Hey everyone. Welcome to the withering effect episode 45. Today's date is May 17 2020 and I am Duds or Duds versus known to the rest of the interwebs and I am Jimbo. You may know me as Jimbo slice 23 and this week we have a guest beginning as a Minecraft Mater and now a game developer Bur, Mojang, King be dogs. Welcome to the show. Hi, guys. It's a pleasure to meet you now that we're at the main show.
Me and Jimbo have a question. We want to ask you early quiz it Mo Yang or Mojang. I think there's like an internal debate about this, but I think the the consensus it's Mojang, it's okay. Not my yang, you would think it's more yang, right? Because that sounds Swedish. But yeah, I mean, I call it Mojang. I'm sure there are some people Company you call it Mary Ann but I personally call it my Jack. That's for sure.
Okay, confuses me even more now. Yeah I know it's going to be in a tunnel debate that just happens forever. Yeah, considering my name is to call it. Considering my name is Jimbo with the gym. You know, I caught Mojang Amber didn't want to begin bow from here on out. I'll come on your boat. Don't don't look like that. Oh, here we go. There you go. You have started something. You don't even know. Probably Anyways, let's go ahead and talk about what we've done this week.
I have not done a lot of Minecraft. I've hooked on Jedi Fallen order from Star Wars, I have like, two chapters left. So, after this show, I'm probably getting on there and finishing the game. Then I'll jump to some Minecraft. I was designing a slime farm storage room and creative a little bit. So, I'm not fully as a loop yet, but this game has its put me in a trance. If you're a fan of the movies, this game plays like a movie.
So it's like a New Media for me to explore and I've just been hooked. So I'm sorry, I don't have a lot of Minecraft. What we've done this week. I hope that game is really good, so fun good. That's how it's made by dice, right? It's made by respawn. Okay. Right. But they kind of work with that. I think they're using the frostbite engine which was
designed by dice right? But yeah it's yeah I don't know how to explain it. A lot of people explain it as like a Dark Souls light and the way it plays because it does have the game Culty sliders. And I'm playing on like the easy mode because I'm basically only playing it because if you play it like the easy mode it's it focuses just on story.
The the enemies aren't overwhelming and stuff so you really truly get to feel like a big and bad Jedi so it's like yeah that's what I want to do. I don't want to give you screaming at my computer monitors as I die for the 17th time on the same level. I'm totally immersed in that game which stinks for my Minecraft content, but I'll be getting back to that soon. But what have you been doing
this week? A little bit of Minecraft last night with Carl, we jumped on there and went on the ripple effect server to see what we could do because we were bored. I'm trying to stay fresh for 116. I don't want to burn myself out ahead of time so I'm trying to stay off Minecraft a little bit just to you know jump into it pretty good when it does start up, but Jack isn't 116 comes out. We're all going to be playing that like non-stop. Hmm. Yeah. Good idea.
Ideas. And I don't wanna, I don't wanna. I know I've been planning for the Ripple season 3 for a month or two now. Hmm, what about you can we dogs? Have you been doing anything with Minecraft? You're allowed to talk about. I mean this week, in terms of work, I've been doing some, you know, bug fixing and some work on the next update cause can't talk about it. But yeah. Some work on the next update in terms of like stuff outside of
work. I've actually weirdly enough I randomly started Watching videos from YouTube, Accord call me Kevin. If you've ever watched him, he's been playing like a well not recently but I saw some videos of him playing like old Harry Potter games from like PlayStation error and that made me start watching like the entire Harry Potter series. Again, since I haven't watched it in like 10 years. Something that was kind of cool. Like, it's like bit of a Nostalgia trip.
Oh, yeah. On the pretty, you know, they're really good movies. I know that like, though, some people I remember when, you know, because I read books When I was very young and I'll watch the movies as soon as they came out. And there a lot of people that kind of like a Halo, you know, it didn't have this part of the book and they're not perfect maybe it's but they're pretty consistently great. Like the pretty good movies and especially for a series that is eight movies long.
I don't know if I've seen many movies or movie series that like that. Consistently good. I haven't watched like the all the Marvel movies. I've heard they're pretty fantastic, but I don't know, it was really cool and I have been enjoying that. Also my teenager Has to I haven't played Age of Empires to. I played the first one but that was a little while ago, he it's great.
While my roommate is a huge Harry Potter fan so I constantly hear that theme music in the background all the time and I'm not the biggest Harry Potter fan but even I can agree. Those movies, even like the first one hold up to the test of time. Yeah, definitely. You're watching it and it doesn't feel dated, which is what I love. I hate the most. When like I'm watching a movie and I see something like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. They don't have cell phones to call somebody to make this a lot
easier. Yeah. I like the fact that also like the series grows off with the audience like it gets yes. That's always been really cool. 100% agree with it. Some guy created like Hogwarts in Minecraft, right? She's huge map and I've been wanting download that and explore it just to understand the scale of it. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of people like
recreating like lots of sets. Of movies or like, I'm pretty sure there is someone who's like recreated Middle Earth from Lord of the Rings, which is just insane. But yeah. Like just I don't know how people have that much talent and patience to create that stuff is just insane to me in the best possible way. Yeah, friend of the show Whitey Whitey was creating set from Over the Rings. I forgot which one it was.
But I said maybe one of these ladies like it's the big one with like, Like the I spiked Mountain coming out the side of it. Oh, I wasn't God. Yeah. Wait with the eye as well. That won't know. They did the I won at one of the point to okay, right. Yeah. Because I know the big like spiky Tower is like Isaac God. Why do your just? Yeah that's a Discord for messing it up but I wanted to give a shout out.
This is an awesome build but you guys say, let's jump into the news because we've got a lot of questions for our main topic and then there's not a ton of news, even though what me and Joe Blow wrote down is a lot. So 3pf, snapshot 20w 20, A and B. Bu is just a bug fix, I think for game Crash. Yeah, yeah, but 20, a added, the game mode switcher, debug menu and some more, another advancements. Now, I saw in your Twitter, Twitter, you were showing off the game mode, switcher.
That's just hold F3 and tap f42, I guess cycle through the tournament and then it has kind of like a remembering feature where members of Hamas, gamer Jihad How did that come about? Was you guys just constantly, get aggravated accidentally switching into creative mode when you're trying to do something else, like we do. Yeah, pretty much in particular when we were working on the piglets one of our developers.
Heinrich he wanted to be able to quickly switch between spectator and survival and because of that, we started working on some sort of solution to switch game modes, easy. And yeah, I just kind of there was one day where I was like, I'm going to prototype this So our prototype to sort of gooey feature and of course, in the past like I've worked on a mod
called orbis. Where you know, I've got some experience like working on this sort of like I guess extra Creative Solutions. So I felt like maybe I'd have some experience in trying to solve that problem and I think I came out pretty well. It seems to be pretty positive across the board from players. Yeah, I definitely think it's one of those. Sorry throats, just for morning boys. Um It's one of those quality of life updates that it's not this big huge thing.
But it's one of these small things that when you've been using it for a year, you're like, man, how did I ever not use this? Yeah yeah, definitely. I'm already thinking. Now the amount of times I would go to a spot and then I'd have to type in spectator mode. It's like take a thumbnail shot for a video or something. Now I can just quick. Tap, tap, take my screen shot and tap back in it's going to be an awesome change. I mean, even just thinking like before Spectator mode existed,
like that's crazy. Like yeah, there's definitely I would love to see if we can squeeze in more of those little things like, you know, in the future as we develop the game just like more quality of life things, because sometimes it can be hard to develop them. Because, you know, they take away time in development from let the content additions. But still, I think that they're important and they add a lot to the game, especially again, for like content, creators and
mapmakers. Yeah, but it's the fact that you guys Do these things that keeps Minecraft around? Let me think about it. It's probably one of the oldest games still be at the top of the games list. Yeah. So these little quality of life. They're awesome changes. Yeah, definitely. It's very interesting, like, you know, I don't even say this in a bad way but, you know, I remember like, years ago when I was, you know, playing Minecraft.
I was like, wonderingly, how long is this Gonna Last like, how long will people going to stay interested in this game? You know, even like only five years ago and it doesn't seem to be dwindling. People really love this game and like, I mean, that's obviously awesome, but for me as a developer and even as a player, but it's always interesting
trying to think of let you know. Why do people love this game so much and I mean on the hopefully it's you know, because we, you know, put a lot of effort into maintaining and making sure it's a still a fun and fresh game, but I think there's also something very special about the game and I think you know the we've captured something special and that's really awesome. I really do think It's we're going to pluck this tiny bit of imagination out of your mind and we're going to put it on screen
and just let you run with. It is really, what sells the game? I know a lot of people are saying, well we want World Generation to be like this with a, but you guys are very much a well you can do that, but we're going to give you this Blank Slate. Yeah. And with little tiny hints of what you can do and we want you to make that world. And that's to me, that's the best thing in the world because I went to school for architecture degree.
Don't use that degree at all. I repair, industrial Electronics. So the fact I get to come home and play a game and do something I really like like that. It's just awesome. That is really cool.
Yeah, and I mean, like, going back to our conversation about like creating like little emergent narratives in the game, I kind of almost think of it. Like, of course, Minecraft has a lot of parallels with like Lego but also even just like, in terms of the, the story side of things, it's like the game gives you a little Lego pieces, in a sense. To build a story. It gives you the it doesn't, it doesn't try to direct you in any way.
It just gives you pieces that you can play with like a toy box and then you decide what you want to do. And I think that's the most powerful part of it. And I think that of course there are games that come close to this, but I think the fact that Minecraft is so abstract in the way that it gives you these pieces, that's what makes it so powerful. Whereas some other games, try to give you a more guided experience for still fun.
Don't get me wrong. Like, I Of, you know, I'm like I was explaining before I love storytelling games, I love games that I like almost on Rails where they just tell you a good story and I love that but I also love and appreciate what Minecraft does were. It's so abstract that it does not try to tell you what to do. It gives you a world, it pops you into a world. It gives you some pieces and you go crazy and that's awesome. Yeah, it's a good way to put it
before. We switch over to Jimbo's news, related stuff. I wanted to talk about their a coupler advancements that That the name itself made me chuckle. So country load, take me home, using the compass on a lodestone. What, by the way lodestones. Now my new beautiful favorite blog, that's all know. Yeah. It's going to be a pain to decorate with it but I love how it gives you a 3D texture while still being 2D Ryan and the fact I live in North Carolina.
So if you yell Country Road, somebody's going to go back. Take me home, granted, we're not in West Virginia but we're closed. Enough where it happened? I'm pretty close. So Virginia get you right on the other side. Right across the river and Ohio. So I don't know if, you know, kojo another developer in the team. He was the one who actually came up with that name and I'm very glad because it's awesome. Such a good man. Yeah, totally the weathering effect. Thanks him.
I love all the puns on the advancements. All the fun puns. The next one I did was oh shiny. Which is when you Distracting angry penguin with gold because I immediately thought of that Family Guy episode where just a cool piece candy candy as he's walking, I was like totally doing that. Yeah, there's a lot more advancements and Bug fixes and stuff will have the link to the Minecraft website and the show notes. But Jimbo you've got some more Minecraft news.
You want to cover. Yeah we have some changes for 20w 20 a the bullseye advancement. Now unlocks when hitting a bull's-eye of on the Lock from at least 30 meters away. The series dedication advancement is now awarded for obtaining. Another right. Ho obtaining Blackstone now also counts for the Stone Age, advancement breeding Striders. Now counts for the parrots and bats and now required for the 2x2 advancement, technical changes chokers with a.
I can now summon with rotation. Added thrown item pick up by entity advancement trigger. Added player generates container loot advancement, trigger added item used on block advancement trigger and remove safely Harvest honey, advancement trigger and miscellaneous trigger changes location. Got a new property, Smoky, which checks if the location is closely above the campfire, entity properties.
Got new properties, which vehicle properties vehicle and Target Target identities with match vehicle or The Entity. Targeted by. Can I say this? I can't do the last one and because this is the earliest we've ever recorded a podcast. Yeah, but I make it to the end and I'm and I screwed up like, really? Yeah. I mean, out of all those I'm assuming like, the Smoky property is just so you don't spawn a player on top of a campfire, mom, and interview properties with vehicle and targeted.
I am assuming that has to do with the striker. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not entirely. Sure. The thing is, I wasn't part of those changes. I haven't really looked into the advancement code too much so I wouldn't really be aware. That's that's my say like that the tech team that kind of works on that stuff. So funny because we don't know half the stuff. Anyway, our listeners understand, we're just kind of Spreading the News and if they know they can message us on
Discord of like, hey dum-dums. This is what it means. It's like okay yeah, Jim, we got some listener comments. You want to bring up, right? Yeah, I got a comment from Groove a guy tonight idea. Just wanted to get our thoughts on it. He That's what if you play music around plants to help them grow faster. Thought that was pretty interesting. Kind of like how bees will pollinate, right?
Yeah, as it goes back to that old adage where, like, depending on the kind of music you play will have a plant grow faster. Like if you play calm music, they grow bigger and stronger. You play like death metal, heavy metal so well. Yeah, yeah, his real-life test and show that it helps some and his eyes soon. As I heard that I was like, wow, that's that's not bad. I kind of like it. I think it'd be very interesting if it was like a specific plan. That did that like an old plants.
But that would be like a special plant that is like a change to music and something. Yeah would be very cool. Like imagine the new twisty Vines and weeping finds if you played Pig step near him. Start growing. Yeah or if there's just a certain rare disk you can get ahold of that. Does it for all plants? It's just really rare. I definitely like the idea of trying to implement the Music and more because I think that's one of the more I shouldn't say forgotten because picks.
It came out and that kind of like broke everyone. But yeah, implementing the Jukebox and different ways could be very cool, but let's jump into this week's just going to add. This is from Roble JC so go ahead and take it away. What's going on everybody? I'm Rebel JC and I would love for you to get involved in our Discord Community. Whether it's voting for block of the week, sharing your thoughts, and opinions on Minecraft, or
just chatting. With like-minded listeners, the weathering effect Discord has something for everyone joined today by following the link in the show notes. Hi, thanks for that ad Rebel JC and remember Rebel also has his own podcast. If you guys want to go check it out, I believe it's called dig straight down. So hopefully, we can get Carl. Remember, kind of put a link to that in the show notes but now it's on to the segment.
I'm the most nervous for because guys, we're changing the block, you chose in front of them being developer this. So this week, we asked you guys to vote and Discord on which of the following blocks Jimbo and I discuss your choices where the beacon bookshelf and On cutter. And before Jim bonus is where I will say we close the votes but you guys kept voting. So what you think is the winner might not actually be the winner. Yeah, they're definitely trying to sabotage the block of the week.
We got people in there trying to sabotage the system but it's not going to work because we got a producer named like are not used to it closing early but the winner this week is bookshelf. Congratulations bookshelf. It's actually rooting for the bookshelf because there's a lot of changes that can be implemented. But before we get to the changes, I have a few things about the bookshelf. It is crafted with any type of wood, it takes six wood planks
in three books. It's found naturally in villages Woodland, mansions and strongholds and in the stronghold library. Yeah. There could be up to two hundred and thirty-three bookshelves which I did not know that. Yeah, that's a lot of bookshelves either. It can be mined by with silk touch preferably with an axe. But without silk touch it, will drop three books instead of the bookshelf itself and primarily serves to enhance Channing with any enchantment table.
All right, so the improvements might easy. First thing that came to mind was bookshelves should hold books. Should be a specific chest for books. And I thought that's obvious. But and how would that affect other parts of the game? And I realized it could be really cool.
So if you have a bookshelf, gooey, maybe you have a spot at the top for just three normal books, that you would craft bookshelves with, and this would allow enchanting setups to kind of be dialable without having to do any kind of crazy. Redstone. You can just kind of take those books in and out as you needed and that would allow that. But also have maybe like a chest gooey underneath it where you could store your enchanted books.
Maybe you could also have the amount of books determine the texture that would show up on the outside of the bookshelf. So like if your book shelves, empty, just an empty texture, there's no books on it and I thought maybe the way furnaces work, how they know once, it's melting, it changes to that the Fire Glow texture you, maybe that could be done with bookshelves Carl. Also mentioned that being able to use different wood types to change the way bookshelves look.
So they didn't all look Oak. Would be a cool thing to and I kind of agree. What do you think can be dogs? How abstract are? We like the idea of like the book like based on the slot that it's in, it actually changes the visuals at be pretty cool. Like because especially for Builders, right? Especially if you could potentially change the cover of the book in some way. So you could like change the visuals of it, When you place it inside the bookshelf. Maybe what is it?
The fire protection book. Is a red book, right? Yeah, actually. Yeah, that'd be very cool and I also, I mean, I've always been a fan of like it would be cool if like the different wood types gave you different visuals. That there is, there is a debate that there. It's like for example, you know, with chests. Like if the different wood type affected the visuals of the, would it get? I don't think it would, but Question is, would it get confusing?
It's like, oh is this a special type of chest? But, no actually, it's just a normal chess besides different specials. So it's like it's a question of doesn't make is mechanics more important of the visuals because of course, you have like, ender chests and they have a different visual because they represent two different mechanic.
But yeah, I don't know like I don't know the answer to that but that is one of the challenges when it comes to like having different visual variations with different would times something like doors. They don't really I don't The problem is as overt because they all relatively act, the same whereas something like chests and two chests and normal just very different. So yeah, it's just it's the thought but it is cool. I would I would love firstly to have different colored bookshelves.
Be really cool me another. Another issue with those different type of bookshelves that you couldn't mix and match the wood to create a bookshelf. You'd have to have that one type. Exactly. Very true and we know like that building a camera setup. That's something you start almost day one. So you just grabbing whatever would you have around you? That went better than I thought we didn't get called dummies. Not not at all. Cool ideas.
But now it's getting to the chunk of our show and that's going to be straight up questions for you. We got a lot of people who asked a lot of different questions, so what we're going to try to do is going to try to get through at least one question for everyone and see where we are on time. If we're still going on time, we'll keep Asking questions if we're late in the show and we need to go ahead and wrap it up.
We do have the post-show for our patreon exclusive now this pre and post-show and our first Half Stack are all free to everyone. We want you to kind of get the feel, see if it's worth you guys giving any kind of money to access these shows. We don't want you to feel like you're getting stuck behind a pay wall. So you want to make sure you guys like this stuff before we get too far into it and we'll
save some questions. As for that like I've got one that's not Minecraft related to really want to talk about. So Jimbo. Do you have a question you want to talk about first? Yeah, I'm going to start off with. How did you become familiar with
coding? Yeah, I mean, it's sort of a weird self-fulfilling prophecy because I basically learned programming from Minecraft. I think it was about I was probably like 13 or 14 and I started making mods for Minecraft the first month that I've ever made was a mod called Minecraft advanced. Originally and the ended up being called Kings mods. But that basically added like just a bunch of random things like added likes and creepers.
At a giant creepers baby creepers added obsidian tools, Dragon tools out of dragons in the nether red, dragon hellhounds? Yeah, yeah it just it was basically back then like as a kid you just like what is cool and then you just add a I didn't really think about like design or anything. I was just like this is awesome. I want obsidian tools and obsidian tools are basically they worked like stone tools in terms of leg efficiency but they
they would last forever. They never Berg so they could - faster stone tools but never broke. So, that was kind of cool. And that was interesting. It was literally like, well, the weird mechanics like runes that you could throw. So you can make like Stone ruins and it would like you would throw them and it would create At us a couple Stone where it landed. I don't know why but it was just it was just me messing around
with things. But yeah, like basically it just ended up being me one day of finding a tutorial on how to decompile Minecraft, which sounds scarier than it is, but basically it's just Minecraft is made in Java and when you compile the game, there is something called an obfuscation process where they off the skate, the names of the code.
So, Cold Light, let's say a snowball would end up being pulled a so you wouldn't know what it is at all lately, would you could decompile the code and then you could see, you could see the code, but it would just be a so. Okay, what is this? A and then what happened is the Minecraft community and the modding Community came together to create something called a d office station map. Where essentially it would every version, it would see.
Okay, I think that this thing called a is actually a snowball. So then it had a mapping, which would go a to snowball and then you would go through a deification process was like automated script, that would pretty much change all those names into something that was readable for you.
And so there was a whole bunch of tools that were made to basically do this where you just kind of hit a button and it would do decompile the game, it will deal for skater and then you could edit the code and then you could re APA skater in order to actually play it in the game. So yeah. So that was a tool that I use to just the office caterer and look
through the code. And I just basically saw like, hey, I see that there's like a chicken here and it seems that it drops feathers when it dies because it's in like a death method or something. And I just change feathers to Diamonds and I changed like the number from like one to nine thousand. And so, my first quote, unquote mod was a chicken dropping, like 9,000 diamonds, and that was fun. Sweet. I bet, ya and ya from there, I like I didn't know anything
about programming. I didn't know what anything was. Was I just saw like the name diamond and I saw a number and I just change things and I kept changing things. I never really looked up like an official tutorial on like how to program until like much late. I like he is later. And yeah, just I just kept iterating kept letting by myself and then eventually I started working on the 8th of March and I owed, you know, Crazy by the way.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah. A lot of it, you know, I attribute a lot of the success to some really awesome people that are around me because I kind of found a community. Ready on IRC code aristocraft. And there was just awesome mutters like from all over the world who were working on Minecraft mods. And I kind of just like, brought together a group and I was, you know, talking to them and like asking questions about okay, how
can I do this? And at one stage, I learned a lot and I was just like, hey, do you guys want to make this this this mod and then we made the Ada so it was really cool. Good night. I know. Now you're like, Neo from The Matrix. Everything just makes sense. When you look at it, I think a
little bit. Yeah, but I think the the awesome thing about programming and sometimes the frustrating thing is, like, no matter how much you learn from programming, you're always learning something new every single day. You never quite get comfortable with it, but I think you get comfortable with it, but you never know everything because programming is always changing. Like the hardware is always
changing. The software is always changing and there are always so many different like I guess like development philosophies and development paradigms, that that The way you think about how you're approaching, like, content developmental software development. So, you do get comfortable, you do get a lot of experience and I think in some sense is like, you learn how to solve a lot of problems but there are so many problems in software
development. So it's impossible to know everything which I think can be really exciting because it means that you know every time you're working on it you're learning something new and that's fun. Yeah cool. Moving on this one kind of leads to your tweet that we ended up doing a show about and I'm knees asking which boss fight is your favorite. That is a tough question. I think, in the end the end a dragon is my favorite. I wouldn't call it a very strong fight in terms of like design.
I think, like, I think it's good like doing away wrong. I think that there are improvements to be made obviously. But I think what I really like about the ender dragon fight is that it uses the environment to its advantage in terms of the design like you have these like obsidian columns. And, you know, you got to like, shoot the crystals and it has something to it that is not just, you know, constantly attack the boss until it dies. It's something more. And of course you got, like, the
end of an everywhere. And they kind of pose, like, a bit of a challenge. Like, no, you gotta avoid looking at them. And then, of course, like you can't forget, even though it's not part of the fight itself, but just the context of the fight, the fact that you go into the end and then you see the end poem offer. It's there's something much more impactful. Out that entire fight, then something like the Widow, which is, you know, still awesome. But it doesn't to me have the
same impact as something. Like the Ender Dragon Hurley think that is a very strong fight, and it has a lot going for it. I agree. I like how the external forces around. You are also dictating the fight. Like, when I fought the Ender Dragon recently on my single player world, I just planned on spending next to the platform right next, the island. It turns out, I was like, 40 blocks away, right? And I was like, man, I'm glad I remembered. Ender pearls just to get onto
the main fight. It's like there was already something I needed to be prepared for before I even fought the dragon. Yeah yeah the void is definitely something to look out for to just to get to the drag. Yeah yeah. It's a very imposing environment and you know, it's not something you used to like you don't really get exposed to the void unless you like in creative mode
or something. So if you just playing in survival for the first time you see like okay there's literally just darkness below me. That's Terrifying for the first time so that's really cool. I really, really like it. Alright, it's terrifying the 50th time to don't worry about, oh yeah, definitely I don't know how many times I've got a pinky cramp trying to build an intermittent Farm over the void and Jim. What's your next question?
Is there a certain part of the game that you're working on or that you work with or do you get to get involved everywhere? So I think the the philosophy in general in the development team, Lisa gameplay team is that you know, you in general. To work on the things that you're most passionate about, but it changes like you kind of have like hats I guess like metaphorically where it's like, okay, this week, I'm going to put on the bug fixing hat and that's, you know, that's my job
this week. And then maybe Midway through you like, okay, well actually I got to do some prototyping. So I'm going to switch the prototyping hat and I'm going to try and work on that. But when it comes to like content development, you know, if you're super passionate about something like I was quite passionate about the idea of the Strider. So as long as like, you know that but that passion of seen and no one else like I guess has conflicting interest of working on it.
The we're very happy to let people in the team work on things they love and I think that creates some of the best content so that's really awesome. I really like that because now you're not forced to Belt working on something you're like 50/50 on you work on something like yes this can work and I'm going to show you guys how it's going. I love the fact that they just kind of our free will like you know what?
I have an idea go for it. Let's see how it turns out breaks up the monotony, a little bit. Yeah. That's definitely a culture of like, prototyping in general. Like, you know, if you have an idea unless like you know, those deadlines or, you know, things are coming to a head, you know, maybe the, you know, we have to work on some things in general. If you have an idea, we're very happy for us to prototype that just like see how it works and
if it doesn't work, that's fine. We learnt something, but we're not. Opposed to it. That's that's what I really like about. Both the role and the company in general is very open with leg. Let's try ideas, let's see if this works and if it doesn't work, it's not a loss. It's a win. Awesome. Kind of leading off of that. We've got a question from Jay, man.
Who goes what aspect of the game has been the hardest to develop for, I think anything related to the court of Court, like, Tech Community, you know, a lot of like mob farms and things surrounding that thing, you know, that's a part of the community that Wasn't very exposed to in the past because, you know, even in my mods that I made, they were very like Adventure focused and like combat focused and exploration
and all these sort of things. And it's like I never even really, you know, used Redstone like that's not that's not my playstyle. And outside of redstone I definitely never built a mob farm. That's just not something I did and it's not a part of the community that was exposed to either. So I didn't understand them and in the past couple of months, you know, as I've been in this role. I've been trying my best to research and understand both the community. And you know what?
What this side of the community really wants and I found through my research that what they want is, they want a challenge into, they basically want a set of like game rules or I guess laws of the game that they want to use their advantage to create like, some sort of positive effect for them, some sort of positive outcome, but they want to make sure that that is a challenge like Their arm up Farms, that are too easy.
I've found, there are some that people feel overpowered and it's not that like they don't want those mob Farms to go, definitely not, they just want them to be more chat. Let the the the reward should meet the input.
So the challenge of building that farm should be greater in order to match that app of like how much items you get or how much reward you get from it. Yeah it's crazy to think as people were You would assume hey, easier Farm the better for me. But now you have this community push them back saying no we want the complete opposite. We want to put in the work. Yeah.
To make this crazy Farm. Yeah, I think that's of course of those a little bit of controversy around the with a rose change of like being able to spawn on with arises like the mobs. But I think in general most people of, you know just said like hey this is the right change because it made farms to simple like you basically had the same solution for every single file. That wasn't fun for that. That's not true.
It's not, it doesn't really like, you know, it doesn't make your brain tick and any role in any way. And I think that's what this community, that part of the community wants. They want fun, puzzles to solve. And if you just give them the answers, that's not fun at all. Yeah, that's been really interesting.
It's been really tough because again, it's just not my playstyle and it's not something that I'm necessarily interested in like on a personal level as a player, but I think Dad's been both challenging and really rewarding to To stand them and figure out what they want. Well, the fact that you and mowing in general, listen to the community some way, which is again, president on why. So many people love this game, you kind of understand your voice is gonna be heard.
It's just a matter of time before it gets figured out how to work it in there. Yeah. And I think come in general, like that there is sometimes I guess the the idea floating around that Mojang doesn't listen to play as but you'd be amazed how much we do. Listen, but I will like, Every single snapshot. I go onto YouTube and I look into newest of like that snapshot like Minecraft nether update or whatever and I will
watch like so much. I will watch people who only have like three subscribers and I will just listen to every single person. Sometimes it's too much. Like, sometimes I should just like relax and not, not get too crazy into it, right? But there is a balance and I think just the fact that I'm willing to listen to everyone, you know, not not just the big content creators, just everyone
that I can. Because I really want to understand what what players like and dislike about the snapshot or you know what the general sentiment is. This is really useful information for me to make the game better. That's awesome. Yeah, Jimbo, you got another question? Yeah, I got a question from the noobs. Are there any mechanics currently in the game that you would like to change or remove? That's interesting. Phantoms would be the top. I think I'm not a big fan of how
bets. What the biggest problem that I I like beds as a concept. I think the problem that I have with the is that, you know, you always skip night now and it's been like that V is of course and it's kind of part of the game and I think would be really risky to change it but what I don't like especially with Phantoms now that they were
introduced. Is that it's it's like now that Phantoms are in your even more encouraged to never experience the night like, you always should sleep, there's just no downside or sorry, there's no upside to Venturing out and like braving the night, you get no reward from it to be better off just sleeping and I really, really dislike Ali heavily dislike that. I think it's, it doesn't make
sense. The game should encourage players to step out of their comfort zone and reward them from stepping out of their comfort zone. But none of that happens. The beds and none of that definitely happens with Phantoms. So there's something deeply wrong there. I don't know if we will ever solve that. I mean, I'm sure what would Definitely eventually address Phantoms in some way. I think that will happen. The question is when, you know, it could take a long time.
But yeah, I just think something's wrong there. And like I love expiration. And I think that I think the fact that there are certain parts of the game that like kind of inhibit you from really increasing yourself in the expiration is a bit concerning to me. Like even the fact that with beds, your constraint to one location and if you sleep, let's You venture out and then you sleep, you lose, you know, track of your base. So of course, I guess you could argue now with lodestones.
That's solved a little bit because you can have a lodestone at your base and then you can sleep somewhere else and then return to your base. But I still think it's not enough, because the play, if you're traveling, let's say ten thousand blocks away from your base. Is it really reasonable for us to ask the player to have a base like that far away, venture out? And then come back, you know
like actually walk all the way. Back the even with horses it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I do think that it should be challenging to travel. It should be challenging to explore but I think the reward should be extremely great. Yeah and I think there's a lot of little mechanics everywhere that could be tweaked to make
that more interesting. You hit on two things, perfectly for my single player world early on what I would do is I'd stay up at night and I'd hunt mobs, just for the XP so I could get in chant and going but The second I knew a phantom was getting ready to spawn. I slept through the night and I went, oh, man, that's a wasted night to get XP. So I agree and I've always thought Phantoms would be cool, as kind of like a replacement for bats. If everyone keeps saying cave update cave update.
Well, it's like, if there was a cave update, imagine like, Phantoms being like having their own Temple, or whatever in there, you'd have to fight Phantoms off in there. I always thought that was cool. And number two, is the long travel. Well, in this world, I've tried to stay out of the nether as possible. I know the nether updates coming and I want it to be fresh for that. So my rule is I have to travel to a destination on land and then travel back without dying.
And if I could get to my location and back without dying, I'd set up a command block that would allow me to teleport to that location and back and they were a couple times I was going over 5000 blocks and I was like, I don't have any lighter yet. This is ridiculous. Yeah, I missed other travel and that's a problem. Like you have to essentially cheat your way just to have a fun experience and I don't think that's That's right. I think that's a failure on on a
pot. Like I don't think it's like such a severe problem that the game is not fun. I just think that it is something that I would urge for us to look into it one point because I think there is something that we can improve the and with the Phantom's. I love the way they look. I think there really is looking well but I think they deserve to have something that is really fun around them or at least give you this like amazing reward for like challenging yourself against them.
It's just not The and hopefully, eventually we can look into it again. Definitely no promises. We don't know when we would look into it, but I would love to eventually, you know, give it some thought for sure. Yeah. Before you get on, do your question. I just wanted to mention now, you know, on multiplayer servers. We always add the data pack for one person sleep to wear. None of us have to go through the night and I think your your
take is very interesting about. Yeah, it does take a lot It away from the game. Not going through the night in that challenge of getting your work done with that, you know, that issue being at night. Yeah. So I think like the ideal outcome of this would be that you can still perfectly like skip the night completely. But I think the players should be rewarded for not skipping the
night. I think that would be the ideal situation because then at least those players who don't like the night like they're just ants carry or it's boring. It's like yes, skip it. We have no problem with you. In that. But if you challenge yourself and you do go out in the night, you'll get something really interesting. Yeah, like that. I think that'd be cool. I like that, too. I got a question from agent paint.
Might have been better a little earlier, but how often do community suggestions and feedback to discuss When developing an update, probably a lot more than you might. Imagine we pretty much every single snapshot we compiled together as much feedback as we can and we have like, discussions pretty much every morning on a work day. Just like, hey, you know, this person.
Said this. They felt like this was, you know, could be improved or they said oh this was actually super fun and we really enjoyed it. We look at the feedback almost consistently like constantly and even myself, like I said, like not necessarily, everyone does this.
But I know that quite a lot of people on the team, you know, after a snapshot that will go out and watch YouTube videos, they'll listen to community members, they'll ask questions on Twitter, they read through Twitter threads, they'll watch streams, you know, we just went off.
He's watching you might not see us but we're always watching and we're always listening and even though you know, the feedback might not be addressed immediately, it might take you know it could take a really long time. We're always discussing these Solutions but of course with so many requests from the community and with so many different takes on the game, we can't do everything, it's just not possible. So we have to prioritize, okay?
This one is going to add the most the game, and this one is going to have Like, you know, the most positive outcomes for the game. So that's kind of how we prioritize. We know, we can't do everything so we make sure that we address the things that at the most or resolve the most awesome. Yeah. You know your yeah. Has there been a project or projects that you've been so motivated to get to that? You just couldn't wait? It doesn't necessarily have to
be at Mojang because we right. All right, it's January and you've had the eighth. Your mods and the orbis mods. Yeah. I mean I guess I'll answer this in two ways I think like outside of Mojang I would definitely be orbis that was definitely one of my most played the biggest passion project I've ever worked on. It is not as popular as the Aether of course. And that's mostly down to the fact that it didn't finish it. That it's the technology behind is really, really interesting.
And really cool and how like it could change the way that developers make content for like mods. Or anything. So it's really cool. I really like that. And the fact that it empowers artist to basically create procedural content with no coding at all. Like, that's that's awesome. But in terms of inside Mojang I guess there's the something that I'm working on. Now that I can't talk about that. I have been very excited for like, extremely excited for so, yeah.
Stuff is happening. Well, I can't wait to figure out what your exciting. Yes. Begin the auris mod. I'm not sure if this is, like when I saw, what your orbis want was, I immediately thought of the way, bastions were being created, it's there any link to that at all? Or is it just a happy coincidence? That they're both dealing with procedurally, generated Dungeons and stuff? Those are linked. Come the bastions use something
called jigsaws in the game. I don't think the community really interacts with Jigsaw stuff much but But it does something quite similar. But the thing that always does very different is that orbit allows you to basically create like procedural content within, let's say a room very, very quickly and you can do it without any programming whatsoever. Where is something like
bastions? It is done in like, you know, in Minecraft blocks and everything and you kind of create, like, a structure file, but it's still quite a lot of programming surrounding it to make sure that it places correctly in the world and I think all this is much more like, you just create a structure and it just works like it just generates in the world naturally, and that's like the side of that. So, yeah, that that's a difference in technology but in terms of like, I guess the outcome.
Yeah. Very similar. I mean, the both procedurally generated Solutions and I didn't work on the bastions, that was kojo, but he did a fantastic job. Like it's, yeah, from what I'm aware. The biggest procedurally generated structure in the game and it came like the, the Effort into making it such a varied structure that, you know, and it just has so much going for it. It's controversial structure because I know there are some people like all its to ruined.
Like I feel like I wish I could see it like less ruined, but I still think that for the goal of that structure, it came out extremely. Well yeah. I like the look of it in the different variations. There's different types of them. Yeah. It's like every time you walk into one it's new to you made. Yeah so yeah definitely Jimmy. Another one. Yeah. Do you think there's been a tangible shift towards prioritizing Bedrock for the
parity? Yeah, I think kind of I mean, I think the stuff was happening before I joined but I think definitely since I've joined like we've focused a lot more on ensuring that there is like great parity between the the two different platforms. And even myself, I am actually working on bedrock and Java at the same time, I implemented the Striders with another Bedrock developer on Ed rock while also implementing it in Java, which was like fantastic. So cool. I've never actually programmed
in C++ before that late. Never learn C++ at all. And that was really cool to be able to learn a new programming language to work on that platform and collaborate with that team. And, you know, we're very with very like close together and we make sure that they were always having discussions and conversations about like oh, I noticed that this thing is a bit different on Java or this. A bit different on petrol click. How can we make these come
closer together? And I think going forward, you will see that these updates are really like great in terms of parity. And I hope that that Trend continues because it seems It's really exciting, really, really exciting. Definitely, I've got a smaller question from vipers tuna and I didn't think much of it, but it actually could be a really cool thing. Will there be any Shield specific enchantments in the
future? I don't think we've really had any conversations about that but but it's definitely an area to explore would be interesting. You know I think in general combat, of course is being evaluated in different ways by Yen's right now. What? Jep with the combat snapshots so you know I think that would be probably a better question for him because he's probably thought of that sort of stuff. But it is interesting, like, you know, there's a lot of different things you could do is Shields
with entrapments. I think that could be really exciting area like maybe, I don't know. So maybe like Just even like successfully blocking with a shield that's Enchanted that like sets The Entity on fire or something. You know, there's all sorts of interesting things you could do so that's yeah, it's definitely a cool area to explore. Now we're getting close on our time. Let's get to more questions in there Jimbo. You got one more. Yeah, you mentioned the Orbeez mod.
I did check this out. It seems like a very convenient way for generation and help build creatively. That was just curious to how this came about. How you came up with that idea, right?
It basically came down to while I was developing a tattoo I realized that you know we had these big Ambitions to create like super crazy Dungeons and that came from essentially we have some really brilliant artists in that team that had come to me with laid these awesome like concept art of like all these Dungeons and like how they would be laid out and I realized that no matter how hard I tried to translate those concept Arts into like a Tool generated Dungeons and the game
it just the translation wasn't good enough. They would be like it like I guess autistic of vision lost between that point and to me that was that was unacceptable because there was so cool. So I started working on originally it was called like I think it's called like the structure generator or something. It was like some generic name. And the idea was how can I get to a point where I can just hand a tool to these artists and They make the whole dungeon themselves and I don't have to
intervene at all. They can literally get in and design the procedural content for like a dungeon room. And I don't have to step in at all, like they they just own this thing. This is their dungeon, they understand it. They have the concept art, they know how to create it and that was the vision and I got extremely close. Of course, there's still a lot of things that like if I were to return to that mod than enough to do to like fully realize that Vision, but it got extremely
close. That sort of concept. I mean in the ended it basically like currently the way it's implemented you it's basically 3D Photoshop that procedural generation. It's got like layers where you can work on a structure in layers and you can like hide layers or delete layers so you can like place blocks, and then you can hide that layer. And those blocks will just disappear. And like, it's super powerful. It's got like, like procedural like conditions and stuff.
Well, it, you can link layers together and you can see this layer will only generate if this layer Rates which has like a 50% chance to generate. So you can just create crazy things that you can create an entire dungeons of it. It's really, really cool. And yeah, unfortunately, I don't have time anymore, which sucks but it's like that was the that was the reason why we worked on that mod. Just so that like the artist could get in and make awesome
work to empower them crazy. I really enjoyed what you did there. I was watching some of it and I just I go, I want to get my hands on that mod. Actually haven't got to download it yet but it looks cool. Yeah, yeah. Me and Jimbo aren't much for outside of vanilla but seeing some of the stuff you've worked on, it's like the things we've talked about are available. We just don't know about it because we're not into the big modding Community, right? Yeah, that's definitely
understandable. Like I think even myself like I tend to avoid mods, which is a bit ironic not, not because they're not great. Like these mods are awesome. The the amount of work that the community puts into it is amazing. But yeah, I like to play an Science that is, I guess like reliable. Like, I don't like to have to wait for you. No mods to update or staying behind on previous versions, like even orbis as awesome as it is.
It's only updated 21-point 12.2. And it's like, that's extremely old now. And the fact that I have to go back in order to play that mod is not an enjoyable part of the experience. So, yeah. One more question for you. Wrap up the weathering effect. What is your favorite part of an I guess development wise or like, literally, what is like my new favorite could be like the
release date. It could be when you're just talking about ideas, it could be when you finally figure out that one piece of code that's been missing for a while. I think come, I'll answer this in two ways.
So the first thing is, like, with the development process, I think my favorite part is when things stop the click, I remember, like, when we were developing the, another update like as you know, like I came in kind of like Midway A which was a bit interesting for me because it's like suddenly all of these crazy cool ideas are coming in and like I had no idea about what the nether update was going to be. And then I just saw her over, I'm like, oh my God, this is so
cool. But even then, like we were still trying to figure out like, you know, we had an idea for a vision of the update, but we had so many problems to solve and then they'll suddenly sort of like a week where it's like oh things are just clicking into place and it feels like oh this
feature interacts with this. Try this way and like it has like the Synergy that is like really powerful for the player experience and it's just that moment where you just like, okay, I can actually see this is going to be a cool update. This is going to be fun for players because before that, you're just trying to Soul, so many problems and you're not sure you like, is this going to be a good update?
We don't know. And then, you know, you just you work as hard as you can, to make sure that it's a great update and it just clicked. And that is that it's rewarding. Definitely rewarding. And of course I enjoy seeing all the reactions to that as well. In terms of like, I guess, Guess what is my favorite like feature from an update? I think, for the another update in particular I would definitely say the piglets just because of how much depth they have to them. I mean, I guess on a personal
level. I would also say The Strider because I worked on it, but I think the Strider doesn't come close to the Penguins and just how much depth adds to the game and like the feeling the atmosphere of like the, you know, this whole race in another dimension that you can interact with such depth to it is. Really cool yet the Penguins to me feel like yes we had zombie pigmen in another before but the penguins are like, okay now we took a mob and we gave it some
storytelling ability that you can play with. Yeah. So here's another chapter to your story, you can create exactly and the player can interpret the Penguins in whatever way they want. But, you know, they could interpret them as like Warlords or something or maybe misunderstood creatures, like, it's up to the player which is so cool. Like, you know, They could be like I'm going to eight the piglets. I'm going to kill all the hot clubs around them. Like, you know, it's up to you
and that's really cool. Yeah, but I think we're out of time for the main show. Guys, don't forget, we have drinking our milk, which is our patreon exclusive post-show. But since it's our first patreon show, it is free for everyone to enjoy. So we're buying to be answering a couple more questions and hanging out over there Jimbo. Do you want to go ahead and read this out though? Well, before I do you want to ask about the 116 release? Oh yeah. So me and Jimbo have a bet on a
diamond block. The first nine diamonds, we come across in our new season is about which one of us is going to be closer to the full release date. 116 Jimbo said made days ago and I've got June 12. Can you give us a definitive answer on when it's going to be released, right? Yeah, I didn't want to say this but it's going to come out. Wow, what? That's okay. I believe it's. Alright make sense.
Yeah, I'm so glad you got out there now that we know who the winner is. I mean yeah it's not that crazy walrus. I can tell you that. Yeah people will be excited. Okay, I'll read this out now I'm all excited out if you like to show you could share it with all your friends and on social media. If you listen on Spotify, follow us, if you listen on Apple podcast, leave us a nice Review doing any of these helps to show
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We are struggling reading Horizons today. Day, The Amazing Music you hear in the intro and outro was created by the one. And only decoy everybody social media. Info can be found in the show notes and thank you again King Boo dogs for hanging out on the show. You're going to be in the post show with this again to. So, thank you so much. It was so awesome. Having you on the show? Not a problem. That's been awesome. All you guys who are listening. You have also been awesome.
Thanks for getting withered with us. You should probably go drink your milk now. Bye. You guys. Bye.