Whats your thoughts on the delay of deep dark to 1.19 The Wild?

Pushed back two two times now.

 

When it comes to games, my general attitude is I'd rather they delay and release it when it's ready to be released rather than push it out sooner and compromise on what what the devs were trying to accomplish or unleash a plague of bugs.

 

In general I agree, they have only had a few knock out expansions in the last years. Oceans and Nether. Everything else is rather small or bland.

1.13 Oceans, good.

1.14 village and pillage, meh.

1.15 Bees, bullshit expansion.

1.16 nether, maybe biggest and best ever.

1.17 caves with no caves. Basically the copper and deep slate expansion.

1.18 looks to be huge and great, but with the new blocks coming out in 1.17 it will feel less special.

1.19 really it’s all about the new red stone blocks and deep cities. I and most thought they would go for the end as the nether update was such a hit.

 

I hear the argument quite often that look at the mod makers, Mojang are lazy, could be doing so much more. For me it's not just about how much or how little content they put out in updates.

I appreciate that Minecraft is rather well optimized for lower-end PCs. Cross-platform play. They don't beef with the mod community--just compare Mojang to Nintendo, who shut down any and all fan projects as soon as they find out about them. With the backing of Microsoft, I'm sure the developer responsible for the best-selling video game of all time could crack down on stuff like that if they wanted.

Folks who got the game 10 years for a handful of dollars are still getting free updates a decade later. There's a singleplayer mode that requires no subscription or additional costs and no Internet connection--imagine that, singleplayer that I can play if my wifi goes down. I don't know how it works with the Java edition, but on Bedrock you can even do multiplayer for free, sort of, provided that the world owner is logged on, then your friend can join the same world as well. Realms subscription is a bit pricey imo and I don't like the in-game store, but honestly, there are no pop up ads for store content, no part of updates is gated behind store content.

As far as modern monetization in games goes, Minecraft is very unobtrusive with this stuff, it's pretty much the ideal implementation--it's there if you want it, but not buying additional stuff in no way impedes your ability to enjoy the game. Mojang could very easily decide to limit world size or something unless you buy a season pass or battle pass or microtransactions or whatever, and I'm entirely sure this must have been brought up in meetings not once and not twice, but at this point Minecraft has been under the Microsoft umbrella longer than not and thus far, there's no such bullshit with monetization. Hell, consider how many people have made playing Minecraft full time their day job, and Mojang are cool with it.

With all the unbelievable bullshit that the games industry has spawned in the last decade, I appreciate Mojang for not doing any of it. They just let us play the game stress-free, announce updates and bugfixes, release updates and bugfixes and I get to keep playing Minecraft. I think the fact that some people seriously complain about Mojang being lazy with updates just shows how fucking spoiled we've been with this absolute gem of a game.

So Mojang get a pass from me for "disappointing" updates. But if you want examine the few most recent ones, here's my take:

1.12 - World of Color - phenomenal, I loved all the new blocks added

1.13 - Update Aquatic - same as above, and I think this was also the update that brought wall, slab and stair blocks for diorite, andesite, granite, prismarine bricks, dark prismarine and more sandstone variants

1.14 - Village and Pillage - overhauled villager trading, raids, pretty big update there, though more exciting for players who like different in-game systems than just building/exploring, but these players deserve new content too

1.15 - Buzzy Bees - yeah ok, that one was pretty bare, but as with every update, it came with a ton of bugfixes

1.16 - Nether Update - it was fantastic, nuff said

1.17 - Caves and Cliffs 1 - new blocks, new natural structure (geodes); I am treating this and 1.18 as one update though. I fired up a new world (experimental gameplay on Bedrock has the option to try out some of the new cave/biome generation) and I was absolutely blown away. Jungle biomes covering mountainsides, terracotta mountains with peaks at y:130, huge caves with stone pillars and underwater lakes dozens of blocks in height. I am very much looking forward to when my 3-year old world updates to new terrain generation, I want to load up fresh chunks and just explore for a while.

1.19 - new boss, new huge biome type promoting stealth gameplay, aiming at a horror vibe experience, new wood type, biome overhaul for swamps... I am looking forward to all of it.

Also, with the account migration happening now, I think all Java players are getting Bedrock version for free.

 

Back from my holidays, and the update has finally installed. Took a deep dive into the new space under my mushroom island and found this:



More importantly, I found a geode right under my main castle:



It's not massive, but it's got quite a few budding amethyst blocks on it which should be useful some day. I also finally finished digging out the fairly large ~50x50x25 cavern underneath my main keep, which I intend to turn into a kind of lush cave with natural pillars, farms, trees and waterfalls. It took a long ass time to dig out, but I'm finally able to start outlining some of my plans, and add a few farms.



The area through the glass is the water of the natural bay around which I am building my castle/town. I plan to add some nice block pillars and detailing in there some day, along with some imported coral and other lights to stop the constant spawning of Drowned. On the upside, my docks have resulted in a fair number of glowsquid spawns.

As always for me, it's a slow process, but progress is once more being made after I fixed my creeper farm (which then blew up, so I fixed it again, only for it to blow up a second and third time, before I changed the design of the peep hole), and was able to throw some TNT into the mix to help with clearing the cavern.

 

Thought to try the Terrafirma mod after watching Ethos go at it... could not even get close to get it running....

 

Update!

First, started filling in some dead space between other builds. Added a nice new garden area, went ham on moss blocks, which are phenomenal.




Grew some generic birch trees and stripped the logs, built one custom tree. I am not very good at building custom trees, throwing one in among some generic trees can do a nice job of creating a wooded area that doesn't require me to build every tree block by block.



Rainbow Pavilion.





Bird's eye view of the new additions



Bonus video

 

After playing this game for a decade, I decided to build my first ever castle.

Started with just the rough shape in stone.






It's not a megabuild, I want to see if I can build something on a manageable scale and have it look good. Once I was satisfied with the basic shape, I started with the hill the castle sits on. I went with brown colors: dripstone, mud blocks, brown mushroom cap blocks, coarse dirt, podzol, then added glow lichen, mushrooms, those dried up plants from the desert (forgot what they're called), dead coral, sea pickles, ferns for decoration.

For the castle itself, I didn't want to go with grey/stone blocks, or the blackstone/deepslate blocks. I tried out a bunch of different block palettes: purple/blue (purpur blocks, lapis, blue concrete and terracotta), brown (mixing woods and the new mud blocks), red (mangrove and crimson wood, brick blocks, red/pink terracotta). Settled on green with orange roofs. Walls are just flat for now, but I will add windows, balconies, galleries, other depth variation when I get to the next stage.

I think it's coming together nicely so far.

 

Some progress

 

Decided to revive a long-abandoned megabuild. Started excavating down... found deep dark under my great big tower. I'll post some pics of the progress this weekend.

 

I've also returned to the castle build after a long hiatus. Completed one of the buildings. Originally I built that part of the castle with some sort of temple/chapel in mind, but once I got to interior building, it became a library/trophy room/reception hall. I think it came out pretty sweet. I'll be posting some pics later once I get more work done, I want to complete the exterior details and then I still have two more buildings. One will be living quarters, the other I planned as storage/kitchens. For my first castle build, I'm pleased with it.

 

Imgr album with more pics because I don't want to spam too many here. Below are just a select few. https://imgur.com/a/Sgg8YV3









From the top:

Castle entrance
Residence
That building that was gonna be a temple but now it's a library/trophy room
The megabuild I revived (planned interior height from y=-15 to somewhere in the 200s)

 

I've finished the castle! Well, nearly. I still want to add flags on the masts, but I wanted to share some pics of the interior of the last building (dining hall/kitchen) and the detail I added to the courtyard.

In hindsight, the shape and size of the build were really nothing impressive compared to the hundreds of awesome castle builds I've seen over the years, but like I said, for my first one, I wanted to take on something I could conceivably finish instead of the build ending up abandoned halfway through, especially since this one is on my main island, and I don't want half-finished failures there.

I tried to make up for the unimpressive scale and form with the richness of detailing and I have to say, I enjoy the final result. I think it looks very nice. I used dozens of different blocks in the buildings and interiors. Interiors in particular were challenging, because detailing like this is something I hardly ever do.

https://imgur.com/a/GIKB2Hj

Edit: Added the flags

 

Big dig! How long to empty that out?

 

This is an update on the long-abandoned megabuild I posted pics of a few days ago. I was the old bedrock level (pre 1.18 build height changes) and went down a further 15 blocks. I didn't keep track of hours, I just built a beacon (which didn't help much because it turns out Haste 2 and Eff V still don't let you insta-mine deepslate, but you can insta-mine tuff and gravel and I ran into some pockets of those) and got to digging.

I have so much fucking deepslate. 5 double chests of cobbled and 11 double chests of silk touched deepslate.

 

Calcite is pretty much the only new block that I like since 1.16 and the nether update.

 

I thought this doorway I built was quite big, but it's so puny on that wall. I will have to make the next one bigger. I want to have 4 doorways leading out of the central room, no plans for what will be built through the doorways yet, but it's a megabuild, I will figure it out as I go.

 

First pair of colossal columns is in. The idea is to make every column different. One column would be a big spiral staircase, another would be a big tree, another maybe a statue (think Argonath from LotR but mine will look awful because I have no experience with organic builds), a gigantic sword. I started with something super simple, flat surface but with block variation. The sandstone/quartz combo looks really great, I will keep it in mind for other builds.