Pocket Edition v0.8.0 alpha

v0.8.0 alpha was a major update to Minecraft: Pocket Edition that was released on December 12, 2013. It added new blocks, items, crops, and other features, as well as some changes and fixes.

Additions[]

Blocks[]

Wood planks, slabs, and stairs

Added spruce, birch, and jungle varieties.
Each one can only be crafted with their respective wood type.
Jungle variants are unobtainable in Survival mode.

Block of coal

Can be crafted with nine coal.
Can be used as fuel in a furnace, smelting up to 80 items.

Carpets

Thin blocks that can be used as decoration.
Red carpets can be crafted with two red wool blocks.
The other 15 colors are unobtainable in Survival mode.

Cobblestone walls

Decorative blocks that can be used to create boundaries.
Comes in cobblestone and moss stone variants.
Cobblestone walls can be crafted with six cobblestone.
Moss stone walls are unobtainable in Survival mode.

Hay bales

Decorative, flammable blocks that serve as compact storage of wheat.
Can be crafted with nine wheat.

Iron bars

Serve a similar purpose to glass panes.
Can be crafted with six iron ingots.

Pumpkins

Fruit blocks that grow from fully-grown pumpkin stems.
Can be crafted into jack o'lanterns, pumpkin pie, or pumpkin seeds.

Jack o'lanterns

Solid blocks that provide light.
Can be crafted with a pumpkin and a torch.

Rails

Non-solid blocks that provide a path along which minecarts can travel.
Can be crafted with iron ingots and a stick.

Powered rails

A type of rail that increases the velocity of moving minecarts.
Can be crafted with gold ingots, a stick, and redstone dust.

Crops

Jungle wood

Serves as a decorative block.
Is unobtainable in Survival mode.

Jungle leaves

Serve as a decorative block.
Are unobtainable in Survival mode.

Ferns

Aesthetic plants that have the same characteristics as grass.
Are unobtainable in Survival mode.

Dead bushes

Aesthetic plants that can only be placed on sand.
Are unobtainable in Survival mode.

Sponges

Currently serve no purpose.
Are unobtainable in Survival mode.

Bark

Currently serves no purpose.
Is not yet obtainable.

Items[]

Beetroot seeds

Have a ¹⁄₁₅ chance of popping out from grass when tilled.

Clocks

Display the current position of the sun and moon.
Can be crafted with gold ingots and redstone dust.

Compasses

Point to the world spawn point.
Can be crafted with iron ingots and redstone dust.

Minecarts

Train-like vehicle entities that run on rails.
Can be crafted with five iron ingots.

Pumpkin seeds

Obtained from the nether reactor.

Redstone

Drops from redstone ore when mined with an iron or diamond pickaxe.
Can be used to craft clocks, compasses, and powered rails.

Foods

Beetroots
- Restore 1 when eaten.
Beetroot soup
- Restores 8 when eaten.
Carrots
- Restore 3 when eaten.
Potatoes
- Restore 1 when eaten.
Pumpkin pie
- Restores 8 when eaten.
Baked potatoes
- Restore 5 when eaten.

Gameplay[]

Breeding

Feeding animals their respective food items makes them enter "love mode."
- Hearts come out of animals while in love mode.
When two animals of the same species are in love mode, they pathfind toward each other and produce a baby animal.

General[]

Mipmaps (iOS only)

Blocks far away from the player have lower resolution textures to increase performance.

Options

Added far (8 chunks) and farthest (12¹⁄₂ chunks) render distances.

Changes[]

Blocks[]

The textures of some blocks are now randomly rotated, for a more natural effect. This includes:
- Grass blocks (top and bottom sides only)
- Dirt
- Sand
- Leaves (top and bottom sides only)
- Sponges
- TNT (top and bottom sides only)
- Obsidian
- Snow blocks
- Snow layers
- Clay
- Netherrack
- Glowstone
- Sandstone (top and bottom sides only)
- Blocks of coal

Wood

Is now rotatable, with the wood placed with the inner side facing the player.

Paintings

Rendering has been remade.

TNT

Can now be ignited by fire and lava.

Lava

Now creates stone when it flows vertically into water.

Redstone ore

Now drops redstone dust when mined with an iron or diamond pickaxe.

Signs and chests

Improved synchronization lag in multiplayer.

Chests

Items being moved to/from a chest is now correctly rendered.

Flowers

Position on the block is now randomized.

Saplings

Can now be used as furnace fuel, smelting 0.5 items each.

Grass block

Changed texture from to .
Inventory icon changed from to .

Oak leaves

Changed texture from to .

Birch leaves

Changed texture from to .

Oak sapling

Changed texture from to .

Wool

Changed textures from to .

Sandstone

Changed texture from to .

Gravel

Changed texture from to .

Lapis lazuli block

Changed texture from to .

Grass

Changed texture from to .

info_update

Changed texture from to .

info_update2

Changed texture from to .

reserved6

Changed texture from to .

Ice

Inventory icon changed from to .

Items[]

Bone meal

Now works like in Java Edition.
Can grow ferns and grass in Survival and Creative.
Pumpkin and melon stems only grow by one when bone meal is used.
Flowers now spawn other flowers when bone meal is used.
Grows sugar cane to maximum height.

Eating particles

Are shown to look like the food being eaten rather than random pixels from the food.

Bowls and wooden tools

Can now be used as furnace fuel, smelting 1 item each.

Lava buckets

Can now be used as furnace fuel, smelting up to 100 items.

Magenta dye

Can now additionally be crafted with pink dye and purple dye, or with lapis lazuli, rose red, and pink dye.

Gray dye

Can now be crafted with bone meal and an ink sac.
- Is still unobtainable in Survival mode due to ink sacs not being obtainable.

Light gray dye

Can now be crafted with bone meal and gray dye, or with two bone meal and an ink sac.
- Is still unobtainable in Survival mode due to ink sacs and gray dye not being obtainable.

Cocoa beans

Can now be crafted with orange dye and an ink sac, or with dandelion yellow, rose red, and an ink sac.
- Is still unobtainable in Survival mode due to ink sacs not being obtainable.
Changed texture from to .

Bow

New rendering and animated items.
Can now be used as furnace fuel, smelting 1 item each.
Changed texture from to .

Leather armor

Changed textures from to .

Apple

Changed texture from to .

Bread

Changed texture from to .

Raw porkchop

Changed texture from to .

Cooked porkchop

Changed texture from to .

Raw chicken

Changed texture from to .

Cooked chicken

Changed texture from to .

Raw beef

Changed texture from to .

Steak

Changed texture from to .

Coal and charcoal

Changed texture from to .

Arrows

Have updated sounds.

Removed arrow sound	Track
Arrow Contact (pre-0.8)

Mobs[]

All mobs

New visual effect for burning mobs.

Sheep

Now have the color overlay of its wool around its face and when sheared.

Zombies

Now rarely drop carrots and potatoes.

AI

System has been improved.
- Mobs can now swim over deep water.
- Hostile mobs are now more intelligent.

Animals

Follow the player when holding wheat (cows and sheep), seeds (chickens), or potatoes/beetroot/carrots (pigs).
Baby animals
- Now follow adult animals of their species.

Spiders

Now move faster.

Non-mob entities[]

Thrown eggs

Now have a chance of spawning baby chickens instead of adult chickens.

Falling blocks

Now drop their item form when falling onto blocks they cannot replace, such as torches.

Gameplay[]

Crafting

Craftable recipes are now shown first in the crafting screen.
If there is 99+ of an item in the inventory, it now shows the actual quantity in the crafting system, rather than 99+.

Inventory

Changed the flow of the inventory for the armor/crafting screens so that the back button goes back to the inventory.
Items that are not supposed to be obtainable no longer have a red background.

Hotbar

Is now transparent.
When selecting an item in the inventory, it replaces the one in the selected hotbar slot instead of placing it in the leftmost slot and shifting everything to the right.
Tapping the inventory button now closes the inventory while open.
Items that are not supposed to be obtainable no longer have a red background.

Creative

Players stop burning as soon as they exit fire/lava.
The hotbar is now saved when exiting a world.
Mining speed increases at/near mining distance limit (8 blocks per second).
Creative inventory
- Has been redesigned, and is now split into four different categories.
- Each category contains the following items, with items added in this update colored purple, items not legitimately accessible before this version colored red, and items previously not available in Creative mode colored green:

Category 1

Category 2

Category 3

General[]

New app logo.^{[more information needed]}

Clouds

Are now 3D.
Have a new tessellation algorithm.

Options

Smooth lighting is now always on, and can no longer be disabled.
Fancy graphics are now on by default.

Graphics

Held items are now rendered in 3D, and bob up and down slightly when idle and sway to the side when turning.
Lighter colored sky that changes slightly depending on the biome.
- Water fades to non-transparent in the distance (iOS only).
Refactored most of the rendering to use indexed VBOs.
- Remade the arrow model.
- Inventory is now rendered using cached VBOs.
- New sky rendering using a triangle fan.
Separated far and near chunks into two queues for performance reasons.
- Fog only on far chunks.
- Transparency only on near chunks.
- Alpha-test-only layers are hidden in far chunks.

Lighting

All entities now produce circular stencil shadows on blocks below them.
Lighting on entities is now dynamic and is no longer the same light level on all sides.
Lighting on each entity is now tinted based on how much sky light and block light is on it.
Light direction on entities now depends on the position of the sun. This does not affect stencil shadows.
All lighting changes are only visible when fancy graphics is turned on.

Textures

Block textures are now generated with terrain-atlas.tga instead of terrain.png.
Item textures are now generated with items-opaque.png instead of items.png.
Inventory icons are now generated with their respective texture atlases instead of gui_blocks.png.

Fixes[]

32 issues fixed
From released versions before 0.8.0

MCPE-40 – You can never run away from mobs
MCPE-169 – Saplings aren't Fuel
MCPE-728 – Wrong dark leaves texture
MCPE-1068 – White line appear in pocket edition
MCPE-1353 – Stonecutter, Quartz Block, Melon (Block) and Melon Seeds show wrong description
MCPE-1772 – Player jumps too early by glass pane
MCPE-2904 – Chicken egg bug
MCPE-3358 – TNT does not work in creative
MCPE-3890 – Different wood logs make the same wooden planks
MCPE-4118 – Bad inventory GUI on Retina display
MCPE-4231 – Automatic egg/ snowball throwing
MCPE-4338 – Mobs draw distance greater than stone. Creates x-ray vision
MCPE-4379 – Animals stay in water
MCPE-4508 – Creative inventory
MCPE-4821 – Shearing a sheep gives you less wool
MCPE-4935 – Creative items glitching to different items
MCPE-5294 – Wooden tools cannot be used as fuel
MCPE-5408 – No bedrock in creative inventory
MCPE-5495 – Bow bug
MCPE-5572 – Shooting a bow, throwing eggs/snowballs, eating needs block proximity
MCPE-5588 – TNT dissolving
MCPE-5592 – Bow firing bug / annoyance
MCPE-5600 – Bow and Arrow issue
MCPE-5634 – Your own arrow can't hurt you
MCPE-5671 – Bow problem in Creative Multiplayer
MCPE-6201 – Can't pass Y:31 in Minecart