The ‘invisible blocks’ Mojang added to Minecraft last week sound like the ultimate “Forgot my snapshot” excuse. But they really are there – completely transparent, but tangibly in the way. On the one hand, they can conduct redstone currents, aesthetically neatening up circuitry no end. On the other, they’ve introduced adventure map makers to that most dangerous tool of ‘90s game design: the invisible wall.
All of this was academic, however, while these transparent blocks appeared “much darker” than the world around them – rendering them partially visible. That’s now been fixed, and a new multiplayer spectator mode introduced to boot.
Mojang have introduced an official spectator gamemode for multiplayer, which should do wonders for the many Hunger Games servers routinely filled with hundreds of players.
Spectators function in ghostly fashion: they cannot be seen by active players. They cannot use items, nor place, destroy or interact with blocks. What they can do is view inventories and swoop straight through any block or organism without the slightest hassle. They are “only slightly buggy maybe sometimes” – the system is “not 100% finished”.
Meanwhile, in Survival mode, activator rails are now able to eject people and objects from Minecarts – so expect that to set YouTube alight in the coming weeks.
See the full changelog here. Remember: snapshot updates are available only if you’ve enabled ‘experimental development snapshots’ under the New Profile button of your launcher. Which of these changes do you imagine will be the most far-reaching?