Experience Orb

Experience orbs are a speculated new item that might come out in beta 1.8. They might look like golden/yellow balls, as seen in the picture. The orb wasn't officially confirmed by Notch, but he did confirm that a hidden clue of something that will be added to beta 1.7 is in the picture of the new lighting and the blurred 1.8 change-list. It is believed by some to be this orb.

Evidence for the inclusion of the orb


In the lighting system photo a small yellow spherical shape can be seen on the left side of the screen, but a day after the photo was published Notch claimed it had an "Error" and posted a new one, this time, without a yellow sphere. In a latter tweet, Notch showed a picture of a 1.8 change-list. Although it was completely blurred out and was, at first, thought of as a joke ,but then Notch stated that one of the pictures with the new lighting system and the change list had a secret in them. People all around the web started speculating.

One place that people discussed it was on the Minecraft forums, where it was discovered that the tabs at the top of the change list that were partly covered, could be decoded based on the 1 pixel tall pattern available in the image.

After a user named "tmcaffeine" successfully decoded, the tabs read: ExperienceOrb.java, changelist.txt, Level.java, Tile.java, HugeMushroomTile.jav(a?), HugeMushroomFeature.(java?), RandomLevelSource(cut)

Therefore, it was speculated that the yellow sphere might be related to the experience orb. As of now, Notch has neither confirmed nor denied this idea, but he did say that the answer was found.

Possible ways to debunk the evidence
Several theories raise on what it could be except of a new item. Some of them are: a yellow flower, an egg, a slime ball or a golden apple. The yellow flower theory is easily taken down because of the round shape of the item, and because a flower will be higher up. The egg, slime ball and golden apple theories are more solid, as they claim that the new light system makes the orb change its color because of a torch near by. The egg theory hits a wall when comparing to the orb: the orb is too round to be an egg. The golden apple and the slime ball is also somewhat broken down; the shape is still not perfect, but they are close.

Another problem is that the golden apple, and more so the slime ball, are different in color than the orb. This can be countered by saying that Beta 1.8 will make item colors dynamic, just like it will be for blocks, but nothing is known about the coloring of items in Beta 1.7. Even another problem is the shading of the items(=the way the shadows form on the item), which in comparison to to the orb is way off for them all. This can also be countered by saying that Beta 1.8 will make item shading dynamic as well, just like it will be for blocks, but nothing is known about the shading of items in 1.7.