Episode 5: Snapshot 12w08a

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 we will be covering the long-anticipated snapshot 12w08a, with robots, slimes, and stairs!"

The screen cut to a shot of a village, with a metal-like creature walking through the streets.

"As you can see," said Calvin, "the largest new feature in this update is IRON GOLEMS! These big mechanical Squidwards are the long-expected villager defense system; during they day they simply roam around the village, but at night these ancient robots use their strong metallic arms to send zombies, spiders, and even Endermen flying!"

"That's right, Calvin," said Hobbes's voice. "Not only do Iron Golems defend the helpless Testificates; they have also made iron a renewable resource! Slaying one of these guys- rather difficult, since they have 50 hearts each- yields three to five iron ingots, as well as occasionally one or two roses. This rose is the same rose which Iron Golems give to Testificate children on occasion...which is apparently some kind of reference to some anime film called Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Whatever."

"Well, it looks like village-hunters have a new target. But that's not all in the snapshot: there's an intriguing new change which promises to deliver amazing new architecture for custom maps. That new arrival is...upside-down stairs! That's right: by standing under a block, you can now place stairs upside-down! This has already been shown to create arches, new staircase designs, and more! Currently we can't have upside-down slabs, since Jeb and the staff of Mojang are currently working on bug fixes for the possible release of 1.2 in a couple weeks."

"Thanks, Calvin. Now it's time for something that we don't have very often: an accidental release! That's right: in snapshot 12w08a is a feature that Jeb and the staff intended to keep quiet! This feature is new camera controls. To be a bit more specific, F6 now allows you to 'stick' to the view camera, allowing you to appear to phase into blocks by the use of other commands; F9 will freeze the camera in place, allowing you to see the player model rotating whilst in 3rd-person mode; and scrolling the mousewheel will rotate the back, left, forward, and right directions. Meanwhile, Y, H, U, O, I, K, J, L, N, and M also control the camera in a few ways, and holding down two related keys, such as Y and H, will reset the view. Once again, this feature was included in the snapshot by accident, and Jeb says they will most likely be removed in a future snapshot."

"Thank you for that report, Hobbes. Well, now it's the time for the minor updates. A few bugs in cave generation have been fixed. There have been many changes to lighting and world generation, including making flat, exposed stone and lava pools more common on the surface. The End now generates properly- a fix of a bug in 12w07a in which only the spawn platform and the dragon would appear. Redstone items and torches can now be placed atop glass, though for unknown reasons they still cannot be placed on the sides of a glass block; this is most likely a glitch. And finally, there have been changes to the splash text in the main menu, and a few Canadian stereotypes have been removed, including a message which said 'Go camping with your buddies, eh?'"

The camera returned to the news desk.

"Well," said Calvin, "this minor update certainly has a lot of potential. Perhaps we can hope for more utility mobs like the Snow Golem and Iron Golem in the future. As has already been stated, 1.2 may be released within a couple of weeks or so. And once it gets released, Calvin and Hobbes' Minecraft News will be there."

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