The second snapshot for 1.12 was released today, 17w13a. It's pretty awesome.
I'm assuming by now you all know about the stuff from the first snapshot. If not, here's a quick rundown:
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Concrete blocks. Really smooth, nice bright textures
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Concrete powder blocks. Same colours as concrete, sand-like textures. Turn to concrete when they hit water
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Glazed terracotta blocks. Very textured block. Tiles nicely in multiples of two. Good for patterns or those fancy rugs people get. They're interesting, to say the least
- Wool, banners and sheep have brighter colours
- Couple of small changes
However, 13a has some really cool changes. I'm looking forward to seeing them develop further, and what ends up being done with them:
- PARROTS! They're in 4 colours, and they sit on your shoulder, and they fly alongside your elytra, and they imitate the sounds of other mobs. Amazing!
- Narrator. Can be toggled with a keybinding. It uses the default text-to-speach voice from your system, but will read anything you or anyone else says in chat. Kinda like Moonbase Alpha. It also doesn't censor words either
- Recipe book. Appears in the crafting table, and shows you all the items you can make with your current inventory. Clicking on them will put the items in the crafting grid for you
- Advancements. Replaces the achievement system. Still a work in progress, but pretty cool. Especially because of the point below
- Lots of JSON stuff. This is the big thing. Map makers will be able to add their own advancements, in their own tab, which can be unlocked by a variety of triggers like achievements used to be able to. Will be really cool for custom maps. Mappers can now also add requirements to crafting recipes, and can make people have to do certain things before they craft stuff, like "you must visit the nether before you can craft a bed" or something like that. Opens up a whole world of possibilities. They can also add their own crafting recipes, or change the existing ones, if they so please. This snapshot is just a teaser of these though. Mojang also added a book which allows players to "unlock" recipes, which I can see map makers using as a reward system
- There's also some textures for a "progression book", which indicates there may be something else to add to this
For vanilla gameplay, these changes aren't really that huge. Right now they're a bit buggy and unrefined. However, for map makers or plugin coders, this could be a huge update. Combined with the resource pack changes over the past few updates, this could be major. I've already thought of some ideas I'd like to try out when 1.12 gets fully released, and possibly implement them in VC
Let's see what the rest of 1.12 has to offer. They've called it the "World of Color Update", apart from they spelled Colour wrong.
There's much more info on the Reddit, where people are pushing these new things to their limits already
