First Impressions of Minecraft Beta 1.8 Pre-release (now 2)

I have been playing around a little bit with the pre-release of Minecraft 1.8. I have been playing my normal world and then just reverting to a saved copy when I go back to 1.7.3.  Right at this time I am just exploring,  I load up on supplies and take off in a direction to see what I find.  I thought I would give my impressions of what I have seen so far.

General
Generally the updates look good.  I like what I am seeing.  I am praying that the performance is going to get better.  I don't run the top of the line game machine, but geez, I had to move my graphics from Fancy to fast and my Distance from Far to Normal and I STILL get real laggy at times.  I hope it is just because of the new world parts being gen'd for the first time or something. I really will have a hard time justifying upgrading my machine for Minecraft... It's one thing if it is a brand new MMO or super fancy FPS... but Minecraft??  Really?  This game requires that much horsepower?

Rivers
Rivers are awesome.  I am burning through my boats.  It's like taking the "It's a small world" boat ride at the amusement park.  I really enjoy meandering through a biome on a river.  That is a GREAT addition.

Villages

I finally ran into a village during my exploring.  They are pretty neat.  I got to see the new tables (fence post with wood pressure plate on top) and thought the general layout of the village was neat.  I liked the fact there was 2 furnaces and a lava pit in the village, it made that building look like a smithy or something.  I looked into the well that was in the village and fell in!  duh.  So that well doesn't quite look right anymore since I mined my way back out. hehe

Ravines
I have ran into a couple of ravines... literally :)  and what I have seen of them so far is pretty cool.  They are deep, very deep...  It's a long fall, trust me.  I haven't been able to explore one yet... well, see the first sentence.

Enderman
The Enderman are ok.  They are just another hostile mob.  I have not had any issues finding Enderman, and very little issues killing them.  I am wondering if they are not bugging out when they teleport at times.

Health Bar and Food Bar
The food bar is OK.  I really miss not being able to heal in the middle of a fight though.  Every once and a while I would get myself in a mess and would eat a couple of times to get through the fight, not anymore.  Eating only raises my food bar, who cares when 3 creepers are chasing me and a few skeletons are plucking at me.  I think the spawn rate of hostile mobs at night can be a little crazy.

New Blocks
The new blocks are good.  I really like having different textured blocks to build with, my favorite by far is the  glass panes.  They are awesome!  They really make my modern house look better.  I am going to replace most of my glass blocks with the panes for sure.  I am not sure where I need to use the iron bars, but I am going to find a spot for them, just because they look cool.

THANK YOU for the fence gate!  Finally!  Do you know how stupid all our farms looked with doors to get in! :)


New keys, etc.
The chest are nice the the lids open, but since I made Ethos storage with a 100 chests all over  in the walls and the ground, the building looks goofy as all get out with nothing lining up correctly.  I know it is a cosmetic thing, but didn't anyone at Mojang ever put a chest in the ground?  or one in a minecart for crying out loud?  The SHIFT-CLICK seems to work on more things now, which I like a lot.  If I put 64 sticks and 64 coal in my crafting slots, once shift click and I get all the torches... very nice.  Speaking of stacking.  STACKED FOOD IS AWESOME!  I love walking around with 64 roasted pork, way better than before.  The double tap "w" to sprint is nice.  I use that often.  It quits on me at different times that I find odd.  I can't tell if it is a bug or not.

I haven't figured out poison yet, but I can tell you that if you eat the zombie food, your food bar turns green and you are poisoned.  I will have to spend some time researching I guess.


Hostile and passive spawners
My hostile spawner seems to be working fine.  No more feathers, darn... not!  The passive mob spawner is not working at all at this point.  It was cranking out probably 500ish items an hour, and not it hardly drops anything.  I am not sure if I haven't got it "spawning" correctly, or something special, but I keep trying different things without much luck.  I am little disappointed in that, but hey, I do have TONS of leather, wool and pork now.

What kinds of things have you found?  Leave a comment and share!

Minecart Station added!

Since I am now getting so much loot from my passive mob spawner I ran into a big issue.  How in the world do I get all that loot back to my main buildings.  I quickly decided I would do my standard underground rail system, but I really hate the end points.  I have never liked the way I just had the carts line up and had to manually push them on the powered rail, they would stack up wierd, and sometimes when I sent to many I would get one surprise me and come back.

So I went to youtube on the hunt for a minecart rail system that would allow me to fix my issues.  I found the solution using Sethblings Redstone-light minecart station.

I first went to my test area and built the one he built and then tried to figure out how to incorporate it into my current building.  I am not completely satisfied yet because it is too open, but I was able to use the furnace/control room to handle it.

I took Sethblings design and switched it around a little bit.  I have my departures on the left and arrivals on the right.  Since I am normally just moving supplies around I was really happy to find it work fine with a chest and without a chest and any mix of the two.  The station I built at the passive spawner more resembles SethBlings, I just made one small adjustment to the arrivals section.




Minecraft
SethBling on youtube

Recreating Ethos Passive Mob Spawner

My versions of Ethos buildings

I really enjoyed making Ethoslab's main storage building (Daily recaps), Cactus farm and Tree farm myself.  It took a lot of time, but the results have been great.  The mob spawner is by far the most productive I have ever made.  I have chests full of arrows, feathers (who cares), bones, and gunpowder/TNT.  I think it is partly due to the fact that I just run by and pick up the drops when I am there.  I don't have to think about it, I don't have to go AFK and wait for it.  When I am running around the building, if there is stuff in the drop, I pick it up.  Done.

Auto Sugar Cane

BUDS

It took me a while to really figure out how nice the Tree farm really is.  When I had limited bone meal, it wasn't that good.  It seemed to take a lot of meal to get the trees to grow, but now that I have basically unlimited supply, the tree farm is nice.  I also took the tree farm and did an ugly upgrade to it.  I added and automatic sugar cane farm to it.  So now when I hear the notes for sugar cane I run and get sugar cane and cactus. :)  Both of those items are almost unlimited also.  Thank you Ethos for the BUDS! (Block update Detection system)



So I was trying to decide what's next, and I always watch Ethoslab videos, like everyone else, and when he did the passive mob spawner system I downloaded his world 93 release.  I could not believe how much wool, leather, and pork he had in his chests.  I never built his Chocolate island passive mob system because I didn't like how it over took the storage building, but the new one... I had to give it a try.

New Passive Mob Spawner

My first attempt building the spawn system went well, but I didn't get very much loot.  The mobs only spawned every once and a while.  So I looked at the area I was at and started dumping water everywhere to get rid of any grass thinking that was the problem.  Well, it helped a little, for only a little bit, but then it would stop.  Then I remembered the most important piece I had forgot...  The chunk update issues!  ARGH!
So I went and watched the chunk video and went out exploring to try again.  I found pretty good area that I was able to line up properly with the chunks and went to work AGAIN.  I decided that looks didn't matter this time and I only built what I needed to get it working.  Once I finished it I went to work clearing the area.

Passive Mob spawner loot

Let me say one thing for sure... THIS WORKS GREAT!  I can't believe how much stuff I am getting.  I have never had this much leather, wool, and pork before.  I already thinking about the super wool building I am going to make.  I have had my eyes on a very large pirate ship that has about 3000 pieces of wool in it. :)

I am going to continue to clean 144 blocks around my passive spawner until it looks just like the water world that Ethos and  Docm77 have.  Even though the start of the passive mob spawner project was frustrating and a failure, starting over, picking a better location, and trying again has been a great success.  Now if I could only learn how to park a boat without destroying it... Hey, didn't someone post a video on a boat dock system.. hmmm

Minecraft

Ethoslab Videos

Docm77 Videos

First project using Hirst Arts Molds

We got our first bag of Hydrostone from Plaster Shak Thursday.  I have been surprised about the mixing being so different from the hydrocal.  The hydrocal I am 130g water / 200g hydrocal.  Last night as I was working out the amounts for the Hydrostone I finally got a good mix at 70g water / 200g hydrostone.  I use almost half as much water, which means I also am short on my pours too.  So tonight I am going to up my hydrostone amounts to get the proper amount of mix so I can fill my molds like normal.  I was surprised that I used almost 1/2 as much water.

The test runs using hydrostone last night looked pretty good.  I seemed to have better luck with bubbles on the smooth pieces which was nice, but I could still get some.  I need to complete my shaker board and quit doing the back massager by hand, I think that will help also.

I have almost finished the Gothic Church, I just need a few more casts for the roof.  I have the small roof done.  I was surprised how difficult it was to line things up and get the building square, etc.  I am glad I am calling the Church a "test build" because when you look close there are all kinds of issues.

I tried and tried to use the Earth Tone Painting Instructions that Hirst Arts suggested, but I could never get it to look right.  I felt the over all look was WAY to dark, and the light color was WAY to light.

I do like the roof though, so I decided to keep that color, and re-paint the entire Church using Hirst Arts Castle Gray Color Scheme.  I really like how the Castle Gray Color Scheme turned out and I am calling this project DONE!

My first Hirst Arts model from powder to painted!  Yeah!  Next up is the Gothic Bell Tower.  Someday I will get to the Cathedral!



Here's a link to some of the pictures as I progressed:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113001256212734810954/HirstArts








Hirst Arts - http://www.hirstarts.com
Gothic Church - http://www.hirstarts.com/church/church.html