The Minecraft 1.6 Upcoming Features

Gameplay

• Minecraft day cycles
  • Potentially seasons.
    
  • During winter, shorter days and nights.
    
  
  

• Riding mounts
  • When riding on an entity, dismounting has changed from right-clicking the entity to using the Sneak key (o § Left Shift by default)
    
  • Boat controls have been changed from the A, S, and D keys to mouse control
    
  
  
• Respiration enchantment
  • Now also helps seeing underwater
    
  
  
• Changed the idea of mob difficulty
  • Regional difficulty: The longer you spend in one area, the harder it gets
    
  • Scales with difficulty - items, enchants or AI improve with difficulty
    
  
  
• Creative mode
  • Added extra tooltip info in the search tab for the creative inventory, which shows what category a block/item is in
    
  
  

Blocks & items

• Horse Armor
  • Exist in diamond, iron and gold variants
    
  • Will be found in dungeon chests
    
  
  
• Horse Spawn Egg
  • When used, a different horse breed is created each time
    
  • Works like any other spawn egg
    
  
  
• Hay Blocks
  • Can be placed in all orientations
    
  
  
• Leads
  • Can be used to bind mobs to fences or lead them around
    
  • Right click mob first, then right-click fence or right-click the mob again to get the leash back
    
  
  
• Carpets
  • Crafted with 2 colors of wool in a horizontal line, yields 3 carpets
    
  
  
• Name Tags
  • Found in dungeon chests
    
  • Name it with an anvil then right click a mob to name animals
    
  
  
• Hardened Clay
  • Obtained by smelting a clay block in a furnace
    
  
  

• Saddle
  • Are now used for both horse and pig
    
  
  

Mobs

• Various new mobs
  
• Horses
  • Ridable by right-clicking them with a saddle - Hold the jump key to fill up their jump bar, release it to jump accordingly, steer them by using the usual movement keys - maximum movement speed and jump height differ between horses
    
  • Have various amounts of maximum health - Use wheat to heal them
    
  • Drop leather when killed
    
  • Can be bred using wheat - Baby horses can be grown using apples, golden apples and wheat
    
  • Players can make them jump
    
  • Creation assisted by DrZhark
    
  
  
• Donkeys
  • Like horses, but can carry chests on their saddles although no inventory is currently available
    
  • There is a Undead, Skeleton, and Mule version of the donkey included in the code, although they require NBT editing to view in game
    
  
  

• Zombies
  • Now have a small chance to spawn additional zombies when damaged.
    
  
  

World Generation

• Deserts
  • No longer contain water lakes
    
  
  
• The Nether
  • Added chest generation in The Nether
    
  
  

Bug fixes

• Fixed Bugs
  • MC-70 - Tab button does not switch between password and username box on launcher
    
  • MC-431 - Unable to update minecraft
    
  • MC-738 - The buttons for logging in with the launcher cannot be read in Windows 7 / XP classic theme
    
  • MC-1123 - SMP: Anvils charge level for nothing when using languages other than English
    
  • MC-3090 - Unable to play game unless LWJGL is manually replaced
    
  • MC-4253 - Endermen are rendered hostile if they take environmental damage
    
  • MC-5320 - Mac Firewall Issue
    
  • MC-10976 - Single player: "java.io.IOException: Stream Closed" when quitting game
    
  • MC-11713 - Unintended debug output to console if .minecraft does not exist
    
  • MC-12017 - Can get permanently stuck in a minecart in a nether portal
    
  • MC-12369 - Minecraft crashing on 1.5.1 prerelease Server