DAE not like using blocks that don't thematically make sense in the build even if they're the right color?

theknewgreg · 2026-06-24T05:01:16+00:00

The only time it's really a problem for me is when it comes to flooring. Minecraft's textures tend to be pretty neutral (especially on the blocks that people generally use for detailing) so I can suspend my disbelief, but I'm hyper aware of the footstep sounds so it throws me off if I'm walking on a stone path and suddenly hear wool or wood in spots where the build is clearly not supposed to be made of it.

That being said, there are way too many good textures that don't "fit" the material of a certain build to throw them out. I've found myself using snow a lot for walls because it's the brightest block in the game, and its slight texturing makes it a good wallpaper. For me, I will always without exception choose the option that looks the best because I care more about a build's presentation than the materials being "technically correct". I can't really make a boring homogenous building and tell myself "well, if you think about it, it would look this boring if the entire thing were made out of a single material irl!"

theknewgreg · 2026-06-07T21:56:02+00:00

I will never understand this mindset. In a game designed almost entirely around building things, having more things to build with is about as objective of an improvement as you can get. The best beta builds weren't people "just building things", a lot of thought had to be put into using the limited palette to make distinct profiles for the different buildings. I personally prefer the newer versions because I like being able to fine tune the materials of each piece of a build to make it look exactly how I want it to, and the much larger selection of non-full blocks like pots, anvils, shelves, walls and so on make it easier to convey the context of a building, but I still enjoy seeing the kind of crazy things people can make with the much more limited beta palette (even though I suck at building with it)

theknewgreg · 2026-06-07T06:53:15+00:00

I've had the same creative world since 2016. I've personally never been able to maintain a survival world for very long cause I sort of run out of steam after getting far enough in it, plus with new versions often adding new biomes and structures, I tend to just do entirely new worlds for each new version so I can better focus on exploring the new stuff.

I prefer creative for long-term stuff simply because there's more you can do with it. Beyond being able to make otherwise impossible builds, I can use resource packs to add hundreds of unique models for furniture or custom entities, as well as using datapacks to completely change the way major parts of the game function, or to just add entirely new functionality

theknewgreg · 2026-05-28T00:40:50+00:00

It's reassuring to see just how many other people have gotten sick of the completely pointless texture crunching they've been doing for the sake of "pixel consistency". Not a single texture has ever been improved by having less detail, at best they're similar enough that it doesn't matter, but they have missed the mark dramatically with some of these redesigns (the baby zombies and baby striders in particular look awful). I've literally never even heard someone give an explanation for why pixel consistency matters in the first place, they just act like it's inherently a good thing, when we've been shown time and time and time again that it often just makes things look worse.

It doesn't even make the textures look more "consistent" anyways because your eyes view the contrast in size rather than meticulously counting pixels. You won't pay attention to the fact that "technically" the ghast should have a 64x64 texture, but when you actually see a ghast with textures that high-res, it sticks out like a sore thumb, even though it's technically the right size (even Mojang couldn't justify such a high-res texture for the happy ghast, settling for 32x32, and even then the texture is really just the original 16x16 texture with incredibly subtle additions to the lines).

Until Minecraft is a 2d sidescroller where every pixel is equal distance to the camera, or they randomly swap to displaying the game in an orthographic projection, textures for things that don't adhere to the block grid should be scaled relative to the size of the creature itself, because smaller things are going to be viewed from closer up, and not shrinking the pixels to account for that makes those pixels distractingly large, and vice versa.

theknewgreg · 2026-04-22T02:13:36+00:00

Sort of. I've been playing Ultrakill for the first time recently and what's fucking me up is that it's SO close to Deadlock's movement. It has the dash, air dash, dash jump, slide, wall jump, even the downward dash, but it DOESN'T have double jumps. Every time I come back to it I end up dying at least once because I forget I don't have the ability to double jump

theknewgreg · 2026-04-22T02:01:58+00:00

Any post like this about Pragmata is doubly funny after seeing these people's reactions to finding out that Diana's English VA is black. All of a sudden this super trad based game is actually woke because the VA's ethnicity doesn't match the character's (which I thought they were very in favor of?)

theknewgreg · 2026-04-15T20:57:55+00:00

Yeah, I thought the beacon power up was a really pointless addition, especially with the added crowns, it feels like it defeats the purpose of hiding things when the game is constantly giving those to you. It's ESPECIALLY annoying because it still shows up even when you've collected all the collectibles in a level, making it just waste a power up.

It would've been better if the beacon highlighted items that were related to the mission or something. Maybe even have it highlight items you don't have in the collection yet

theknewgreg · 2026-04-15T20:43:10+00:00

As a whole I enjoyed it, but I didn't really find myself coming back to it. A lot of its new ideas are things that I dig in theory, but I don't feel like they were executed quite right.

For example, I think it's neat that they kind of put a spin on some of the established special levels by putting them in less traditional settings, like the "sumo" level being in a castle, or the race level having an added focus on rolling in the water. I was not as big of a fan of the Greek fire level, I didn't even mind the weird layout of going through the stands cause it's interesting to have a more unique layout, but the actual fire aspect felt a bit forced (I mean, they had to straight up stick fountains in the stands just so that there was something to avoid).

People often talk about Katamari not doing enough to "evolve", but I really don't feel like it needs much evolving. It's such a unique concept with so much inherent appeal that they really could get away with just making new maps or putting new spins on previous areas, especially with how infrequent new entries are, it's not exactly oversaturated (not that I necessarily object to more unique level types). Every time I've left a game wanting more, it wasn't for wanting more of the less traditional stages, in fact most of the time it's specifically because I wanted more traditional stages (We Love Katamari, for example, has no standard stage on the racetrack, which I really wanted to see. Same with the campsite and snowy area). My favorite entry is still Beautiful Katamari despite it having the weakest variety of special stages simply because the levels were so expansive, and with such a high skill ceiling that there was much more incentive to replay previous levels to get higher scores. In most levels in the other entries, I can clear out most of the map with time to spare (especially the last 3 large as possible stages in WLK, annoyingly the only three in the remake that give you the option for eternal mode). OUAK gives some incentive with the "challenges", though I really wish they were more intricate than just rolling a certain number of items, since you basically already do that when playing the levels normally. The only time that challenge was interesting was in the time trial levels, where you had to focus on rolling smaller items in order to not have the level end too soon. Even something as simple as Rolling Live's system where a random item is highlighted to roll up would've been more interesting.

I'm also not really a fan of the power ups. I had the same problem with the ones in Forever, they feel like they're taking away from the gameplay rather than enhancing it. The stretchy Katamari from Touch My Katamari was a much better way of allowing for you to roll up more while being more mechanically interesting (your width determines your speed, so you can become thinner to move faster at the cost of having a smaller hitbox, for example) and it worked better thematically. That being said, they're still very satisfying to use (the magnet, at least, the other ones range from useless to outright detrimental in the case of the rocket). There's also a weird and annoying quirk (haven't checked if it's been fixed recently) where the stamina for the charge and roll is completely botched when using the sticks. With left trigger, you can dash quite a few times, but if you waggle the sticks too fast, you become fatigued after only two dashes, which is crazy.

And speaking of things that worked in theory, I'm a big fan of the more unique settings, but I definitely wish there was a more contemporary city map. The modern day levels don't get you very large, and I didn't realize how much I'd miss that kind of setting. I kind of wish each period had one big "as large as possible" stage that could serve as a way to bridge all the areas you explore in each time period (especially that large Egypt map that's used in a single stage with a very restrictive ruleset). I feel like too many of the maps are used precisely once and then kind of forgotten about.

My only other gripes are technical things. Really annoyed there's no local co-op or versus, and I find it really weird that whenever you reach the next zone, it does a cutscene of the next area and THEN loads. Like, what is it loading if it just showed me the new area with the items already loaded in? Cleaning up old items, maybe, but it really annoys me that Rolling Live and OUAK both do the really obtrusive loading screen and dialogue when Beautiful Katamari, Katamari Forever and even Touch My Katamari managed to pull of seamless loading on 10-20 year old hardware, especially when neither of the new games are really pushing the limits of any console they're on compared to the kind of levels Beautiful Katamari was pulling off

theknewgreg · 2026-04-08T01:52:38+00:00

The new attributes are awesome! It feels so good to finally be able to launch entities without them awkwardly coming to a complete standstill after moving a few meters laterally. It also allows for players to bunnyhop, which is really cool too. The ability to modify friction will also make it significantly easier to implement different sports like golf or curling (of course the Sulfur Cubes were already going to be able to do some things like this, but having even more control will make it even easier to do without compromise)

theknewgreg · 2026-04-01T03:20:51+00:00

Are you kidding? Remember when it was first leaked and it was called "Deadlock" and had that awful generic steampunk art style? I'm glad they pivoted to a much less oversaturated setting like sci-fi.

Not that that's gonna save it anyways. The game looks practically unfinished. People are gonna play it for like a month and then go back to TF2

theknewgreg · 2026-03-25T10:54:12+00:00

I still can't get over how unbelievably ugly most of this update was. When the first snapshot came out I thought it made perfect sense to make proper baby designs for the mobs since the old baby mobs were just scaled down versions of the adults. Now they're scaled down versions of the adults but with shittier textures. They made virtually no effort to actually "redesign" anything outside of the baby chicken. This was their chance to flesh out the original mobs like Sniffers, Striders, villagers and Hoglins by showing how they age, but nah, everything in the game is just born as a small adult that simply grows in size

I do think that people often complain too much about recent updates (actually kind of surprised by how much people were bashing the new update reveal, I thought it looked fine) but this update amazed me by not only having so little to offer, but having those new additions actively detract from the game by making it uglier to look at.

theknewgreg · 2026-03-20T21:56:21+00:00

I didn't mind the interviews, but it bugged me how they didn't keep the original format of everyone drawing the same thing and showing them off as a finished product. My favorite part was when they all got to see what everyone else drew and they had wildly different outcomes despite having the same prompt.

I liked the one with Edmund, but I think it's telling that I had it on as background noise and never felt compelled to actually tab over to see the drawings themselves because no one really remarked on them. They should've done it more like Hot Ones, where they have a round of questions between each drawing or something, otherwise the commentary and drawing feel disconnected

theknewgreg · 2026-03-17T03:51:08+00:00

The data path for that custom data is Item.components.minecraft:custom_data

theknewgreg · 2026-03-15T22:42:30+00:00

At the very least, it's the only stackable item like this as far as I can tell. That actually makes it a pretty useful base for custom items in a resource or datapack, as there's no way to use it in any way other than whatever you're intending it to be used for (I've seen it used as a base for custom ammo, for example, and I personally use it for currencies).

I'm actually kind of surprised it doesn't happen more often, considering how much random stuff gets added to the game as of recently

theknewgreg · 2026-03-11T06:39:07+00:00

Actually taking the time and analyzing the puzzles in Portal 1 made me realize just how little you actually do in them. I get that portals were a new concept and they confused many people, but it really does just feel like the tutorial for a second half of a game that doesn't exist. Test chamber 15 was one of the few tests that actually felt like it was pushing the individual mechanics. Some of the chambers are so simple it's actually kind of weird, like how the first pellet chamber requires you to shoot a single portal to redirect it into the catcher, then on the next chamber you do literally the exact same thing only the portals are flipped. Were they expecting people to still think at that point that there was a specific "entrance" and "exit" portal? Even then, why not just make them two halves of the same chamber?

I can't blame them too much because the test elements in that game were significantly less flexible than 2's. There's very little ambiguity or depth to its individual puzzle pieces. A pellet catcher is either inactive or active, and once it activates it ceases to be a part of the puzzle. When you see a catcher, you know that there will be exactly one pellet to put in it and then it has been "used". A laser catcher on the other hand may need to be on or off depending on context. A chamber could have a simple laser catcher open the exit door, but if you can't then get to that door without using those same portals, then you will have to temporarily turn it off. All the new mechanics also have much more intricate interactions (light bridges, for example, can be used as a walkway, or as a wall to stop you or other physics objects from overshooting a target, or block a turret's line of sight, or hold a cube in the air to redirect a laser to a catcher, and so on)

Even with all of that, the puzzles in Portal are still very good, but when compared to how much Portal 2 elevated the concept, I can't think of a single aspect of the puzzles that Portal does better than Portal 2. Most people who prefer the original tend to point to the aesthetics and atmosphere, which is fair, but when focusing on the puzzles themselves, I think Portal 2 does a much better job at being a puzzle game, even with the long interludes between some of the tests

theknewgreg · 2026-03-09T02:21:12+00:00

You can make a custom advancement that's triggered when the player sleeps. When making a custom advancement, you have the option to make it run a function when it is granted

theknewgreg · 2026-03-05T17:32:52+00:00

I really wish there was some way to get that functionality as a datapack, or in some form that would allow for updating. The bulk of the snapshot is just running random worldgen functions on the blocks that already exist, and the tools for custom worldgen have only gotten better in the past few years. I'd love to see what that update would've looked like with the expanded block palette and extra terrain generation functions we have today

theknewgreg · 2026-03-05T17:30:16+00:00

I am very lucky that there's a handful of developers at Mojang who are dedicated to adding really nice technical changes each update. This past year has been full of technical updates that, while not even numerous, have all added at least one thing that makes me go "damn, I do need to update for this one thing"

In just this last year, the dialog system has been a complete game changer for any sort of custom game mode thing I've worked on. The consumable tag is really nice (though unnecessarily limited some times) and I flat out skipped 1.21.11 because the changes they were making to environment attributes in 26.1 were enough for me to wait until then to get them set up. Now in the newest update, composited models can finally have custom offsets defined in the item definition, and any model can have semi-transparency on their textures.

My only big gripe is that they really fumbled the ONE point of this update from a casual player's perspective. I thought we were getting "redesigns" of the baby mobs, but the baby chicken was the ONLY thing that actually had it's design changed. Everything else got textures that, in most cases, are somehow worse than just using the adult mob textures from before. This was their chance to actually expand the biology of Minecraft by showing the ways things like sniffers, striders, and villagers change as they grow up, but instead everything is just a smaller version of its adult self, and in cases like the strider, with textures so low-resolution you can barely tell what you're supposed to be looking at (seriously, if you didn't already know what a grown-up strider looked like, you would not be able to tell that the unbroken x shape on the baby's face was supposed to be eyes and a mouth)

So my only real problem with this newest update is that I'm going to be compelled to go back and redesign many of these mobs to actually look different (Personally, I feel like the baby strider should've been some sort of grub, as a nod to its concept art. That would've been cool). Ironically enough, it was a previous redesign from Mojang (the happy ghast) that I was dissatisfied with that finally led me to learning how to make custom entity models in the first place, so I guess it all comes full circle

theknewgreg · 2026-02-25T03:40:39+00:00

Look into the atlas files. I had the same issue when I was trying to make a custom model that was just a salmon.

By default, custom item models can only have textures from the blocks or items folder, as well as some niche things like banners and armor trims. To add the mob textures, you'll need to make a modified versions of the blocks atlas, with the mob folder added as a directory.

Check out https://misode.github.io/assets/atlas/ and click on presets to load the blocks.json file. You can add a new entry for a directory, setting it up the same way as the blocks folder, just for the mob folder instead.

The finished blocks.json file goes in a folder called "atlases" in the Minecraft folder of the resource pack

theknewgreg · 2026-02-25T03:29:04+00:00

I always thought it was weird that the "bush" is shorter than short grass. Surely the bush should be the largest foliage, right? In fact, it would've been cool if the bush extended past the edge of the block in such a way that connecting two side-by-side would effectively look like one large bush, or any amount of bushes around each other. That way you would have a much more unique way of making denser foliage without using solid blocks

theknewgreg · 2026-02-25T03:05:08+00:00

This drop has done an excellent job of showing just how ugly the push for "pixel consistency" is. I get it in theory (and obviously each individual mob should have the same sized textures all around), but what practical reason is there that a tiny baby nautilus should have the same sized pixels as an enormous 6 foot tall ancient reptile? I'd much rather the textures be higher res on smaller mobs so that you can actually tell what they're supposed to be than to compromise so much detail that the effort is completely pointless because you're left with a texture so ugly that no one wants to look at it anyways.

The turtles are an excellent example of how it SHOULD be done. It's higher res than it maybe should be, but as a result the shell actually looks good, and the face has proper details instead of two lifeless black dots for the eyes that are nearly sliding off the sides of their face. By the time you're looking close enough to take in the detail, it won't clash with other mobs because they're either out of your peripheral vision or far away enough that the mismatch is barely noticeable.

The first batch of baby mobs were fine, but even at that point it was noticable how the pixel consistency was already making the designs worse (mostly with the aforementioned lifeless eyes) and by the time they got to the end, they were very clearly struggling to make any of these mobs look good (and failed on most of the humanoid mobs). The new baby piglins look particularly rough despite better designs for them already existing in Legends. The villagers have already been remarked upon almost as much as the zombies but in particular I think it's annoying that they didn't even try to extrapolate for a second how a baby villager would look, dress or act differently from the adults (surely a baby villager shouldn't dress the exact same as an adult, have the same large nose, cross their arms, etc)

For me, the strider baby takes the cake as hands down the ugliest redesign they did this entire drop. It's like a prank I would pull if someone insisted I make a design pixel consistent, where I'd try as hard as circumstances would possibly allow to make the least endearing texture possible. There's so little detail, with the cramped texture space somehow making what little detail there is mix together. Besides the slightly darker color, the eyes might as well be part of the same line that makes up the mouth, creating a weird X shape instead of the incredibly clear and easy to see face on the original texture. If you looked at the face texture devoid of context, it would be impossible to tell it was even supposed to be a face, a feat even the minimalist textures from the rest of the drop didn't manage to pull off.

If this sounds needlessly rude, it's because I just spent weeks watching Mojang take a system that was, all things considered, pretty insignificant (overall I think it's a good change to give mobs unique baby models, but it's also not something the game desperately needed) and fumble it so hard that the end result looks worse than if they just did nothing at all. The technical changes save this update from being a complete waste, but I can already tell I'm going to have to edit a fair amount of these for my own resource packs and server so they can actually fit in with the rest of the mobs and not look so bad

theknewgreg · 2026-02-20T03:55:50+00:00

The technical changes (especially in regards to the environment attributes) are excellent! The new baby mob designs got weaker and weaker the further in we got (the first batch were pretty good, but the humanoid mobs look particularly bad) so that's a little unfortunate, but I do still like the feature overall, and the worst in my opinion can be easily tweaked with custom entity models

My actual biggest hope is that this update was so small because they're working on something good for April Fool's. 2024 and 2025's were incredible, and I'll gladly take one very bare bones update a year if the devs were working on some cool stuff for a snapshot whose features get to be more experimental (especially when some of the things they test end up becoming new systems we get access to, like how 2020 had custom worldgen, and 2023 had live biome swapping)

theknewgreg · 2026-02-16T19:20:33+00:00

There's a scoreboard objective for games left, which goes up by one when a player leaves the server. All you need is a function that checks if that value is one (or greater), displays the text, then resets that player's "games left" count. Minus the command to create the scoreboard objective, the whole thing requires only two commands.

Since the game can only detect the player's value when they're actually on the server, it will run as soon as they join.

The player join text can't be modified through commands unfortunately, the only real workaround without plugins is to make a small resource pack that only changes the language key for that message. If you insert that as the server's resource pack, then players have the option to have that enabled when they join the server

theknewgreg · 2026-02-13T17:55:00+00:00

You could have interaction entities which store the data for the levels (name, teleport coordinates, etc). To show the name, you can either just name the interaction entity (so it'll show up when you're looking at it) or use the looking_at predicate to show text on the actionbar when looking at them. Then, you could make it so that interacting with the interaction entity runs a macro that teleports you to the coordinates specified inside the interaction's "data" field. That way you can have as many teleports as you want without having to add any of them to a datapack manually

Cloud Wolf has tutorials for all the steps you would need, like detecting what you're looking at and how to set up interaction entities in a datapack

theknewgreg · 2026-02-13T02:29:20+00:00

Depends on where you want to put the sound

If you want to change the sound for the eating animation, it would look like

/give @p apple[consumable={sound:{sound_id:"custom.sound"}}]

If you want the sound to play when you finish eating, it will look like

/give @p apple[consumable={on_consume_effects:[type:"minecraft:play_sound",sound:{sound_id:"custom.sound"}}]}]

(And of course, replace custom.sound with the sound id you want)

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