Minecraft pre-1.8 leak.

September 9, 2011 4:58 PM

It appears a preview of the 1.8 update to Metafilter favorite Minecraft has been "leaked" to 4chan.

Initial reports on reddit's /r/Minecraft seem to confirm this is legit. Notch has confirmed that he is fine with people using it, but warns that people should obtain it from the official leak url.

posted by Ad hominem (79 comments total)

Enders pearls wtf?
posted by The Whelk at 5:04 PM on September 9, 2011

Windows users can run %appdata%/.minecraft/bin, rename the old minecraft.jar and drop in the new one.
posted by Ad hominem at 5:07 PM on September 9, 2011

4.8chan
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:08 PM on September 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

The first link is broken.
posted by KokuRyu at 5:09 PM on September 9, 2011

From the boards:

Java files really can't do much to your computer

Uh, no. Java applets aren't supposed to be able to harm your machine, they're not any different from flash movies. However, like flash, there are sometimes bugs in the JRE.

However, .jars you download to your own machine and run are no different then regular programs. Downloading a file off 4chan and running it is not a good idea.

(if this leak has been confirmed, and you download it directly from the minecraft servers, it should be OK)
posted by delmoi at 5:10 PM on September 9, 2011 [3 favorites]

Really? they all work for me. this is the destination for the "leaked" link

Yes, if you download it, download the jar hosted on minecraft.net
posted by Ad hominem at 5:13 PM on September 9, 2011

It is apparently extraordinarily buggy. youtube vid
posted by rifflesby at 5:16 PM on September 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, it doesn't have any of the bugfixes they delayed the official release to fix. People have even less reason to complain about it being buggy than they usually do, in my opinion.
posted by flatluigi at 5:19 PM on September 9, 2011

It is apparently extraordinarily buggy.

m@f faints from shock, falls into lava, dies.
posted by m@f at 5:19 PM on September 9, 2011 [6 favorites]

Though, of course, having no reason to complain has never historically stopped anyone.
posted by flatluigi at 5:24 PM on September 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

Metafilter - where links to 4chan downloads are always safe.
posted by Chuffy at 5:25 PM on September 9, 2011 [4 favorites]

guys, its not a link to a 4chan download. it is a link to minecraft.net posted to 4chan.
posted by Ad hominem at 5:27 PM on September 9, 2011

It's supposed to be a gorgeous weekend here in the PNW. I think I will wait for the actual, somewhat-less-buggy release next week.
posted by Aquaman at 5:28 PM on September 9, 2011 [4 favorites]

It is apparently extraordinarily buggy.

Get outta' town..
posted by codacorolla at 5:30 PM on September 9, 2011

Aquaman: "It's supposed to be a gorgeous weekend here in the PNW. I think I will wait for the actual, somewhat-less-buggy release next week."

Please give me the seed number for this "PNW" world immediately.
posted by Dr. Zira at 5:31 PM on September 9, 2011 [13 favorites]

guys, its not a link to a 4chan download. it is a link to minecraft.net posted to 4chan.

Sure, but we don't know how it got there. I mean in this case we know it's safe, but if you just see a random URL you can't always be sure even if it's a known host. A hacker could upload a file to a website, then get people to download it thinking it's safe.
posted by delmoi at 5:39 PM on September 9, 2011

It is apparently extraordinarily buggy.

Get outta' town..
I would but the game stopped responding to my keyboard and now I'm stuck in town.
posted by Paul Breeze at 5:39 PM on September 9, 2011

20 blocks, same as in town.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:42 PM on September 9, 2011 [10 favorites]

Please give me the seed number for this "PNW" world immediately.

1.
posted by Malor at 5:43 PM on September 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Sure, but we don't know how it got there. I mean in this case we know it's safe, but if you just see a random URL you can't always be sure even if it's a known host. A hacker could upload a file to a website, then get people to download it thinking it's safe.

Good point. Same goes for any file on the web. In this case Jeb and Notch have pretty much confirmed that the .jar hosted on minecraft.net is "official". I have been playing it and nothing bad has happend...... yet.
posted by Ad hominem at 5:57 PM on September 9, 2011

so no endermen then.
posted by empath at 5:58 PM on September 9, 2011

Goodbye, productive weekend. Hello exploring.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:59 PM on September 9, 2011

Man I read that as an update to Metafilter leaking to 4chan, which blew my mind.
posted by graventy at 6:13 PM on September 9, 2011 [6 favorites]

I'm so glad my kids don't read MeFi. They can just get the release when the most serious of the bugs are fixed on Monday.
posted by DU at 6:25 PM on September 9, 2011

Gorgeous weekend to CHOP ALL THE TREES!!
posted by The otter lady at 6:30 PM on September 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

As an aside, Reading about this patch is the first time I've wanted to play Minecraft in about a year. I'm amazed that the other coders have managed to escape the event horizon of Notch's phenomenal incompetence.
posted by codacorolla at 6:33 PM on September 9, 2011

notch's legendary incompetence is the result of vastly overinflated expectations; software development is ALWAYS this messy, but big game corps have paid employees who do nothing but fix bugs, and *different* paid employees who do nothing but find bugs. mojang is five guys.
posted by LogicalDash at 6:41 PM on September 9, 2011 [4 favorites]

That 4chan comment thread is a steaming pile... best just to go to the reddit thread.
posted by crapmatic at 6:42 PM on September 9, 2011

MetaFilter: best just go to the reddit thread
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:50 PM on September 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

mojang is five guys.

My project at work is one guy who supposedly works on the project but has done basically no work in about 2 years (not because he's lazy--he's just on a trillion other projects), two analysts (who don't actually do any coding, they just use the thing) and me.

I'm not saying I'm better than notch--I haven't really seen the evidence that he's so terrible (Java, yes; notch, no). I'm just saying that you can have a very stable product even with a small number of people if you have good engineering and smart practices. Like, don't be afraid to rip your code apart and do it over. You'll have a better product that you understand more thoroughly and in fewer lines of code. And release as often as possible with features incremented as small as possible in front of as many users as possible.
posted by DU at 6:50 PM on September 9, 2011

I've been too busy to play Minecraft for a fair while now, and when shears came out I lost a lot of motivation on my main project. I was working on an enormous tree and adding leaves to it by manually planting hundreds of normal trees on soil scaffolds, but somehow now it seems uninspiring. I'm really intrigued by the new terrain features and dungeons in 1.8 though. It's just a shame I'd have to start a new world to get the most out of them, I already spent too long travelling trying to find a chunk with lapis lazuli in my original world.

I'm really hoping to see some sort of algorithmic goal generation eventually. I think Minecraft is only fun for very long if you give yourself a project, so if there were a way to do this in-game (mysterious plans for giant magical constructions left by an ancient civilisation?), it seems like that would go a long way towards breaking through the plateau you eventually reach.
posted by lucidium at 6:51 PM on September 9, 2011

DU: "I'm so glad my kids don't read MeFi. They can just get the release when the most serious of the bugs are fixed on Monday."

Tell me about it. This information is being firmly suppressed at my house, as I do not wish to expose my eleven year old to either a buggy version or 4chan.
posted by Dr. Zira at 6:51 PM on September 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

This came up mere minutes after I exuberantly dug out the diamond block I was standing on and plunged into lava (and yes, dumbass wasn't carrying a bucket of water). Thought that had pretty much finished me for the night.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:59 PM on September 9, 2011

I don't know what to make of notch as a developer. I have 4 dedicated qa people and dozens of UAT people and each release still has some fucked up edge case bug so I can't fault the guy. People who watch his live streams always seem to be impressed.

I haven't gone nuts on the 1.8 patch but I haven't seen any showstoppers yet.
posted by Ad hominem at 7:09 PM on September 9, 2011

Imagine Bethesda releasing weekly builds of Skyrim to people who pre-ordered as they worked on finishing the game.
posted by straight at 7:20 PM on September 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Like, don't be afraid to rip your code apart and do it over.

He's not, and that's a lot of the reason why this leaked pre-release is so bad. The lighting system is basically entirely new, as I understand it.
posted by rifflesby at 7:39 PM on September 9, 2011

I'm not saying I'm better than notch--I haven't really seen the evidence that he's so terrible (Java, yes; notch, no). I'm just saying that you can have a very stable product even with a small number of people if you have good engineering and smart practices.

Well, you can spend your time doing features, or doing QA. But there is a finite amount of dev time, and you have to focus on one or the other. QA isn't as important in a game as it is in avionics.

I think People are spending a lot more time worrying about bugs these days, since a bug in an internet facing app could potentially mean a security flaw. But it's not really that big of a deal. (Also, it's kind of ridiculous how you keep complaining about java even though you don't actually know anything about the language.)
posted by delmoi at 7:40 PM on September 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

- Silverfish

Ah... ugh. Really? Of all things, why??

- Clouds are now at the ceiling of the world

Awww. :(
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 7:48 PM on September 9, 2011 [3 favorites]

Oh shit. I thought there was a Metafilter 1.8 update that was leaked. haha.

I was wondering if it was going to stay liberal or what.
posted by hal_c_on at 8:37 PM on September 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

My son cannot get enough Minecraft. Is it a true MMO (persistant world, avatar development)? Or simply a multi-player FPS style game?
posted by no1nose at 9:27 PM on September 9, 2011

It's both, you can have a persistent server, but it's not centralized, and you can play the game totally offline if you want.
posted by The Whelk at 9:34 PM on September 9, 2011

There's not much avatar development yet, though 1.8 adds (useless) experience orbs. The biggest step in avatar awesomeness is a full set of diamond tools and a suit of diamond armor.
posted by polyhedron at 9:48 PM on September 9, 2011

It's super buggy, as has been mentioned. But the lighting is much nicer. The hunger mechanic isn't the albatross I thought it would be. I've still yet to run into a village, but I'm going to run around tonight on a new map in peaceful and see if I can find one.

Just this week I launched the game for the first time in months after reading about the Millenaire mod which creates villages and shops in the world. It's been pretty fun.
posted by eyeballkid at 10:07 PM on September 9, 2011

Apaprently there has been village and Enderman sightings.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:12 PM on September 9, 2011

killed by endermen
posted by Ad hominem at 10:22 PM on September 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

I ran into some Endermen earlier today. They are as creepy as advertised. Just dug around and found a dungeon, which could be better described as a decaying mineshaft, complete with sporadic track, archways and chests everywhere.
posted by eyeballkid at 10:38 PM on September 9, 2011

I can't do minecraft anymore, no more than I can do Everquest. It is a social MMO and when you use your digital experiences as replacement for real life experiences this can be really damaging. The whole minecraft thing snuck up on me as a recovering Everquestian faster than I could say Notch. In fact, Minecraft made me realize exactly why I was using MMOs.

I feel kinda bad, I had to completely ditch those I had met online.

Limit your son's Minecraft time. Engage him more.
posted by chemoboy at 1:54 AM on September 10, 2011

If you guys are disappointed with Notch's pace at adding new stuff, try the Better Than Wolves mod... I've been playing it for weeks, and FlowerChild has been adding stuff almost weekly-- here's the wiki.

He's actually kind of settled in on a coherent design philosophy at this point, and he's not just randomly adding cool stuff, everything tends to be useful for lots of different purposes and it tends to encourage the natural development of buildings and locations like smithies, mills, farms, etc, and it keeps the flavor of vanilla minecraft remarkably well. I highly recommend it.

He even made the nether useful.
posted by empath at 4:44 AM on September 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Rather than in house suppression, I decided to embrace this just for the hell of it. My kids (12 and 10) are now playtesting the bejesus of out this and likely will be for most of the weekend.

First mini-review from the 12 year old... "This. Is. Awesome".
I haven't seen the 10 year old yet today.
posted by datter at 4:51 AM on September 10, 2011 [3 favorites]

(Also, it's kind of ridiculous how you keep complaining about java even though you don't actually know anything about the language.)

Other than dealing with its consequences (in terms of apps and developers) all the time.

But really, the language is fine. If it were limited to domains where Java was a good choice, there would be little complaint. But any dogmatic language ("everything must be an object!" "all programming must be functional style!" "top-down imperative is the only way!") is just plain a bad idea.
posted by DU at 4:56 AM on September 10, 2011

It is a social MMO

Well, it CAN be, but you can also play it exclusively offline as a sandbox building & exploration game. It's a great sibling game or even parents & kids together on a home network, which is kind of rare.

You don't ever have to go online if you don't want to at all, which makes it quite different from Everquest, etc. I like it precisely for that reason.

Keeping tabs on kids who are using it in an MMO way is always a great idea of course.
posted by Aquaman at 7:07 AM on September 10, 2011

My kids are DYING to try it out. I can't even supress the info, because the 12-year-old has notch and jeb's twitter feeds, notch's blog, the mojang blog, the minecon blog, the Yogscast channel, and reddit minecraft in her Google reader feed. They knew about the "leak" before I did!
posted by mothershock at 7:18 AM on September 10, 2011

My minecrafty 11 year old is psyched to try this out, too. I run a server for him and two friends and I smile a secret satisfied smile whenever I hear them planning, debating and implementing something new. They are learning quite a bit from the whole experience.
posted by Biblio at 7:55 AM on September 10, 2011 [4 favorites]

They are learning quite a bit from the whole experience.

Absolutely!
posted by mothershock at 8:05 AM on September 10, 2011

My 10-year old nephew has been hooked for quite some time.

Which I mean, yeah, makes perfect sense. I'd like to go back in time and gift minecraft to my 10-year old self. Which, lessee here...

Atari releases Pac-Man for the Atari 2600.

Way to rub it in, wikipedia.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 8:18 AM on September 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

My 12 year old's desire to run a server for friends caused us to have a 30 minute lesson on How The Internet Works, complete with hand-drawn visual aids. ("A particular server program running on a given computer as has an address and a port number, which like a telephone extension that you dial after you dial the main number of the office..." etc). So yes, learning a lot.
posted by DU at 9:06 AM on September 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ad hominem: "killed by endermen"

Joe Hills of Nashville, TN, I think I love you.
posted by Dr. Zira at 9:10 AM on September 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

My 12 year old's desire to run a server for friends caused us to have a 30 minute lesson on How The Internet Works, complete with hand-drawn visual aids.

When I was 12, my parents were the ones asking me about how computers worked. How times have changed.
posted by empath at 9:40 AM on September 10, 2011 [3 favorites]

Thanks to the positive reviews above from the age 10-12 demographic, I relented and went ahead and installed it for my son. I am now receiving regular updates on bugs and NEW THINGS. I can't wait for him to run into an Enderman.

Speaking of which, does anyone have any recs for kid-friendly servers?
posted by Dr. Zira at 11:57 AM on September 10, 2011

Looks like mine craft.net is down (it says it's not, but it is) and none of friend's servers are working....SPM still works, though.
posted by digitalprimate at 12:37 PM on September 10, 2011

My first computer network was built at work as an excuse to run Doom multiplayer.
Port 666!
posted by Threeway Handshake at 9:03 AM on September 11, 2011

Looks like the official 1.8 patch is being delayed.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:47 AM on September 12, 2011

Yeah, probably a good thing. The amount of buried mineshafts is absurd.
posted by empath at 9:40 AM on September 12, 2011

I think that I'll wait until the official release is out. I really wish that they'd do a feature freeze and spend a few months doing a bugfix, stability and performance update.
posted by octothorpe at 10:20 AM on September 12, 2011

The 'official release' is 11-11-11, though they probably won't make that. After that, they're going to do a feature freeze, bug fix, etc, then start selling expansions. (Though if you bought it in alpha, all the expansions are free for ever).
posted by empath at 10:22 AM on September 12, 2011

What I'd like to see, personally is for Mojang to work with mod creators to finalize their mods and sell them as expansions for like $5, with mojang and the modders splitting the money. That would be great for everyone involved. They can probably do that for years, like the Sims does it: Minecraft: Farm Life, Minecraft: The Age of Steam, Minecraft: Flying Machines
posted by empath at 10:25 AM on September 12, 2011

What I'd like to see, personally is for Mojang to work with mod creators to finalize their mods and sell them as expansions for like $5, with mojang and the modders splitting the money. That would be great for everyone involved. They can probably do that for years, like the Sims does it: Minecraft: Farm Life, Minecraft: The Age of Steam, Minecraft: Flying Machines

I agree. Most of the features that are being rolled out in this official patch have been part of mod mega-packs for a long, long time. And that's people working with obfuscated code.

Although I think things would get problematic once it came time to sell the finished product.
posted by codacorolla at 10:49 AM on September 12, 2011

Whoah. Better than wolves is insane.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 5:43 PM on September 12, 2011

jeb has released a new patch.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:07 AM on September 13, 2011

1.8pre2 changelist
posted by Ad hominem at 9:10 AM on September 13, 2011

Whoah. Better than wolves is insane.

Oh you haven't seen the half of it.
posted by empath at 10:37 AM on September 13, 2011

Yeah, I spent my lunch watching the embedded videos in the wiki, and Battosay seems to have provided many/most of them.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 12:56 PM on September 13, 2011

Minecraft.net is back up and 1.8 is officially released!
posted by Ad hominem at 1:10 PM on September 14, 2011

CREATIVE MODE MEANS TNT
posted by The Whelk at 4:22 PM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

Huh. I'll just explore this tiny cave near my--OMG RAVINE SO MAJESTIC AND SO TERRIFYING.

Also, I'm merrily planting torches when suddenly I turn around and there's an Enderman right there. I'd actually forgotten about them.

But movement was a little glitchy, and suddenly I'm at the bottom of the ravine, and shortly thereafter, dead, mobbed by barely glimpsed dwellers of the deep.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:07 PM on September 14, 2011

So, how does one find a village?
posted by msalt at 12:49 PM on September 18, 2011

they tend to be near spawn points.
posted by The Whelk at 1:42 PM on September 18, 2011

Is Enderman a reference to Ender's Game? (Two favorite MeFi discussions in one?!)
posted by msalt at 5:54 PM on September 18, 2011

nope, Slenderman
posted by The Whelk at 6:14 PM on September 18, 2011