There may be hope for 1.8 afterall...

Discussion in 'General Minecraft Discussion' started by ShelLuser, Feb 4, 2015.

  1. Hi gang!

    Besides playing Minecraft online I also occasionally play survival and when my gf comes over (or I go to visit her place) we also sometimes play MC together. Normally using a private, vanilla, server I once set up but when I started experimenting with 1.8, and my gf wanted to join as well, we also started experimenting with the "Open to LAN" feature.

    The only problem I had was that 1.8's performance was extremely poor. It was playable, also with 2 players over the LAN, but the very moment when you had to deal with (several) enemy mobs it would result in a disaster. Sometimes funny disasters, but even so.. it was playable, "BUT...."

    As such we haven't been playing on 1.8 very often but instead fully focused our attention on 1.7.x.

    Alas, if all goes well then she's coming over next weekend and we have already been talking about playing MC. She still wants to see for herself that you can't tame bunnies (its her new activity in 1.8: chasing bunnies with a carrot. I just can't help grin at the thought of what would happen when the white killer rabbit spawns someday).

    Fun thing is that our 1.8 session was the first time when we build a nether portal and used that to go elsewhere. Pure by sheer luck did we end up in an Extreme Hills biome (a very appealing looking environment IMO) and we also managed to build somewhat of a road between our "nether bunker" and the new portal which leads to our new outpost.

    So... While waiting for my barbers appointment (need to run off in an hour or so) I figured I could use that brief moment to move my character from our main build to the new location in preparation for our exploration adventures. What I had forgotten however was that my profile was set to using the latest experimental snapshot so I ended up on 1.8.2-pre6 and not so much the 1.8.1 client.

    But the difference with this and 1.8.0 really is astonishing!

    For example, the area around the house, esp. when going there from a larger distance, would constantly cause me lag. Actually resulting in moments where the game would simply freeze for a brief moment....

    Well, look at this:



    House with a small farm....


    Same area but from a further distance; hardly any framedrops at all....


    As you can see the framerate is quite decent, even from afar. And it only gets better...

    I already told you guys about the nether portal. Well, around the portal and the nether itself I always had lots of laggy moments. Its why I hardly went into the nether, and why we're still not able to do any brewing in this session...

    So, when I go into the nether using this client... Well, I'll show you guys again:



    If I just come out of the portal you can see a clear drop in framerate...


    But once I'm well outside then the framerate quickly restores itself, even with the mobs around it...

    This bunker and portal location has caused us many lives :D

    Fun story: its difficult to see but the portal sits right at the edge of a huge cliff which has a nice warm lava pool at the bottom. Main reason why we build this cobble bunker; there are often a few ghasts in the area as well, and yah; best if they don't shoot out our portal.

    So the first time we entered here I immediately noticed the gap and told my gf (sitting in the same room with her laptop) to be careful because of that cliff. Well, she was careful alright :rolleyes: Still managed to give me a strategic bump which sent me right over the edge :D

    One respawn later (I was lucky that I didn't bring too much stuff with me) and we suddenly got some ghasts over for a visit. Yeah, that was fun; they all seemed to be targeting me (now without armor) and apparently my evasive actions were extremely funny to look at. Not good for the gaming mood for sure, but it's also very hard to stay annoyed when someone has a hard time to stop laughing :)

    But yah, framedrops?

    Another example:


    There several ghasts somewhere in that area....

    Over here you can hear several ghasts, and there are also a few zombie pigman around. And as you can see the framerate also dropped a bit. But only for a short moment... The moment I turn left to continue walking our gravel path things jump back to 60 - 70 again.


    SO yah, as you might imagine this really is quite a huge change from what we had. That last location I showed was where we'd normally continue walking without looking around at all because it was a sure way to get the game to hiccup, and that's not something you want when there's a good risk of ghasts floating around which are quite eager to use you for target practice.

    But with this version... No problem at all anymore!

    Oh well, and since I'm showing off let me also share the location which we'll be exploring upcoming weekend:



    Even with the nether portal nearby I still keep decent framerates...

    So yah, and this is what we're going to be exploring:


    Extreme hills ftw! :)

    I didn't have the debug screen up because I really like this scenery, one of those screenshots where the area looks really cool, even though it is fully blocky and pixelated.

    But yah, these are the stats:




    And for the record: if I load the old versions again (1.8.0) then for sure: the lag returns. But this version...

    So yeah, there's definitely hope on the horizon for MC 1.8 I think.

    And now... I'm off; otherwise I gotta run :)
    shiyvah, Palmsugar and 607 like this.
  2. Awesome! I've heard of 1.8 performance drops but I have never played 1.8 for myself... I update when EMC does. Also I'm too lazy to update my one mod. :p
    ShelLuser likes this.
  3. Yeah, they actually worked on increasing performance quite a bit!
    I would say more, but I forgot what and it's 20:45 for me, so I'll just say this: nice thread, and I'm hoping to hear more about your future (Minecraft) adventures with your girlfriend :)
    ShelLuser likes this.