Minecraft Update for Xbox Available October 16

Finally, after two weeks of Microsoft certification testing, the 1.8.2 update for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition will be available for download starting October 16 at 5 am ET. And even though yet another skin pack was announced before the 1.8.2 update, this news is still super exciting for fans of the game. Check out this official trailer for the update:

   

Three weeks ago, I reported on the features that the 1.8.2 update will bring to the Xbox port of the extremely popular open-world, sandbox builder created by the independent Mojang Studios. I also criticized 4J Studios--the studio responsible for the Xbox version of the game--for taking so long to get the update released. But I’m not so sure that 4J Studios is entirely to blame. Sure, Microsoft certification does take one to two weeks, but is there a reason that the certification team took thirteen days to give the thumbs up to an update?

True, the update is large and that could be the main reason that held up Microsoft. Still, when Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson sent out the following tweets on September 27, Microsoft may have taken offense. Notch tweeted:

Notch has been vocal about his distrust of large corporations, although he had previously indicated that working with Microsoft was a positive experience.

Although the 1.8.2 update will be free, Microsoft stands to gain a lot from those who decide to download the game now that it is so much closer to the PC version. Delaying the update’s certification may be a power play by Microsoft, but it is one that is unlikely to phase Notch. Unless Microsoft is willing to allow developers to bypass the new certification process for Windows 8, it is likely that the company will see a large backlash from video game developers.

Until that conflict comes to a head, we will have the 1.8.2 update to keep us busy. Here is the official list of features that the 1.8.2 update will add, quoted from Examiner.com:

Additions: 

Added Creative Mode. 

Disabled Achievements and Leaderboard updates if the player is in Creative Mode, or if the world has been previously saved in Creative Mode. 

Added a simple tutorial for Creative Mode. 

Added sprinting to Survival Mode. 

Added flying and sprint-flying to Creative Mode. 

Added new items to the game – Melon, Melon Slice, Melon Seeds, Pumpkin Seeds, Raw/Cooked Beef, Raw/Cooked Chicken, Rotten Flesh, Pumpkin Seeds, Iron Bars, Fence Gate, Stone Bricks, Stone Brick Slabs, Stone Brick Stairs, Brick Slabs, Brick Stairs, Ender Pearl, Web,Vines, 10 more Music Discs, and Chain Armor. 

Added new items to the crafting menu – Melon, Melon Seeds, Glass Pane, Fence Gate, Iron Bars, Stone Bricks, Stone Brick Slabs, Stone Brick Stairs, Brick Slabs, Brick Stairs. 

Added terrain generation features – Strongholds, Villages, Abandoned Mineshafts and Ravines. 

Biome code additions, including rivers and oceans. 

Changed the bow to have drawing and firing action. 

Added a quick move to the dispenser. 

Added a quick equip for armor to the inventory interface. 

Added a quick move for ingredients and fuel in the furnace interface. 

Brought forward the mining speed changes from 1.2.3 

Brought forward apples dropping from leaf blocks from 1.1 

Brought forward change from 1.2.3 to make pumpkins and melons grow from stems much faster, and not require farmland around the stem to grow on. 

Fix to vines brought forward from 1.2.3 to stop them spreading too much. 

Added the Food Bar to the HUD. 

Added stacking for food items. 

Added the eating animation. 

Enabled crafting mushroom stew without a crafting table. 

Added the blocking move with swords. 

Changed all the text descriptions for food to show how much they refill the food bar. 

Passive mobs will now flee when hit. 

The snout on pigs now protrude from their head. 

Skeletons now hold full size bows. 

Animals no longer despawn which makes it possible to capture them. 

Zombies now drop Rotten Flesh instead of Feathers. 

Updated some mob sounds. 

Shears can now collect Tall Grass and the new Vine. 

Improved sunrise and sunset. 

Improved the rain edges (when looking up in rain). 

User-placed leaf blocks no longer decay. 

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. 

Both Wooden and Stone pressure plates can now be placed on fences. 

Improved chest model with a 3D lock, and opening and closing animation. 

Added a countdown timer to the autosave to stop it being such a surprise. 

Added the ability to rename an existing saved world. 

Added map icons to the in-game player list to match their color in the map. 

Added a confirmation dialog on the player choosing to exit without saving. 

Added a character display when sprinting or flying. 

Updated the How To Play HUD with the Food Bar information. 

Added descriptions for Creative Mode and Sprinting to the How To Play menus. 

Updated the Download Content menu with pictures of the DLC available. 

Removed Herobrine.

Options Changes and Additions: 

Changed the Gamertags Display option to mean display/hide gamertags in-game and on maps. 

Added an option to select Creative Mode or Survival Mode on creating or loading a world. 

Added an option to disable clouds. 

Added additional options to the world creation – Superflat land (creates a flat world near bedrock in both the Overworld and the Nether), enable/disable Structures and Bonus Chest. 

Added Host options – toggles for Player Versus Player, Trust Players to stop players being able to mine without permission from the Host, Fire Spread, TNT Explodes, and Host Privileges. 

Added in-game player options for the host – Can Build and Mine, Moderator, Kick Player, Can Fly, Disable Exhaustion, Invisible. 

Store the Online, Invite Only, and Friends of Friends options in the player’s profile.

Tutorial World Changes: 

Changed the Tutorial world to enable the new terrain features in it. 

Added mini tutorial for sprinting in the Tutorial world. 

Added mini tutorial for eating in the Tutorial world. 

Added Music Disc Quests in the Tutorial world – players can search the world for the 12 chests, each containing one of the Music Discs that can be played in a Jukebox.

Fixes: 

Fix for duplication glitch. 

Fix for aspect ratio of things in hand when in splitscreen mode. 

Fix for issue with player data not saving (player starting world with no items they had when they saved). 

Fix for redstone tiles burning out when they shouldn’t. 

Fixed issue with Minecart with Furnace not being able to move another Minecart. 

Fixed particle code for flipped 3rd person view.

Also, look out for Skin Pack 3 on Friday, October 19. The newest Skin Pack contains skins from Portal, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, and Awesomenauts. Official Minecraft 1.8.2 Xbox Trailer

A Vision of 1.8.2 Minecraft for Xbox

Tomorrow on Xbox Live, new items for your Xbox Live avatar inspired by Minecraft will be made available for purchase. Thanks a lot! That’s the very thing we’ve all been clamoring for: clothes for an avatar I never see. 4J Studios! You know what we want, baby! We want Minecraft update 1.8.2 for the Xbox 360 edition to finally introduce many of the most interesting aspects of the PC-version to the console-ported sandbox-builder. As of 6:00 pm, September 24, 4J Studios is still working out some bugs in the 1.8.2 update. When they’ve finished, the update will be sent to the Microsoft Certification Test team. Certification for the update should take a week or so, after which the Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition 1.8.2 update should become available sometime in the first two weeks of October.

But what exactly can we expect? Based on the videos (see below) and photos released by 4J Studios, and a knowledge of the PC-version’s 1.8 Beta (The Adventure Update), the following likely describes the 1.8.2 update pretty accurately.

A Vision of 1.8.2 Minecraft
 One of the major changes for survival in the post-update Minecraft is the new food system. When playing on survival mode, you not only have to worry about your health, but there is now a food meter. You will have to feed yourself regularly in order to stay alive. Also, food will no longer restore your health directly. To continually regenerate health, you will need to keep your food meter above 90% which will replenish half a heart every five seconds or so. If the food meter reaches 0%, you will lose half a heart every five seconds. Eating raw chicken or rotten flesh--dropped by zombies; feathers now come from chickens--may give you food poisoning. When you have food poisoning, your food meter will lower at three times its normal rate. On top of the update’s emphasis on consistently eating, eating is now a process and not an immediate action. Eating is now an animated action that takes close to 2 seconds to complete.

The additional challenge posed by the need to eat is counterbalanced by other aspects of the update. The most helpful improvement to food items is that they are now all stackable. No more single Pork Chop taking up a full inventory slot. Further, the update introduces various new food items including melon slices, chicken, steak, and red apples. Farming has also been enhanced. Animals can now be fenced in and they will not despawn. We will still have to wait for a later update to make breeding a possibility, but simply being able to contain a herd of cattle provides a regular source for milk and a finite source for raw beef. Further, it is now possible to harvest melons and pumpkins ... one of which is edible.

Three new mobs are introduced in this update: Silverfish, Cave Spiders, and Endermen. Silverfish probably won’t cause you many problems, but cave spiders and endermen are a different story. A cave spider’s venom takes away half a heart every 1.5 seconds for 7 to 15 seconds. Endermen have forty health points and they can teleport. Endermen can also pick up almost any block within its reach, which could be very destructive. The simplest way to avoid endermen is to not look at them directly. They only attack when you look directly at them. If you do decide to fight an enderman, it may drop an ender pearl. Ender pearls can be used to teleport a short distance but at the cost of two and a half hearts.

With these new threats come some new tricks for your combat arsenal. The update adds sprinting as an option. Be mindful of your food bar though. Sprinting causes your food bar to deplete faster, and you can’t sprint if your food bar reaches below 30%. Beyond sprinting, which provides a great chance to run away from your problems, bow combat has been bolstered as increasing the string’s tension increases the likelihood that your arrow will cause additional damage. Fighting enemies up close with a sword has also been improved. The sword may now be used to block incoming attacks. Plus, the update introduces the possibility of landing critical hits.

If you are less of a survivalist more of a builder, update 1.8.2 will certainly make you happy. The new update opens up creative mode. In creative mode, you don’t have to worry about your health as you are immune to damage. You also don’t have to worry about gathering building supplies. An item selection screen replaces the regular inventory screen and provides you with infinite materials. But infinite material isn’t all. You can also fly simply by pressing jump twice. That’s right. That 128-block high tower you’ve been wanting to build should be a whole lot easier to build when you aren’t burdened by gravity. In addition, the update makes a few new block types available: stone brick, stone brick slabs, stone brick stairs, brick slabs, brick stairs, glass panes, iron bars, and fence gates. But one major negative is that you can’t enter creative mode in a world created before the update. So, if you’ve been building in some world the old-fashioned way, you’ll just have to continue to build there the old-fashioned way.

Flowing rivers are now a part of the Minecraft landscape. There are also new structures that generate in various corners of each world. These include ravines, abandoned mine shafts, villages, and strongholds. 4J Studios has updated the tutorial mode to show off these new terrain features. But, do not expect to find NPCs in the villages just yet. Also, even if the strongholds contain End Portals, this update does not introduce all of the necessary elements to craft an Eye of Ender. We aren’t yet getting the full Minecraft Adventure Update. But this update is the precursor to experience orbs, enchanting, and the Ender Dragon.


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