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.
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
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It was so awesome. Having you on the show?
Not a problem. That's been awesome.
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