It's a very spooky day today, zombies everywhere, bats flapping around... It must be october 31st, Halloween! Man, can you imagine if it were also friday the 13th? That'd be truly scary.

Here at Mojang, we celebrate halloween in style: with snapshots! And this weeks snapshot is another doozy! New cats! New blocks! Lots of new blocks!

Keeping in the spooky theme of the day, though, we've not added any new functionality to the new blocks contained within this snapshot. How fiendish of the developers! What could they possibly be for? We may never find out... At least not today.

Changes in 18w44a

• Split cats and ocelots to their own creatures and updated cats with new features!
• Added lots of new blocks!
• You can now right click on signs with dyes to change the text color
• Lots of performance improvements, especially to client stuttering!
• Added "Programmer Art" in the resource pack menu: it's the old textures, easy to use!

Cat and ocelot split

• Stray cats can be tamed
• Tamed cats can give lovely (or less lovely) morning gifts to their owners
• Ocelots can't be tamed, but they might start trusting you if you feed them with fish
• Phantoms are terribly scared of cats - how convenient!
• Cat collars can now be dyed
• Added several new cat skins!

New blocks

Even more! Can you believe it?!

All of these blocks currently have no functionality and are only available in the creative inventory. This will change really soon, we just wanted to get the actual blocks themselves out there as soon as we could! They might also change visually, too!

• Added Barrel
• Added Smoker
• Added Blast Furnace
• Added Cartography Table
• Added Fletching Table
• Added Grindstone
• Added Lectern
• Added Smithing Table
• Added Stonecutter
• Added Bell

Technical changes in 18w44a

• Players, armor stands and wither now have loot tables
• Changed NBT chat components
• Removed award part of /drop command (loot now does the same thing)

NBT chat component

• Block variant {"nbt": <path>, "block":"<coordinates>"}, where <coordinates> field uses same format as /setblock
• Entity variant {"nbt": <path>, "entity":<selector>}, where selector field uses same format as /kill
• Additionaly, if field interpret is present and set to true, contents of selected tags will be interpreted as chat components
• Works same as selector components:
  • if there are no elements, returns empty string
  • if there are multiple elements, merges them with ,

Loot tables

• New loot table functions: set_lore, fill_player_head
• Removed loot table condition: entity_present
• New loot table conditions: damage_source_properties, location_check, weather_check and two special modifiers: inverted and alternative
• Renamed entity parameter in predicates from direct_killer_entity to direct_killer

Modified conditions

entity_properties

Now uses same predicate syntax as advancements (like player_killed_entity). Parameters are now described in predicate field. Now uses same predicate syntax as advancements (like player_killed_entity). Parameters are now described in predicate field. If this field is empty object, any entity is accepted (but still has to be present).

Modified functions

set_name

Added new parameter entity (same values as entity_present condition). If present, name will be resolved with that entity (allows using selector and score components).

New functions

fill_player_head

Copies player profile info to player head item.

Parameters

• entity - source of profile (same values as entity_present condition, will do nothing if it's not player).

set_lore

Adds or replaces lore lines.

Parameters

• lore - list of lines (in chat component format) to be added
• replace - if true, previous lore is erased
• entity - if present, name will be resolved with selected entity (same values as entity_present condition).

Fixed bugs in 18w44a

• MC-138474 - Pandas won't panic when they catch fire
• MC-138453 - Tall grass drops two tall grass / large ferns drops two large ferns
• MC-138362 - Written books do not maintain CustomModelData NBT upon creation
• MC-138082 - When setting CustomModelData on food items, the crumb particle is not updated to the model you specify
• MC-138045 - Pandas indefinitely eat cakes
• MC-138002 - Dispenser with shears always succeeds even if there is no sheep in front of it
• MC-137974 - Dispenser can shear dying sheep
• MC-137934 - "Argument range" class has typo in JsonObject serialization
• MC-137931 - Lag spikes while placing/breaking blocks
• MC-137911 - Arrows spawned by commands plays cave ambience
• MC-137866 - Negative durability on shears using dispensers
• MC-137839 - Lighting issues
• MC-137831 - Slimes and magma cubes riding mobs causes game crash
• MC-137797 - Illager beast destroys leaves even when mobGriefing is set to false
• MC-137589 - Pandas are not spawning in bamboo jungles
• MC-137512 - Bamboo sapling connects to fences and walls
• MC-137490 - Unable to pick block a bamboo sapling
• MC-137463 - Infinite flame particles for naturally and command generated monster spawner

Get the snapshot

To install the snapshot, open up the Minecraft Launcher and enable snapshots in the "Launch Options" tab.

Snapshots can corrupt your world, please backup and/or run them in a different folder from your main worlds.

Cross-platform server jar:

• Minecraft server jar

• Minecraft issue tracker!