Minecraft 1.19 so far...

Intentionally added bugs, missing features & broken redstone...

---

With Minecraft 1.19 likely only a month or two away, we're finally getting towards the end of what feels like an incredibly long development process for the 1.19 Wild Update.

---

If you're not already up to speed, The Wild Update promised to update the games biomes as well as adding in the long awaited Deep Dark biome and the Warden mob.

Featured at Minecon Live 2021, we were told that the Birch Forests would be updated as well as the swamp biome, which would have chest boats, frogs, fireflies and new mangrove trees added as per the biome vote that it featured in in 2019.

Unfortunately however, it seems that the Birch Forests have been forgotten and the swamp biome has been ignored in favour of putting all of those things into a brand new Mangrove biome.

...continue to improve on the swamp...

According to Minecraft developer Cory Scheviak,

obviously originally the intent was to add mangroves to the swamp, since that's what was in the biome vote. but after trying it out in game we found something that felt and looked really good in its own right. It doesn't mean we won't continue to improve on existing swamp, just that we found something that felt good and as the ones designing the game, it is up to us to decide that ?

This is perfectly acceptable in my book, as it means we're getting something new on top of existing features. What confuses me is that he said they're going to continue to improve on the existing swamp, but we're yet to see any improvements or changes to the swamp in the betas, previews and snapshots that have been released so far. Frogs will now spawn in swamp biomes, but that's the only real change they've seen.

...bye bye firefly...

Sadly, another feature to get dropped is the Firefly mob which was going to add ambiance to the swamps and be the Frog's main source of food. However, during The Secrets of Minecraft: How We Invented Frogs video on the Minecraft YouTube Channel (Watch Video) it was explained that Mojang learned during the development of frogs, that frogs might get sick from eating some fireflies, and they didn't want to encourage feeding an animal the wrong food within the game. So instead, frogs now eat fantasy slime mobs and magma cube mobs.

Over the last few major updates, Mojang have had a habit of announcing features that then get canceled or put on hold indefinitely. The Warden and the Deep Dark biome was originally intended to be part of the 1.17 Caves and Cliffs update, which was then split into two parts with those features being put on hold. The archaeology features we're silently dropped, as were bundles and now so have the Birch Forests seemingly.

It's a strange change from previous iterations of Minecraft. If you go back a few years, there were never features or announcements made during official streams or publications that then ended up dropped, with the exception of a handful of Minecraft Bedrock Edition features such as the Super Duper Graphics Pack.

...redstone parity issues...

Speaking of Minecraft Bedrock Edition, finally the redstone parity issues between Minecraft Java and Minecraft Bedrock have come to light with the implementation of a redstone tutorial area that's part of the new ancient cities.

Content creator Xisuma was previously asked by Mojang, what he'd like to see added to the game, and his answer was a redstone tutorial section to help new players better understand how redstone components work and what to do with them. This requested was green lighted by Mojang who decided to implement them into the Ancient Cities underneath the Warden head statue.

However, due to the fact that JAVA and Bedrock redstone don't work the same, and that the developers clearly just copy and pasted the structures between versions, the redstone inside of the Bedrock version is broken and doesn't function. In fact, the piston doors at the front of the structure continuously open and close rapidly which, due to the games new vibration mechanics, send signals to the nearby Sculk blocks which then summon the new Warden mob. Which would be fine, but the Warden has recently been given a lot of love in development to make it stronger, faster and allowing it to utilize a very powerful and long range sonic attack.

The Ancient Cities, located within the Deep Dark are supposed to be an optional area that you stealthily creep around looking for loot. The idea is to not trigger the Warden, by sneaking and being careful not to cause vibrations, so that you can grab the loot and get away with your life. So the fact that the buildings themselves are so broken that they're triggering the Warden to spawn, totally ruins the experience and makes a joke of the entire process.

Redstone between Minecraft versions has been different since the inception of Minecraft Bedrock Edition, however these differences have mostly been ignored by the developers due to their programming being potentially too complicated to change.

It's a particularly frustrating issue for Minecraft Bedrock players, as the majority of redstone tutorials found online and on YouTube and even those featured in official Mojang literature, are suited to JAVA edition redstone mechanics and generally, it doesn't work the same way for bedrock players. This leads to confusion within the player base and makes it particularly difficult for content creators to make content aimed at the entire player base.

Perhaps now that this issue has arisen, it might help highlight the importance of Redstone parity and force the developers to work towards bringing the versions closer together in this aspect.

...a new bug was intentionally introduced!...

Now Minecraft has been synonemous with bugs. JAVA edition is riddled with minor bugs and annoyances and Bedrock edition has been plagued with game breaking bugs, realms bugs and marketplace bugs for years. Over the last few update cycles, Bedrock Edition has been seeing a lot more effort going into fixing bugs, which is fantastic, however it still finds itself completely broken from time to time, corrupting worlds, and breaking custom tools and maps.  

The release of 1.18.30 introduced an array of devastating bugs, one in particular that shut down servers, realms and blocked players out of the single player worlds. The bug meant that when entities wandered into unloaded chunks and then the game tried to load those chunks, the game would freeze as pushing cpu and ram usage to the max and eventually crashing out the client and in some cases, shutting down peoples PCs entirely. Fortunatley, this has been fixed in Minecraft 1.18.32, however in Minecraft 1.19.0.28 a new bug was intentionally introduced!

Pathfinding has been an issue for mobs and entities on Minecraft Bedrock Edition for a long time, and as a result, when the new Mud Block was added to Mangrove Swamps in the Beta and Previews, the new Frogs that spawned on them couldn't move. They just stood and spun around in circles.

This was due to how these mud blocks are technically not full blocks. They allow the player and other entities to slightly sink into them, giving the feeling that they're wading in mud. Other blocks in the game have the same mechanic. These are soul sand blocks which also slow the player down. 

Because entity path finding is a rather complicated system to update, the developers opted to remove the sinking mechanic from Mud Blocks in order to fix Frog path finding, until a proper path finding fix can be implemented. Sadly however, they've also managed to remove this mechanic from soul sand which might have some serious repercussions for people utilizing this unique mechanic in farms and builds.

Article Author: FoxyNoTail

Foxy is a Minecraft player, content creator and official Marketplace Partner. He's been playing the game for over 13 years, delving into the code creating datapacks, add-ons, resource packs and other tools for the Minecraft player base and communities to use and enjoy. He also hosts The Minecraft Update weekly podcast. You can find Foxy on Twitter @foxynotail

Publisher: Minecraft Update News

The Minecraft Update News is produced and published by author FoxyNoTail as part of the foxynotail.com website. Sourced directly from working as a content creator, player and officially partnered producer, FoxyNoTail has the facts and figures at his disposal to ensure news articles are current, relevant and factual. Foxy has 13+ years experience in not just playing Minecraft, but creating content, videos, streams, data packs, servers, add-ons, packs, podcasts, licensed content and now news. Revered by the community as a trust worthy, reliable and honest source of news and opinion, Foxy's data is trusted and acknowledged regularly.