Java Edition 14w17a

14w17a is the nineteenth snapshot released for Java Edition 1.8.

World generation

 * Customized world type
 * Highly customizable terrain generation.
 * To use, select the new 'customized' world type, and then press the 'customize' button beneath.
 * There are 4 pages to customize the world:
 * Page 1: customizes the generation of structures, chance of lake generation, size of certain structures, and biome type and size, and sea level.
 * There are 17 customization options that affect whether generated structures will spawn in, as well as other environmental factors. Some of these presets are Yes/No inputs or sliders.
 * Sea level height, toggles for cave, village, temple, dungeon, water lake, lava lake, stronghold, mineshaft and ravine generation, sliders to control water lake, lava lake, and dungeon rarity, toggle to turn oceans into lava oceans, biome selection, biome and river size sliders.
 * Page 2: customizes the ore distribution for dirt, gravel, granite, diorite, andesite, coal, iron, gold, redstone, diamond and lapis.
 * Rarity, height range and blob size.
 * Pages 3 & 4: expert customization of the terrain generation.
 * There are 16 customization options that can be used to affect various aspects of Minecraft's terrain generator. These can be changed by moving sliders or by typing in values directly.
 * Main noise scale X/Y/Z to smooth out terrain, larger values for smoother terrain.
 * Biome scale/depth weight and biome scale/depth offset to stretch/squash terrain vertically based on the biomes default height settings.
 * Upper/lower limit scale to make terrain more solid/riddled with holes, depending on how close the values are to each other.
 * Height stretch to pull terrain upward, with smaller values causing more extreme stretching.
 * Height scale, coordinate scale, depth base size, depth noise exponent, depth noise scale.
 * There are seven presets:
 * Water world, isle land, caver's delight, mountain madness, drought, caves of chaos, good luck
 * There is a button for most pages to randomize the various values.
 * Uses the 'generator-settings' string known from superflat presets for server.properties and world data.
 * Generate structures button disappears when selected.

Command format

 * Used to set size of border, the first argument sets the size of the border and the secon
 * Used to set size of border, the first argument sets the size of the border and the secon


 * Sets the center of where the border will be placed.
 * Sets the center of where the border will be placed.


 * Game rules
 * A new gamerule that controls how often a random tick occurs.
 * Influences how fast plants and crops grow, how fast zombie pigmen spawn from portals, how fast farmland updates, how fast grass and mycelium grow and decay and more.
 * If set to 0, random ticks never occur.
 * Set to 3 by default.
 * Set to 3 by default.

General

 * Splash
 * Added the following splashes:
 * "Now with multiplayer!"
 * "Very influential in its circle!"

Blocks

 * Block models
 * Converted the remaining blocks to use block states.

Mobs

 * Endermites
 * New model (currently bugged).
 * Endermen are no longer aggressive toward non-pearl-spawned endermites.

Non-mob entities

 * Minecarts
 * Reverted to the way they were before 14w11a.

World generation

 * The End
 * Biome name is now "The End" instead of "Sky".


 * World borders
 * The default world border is now an animated texture rather than an invisible bedrock barrier.
 * There is now nothing beyond the world border.
 * Can be changed with to prevent players from leaving the specified area.
 * Is set at 60 million by default (+30 million to -30 million), divided by 8 for the nether.
 * Mobs and players can't pass through it and take damage when outside, however, in the future players will be able to go back inside if the player accidentally find outside.

General

 * Debug screen
 * All targeted blocks now have their info displayed on the right-hand side of the F3 debug screen.
 * Removed the "Facing negative/positive x/z" from the F3 menu
 * Improves performance.
 * Some block id/metadata combinations were broken by this, such as  (6-sided piston) and   (6-sided hay bale), though all-sided logs were kept.
 * List of block states.


 * Model format improvements
 * Converted most of the remaining static blocks to the model format.
 * Added "rotateVariantTextures": to preserve UV details through rotation.


 * Servers
 * New server icons, displayed with 3 buttons.
 * Up and down arrows to move the servers' order.
 * Third button is to join the server.
 * There is now a default server icon.
 * Resembles the unknown resource pack icon.
 * When editing and adding servers, the player can now set how it handles resource packs: Prompt, Enabled or Disabled.

General

 * Distance effects
 * Redstone wire (when flat on the ground) no longer appears extremely stretched at high distances
 * Fire (when on the side or bottom of a block) will also no longer appear weird at high distances from the world origin

Trivia

 * 14w17a was previously removed from the launcher for some time, but was added back in September 2018.
 * 14w17a has the second longest wait between snapshots on the same development version, with 42 days having elapsed since the release of 14w11b on March 13, 2014, only beaten by the wait time between 17w06a and 17w13a, which spanned 50 days.