Episode 4: Snapshot 12w07b (?)

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! Today my co-anchor Hobbes and I will be focusing on the newest snapshot: 12w07b! But before we begin, Golden Keyblade would like to apologize for making this episode basically a full week late; he was just caught up in the vacation."

The screen cut to the clips showing the news footage.

"As you've probably heard," said Calvin, "the biggest news this week is that Mojang has finally increased overall world height! That's right: you asked for it, you've got it! World height has now been doubled from 128 blocks to the new grand total of 256 blocks! Sadly, however, the new system does not include any changes to terrain; but that just means you now have a new 128 block chunk to build your ultra-tall towers in!"

"That's right, Calvin," said Hobbes's voice. "The new world height is part of a new world format system the staff at Mojang have named 'Anvil', which in 1.2 will take over from the current program, 'McRegion'. The details are too complicated to go over at this time, but there are two major features other than world height: total block ID's have been increased to 4096, and biomes will no longer be altered by new updates that change terrain generation."

"Thanks for that, Hobbes. Well, it looks like those out there who like to build adventure maps now have lots more space to build in. Back on the ground, the villagers are now getting some most interesting updates. Now we'll go to our field reporter Susie Derkins for details."

The scene cut to a shot of an NPC village. Susie began to speak.

"Thanks, Calvin. Things are getting intense here in the NPC villages. With the upcoming zombie siege feature for 1.2 already in production, villager populations might take a severe dive fairly soon. Villagers are dealing with this new threat in two different ways: they will soon have some new form of defense, although what that may be is not known at this point; and, more interestingly, villagers now reproduce to replace killed villagers, as well as to fill houses. I can say in all honesty that baby Testificates can be a rather startling sight. Back to you, Calvin."

"Thanks, Susie...I guess. It looks like villages will be a lot more interesting in the near future. But for now, Jeb has given us a feature many people have been wanting for quite a while now: redstone lamps! That's right: lamps which can be turned on and off using redstone power are now a part of the vanilla game! These lamps, made with redstone and one glowstone block, will be very useful in adventure maps and for special creations."

"Thank you, Calvin. Well, that's about it for the major updates, and so now we've come to the minor changes. The rather helpful glitch in which Ghasts in the Nether became unable to move has since been fixed. The remaining mobs have now been moved into the new AI system which, until recently, had only been used on skeletons, zombies, and the dreaded Creepers. Light calculations in multiplayer are now performed client-side, rather than by the server, as a way of preventing certain lighting glitches. And finally, it is now a lot less likely to get a rare item drop from a hostile mob, so good luck on that front!"

The scene returned to the news desk.

"Well," said Calvin, "that's it for snapshot 12w07b! I don't know exactly what happened to 12w07a, but I assume it was just glitched or something. Well, we'll see you later, I assume on snapshot 12w08a!"

There was a loud noise off-screen, as if the closet door had just banged open. Golden Keyblade ran onto the screen with no warning.

"And once again," he said, "I am sincerely sorry that it took so long to get this chapter out."

"How do you keep getting in through my closet?" exclaimed Calvin in confusion.

Golden Keyblade ignored him. "Believe it or not, I do want to make you all happy. I just got distracted what with the week of vacation at all. It isn't often I get the chance to go a whole week without doing anything. I will try to make sure these episodes come out on time, especially if they've got something particularly exciting, like this one."

And with that, the Author strode off the screen. A few moments later there came the sound of the closet door once again closing.

"Um...okay," said Calvin, not sure how to finish. "Uh, I guess I'll...see you later or something."

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

A/N: Yes, I am entering Calvin's room through his closet...but I'll never tell you how! *trollface*