More details about Minecraft 1.3 announced, to be released August 1st

Today Mojang decided to fill the community in on why Minecraft 1.3 still isn't out. Mojang hasn't been sitting down with this release, even bringing in Nathan Adams to work on the game full-time. Jens went on to say that the space between the 1.2.5 and 1.3 releases is the biggest one yet, and that so many new things have been added that have not been tested.

He also talked briefly about the structural changes in the upcoming release. Single-player has essentially been kicked out of the game, and replaced with a multi-player shell. This does not mean you can't play alone, but now it's more like playing on a server by yourself, if you understand. Speaking of multiplayer, that has been one of the biggest changes in 1.3. Playing on servers is faster and better than ever, and is now even encrypted. The chat log most certainly left something to be desired, but is now decked-out with links and better editing capabilities.

But with all releases, Minecraft 1.3 has some downfalls. It will require slightly more powerful computers to run, since a server will be running almost the entire time the application is open (so don't be surprised to see your frame rate drop). Optimizations are planned for Minecraft 1.4, but only God knows when that will be. Also, the lighting bugs that have caused dark patches to form inside your worlds will not be fixed in this release, but will be in 1.4.

Also, to the sadness of everyone who loves mods, the Mod API will not make it into this release. "Throwing out single-player was the first step in order to make the API possible, and that’s done now. We decided to release 1.3 without the API, because otherwise it would be an even longer wait for a Minecraft update," Jens said in the post. With all of this news, Mojang announced the update will be released on August 1st. Get even more details in the source link below.

Source: Mojang