It is now undeniable that I have a significant-enough following of some people who are anticipating the publication and are waiting to play my mod. It's not like several months ago when I only knew of one Tumblr user who was speaking of this interest. It is worth restating that Noticeably Beta One Dot Eight has not been released, and has merely been in a passage of very closed-circuit development for the last two and a half years.
I hope to release Noticeably Beta 1.8 soon. Before then, I think it would be good right now to ease potential expectations a little, in case people have accidentally developed incorrect ideas, so as not to suddenly let them down on the week it gets published. I don't want to put NBODE down too much, but I've got some points here about what isn't there and therefore people shouldn't get excited for.
I would say the most probable audience for this mod is basically people who are already fans of Minecraft Beta 1.7.
If you are perfectly content to play Beta 1.7 - or - Beta 1.7 with different terrain and looks and a medium helping of new stuff, then you don't need to worry. NBODE will be as basic or a bit less basic than a version you already call home.
After you edit the bad parts out of Beta 1.8 - other than as some people would deem, the terrain - it basically becomes a slightly more advanced Beta 1.7 with new blocks and different graphics. Though I'd like to in the future, so far I have not added a faithful Beta 1.7 world generator option.
With a removal of hunger mechanics and no native Minecraft Release 1.0 additions, if you ignore the structures and landscape generation of Beta 1.8, NBODE is quite thoroughly retro.
I know a lot of people here are clearly Golden Age fans, but in spite of being based on the version that historically ended the real Golden Age, I should say anyway that NBODE is basically an experience of Golden Age baggage. (Though if I am to be fair, you guys probably figured that out already and I just sound unintentionally condescending right now. This whole blog has been posting almost exclusively pre-seaweed version pictures for who knows how long now.)
This is not to say that I haven't added a lot of features, but the features I've added are very pre-1.0. There's no Enderdragon, Nether Fortresses, advanced redstone, or even a good half of the QOL additions over the years that some Full Release versions did. This brings me to my point about not being very skilled at editing Minecraft. Talented, sure. Lots of good ideas, definitely. I'm just punching well above my weight. Lots of stuff that you know retro Minecraft modders for are things I can't do yet.
So, we all know now that NBODE is based on Beta 1.8, feels visually and tonally like Beta 1.8, and plays like Beta 1.7 with terrain that most people in the original cohort view as The Scrappy, but how densely packed is it? This is where I have to say that you should not expect the same amount of content that there is in Better Than Adventure or New Frontier Craft.
My first priorities have been fixing what's broken, and adding easy, nice things I like in the way of certain rebalances and blocks. I'm particularly excited about the possibilities of Hard Mattress Mode, an optional non-default world setting that makes the gameplay the same except that you can't sleep away night, with beds only changing your spawn point.
So, it's not as full as the Golden Age mods you are probably used to seeing at this point. I'm perfectly fine with that because for me, an actual salvaged way of playing Beta 1.8 is a treasure, a very alluring mod to play, kind of my killer app. (I don't know if I'm using that right.) If I were to go for an Authentic Adventure kind of thing - much beyond what I'm doing now - that would have to wait for a Beta 1.8 mod project after the first time around. NBODE is set to be my second published MC mod.
I said earlier that this mod is kind of like playing Beta 1.7 with different terrain and looks in a lot of ways. I have some good news here, which is that you don't have to be a Beta 1.8 fan to have fun in this mod. The memory lane callbacks to the past (remember Mindcrack in 2011?) might just kind of help. Who is? Beta 1.8 is a bad version without modder help, and I could never seriously play vanilla first-part Adventure Update as just something to do to enjoy Minecraft and have fun, without the aspect of a special goal/video project or special multiplayer event. It's the Attack of the Clones of Minecraft versions, so don't worry about being attuned to it in vanilla. I'm not even a "fan" of Beta 1.8, myself. I just like some things about it and I have some positive associations. Luckily enough I seem to have struck gold a little by committing to taking Beta 1.8 and modifying things into and out of it to bring out its positive aspects and create a new unheard of way to play Minecraft. It's like if you got someone really capable to rewrite and fix the Star Wars prequels.
I should probably leave a tip here ahead of time... If you want to place a door in this mod, don't try to place it against the ground. You have to be facing into the doorway hole, and then right click on the side wall. Doors fall off if the walls break here, not if you remove the block beneath them. This makes sense. Just so people might learn from others who read this what to do in the event of house-building frustrations.
Right now the only version I'm really leading up to is Alpha 1.0.0 of this mod. That's the first public build, and it is what it suggests - the first Alpha. This is to say that more updates are to be posted after, and that NBODE's first public build "isn't finished". However, I do think I want to take a RELIEVING break from modding MC once Alpha 1.0.0 is finished and available. Probably for about two months.
In spite of being an average amount of meat on the 2011 October game's original bones - kind of like the feature count difference between Beta 1.3 and Beta 1.5 - I think NBODE provides a lot of nice toys and a few extra things you can "do", and in both singleplayer and multiplayer I've found it quite enjoyable. Though I do have to admit I play multiplayer of it a lot more.
It's really cool that I have this many people who are interested in playing Noticeably Beta 1.8 by now, and I'm excited to see the effect culminate in however the actual playing goes. If I know this right, NBODE is going to have a pretty successful opening run (by my standards) simply on the money of what I've achieved on Tumblr. I'm particularly interested to see what happens when people make gameplay videos of this mod. An at least modest opening success seems inevitable.
By the way, most of the time I can't believe I actually did this. This time I'm not talking about the amnesia.
