Winter mode



Winter Mode was a randomly occurring map type for Minecraft Alpha. It was added on July 9th of 2010 and is the first biome to appear in Minecraft. Worlds generated having this mode could not be changed back to the normal mode and vice versa naturally. Players could, however, force their savegame into Winter Mode by activating the SnowCovered parameter in level.dat using a map editor such as NBTEdit.

The Halloween Update disabled the snowfall effect and made Winter Mode obsolete (snow effect is still in game files), because snow is now area-dependent, as one of many biomes.

However, Notch recently announced that rain and falling snow will be added in 1.5 Beta. Also he announced that Ice and snow will regenerate if it snows.

Differences
One of the differences is falling snowflakes. These snowflakes will create Snow tiles on any tile that is directly exposed to the sky, provided it's solid. Unlike Grass, Snow will not "grow" onto tiles under cover. A light source can be placed next to it in order to melt the snow. Snow can be broken by hand or with tools, and a shovel can be used to produce snowballs, which can then be thrown or crafted into snow blocks. Snow will automatically break if a block is placed on it and will hover in the air if placed over a half block.

The second unique element is Ice. When a map is generated, all exposed water blocks are frozen into Ice, which is semi-transparent and slippery. Ice can be changed back to a spring tile by hand or with a pickaxe if speed is preferred. Like snow, it can be melted by being placed in proximity to a light source.

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