Latest Minecraft update fixes an 11 year-old bug
It's been playing footsie with this one for too long.
The latest Minecraft update, which the game for some reason calls snapshots, is mostly routine: Focused on smithing, squishing a few bugs, tweaking a few parameters. Then one of the most popular and widely played games on the planet says it's finally managed to deal with a bug that was first noticed 11 years ago.
Take a bow MC-1133, which is not a minor Halo character but the name given to this particular gremlin. This bug prevented players from hearing footsteps when their avatar got too close to the edge of a block in Minecraft. The game would get confused about the avatar's relative position, think it was somehow in mid-air rather than on solid ground, and thus walking when in this position made no sound.
No more. With regards to MC-1133, Mojang says it's now the case that "Whether or not a player experiences some effect is calculated based on the block under the center of the player." Footsteps are back baby! Going into slightly more detail, the patch notes add:
- Walking on a block will now always play a step sound
- It was previously not the case if you were walking along the edge of a block with air or fluid besides it
- Walking on the ocean floor will produce a step sound for the block you are walking on at a lower volume and pitch
I'm not sure whether the last point related to MC-1133 but, given this little guy survived 11 years, let's give it the credit.
Other changes mean players no longer require a smithing template in the template slot, and the jukebox has been added to the Redstone Blocks creative tab. It also contains this note about Adventure mode which I find quite mystifying: "Read the power signal of a Chiseled Bookshelf using a Comparator."
Minecraft has most recently been in the news for something far more unbelievable than a bug with some longevity: Military secrets leaked on a Discord relating to the game. Yes, really. It's a far cry from the innocent days of speedrunning scandals. The game's long-awaited spinoff Minecraft Legends also launched recently although, erm, maybe the less said about that one the better.
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Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."
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