Beta 1.8

Beta 1.8

Official name	Adventure Update (Part 1)
Release date	September 15, 2011
Development versions	View all Pre-releases Beta 1.8 Pre-release Beta 1.8 Pre-release 2 ;)
Download	Client (json)
Protocol version	17
Other editions of 1.8	Java Edition
◄◄ Beta 1.7 ◄ Beta 1.7.3 Beta 1.8.1 ► 1.0.0 ►►

This article is about the Java Edition. For other editions, see Version history.

Beta 1.8 is the first release of the Adventure Update. It introduced features that focused on fighting, exploration, and adventuring, as well as other aspects.

Additions

Blocks

• Stone Bricks
• Cracked Stone Bricks
• Mossy Stone Bricks
• Stone Brick Slab
• Stone Brick Stairs
• Brick Slab
• Brick Stairs
• Fence Gate
• Glass Pane
• Iron Bars
• Melon

Items

• Food
  • Melons
  • Raw chicken
  • Raw beef
  • Cooked chicken
  • Steak, which has cooked porkchop's old texture. Cooked porkchops' new texture is a tan shade of the same sprite
• Ender pearls
• New seeds for farming: pumpkin seeds and melon seeds that produce pumpkins and melons respectively. Pumpkin seeds can not yet be obtained from a pumpkin but only from the new Abandoned mineshaft' chests, melon seeds can be produced from melon slices but can only be found originally from Abandoned mineshaft chests.

Mobs

• Enderman
  • As a placeholder, Endermen used Zombie sounds.
• Silverfish
• Cave spiders

World generation

• Generated structures
  • Villages
  • Strongholds
  • Abandoned mineshafts
  • Ravines
• New, fractal-based biome code; added and removed some biomes while making all of them more vast than before.
  • Rivers flowing through/in between biomes.
  • Ocean biomes, that are deeper and much more vast than before.
  • Mountain biome
  • Swamp
  • Snow in taiga and tundra biomes do not generate for technical reasons.
• New ocean floor; random mix of sand, dirt, and clay.
  • Because of this, clay is much more common.

General

• A new achievement: "Kill a skeleton with an arrow at 50 meters".
• New Creative game mode.
• New Mojang logo splash screen
• New particle effects.
  • Performing a critical hit on any mob will cause 'sparks' to fly.
  • Explosion particles are now shockwaves instead of smoke.
  • Tiny stationary bubble particles can be seen when underwater.
  • Fog is now thicker and darker deep underground, and gives off particles. Due to this, the void appears black.

Gameplay

• New combat mechanics.
  • Hold-to-charge bows.
  • Critical hits.
  • Players can parry with a sword by holding Right Mouse
  • Hostile mobs perform attack animations.
  • Mobs killed by players drop tiny flashing experience orbs that add to your experience bar.
• New food system.
  • There is now a food meter.
    • Food no longer heals directly but indirectly: if the food meter is above 90%, heals every 4 seconds.
  • All food (except mushroom stew) are now stackable.
  • Food takes 1.6 seconds to consume, accompanied with an animation.
• Added sprinting

Changes

Blocks

• Both Wooden and Stone pressure plates can now be placed on fences.
• New texture for moss stone.
• Improved chest model with a 3D lock.
• Improved model for torches placed on walls.
• User-placed leaf blocks no longer decay.

Items

• Eating any raw food or rotten flesh has a chance to give the player food poisoning which makes the hunger bar decrease three times as fast.
• Shears can now collect tall grass and vines

Mobs

• Passive mobs will randomly flee if attacked by the player or other mobs (such as wolves).
• Zombies drop rotten flesh instead of feathers.
• The snout on pigs now protrude from their head.
• Skeletons now hold full-size bows.
• Player-to-mob damage decreased by half a heart.
• Arrows that hit a mob visually "stick" into the mob rather than just disappear.
• Skeleton arrows originate from about their eyes to the bow, instead of above the head.
• Animals no longer despawn which makes it possible to capture them.

Gameplay

• New improved lighting
  • Day/night cycles no longer require chunk updates and is a smooth transition
  • The lighting on a block is given a tint based on the most prominent source of light
    • Reddish from artificial light sources
    • Blue from Moonlight
    • Total darkness keeps the same black tint
    • Sunlight gives the same white tint
  • Artificial light now gives a very subtle 'flicker'.
• Improved sunrise and sunset.
  • Clouds change color during sunrise and sunset to match the sky color.
  • Horizon, specifically haze changes color more vividly during sunset and sunrise.
• Cloud height raised to the top of the map, so clouds can no longer phase through blocks.
• Cloud movement syncs with the game's time.
• Rain and snow both render faster
• Armor bar moved to above hearts, due to food bar.
• Holding the left mouse button with a weapon will now only swing once.
• Holding the right mouse button to place blocks is slightly slower than before.
• ⇧ Shift+Clicking the output item in a crafting square will craft all the items at once, and automatically places them in the inventory.
• Farming changed to be less volitile. Farmland no longer untills when stepped on and only now when jumped on.
• The player can now jump four blocks horizontally by sprinting.
• Unarmed damage was decreased from 2 () to 1 ().

General

• Changes with debug-view (F3)
  • Mobs are no longer visibly labeled with their entity ID
  • The world's numeric seed is displayed in a field below player position.
  • Changing fog by hotkey now requires debug-view to be open in addition with pressing F.
• The version tag appears in-game again.
  • The 'Multiplayer join screen' has been improved, mainly with a server list.
• Main menu/options changes
  • The main menu's background is now an animated scene.
  • The version tag is now displayed on the bottom-left rather than the top-left
  • New sliders for Field of View and Brightness
  • 4 new entries in control list
    • "Attack", "Use Item", and "Pick Block" can now be remapped.
    • Player list in multiplayer, defaults to Tab ↹.
• The game's coding now allows for mods to more easily change the (map) height.
• Operators can switch back and forth between survival and creative mode.

Removals

• Removed old terrain.
• Removed the far lands.
• Remove the human mob's commands, hacks and codes, leaving only its AI.

Fixes

9 bugs fixed

• The ⇧ Shift + Click crash bug from 1.8-pre2 is fixed.
• Fixed Redstone circuits not working after /time set x glitch is now fixed in multiplayer.
• Destroying boats and minecarts now creates particles.
• Ghast attack sounds are fixed multiplayer.
• The Far Lands have been removed; there is now only void.
• Fixed cactus and trapdoor items being too big
• Fixed the "smart farms" glitch where the hitbox of a fence would extend past the hitbox of tilled soil and prevent it from reverting to dirt when walked on.
• Fixed several crash bugs relating to pistons.
• Increased the z-buffer from 8-bit to 24-bit, fixing graphical issues with AMD graphics cards.

Gallery

• 

  The bug where cactus items were too big before Beta 1.8.