i think a large part of why people keep saying newer minecraft stuff "feels modded" is that a lot of it exists in an aesthetic space that minecraft has historically not touched. cherry wood is some of minecraft's first dip into pastel color. copper is... whatever copper is.
to clarify, i think minecraft allowing itself to expand its visual identity is a good thing. not only does it give builders more options with their own projects, but it makes the natural game world feel so much vaster and its history so much deeper.
they really should give glass an assigned tool one of these days. like, i get that you can't mine it without silk touch, but once you have silk touch, it just kinda takes longer to mine than everything else for no reason.
minecraft should have like a reverse sponge block or something. like, a creative-only block where you pick a different block for it to fill in an area with, and then it just fills it. kinda like the /fill command except you aren't limited to cuboids. you know what i'm saying?
the concept of pixel size consistency and how much it should be adhered to in minecraft is an interesting one.
'cause like, let's say minecraft, as a 3D game using pixel art, is going for a more retro 3D aesthetic (i mean, it wouldn't have been that retro at the time, but stick with me a little). a lot of early 3D games just didn't care about pixel size consistency. like, a lot of early 2D games also didn't - people have been scaling sprites in the ugliest ways imaginable for as long as they've been able to - but 3D games adhered to a consistent pixel size even less. this is probably due to early 2D games usually being tile-based while early 3D games weren't.
minecraft, however, is tile-based. in fact, its choice to use 16x block textures seems to be a deliberate reference to these older 2D games. i mean, it could have been an optimization thing, but there are other powers of two that the game could have based its visual identity around, you know? the only block i can think of that doesn't have a pixel-size consistent texture is tripwire string (which is like that for hopefully obvious reasons).
entities are very weird and inconsistent about pixel size consistency. being not-tile-based, but in a game that is, i could see them going either way. and they do! like, they try to mostly stay pixel-size-consistent, but they also often fail in ways that don't seem to be a priority to fix. take, for example, the outer layers on certain mobs, such as armor. those remain the same resolution as the inner layers, but their geometry is obviously inflated to avoid z-fighting, and so technically, they aren't pixel-size-consistent! and yet they look perfectly normal! probably a lot more normal than if they actually were made to be pixel-size-consistent.
on the topic of entity scaling, particularly large or small mobs occasionally have just straight-up not been pixel-size-consistent. things like ghasts and bats. sounds like a fairly reasonable rule given the aforementioned history of 3D games, except, it's not a rule! chickens are smaller than bats and the ender dragon is larger than ghasts and those have always been pixel-size-consistent!!
i guess what i'm saying is that people who complain about mojang's recent push toward pixel size consistency on the basis of the game's history are annoying and liars. minecraft has never had consistent rules about this, but it has historically shown a preference in favor of consistency! the sniffer isn't """"too HD"""" for minecraft, and neither is the new ghast texture!! the new ghast texture isn't even pixel-size-consistent anyway!!!!!
i love how certain mobs will interact with and/or attack each other completely unprompted. it's such a small thing, but the world feels so much more alive for it. but i wish they also actually did anything with the drops.
as it stands, predators will hunt their prey and then just... leave the meat on the floor.
hmmm..... i normally don't say this, but i feel like the cactus flower would have looked better if they'd gone with the spore-blossom-esque geometry that most modded implementations do.
also why does this thing, of all the things, get unique sounds???
also also, this thing is definitely gonna break some cactus farms lol
What I Don't Like About Minecraft's Modern Music
Part 2 - The Caves and Cliffs Update
[ <- Previous Post ]
i'm back with my post series analyzing minecraft's non-C418 music and all the ways i personally think some of it isn't handled very well - a series that is simultaneously far more negative and far more positive than it really should be.
speaking of things that should be, you should read the previous post (linked at the top of this one). it'll give you some context you might need, such as explaining the four sections each of these posts will have. such as section one:
The Music Itself
i will be refraining from talking about ancestry since it was not implemented until the wild update. with that being said, my thoughts on the caves and cliffs soundtrack:
you may be surprised to learn this, but i actually kind of like it!
i complained about the caves and cliffs soundtrack back when the update first came out, claiming that it kinda clashed with the classic soundtrack (volumes alpha and beta) in a way that the update aquatic music didn't, but over the years, it's kinda grown on me.
but maybe that's just because everything after it has been Significantly worse in this regard.
the caves and cliffs soundtrack definitely... doesn't sound a whole lot like volume alpha. tonally and stylistically, it's very different, emphasizing the grandness and wonder of the new terrain generation, with instruments that somehow feel a lot more naturalistic despite not actually being that much less synthy.
it's in a noticeably different style, but it's actually done a deceptively better job at merging itself with the existing soundtrack than most people give it credit for. every track has a proper fade-in and -out (except for wending for some reason). most of them sound distinct enough to not feel redundant while not being so different as to be inconsistent with each other. it's even the first (non-minigame) minecraft album to feature two different artists, but they're so in-sync that you can't even really tell who's who unless you're really paying attention.
i've said this before and i'll say it again, but this soundtrack could've been pretty good if mojang just made it play in the correct contexts. imagine mining into a lush cave and having that be your introduction to 'left to bloom'. but unfortunately, that's apparently just too much to fucking ask.
How it’s Used In-Game
let's start with the things i like about the update's music implementation before moving onto the stuff that's a little more questionable.
the nether update made each of the nether's music-playing biomes play one track specific to that biome (chrysopoeia for crimson forests, rubedo for nether wastes, so below for soul sand valleys and basalt deltas) and all four general nether tracks that C418 had already made for volume beta. the caves and cliffs update added eight new ambient tracks (aka, not music discs) and eight new biomes, so it'd look like they'd just assign one new track to each biome and have it play alongside all twelve tracks from volume alpha, but what they actually did, in my opinion, was ultimately the better choice.
basically, unlike the nether, the caves and cliffs biomes each play an assortment of volume alpha tracks and an assortment of caves and cliffs tracks. since volume alpha is specifically written to work regardless of context, which tracks play in any given biome can feel a little arbitrary, but, having multiple caves and cliffs tracks play in a biome just makes the biome feel more cohesive.
that was the good part. that was the competent part, even. (pretend it has not been four months since i wrote it btw). now it's time for the bad part.
remember how i said that the music could've been okay-ish if it played in the correct contexts? well, while mojang did make caves and cliffs music play in the caves and on the cliffs, you wanna know where else they made the music play?
Literally. Everywhere. Else. (in the overworld).
in version 1.18.0; one more day, floating dream, comforting memories, and left to bloom all played in literally every overworld biome that was not introduced in the caves and cliffs update, including deserts and snowy biomes!
while deserts have since been changed, snowy biomes are all still like this in 1.21.51!
this is also when mojang started making each major update's music play on the title screen, though this wasn't super apparent until the wild update; it kinda just seemed like lena's caves and cliffs soundtrack was tacked onto the title screen for no reason.
i mean, infinite amethyst would definitely work a lot better as title screen music than as ambient biome music. but unfortunately, it's not used on the title screen anymore.
How it's Broken on Bedrock Edition
if you thought the bedrock team handled the nether update music poorly (which you'd be correct in thinking, btw), you're not going to be ready for the caves and cliffs soundtrack... because it's somehow worse.
to reiterate, before the caves and cliffs update, bedrock edition played all of its overworld music at 10% to 30% volume, depending on the track.
when it comes to the new biomes, they did the thing they did with the nether update and just used java edition's volumes for everything, meaning that 'sweden' could play at either 20% or 100% volume depending on nothing but the biome.
but at least the music volumes with these biomes are internally consistent. the same cannot be said about all the old biomes.
instead of changing the existing music to java edition's volume, or changing the new music's volume to be consistent with the old music's, they just tacked on the new music at its java edition volume.
this means that in every single non-caves-and-cliffs biome, all of C418's tracks play at 10% to 30% volume, while the newer ones play at 40%!!! which would already be kinda inconsistent even if the files themselves were the same volume, but they aren't. the files for the caves and cliffs music are more than twice as loud!! that's why java edition even plays them at 40% volume to begin with (for context, java edition plays the entire classic soundtrack at 100% volume)!!!!!
And It's Still Like This!!!!!!!!!!
some of these tracks even have inconsistent volumes on java edition. overall, just a bad update for volume consistency.
How it Affect Cornbread's Music Fixer
while cornbread's music fixer didn't technically exist until shortly after the wild update, i'm gonna cover the caves and cliffs music now. because this is the caves and cliffs music post.
basically, in pack version 1.0.0, one of the major features of the pack was the removal of the caves and cliffs music from non-caves and cliffs biomes. this has since been reverted due to issues with the tricky trials music, but that's a whole different post.
in pack version 1.2.0, i finally noticed that overworld music was at a horrifically inconsistent volume and attempted to fix it, and in pack version 1.3.0, i actually made it not worse!
caves. they're distinct enough from the surface that the fact they inherit grass colors and water colors and music from it is more than a little weird. mojang probably wouldn't be able to retroactively make existing caves their own biomes, but that's fine.
things that should not be their own biomes:
rivers. fuck holy shit why are these things still their own biomes they are fucking. up. the color palettes!!!!
