Minecraft – Minecraft Live 2021: The Caves & Cliffs Update

[MUSIC] >> Our social team will be tweeting throughout the show and want to know what you think about everything we announce. Hang out with us here and also there. Last year, we announced quite an anticipated update, the Caves and Cliffs update. We’ve seen all the incredible things you’ve done with Caves and Cliffs

Part 1 and can’t wait to see what you do with Part 2. Agnes and Henrik are here to give us a peek into the surprising development process for Caves and Cliffs Part 2. Hi, Agnes. Hi, Henrik. >> Hello. >> Hello. >> I guess, how are you feeling?

>> I’m super happy to be here. I’m excited, very excited. >> So excited. Henrik, its your first time on the Minecraft Live stage? >> It is, it’s not your first time though, right? >> It is not my first time. You two are going to tell us about Caves and Cliffs Part 2.

The thing that I think is the most amazing is how involved and how essential the community was to making it. >> Yes. This update changes basically everything about the world generation in the game. We’ve added massive mountains, massive caves. It’s been really hard to balance that because we

Want to add all this new cool stuff, but when people are playing the game, we also want them to build encounter, like the old familiar stuff. This balancing act is really hard. As designers and developers, when we test the stuff we built, how do we know if it’s any good?

How do we know if it’s better. We need a lot of help and we’ve definitely gotten it. We’ve been shipping snapshots, betas every week. The people have been play testing and giving us feedback. It’s just been wonderful. It feels like they’re colleagues helping us build this great game. >> That’s amazing. You have

An amazing example of someone who took a lot of time giving notes. >> Yeah. For example, a player tweeted at me this wonderful big picture showing in the same location, what changed across different snapshots, and offer some opinions on that and some feedback. This stuff takes a lot of time to do,

It’s research that the users are doing for us. We get a lot of this stuff and it just saves time. That’s time that we can use, of course, to make the game better. >> That’s so amazing. >> It truly is. This is the biggest update we ever done and we couldn’t have done

It without the community. >> That’s incredible. I know you are nervous when you decided to split the update. Tell everyone about that. >> Yes. It’s a very big decision and we took it together as a team. But yes, when it was time to announce it, it was quite scary.

But we thought, the best thing is just to be transparent. Because as we know, Minecraft is crafted together with the community, and then it’s got to be as honest as we possibly can. Then when we did announce it, everyone was so kind and understanding. It shows we have

The most beautiful community, so thank you. >> We absolutely do. >> Also nice, as a team, to not rush it. Since the change is so big, to be able to do it properly and take the time and really do it well. We’re super thankful that we got strong support for it.

>> That’s awesome. Sometimes during the development process, things change and you decide you want things to be bigger and better, which moves them to a different timeline. I know we have one of those today. Yeah, we do. We have been working quite a lot on the Deep Dark,

The Warden, and the Sculk Sensor. We are so excited about this and we know everyone is. Got to be bigger because we really want to do this right and do it with super high quality, but that’s also the reason that we moved it to the next update instead.

>> We’re going to talk about the next update at the end of the show, right? >> Yes, we’re going to show both new things from the Deep Dark and some other new things, so that’s exciting. >> We’ll move the Deep Dark feature set into the next update,

Which will be after Caves and Cliffs Part 2, and we’re going to look at that later in the show. You’re going to get to see some really cool stuff from Brandon. Now, Henrik and Agnes, you too are working with an awesome team of developers. This was quite a technical challenge,

So we have an inside look at a lot that went into Caves and Cliffs Part 2. >> Yeah, let’s watch it. [MUSIC] >> The best part of my job, I think it’s just creating a game. I want to make people happy. In the new update, I’ve been primarily focusing on creating

The mountains and also putting everything together in the new generation of the world, so that’s the caves and the mountains and everything in between. When I started this project about a year ago, I knew almost nothing about world generation and I learned so much. It’s really been a team effort,

Java and Bedrock together. >> In this update, my role is to bring to life the cave part. Together with our colleagues who work on the mountains, we present to you the cliffs and the caves update. One of the inspirations for the caves is the Son Doong cave systems in Vietnam because that

Was one of the largest cave system in the world. I feel so proud of it because I came from Vietnam and we get to use this cave systems in my country and put it into the game. I felt so proud whenever we think about the caves.

>> My job is to find what works slow in Minecraft and try to optimize it. The new update changes how the world looks a lot, and it also affects performance quite a lot. The best part about my job is just finding something which can give

A big benefit and then just seeing how FPS improves or how frame time graph looks much better after the change. >> I would say the coolest part about my job is all of the wonderful colleague that I get to work with them. They really inspire me, teach me, and motivate me to be

A better versions of myself every day. >> We put in a lot of time and effort into this update and I hope that it will inspire and excite our community. >> It feels like it’s a whole new game. [MUSIC] >> What a great team you have. >> The best team.

Now, we have been working on Caves and Cliffs Part 2, it’s been so beautiful to see everyone collaborated, all the different roles. Bedrock developers, Java developers, designers, artists, sound and so on. It’s been so good. >> When you get a diverse group of people together in a room like that,

Even if it’s a digital room like [inaudible] and all focus on one thing like this. It feels like there’s no problem you can’t solve. Plus, it’s fun. >> That’s amazing. Then you add our community, they’re doing bug tracking. They’re just everywhere giving us notes and feedback and telling us what’s working.

You add that to an amazing team and it’s really incredible. >> We really want actually to highlight everyone that helps us with the public bug tracker we have, so many players report bugs. Then we also have the moderators and helpers. They help us so much with categorizing, finding duplicates, asking for additional information.

It’s extraordinary helpful. >> We have a really amazing community. >> Now, you two have been, and actually the whole team, has been just sharing images and scenes as you’re finding things. You put together some really awesome worlds for us to look at. [MUSIC] >> Wow, they’re beautiful. >> Yeah. What’s interesting about

This is when you look at that video, initially the plan was just big mountains or natural looking cool mountains on caves. But as we started working on it, the scope grew because we realized that we need to change all the terrain to make this all fit together.

But once we started seeing that work, and it was so fun to see how the team started realizing that we’re really on to something, this is going to be great. Seeing that inspiration spread and then also spread out to our community through the snapshots has been really fun.

>> We have been play testing a lot, then we’re like, we couldn’t stop playing. >> We’re just distracted all the time. >> [inaudible] so many cool places and it feels so inspiring. That’s what we want to do with Minecraft, we want to inspire everyone to play Minecraft in their own way.

We really feel that this new world generation inspires you like going on an adventure, building, telling stories, very exciting. >> That’s amazing. You make all these changes, but then obviously we have so many players who’ve been playing for so long. The two of you have worlds that are like 10 years old.

I just love the approach you took to keeping everything really safe for players who have existing worlds. >> Yes. It’s very important for us to be respectful to play as worlds. Minecraft should be a game you can trust because we know that it works and it will work for many, many years.

Then you can spend all this love and time on your Minecraft world. [inaudible] we have actually done two things mainly. To make sure that everything works well, and the first thing is blending. As you can see in the picture here, to the left, with don’t have blending. When you update your old

World to the new world generation, it would just be like an ugly edge. But now with blending, it’s actually all smooth and pretty. >> That’s beautiful, that makes a huge difference. Henrik, I know the other part you want to show us with your own world. >> Yeah. What happens if

You open your old world with a new version of Minecraft. I took a look at what happens in my old world, which I’ve had for 10 years playing with friends and family. Let’s take a look. There it is, all that old stuff we built 10 years ago. But that’s what happens when

You open the world in 1.18. It basically generates new caves beneath the old areas. The idea is to create the illusion that that was there the whole time, we just didn’t go there until now. Wow, look what I found. >> Don’t look, Henrik. There’s so many spoilers there under your world,

So many cool things. >> I was squinting. >> Okay, good. >> That’s the first thing I’m going to do when I update, just digging straight down. Well, not straight down, actually. But I’m going to see what’s under my base. >> That’s so cool. I just love that it adds so much

To the existing worlds that our players have, so you’re keeping them safe and adding a lot to it. >> That’s also an important thing. We don’t want to force players to have to pick between just the new or just the old, so we want them to be able to experience

Both things in the same world. >> That’s amazing. Throughout the show, we’re going to have creator questions and you two get to have the first one. >> All right. >> Will Java and Bedrock get Part 2 at the same time? >> Yes, the plan is to release this

On Java and Bedrock at the same time, and also to ship it with what we call seed parity. What does that mean? Seed is this name for the magic number that is used to determine how your whole world looks like. Every world is unique and that’s driven by the seed.

When you create a new world, it gets a randomly generated seed. But if you dig that seed up, if you really like what you see, you’re like, “Wow, this world is wonderful. I want to share it with my friends.” You can dig up that number and share it with others.

Then if they open a new world with that seed, they’ll see the same thing. But what’s new for this update is that that also works between Bedrock and Java. >> That’s amazing. >> If you create a world in Java and you think it’s beautiful, you want to share with others.

Anyone who opens their world with that seed, regardless of which edition they’re playing, will see essentially it’s almost exactly the same thing. >> It’s almost identical. Then it’s the thing in the community, you find a [inaudible] location and you share it like, “Look at this world I found.” Before, you couldn’t

Do that with players on the other addition. But now everyone can just share cool places together. I think that’s really nice. >> It’s really amazing. When you find these amazing and big things in Caves and Cliffs Part 2, you obviously want to be able to share them. Seed parity is huge,

I think everyone’s going to be so excited about that. >> We’re not 100 percent there yet, but close. >> Getting close. >> Very similar, same details will be different. >> Seed almost parities. >> Seed almost parities, that’s it >> That’s very cool. I know everyone is anxiously, including myself, waiting for this update.

When do we get it? >> It’s actually almost done, we’re going to release it in a month or two. >> That is amazing, thank you so much Agnes and Henrik. >> Thank you. >> Caves and Cliffs Part 2 will be coming to a screen near you in 1-2 months.