The Mystery of Minecraft’s Unknown Ghost Block (Block 36)

Since it’s beginning minecraft has and will undoubtedly continue to be a block game there is a large variety of blocks with new ones being added to the game in nearly every single update hundreds upon hundreds of blocks make up the world and more await the player in the creative

Inventory the majority of minecraft’s blocks and items can be found in the creative inventory and usually these will suit the player’s needs however players more experienced and those who have played the game for a significant period of time will be familiar with most if not all of these

Blocks even the more obscure ones like the petrified slab or the chiseled black stone wall most players think this is the extent of minecraft usable blocks however how much do you really know about the blocks of this game some blocks can’t be found in creative inventory and can only be acquired by

Commands such as the smooth mushroom block a cool decoration item the barrier block a block typically used by mac makers to restrict certain areas the command block which i’m sure we’ve all heard of the jigsaw block a special structure used for structure generation the structure void to represent air and

Structure cloning and that’s just naming a few once more though we can go one step further and players with more in-depth game knowledge will be familiar with all these items if not most of them but what about blocks you can only place and can’t actually hold like the piston

Head this unique block can be altered by the use of a debug stick and could only be placed via commands another similar one is the attached stem you can place it anywhere but updating its surroundings makes it disappear using the set block command you can also

Place in a nether or end portal without actually making the frame both which will take you to their respective dimensions so what do all these blocks have in common yes they are indeed strange but we can see and interact with all of them yes they’re also the void air and cave

Air blocks but they don’t really exist and only matter for a generation so if you know all this you’re probably sure you’ve seen it all but wait what if i told you there was another block a block so mysterious and strange i’m willing to bet that a huge majority

Of the minecraft player base has never seen it nor heard of it a block with a special classification one that can only be placed by the setblock command and is invisible to the player its existence only proven through the strange and wondrous features i will show you today

This is the story of minecraft’s mysterious ghost block What you’re looking at right now may not look like much or anything at all for that matter but atop this pedestal is perhaps minecraft’s most unknown block ever the moving piston now you may be thinking what this dude’s pulling my leg he’s making this up there’s nothing there

Well i would think so too but this secret block has many special and interesting features that prove its existence For instance check out this water it’s staying still right not flowing but wait uh oh we fees there are just barriers around it well there is there is a barrier but that barrier isn’t the barrier block because watch i can just run through it the water isn’t flowing

But there’s nothing here to block it or is there Now look at this pedestal again this obsidian one blast proof and watch what happens as i right click on this area with a block okay because i don’t have a keystrokes on i’m like doing it like this with a voice because i think it’d be really suspicious uh just because you could

Claim oh i’m not right clicking so um i have the grass block i’m gonna hold outside of the screen yeah you can say it’s not unplugged i’m not you can you can transfer yourself but i am in fact right clicking now i’m gonna left-click uh left-clicking i’m gonna left-click on the area

I broke the obsidian excuse me left clicking nothing’s there and now i go to right click again nothing happens so uh yeah it is it is it is there but watch what happens as i light a tnt adjacent to that location i won’t cut so you have to bear with me but look

All right once again we’re doing this with voice just for um simplicity’s sake with no cuts the produce is real so right now i am right clicking nothing’s placing left clicking i mean uh still can’t right click place on the area so i can’t place anything

There now i’m just gonna light a tnt next to it i’m gonna wait for it to go off i’m not cutting anything and now you can place a block there perfectly fine so what happened to the tnt cause a glitch an update no it blew up the moving piston because

The moving piston can’t be interacted by the fist it can’t be broken but it does exist in some weird limbo state that we’ll get to and one that can actually be blown up by the use of tnt which i think is really interesting and we’ll get to where that is in a bit Well if that wasn’t evidence enough the moving piston also has a sound can you guess what it sounds like does it sound like redstone uh a piston moving i don’t know what that sounds like the annoying piston extension no it sounds like stone i guess mojang chose stone because it’s pretty much the

Most basic sound in the game but yes the moving piston makes a stone noise how can we prove it you may ask using the set block command and the destroy function associated with it you may want to turn your audio for the sound parts coming up but i’ll try to

Make them as easy as possible to hear when using the set block command a block doesn’t actually make a sign when it’s placed and this is important to know however there is a feature of step block that does in fact make a noise destroy when using the destroy function the

Block being replaced by the set blocked block or the block that is being set by the set block command i hope that makes any sense the block being replaced actually breaks instead of just snap being replaced or something similar also just a fun fact in the minecraft

Wikipedia the moving piston is said to have a stone noise not only for destruction but for footsteps which i find really funny because i literally have no idea how i’m supposed to walk on a block that i can’t interact with physically how am i about to make footsteps on it

If i can’t walk on it to begin with that just makes no sense to me but i think that’s a quirky little fun detail that i thought i’d let you guys know about the final and probably coolest ability of the moving piston is its interaction with minecraft mobs minecraft mobs can

Actually see through it but can’t move through it or they can’t pathfind through moving pistons making a hilarious scenarios possible like this one where the villager is scared of the zombie but the zombie can’t actually walk through what seems like open air i find this so funny and actually use it

In my quirky minecraft video this tidbit of information is also the minecraft wiki and for those interested in the details i’ve hopefully linked it below in the description here’s just another fun demonstration with me taunting these mobs so now we get to the interesting portion of the video

Why does the moving piston even do this and why does it even exist for that matter the moving piston represents what it is what it says it is a moving piston let’s visualize this like it better help myself and you understand it because even i don’t fully get it

So watch what happens when i extend this piston to the block on its face it extends like it should nothing special but from a technical standpoint from a game designer standpoint it’s not clear how one would program this this smooth extension animation even if it’s quick it’s still there

There is an animation of the piston extending so how is it doing that the moving piston itself refers to the motion of the piston and its stroke the moving piston isn’t distorted as a normal block in the game because it varies in how much of a block it takes

Up every given frame in one frame the piston is extended to a certain extent it’s like taking up this much of the block in the next it extends a bit further thus occupying more of the upcoming block on the extension and less in the retraction because think about

This look at this block i’m pushing it’s not occupying when it’s in the middle where is it is it in this block or is it the one thought to take up when it’s retracting is it in its original location or is it back in front of the piston

Where is it it’s how does it how does the game store a block that is in between two other blocks that doesn’t make any sense and that’s what the moving piston is for the moving piston is labeled as a block entity a block with additional data associated with it it stores more information

Similar blocks include a chest or an end gateway for example which both store more information about themselves the chest stores its contents or if it’s locked or not and the end the gateway stores about its teleport location and if to show the beam or not in case of a portal to shulkerland

Looking through the moving pistons information you can see one of the things that stores is progress showing how far the piston is extended it stores both the block being pushed and the piston head so after the animation is finished the block the moving piston is overwritten with either

Air in the sense of our attraction a block in the case of an extension and the piston head also in the case of an extension where the piston takes up two extra blocks instead of just one or at least that’s my interpretation i’m not a technical minecraft player and

Definitely not to that extent so take everything i say with a grain of salt it may be a bit off but that’s really all you have to do about the moving piston it’s a very interesting block and one fun to explore especially those interested in the inner workings

Of minecraft it’s extremely fun to consider the potential of the moving piston plug-in and mod designers can use it to make force fields to keep mobs away builders can make fun sculptures with water or lava that seem to defy physics and gravity without the use of barriers and event hosts and map makers

Can use it to limit where the players can place blocks even in survival by coating the floor and walls with moving pistons instead of setting everyone to adventure and restricting them entirely however that wraps up today’s video it was a bit quicker but i want to talk

About this vlog for a while because like no one does so yeah i hope you learned something i hope you enjoyed and if you did subscribing would be amazing thank you but once more thank you so much for watching and i will see y’all next time peace out have a good one [Applause] You