Slashdot Mirror
Minecraft 1.5 "Redstone" Released
First time accepted submitter kdogg73 writes "Jens Bergensten and the Mojang team have released the latest version of Minecraft — version 1.5, dubbed 'Redstone.' Changes and updates include an added redstone comparator, redstone block, hoppers and droppers, light and weight sensors, Herobrine removal, and many bug fixes. Videos detailing the changes and new redstone devices already litter YouTube."
Funny what happen to the MOD API.
Bonus points to whomever builds a Redstone rocket using this version!
And many many bug fixes too, including one I really liked that could be used to make turbo-firing dispensers in a tiny space. I used that for potions and eggs.
There was some interesting ones removed that I hope they actually add in as effects, such as some curious mixture of potion effects that effectively flips your screen on the horizontal. (and controls)
That would make for a fantastic effect. That plus a double reverse potion (cure) would be pretty interesting if also combined with the beacons.
You could create an area effect around your base that flips every other players controls and your team use the de-flip potion.
Would be a great defensive use of Beacons, which are its main use from what I have seen on several huge faction servers.
Another was also one that flipped on the vertical two.
They really should heavily expand the potion system and allow for negation potions to disable potential effects getting applied to you.
I have heard the next update is supposed to be another biomes update.
I sure hope so, SO MANY biomes were removed in a recent update, that was annoying.
To be honest, seed generation should be based around peaks and depths, with biomes placed around them in a normal realistic sense.
It still annoys the hell out of me to see a snowy biome separated by a river, and then a damn desert next to it.
Then temperature can actually be made better use of, instead of just a very simple use that it is now.
And fix weather as well. Weather is still terrible. Weather is still global, it needs to be seed + biome based.
You'd probably enjoy TrollCraft more though
My sig of choice is Marlboro
They say "Removed Herobrine" in every changelog.
As a server admin, this release continues my frustration of the lack of a mod API which was promised a LONG time ago.
Not only that, Mincraft has terrible memory and performance issues. I'm really surprised they haven't spent some of their vast money mountain to get it a lot more efficient, even if it means replacing some of the calc intensive java stuff with something offering better throughput, like interpreted BASIC on an 8 bit micro.
Here, I have gone to great lengths to address your question on this page.
Maybe you'll want to look at Minetest instead?
Granted it's not as polished as Minecraft yet but; it's open source, the engine is written in C++ and the gameplay logic is written in Lua.
I plan to contribute something to the project once I find some free time on my hands.
The soundtrack was released over two years ago. You can pick it up for $4 now. Most of the tracks it features are only heard in-game if you collect records (which drop from creepers when they're killed by skeletons) and play them in a jukebox.
Wouldn't work well in a VM anyway.
They actually refactored the code awhile ago, and are refactoring it currently in order to merge the single and multi-player sides to the code base. The game definitely runs better than it used to, though they're using each performance gain to pay for new features, such as smooth lighting. Thankfully, many of those features can be disabled, and doing so should leave you with a game that performs better than it once did.
Then I remembered it requires Java. So much for that... I'm too lazy to set up a VM just for that.
You imply a VM would help.
Save yourself the overhead, install a 64 bit JRE so there is no browser plugin, and you will be equally as safe as if running it in a VM - only getting 120 FPS instead of 1-2 :P
If you arn't running a 64 bit machine, then
A) wtf?!
and
B) Make double/triple sure you remove the browser plugin, else you'll be in a world of hurt.
There have been hundreds to thousands of exploits for the browser plugin these past few years, but thankfully none for the JRE in at least two years, and all those have long since been patched.
The problem is that you have to have a computer that can handle your view distance^3 blocks simultaneously. Lets say you can see 1000 blocks away (500 in both directions), that's a trillion blocks. They have a system that kinda shortchanges your height (you don't miss it anyways) and loads the terrain in blocks, but the way that the game functions has some limitations that even the coolest tomfoolery doesn't alleviate.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! It's java! Java is teh suxors! It would get a bajillion frames per microsecond if they just wrote in pure machine code!
Sorry, the Java is slow meme has gotten way too old and posts like yours shouldn't be necessary. Voxels are not as simple as people think they are. There's way more vertices, surfaces, and triangles in a simple voxel landscape than in a typical mesh landscape, primarily because voxels also have depth while a mesh is just just the surface. You basically take the amount of data a "traditional" game is trying to shove down the video card's throat and raise it by a couple of factors then desperately try to reduce that number by employing clever hacks. So, yeah, someone can try to look smart and compare Minecraft to Crysis (really? We're still on the Crysis standard?), but all they're really showing is their ignorance of how complex voxels really are.
The good news is my 9 year old loves Minecraft, and I like how it encourages his creativity and isn't all about violence.
The bad news? Its a Java app, which is the last thing I want on any of my Macs. Not to mention that adding mods is a total pain in the ass. It's like they built an app specifically to screw with parents and make their computers vulnerable. Thanks...
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle. - Plato
What is wrong with having java installed?
Several zero-day privilege escalation vulnerabilities, for one. Watch an applet take over your user account. Do these stories interest you?
Also, if you're a Linux user, you can use the OpenJDK packages as well if you don't want to use anything Oracle related. Minecraft runs fine with OpenJDK on my Slackware 14 setup.
Is Redstone fun? Redstone always seemed very wierd in minecraft. Minecraft is all about simple things. Then you have Redstone with its wierd rules. You can't just pickup and use Redstone. Look at this stupid chart: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_Circuits/Logic
It feels very tedious compared to circuits in say little big planet 2.
Disable/remove the Java browser plugins, which is what the majority of vulnerabilities prey on.
Since most generally run MC from a local Java install (not the browser), it should be fairly safe.
And yet it was released with a bug of white pixels between textures in dark areas on some video cards, which their error reporting site has marked as "fixed." It also has a very sporadic framerate from the "improved" lighting engine, even though the biggest lighting glitch (the dark spots) still exists in full force. Not to mention, they buffed skeletons to be way more annoying, to the point that they shoot so fast you can't get out of the water to kill them, yet nerfed bonemeal to need multiple pieces to grow something. The latter is particularly ironic given that this is the "redstone update" which attempts to implement automation, and yet here they threw unpredictability into the equation, which is the exact opposite of what you want in an automated system.
And when you consider that the "redstone update" does nothing to actually improve redstone itself, which is still a huge pain to work with, you wonder what the overall point to this version was. Anyone who's used the Redpower mod knows that once you've used red alloy wire that you'll never use redstone dust again. All we really get here are variable redstone signals and some hoppers for the most part, which still requires fighting the game's implementation of redstone with crazy block configurations to pass signals rather than just focusing on building the creations themselves.
There's other various bugs and annoyances introduced or unfixed in this version, to the point that when you combine that with the performance and visual issues, it's just a rather disappointing update. But I'm waiting for 1.5.1 before I completely throw up my hands with it. In the meantime, we still have modded 1.4.7 to enjoy.