Super exciting snapshot today!

They're introducing a friends list for Java Edition that allows you to play peer-to-peer with your friends on local worlds, similar to LAN play! No more need for a dedicated server or a Realms subscription just to play Minecraft with a friend!

They've also added new music tracks, a new music disc, and finally what we've all been asking for, the ability to trigger geysers manually! By placing lava instead of a magma block under the potent sulfur, you can create indefinite geysers and toggle them at will!

There's some more, so check out the linked changelog.

(Image alt: 3D rendering of one of the new spring variants. It is much shallower and wider than the previous designs, featuring a water pool around 8 blocks in diameter, surrounded by a sulfur and granite ring. It also extends down into the ground with tuff and granite.)

Of course, the one pictured is only one of many variants, you can see a full list here:

https://minecraft.wiki/w/Sulfur_Spring#Structure

I personally think it's a good step in the right direction. It's obviously a response to all the negative player feedback as of late regarding the original spring designs and I feel like it addresses it well.

Here's what they added, summarised by yours truly:

• Three new languages (Gallo, Uzbek, Vȯro)!
• Geysers can now be detected by skulk sensors, both at the beginning and end of eruption.
• Two new sulfur cube archetypes: Slow Bouncy (buoyant, but slow speed, high bounciness, medium friction and medium air drag) for stone blocks and Hot (same as bouncy but damages entities) for magma blocks.
• Sulfur springs (the overworld features) have been redesigned completely, probably due to all the negative player feedback about the original designs!
• Sulfur caves now no longer have tuff and granite strips in them, and they're less likely to generate below oceans, hills and mountains.
• New advancement: "Uh oh", achievable by having a sulfur cube absorb TNT.

I left out all of the technical changes, datapack updates and bugfixes for better readability, but they're included in the changelogs linked if you would like to read about them.

Here's the official Minecraft wiki article about the snapshot:

https://minecraft.wiki/w/Java_Edition_26.2_Snapshot_6

Hope this helps! I would really like this community to be a bit more active, so I'm going to post news like this regularly and try to contribute to a lively environment. :)

What do you think about the snapshot?

There is a thing about the way Minecraft does its closed captions that frustrates me a bit.

It does not differentiate between different footstep events. For example, while the game's audio clearly distinguishes between the stompy shuffling of a cow and the human-like footsteps of a zombie, the subtitles read 'footsteps' for both.

It also makes no sense that your own footsteps, as in the ones caused by the player, are captioned the same way as other mobs'. People with auditory access to the game audio can clearly tell whether there are multiple entities' footsteps around or whether it's their own movement causing the sounds, and so can everyone in real life (including deaf and hard of hearing folks) because we have direct sensory knowledge of our bodies and movements.

In the game's captioning however, there is no way to tell whether you're hearing your own lone footsteps echoing in a cave, or whether you're followed by an entire herd worth of sheep, because it's all one line: "footsteps".

Is there a mod that addresses these issues?

For example, what would help tremendously is a "direction" indicator that instead of a left or right arrow shows an icon indicating that a sound originates from the player themselves. Logically, we should know whether it's a sound we made ourselves or something external.

According to most voices on the Steam forums, this beta branch update dramatically decreases the game's loading times, in some cases from over 7 minutes to under a minute.

Although I usually like playing city building games that focus on realism or sandbox creativity, I actually really enjoyed this game's puzzle-like building mechanics. You work with (and around) building effect ranges to figure out optimal placement for your infrastructure, because depending on a building's surroundings, it changes what type of building it is. For example, a generic residential building might become a gentrified yuppie bloc if there's enough entertainment businesses around. A farm will upgrade if there's enough silos nearby, so figuring out the perfect pattern for farms, fields and silos is a whole puzzle.

It's a lot of fun.

I wanted to be able to skate for years, because two of my girlfriends are super cool hanging out in places with their boards and skating, and it's a regular activity that they do but I always kinda felt left out from. I tried to skate a longboard two years ago, but I just failed miserably and I gave up for good. Or so I thought!

Today, I was out with the girls and I did manage to convince myself to at least try my best, and it actually worked after an hour or so! I managed to relatively consistently roll out on a skateboard without supports and without losing my balance! :)

… Now for practicing actually pushing while on the board. But that's the next step! For now I'm super happy about my progress.

I personally think they are really cool and made this whole drop quite a bit more interesting! They introduce new decorative elements for animated builds like fountains and steampunk pipes and stuff, and they can be used in entity transport of all kinds.

My only disappointment with them so far is that they're so random to trigger, I wish we had a way to trigger them manually somehow. Perhaps the first time they're formed, they could immediately spit out a geyser? That would make them piston-activatable.