So the Minecraft 1.8 preview is out, and I’ve been playing with it a little.

It’s going to change a few things that effect me. Logic needs some new recipes due to a conflict with the stone bricks, and I’m going to have to do a lot of work on the lighting engine for the cover plate renderer. Also, I’ll have to figure out how to populate all the different types of blocks into the new creative mode inventory.

And that’s of course after all the prerequisites port.

Some of the new features are exciting. A couple new block types, which I do plan on adding to the available microblock list when I can. A few new materials and a few new mechanics. I love the swamp biome. Clay seems much easier to find, if a little harder to retrieve, since it’s now only generating underwater.

And a few new irritations. Not sure why you now need to click once for every new block you place. That will probably get annoying. The mountain biome is pretty buggy, lots of floating islands and exposed chunk boundaries. And the endermen… I had one move a block from my house wall. I wonder how best to avoid that sort of thing.

So, I’ve finally started a new blog.  Got the server software running, and WordPress installed.

Currently I have a relatively boring stock theme, and not a lot of content, but I’m going to work on fixing both as time passes.

I’m working on RedPower 2 at the moment, which brings along the new RedPower World pack. This comes with things like this:

I’m also writing a new game, which I’ve titled Minia. Here’s a screenshot of the engine as it stands: