dress up for love, now, dress up for fun

Notch has announced the list of changes for Minecraft 1.6. It's a long list. Among my favorites:

* Severely nerfed fire so it spread slower, and doesn’t spread infinitely
* Fixed hair and cloaks being rendered in the wrong locations on sneaking players
* Fixed arrow physics, making them not get stuck midair when you open a door
* Fixed fire sometimes existing mid-air as an invisible block of pain
* Fixed fire effect on burning entities sometimes getting rendered in the wrong location
* Fixed arrows being animated really strangely in multiplayer
* Fixed pigs getting hit by lightning in multiplayer spawning client-side zombie pigmen

Now, these are all good things, yes, but why are they funny? Well, the fire thing wasn't funny. The fire thing was insane. Depending on how the fire started, it could--and has, on both single-player and multi-player worlds in my experience--spread pretty much infinitely in all directions and never go out. Notch says that's fixed now. That's a good thing.

If you think the hair/cloaks being rendered in wrong locations reminds you of SL glitches...yeah, you're not that wrong.

The arrow physics fixes...I've still got some arrow pics to post, but I am actually looking forward to leaving the days of perpetual arrow rain after pitched battles, in or out of dungeons. Though it was hysterically funny to open a door and have an arrow hovering in your face in defiance of physics (well, what little physics Minecraft has).

I've posted pics of the strange fire effects, too--this is essentially where some monster takes enough damage to drop, yet the column of fire stays merrily burning. It won't hurt players, it just looks odd. What I'm wondering, too, is--if he fixed the fire columns glitch, did he also fix the red-corpse glitch? Because that's the secondary bit of that--corpse drops, yet does not disappear.

Unfortunately, into every life a little rain must fall, and these things make me sad:

* Mushrooms now spread (very) slowly
* Seeds are now found in tall grass, using a hoe on the ground no longer works
* Fixed submerged boats rising very very fast
* Fixed placing doors next to cacti creating half-doors
* Fixed fences and wooden stairs not being flammable
* Fixed fishing rods being stackable
* Fixed mushrooms spawning everywhere during nights
* Fixed monsters not being visible for players with their difficulty set to peaceful

Yeah. I am really going to miss being able to gather seeds from grass. That is just not going to be good for me, because I'm hoping the wildgrass default look is only an opt-in thing, not mandatory. That, and the mushroom thing. I don't know what complaints he's been getting, but--in both single- and multi-player worlds--mushrooms are hard to find. Like, seriously hard to find. And he's going to make them insanely hard to find in the update?!? This is not a plus!

Fishing rods being stackable--I'm of two minds. In multi-player, it's a boon, because stacking fishing rods means they take up one inventory slot. So you can have six fishing rods hang out in a community chest, and take them out at need, and they stack back again when fishing time is over.

The reason that bug got fixed, though? Is because stacking fishing rods automatically restored them to pristine, never-been-used condition, if the rod beneath it in the inventory chest had never been used. And okay, I get that, that's not how he wants fishing rods to behave. But I still want them stackable, damn it--because fish? Cannot be stacked. And if you fish to restore health, each individual fish takes up a slot. Believe me, that adds up with several people fishing!

Hank's going to be sad with the submerged boat thing--that was a trick that worked really well as sort of an 'elevator' from the lowest levels. Spawn boat; get in boat; click lever; boat moves forward into a water stream. Boat, now being submerged, rises quickly to the surface, where it--and you--pop free, moving to the dock. That was handy.

Fences and wooden stairs not being flammable, that was just amusing. But wait--does this mean all wooden things will now be flammable? Including wooden doors?

That could be bad.

Finally, placing doors next to cacti creating half-doors, that was another amusing glitch I'm going to be sad to see go, because it created two fun effects--first, trimming off the top half of the door, so you essentially had half a door, which made it the perfect height for adjoining fencing, but also, it spawned another door that you could then pick up and put in your inventory, because the game read the half-door as having been knocked down. So yes, that is a glitch, it deserves fixing...but I'm going to miss half-doors.

The upcoming Wonder Woman has had her costume changed yet again, but it's a case of too little, too late--even with the trademark "booty shorts" (were they always called that?), NBC rejected the show.

Blogger explains the Turing Test to a sexbot--the best thing about that? Is not, actually, the story. It's in the comments.

While the price tag is prohibitive--over twenty thousand at this point--it proves that glasses-free 3D projection is on its way. I think we can officially state that 3D is here to stay this time, it's not just a fad--or if it's a fad, it's one that's going to last at least a decade.

The first Torchwood trailer is out, and while I will be watching the show however I can, I am pondering what the changes are going to mean to the show, moving it to America. It was such a uniquely Welsh show--not even British, but Welsh, with all the expansive, acerbic, Welsh confrontation intact. I fear that "Americanizing" it is going to remove what made it so wonderful in the first place.

Still. We get Captain Jack and Gwyn. So it's not all bad.

Finally, one of the best Minecraft videos ever has hit YouTube. While much that's seen in that video is not possible in game, it does include footage of both the Planetoids mod, and the Acid mod.

And the opening, with the switches, the music and the platforms? That is possible, in game, on the ground, with existing tools. And that? Is all kinds of cool.