Pretty Scary Update



The Pretty Scary Update is the latest major update, labeled as 1.4.2, officially released on Thursday, October 25, 2012. Among the main changes are a number of new mobs and variants, wearable and placeable heads, a new boss (the Wither), the command block, the anvil and the beacon.

Development on the Pretty Scary Update began directly following 1.3.2, which was released on August 16, 2012. 15 development snapshots for 1.4 from 12w32a to 12w42b were released. The 1.4 Pre-release was unveiled on October 19, 2012, so that modders can start preparing their mods before the launch on October 25, 2012. However, Mojang found a mob suffocation bug after this was released, and was forced to delay the launch by a day. The 1.4.1 Prerelease was unveiled on October 23, 2012. Mojang then found yet another bug, and fixed "a severe memory leak in the server". This, as well as correct rendering of fences and cobble stairs, came in the 1.4.2 Prerelease.

Minecraft 1.4 was the first update to include the Official Minecraft Bug Tracker.

The official name of the update was revealed at PAX Prime 2012 during the Minecraft panel, then later with snapshot 12w36a. Dinnerbone first revealed the 1.4 release date with Snapshot 12w40a, where he stated that he was fully into the "Prepare for release" mode.

The Pretty Scary Update was originally intended to include the Modding API, however this has been pushed to a later version.

Lighting bugs present in 1.3.2 were only partially fixed. Dinnerbone first introduced changes in snapshots 12w39a/b. Dinnerbone tweeted to revert back and push this to 1.5. Other changes postponed to a later version of Minecraft (most likely 1.5) including redstone changes, and a rendering overhaul.