With the new Minecraft 1.6 "Horse Update" coming in the next few days, I thought I should make a post explaining some of the new features, how the server update process works and how it will impact you.
For those who have not yet tried the snapshots, here are some important changes in Minecraft 1.6:
- Horses!! In fact, there will be 5 variations of horses! Foal, Donkey, Mule, Skeleton horse, Undead horse.
- Horse armour: Various types and colours of horse armour, which is placed on a horse before riding.
- Coloured carpet: Thin coloured blocks (same thickness as pressure plates) used for decoration.
- Stained clay: Clay blocks can now be stained with the usual dyes.
- Coal blocks: A compact way to store coal. Nothing special, but very helpful at times!
- Resource Packs: Replacement of texture packs, which in the future will contain more than just textures (music, fonts, sounds, mods).
- New Launcher! The new launcher is a huge improvement from the previous one. It allows you to easily switch between Minecraft versions, configure game profiles to manage your different versions (included mods) and download the latest updates automatically.
It's also important to understand how process works when Mojang release a new Minecraft update:
- Mojang release a new Minecraft client and server. This is a standard "vanilla" server (like singleplayer).
- The Bukkit team take this release and work day and night to release a Bukkit version.
- The Spigot team take this Bukkit release and make various performance enhancements and other improvements.
- We take the Spigot release and run it on our test server, validating all the plugins and features.
- Once we are happy with the release, we install this version on the live server.
- Everyone enjoys the new features!!
Frequently asked questions:
Q: When will the server be updated?
A: As soon as Spigot releases a working version and we have tested it. See the explanation above regarding how the process works.
Q: Will the Survival map be reset?
A: NO! We have recent spent a lot of time expanding the survival make to make is massive! Also we have many players who have spent a lot of time and hard work building their homes and towns, and I'm sure they would all be very annoyed to find all of that removed.
Q: I heard that horses only spawn in new chunks and horse armour can only be found in new maps?
A: We are working on solutions that will hopefully keep everyone happy. Don't worry, you WILL get horses and armour
Q: Will you sell the new 1.6 items at the server shop?
A: Not in the beginning. We want people use the Market to buy/sell items and give everyone a chance to make some money.
We hope this gives you a better understanding of what is to expect and how we do things
Any other questions???
