faster method of sending chunks to the GPU; however, it will cause floating point rounding errors to noticably affect rendering far from the origin (well past the point most players will explore); for this reason it is turned off by default.
Removed 3D anaglyph as it was rarely used and not even implemented properly, enabling code to be simplified. Likewise, the server textures option was removed since support was not implemented until 1.7 (MC-18569); removing both of these frees up space for new settings.
Changes to video settings only take effect after exiting video settings to prevent unnecessary chunk reloads; pressing Esc instead of the "Done" button also properly saves changes to settings (there are two screens due to the number of settings, Esc will go back to the game from either). There is also an option to reset all video settings to default values.
Here are some screenshots:
Performance at maximum settings in a Mega Mixed Forest, representing a worst-case scenario:
Video settings and controls:
Circular chunk rendering:
Fixed smooth lighting (compare to vanilla; this is also worse in newer versions):
Water uses a special texture against glass and other visually transparent full cube blocks (rather than the flowing animation):
Video settings and controls:
Circular chunk rendering:
Fixed smooth lighting (compare to vanilla; this is also worse in newer versions):
Water uses a special texture against glass and other visually transparent full cube blocks (rather than the flowing animation):
While not primarily a content update, there are many more additions and changes, including some that significantly impact gameplay, at least, if you are the typical player who heavily relies on mob farms; many of these changes were backported from TMCWv5 (and as such, are no longer considered to be features it will add), a full list of which can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xhq7o28tk4igrhd/tmcwv4.5_changelog.txt
(this is a very long list, hence I provided a link to a separate file, which can be viewed in the browser)
Another notable change is not to the mod itself but to the included utilities; rather than providing a patch that enables AMIDST to be used, but only showing basic landmasses and climate zones, I made my own biome mapping tool which makes a fully detailed biome map, as well as providing a list of the biomes present and their frequencies, and the number found out of the total (making it easy to find "all biomes within x blocks" seeds; these are not as common as you may think despite the much more varied biome generation in TMCW):
A biome map of the seed "TMCWv4", centered around 0,0 with a radius of 512 blocks:
A map of an actual world made with Minutor. While biomes are not marked on the maps it is easy to learn which colors correspond to which biomes; some are quite obvious, such as Mesa or Rocky Mountains, others use the same colors as AMIDST, such as Desert, with Mountainous Desert appearing similar to Desert Hills but the size of an entire biome; Savanna has a similar color as the foliage in-game, Ice Plains is white with gray Ice Mountains, while Winter Forest is light green and Winter Taiga is light blue-green, and so on:
A map of an actual world made with Minutor. While biomes are not marked on the maps it is easy to learn which colors correspond to which biomes; some are quite obvious, such as Mesa or Rocky Mountains, others use the same colors as AMIDST, such as Desert, with Mountainous Desert appearing similar to Desert Hills but the size of an entire biome; Savanna has a similar color as the foliage in-game, Ice Plains is white with gray Ice Mountains, while Winter Forest is light green and Winter Taiga is light blue-green, and so on:
(this used to be in the OP but it got too large(!) so the descriptions for all previous updates have been moved to separate comments which originally described features added by that update)
September 1, 2020 update (original comment):
1. Added variants of rail blocks for all types of rails (normal, activator, detector, powered); texture was also changed to include separate end and side textures (side textures are all the same while end texture matches the top and bottom textures) and block model is sized to the width of rails so they look like a stack of rails (before the same texture was used on all sides and they were full cubes). They can also be placed in two orientations depending on the direction you are facing, north-south or east-west.
All new blocks added (fun fact: there are actually no new blocks added; they are all variants of existing blocks, and otherwise only rail blocks are an actual new block, the same is true of the majority of blocks added by TMCW so there are still plenty of IDs left):
2. Burning zombies can now set the player on fire while they are holding an item (this is/was intended not to happen in vanilla, MC-14396, but it adds difficulty).
3. Rubies reduce the prior work penalty by up to 6 levels per ruby, for a cost of up to 6 levels plus the prior work penalty and number of enchantments, times 2 for diamond and 3 for amethyst (e.g. one ruby on an unenchanted item with a prior work penalty of 8 will cost 14 levels, or 6 + 8; two rubies will cost 16 levels, or 6 + 2 + 8. If the item also has 3 enchantments the costs will be 17 and 22 for iron or lower, 20 and 28 for diamond, and 23 and 34 for amethyst). This enables indefinitely repairing items which would be too expensive with Mending (e.g. an amethyst pickaxe with Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III, Mending would cost 56 levels; without Mending the cost is 43 levels and you get 4 repairs before it becomes too expensive; with rubies you can use one every 3 repairs to reset the penalty to 0 for a cost of 43, 45, 47 per repair, then 15 for a ruby). Note that the cost of using rubies is capped to 39 levels, even for amethyst items (normally 49) and they do not work on enchanted books:
4. Reduced cost of Thorns from 8 to 4 per level and reduced durability penalty to 1 extra durability lost and only when reflecting damage, making it more viable to use (previously Thorns III would increase the base cost by 24 levels and take an average of 2.9 times the durability away; now it costs 12 levels and 1.45 times durability, 0.725 times with Unbreaking III compared to no Thorns/Unbreaking). Multiple items with Thorns will also lose durability at random instead of just the bottommost item. Also reduced the cost of Blast Protection from 4 to 2 per level (from 16 to 8 for Blast Protection IV), giving it the same cost as the other specialized protection enchantments.
5. Renaming an item now only costs 1 level regardless of the item or the stack size (plus the prior work penalty and enchantment costs, if applicable; because of this, it is best to rename an item you want to enchant before doing so, or while adding new enchantments, combining, or repairing):
6. There is a chance (3.226% of slimes or 1/10 as common as each smaller size, which have equal chances) of a size 8 "mega slime" spawning in swamps, which has double the aggro range (32 blocks), 64 health, deals 8 damage (on Normal difficulty), can jump over obstacles 4 blocks high, fall up to 8 blocks with no fall damage, and drops 8 XP and splits into 2-4 large slimes when killed (up to 85 slimes and 120 XP total):
7. If a medium or larger slime is killed by lava it will split into magma cubes instead of slimes:
8. Oak/spruce bushes (like the ones in Bushlands or Jungle) now only grow if there are only 2 blocks of clearance above a sapling (a non-air/leaves/wood block 3 blocks above sapling; previously, spruce saplings only grew bushes in Bushlands, making spruce less viable in that biome):
9. All-bark logs are now craftable; 4 normal logs give you 4 bark logs (instead of 3 like 1.13+ does so there is no loss) and Silk Touch is needed to harvest them (they naturally generate in trees, even unbranched trees (topmost block so the inside of the log is not visible on Fancy graphics), so it would be a bit of pain if they dropped themselves; Silk Touch is basically just a convenience since you can easily recraft them in the inventory). They can also be directly crafted into planks.
10. Smooth stone, sandstone, and quartz double slabs (named as Smooth Stone, Full Smooth Sandstone, and Smooth Quartz Block) can be crafted using 2x2 of their respective half slabs, giving you two of their full blocks. They also drop themselves when mined, thus act like normal blocks and not double slabs. Smooth quartz blocks also use the bottom texture on all sides (instead of the top texture, which makes it look too much like normal quartz blocks).
11. Petrified Oak Wood Slabs (the original wood slabs) can be crafted with a stone slab sandwiched between 2 oak wood slabs on top of each other, giving you 2 petrified slabs, which look like wood but are mined with a pickaxe and do not burn.
12. Added spruce, birch, and jungle wood fences, which have the same crafting recipe as 1.8+ except you get 4 fences instead of 3, or slightly less than one fence per plank block. Villages also use different types of wood for fences; Plains = oak, Savanna = jungle, Meadow = spruce, Ice Plains and Desert = birch.
13. Added 12 new wall variants for stone, granite, diorite, andesite, sandstone, brick, stone brick, mossy stone brick, end stone, nether quartz, netherrack, and hardened clay.
14. Snow layers drop up to two snowballs per layer instead of one when harvested with Fortune (similarly to glowstone higher levels give a higher chance of two; Fortune I-III = 1.25, 1.5, 1.75). Also, multi-layer blocks melt by one layer at a time instead of all at once:
15. Silk Touch can now pick up an intact (uneaten) cake; only right-clicking now consumes cake so as to not interfere with mining action, also consitent with eating other foods.
16. Fixed MC-190, most noticeable when using custom textures on blocks like stairs (hard to see with default textures), and MC-41825 (some entities render black with no light and Night Vision).
17. Shears and shovels can now be fully repaired with 2 units instead of 4, making repairs twice as efficient in terms of both materials and XP (it is still cheaper XP-wise to repair shears with new shears instead of units but it can be more convenient, e.g. running out of durability halfway through clearing a cave spider spawner and not having enough levels, which can be avoided by repairing with a unit when durability falls below 50%. For shovels the benefit can be much greater, especially for amethyst, e.g. Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending costs 43 levels for a one unit repair, which now restores twice the durability):
18. Leaves have a 5% chance of dropping a stick, increased to 10% with Fortune III; jungle leaves have 2/3 the drop rate.
19. Fixed brightness of XP orbs so they do not appear dimmer from certain angles (MC-108003, unfixed as of 1.16.2).
20. Bows now cost twice as much to repair, up to 8 instead of 4 levels for an intact sacrifice; this is to bring up the cost to match vanilla in the case of a bow with Power V, Flame, Infinity, Unbreaking III, and Mending (39 levels in vanilla 1.6.4; previously, such a bow cost 35 levels in TMCW):
(the cost with Flame is 4 levels higher; you could also add Punch II or Flame and Punch I for 8 levels and be able to repair it with damaged bows for as low as 36 levels since the repair cost can be as low as 1 if the sacrifice is damaged. This also means that even if your bow now costs more than 39 levels to repair with an intact sacrifice you can still repair it)
21. Slimes will now randomly despawn when more than 32 blocks away from a player, but after 5 minutes instead of 30 seconds, preserving some of their original tendency to accumulate.
22. Fixed incorrect rendering of hinges on doors (MC-106697, "works as intended"; they would appear on the side with the knob and sometimes both sides).
23. Slimes now have their own mob cap, set to 25, similar to ocelots (slime spawning is controlled by the hostile mob cap but it does not include slimes). Slimes also now spawn twice as often (removed 50% failure rate for surface and reduced failure rate from 90% to 80% for slime chunks) and is also no longer reduced by an additional 75% in Superflat worlds if the ground level is at least 40 (this affects both slime chunks and surface spawning in swamps):
All new blocks added (fun fact: there are actually no new blocks added; they are all variants of existing blocks, and otherwise only rail blocks are an actual new block, the same is true of the majority of blocks added by TMCW so there are still plenty of IDs left):
2. Burning zombies can now set the player on fire while they are holding an item (this is/was intended not to happen in vanilla, MC-14396, but it adds difficulty).
3. Rubies reduce the prior work penalty by up to 6 levels per ruby, for a cost of up to 6 levels plus the prior work penalty and number of enchantments, times 2 for diamond and 3 for amethyst (e.g. one ruby on an unenchanted item with a prior work penalty of 8 will cost 14 levels, or 6 + 8; two rubies will cost 16 levels, or 6 + 2 + 8. If the item also has 3 enchantments the costs will be 17 and 22 for iron or lower, 20 and 28 for diamond, and 23 and 34 for amethyst). This enables indefinitely repairing items which would be too expensive with Mending (e.g. an amethyst pickaxe with Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III, Mending would cost 56 levels; without Mending the cost is 43 levels and you get 4 repairs before it becomes too expensive; with rubies you can use one every 3 repairs to reset the penalty to 0 for a cost of 43, 45, 47 per repair, then 15 for a ruby). Note that the cost of using rubies is capped to 39 levels, even for amethyst items (normally 49) and they do not work on enchanted books:
This pickaxe has 3 prior workings for a prior work penalty of 6 levels; it costs 7 levels to repair:
The cost for a ruby is 12 levels, or 6 plus the prior work penalty:
After using a ruby; it only costs 1 level since the penalty is now 0:
Here is an example with enchanted items (all with 3 enchantments and 6 prior work penalty from adding them with books); each enchantment increases the cost by 1 level, 2 for diamond and 3 for amethyst:
Rubies can also be used on a stack of items for the same cost as a single item:
The cost for a ruby is 12 levels, or 6 plus the prior work penalty:
After using a ruby; it only costs 1 level since the penalty is now 0:
Here is an example with enchanted items (all with 3 enchantments and 6 prior work penalty from adding them with books); each enchantment increases the cost by 1 level, 2 for diamond and 3 for amethyst:
Rubies can also be used on a stack of items for the same cost as a single item:
4. Reduced cost of Thorns from 8 to 4 per level and reduced durability penalty to 1 extra durability lost and only when reflecting damage, making it more viable to use (previously Thorns III would increase the base cost by 24 levels and take an average of 2.9 times the durability away; now it costs 12 levels and 1.45 times durability, 0.725 times with Unbreaking III compared to no Thorns/Unbreaking). Multiple items with Thorns will also lose durability at random instead of just the bottommost item. Also reduced the cost of Blast Protection from 4 to 2 per level (from 16 to 8 for Blast Protection IV), giving it the same cost as the other specialized protection enchantments.
5. Renaming an item now only costs 1 level regardless of the item or the stack size (plus the prior work penalty and enchantment costs, if applicable; because of this, it is best to rename an item you want to enchant before doing so, or while adding new enchantments, combining, or repairing):
6. There is a chance (3.226% of slimes or 1/10 as common as each smaller size, which have equal chances) of a size 8 "mega slime" spawning in swamps, which has double the aggro range (32 blocks), 64 health, deals 8 damage (on Normal difficulty), can jump over obstacles 4 blocks high, fall up to 8 blocks with no fall damage, and drops 8 XP and splits into 2-4 large slimes when killed (up to 85 slimes and 120 XP total):
7. If a medium or larger slime is killed by lava it will split into magma cubes instead of slimes:
8. Oak/spruce bushes (like the ones in Bushlands or Jungle) now only grow if there are only 2 blocks of clearance above a sapling (a non-air/leaves/wood block 3 blocks above sapling; previously, spruce saplings only grew bushes in Bushlands, making spruce less viable in that biome):
9. All-bark logs are now craftable; 4 normal logs give you 4 bark logs (instead of 3 like 1.13+ does so there is no loss) and Silk Touch is needed to harvest them (they naturally generate in trees, even unbranched trees (topmost block so the inside of the log is not visible on Fancy graphics), so it would be a bit of pain if they dropped themselves; Silk Touch is basically just a convenience since you can easily recraft them in the inventory). They can also be directly crafted into planks.
10. Smooth stone, sandstone, and quartz double slabs (named as Smooth Stone, Full Smooth Sandstone, and Smooth Quartz Block) can be crafted using 2x2 of their respective half slabs, giving you two of their full blocks. They also drop themselves when mined, thus act like normal blocks and not double slabs. Smooth quartz blocks also use the bottom texture on all sides (instead of the top texture, which makes it look too much like normal quartz blocks).
11. Petrified Oak Wood Slabs (the original wood slabs) can be crafted with a stone slab sandwiched between 2 oak wood slabs on top of each other, giving you 2 petrified slabs, which look like wood but are mined with a pickaxe and do not burn.
12. Added spruce, birch, and jungle wood fences, which have the same crafting recipe as 1.8+ except you get 4 fences instead of 3, or slightly less than one fence per plank block. Villages also use different types of wood for fences; Plains = oak, Savanna = jungle, Meadow = spruce, Ice Plains and Desert = birch.
13. Added 12 new wall variants for stone, granite, diorite, andesite, sandstone, brick, stone brick, mossy stone brick, end stone, nether quartz, netherrack, and hardened clay.
14. Snow layers drop up to two snowballs per layer instead of one when harvested with Fortune (similarly to glowstone higher levels give a higher chance of two; Fortune I-III = 1.25, 1.5, 1.75). Also, multi-layer blocks melt by one layer at a time instead of all at once:
15. Silk Touch can now pick up an intact (uneaten) cake; only right-clicking now consumes cake so as to not interfere with mining action, also consitent with eating other foods.
16. Fixed MC-190, most noticeable when using custom textures on blocks like stairs (hard to see with default textures), and MC-41825 (some entities render black with no light and Night Vision).
17. Shears and shovels can now be fully repaired with 2 units instead of 4, making repairs twice as efficient in terms of both materials and XP (it is still cheaper XP-wise to repair shears with new shears instead of units but it can be more convenient, e.g. running out of durability halfway through clearing a cave spider spawner and not having enough levels, which can be avoided by repairing with a unit when durability falls below 50%. For shovels the benefit can be much greater, especially for amethyst, e.g. Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending costs 43 levels for a one unit repair, which now restores twice the durability):
Both the shovel and pickaxe have the same enchantments but the shovel gets twice as much durability per unit for the same level cost:
18. Leaves have a 5% chance of dropping a stick, increased to 10% with Fortune III; jungle leaves have 2/3 the drop rate.
19. Fixed brightness of XP orbs so they do not appear dimmer from certain angles (MC-108003, unfixed as of 1.16.2).
20. Bows now cost twice as much to repair, up to 8 instead of 4 levels for an intact sacrifice; this is to bring up the cost to match vanilla in the case of a bow with Power V, Flame, Infinity, Unbreaking III, and Mending (39 levels in vanilla 1.6.4; previously, such a bow cost 35 levels in TMCW):
(the cost with Flame is 4 levels higher; you could also add Punch II or Flame and Punch I for 8 levels and be able to repair it with damaged bows for as low as 36 levels since the repair cost can be as low as 1 if the sacrifice is damaged. This also means that even if your bow now costs more than 39 levels to repair with an intact sacrifice you can still repair it)
21. Slimes will now randomly despawn when more than 32 blocks away from a player, but after 5 minutes instead of 30 seconds, preserving some of their original tendency to accumulate.
22. Fixed incorrect rendering of hinges on doors (MC-106697, "works as intended"; they would appear on the side with the knob and sometimes both sides).
23. Slimes now have their own mob cap, set to 25, similar to ocelots (slime spawning is controlled by the hostile mob cap but it does not include slimes). Slimes also now spawn twice as often (removed 50% failure rate for surface and reduced failure rate from 90% to 80% for slime chunks) and is also no longer reduced by an additional 75% in Superflat worlds if the ground level is at least 40 (this affects both slime chunks and surface spawning in swamps):
The number of slimes is displayed next to "mob counts" on the left (M = monster, S = slime, P = passive, O = ocelot, A = ambient, W = water); there are a total of 94 hostile mobs including slimes present:
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These are in my Alpha 1.2.6 mod, but you can adapt them to modern vanilla.
First is my linear mine. I dug this out with TNT (just like in current versions, my TNT drops everything) and then decorated a bit. The pillars are a natural formation from the way I stuff my TNT into boreholes. It's 2 charges per section, top and bottom. I push the cart along to hold drops. After about 300 blocks, the tunnel turns and loops back.
This is a new wide-area "quarry" style mine I'm experimenting with. It's single charges of TNT, which (due to my borehole style) make a nice set of pillars and arches. I tidy them up, add some details and lighting:
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I felt bad for birch not having a large tree variant, so here's an unsolicited suggestion (feel free to use, adapt, ignore, or do whatever you like with it): what about a coppiced birch? Birch trees with their trunks cut or broken can re-grow multiple straight trunks from the stump:
Using the Poplar variant, here's a mock-up using 3x3 birch trees, each 1-3 blocks above the "stump" and with the outer trunks offset by 1 from the base:
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A question: is your pack considered "best" when combined with the old "programmer" vanilla textures, or the new vanilla textures? Which way do you use it?
I made an add-on pack which just does some blockstate/model magic to add bark textures to the upright fenceposts, log knot textures to wooden buttons, vertical planks on double plank slabs, taller full-grown wheat, and no-lag fluffy leaf models.
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Isabella II Retro - A lighter version of Isabella for Beta 1.7.3
Is Isabella Retro just too dark? Do you want some of the slightly newer textures while still keeping the early-beta quirks (and compatible chests, color maps, etc)? You might prefer Isabella II Retro.
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After chasing some dead links around, I ran across this copy of "v2.7 for Steamcraft 0.4", which seems to be the correct version for beta 1.7.3: https://mediafire.com/file/63p5d678xa6ping/
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Isabella Retro - a remix pack for Beta 1.7.3
This pack uses textures created by bonemouse between beta 1.6 and the 1.0 preview versions. The style of Isabella Classic was changing quite a bit from version to version back then. Some blocks will be very familiar, others may not. I didn't edit any of them, I just mixed and matched block variants with similar styles from each version until I had something cohesive. This version doesn't use the MCPatcher features, so you can use it with your vanilla launcher.
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New version of SuikaTweaks (mainly for better compatibility with yurisuika's GUI updates, yes there's updates to the pack, go download the newest version), now with season packs separate:
SuikaTweaks add-on to SuikaCraft.
Autumn add-on to SuikaTweaks
Winter add-on to SuikaTweaks
Alternate double-slabs, fences, plant variants, etc:
SuikaCraft Default
SuikaCraft + SuikaTweaks
SuikaCraft + SuikaTweaks + Autumn
SuikaCraft + SuikaTweaks + Winter
Tree types (superflat with no varying colors, and natural forest):
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SuikaCraft Default
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SuikaCraft + SuikaTweaks
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SuikaCraft + SuikaTweaks + Autumn
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SuikaCraft + SuikaTweaks + Winter
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SuikaTweaks for 1.12 (Updated, see below!)
An updated version of SuikaCraft Foliage with fewer added/changed texture files and more blockstate/model magic.
-Fluffy randomized leaves
-Grass, mushrooms and flowers of varying sizes
-Bark on upright fence posts, great for making miniature trees
-Alternate double-slab textures
-Mildly tinted lightmaps with darker shadows (requires Optifine, optimized for moody lighting)
-Corrections to various blockstate issues
-Some additional environmental sounds
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SuikaCraft Foliage - add-on pack for SuikaCraft
Uses Wedhro's no-lag fluffy leaf model, some lightly modified SuikaCraft leaf textures, and a different leaf color palette:
Uses yurisuika's alternate pumpkin/lantern textures, alternate tallgrass textures,
vine models[edit: removed due to lag around vine farms], and waterlily texture/models without Optifine or extra packs. Uses rotated textures on double wooden slabs, and small stone brick textures on double stone brick slabs:Uses the log (or netherrack) texture for fence posts:
Other small tweaks and fixes:
-Shield decorations are now properly aligned, instead of some being offset
-Shields now take up less of the screen from first-person view
-Jukeboxes show when they have a disc in them
-Observer blocks have a proper "activated" texture
-Additional thunder, fire, and water sounds
-Spookier ghast sounds
-A different font for better visibility
-A couple of other visibility tweaks and blockstate fixes
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In case you hadn't seen, the Observer block now has an extra texture for the output side when it detects something. In vanilla, the redstone dot lights up.