Vanilla Minecraft News Discussion

[DaveYanakov]

Holy crap, that is terrible. I thought the horses modeled after alligators were bad as it was but this is horrific.

It's a damned good thing that they're giving us the option to tear those sounds right back out.

[FlowerChild]

Ok...must...not...get...upset.

I'm kinda laying into Dinnerbone a bit about the villager sounds on twitter. Need to chant "make your own game" over and over again as a soothing mantra ;)

[jecowa]

I think the villagers are better now that they make noises. We will probably get used to their new voices over time. They are kind of annoying, but so are all the farm animals. Maybe that's why so many play with the sound off.

[Azdoine]

The villager noises aren't too bad individually, IMO. They just happen way too frequently to not be annoying, however.

The horses on the other hand sound like a cross between a bad subwoofer, a whoopee cushion, and a growling attack dog. Is it just me?

[Gunnerman21]

I don't really care what sound villagers make, as long as they actually MAKE a sound, then i'm fine with whatever it is. Even if it's some nasally, half-assed voice, I can hear them now.

And people play without sound?.. i keep it on 100 all the time, oh man id die so much to everything.. but.. you know, more than i die right now :P

[Panda]

Im really hoping that you cannot tame skeleton horses.... It would be much cooler if skeletons spawned riding them and hunted your ass down in groups of these.

[eternal8phoenix]

Wow the villagers sound weird....although, to quote my sister:

If you punch them right it sounds like they're beatboxing

Made me laugh. At least they don't sound like coherent conversation.

The horse noises are sub par but inoffensively so I guess.

[FlowerChild]

As an aside, I think that video just confirmed horses will be getting the axe from BTW. They honestly look like mod content, not Minecraft, and since I am not an artist, I don't see myself being able to effectively revamp them to bring them up to snuff. Combine that with the gameplay rebalancing I will almost certainly have to do to them, and it's just way too much.

The alligator mouths which Dave mentioned, the excessive poly-count that doesn't fit the rest of the game (that thing has more detail than the player's own character for Pete's sake), the cold dead eyes that again don't match other animals, and even the way the neck moves (it just feels somehow off to me without putting my finger on it), just make me say "no way".

Again...I'm not an artist, but that's just way over the line. Again, no offense to the Mo'Creatures author intended here. He's making a mod with his free time and deserves respect for that. The big difference is that this is supposed to be professional level content going into the game proper and thus I hold it to a higher standard, just as I would have hoped Mojang would.

[JakeZKAM]

And here I was looking forward to Horses, but they have been absolutely destroyed in development terrible sounds and animations aside. Adding a GUI to them simply ruined the immersion. It's a horse not a furnace.

[FlowerChild]

And here I was looking forward to Horses, but they have been absolutely destroyed in development terrible sounds and animations aside. Adding a GUI to them simply ruined the immersion. It's a horse not a furnace.

Yeah, you'll remember that I didn't object to them when they were announced either, which is rather rare for me and a vanilla feature these days. I already had plans for how to make coralling and taming them interesting and challenging, so I definitely wasn't inclined towards the axe here and was looking more towards refinement. Like I said above though: it's just too much now. It's gone from tweaking to me largely feeling compelled to rework them from the ground up, art assets, animations, and all, and as you could probably guess, if I'm going to spend all that time on a new feature, it likely wouldn't be horses.

And I agree with you on the GUI. You know how much I love excessive GUI use, just like I did with beacons.

My overall impression is that the current developers are now looking at Forge mods as the standard of quality for MC development rather than at vanilla. In other words, the professional developers are now trying to match the level of quality the community is setting rather than the other way around. Whatever. It's just a new level of sadness. I should be used to that by now, and really shouldn't be allowing myself to get upset about this stuff anymore.

[CrafterOfMines57]

I just watched the video. Did anyone else notice that the XP bar went from an XP bar to like a jump bar between 1:47 and 1:55? My real question is why exactly they would override an existing feature for something that really should have a separate indicator (if it has to be a feature at all, they pretty much just made minecarts obsolete for some wheat every now and then).

[Taleric]

Time the face the facts. Mojang's target MC audience is the holdout casual gamer that has yet to pickup a copy. Aiming to get a quick purchase with "oooo horses!" or "lol listen to those villagers".

The dwarf fortress fans are once again cast out to search for something else.

[Mikko_blu]

Thankfully we have BTW as a safe haven, which is why i was so worried when i heard about RTH.
It gives me ALOT of relief knowing that i can read these changes, but still be able to come back here and expect a challenge with them

[FlowerChild]

Time the face the facts. Mojang's target MC audience is the holdout casual gamer that has yet to pickup a copy. Aiming to get a quick purchase with "oooo horses!" or "lol listen to those villagers".

I really don't think that much thought goes into these things man. I think they just don't know any better.

[Sarudak]

Yeah I think an application of Hanlon's (not quite as cool as Occam) razor is appropriate here...

- Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah I think an application of Hanlon's (not quite as cool as Occam) razor is appropriate here...

- Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Yeah, I think that covers it, although I think it's more a lack of experience than outright stupidity.

Also and oddly, as much as I like the above sentiment, it occurs to me that it's the exact opposite of what you need to do in dealing with trolls, as feigning stupidity is one of their favorite tactics. I needed to reprogram myself at a certain point to assume someone was likely trolling if their behavior seemed to be too stupid to be true.

[Aesc]

As an aside, I think that video just confirmed horses will be getting the axe from BTW.

But how will I make lasagne now?

As an artist, the fact that they haven't even tried to make the horses look like they fit in with the rest of the Minecraft world just... offends my delicate sensibilities. Even if horses were fun to play I would avoid them just for that.

[Sinornithosaurus]

What really bothers me about the horses is that the texture is trying to be HD and ends up looking blurry and weird. Also the model is needlessly complicated, it is perfectly possible to make nice looking creatures in MC with a simplistic design and texture, look at this guy: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/681 ... urds-mobs/

[FlowerChild]

As an artist, the fact that they haven't even tried to make the horses look like they fit in with the rest of the Minecraft world just... offends my delicate sensibilities. Even if horses were fun to play I would avoid them just for that.

Yup, I'm not an artist, and the complete lack of visual consistency still drives me nuts. Again: they just aren't from MC. It was already getting bad with some of the blocks and the excessive level of detail (e.g. tripwire hooks, and the vanilla Hopper), but this (along with the villager sounds) seems to be an entirely new level of just not giving a fuck about any existing standards within the game.

Like, plain suckitude aside, I'm not even a supporter of the whole gender neutrality thing in MC, but given how much Notch has talked about that, where the fuck does that fit in with those villager voices? It wasn't so long ago they replaced Steve's hurt sounds to avoid having distinctly male voices in the game.

[DaveYanakov]

I am also completely apart from the art skills required for new mobs, that said, if someone who did have those skills wanted to see horses put back in as a balanced mechanic that lives somewhere outside of the uncanny valley, I think we could put together a Better Than Horses add on team.

[FlowerChild]

I am also completely apart from the art skills required for new mobs, that said, if someone who did have those skills wanted to see horses put back in as a balanced mechanic that lives somewhere outside of the uncanny valley, I think we could put together a Better Than Horses add on team.

I'd definitely support such a project with any required hooks and such.

[PatriotBob]

Yeah I think an application of Hanlon's (not quite as cool as Occam) razor is appropriate here...

- Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Hmmm, this is what I use to get through most days at work...

But that point of truth aside, WTF IS WITH THOSE HORSES? They actually add in a feature that FC considers using and... nope. Have to mess it up royally so the only proper action is the axe.
*facepalm*

And I was really interested in seeing what FC did to horses to welcome them as a not-retarded-vanilla-feature addition to BTW.

[Vexalor]

Looks like Horse Armor is now enchantable, and it is no longer stackable to sixty-four. Also, Mojang appears to be nerfing the interesting behavior of leads/leashes where they would break if they were stretched too far because people wanted to ride horse attached to fence posts, and riding a horse this way would cause the lead to break. Oh well.

Also, just wanted to say that I personally think that the Horses look absolutely ugly in addition to the fact that they don't fit in with the surrounding landscape.

[Sinornithosaurus]

What are your thoughts on leads?

[Azdoine]

What are your thoughts on leads?

Meh.

I guess they could be used as a replacement for the breeding harness, but I honestly don't give a fuck, I haven't used pretty much any vanilla features since 1.8.