Episode 3: Snapshot 12w06a

The black screen began to dissipate, replaced with the shot of Calvin and Hobbes' news desk. Calvin grinned right at the camera.

"Good day, fellow Minecraftians, and welcome to the next episode of Calvin and Hobbes' Minecraft News, where Minecraft stuff comes first and the rest comes never! Well, Valentine's Day has come again..."

"And our lead anchor has his sights set on a particular female reporter," added Hobbes.

Calvin mouthed something at Hobbes that looked a bit too much like "shut up". He turned back to the camera. "As I was saying," he said, "as we all know, Mojang loves all of its fans. So as a way of telling us that, they've given us a bit of an early Valentine's Day present: snapshot 12w06a, with quite a few changes! And at the end, as our present to all of you, we'll be discussing another interesting piece of news a lot of people have been waiting for!"

The gameplay clips, and Calvin and Hobbes started to commentate in alteration.

"First up," said Calvin as a player ran into his house to get away from a zombie, "zombie AI has received its latest improvements- improvements that, believe it or not, render it mildly threatening! First of all, they attack NPC villagers, so it's a good idea to have some Testificates around, if only to lure the zombies away. But the real change is something much more sinister. How many people have fled indoors at night to get away from pursuing monsters? Probably a few. Well, it turns out Mojang hates it. First they made it so that you can't sleep if there are monsters nearby, and now they have pulled out another little change: zombies can actually break down doors! Now to our reluctantly-hired reporter Susie for the... details."

Susie's voice cut into the audio. "Um...thanks, I guess, Calvin. Well, you heard it here: zombies now have enough power to break down wooden doors! Not only that, they are now sufficiently intelligent to know when you're behind a wooden door and break it to get to you! Of course, breaking down doors is only for players on Hard difficulty or if you are playing on Hardcore Mode. On Easy orNormal, they'll attack the door but are unable to break it. There's currently a glitch wherein zombies are able to break down iron doors, but that will be fixed in the full 1.2 release. Now... back to you, Calvin."

"Thanks for that, Susie. (Slimy girl.) Anyway, next on the changelog is the increased intelligence for Testificates! That's right: villager IQ is slowly but surely increasing. We still don't know when they're going to be able to do official NPC stuff like provide quests or trade with players or stuff like that, but at least they're getting there. First, the bug in our last snapshot, 12w05b, in which Villagers can actually open iron doors as if they were wooden ones, has now been fixed. As we've already mentioned, zombies now attack not only the player, but villagers as well, so the Testificates are able to flee from zombies. They'll also now socialize with other villagers and even with other passive mobs, and they go inside if it's raining!"

"Well," said Hobbes, "we've certainly got a lot to look forward to with villagers. Well, we now continue onward to changes to the newest and my personal favorite mob in the game: ocelots/cats! It seems cats now have sound effects at last! They can now purr, meow, cry, hiss, and they're even able to howl! And on the subject of sounds, wooden doors now have new sounds when zombies attack them!"

"And speaking of doors, we've got some bug fixes to double doors! Previously, a glitch with double doors meant that doors that were supposed to open when a pressure plate in front of them was stepped on closed instead. Now doors have been fixed to properly detect whether they are open or closed. Sadly, this only applies to double doors made after you've installed this patch, so you'll have to take apart your doors if you want to fix them."

"Thanks, Calvin. And now for perhaps one of the most exciting changes of this snapshot: rare loot drops for mobs! If you kill a zombie, skeleton, or zombie pigman, they have a chance of dropping something other than their usual- and rather boring- drops. Zombies can drop iron ingots, an iron sword, an iron helmet, or an iron shovel; skeletons can now drop a bow or even an enchanted bow; and zombie pigmen can now drop a gold ingot, golden helmet, golden sword, or maybe even an enchanted golden sword!"

"Well, we've reached the end of the major changes. It looks like this is as good a time as any to move onto more minor changes. Water has been changed so that mobs move slower through water than before: the most noticeable part of an improvement to mob movement in water. Snowmen, or Snow Golems as they are known in-game, will now take damage from rain and water. (Really wish that happened to the Snow Goons.) And pressing the F1 key on the keyboard now disables viewing the hitboxes for blocks."

"And now, last but certainly not least, we have made it to the bug fixes. Some of the fixes are good: skeletons, cats, ocelots, zombies, and wolves no longer spin around in tight circles when they stand on non-full-height blocks; and that pesky SMP bug where Monster Spawners wouldn't display the correct mob they spawn has now officially been fixed at last. However, some fixes are less fortunate: the convenient glitch where two mobs that accidentally attacked each other would begin 'in-fighting' is now removed, so no luck there. Other fixes are Creepers can no longer explode after you've killed them, and the aforementioned preventing of villagers opening iron doors."

The camera left the footage and returned to the desk.

"That's all we have for snapshot 12w06a," said Calvin with his customary camera grin. "But by no means is it the end of the episode! We've got one more piece of news that we left for last! You see, Jeb recently posted a photo which has a lot of people very excited!"

The screen cut to a still shot of a photo, which showed a huge tower stretching above a jungle biome as seen from the ground.

"Along with the picture," said Calvin's voice, "came a caption from Jeb reading, 'Default world height is likely to be increased very soon'. That's right: what Notch said was forbidden is now an acceptable proposal! And world height increase is one of the top requests! However, Jeb has stated that even if world height is increased, there will not be any changes to terrain generation. So those of you looking for a high mountain to scale will sadly disappointed. But people who build towers are undoubtedly delighted by this sudden news. Beyond that, people have now been given new hopes that things forbidden under Notch's term of office (for me, sharks and obsidian tools) may be on the way."

The screen cut back to the news desk.

"Well, I hope you found this episode helpful," Calvin said. "So until we meet again for snapshot 12w07a, have a happy Valentine's Day, a fantastic Lincoln's birthday, and a wonderful Stupid Mario Brothers Season 5 premier! Until then, I'm Calvin, this is Hobbes, and good night."

Calvin and Hobbes began reading their papers, and the screen faded to black.

A/N: In case you're wondering, Susie only got hired because Hobbes wanted her on the show and hired her without telling Calvin. How did Susie see Hobbes? That's a question I'll probably get around to answering shortly after the Sun goes out. Until then, keep wondering!