Once again, we find ourselves immersed in the bustling shipping room, unveiling an exciting snapshot for our community on this fine Tuesday. The anticipation builds as we prepare to introduce the first features from our upcoming release, Chaos Cubed. Players are invited to explore the Overworld, seeking out sulfur springs and delving deep underground to uncover the mysteries that lie beneath. Central to this adventure is the sulfur cube, a fascinating new mob with an insatiable appetite for blocks. Engage with this curious creature by feeding it various blocks and observing its reactions. Venture into its habitat within the sulfur caves, where players can mine for new cinnabar and sulfur blocks, among other discoveries.
In addition to these engaging features, we are thrilled to announce the inclusion of Vulkan support in our snapshot testing. This marks a significant advancement toward enhancing the visual experience of Java Edition, as previously highlighted in our article on Vibrant Visuals. During this testing phase, players will have the option to toggle between OpenGL and Vulkan, with the default setting favoring Vulkan if supported. We will remain in this testing period until we are assured that the Vulkan implementation is stable and performs optimally, with future adjustments made based on player feedback.
New Features
- Support for rendering the game through Vulkan has been added.
- A new “Graphics API” option is now available in Video Settings.
Sulfur Cube Mob
- The Sulfur Cube mob has been introduced.
- This mob spawns in the newly created sulfur caves biome.
- When players interact with the Sulfur Cube while holding a block, it will absorb the block and disable its AI.
- Players can also interact with the Sulfur Cube using Shears to shear the block, reactivating its AI.
- The Sulfur Cube will follow players holding a block it can absorb.
- It can also detect nearby block items and move towards them to absorb.
- Upon defeat, the Sulfur Cube splits into two smaller versions.
- Small Sulfur Cubes can be fed with Slime Balls to grow into larger Sulfur Cubes.
- When holding a block, the Sulfur Cube becomes a physical object, immune to fall or player damage, allowing players to interact with it by punching or pushing.
- It will adopt one of several archetypes based on the block it absorbs, altering its physical properties accordingly.
- A large Sulfur Cube can be collected using an empty bucket.
- Dispensers can now equip and swap blocks within a Sulfur Cube, as well as shear it to remove the held block.
- Dispensers can spawn a Sulfur Cube from a Bucket of Sulfur Cube.
Sulfur Cube Archetypes
- Each archetype is defined by its speed, bounciness, ground friction, air drag, and buoyancy in liquids. The archetypes include:
- Regular: Medium speed and bounciness, buoyant, used for stone and mineral blocks.
- Bouncy: Fast speed and high bounciness, buoyant, used for wooden blocks.
- Slow Flat: Slow speed and low bounciness, used for metal blocks.
- Fast Flat: Fast speed and low bounciness, used for organic blocks.
- Light: Slow speed and high bounciness, buoyant, used for wool blocks.
- Fast Sliding: Fast speed, no bounciness, used for icy blocks.
- Slow Sliding: Slow speed, no bounciness, used for shroom blocks.
- Two special archetypes include:
- High Resistance: Very slow, low drag, low bounce, high friction, used for Soul Sand and Soul Soil.
- Sticky: Mimics a golf ball’s properties but with high ground friction and no bounce, used for Honeycomb Block.
Cinnabar and Sulfur Block Sets
- New Cinnabar and Sulfur stone block sets have been added, featuring Polished and Bricks variants, along with their respective Slabs, Stairs, and Walls.
- Chiseled variants of Cinnabar and Sulfur blocks have also been introduced.
Sulfur Caves Biome
- The sulfur caves biome has been added, generating naturally underground and within hills or mountains.
- This biome features bands of sulfur and cinnabar, along with the new Sulfur Cube mob and Cave Spiders.
- Sulfur Pools containing Potent Sulfur are also part of this biome’s landscape.
Potent Sulfur
- Potent Sulfur is a new block found in water pools within the sulfur caves biome, producing bubbles that rise up to four water source blocks above it.
- When placed beneath up to four water source blocks, it generates a cloud of nausea-inducing gas on the water’s surface, which can spread across adjacent water with a maximum radius of three blocks.
- Potent Sulfur can be crafted from nine Sulfur blocks and can be converted back into four Sulfur Blocks.
Sulfur Spring
- A new feature, the Sulfur Spring, generates naturally above the sulfur cave biome, consisting of Sulfur, Potent Sulfur, and Magma Blocks.
- Sulfur Springs come in four size variants: Small, Medium, Large, and Extra Large.
Vulkan Support
- As previously announced, we are transitioning the game from OpenGL to Vulkan.
- Vulkan support is not available on older hardware or drivers, with OpenGL serving as a fallback.
- The current requirement is Vulkan 1.2 with dynamic rendering and push descriptors, subject to change.
- This rendering backend is experimental and may exhibit performance or stability issues; players are encouraged to report any bugs.
- Under Vulkan, the game will prioritize the use of dedicated graphics cards over integrated graphics, a shift from OpenGL.
- Players can check the rendering backend in the F3 debug overlay.
- On MacOS, MoltenVK is utilized to translate Vulkan to Metal.
“Graphics API” Video Setting
- A new option in the “Video Settings” allows players to choose between three values: Default, Prefer Vulkan, and Prefer OpenGL.
- The “Default” setting may change, but is currently equivalent to “Prefer Vulkan.”
- “Prefer Vulkan” will attempt to render using Vulkan, falling back to OpenGL if necessary.
- “Prefer OpenGL” will attempt to render using OpenGL, with a fallback to Vulkan if needed.
Changes
- Fixed the left ear texture of baby Hoglins and Zoglins for proper mirroring.
Minor Tweaks to Blocks, Items, and Entities
- Entities now emit a vibration of frequency 2 when bouncing off blocks or collidable entities.
Developer’s Note: We have adjusted how Beds and Slime Blocks restitute entity velocity after collisions. For example, when air drag is removed via the entity attribute, Slime Blocks will now correctly bounce mobs indefinitely, potentially altering player perception of the bounciness of these blocks.
Sounds
- New block sounds have been added for Sulfur, Potent Sulfur, and Cinnabar, as well as mob sounds for the Sulfur Cube and Small Sulfur Cube.
Technical Changes
- The Data Pack version has been updated to 101.2.
- The Resource Pack version is now 85.
- Profiling the game with Tracy now includes GPU timings.
- Rendering now utilizes a reversed depth buffer to mitigate Z-fighting on most hardware.
Data Pack Version 101.2
- A new <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:sulfurcubearchetype registry has been added, featuring various archetypes.
- Entry format includes fields for items, buoyancy, and attribute modifiers.
Commands
- When granting or revoking multiple advancements, the command output will now indicate how many advancements changed state across all players.
- When making changes to advancements or criteria for several players, the command output will report the number of players affected.
Attributes
New Attributes
- <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:bounciness: Determines velocity restitution after collisions, accepting values from 0.0 to 1.0.
- <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:friction_modifier: Adjusts ground friction applied to entities, with values ranging from 0.0 to 2048.0.
- <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:airdragmodifier: Modifies drag applied to entities in the air, with values from 0.0 to 2048.0.
Updated Knockback Resistance
- The minimum value for <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA">minecraft:knockbackresistance has been changed from PLACEHOLDERb499b92aa5017074 to -2.0.Data Components
New <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:sulfurcubecontent
- This component represents the item absorbed by the Sulfur Cube.
- Format: item that is absorbed by the Sulfur Cube, e.g., <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:sulfurcubecontent=green_wool.
World Generation
Dripstone Features
- Renamed Feature Type <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>pointeddripstone to <span class="MCEffect_TextHighlightA”>speleothem, with added fields for base and pointed blocks.
- Renamed Feature Type <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>dripstonecluster to <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>speleothemcluster, with similar adjustments.
- Adjusted Feature Type <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>large_dripstone to include new fields.
New Surface Rule
- Added <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>noise_gradient to replace blocks based on specified noise and gradient lists.
New Feature Types
- Added <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>sequence to generate a list of Placed Features in order.
- Added <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>template to place one randomly chosen template from a weighted list.
Dimension Types
- The <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>infiniburn field now accepts an ID and a list of IDs in addition to a tag.
Configured Features
<span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:geode
- Updated fields in the <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>blocks section to accept IDs in addition to tags.
<span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:root_system
- The <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>root_replaceable field now accepts an ID or a list of IDs in addition to a tag.
<span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:vegetation_patch
- The <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>replaceable field now accepts an ID or a list of IDs in addition to a tag.
<span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:waterloggedvegetationpatch
- The <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>replaceable field now accepts an ID or a list of IDs in addition to a tag.
Structure Processors
<span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:protected_blocks
- The <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>value field now accepts an ID or a list of IDs in addition to a tag.
Tags
Block Tags
- New tags added for blocks that suppress bounciness and collections for glazed terracotta and concrete blocks.
- Renamed <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>#concretepowder to <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>#concretepowders.
- New tags for shears with varying breaking speeds have been introduced.
Item Tags
- New item collection tags for glazed terracotta, concrete, and concrete powders have been added.
- New tags for items that can be fed to or placed inside a Sulfur Cube have also been introduced.
Entity Tags
- <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>minecraft:sulfurcube is now included in <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>noncontrolling_rider.
- New tags for damage immunity and updates to existing tags have been made.
Game Events
New Bounce Event
- Emitted when an entity collides with a block or collidable entity with non-zero bounciness, with a vibration frequency of <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>2.
Particles
- Added <span class="MCEffectTextHighlightA”>sulfurcubegoo particles that appear when a Sulfur Cube hops around.
Resource Pack Version 85
Block Sprites
- New block textures have been introduced, including chiseled and polished variants of Cinnabar and Sulfur.
Item Sprites
- A new item sprite for the Sulfur Cube bucket has been added.
Entity Textures
- New textures for the Sulfur Cube entity have been introduced.
Sounds
- New sounds have been added for Sulfur, Potent Sulfur, Cinnabar, and both sizes of the Sulfur Cube.
Shaders & Post-process Effects
- Several shaders have been replaced and are now controlled by shader defines, enhancing the visual experience.
Fixed Bugs in 26.2 Snapshot 1
- A variety of bugs have been addressed, improving overall gameplay stability and user experience.
Get the Snapshot
Snapshots are available for Minecraft: Java Edition. To install the Snapshot, open the Minecraft Launcher and enable snapshots in the “Installations” tab. Please note that testing versions can corrupt your world, so it is advisable to back up your data or run them in a separate folder from your main worlds.
For cross-platform server jar and bug reporting, please refer to the respective channels.
