The Minecraft 1.8 Adventure update was so close, but it was too good to be true. Originally scheduled for release today, the first half of the long-awaited Adventure Update is slightly delayed until next week as the crew at Mojang work out a few more bugs and attempt to throw in a few changes.

We shared a pile of new info on the 1.8 and 1.9 updates last week and now we've collected the latest details on the happenings for Minecraft and a little more on what players can expect from the Minecraft 1.8 and 1.9 updates. Read on for the details and be sure to watch the official Minecraft 1.8 Adventure Update trailer.

[Update: The Minecraft 1.8 pre-release is out along with a few cool walkthrough videos - check them out!]

Jens Bergensten (Jeb) and Markus Persson (Notch) are working away on Minecraft and through Twitter and Notch's official blog, have discussed a few of the details they're working on for the latest content patch of the super successful sandbox game. Some you may already know, but many you may have missed so here's what's up with the Minecraft Adventure Update:

  • There are a team of testers checking out the 1.8 update and sending bug lists for correction. Jeb is still mostly working solo on the project.
  • The Minecraft 1.9 update, like the 1.8, will require generation of a new area so you'll have to start again.
  • 1.8 comes with animated opening/closing chests - the bugs on this animation are being worked out.
  • Creative Mode is now fully working in multiplayer so expect it in 1.8.
  • In Creative Mode, players do gain XP but they will be unable to see how much. XP does nothing until the 1.9 update comes out.
  • Interesting quote from Jeb, "Notch has said he wants to work more on the sky dimension once the nether is interesting," hints of lots to come from the Nether.
  • New Cave Spider mobs are the exact same as regular spiders, outside of a color change.
  • "If the the food bar is empty in MC 1.8, it will slowly drop your health to 5 hearts on easy, to 0.5 hearts on normal, and kill you on hard."
  • Notch is still working on that "secret project" which could potentially spawn a new game for the studio in addition to Scrolls, which they're already working away on. He's taking breaks to help Jeb with Minecraft.
  • When meeting NPCs, players can help them out and then be able to trade with them.
  • Randomly generated towns will come with 1.8, but the NPCs not until 1.9.
  • The new Mineshafts come with 1.8.
  • The creepy Endermen creatures drop diamonds, but that may change before the update releases.
  • New, more stable, lighting code is being implemented.
  • 1.9 will see introduction to potentially a few new biomes (including swamps).

And the last bit we can discuss is the natural progression of Minecraft which comes simply through playing the game and discovering new features and ideas as a result of the experience. Notch posted a blog entry yesterday, discussing his experience of playing the updated Minecraft version over the weekend and how it resulted in a few new things to implement in the updates:

  • Hunting for food and noticing cows just standing around, waiting to be slaughtered, resulted in new improved AI so animals flee when attacked or when taking environmental damage.
  • Because of that code change, Notch came across a situation where a wolf was attacking a sheep and the sheep was attempting to run away and this gave rise to the idea of adding more specific and unique mob vs. mob interactions which we can see in future updates.
  • A random tweet got Notch motivated to play with the the 3D model of the faces of pigs, which now has Notch working to correct how they model and code the mobs to better and easily animate, hopefully fixing visual bugs when it comes to some of the mobs (see image up top).

So, there you have it. No 1.8 update this week, but here are quite a few things to think about for future tweaks with the game and things to look forward to. Get ready for the first taste of the Minecraft Adventure update come Monday, September 12th!

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Minecraft exits beta status on November 11, 2011.

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