After a long time coming and many snapshots, Minecraft 1.8: The Bountiful Update has finally released on the launcher today.

It’s been well over 300 days and 10 months since Mojang began working towards what is possibly the largest update to the popular sandbox game since its full release. The reason for this is that a great many of the core mechanics of the game have been reworked, replaced or just generally improved. This includes some tweaks to world generation (including a whole new way to allow players to generate a world based on what they want) and a new skin system that saw the ‘hat’ layer extended all over the surface of the player avatar and the possibility of finally being able to have limbs that weren’t mirrors of each other.

And while a lot of the updates were meant for the mapmakers or ‘invisible’ to the player, there were many updates to Survival mode as well. This included the addition of new blocks, such as the fall damage-dampening slime block; the three new stone types: andesite, granite and diorite, all naturally occurring and also craftable; red sandstone; prismarine; sea lanterns; wet sponge and more. There are also new mobs added in 1.8, the most prominent being the rabbits who are often tame but can rarely spawn in a ‘killer’ variety.

There are also some building tweaks such as moss stone now being craftable (vine and cobblestone), all wooden fences now join together (but nether brick fences still won’t), fences crafting recipe has changed to be the opposite of crafting a gate (4 planks and 2 sticks) and the different woods now make different doors. Banners are also now available, being crafted much as you would a sign but with wool instead of planks (6 wool and a stick).

There’s a reason it’s called the Bountiful Update and that’s because there’s so much added that it’s impossible to fit all into one article. Check out the blog post linked below for the full list of features and download the 1.8 update from the launcher to play with it yourself.

“Minecraft 1.8 Pre-release 3 – The Bountiful Update” – [x]

So, as PredictedCyborg mentioned in her post yesterday (Mojang take over Bukkit development after project leads quits), The Minecraft 1.8 – The Bountiful Update has been pre-released has dropped today and here’s the patch notes

 

 

Hello!

 

It’s time for us to pre-release the next major Minecraft update, the Bountiful Update! This will bring Minecraft to version 1.8, and should be officially be published in the launcher on Tuesday, September 2. This is the update that to date has taken the longest time to create (over 300 days), and is the result of many, many changes.

 

These changes consist of both new features, and large game structure changes such as replacing the hard-coded “block renderer” with a system that is able to read block shapes from data files, or performance enhancements such as multi-threading the client-side chunk rendering. We hope you will enjoy it!

 

Here’s a list of the major changes in the game:

 

-Added Granite, Andesite, and Diorite stone blocks, with smooth versions
-Added Slime Block
-Added Iron Trapdoor
-Added Prismarine and Sea Lantern blocks
-Added the Ocean Monument
-Added Red Sandstone
-Added Banners
-Added Armor Stands
-Added Coarse Dirt (dirt where grass won’t grow)
-Added Guardian mobs, with item drops
-Added Endermite mob
-Added Rabbits, with item drops
-Added Mutton and Cooked Mutton
-Villagers will harvest crops and plant new ones
-Mossy Cobblestone and Mossy Stone Bricks are now craftable
-Chiseled Stone Bricks are now craftable
-Doors and fences now come in all wood type variants
-Sponge block has regained its water-absorbing ability and becomes wet
-Added a spectator game mode (game mode 3)
-Added one new achievement
-Added “Customized” world type
-Added hidden “Debug Mode” world type
-Worlds can now have a world barrier
-Added @e target selector for Command Blocks
-Added /blockdata command
-Added /clone command
-Added /execute command
-Added /fill command
-Added /particle command
-Added /testforblocks command
-Added /title command
-Added /trigger command
-Added /worldborder command
-Added /stats command
-Containers can be locked in custom maps by using the “Lock” data tag
-Added logAdminCommands, showDeathMessages, reducedDebugInfo, sendCommandFeedback, and randomTickSpeed game rules
-Added three new statistics
-Player skins can now have double layers across the whole model, and left/right arms/legs can be edited independently
-Added a new player model with smaller arms, and a new player skin called Alex?
-Added options for configuring what pieces of the skin that are visible
-Blocks can now have custom visual variations in the resource packs
-Minecraft Realms now has an activity chart, so you can see who has been online
-Minecraft Realms now lets you upload your maps
-Difficulty setting is saved per world, and can be locked if wanted
-Enchanting has been redone, now costs lapis lazuli in addition to enchantment levels
-Villager trading has been rebalanced
-Anvil repairing has been rebalanced
-Considerable faster client-side performance
-Max render distance has been increased to 32 chunks (512 blocks)
-Adventure mode now prevents you from destroying blocks, unless your items have the CanDestroy data tag
-Resource packs can now also define the shape of blocks and items, and not just their textures
-Scoreboards have been given a lot of new features
-Tweaked the F3 debug screen
-Block ID numbers (such as 1 for stone), are being replaced by ID names (such as minecraft:stone)
-Server list has been improved
-A few minor changes to village and temple generation
-Mob heads for players now show both skin layers
-Buttons can now be placed on the ceiling
-Lots and lots of other changes
-LOTS AND LOTS of other changes
-Removed Herobrine 

The pre-release is available if you have activated development versions in the launcher.

 

Sincerely, the Minecraft and Minecraft Realms teams

So yeah, there’s the prerelease, but we have two weeks until the full release of it apparently

Around a month ago Mojang tightened up their enforcement of their EULA, coming down hard on servers who were offering what could be described as ‘pay-to-win’ services as well as those keeping parts of the vanilla game locked away for those who hadn’t paid for the privilege of having them. There was some uproar over it of course, but as Mojang better explained and outlined what they considered okay (donations and paying for cosmetic items for example) and not okay (anything that gave unfair advantage or took away from the core game) things died back down to normal. Or so we thought.

Earlier the lead on the Bukkit project, EvilSeph, made a lengthy post on the Bukkit forums announcing that they had decided not to continue developing the mod, which forms the backbone of many, many Minecraft servers out there. He cited concerns over Mojang’s “recent abrupt turn-around” on enforcing the EULA rules and was fearful that they might start deciding what category mods could fall into – mod, plugin or hack of the game; the last of which would violate the EULA rule of not distributing anything that Mojang have made.

He continued on to say that “it’s no longer worth it for us to put up a fight” to keep Bukkit alive, stating that the new 1.8 update was going to bring “large and significant changes” that the team was going to find hard to provided support for, stating that Mojang was giving them a “lack of support… with updates” to help them update Bukkit. He also stated that the team was having difficulties finding volunteers to work on the project now as well and the EULA and 1.8 update combined were the final nail in the coffin for Bukkit.

However, it seems Mojang had other plans and have now stepped in to make sure Bukkit continues, hoping to quash the fears that the EULA changes would greatly affect Bukkit and other similar big mods to the game. For now Minecraft developer and former Bukkit developer Dinnerbone is taking over the lead to make sure that Bukkit is developed to work with all 1.8’s new updates.

I started Bukkit, I’m going to personally see it through for 1.8. Updating it now 🙂

— Nathan Adams (@Dinnerbone) August 21, 2014

Minecraft lead Jeb publicly tweeted earlier that Bukkit was not EvilSeph’s to shut down as Mojang had owned them for two years; possibly to reassure fans that the mod was not going to become outdated and broken any time soon.    

Warren over at bukkit seems to have forgotten that the project was bought by Mojang over two years ago, and isn’t his to discontinue. — Jens Bergensten (@jeb_) August 21, 2014

EvilSeph has since confirmed on his Twitter that if Mojang wish to continue Bukkit he’s all for it. You have to wonder how it got to this point though…

Bukkit Forum “It’s time to say …”: [x]

Well this is an announcement that’s brought a smile to a great many faces around the UK.

Mojang posted today on their site that because a great many people had been asking why there had been no details for Minecon posted up yet when Minecon 2013 had already been announced this time last year; they wished to give some more concrete details of their plans. Vu Bui wrote that the next event wouldn’t be until sometime in 2015, as much as Mojang would love to run the event every year this time they were moving it back to give more time for them to give it the attention needed.

What stuck out for most though was that Vu said he was aiming to schedule Minecon 2015 for a spring date. And in London.

For the past few years many British Minecraft players, myself included, have pleaded with Mojang for a Minecon that was to be set in Britain, where many prominent Minecrafting Youtubers were based. Petitions were even set up by some to see if focusing the cry would work. And it seems that Mojang have decided to listen to the players.

I’m already trying to guess what venue they’ll take it to.

Mojang blog post “Minecon 2015”: [x]

Well, it’s been a long time coming but finally we’re getting close to the time all PC-based Minecraft players have been waiting for. Mojang have announced that if they don’t identify any more big game-breaking bugs in the latest snapshot, Minecraft version 1.8 should see pre-release on Thursday.

The update’s been a long time coming, but that’s mostly because in terms of what it adds to the sandbox game, it is one of the biggest in recent memory. Indeed we’re on snapshot 14w34c and has 1.7.10 come out during the build-up to its release because there has been that much added in stages that needed careful integration into the game. This includes new mechanics, new blocks and even a handful of new mobs for players to play with.

The most important ones for me are the addition of 3 new stone types beyond the type regular ‘stone’ block that forms the basis for most generated worlds; the new rabbit mobs which will provide some cute wildlife to the game as well as a new source of food if you so desire; a new way to generate worlds based on data values which could give you a world full of water, floating islands or even mountains and valleys as far as the eye can see; the addition of the slime block, which not only gives you a way to better store extra slimeballs (if you happen to have enough of those!) but also a way to make a landing pad that cancels fall damage; a new skin system that sees a ‘hat’ layer applied all over the avatar model; and finally the addition of Spectator Mode, which will be of tremendous use for the PvP community I’m sure.

This isn’t all that we’re getting of course, but it’s what stood out for me. What are you most looking forward to with 1.8’s release? Leave a comment below!

Mojang 14w34c post: [x]