Minecraft Wiki:Issues/Beta 1.9pre5

The fifth pre-release for Beta 1.9 has been recently released by Jeb.

''' Use the Discussion page first before adding any bugs onto this page. ''' Bugs can be confirmed by checking into the discussion page and make sure other people reply to your report and have the same problem.

= Bugs =

Bug Labels:


 * [X] = Minor bugs.
 * [!] = Major bugs.
 * [!!] = Bugs that can crash Minecraft or a server.
 * [?] = Possible bugs/features that you and the community (on the discussion page) are unsure about.
 *  [U]  = Bugs that Jeb tested but was unable to reproduce.
 * [A] = Annoyances.
 *  [F]  = Bugs that have been fixed in the next update.

Blocks

 * [?] Wooden stairs drop a wooden plank instead of the stairs.
 * [X] Dirt blocks that are irrigated shimmer blue on the side when viewed from underwater. Also the water-side of submerged glass blocks.
 * [X] Glass blocks do not displace loose blocks underwater.
 * [X] Tall grass can be generated on dirt and gravel in NPC villages.
 * [X] Spruce or Pine, when converted into sticks, sometimes cannot be made into tools. This bug is absent with Oak and Birch.
 * [?] When a water block is placed with empty space underneath, a column of source block is created under the water block. (Maybe an intended feature? Might help keep oceans from having random holes where land used to be.)
 * [!] Quitting to title menu while standing on a pressure plate will activate it forever. It must be rebuilt in order to make it usable again, this goes for items on wooden pressure plates too. [Verified]
 * [?] Flowers can spawn upon sand blocks but cannot be placed upon sand blocks by the player.(Only seen with yellow flowers)
 * [?] Patches of swamp water can be seen in the middle of a lake with no swamp land around it.
 * [?] Arrows do not get stuck in lilly-pads.
 * [?] Snow Golems still attack mobs in creative mode in which are neutral.
 * [?] Right clicking on a water block with a glass bottle while having a full inventory will eject a water bottle
 * [A] Lily pads, tall grass and ferns do not appear in the creative mode inventory.
 * [X] Enchantment Tables break with a single punch and are destroyed permanently, although they can be mined with a pickaxe.
 * [?] It is possible for a lilly-pad to spawn underground and on flowing water. Example:
 * [?] Chests connect with each other when placed three in a row, with a graphical overlap. When opened, they show the inventory of 2 like normal.
 * [?] Eyes of ender will sometimes go to areas without an ender portal. An example seed for 1.9pre4 which suffers from this bug: 1883114686416083372. No seed which reproduces the bug has been found for 1.9pre5.
 * [X] Dead bushes don't get placed in creative mode.
 * [X] Lily pads can now be placed by right clicking on the side of a block 1 space above water, though when placed on vines using this method, the vines disappear. Same happens with mushrooms, though they are just broken. May also work with other blocks, haven't tested this yet
 * [X] When placing a halfblock of sandstone, and another one under it, then another one over all of them, the blocks combine into 1 sandstone block at the bottom.
 * [?] Pistons can be used to generate an infinite supply of sand and gravel blocks.
 * [X] Cant place a torch under a stair block
 * [X] Glass pane don't connect to slabs, stairs and (wooden?) doors:
 * [X] Pistons can be powered by blocks that are not directly connected to them (diagonally above or 2 blocks above) leading to changes in those blocks not updating the piston, but when the piston is updated it will take those blocks into account.
 * [X] Save and Quit while water and/or lava is flowing downwards from a high source block can lead to weird freezes in state upon reloading the world (suspended blocks of fluid).
 * [A] Slimes in SMP are very buggy while in caves. They are very hard to kill. They keep jumping extremely high and falling from the ceiling
 * [A] Placing a redstone repeater to the side of a jukebox causes a lighting bug on the repeater.
 * [!] Minecarts with furnaces still can't push other minecarts (stops or glitch trough them)
 * [X] Some signs won't move from a chest to a inventory with shift+click.

Crashing
This can commonly be fixed by using the below line in a file ending in .bat or .batch. This works with 64-bit OS machines: "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Java\jre6\bin\java.exe" -Xmx256m -Xms128m -cp Minecraft.exe net.minecraft.LauncherFrame And this works for 32-bit OS machines: java -Xmx256m -Xms128m -cp Minecraft.exe net.minecraft.LauncherFrame
 * [?] Some users report F11 causing a blackscreen crash. I have experienced this before usually fixed with pressing F11 fullscreen glitch possibly happens when in game full screen when to tab out users press F11 this can be avoided by alt + tab to tab out like that - alizter1234
 * [!!] Maximising the window and moving it to another monitor before pressing 'E' or right clicking an interface after starting the game will result in the game crashing with the "Saving Chunks" screen upon pressing 'E' or right clicking any interface in Mac OS X.
 * [!!] After playing for a few hours an error will occur causing the "Saving Chunks/Out of Memory" error. This often happens while running 32-bit Java on a 64-bit OS. But since 1.9-pre5, it doesn't happen that often anymore.
 * [!!] Game (clients and ?servers?) cannot tell when it is in distress / running out of memory / processing due to an entity (Mobs or blocks on the ground) overload. Propose that when memory/processing usage is approaching critical levels, the game should take much more aggressive management of entity removal.  This can be achieved in vanilla ssp/?smp? through standing next to a mob spawner dropping mobs into a trap outside the check range but mobs remain inside the "mob reborn" range (this may have been a bug of the above memory leak, the game crashed and I was not able to restart it).  This can be achieved artificially with MCEdit with a 2x2 chunk room 10-20 blocks high and replacing the air with torches or similar.  Entity overload on SMP creative through the use of scripts mass-dropping blocks (before the ability compress blocks into a single unit) is/was a well known and often abused griefing tactic.
 * [!!] Placing a chest beside a Brewing stand in 1.9pre5 multiplayer will cause it to look like it is not there (transperant), right-clicking on it causes the game to crash. You can still break it without Minecraft crashing. After logging back on the chest will work properly.
 * [!!] Hitting Alt + F11 causes a crash and a error report to download to your desktop.

Files

 * [X] On servers if the ops.txt file is missing the message generated states "Failed to load ip ban list" obviously copied from banned-ips.txt message and not modified.
 * [X] Saved worlds show up as 0.0 MB.
 * [A] After loading a world and quitting to the main menu, some region files remain being opened and locked by the region cache manager. Altering these region files requires the game to be fully shut down first, which makes external edits cumbersome.

Gameplay
You must dig up from the obsidian you spawn on, you only have to go up 5 blocks. True. i needed to do it also Firstly, Destroying the torch under the noteblock does not turn off the noteblock. Lastly, The repeater functions backwards, it causes the noteblock to play when unpowered (Sending power does not make a sound, but removing it does)
 * [!] If you switch between Survival Mode and Creative Mode on the same Map - switching back to Survival Mode does not work properly. (you will be still able to fly around)
 * [X] In single-player, leaving an area causes the game to "spike" for a moment, but not when re-entering it. This may be exclusive to the area the user's bed is in.
 * [x] pressing the "a" key to strafe left will cause all chunks to reload. entities are not affected. unsure if there are any negative effects of this, other than lag, annoyance, and the ability to find nearby dungeons (in the same manner as the old " f render change" glitch). possible causes include hitting an enderman, having an enderman look at you, hitting an enderman while something else hits you, crit-hitting an enderman, or falling while watching an enderman watch you watch it watch you.
 * [?] using a hack to change mode to creative then back to survival you will still be able to fly and have infinite health.
 * [?] There is no apparent way to turn off f10 causing the game to be unplayable without a reinstall. It also seems to be on no matter what save I go into.
 * [X] In SMP, the server won't load the End or Nether; therefore making both worlds not generate (the End is just the 5x5 obsidian platform you spawn on).
 * [X] When entering The End, it is possible that you will spawn off the generated blocks and be placed on a 5x5 block of obsidian. If played on a mode other than creative, it would be difficult to make a path to the rest of the map. (gravel/sand?)
 * Same as above
 * [X] Redstone does not detect when redstone powered items are adjacent and direct power to them while it does detect repeaters.
 * [X] Noteblocks can only be powered in 3 ways, 2 of which is bugged: Direct wire, Torch underneath, and a direct repeater.
 * [X] If you exit the game (or or the game crashes) while in a minecart you will start next time buried up to the waist in the ground. If there's lava one block down you'll burn. If you exited the game in a crash often the minecart is duplicated.
 * [X] If you exit the game (or or the game crashes) while in a boat you will start next time on the sea bed with the boat zooming away from you.
 * [?] While using a bed you will always be interrupted by a hostile mob. (even when the bed is well within a mushroom biome where no hostile can spawn) It seems the buffer distance between you and mobs has been increased to 3? - Are you in a house with double doors? Double doors allow mobs to wake you up unless it is redstone locked.
 * [?] Sugar Cane seems to grow at a reduced rate.
 * [?] Endermen will attack you in Creative mode if they bump into a wall and you are near them.
 * [?] When logging on with a random username and password you can play minecraft singleplayer for free. (offline) -- True, but you must have offline (.minecraft) files, then you can log in with a random username. While an offline server would work with this method, an online server doesn't.
 * [?] Efficiency enchanted picks (tested with Efficiency 4 diamond pick) have little effect on reducing Obsidian mine time. Not sure if intended. Eff. IV should take 40% of mining time - 0.6 x 15s = 9s to mine obsidian.  Not tested.
 * [X] Water on top of fence posts can cause entities to hop in place if they move in any direction against a wall 1 block or more higher. This does not happen at all at the .5 minimal height for collision next to water on a fence post.
 * [?] When you're in a snow Biome in Beta 1.9 pre5, if you make a fountain of Water and wait for it to freeze, you can take it with a Bucket, and the the next flowing water will turn into Ice.
 * [?] Mushroom Soup does not stack. It's intentional.
 * [X] Being suffocated by blocks (i.e. dig down 3 blocks and place 2 sand blocks above you) while in 3rd person will cause the camera to revert back to 1st person.
 * [X] The client can place and break blocks 1 block further than the server thinks it can; blocks destroyed this way may reappear. This can be an annoyance for players. The extended reach is usable horizontally but not vertically.
 * [A] Birch and pine leaves don't appear in the creative mode selection screen.
 * [X] On the world creation screen, when you resize the window, any name you entered in the editbox will be reset to the default "New World".
 * [A] In creative mode boats are not infinite forcing you to refill your item bar after placing one. Same with TNT
 * [!] When going into The End, the player turns invisibile and the FOV turns all the way up and cannot be turned down. After a little while the screen turns upside down and the FOV becomes increased again.  Yet, the FOV slider on the menu is still at 0, but the game is beyond the maximum setting.  This bug then carries over to all other saves (worlds). Hold N and M and then Y and H (M/N = Roll, Y/H = Zoom)
 * [X] Sugar and Eye of Ender are rendered incorrectly as a tool in 3rd person mode.
 * [X] When playing on multiplayer, a slight lag causes thrown eggs to disappear. Sometimes a phantom egg is placed back in the inventory, also.
 * [X] Sometimes when standing near a repeater you will fall through one level of blocks. (And will sink into the floor up to your waist). Seems to happen more when the ceiling is only 2 blocks high.
 * [!] Strongholds can be generated without an Ender Portal. (Sample seed: -7521364253261532640)
 * [X] You can't hold down the left mouse button to continuously attack any more.
 * [X] You can't hold down the left mouse button to to break a minecart any more.

Graphical
visible to the player.
 * [X] While sat in a minecart wearing armor,opening your inventory shows you sat on your boots as well as wearing them.
 * [X] Activate F3 and open Creative Inventory. If you scroll down the background of the CPU-Time-Usage-Table (right bottom) disappears. Seems to happen if you see the "Golden Apple" with its graphical effects in the Inventory. //Update: This happens with every animated item in your inventory.
 * [X] While in front first-person the fire on the players body while burning is not
 * [X] Swamps have a horrible transition from any biome to a swamp biome leaving some nasty looking colors. Example:
 * [X] Chest armor doesn't move when swinging arms if looking in certain directions.
 * [X] Due to the new camera positioning keys, switching keys (such as I for inventory, instead of E) causes "unintended" camera panning from the player.
 * [X] If you eat rotten flesh and get infected then switch to third person and facing the character the infected animation doesn't play. Tested with fancy graphics and the default texture pack.
 * [X] Swimming/sailing in the ocean causes the horizon to flicker obnoxiously (since 1.8). It occurred in the 1.8 update because the water level was lowered one block. Previously, water level was at 65, now it's at 64. When you used to dive into water at level 65, the horizon would turn blue to create that underwater effect. But now when you dive at the new water level, the horizon still behaves as if the water level is still 65, causing that horizon glitch.
 * [X] The wheel texture is flipped upside down on one side of Minecarts.
 * [X] When you die, the player model in the inventory screen also appears dead, blocking some parts of the inventory screen/slots.
 * [X] While you're in bed, the experience level number doesn't fade out.
 * [X] When underwater with the camera position changed, it resizes the blue square filter you get when being underwater.
 * [X] After pressing f6, if you hit left shift to crouch, it inverts your movement controls.
 * [X] Water and lava drips under blocks where it probably shouldn't such as glass, signs and ladders
 * [X] Looking directly at an entity while holding a map will cause the map to become white (see http://imgur.com/5F0Wq).
 * [X] If you press F3 and exit the world you are playing on, the F3 data/screen will still be visible when you are in the minecraft menu but you cannot turn it off
 * [X] When travelling using a boat on a large body of water (e.g. ocean biome), the horizon will flicker.
 * [X] Part of the player's skin, specifically the bottom of the head and hat, is facing the opposite direction. Tested in both SSP, SMP, and all the gamemodes.
 * [X] If tree is in the middle of two biomes, it may cause an overlap of of leave blocks at that area.
 * [X] This is kind of major cause it allows you to look through walls. So what you do is play around with Y,H,N and M, (aka camera angles/depth/etc) then reset it(hold Y and H, and N and M) and press F5. If you are lucky the camera will be screw up and if you look down you will see under ground all the caves. You can't see your character tho cause its like facing the opposite way.

Lighting

 * [X] Redstone Repeaters placed between two full blocks are dark when placed along Z axis. They are properly lit when placed along X axis.
 * [X] Black and white flickering on all mobs and the player arm when playing Minecraft on Windows XP. Has occurred since 1.8 // cannot reproduce.//reproducable
 * [X] Black an white flickering on chests and all placeable objects on Minecraft Windows 7. Occurred since 1.8 // cannot reproduce.//reproducable, same with WinXP
 * [X] This lighting bug is better explained by a short, voiceless video here [Skip to 1:20 for the bug; earlier shows how to create].
 * [X] Sometimes overhangs create pitch black shadows, as shown here . However, when one gets closer to the cliff, the lighting is updated and the pitch black shadow disappears (as shown here ).
 * [X] If the block adjacent to a water source has a lighting issue, the bubble particles will become black.
 * [X] Glowstone behind glass is odd, the light shines through but the glowstone itself is almost black. Example:
 * [X] Chests and signs are often black or very dark even when in a well lit location
 * [X] Enchanting Tables Books are often black or very dark at some angles
 * [X] Light source is placed underwater and destroyed the light stays. - Fixed in the newest Pre-Release.
 * [X] Arrows shot at the bottom of a block appear dark, even in well lit areas.
 * [X] Signs flicker dark.
 * [X] Glowing redstone ore appears darker if light level is high Redstone_block_lighting.

Maps

 * [!] When you are flying on ice, you will see the sides of the chunks (Confirmed for versions 1.6, 1.7.3, 1.8.1, and 1.9pre5)


 * [!] Created a map prior to 1.9pre5. After getting 1.9pre5, every new map made is an exact duplicate of the first one regardless of where it's made. Check and make sure you're not holding down shift when crafting the Map; this will always create a duplicate of "map_0"


 * [X] Using a map, while in a boat, at night, causes the map to become "highlighted" when the player looks down at the map.


 * [X] Map arrow don't match real looking direction.


 * [A] Blocks which use damage values to select their appearance only show the default colour on a map, e.g. an area full of red wool will show up as white on the map.

Mobs
''Correction: you can see endermen and spiders far away in fog.
 * [X] The cow, pig, wolf, sheep and sheep fur rear texture are upside down. It's maybe a general bug and maybe concerns all mobs/items/entities like boat, cart, chest and sign... It does affect the underside of player's head (1.8.1 was fine, during pre5 I noticed the bottom of my chin was now at the back of my neck; not sure when it started).
 * [X] Spiders, endermen and silverfish will still try to attack you even if you have not provoked them in creative mode (other hostile mobs do not ).
 * [X] You can see see mobs far away in fog, though they are white.
 * [X] In a dark area, creepers and skeletons don't attack you.
 * [A] All (non aquatic) passive mobs make a bee-line for the sea. After a short while the land will clear of livestock which can be found floating offshore or trapped in ponds and pits. Includes cows, pigs, sheep & mooshroom cows. Chickens seem less affected.
 * This may be due to mob pathfinding directing them to attempt to reach a point below them. I have witnessed chickens climb a dirt spiral to jump and float out of a pit, so this may be a case of the pathfinding algorithm trying too hard to move in a direction.--PlNG 20:28, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * [A] Passive mobs constantly bounce when next to fences even though they cannot get over.
 * [!] Mooshroom spawn too much in some area (see http://tof.canardpc.com/view/993ab614-4193-4b24-9d04-fcadd5c3f517.jpg). More than 29000 was removed with the help of MCEdit. The mooshrooms spawned back after several minutes.
 * [X] Sheering baby Mooshrooms yields a full grown adult cow rather than a baby cow. Possible exploit to gather beef faster from breeding by bi-passing the time spent to age.
 * [?][A] Slimes and Magma Cubes are voiding several spawning algorithm rules. Such things as spawning on top of blocks labeled in the game as non-spawnable (glass, half steps, stairs, etc); spawning inside of translucent blocks next to air blocks, such as spawning inside of a piston block; spawning inside 1x1 block spaces that contain translucent blocks such as redstone, repeaters or torches.
 * After more research and testing, I have found this is caused by them ignoring the collision mask for translucent blocks. I've witnessed all sorts of weird stuff like them spawning inside of extended sticky pistons holding solid blocks and unable to move because of the pushers collision mask; spawning inside of glass with a solid block below it; spawning inside of extremely tight spots because the head layer was glass or piston and spawning on top of things like repeaters, half steps and the like when they clearly have a collision mask.  I could not replicate this with any other mobs, so the mistake lies somewhere in the code for cubed entities.
 * [?] Ghast hit box (and collision check when spawning) are set approximately one block too low.
 * [A] Slimes and Magma Cubes do not despawn when setting to peaceful despite being hostile mobs at all sizes. This is indeed a "feature" but it was also not as intended when originally coded.  The original intent was to allow the smallest version of them to spawn but remove the rest since the smallest ones do no damage, just annoy.  This clearly is not how they have been behaving all these months.
 * [X] Chicken clips through gravel block and asphyxiate while following the player with wheat.
 * [X] Endermen may teleport after the player deals a killing blow resulting in their drops appearing elsewhere, often out of sight of the player and therefore lost.
 * [X] Mob path-finding is extremely lackluster and can easily break in tight spaces. In fact, it is so faulty that even a single block placed well over 50 blocks has a chance to cause mobs in a tight space to behave completely wrong; typically resulting in mobs blatantly ignoring the player entirely.
 * [X] Mass amounts of Spiders may collapse into a super dense spider ball, unable to escape the hitboxes of other spiders even when there's room, requiring that they be pulled apart one at a time. Spider Ball
 * [X] Mobs of all kinds no longer wander randomly if the player is a little distance away. They simply stand in one spot until the player gets closer. Mob towers that rely on mobs stumbling into water travelators no longer work if the player isn't close. Turns out this is an intentional effect in the 1.9pre5 update. Apparently pdating wandering mobs is too resource heavy so they don't move unless you're close. This spells the end of mob towers.

Multiplayer Related

 * [!] Reducing server.properties view-distance drastically reduces/eliminates mob spawning in SMP
 * [!] No Ender Map other than Spawn platform. (After exstensive testing... Might of just spawned Far off the island.....) -Flamespinner
 * [?] End Portal spawns you 1500 coords away or so from the floating island in the end.
 * [X] When exiting a minecart after riding it, the player floats and can clip into blocks. This condition only disappears when restarting the Minecraft client.
 * [X] When an arrow is shot at a block, the shot arrow floats to the top of the block. It does not stay at the position it was shot at.
 * [!] Nether Portals : Same bug as portal to The End (Portal is created above a huge lava lake, land is far away)
 * [A] Servers could use join/quit DDOS/flood protection through queueing, or at least the ability to limit/combine/reduce player announcements.
 * [!] Client-side world holes are still a frequent occurrence in multiplayer games.
 * [U] From pre4 thread: "Blocks are not always what they seem to be. For example, a Dirt block can look like a Stone block.". It seems that the cause is that the client got one chunk with wrong data since it can be fixed by rejoining the server. The bug is very rare and very old (at least an half year).
 * [A] Use of multiple TNT on SMP occasionally leaves 'ghost' TNT tiles (old bug, been around since as far back as 1.2.3_04 as per youtube video). This is a client end issue, as re-logging will typically remove any ghost tiles.
 * [A] Similar to TNT issue, when clearing high pillars of sand/gravel from the base up, some times you will encounter this problem, too.

Memory/CPU General

 * [X] The Macintosh version uses 32-bit Java, even on 64-bit computers (This is because the launcher specifies 32-bit java, but there is a fix.)
 * Same here, on Windows 7 64bit, unless you use a batch file, or shortcut:
 * "C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe" -jar "full path to minecraft.exe"

Sound

 * [X] Unchecked volume increase? Placing a water source at the feet of 500+ mobs standing in a single square produces a very loud sound equivalent to a small army of creepers detonating simultaneously.
 * [?] Rain does not always generate the rain sound.
 * [X] Walking across a series of trapdoors does not make any sounds. Walking across the edges of blocks adjacent to the trapdoors (ie, walking across the top of the block containing the trapdoor) makes the walking on wood sound.

Weather

 * [X] Sometimes a thunderstorm can start but it will not rain until near the end of the storm. Mobs spawn normally.
 * [A] Weather sounds/looks the same regardless of weather severity. Would be nice to be able to distinguish audio/visually between an overcast day, a light drizzle and "Get the **** out of this!" weather.  Thundersnows and Desert Lightning.

Lava

 * [?] While in the Nether, I fell into the lava. I paused the game (with esc) but after a few seconds, the entire screen went completely red and the game froze. I had to end the process to get rid of it. (If you want to recreate my scenario for testing purposes, I was wearing full Iron armor at the time, if that matters.)
 * [?] You can now create an infinite lava spring.

Water

 * [!] Water falling directly onto rails/redstone/regular torches from above will destroy that item completely.
 * [!] if you have a column of water running down a wall and you block the hole, the water below it keeps flowing, it's like all the water becomes source blocks. //Confirmed, water placed above air will turn all blocks below into source blocks. This makes it impossible to have 1x1 flows of water because the source blocks will leak in all directions.
 * [A] Fluids such as water can alter other fluids to change their angle; however the angle of the water can alter whether or not an entity can jump out of the water. (Further explanation: Prior to 1.6 this feature didn't affect the way the water reacted with entities.  Current tests to exploit the angles of waters in all 4 directions when water was applied to corners or head on to shift the angle caused varied results.  For instance, it is impossible to jump out of a source block onto any other source blocks 1 block higher.  Using flowing water yielded a rather varied slew of results.  With just water straight ahead in the direction being tested, only West was able to hop out into the source block.  With water applied to the corners of a flowing stream to lift it up, 2 directions could hop out onto a dry block just fine while the other two could not.  All tests were done on the player, but I noticed these problems several months ago on a mob machine and did a slew of tests using mobs to gather the same odd results.)
 * [X] Placing a contained water source next to a ladder then carving the block below the ladder and placing a source block in that position will cause the first source block (the one next to the ladder, not under it) to convert into a flowing stream that points at the ladder; or rather the source block hidden in the hole below the ladder. Unsure which the game is doing since they are both in the same direction using this trick.  Basically it turns a source block into a flowing block when it shouldn't.
 * [!][A] Water doesn't push activated TNT, very annoying in some cases.
 * [!][A] Falling water destroys items normally pushed aside by flowing water. An exhaustive list: Sapling, powered rail, detector rail, cobweb, tall grass, dandelion, rose, brown mushroom, red mushroom, torch, redstone wire, seeds, rails, lever, redstone torches, button, redstone repeaters, stems, lily pads, nether warts, and other objects of similar nature.

Biomes/Dimensions

 * [?] Sometimes there are random cacti on mountains.
 * [?][!] Nether fortresses are not spawning (checked on 2 worlds using MCedit to check every part of the currently generated map for them. More extensive testing may be required.)
 * Make sure your MC Edit is up to date -- May just be generating an older version of minecraft that doesn't have the Fortresses
 * They do spawn... I found two of them on my world in 350 block radius from my spawn position (Nether portal)
 * Sometimes a Biome with water such as an ocean or so, from a earlier version like 1.8/1.7.5 etc. will make the whole map into an Snow/ice Biome.
 * in My case my whole 1.7.5 map turned into an snow / ice biome -_- and all the water froze and snow is on every block
 * [!] Sometimes after dying on a hardcore world and starting a new one (hardcore) you may find your house (not sure if the seed is the same).

= References =