Editorial: Minecraft 1.8 will be the best update ever, but not how you would expect

Minecraft was never created to become popular. It was created as a hobby by Markus Persson, but as evidenced by it becoming the best-selling PC game of all time, it's clearly moved beyond that. But Markus' decision to make the game in Java created a performance bottleneck that still exists today. Why should a game that is composed of blocks need more graphical power than detailed games? Because Java.

Java isn't really meant for video game development, because they always under-perform native applications. This is because Java runs all programs on a virtual machine, which translates the Java code into native machine code as it runs. This means that Java is portable (can you think of a device that can't run Java?) and more secure. The downside is that code is compiled into native code as it runs - making it slower than pre-compiled programs and games.

Minecraft isn't switching it's programming language - that would kill both the modding community and the future of the Mod API in one move. But it's pushing every ounce of power out of Java with dozens of improvements in Minecraft 1.8, and the results are incredible.

http://youtu.be/4PrGf7RPWuU

This is a YouTube video published by Ryan Holtz (aka, not us) earlier today. It clearly shows the graphics improvements the most recent 1.8 snapshot (14w30a) includes, which in his case doubled the frame rate. That's right, doubled.

Minecraft 1.8 includes dozens of new tweaks and technical improvements that make the game perform far better than previous versions. The update uses a new mechanism for sorting world chunks, threaded chunk rebuilds, and even borrows Minecraft PE's method of not loading underground chunks. Advanced OpenGL is gone in the options, it's possible it's been fully integrated into the engine at this point.

If you didn't understand a word in that paragraph, here's the summary - Minecraft 1.8 is much faster and more efficient. And chances are, it will run a lot better for you. While the game will always be a slow Java game, at least it's a little better for now. If Minecraft 1.8's engine was real, it would probably be as cool as the engine in the picture.