A new preview of Minecraft Update 1.9 has been released by Mojang, just less than a week after our last glimpse at the next big Minecraft patch, but fans hoping for loads of new content might be disappointed by the scarcity of new content in Minecraft snapshot 15w38a.
As longtime Minecraft fans know, weekly previews of upcoming content can pretty much run the gamut, from tiny patches with few noticeable changes to massive influxes of new blocks and/or major overhauls of existing game mechanics. Unfortunately, according to patch notes for Minecraft snapshot 15w38a, this week’s Minecraft Update 1.9 preview build definitely falls into the first category.
In all fairness, Minecraft snapshot 15w38a does include some changes that will be evident when playing Minecraft in coming days. All pet deaths will now be communicated to the creatures’ owner, even if the ocelot/wolf in question wasn’t named, and players can expect some noticeable changes to the spawn process for Skeleton Horses.
For the most part, Minecraft snapshot 15w38a is a fix-focused patch. Nearly two dozen issues with the Minecraft client have been fixed in the new build, including a bug that caused players to fall through moving pistons and one that let players duplicate banners from bannered shields. The Minecraft team also tweaked beetroot farming, making it a sustainable for those who prefer the agricultural aspects of Minecraft. And that’s just the start.
Here are all the changes introduced in Minecraft snapshot 15w38a, via Jens Bergensten:
- Further improvements to general mob AI
- Skeletons now move randomly when shooting
- Made all pet (ocelot & wolves) deaths be announced to their owners, not just named ones
- Performance enhancements
- More bones
- Not items or animation related
- Skeleton horses now spawn with thunder and lightning
- Fixed some bugs
- Fixed players and mobs falling through extending/retracting pistons
- Fixed some hItboxes being broken
- Fixed some block collision box issues (mobs glitching through blocks and more)
- Fixed hoppers splitting items into “Minecart with chest”s next to each other
- Fixed a crash: IndexOutOfBoundsException on Tesselating block in world
- Fixed villagers not picking up Beet Roots or Beet Root Seeds
- Fixed beetroot farming being non-sustainable
- Fixed monsters seeing players through walls
- Fixed retracting blocks not moving entities correctly
- Fixed a crash when going outside height limit or into the void with F3
- Fixed shift-clicking combined shields+banners duplicating banners
- Fixed a crash when crafting an empty shield with a banner
- Fixed pistons not moving unextended pistons
- Fixed pistons being able to move obsidian
- Fixed vines being unplacable
- Fixed unconditional impulse command blocks interacting unexpectedly with conditionMet
- Fixed joining a multiplayer game within render distance of another player causing “invisibility”
- Fixed minecarts accepting items from hoppers 2 blocks above
- Fixed a crash: java.lang.NullPointerException: Rendering screen
- Fixed banner items in chests becoming invisible after 6-7 chests full
- Fixed banners not rendering if there’s too many
- Fixed large mushrooms not generating correctly in mushroom biomes
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