Back when Dinnerbone tweeted that terrain generation would be getting a huge overhaul in Minecraft 1.7, I knew that would spell trouble for modders. The majority of responses to my statement were along the lines of "Nah, 1.7 will be an easy update after 1.6 was so difficult." I admire the optimism in those responses, but I'm sorry to say they are looking more incorrect.
"I think I just did the biggest refactor in Minecraft history, 222
commits, 379 files changed, 25023 lines of diffs. Breaks all the things!"
I don't want to imagine what the Minecraft Forums are going to look like once this update hits. There's still a ton of mods not even updated to 1.6 yet because of the changes, and the forums are filled with users asking/demanding updates for them.
A recent post I read mentioned the possibility that Mojang might be attempting to ditch their modding community. Considering the Mod API (announced way back once the game left beta) is still in development limbo, and the stress put on mod authors due to the drastic changes of recent and upcoming updates, it's not a stretch to think that may be the case. Combine with that the recent addition of Minecraft Realms (which doesn't allow for mods), and it really makes you start to wonder.
In any event, look for 1.7's release to cause a lot of grief. I may be sitting with a 1.5.2 setup much longer than I expected.
If you haven't already heard, Blizzard is releasing a new online collectible card game called Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. While the flavor of the game is pretty well-established, the gameplay is kind of new territory for the developer. Blizzard's past successes with titles like Diablo II, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft (to name a few) set the bar for their genres - so I think a lot of people are going to have high expectations for Hearthstone.
Will it live up to those expectations? It's too early to tell, but they already have some tough competition. Magic: the Gathering Online has been around for a while now, and Mojang (of Minecraft fame) has Scrolls, which is starting to gain a following. This isn't a new situation for Blizzard though - the MMORPG genre was already going strong with titles like EverQuest when they released World of Warcraft... and we know how that turned out (it was a massive success).
I've watched a few Hearthstone gameplay videos, and it looks like a lot of fun. Here, see for yourself.
It's fast-paced, exciting, and strategic, and that's going to make for a good launch. In the long term, they've got to come up with a way to keep the game fresh and exciting after players have built and played decks thousands of times. With Magic, the answer to that is new card sets featuring new mechanics. While that's a great way to add to the game, I've come to really dislike the release schedule of Magic sets. They add 3-4 sets a year with each set ranging between 150 and 300 cards, along with a number of extra products that add twists to the game.
I played my first game of Magic right before The Dark was released, and I've gone through selling my collection and coming back to the game a number of times. I haven't had interest in Magic for several years now, mainly due to the feeling of being inundated with so many cards. I just can't keep up with that pace. Knowing that the digital equivalent is now on the same release schedule as the paper one, I wouldn't play MTGO if I was given an account full of goodies because I know a year down the road there will be hundreds of new cards to chase - and this will happen continually as long as the game exists.
This is what I hope Blizzard will be able to avoid with Hearthstone, somehow. Now, I'm not against expansions - I enjoy new toys to play with as much as the next guy - I'm against expansion overload. If they can keep away from that and still provide new play experiences once in a while, I'd be happy. Another difference between Hearthstone and MTGO will be the ability to actually win new cards via standard gameplay. Hearthstone is announced as being a Free-to-Play game where you can buy new cards for real money (like MTGO), but you can also win new cards as you play games. Realistically speaking, I'm sure you'll have to play a ton of games to earn cards after a while, but it's at least an option.
The other important thing to note about Hearthstone is that this is also Blizzard's first game using the Free-to-Play model. It's already been announced that World of Warcraft will ultimately go F2P sometime down the line, but they want to make sure their timing and business model is right. Hearthstone is going to be Blizzard's way to learn what will work for them in the F2P market, and that alone makes it an important title for them.
Once I was able to ascertain the cause of my mob spawning issues, I thought about the situation. The rift spread was over 500m (30+ chunks) from my base in a direction I rarely even travel. That far away is well beyond the normal game loading distance, so I asked about rifts in the Dimensional Doors thread on the Minecraft forums.
The mod author, stevenrs11, responded saying that rifts are tile entities in the game (you can look that up on the wiki, but those are usually blocks that hold more information than normal). He's noticed the rifts are unintentionally staying loaded outside of the normal range recently, which will be worked on.
So, what was happening was that the rifts were staying active even while I wasn't nearby, allowing them to multiply/spread and spawn Endermen. Thus, the spread became so large that Endermen in that area hogged the spawn cap so nothing else could spawn.
Thankfully, it is a situation that can be easily dealt with, as long as you know where it's at. This was far enough away that I could've gone a while before locating it myself. If it wasn't for the extra JAS commands provided by Crudedragos, I'd still be tearing my hair out trying to figure out why my game was "broken".
Also, I should mention that Dimensional Doors does have a detailed config file that allows for changing the settings of rifts and other things. This will allow you to tone down or even disable rifts until they are fixed.
It's been a frustrating week trying to sort out the spawning issues in my 1.5.2 setup, and thanks to Crudedragos (author of Project Zulu, Just Another Spawner, and several other great mods) I finally found the source of the problem.
Using the new commands in the DEV version of JAS, I discovered a huge patch of Endermen just east of my location (even though I was on Peaceful). I knew immediately what that meant - a rift damage spread caused by Dimensional Doors.
I traveled east and found extensive rift spread. Setting the game back to Normal and then to day, you can see the Endermen (and the rifts) clearly.
I'm not certain why they were tagged as despawnable, yet were not despawning even in Peaceful, but I at least know what was causing the problem!
I typically don't post mod spotlight videos on here, but these are so unique (and sometimes freaky) that I really wanted to mention them.
The first one is called the Clones mod, and while on the surface it allows you a way to spawn mobs in survival, it's capable of much more. If you clone a player (such as yourself), it can level, eat food, and do a variety of useful tasks. When you give it gear, it's smart enough to not only equip it but to upgrade to the best option it has available. When the clone is given a task, it will often do the job faster and more efficiently than you can... and that's where it gets weird.
This mod has basically found a way to make NPCs that can do just about everything you can, only better. Let's just hope the clones never get any smarter, or they'll realize the players are inferior and boom, SkyNet. :-P
So, what do you do once you create an army of clones to do everything for you? Sit back and surf the web, of course! The Laptop mod allows you to create a big flatscreen computer monitor in your world which you can use to browse websites. What's more, it actually plays YouTube videos - even the fullscreen function works! You could very well use this to make a movie theater in Minecraft that plays real videos.
The thought of actually using both of those mods in the manner I described sounds a bit bizarre though. You'd be playing a game, but having the game play for you, while visiting real life websites inside the virtual game world... oh, I've just gone cross-eyed trying to comprehend it. I'm pretty sure there's a paradox in there somewhere, and attempting it might cause a rip in the fabric of reality. ;-)
