There've been a solid number of rumors, but according to an official release on the MC Forums, all rumors are 100% false until Notch or Mojang themselves specifically say so via one of their official channels (most likely Notch's Google Plus, Twitter, or blog).

As it stands, Notch said Saturday at PAX that it'd be out within "the next few weeks". If taken literally, that'd mean it would release anytime between now and September 17.

In the meanwhile, I want to request assistance from you guys. I built some docks in my city, and I want to build some big boats to go in the docks. I'm planning on putting in a freightliner, a small cruise ship, a yacht, a fancy rich-guy fishin'/cruisin' boat (aka, a tad bit smaller than a yacht), and a sailboat. I'd be willing to eliminate the yacht or cruise ship due to space constraints, but everything else stays. I also intend to have a section that's actually a practical in-game dock (in the small wooden dock to the north side of my city docks).

If any of you want to/can help, I'd surely appreciate the assistance. I'm having trouble figuring out what I want to do. Feel free to just pop in and pick a spot to build the ship - I can easily move it if I don't like where it goes.

To get to the docks, you can warp /warp docks

Textures for the update have been released. I'm going to post the old textures, THEN the new, for comparison.

Things to note on the texture.png:

(1) Three new stone brick textures (as opposed to clay brick, which we've already had). Normal brick, cracked/crumbling brick, and mossy brick.

(2) What appears to be bars, above the cracked and the mossy bricks.

(3) A blue line of some sort.

(4) Four new textures for the Giant Mushrooms

(5) Peculiar plant-like textures next to the Giant Mushrooms

(6) Melons.

(7) Odd texture at the bottom resembling tracks. Don't know what that is at the moment.

(8) Something next to that with three dots each with a line under them.

No other changes.

and the items

things to note:

(1) Addition of beef and chicken, both raw and cooked. Cooked pork is now colored like actual cooked pork.

(2) Watermelon slices!

(3) Watermelon and pumpkin seeds.

(4) Various bows are displayed now for the varying degrees you can pull the bow to for firing stronger shots.

(5) They've added a ton more of those "placeholder" slots.

(6) Something I can't recognize is next to the cookie.

just a note the winner of the name contest will be announced when 1.8 comes out

I'm getting REALLY sick and tired of this weather bullshit. The ocean next to my city just now randomly decided it was a good idea to start freezing. It's NEVER been a problem before. I've worked around this water for a long time and it's never frozen before. Why did it just now decide it wanted to?

Update on what I've been building:






As-of-yet unnamed luxury hotel. Entirely constructed but not quite yet furnished. It has 14 rooms, ranging from small "economy"-priced rooms all the way up to the massive two-floor luxury suite.



Preview of my next project.

Project finished!




and I built a second project below it.

so almost everything that used to freeze? doesn't anymore. the entire spawn area, I just thawed out, and it's not freezing back up.

meanwhile, as I said before, my ocean is freezing now, though it didn't before.

leads me to believe we have minecraft seasons and nobody knew about it before.

it is entirely possible this is due to damage on the map i repaired after a hard shut down. did this change happen after Friday night? i had an unexpected crash then while cleaning up the install of my fx card (its been the reason for the instability this week i needed a bios update for my mother board that i flashed to and then ha to uninstall reinstall all drivers)

we should note have anymore issues with it, but damn if i can fix that.... but i did not really change any code... gah working with a pre betta map can be strange

I see you spent your long weekend well tone ;)

Yeah, it happened Saturday morning. WEIRD.

When are we gonna get a map update? I wanna see my pixel art on the map!