By Quintin Smith on June 15th, 2011 at 6:03 pm.

Notch has released a video of the pistons that’ll feature in Minecraft update 1.7, aka the Adventure Update. I’m well aware that this only barely scrapes into the category of “news”, but then I realised how easy it would be to come up with a headline pun and that was that.
Besides, after watching this video I’m now convinced that I (finally) want to start fannying around with elaborate redstone circuity. Just look at this.
2:40 is the good bit. Also, the cow abuse at 4:00 reassures me. If the boys at Mojang aren’t immune to the temptation of giving the odd cow a slap, there’s surely hope for the rest of us.


Quinns, you have the best puns.
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He’s the pungeon master.
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westyfield, you have the worst puns.
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I’m sure that you just can’t take such pun-ishment.
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Well, Minecraft definetly needs more new mechanics. I’d especially love me some windmills and/or watermills to generate electiricty-like things for powering elevators and whatnot.
And hopefully this time the patch isn’t totally broken for a week.
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Indeed.
Low-brow profanity pun?
Not a pun for me,
Indeed.
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And here I haven’t even looked in Minecraft’s direction for months.
This might change that. We’re a steam engine away from paddlewheelers and locomotives.
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At first I wasn’t that excited about these pistons. Until I saw that elaborate gate. I’ll definitely be trying to build something similar.
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2:19~ is pretty good too. That opens up quite a few options.
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You might say it is the doorway to many possibilities.
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It could be the entrance of new ideas
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SURELY that should be “Getting Pist On”?
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Better piston than pissed off.
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You mean pissed ON?
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Finally, fully operational (and remote-controlled) dams :D
Now I can fulfill my dream of building a giant stone skull in front of my castle’s main viewing room, with lava running from its eyes and mouth at the flick of a switch from my lounging chair.
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A Minecraft version of the Boatmurdered Defence System?
Now all we need are elephants.
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Hell yes, Napalm.
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What could possibly go wrong?!
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Initiate operation Fuck The World.
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Some other things hidden in the video(semi-spoilers):
- Torches on fences(and probably simple stackable fences)
- New cobblestone textures
- New brick textures
In the changelog screenshot there’s also a mention of XP orbs, which can also be partly seen in one of the colored lightning screenshots, and there’s a mention of huge mushrooms.
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One of the other things pointed out on twitter was that the censored changelist contained the line ” – Removed herobrine”, and since two negatives make a positive…
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I know how to build stone and wood houses, and dig, and make torches and weapons – thats it.
Honestly, I have zero interest in the direction Minecraft is going. I’d love it to evolve, but just addind more stuff to build isn’t really the way(for me).
Adding life to the world, npcs and the long promised adventure mode though, would be interesting
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This is the right direction. Until now Mincecraft was boring and static, pistons add interaction. Finally, my Chamber of Riddles will look exactly how it should.
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What is this “long promised adventure mode,” out of curiosity? He’s adding more reasons to explore – these pistons are a small part of what’s called the “adventure patch,” after all – but I’ve never seen a reason for that to be a separate mode from survival. What would be different?
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I have absolutely no idea. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Hope it’s something more interesting than simply adding new mob and new drop.
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@mwoody
If I remember correctly, the adventure mode would include explorable dungeons, loot and would be generally more RPG-y.
Now, we shall just wait for Wizardry and tell us how it could never be RPG-y.
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Adventure Mode – as distinct from an ‘adventure update’ – is a mode in which you can’t dig. The idea being that other people would create dungeons / puzzles (in Minecraft, normally), and then you could go through and solve them without being able to just demolish the entire building by hand.
It has indeed been planned for a while, but I can see why it’s not the very highest priority.
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Ahhh, gotcha, that does make sense. I could see it being sort of interesting, maybe, but only once the base engine’s ability to produce procedural villages/castles/dungeons is in.
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I think I’m in love again.
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yeah, great. Now fix the bloody fluids.
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I never really understood the hate for the fluid physics. Yes, it’s not realistic but it’s intrinsically minecrafty – water is a block.
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An unmanageable block. Filling a pool shouldn’t be such a goddam chore to get a flat, even surface. Finite Liquid is the way forwards (albeit some flooding of caves does occur).
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I think the fluid physics in terraria is realistic and simple enough at the same time. OK, maybe they could also define pressure, so that connected liquids in parallel containers level. It should be easy to implement, if the surrounding block has less pressure (taking into account the height), move water there…
Aside from all the quest, NPC etc. game-like stuff, which should be implemented as soon as possible. If they were to ask my opinion on what should be implemented first in terms of game mechanics, I would also vouch for liquids.
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I think BT’s attitude to broadband rollout is not fit for purpose in the UK.
Wait, I thought this was a minecraft thread.
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Fix for water in minecraft :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhPHGINYcl4
Minecraft Finite Liquid Mod.
I’ll come back to playing Minecraft when this is incorporated in the core game engine.
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Haha I see what you did thar.
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Floodgate! Gatehouses! Conveyor Belts! Flash flood for farming! The possibilities are (nearly) limitless!
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Quoth Bit, Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
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OMG! Finally! Giant Dwarfen Gates, here i come!
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Somehow, someway, I am going to build a tower that unfolds from the ground, from 60~ units of depth to 60~ units of height.
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I’m keeping everything crossed that pistons can also push pistons.
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Well, there are already videos on YouTube of self-building and self-repairing houses using pistons, so what you envisage would only take a bit of Dwarvern ingenuity.
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Yes they can, check 2:55 in the video!
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Pistons in pistons.
Pistception.
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Think of the dungeons and traps that can be constructed with this! Can’t wait for more news, this update will surely get me back into the game ;)
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Finally, I can create traps of death for my friends beyond my land mines.
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Pistons look cool, but I’m not sure their inclusion alone would entail calling it the “Adventure” update.
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Just think they threw ‘em in there because they’ve been talking about them for a while. It’s quite a requested feature. They don’t seem to have too much parameters though. I would like to build a giant elevator, but if they only push one block in height, it’s going to take a lot of pistons. You could build a shaft and flood it with water though… very Indiana Jones.
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You should be able to mix pistons and water for an elevator. Have one piston open a path for a water supply to fill the shaft and a second piston to open a drain.
From the video, although it looks silly, you don’t even need to use a sticky piston with a block attached as a plug, as water is apparently magically stopped by even the shaft of an extended piston.
You can probably build all sorts of things with pistons once you start having pistons themselves activating and deactivating further piston circuits.
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no see you misunderstand… its the “adventures with pistons” update.
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Currently water is also magically blocked by open trapdoors, so I think I’ll let that slide for now. It helps to make things more compact, anyhow.
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I now want to play more minecraft!
Some great new ideas. Open-able doors, disposable bridges, create waterfalls by pushing a button,… Can’t wait to see what some of the crazy internetters will create with this.
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I… I still want tables and chairs.
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Your demands are unbelievable. Tables AND chairs?! Where I come from, we’re lucky if we have some mental institution to sit on, and we place our food on straitjacket. Who took my sedative?!
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My brother and I had an agreement: when they implement floodgates, we’d return to Minecraft.
Back we go!
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what’cha guys gona do with dem floodgates?? huh? huh?
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Very nice!
That door thing… that’s what I want to make. Or some sort of creeper-crusher.
Odd looking at the default textures though (I made my own, which I guess will need to be updated again for 1.7, and I only just finished updating it for 1.6.6! visit http://www.ultimaaiera.com for details! /shamelessplug)
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Pistons!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FAN-TASTIC!!!!!!!!!! Oh wait, I’m going to go fight a giant segmented death-worm right now, in Terraria, the game with THINGS TO DO.
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Well i did everything in tererria, Back to minecraft were the building stuff dosent suck!
really though both games are awesome. but the building stuff in tererria is so bland. tererria for mindless slashing minecraft for building awesome stuff. hopefully the adventure update bridges the gap.
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minor nitpick: jeb is spelt J E B not N O T C H :P
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Finally. I can now have moving drawbridges. :D
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And after three weeks of no MineBawks updates, we finally get a massive Adventurer patch – A PISTON. WOW! Take her away Microsoft, that’s all she wrote.
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What sort of an adventure update would it be if they spoiled the adventure content before the update was released?
Pistons are only a part of this update. Something they’ve been working on for a while, and something me and many others are really looking forward to.
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I plan on using pistons to push my planet out of orbit and into the sun.
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Newton’s laws of motion bet you won’t.
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sticky piston + cactus + pressure plate = spikey death?
One can only hope… minecraft doesn’t yet allow for nearly enough traps!
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Holmes versus Moriarty! Aristotle versus… MASHY SPIKE-PLATE!
Seriously though, pistons and hatches powered by elaborate redstone circuitry will probably make for an experience not unlike Portal 2 with it’s dynamic panels. I’ll certainly try to make something like that.
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Really glad they scrapped the six-metal-per-piston recipe from the mod.
I guess it’ll be impossible to create a properly discrete self-propelled entity with pistons, unless there is some surface that pistons can push themselves off from. No self-propelled howitzer for us yet. Still, floodgates for blue and red goop have got be a good thing, and the auto-farming possibilities are pretty endless, assuming there’s a way to make them reliably smash blocks.
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Random bit no one has commented on yet that I’ve seen: he uses a slimeball to contruct a sticky piston. So it looks like slimes are coming back, finally.
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were they ever gone?!?!
think I remember finding a couple not too long ago
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I’ve never, ever seen one, but wow, the wiki claims they’re still in. And I spend 90% of my time at or near bedrock, too – that’s one damn rare mob.
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They are actually not at bedrock level, they spawn in a HUGE underground caves. First time I’ve met them, I was actually scared, but soon I KILLED THEM ALL.
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Seen them a couple of times on our current server. Seen more evidence of them – loose slimeballs – than actual slimes though.
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the pistons could be used to make a great pork factory – just get the pigs in place and squish until delicious.
… well, i suppose they’d need some way to lure pigs, or birth them… they need to add pig bait in the next update.
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But can you place the piston upside down a make a jumping sand castle?
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FUND IT.
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