Redstone Update

The Redstone Update is a planned major update labeled as 1.5. It was announced at MineCon 2012 at the Future Updates with the Minecraft PC Team and The Future of Mod API talks. It will probably be released sometime in early or mid January 2013.

Planned changes
Note: Most of the changes listed here have no detailed references since most of them were mentioned at MineCon, especially the Future Updates with the Minecraft PC Team and the The Future of Mod API talks.

You can watch the presentation here:

Redstone improvements
Yes{| class="wikitable" ! header 1 ! header 2 ! header 3
 * row 1, cell 1
 * row 1, cell 2
 * row 1, cell 3
 * row 2, cell 1
 * row 2, cell 2
 * row 2, cell 3
 * }
 * row 2, cell 3
 * }

Minecart improvements

 * New ways of transporting items
 * Using minecarts similarly to Railcraft systems
 * New uses for storage minecarts
 * Filling and emptying of storage minecarts
 * Specific rails to empty them
 * The possibility of linking minecarts together (driven by furnace minecarts)
 * Rails to unload mobs and perhaps players when reached

Rendering engine rewrite
The features were:
 * Will require a higher OpenGL feature-set
 * Will include some sort of fallback for older hardware
 * Support for high resolution textures
 * The internal layout of texture packs will change
 * Every block will have its own texture file
 * Supports the use of animated textures for all blocks
 * The geometry of individual textures can differ
 * Not intended to support HD skins
 * Much faster overall rendering, resulting in more frames per second (FPS).
 * Lighting fixes similar to the ones first introduced in snapshots 12w39a/b (during 1.4 development)
 * Support for fancy lighting control
 * Support for more realistic lighting, such as active furnaces only giving off light from their front surface