Minecraft 26.3 Snapshot 2

We're back with the second snapshot for 26.3! This week brings a new rendering option designed to improve transparency handling in Minecraft Java. We've also optimized certain mob behaviors when players aren't nearby, made a few gameplay adjustments, including technical changes and fixes.

Happy mining!

Known Issues#

• When using Vulkan on Mac the world will not render, instead showing a pink screen
• The lighting on entities is not correct, rendering e.g. the top side too dark

Changes#

• Persistent mobs' random walk/swim behaviors will now deactivate when players are not nearby, in the same way as non-persistent mobs
• Replaced current "Improved Transparency" approach with a new order-independent transparency algorithm which is expected to be much better at solving translucency issues
• When using a Shield together with a Hoe or a Shovel, raising the Shield will take precedence over tilling and pathmaking

Minor Tweaks to Blocks, Items and Entities#

• Drowned with Tridents will now use a melee attack if the player is within 3 blocks of them

Order-independent transparency (OIT)#

• Generally, translucent surfaces need to be rendered back-to-front to avoid visual issues
  • In order to do so, the translucent geometry has to be sorted before rendering
  • This is very expensive and even with perfect sorting of individual triangles, intersecting triangles are not possible to render correctly
• Before this snapshot, the "Improved Transparency" video setting attempted to mitigate translucency-related visual issues
  • It did this by rendering different types of translucent objects (entities, particles, water, etc.) to different textures that were later combined to create the final image
  • This allowed us to fix some of the issues with some performance impact
  • However, it introduced some other less noticeable issues
• The "Improved Transparency" video setting will now instead enable a new order-independent transparency algorithm (which we will refer to as OIT)
  • This makes it possible to render translucent objects in any order without sorting
  • It fixes all existing major translucency-related visual issues (such as certain objects disappearing when viewed through translucent objects)
  • However, the algorithm is an approximation, and so it introduces some new minor visual artifacts (such as the color of clouds being somewhat incorrect when viewed through multiple layers of translucent surfaces)
• We expect OIT to have a higher performance impact than the previous implementation of "Improved Transparency"
• When "Improved Transparency" is turned off, the behavior hasn't meaningfully changed and the game will still prioritize performance over correctness while sorting geometry as necessary

Developer's Note: Special thanks to Rubén Osorio López, Jozufozu, and the Minecraft modding community in general for sharing the information that helped us to deliver this.

Technical Changes#

• The Data Pack version is now 109.0
• The Resource Pack version is now 90.0
• The definition field from the blocks.json data generation report has been removed

Server Properties#

• The white-list property is now true by default

Data Pack Versions 109.0#

Data Components#

Added minecraft:block_transformer#

• This component allows items to transform a block into another block on player interaction
• Format: list of objects with fields:
  • block_state_provider - Block State Provider, used to provide the state for the transformed block
    • If the Block State Provider returns no result (as by rule_based_state_provider, for example), the next rule in the list will be attempted
    • The set of Block State Providers are the same as the Block State Providers used in World Generation
  • sound - optional field, Sound Event to play on interaction, e.g. minecraft:item.axe.strip
    • If not present, defaults to play no Sound Event
  • - optional field, particles to play on interaction

Loot Tables#

• Added till/rooted_dirt loot table for drops when Rooted Dirt is tilled with a hoe

World Generation#

• Cave Air is no longer generated in Nether caves

Features#

Added minecraft:copy_properties_provider Block State Provider#

Copies common Block State properties from the Block at the evaluated position to the resulting state Format: object with fields:

• block_state_provider: Block State Provider, provides the Block State which the copied properties are copied on top of
  • Only properties common between both the source and the target blocks will be copied

Changed minecraft:stepped_column_cluster Feature Type#

Renamed from minecraft:basalt_columns. Now exposes more control over the feature functionality.

Format changes:

• Added field block: Block state provider for which block to place
• Added field can_replace: Block predicate for which blocks can be replaced by the column
• Added field continue_through: Block predicate for which pre-existing blocks to accept as part of a column
• Added field cannot_place_on: Block ID, list of block IDs or hash-prefixed block tag ID representing which blocks are avoided when starting placement
• Renamed field reach to

Changed minecraft:single_block_pillar Feature Type#

Renamed from minecraft:basalt_pillar. Now exposes more control over the feature functionality.

Format changes:

• Added field block: Block state provider for which block to place
• Added field can_replace: Block predicate for which blocks to replace
• Added field direction: Vertical direction of the pillar - one of up and down
• Added field chance_to_continue: Optional probability between and (default: ) that the pillar continues another block (assuming matches)

Changed minecraft:random_neighbor_spread Feature Type#

Renamed from minecraft:glowstone_blob. Now exposes more control over the feature. Places blocks randomly in an area starting at the origin, each block placing so it has exactly one accepted neighbor.

Format changes:

• Added field block: Block state provider for which block to place
• Added field accepted_neighbors: Block ID, list of Block IDs or hash-prefixed Block Tag for which blocks count as a valid neighbor
• Added field can_replace: Block predicate for which blocks to replace
• Added field attempts: Int provider between 1 and 3000 for how many placements attempts to make
• Added field xz_offset: Int provider between -16 and 16 for what offsets to try along the x and z axes
• Added field : Int provider between -16 and 16 for what offsets to try along the y axis

Added minecraft:overlay Feature Type#

Places a set of features in the same location. Note that as opposed to the minecraft:sequence Feature Type, all features are placed regardless of individual placement success.

Format:

• features: Placed Feature ID, non-empty list of Placed Feature IDs or hash-prefixed Placed Feature Tag for the features to place

Added minecraft:projected_random_patchy_square Feature Type#

Generates a square where each block is randomly placed or not placed with its probability based on the distance from the center of the square, with the center more likely to generate than the edges. Each placed block can be projected downwards if the appropriate conditions are met.

Format:

• block: Block state provider for which block to place
• project_through: Block Predicate for which blocks are considered "empty" and should be projected through
• size: Int provider between 1 and 16 that determines the size of the square as measured from the center to the edge
• max_projection_height: Non-negative integer representing the maximum change in y level from the original height to the placement height for a block in the square

Placement Modifiers#

Changed minecraft:offset Placement Modifier#

Renamed from random_offset.

Format:

• Removed fields xz_spread and y_spread
• Added fields x, y, z: Integer providers between -16 and 16 specifiying the axis-specific offset

Noise Settings#

Spawn Target#

The spawn_target field has been updated to allow use of any Density Function, instead of just a subset of those defined within the noise_router field.

The suitability of a candidate spawn position is determined by evaluating, in some arbitrary n-dimensional space, the squared Euclidean distance to a set of target hypercubes.

For example, one axis might be temperature and the second erosion - and suitability determined by distance to the square between temperature=0.1, erosion=0.2 and temperature=0.3, erosion. This would prefer any candidate spawn within those ranges equally, while penalizing candidate spawns very far out of that range.

Format: list of target hypercubes

• Target format: map between Density Function ID and a range on that axis:
  • Range is specified as one of:
    • Float, an exact target value
    • Array of 2 floats, a range of target values in form [min, max]
    • An object with fields:
      • min - float, the minimum value of the target range
      • max - float, the maximum value of the target range

Block Predicates#

Added minecraft:height_range#

Checks the height of the position against a given range.

Format:

• min_inclusive: Vertical Anchor describing the minimum height required
• max_inclusive: Vertical Anchor describing the maximum height required

Vertical Anchors#

• Added a new option for Vertical Anchors: relative_to_sea_level - specifies an offset to the sea level of the dimension

Carvers#

• The worldgen/configured_carver registry has been renamed to worldgen/carver

Updated minecraft:cave Carver Type#

• All fields previously under the config field have been inlined to the top-level
• Added count field - non-negative Int Provider, the number of Cave tunnels to create from a seed chunk
• Renamed yScale to room_vertical_radius_multiplier
• Added optional start_vertical_radius_multiplier field - Float Provider, acts as a multiplier for the vertical radius of the first segment in each tunnel
  • If not specified, defaults to

Updated minecraft:canyon Carver Type#

• All fields previously under the config field have been inlined to the top-level
• Renamed and moved yScale to shape.y_scale
• Removed replaceable field, carvers will replace any block (excluding features)
• Removed lava_level field, fluids are now always selected by the aquifer or configuration in the dimension

Removed minecraft:nether_cave Carver Type#

• Replaced by minecraft:cave Carver Type

Int Providers#

Added minecraft:very_biased_to_bottom Int Provider Type#

Picks a random value in the provided range, with a quadratic bias towards the minimum value.

Format: object with fields:

• min_inclusive - Integer, the minimum selected value (inclusive)
• max_inclusive - Integer, the maximum selected value (inclusive)

Block Tags#

• Added #turns_into_dirt_path - contains all blocks that turn into Dirt Path blocks when a Shovel is used for pathmaking
• Removed #overworld_carver_replaceables and #nether_carver_replaceables

Item Tags#

• Added #dowses_campfires - items that can dowse a lit Campfire block

Resource Pack Version 90.0#

• The texture of the Shelf Mushroom has been updated

Particles#

• Added new Particle textures:
  • shelf_mushroom_particle.png

Shaders & Post-process Effects#

Developer's Note: Although it is possible in Resource Packs, overriding Core Shaders is considered as unsupported and not an intended Resource Pack feature. These shaders exist as part of the internal implementation of the game, and as such, may change at any time as the game's internals evolve. We understand that overriding Core Shaders is used for very cool Resource Pack features, many of which lack supported alternatives. We would like to provide better, supported alternatives in the future.

Order-independent Transparency (OIT)-related Shader Changes#

• Added new shaders to support order-independent transparency:
  • core/oit_composite.fsh
  • include/oit.glsl
  • include/oit_add_transmittance.glsl
  • include/oit_common.glsl
  • include/oit_depth_bounds.glsl

Fixed bugs in 26.3 Snapshot 2#

• MC-161885 - Many transparent things do not render behind slimes
• MC-161898 - Transparent particles make other particles invisible
• MC-161926 - The block breaking animation is more transparent when mining ice or stained glass
• MC-168653 - Mobs, particles, clouds, water and transparent blocks don't render behind the transparent parts of shulker bullets
• MC-190203 - Transparent and specially rendered blocks, entities, clouds, water and particles don't render behind wind charges, and charged creeper, wither and breeze armor
• MC-202197 - Entities' name tag background is rendered behind transparent things
• MC-210584 - Semi-transparent textures on an item that doesn't have it by default doesn't render water behind it
• MC-223559 - Transparent blocks, particles, and clouds are not rendered behind semi-transparent marker armor stands
• MC-229405 - The inside of boats blocks the rendering of most translucent objects with the "Improved Transparency" option enabled
• MC-252369 - Data packs can fail to load due to a feature cycle when one does not exist
• MC-259812 - Block and item displays, beds, clouds, signs, shulker boxes, and semi-transparent blocks and entities don't render behind text displays
• MC-265743 - Entities, block entities, clouds and semi-transparent blocks are always rendered in front of text displays with see_through enabled
• MC-271069 - Item entities appear to fly towards the player when picked up by a dolphin that isn't being rendered
• MC-275111 - Two animals in a boat look sideways instead of at the player when lured