On Sunday, as many of you know, Notch was on the Coe's Quest Livestream (Coe's Quest is one of the best and almost certainly the longest Minecraft Let's Play; it is currently at 117 episodes) and it turned into what was essentially a Q+A session. If you want to watch it, go to
. It was over an hour long and covered a huge amount of the topics that have been bouncing around the forums.
Apparently I have no life, because I listened to it twice and took notes on everything he said the second time. Please note that none of what you read here is guaranteed. Just because Notch said it once in reply to a fan during a livestream does *not* mean that it is 100% certain to happen, no questions asked. That said, it gives a lot of interesting insight into a lot of things, so I thought those of you who have not seen the livestream would be interested in knowing what was said. I have bolded what I consider to be the most important points because there are a lot of them and the important and trivial tend to get mixed up. None of this is my interpretation; it is flat-out what was said (the wording will obviously be slightly different).
- Notch is not, in fact, God (I am not making this up. He actually said this.)
- He dislikes hiding tricks; he considers the differentiation of furnace textures from stone one very positive effect of the change. This is also why the dispensers firing through blocks glitch was fixed.
- Cake was going to have gravity, but he didn't get around to implementing it.
- Mojang definitely wants to do something with capes; Notch mentioned clan affiliations as a likely option.
- Notch did not know or does not know that the texture pack competition results have been announced. As of Sunday, he had not signed the prize(s?).
- Although there are no plans to officially support high-resolution textures, Notch plans to add unofficial support. When xau's fix was mentioned, he talked about perhaps getting an official release of it.
- Notch plans to add inter-server portals, most specifically with regards to the Nether. We can expect to see the Nether in SMP when that happens. However, there are problems with how to manage inventory between servers.
- There is a plan for differentiated saplings for different trees OR saplings randomly selecting trees based on biome (this second part was supposed to already be the case)
- He will definitely add a dangerous water mob.
- In SMP, there will probably be an option to show a nickname instead of your username.
- The mob spawning problems in the Nether (something that leads to crashes for many people) were acknowledged and he said they may have been fixed in 1.2_01
- Slimes should now be in the game again, although he said they were probably too rare.
- Notch wants to make a way to stop mobs despawning and perhaps allow breeding (the example he gave was allowing two pink sheep in a pen to create pink sheeplets [yes, he used that word])
- There is a possibility that he will add translucent textures (this was brought up with player helmets in mind)
- Lava smelting should no longer consume the bucket
- Servers will be able to suggest texture packs for use on them
- 'Non-transparency' sections may be added to terrain.png
- There is a possibility that ops will be able to do things like see through walls, fly, and become invisible
- There are sorta-not-really plans for dragons. He said that they were...interesting...from a technical aspect and a gameplay one.
- Yes, weather is coming.
- Later on, settings will be added to the world gen such as limited maps and perhaps other indev things.
- Bigger and better boats, maybe.
- There will be a friends list / saved servers list.
- The simple fix for sidegrass would increase polygon count, so he is trying to find a fancy fix first. He is aware of it, though.
- Notch tries not to look at mods to avoid their ideas influencing his,
- BUT he does plan to greatly increase mod support, and even *MAYBE* talk with the best mods about official integration.
- He likes blocky light. Maybe he'll add BetterLight sometime, but he likes blocky light.
- Perhaps holding shift will allow you to latch onto ladders, so that you can sit there instead of always moving up and down.
- Ropes that act like ladders but only need to be attached to a single point have been considered. (this would also potentially include casting them like fishing line)
- Sugar might add a slight speed boost or healing
- There is a possibility of an underwater breathing apparatus.
- Notch appreciates all our talk about the game and the free testing we provide.
- Support will improve.
- They want to add more to the nether, because it's boring right now.
- Magic. Magic was mentioned and seems to be planned quite seriously. A mention was made of the materials for it perhaps being in the Nether.
- That said, the magic will stay subtle, like enchanted items. Another suggestion that he seemed to like was ice-making.
- Steve is carrying a bag of holding. Problem, reality?
- Notch is considering the Aether, but he doesn't want to add another boring realm; he needs a way to make it interesting and to make the Nether more interesting.
- He plans for furniture, and has seen mods for it that implemented it in a way he liked...
---and in the middle of that, the audio died for 10 minutes---
- Boosters WILL be fixed, and a booster block will almost certainly be added. He sounded quite certain about this one.
- Minecraft will probably not be on Steam until it's out of Beta.
- Saves will be autoconverted to the new optimized format.
- Notch really, really wants mob villages, complete with more AI than anything yet seen in Minecraft.
- More records are already prepared; the main challenge right now lies in finding cool ways to allow players to get them.
- He was inconclusive about future saddle uses. There was no mention of horses.
- Squid should be dying on land; it is a bug that they are not
- Fish may later be permitted to be placed in aquariums.
- When he adds air travel, it will probably not be a primary method of locomotion. He liked the idea of hang-gliders or something similar--recreational flight.
- The issue of painting customization in SMP was brought up (so that everybody could have their own unique paintings). The idea seemed to come as a little bit of a surprise to him, but he said he would consider it.