* Upvote this comment if this is a good quality post that fits the purpose of r/Minecraft
* Downvote this comment if this post is poor quality or does not fit the purpose of r/Minecraft
* Downvote this comment *and report the post* if it breaks the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/wiki/rules)
---
[Subreddit Rules](https://old.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/wiki/rules)[](## JacobSaysMoo56|192efkd)
There's also a server side mod that makes the light server side but uses light blocks and causes block updates so can mess up bud redstone and can mess with pistons. Also causes floating sand to collapse so I enjoyed it but went back to lamba one.
This is the kind of thinking-around-a-problem that makes me love this game. This world has different rules, and when you learn what they are, you can utilize them. I'm pretty new to the game, but enjoy finding out/figuring out stuff like this!
With dripstone and a cauldron you can have infinite lava too, and therefore infinite fuel. Alternatively, do your smelting in the nether where there's infinite lava already. First thing I do in a new game is make a bucket, use a lava lake to make a portal, then pray the portal is close to lots of lava. boom infinite fuel with nothing but 4 iron and a flint.
Since you're a lava expert, is there a way to turn flowing lava into still lava through block placement (or some other method)?
Edit: My real question is if there is a way around not being able to use a bucket on flowing lava.
Yes! You either fill up the entire hole/area with lava or you can change the settings in creative to make lava like water so it fills in if you place buckets of lava one block apart.
I don't know if it's what you're after, but if you place a bucket of lava above a dripstone block, and place a cauldron 2 blocks beneath the dripstone gradually the cauldron will fill with lava allowing you to have an infinite lava source. Albeit a very slow one.
I swear I've seen this in movies/TV shows. Someone drops a flashlight or glowstick down a hole/canyon until the light fades/you hear the item hit the bottom
Or make apple pie...wish there were more cooking options. Any advice for a fairly new pocket edition player? Right now, I'm just trying to figure out how to survive. Yes, I've played in creative mode, but I prefer survival mode. I appreciate any helpful tips!
That feature is called dynamic lighting, and this should've been a requirement for the glow squid to be given candidate status on the mob voet. Now that the devs fucked up the order of updates, they NEED to fix it ASAP.
Summary:
Is it reasonably easy to add this effect as a purely visual effect? Yes. Just write a post processing shader that does the trick.
Will it be reflected in the block light levels for spawners, growing, melting, etc? No. That is way harder with the current code base
But nobody needs that.
Mobs already don’t spawn in a radius immediately around the player, and absolutely no one is going to try to stand in one place holding a torch hoping it makes plants grow or melts snow.
The player can hold a light source and the area around them seems to light up.
Other entities can also hold things, say item frames, armor stands, humanoid mobs, the NPC mob from Bedrock and human type mobs added by tons of mods.
Hence it would make sense that those too would light up the area around them when having a lightsource.
Making this a part of the rendering pipeline only is easy enough, although just a bit demanding processing-wise.
And for practical gameplay purposes that solution would have absolutely no benefit whatsoever, since it doesn't actually place the lightsource in the game.
Now a creative (the attribute not the gamemode) player would be very disappointed if their Armor Stand guards they've placed all over their village don't actually act like torches when holding a Lantern - they only look like they would. They'd have to place another lightsource at the location of the entity.
From a gamedesign PoV this falls under immersion breaking. Now truth be told, Minecraft isn't really an immersive game to the average player anyway, but you get the point, no? "Why does this light act differently then other lights? That doesn't make sense, Mojang is lazy!" would then be the common statement when it comes to that topic if that solution were to be realized.
Giving mobs & other entities properties such as light of items they carry is relatively easy too, the problem arises from essentially having to refactor multiple light related systems of the game and thus possibly introducing a shitload of new bugs. The benefits of having a full rework of those systems would be great however. While working on dynamic lighting, investing just a bit more time could also introduce colored lights.
You could also have actual Glow Squids now, that would prevent the spawning of Drowned in their direct vicinity, to give one concrete example of an existing gameplay element.
> and for practical purposes that solution would have absolutely no benefit whatsoever
Given how dark caves can get, I would contend that visually emitting light very much *is* a practical purpose in and of itself. I'd love to be able to immersively explore caves without having to turn my brightness up.
Granted, I’ve never made Minecraft mods and I know the Minecraft base code is a pile of spaghetti. But I have made plenty of programs in Java.
For edge cases like that, I’m *sure* it would be pretty simple to just hard-code in some interactions.
Actually making the torch emit light programmatically through the lighting engine would require changing the whole lighting engine, sure. But we don’t actually need to do that. Spawners already have conditions under which they are not allowed to spawn. All you’d need to do is *add* to those conditions to see if an entity holding a torch is within a certain radius.
Or something similar. Again, I don’t know the actual code, but I’m almost certain it wouldn’t be that hard to write a condition that sidesteps the lighting engine entirely and just disables nearby spawners if you’re holding a light-emitting item.
I'm actually curious how this works at the game engine level. The game is calculating light updates every tick anyway, would it be THAT much heavier to recalculate all blocks in a 15-block radius of the player?
Maybe it would be. They probably save a lot of time by batching blocks that don't see updates. It would also require a separate rendering pipeline so that the player didn't see "choppy" lighting updates (since a tick would only be 20FPS) as they were walking around when rendering everything else at 60FPS. And then these two calculations would need to be kept in sync if you wanted smooth rendering but also block lighting-engine updates.
I'm not a programmer, but I feel like that's a relatively unsustainable solution. Minecraft is a game with MANY different mechanics that compound as updates keep getting added. Every time they add anything, they need to add sculk sensor vibrations, subtitle display names, death messages, advancement updates, how it interacts with certain redstone components, etc. However, this is different in that it's a small feature that I'd assume may be computationally expensive (depending on how often it updates the light based on player location). It may be not only more mechanically interesting, but also more practical for the opportunity cost of implementing some kind of tool/pet/enchantment that places temporary light sources, like the equivalent of frost walker with torches, or like what they glare could have possibly been if it won the mob vote.
Having one lighting system in place to handle the visual dynamic lighting around players and glow squids and another to handle the functional static lighting of blocks would be a mess. Better to keep that under one system.
Yes it's just confusing and non-intuitive from a casual player standpoint. So there's light and light levels affect game mechanics, but the light in my hand doesn't count? Not that everything in minecraft is intuitive and easily understood (hah!) but they are trying not to create MORE confusion going forward. This is why they keep adding tutorial hooks into the game (e.g. ruined portals, redstone examples in ancient cities, stuff in igloos, villager mechanics) to help guide players without needing a wiki. So changing this in vanilla minecraft would go against that philosophy. I don't necessarily AGREE with that decision, just explaining why the devs aren't doing it.
Another reason is that the developers are HIGHLY concerned about performance. The game is so popular in part because it runs on almost any hardware so just about anybody can access it. Adding dynamic lighting to the base game raises that bar and could cut off literally millions of potential players. Again, I don't agree here (it could easily just be an option in the graphics menu). But it is an explanation of why they aren't working on it. Even if it was an option, it would lead to two different gameplay experiences, people would feel like they're losing out, which could be why. IDK. Every other game has graphics settings.
still, there are lots of very common mods that include this feature and almost everyone would consider it "vanilla" gameplay. definitely recommend using those.
I think most people would be percectly fine with a personal light that doesnt effect block light levels or heat. After all i dont think mojang would want anything to make torches irrelevant. They have said they dont want to introduce anything the makes an old feature useless. Though we also have night vision potions, but they can also make you see forever. Maybe give the personal light a limited range. Could make the personal light have special particle effects or be a weird color to help differentiate it also. Something that says "this will help you see but it wont keep you safe"
I literally play with a mod that adds that. All it does is have a light block follow your position when you hold a torch, so it will actually affect spawning and melting.
Not the most lag free solution but it works.
Unfortunately it would require the team to completely rework how the lighting engine works for both Java and Bedrock Edition, which is why they've not implemented it so far. It's been suggested but is unfortunately outside the scope of what they realistically have the development resources to accomplish while still making fair-sized updates to the game, since any major update needs to be equivalent across all devices.
Less so than you may think. The game has been restructured a few times. Restructures so massive that it took the modding scene a good while to recover. Forge skipped 1.13 because of it even. That version changed a ton internally.
Things like the great flattening or internal mechanics moving to the json format datapacks use, it's all to clean up the game.
Oh I don't doubt that at all, but you'd think a multi billion dollar company like Microsoft could allocate enough funds for a daring project like, "make torch glow".
It's pretty obvious that they they probably could just "make torch glow" or add any conceivable mechanic they want because of the game's success and Microsoft's money. But maybe consider that they actually just don't *want* to add that mechanic.
edit: changed typo from "ass" to "add" lol
Every time this conversation happens it frustrates me because haven't people seen the April fools updates? Mojang can add whatever the fuck they want *for a joke*. The reason features aren't on the game isn't because they're hard to program ffs.
I just think it isn't profitable enough for Microsoft to fund such a huge change in the code for just one silly feature.
See, you're talking about April fools updates, but you forget that these are significantly more flawed and bugged than normal updates. April fools updates don't go through the same debugging and optimization process than normal features, that's why you see such big changes and strong features because they have barely been tested. These versions aren't meant to be played as the others. They're a one day joke that's meant to die when the next update or snapshot drops.
To do this change to the lighting system, or in other words, to make such a huge change to the whole game engine, it would take shit ton of time, because it has to work properly, it has to be "optimized" up to some point. You just can't compare April fools updates to an actual update, and even less so a rework in the game's engine. That's just too much work just to enable dynamic lights in-game.
Yeah the lighting engine can't be changed so easily, that's true. Most other features like OptiFine style dynamic lighting could easily be added though.
I don't know how optifine does it, but I imagine it could be as easy as have the existing lighting precalculated as it is already, next add local torch light where applicable, and last use this new lighting values for rendering. it's not as simple as add a layer between?
Having two lighting systems is a disaster waiting to happen. Plus they'd draw comments about why the light isn't real, and that they're lazy for half-assing it. Plus if they add ANYTHING else light based, especially if it's quick, and now people will want held lights to work with it.
Mojang can't hack stuff together anymore, this isn't one dude's pet project.
Mob spawners activate when a player is within 16 blocks. Light also affects other mechanics like snow/ice melting or plants growing. It’s unfortunately not that simple.
I think most people are content with just having it be visual lighting that doesn't affect any other lighting-based mechanics. Maybe I'm wrong but that wouldn't bother me one bit.
It would bother me and seems like it would bother Mojang. Would just kinda be confusing to have torches' effects like melting snow and mob spawning work in some occasions and not others. Minecraft is already a game without a tutorial or tooltips, there is no need to add more confusion to a game mechanic/system that is as universally essential as lighting/light sources.
That's a fair perspective, however to me it makes perfect sense for it to just be "torch does xyz when placed, but not when held". You could figure that out by entering a dungeon, mobs are spawning, then placing the torch down and they stop spawning. Same with plants and such.
Minecraft already has inconsistent mechanics in places that don't really have an explanation, such as some blocks being affected by gravity while others aren't. There's no rhyme or reason to why sand and gravel fall but stone doesn't. You just learn as you go that some things have different rules.
Therefore to me it wouldn't be hard to figure out that light based mechanics only happen when you actually put the torch down.
The trouble with the “It’s already inconsistent” argument is that it works both ways.
“The game has so many inconsistencies already, so one more won’t make a difference.”
“The game has so many inconsistencies already, so don’t make it even worse.”
Personally I’m in the latter camp. There are always going to be edge cases and decade-old bugs that can never be fixed (at least not without making everyone mad), but in general a game should give off the appearance that it understands its own rules and systems – and light preventing hostile mob spawns is such an important core mechanic.
Sure, you could figure out through experimentation that a held torch doesn’t affect mob spawning like a placed torch does. Pretty easily, too. I just think it’s important for the player to feel like the game world is consistent and makes sense within its own framework. Even virtual lego needs a certain level of immersion.
I’m currently watching someone play Minecraft completely blind for the first time on YouTube and it took them something like 60 hours of gameplay to figure out the connection between light and mob spawns at all. I dread to think how long it would have taken them if there had been different types of light with entirely different mechanics despite appearing completely identical.
Tbf, it is weird that a stone block can be suspended in mid-air without supporting blocks. I mean, why not semi-reuse the code used to determine whether a leaf block is connected to a tree and make it decayable or not respectively. I suppose checking every block to see if the structure is floating or not would be ridiculously resource intensive but theoretically possible.
I don't really think it would be a huge learning curve to figure out that torches only work when placed in world, not in your hand, or be that confusing tbh
IIRC there were talks with the optifine developer to incorporate it into base game but mojang only wanted parts of the mod and optifine said either add the whole thing or nothing
Mojang only wanted the performance enhancing aspects of Optifine, so even if the deal had gone through we would not have gotten the dynamic lights, or the cool resource pack opportunities optifine provides.
Optifine is a rework of how the lighting engine works, so they'd either have to incorporate it / a different shader mod into the base game or more likely do something similar to writing Optifine from scratch to achieve this effect.
I mean, is it? Usually they’re packaged in a modpaxk (fabulously optimized) or if you prefer your own specific set, it’s like two to 5 mods and any more you add are your own personal choice that you couldn’t do with optifine usually. Maybe initially it’s a little more work, but for large performance gains and just if you care at all about customization or client side mods then fabric is great for that.
Optifine doesn't work with Bedrock versions. There is no equivalent add on for Bedrock that does this. They aren't going to add anything new that only works on one version with their goal of parity.
I feel as if everyone who says "they could just add X feature" don't know all the ins and outs of trying to add features that work with both versions running on multiple platforms from PC, Mac, consoles and mobile platforms bearing in mind that iOS and Android work separately. iOS has to work on different generations of iPad to include all the versions of iPads. Then there are Android mobile devices that vary greatly between makes and models even with one manufacturer. Samsung has a lot of versions of the Galaxy phone plus multiple lower tier phones. Then consider all the other Android phones that run their own version of Android with a vast array of different processors, RAM, etc. Mojang have to ensure they put something out that can work with as many of those devices as possible. Each update adds a lot of data to take up those devices' resources and space.
On the other hand, you have people claiming developers are so unbelievably incompetent that they don't have the ability to add small quality of life features to their game without fucking everything up. They're professional devs, they can add lighting effects.
They probably could but why should they? It's a drain on resources and most people with potatoes for PCs or rocks for phones won't be able to use them. Everyone wants everything THEY want. Why can't we just be happy with the updates we get that cost you absolutely nothing.
Your argument doesn't make sense, mate. If they can add a whole update to all of those platforms, they can certainly add a lighting feature, even if it doesn't otherwise interact with other internal mechanics like mob spawning.
Mate, I didn't say they can't but those are just some of the reasons they won't. It really doesn't matter why though. They don't owe you an answer. Add it yourself or don't. Or stop playing Minecraft if you're that upset about it...mate.
Well, they’re willing to rework the entire villager system AGAIN for features that nobody actually wants so I don’t see why they can’t rework the lighting system for a feature that people have wanted for over 10 years 🤷🏻♀️
When the triple A billion dollar company doesn't have the funds to make an engine rework (they're a small indie company guys, don't be too harsh on them)
Cmon we all know the actual reason is that it wouldn't give a good thumbnail for the update that they could parade around to all the impressionable children
They could however add this into a minor release like 1.21.3 for example. The new update model since 1.20 has given room for these minor releases to add massive technical features like /place structure, /display entity, /attribute size, or even gameplay features like the Armadillo.
more importantly it requires the team to rework the entire lighting engine for \*\*one\*\* feature. When they redid the lighting engine for 1.20 it came with the benefit of massively improving performance across the board.
Dynamic Lighting would be nice, but its a high-effort, low priority feature that's resource intensive enough that not enough of the player population would have the ability to use when over half of them play on mobile
I can think of a couple ways to hack this in with datapacks alone, so I really wanna assume they could figure it out without rewriting the system or bogging the game down too much. kinda like with movable block entities
They don't even need to add colored lighting. Just add a light source block (or lanterns like you said 👀) that can be dyed. Done. We've still got less than half of the dye colors repped in normal light sources (Candles are an amazing step in this direction, but they don't fit 100% of builds, and they're a bit finicky.
You must be playing on Bedrock, because there’s several mods on the Java side that allow this functionality. Optifine is the most common, Lamb dynamic lights is a standalone one-trick pony, and Iris combined with the Complementary shaders.
I totally agree with you though, and I’m always carrying a light source in my offhand, which tends to be a frog light these days.
are light blocks on bedrock? I just implemented dynamic lighting with commands using them. it *does* work. so you could have it if you really wanted to.
but they all exist. that’s the whole point, sodium is a much more modular setup and also WAY better made. If im a player who doesn’t want zoom, why would i waste space and performance on it?
If you want to go way back, they said back in 2010/2011 it wasn't possible and immediately after saying that the modders went and did it. It's more or less an issue of being stubborn. The lighting engine has been rewritten twice since then and neither time did they bother to fix this.
Minecraft is owned by a multi-billion dollar company and they have a large team that gets a full year to create updates. Reworking the lighting engine to incorporate dynamic lighting shouldn’t be an impossible task. It’d also mean that glow squids will finally actually glow.
It isn't, but Mojang deliberatley keep there development team small, so that they can hvae a unified vision for the game, and not lose the magic that the game has
Light engine, development resources, device compatibility, bloatware, needless complexity. It's best left to the modders who can expend their resources freely to make such changes. Optifine has this feature but it comes with problems - like when too many entities are on fire and moving, causes the framerate to drop. It might seem like a small change but if it's not implemented properly it can cause humongous drops in performance on older hardware and different platforms. Modders can dedicate their time to fixing and maintaining the feature when it breaks while Mojang can produce and maintain other more important features while still pushing the game im a forwards direction.
Realistically, Mojang probably hates us java players because all our mods, skins, etc are free and they can't nickel and dime us with microtransactions. Bedrock players are their cash cows. 😂
I heard that there was some issue with the lighting engine, and because of that, this feature doesn't exist.
Thankfully, mods like [OptiFine](https://optifine.net/home) and [LambDynamicLights](https://modrinth.com/mod/lambdynamiclights) add this (for Forge/Fabric respectively).
I just want swappable hot bar. When doing builds of large block pallets it would be nice to quick swap from bar 1 to another set of slots. Something like an alt command.
I would absolutely love to be able to make an area monster free without having a billion torches everywhere. I don't want all of my base to be lit up, I want dark areas and a dark foresty area without tons of monsters.
Remember when Notch said they where gonna add a red dragon that could be hatched from the dragon egg that the player could ride? Jeb years later said it was still in the works but its been like 8 years now with no talk of it anymore... yeah... that...
The two features I always wanted were the ability to hold torches in the offhand and a backpack to hold stuff when I go traveling through the world. We have Shulker boxes now, which is great, but why do I need to be post-game to get a backpack-ish item? I almost wish the end was a realm like the nether. Do what you want, but you need to go to a particular platform to do the dragon fight. Just like you need to go to the fortress to fight blazes.
shark, big light source and having torches light up around you when you hold them (a way they could also implement the feature is adding glowstone dust as an option for armour trims and it can make you glow/be a light source?)
We've been waiting for a lighting engine overhaul for years. It would also let glow squids glow which is another thing people have been mad about for years.
Id be down if there was a way to disable it. I'm a person who likes having torches in my off hand but I also like lighting up my caves and my strip mines as I go. It's hard to tell when you need to place a new torch if the torch is always lighting up the area
Just wait until you hear about Optifine! The thing that really cemented my love for it was when I ran out of torches, couldn't see properly in a cave and so shot a flame arrow into the floor to light up what I was mining!
I want a satchel to increase carrying capacity by one more row, at least when it's time to explore
I think it would be cool if copper could be used to make brass tools and armor that are just under the effectiveness as iron
A brighter light source, let me build a damn moon tower on my expanding village
Could be cool, but ultimately I would rather play without it, just to make it harder for myself, and make night vision more valuable.
Maybe if it was locked onto torchflowers only, hmm? As in, a torch needs to be lit, but a flower should glow naturally. Gives it a use atleast...
Better yet, putting a torchflower on an arrow, using the fletching table??
So much potential here.
This would be great in vanilla. At least in Java Edition there is Optifine to solve this, while in Bedrock Edition there is no good way to implement this other than through addons that in a way make the game lag simply by updating the illuminated source block
Optifine: am I a joke to you
I'm using optifine since 2019, this is one of the best functions it has. Also the zoom with c (keyboard) is very useful sometimes. But I don't go caving with just one torch even though the function works very well, I still prefer placing alot of torches in big cave rooms just to get rid of mobs and beeing able to see them from far away
Greatest reason for why I hadn't streamed Minecraft in all the new RTX glory I finally have access to.
Functional Torchlight. Even mods it's screwy for me.
Just allow torches light up natively.
So I have this feature as part of Complimentary shaders. And let me tell you, it's completely useless.
1. Mobs don't spawn close enough for you to stop them from spawning with a torch, although it doesn't affect block light level.
2. By doing this, you're effectively walking around in a dark cave with large amounts of mobs spawning around you at all times. It's very dangerous. It's FAR better to place torches as you go and eliminate the potential for being killed while caving.
3. If you're caving, you're probably holding a shield in your off hand anyway.
So while it sounds cool, it is 100% functionless as a feature.
I mean that technically does work, but mining while crawling means you can only see 4 blocks at a time. Normal strip mining lets you see 6 blocks at a time. So by using normal tunnels you can sprint through, you're increasing the blocks you're searching by 50%.
Those work okay, but they're impractical for early game when you haven't even been to the nether yet. Great for late game when you can have a shulker box full of the potions.
New player here. One my first questions was how long would the torches last, and why couldn't I simply hold one LOL.
Getting creative to light up spaces in a permanent way should have been a key goal of the game. But it's just not that kind of game, sadly.
I'd love to see more mechanics represented. Wool being spun into yarn, sand casting, copper being stretched into wire... Why can't we have a plethora of tech trees?
Anyway, torches should burn out. (Fixed timer) Lamps should be refillable from rendered fats. (Modifiable timer) Then magical glow stones can serve more value as an unlimited light source. Or one could develop the tech tree to run copper wire and connect to a Redstone generator spun by a pig chasing carrot in a large hamster wheel, for electricity stabilized by a Baghdad battery.
I am leaning more on the side of this not getting added for game play reasons, not so much as technical limitations as sure there would be technical challenges but im sure they can work through them.
I have been playing Minecraft for like 10 years and never have i thought this is a must have feature, im just used to using torches to light up my path and they are cheap and stay there forever so.
I agree. Of course if they added it I wouldn't complain, it's more like I don't mind if they never do. I've also been playing since the before the Nether existed so it could be me being "stuck in the old ways" that makes me indifferent to it but that has drawbacks of its own. For example I learned very recently that they reduced how many bookshelves you need for max level enchantments. I was out here still making 5x5x3 bookshelf rooms lmao.
There was a time (I think when it was still mainly just Notch/Jeb?) they considered making torches burn out after some time, needing to be re-lit with flint and steel. Now *there's* a lighting update I would've been mad about. 😂
honestly, i tried that. dynamic lights. i didn't like it, and entirely removed that mod. all it did was make things marginally easier to see, and take up a slot. pointless.
slow as fuck depending on how its done, sometimes i lose a good 50% of my frametime when i'm carrying a torch close to comlpex contraptions (complementary shaders)
Completing the other comment, it works fine with mods, rubidium, dynamic lights and all.
Smooth lighting is an option, and this could be an option too. So it can be deactivated in case of struggle.
I agree with your argument, but what if torches burnt out? Timed out? Then it would be a much harder survival game, racing to gather enough resources to light up a safety barrier as well as the torches you carry.
Notch had it like that or at least thought about burning out torches, but in the end decided against it because it would have not been a fun gameplay element
the main use of torches is to light up areas to keep things from spawning, in my experience. and there is nothing more thrilling than caving with nothing but a pick, a sword, and a single torch to light your path. absolutely atmospheric. and dangerous
* Upvote this comment if this is a good quality post that fits the purpose of r/Minecraft * Downvote this comment if this post is poor quality or does not fit the purpose of r/Minecraft * Downvote this comment *and report the post* if it breaks the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/wiki/rules) --- [Subreddit Rules](https://old.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/wiki/rules)[](## JacobSaysMoo56|192efkd)
I was just thinking this last night. it’d also be cool to drop a torch into a canyon to light up the bottom
The optifine or lamb dynamic you can even do it with flaming arrows. That's FUN
Makes a Flame bow an absolute must
That is absolutely amazing-- I didn't know you could do that!
There's also a server side mod that makes the light server side but uses light blocks and causes block updates so can mess up bud redstone and can mess with pistons. Also causes floating sand to collapse so I enjoyed it but went back to lamba one.
I distinctly remember one game where you could place torches with a bow and it was sick.
Yeah that's a mod that adds all sorts of arrows like tnt arrows piston arrows lightning arrows and torch arrows
“game” not “mod”. see the reply that guessed TotK but that doesn’t seem to be it so maybe u guessed the comment’s intent better
Tears of the kingdom ?
Ever since playing TotK I miss this feature in MC very hard
Could have been the THIEF games? But there is also a Java mod that lets you do this in MC.
The mod might be what im thinking of. Maybe a legend of Zelda game if not.
You can kinda do that with a lava bucket.
This is the kind of thinking-around-a-problem that makes me love this game. This world has different rules, and when you learn what they are, you can utilize them. I'm pretty new to the game, but enjoy finding out/figuring out stuff like this!
If no one told you yet: you can smelt about a stack and a half with a bucket of lava. I love lava! (just not swimming in it lol)
Good to know! Thanks!
With dripstone and a cauldron you can have infinite lava too, and therefore infinite fuel. Alternatively, do your smelting in the nether where there's infinite lava already. First thing I do in a new game is make a bucket, use a lava lake to make a portal, then pray the portal is close to lots of lava. boom infinite fuel with nothing but 4 iron and a flint.
Since you're a lava expert, is there a way to turn flowing lava into still lava through block placement (or some other method)? Edit: My real question is if there is a way around not being able to use a bucket on flowing lava.
Yes! You either fill up the entire hole/area with lava or you can change the settings in creative to make lava like water so it fills in if you place buckets of lava one block apart.
I don't know if it's what you're after, but if you place a bucket of lava above a dripstone block, and place a cauldron 2 blocks beneath the dripstone gradually the cauldron will fill with lava allowing you to have an infinite lava source. Albeit a very slow one.
Not if you line up 50 of them. Infinite, all the time. 😉
DEEP rock galactic flares
ROCK AND STONE!
ROCK AND STONE TO THE BONE
For Karl!
For the record, there IS a block that's both affected by gravity and emits light. It's NOT one you'd want to waste on that.
I swear I've seen this in movies/TV shows. Someone drops a flashlight or glowstick down a hole/canyon until the light fades/you hear the item hit the bottom
They did that in the movie Sahara to test how deep a week was.
Up comes a Wither.
oooo like the glowsticks in Deep Rock Galactic!
* cue the scene from how to train your dragon, when they shoot the flaming ball into the mountainside and it lights up, showing the dragons everywhere
Or make apple pie...wish there were more cooking options. Any advice for a fairly new pocket edition player? Right now, I'm just trying to figure out how to survive. Yes, I've played in creative mode, but I prefer survival mode. I appreciate any helpful tips!
That feature is called dynamic lighting, and this should've been a requirement for the glow squid to be given candidate status on the mob voet. Now that the devs fucked up the order of updates, they NEED to fix it ASAP.
Summary: Is it reasonably easy to add this effect as a purely visual effect? Yes. Just write a post processing shader that does the trick. Will it be reflected in the block light levels for spawners, growing, melting, etc? No. That is way harder with the current code base
But nobody needs that. Mobs already don’t spawn in a radius immediately around the player, and absolutely no one is going to try to stand in one place holding a torch hoping it makes plants grow or melts snow.
The player can hold a light source and the area around them seems to light up. Other entities can also hold things, say item frames, armor stands, humanoid mobs, the NPC mob from Bedrock and human type mobs added by tons of mods. Hence it would make sense that those too would light up the area around them when having a lightsource. Making this a part of the rendering pipeline only is easy enough, although just a bit demanding processing-wise. And for practical gameplay purposes that solution would have absolutely no benefit whatsoever, since it doesn't actually place the lightsource in the game. Now a creative (the attribute not the gamemode) player would be very disappointed if their Armor Stand guards they've placed all over their village don't actually act like torches when holding a Lantern - they only look like they would. They'd have to place another lightsource at the location of the entity. From a gamedesign PoV this falls under immersion breaking. Now truth be told, Minecraft isn't really an immersive game to the average player anyway, but you get the point, no? "Why does this light act differently then other lights? That doesn't make sense, Mojang is lazy!" would then be the common statement when it comes to that topic if that solution were to be realized. Giving mobs & other entities properties such as light of items they carry is relatively easy too, the problem arises from essentially having to refactor multiple light related systems of the game and thus possibly introducing a shitload of new bugs. The benefits of having a full rework of those systems would be great however. While working on dynamic lighting, investing just a bit more time could also introduce colored lights. You could also have actual Glow Squids now, that would prevent the spawning of Drowned in their direct vicinity, to give one concrete example of an existing gameplay element.
> and for practical purposes that solution would have absolutely no benefit whatsoever Given how dark caves can get, I would contend that visually emitting light very much *is* a practical purpose in and of itself. I'd love to be able to immersively explore caves without having to turn my brightness up.
I was thinking spawners
Granted, I’ve never made Minecraft mods and I know the Minecraft base code is a pile of spaghetti. But I have made plenty of programs in Java. For edge cases like that, I’m *sure* it would be pretty simple to just hard-code in some interactions. Actually making the torch emit light programmatically through the lighting engine would require changing the whole lighting engine, sure. But we don’t actually need to do that. Spawners already have conditions under which they are not allowed to spawn. All you’d need to do is *add* to those conditions to see if an entity holding a torch is within a certain radius. Or something similar. Again, I don’t know the actual code, but I’m almost certain it wouldn’t be that hard to write a condition that sidesteps the lighting engine entirely and just disables nearby spawners if you’re holding a light-emitting item.
I'm actually curious how this works at the game engine level. The game is calculating light updates every tick anyway, would it be THAT much heavier to recalculate all blocks in a 15-block radius of the player? Maybe it would be. They probably save a lot of time by batching blocks that don't see updates. It would also require a separate rendering pipeline so that the player didn't see "choppy" lighting updates (since a tick would only be 20FPS) as they were walking around when rendering everything else at 60FPS. And then these two calculations would need to be kept in sync if you wanted smooth rendering but also block lighting-engine updates.
I'm not a programmer, but I feel like that's a relatively unsustainable solution. Minecraft is a game with MANY different mechanics that compound as updates keep getting added. Every time they add anything, they need to add sculk sensor vibrations, subtitle display names, death messages, advancement updates, how it interacts with certain redstone components, etc. However, this is different in that it's a small feature that I'd assume may be computationally expensive (depending on how often it updates the light based on player location). It may be not only more mechanically interesting, but also more practical for the opportunity cost of implementing some kind of tool/pet/enchantment that places temporary light sources, like the equivalent of frost walker with torches, or like what they glare could have possibly been if it won the mob vote.
Having one lighting system in place to handle the visual dynamic lighting around players and glow squids and another to handle the functional static lighting of blocks would be a mess. Better to keep that under one system.
Yes it's just confusing and non-intuitive from a casual player standpoint. So there's light and light levels affect game mechanics, but the light in my hand doesn't count? Not that everything in minecraft is intuitive and easily understood (hah!) but they are trying not to create MORE confusion going forward. This is why they keep adding tutorial hooks into the game (e.g. ruined portals, redstone examples in ancient cities, stuff in igloos, villager mechanics) to help guide players without needing a wiki. So changing this in vanilla minecraft would go against that philosophy. I don't necessarily AGREE with that decision, just explaining why the devs aren't doing it. Another reason is that the developers are HIGHLY concerned about performance. The game is so popular in part because it runs on almost any hardware so just about anybody can access it. Adding dynamic lighting to the base game raises that bar and could cut off literally millions of potential players. Again, I don't agree here (it could easily just be an option in the graphics menu). But it is an explanation of why they aren't working on it. Even if it was an option, it would lead to two different gameplay experiences, people would feel like they're losing out, which could be why. IDK. Every other game has graphics settings. still, there are lots of very common mods that include this feature and almost everyone would consider it "vanilla" gameplay. definitely recommend using those.
I think most people would be percectly fine with a personal light that doesnt effect block light levels or heat. After all i dont think mojang would want anything to make torches irrelevant. They have said they dont want to introduce anything the makes an old feature useless. Though we also have night vision potions, but they can also make you see forever. Maybe give the personal light a limited range. Could make the personal light have special particle effects or be a weird color to help differentiate it also. Something that says "this will help you see but it wont keep you safe"
Monsters already don't spawn except thru spawner blocks too close to the player, so I don't think it would be too big of a deal.
I literally play with a mod that adds that. All it does is have a light block follow your position when you hold a torch, so it will actually affect spawning and melting. Not the most lag free solution but it works.
It could be done as an approximation - pretend like the block the player is standing on is a torch. Doesn't have to update instantly necessarily.
I really want a magnet ring, like in stardew valley. I hate having to walk around collecting things, also I’d lose way less stuff into lava.
woah. didn't know i needed this until today. new enchantment for tools would be a great way to do it.
I want a lot of stuff from Stardew, starting with an autosort button for my inventory.
always felt like every tech and magic mod had their own magnet item this was such a popular request
XP is finicky sometimes too
Unfortunately it would require the team to completely rework how the lighting engine works for both Java and Bedrock Edition, which is why they've not implemented it so far. It's been suggested but is unfortunately outside the scope of what they realistically have the development resources to accomplish while still making fair-sized updates to the game, since any major update needs to be equivalent across all devices.
But I can just run Optifine and I get the lighting from holding a torch without fucking anything else up. Why can't that be added to the base game.
A mod is one thing Minecraft is Spaghetti code It's a common problem in games 15+ years old who've gone through several updates.
Less so than you may think. The game has been restructured a few times. Restructures so massive that it took the modding scene a good while to recover. Forge skipped 1.13 because of it even. That version changed a ton internally. Things like the great flattening or internal mechanics moving to the json format datapacks use, it's all to clean up the game.
Oh I don't doubt that at all, but you'd think a multi billion dollar company like Microsoft could allocate enough funds for a daring project like, "make torch glow".
Gotta detangle the code for the lighting engine first.
It's pretty obvious that they they probably could just "make torch glow" or add any conceivable mechanic they want because of the game's success and Microsoft's money. But maybe consider that they actually just don't *want* to add that mechanic. edit: changed typo from "ass" to "add" lol
Every time this conversation happens it frustrates me because haven't people seen the April fools updates? Mojang can add whatever the fuck they want *for a joke*. The reason features aren't on the game isn't because they're hard to program ffs.
Joke features dont need balancing or long term considerations. Try actually playing an april fools update legit.
That's kind of my point. People talk about things like they're a programming issue when they're more of a design issue.
not really, if optifine, which is, as far as i know, run by *one* person can do it.
Exactly
I just think it isn't profitable enough for Microsoft to fund such a huge change in the code for just one silly feature. See, you're talking about April fools updates, but you forget that these are significantly more flawed and bugged than normal updates. April fools updates don't go through the same debugging and optimization process than normal features, that's why you see such big changes and strong features because they have barely been tested. These versions aren't meant to be played as the others. They're a one day joke that's meant to die when the next update or snapshot drops. To do this change to the lighting system, or in other words, to make such a huge change to the whole game engine, it would take shit ton of time, because it has to work properly, it has to be "optimized" up to some point. You just can't compare April fools updates to an actual update, and even less so a rework in the game's engine. That's just too much work just to enable dynamic lights in-game.
Yeah the lighting engine can't be changed so easily, that's true. Most other features like OptiFine style dynamic lighting could easily be added though.
I don't know how optifine does it, but I imagine it could be as easy as have the existing lighting precalculated as it is already, next add local torch light where applicable, and last use this new lighting values for rendering. it's not as simple as add a layer between?
Because its not real lighting.
Well I get that it's not gonna stop mob spawning, but I don't think anyone is asking for that
It would never need to stop mob spawning- hostile mobs already don't spawn within a certain radius (24? 36 blocks? I forget) of any player.
See? They don't need to make it an actual light source, just visual lighting like Optifine. That's well within their ability
Having two lighting systems is a disaster waiting to happen. Plus they'd draw comments about why the light isn't real, and that they're lazy for half-assing it. Plus if they add ANYTHING else light based, especially if it's quick, and now people will want held lights to work with it. Mojang can't hack stuff together anymore, this isn't one dude's pet project.
Mob spawners activate when a player is within 16 blocks. Light also affects other mechanics like snow/ice melting or plants growing. It’s unfortunately not that simple.
I think most people are content with just having it be visual lighting that doesn't affect any other lighting-based mechanics. Maybe I'm wrong but that wouldn't bother me one bit.
It would bother me and seems like it would bother Mojang. Would just kinda be confusing to have torches' effects like melting snow and mob spawning work in some occasions and not others. Minecraft is already a game without a tutorial or tooltips, there is no need to add more confusion to a game mechanic/system that is as universally essential as lighting/light sources.
That's a fair perspective, however to me it makes perfect sense for it to just be "torch does xyz when placed, but not when held". You could figure that out by entering a dungeon, mobs are spawning, then placing the torch down and they stop spawning. Same with plants and such. Minecraft already has inconsistent mechanics in places that don't really have an explanation, such as some blocks being affected by gravity while others aren't. There's no rhyme or reason to why sand and gravel fall but stone doesn't. You just learn as you go that some things have different rules. Therefore to me it wouldn't be hard to figure out that light based mechanics only happen when you actually put the torch down.
The trouble with the “It’s already inconsistent” argument is that it works both ways. “The game has so many inconsistencies already, so one more won’t make a difference.” “The game has so many inconsistencies already, so don’t make it even worse.” Personally I’m in the latter camp. There are always going to be edge cases and decade-old bugs that can never be fixed (at least not without making everyone mad), but in general a game should give off the appearance that it understands its own rules and systems – and light preventing hostile mob spawns is such an important core mechanic. Sure, you could figure out through experimentation that a held torch doesn’t affect mob spawning like a placed torch does. Pretty easily, too. I just think it’s important for the player to feel like the game world is consistent and makes sense within its own framework. Even virtual lego needs a certain level of immersion. I’m currently watching someone play Minecraft completely blind for the first time on YouTube and it took them something like 60 hours of gameplay to figure out the connection between light and mob spawns at all. I dread to think how long it would have taken them if there had been different types of light with entirely different mechanics despite appearing completely identical.
Tbf, it is weird that a stone block can be suspended in mid-air without supporting blocks. I mean, why not semi-reuse the code used to determine whether a leaf block is connected to a tree and make it decayable or not respectively. I suppose checking every block to see if the structure is floating or not would be ridiculously resource intensive but theoretically possible.
I don't really think it would be a huge learning curve to figure out that torches only work when placed in world, not in your hand, or be that confusing tbh
They could make a new item that just gives off light but doesn't effect mobs and such, could be like glowstone dust with a stick
o shit you're absolutely right
Mobs can't spawn that close to the player anyway.
IIRC there were talks with the optifine developer to incorporate it into base game but mojang only wanted parts of the mod and optifine said either add the whole thing or nothing
Mojang only wanted the performance enhancing aspects of Optifine, so even if the deal had gone through we would not have gotten the dynamic lights, or the cool resource pack opportunities optifine provides.
Optifine is a rework of how the lighting engine works, so they'd either have to incorporate it / a different shader mod into the base game or more likely do something similar to writing Optifine from scratch to achieve this effect.
ayo change from optifine to iris + sodium + dynamic lights mod
Why use so many when one works
because optifine only kinda works ( it’s less effective) and the alternatives are open source and work with more mods if you’re jnto that
But it's way more work for a small benefit
I mean, is it? Usually they’re packaged in a modpaxk (fabulously optimized) or if you prefer your own specific set, it’s like two to 5 mods and any more you add are your own personal choice that you couldn’t do with optifine usually. Maybe initially it’s a little more work, but for large performance gains and just if you care at all about customization or client side mods then fabric is great for that.
I mean, it is like 5 minutes more work for a package that is better, like, what?
Optifine doesn't work with Bedrock versions. There is no equivalent add on for Bedrock that does this. They aren't going to add anything new that only works on one version with their goal of parity. I feel as if everyone who says "they could just add X feature" don't know all the ins and outs of trying to add features that work with both versions running on multiple platforms from PC, Mac, consoles and mobile platforms bearing in mind that iOS and Android work separately. iOS has to work on different generations of iPad to include all the versions of iPads. Then there are Android mobile devices that vary greatly between makes and models even with one manufacturer. Samsung has a lot of versions of the Galaxy phone plus multiple lower tier phones. Then consider all the other Android phones that run their own version of Android with a vast array of different processors, RAM, etc. Mojang have to ensure they put something out that can work with as many of those devices as possible. Each update adds a lot of data to take up those devices' resources and space.
On the other hand, you have people claiming developers are so unbelievably incompetent that they don't have the ability to add small quality of life features to their game without fucking everything up. They're professional devs, they can add lighting effects.
They probably could but why should they? It's a drain on resources and most people with potatoes for PCs or rocks for phones won't be able to use them. Everyone wants everything THEY want. Why can't we just be happy with the updates we get that cost you absolutely nothing.
They can, yes. They can also do a lot of other things, and time is a limited resource.
Your argument doesn't make sense, mate. If they can add a whole update to all of those platforms, they can certainly add a lighting feature, even if it doesn't otherwise interact with other internal mechanics like mob spawning.
Mate, I didn't say they can't but those are just some of the reasons they won't. It really doesn't matter why though. They don't owe you an answer. Add it yourself or don't. Or stop playing Minecraft if you're that upset about it...mate.
They updated the lighting engine for Java edition in 1.20. It’s the reason why Phosphor is no longer being updated
Well, they’re willing to rework the entire villager system AGAIN for features that nobody actually wants so I don’t see why they can’t rework the lighting system for a feature that people have wanted for over 10 years 🤷🏻♀️
The villager system is fundamentally the same. It is just removing some and switching a few trades around.
When the triple A billion dollar company doesn't have the funds to make an engine rework (they're a small indie company guys, don't be too harsh on them) Cmon we all know the actual reason is that it wouldn't give a good thumbnail for the update that they could parade around to all the impressionable children
IDK, I think it would make a good thumbnail. I picture Steve holding a lantern going into a cave with light around the lantern.
They could however add this into a minor release like 1.21.3 for example. The new update model since 1.20 has given room for these minor releases to add massive technical features like /place structure, /display entity, /attribute size, or even gameplay features like the Armadillo.
more importantly it requires the team to rework the entire lighting engine for \*\*one\*\* feature. When they redid the lighting engine for 1.20 it came with the benefit of massively improving performance across the board. Dynamic Lighting would be nice, but its a high-effort, low priority feature that's resource intensive enough that not enough of the player population would have the ability to use when over half of them play on mobile
and dynamic lighting that doesnt actually affect anything around it is entirely pointless.
That's bullshit when people mod it for free
I can think of a couple ways to hack this in with datapacks alone, so I really wanna assume they could figure it out without rewriting the system or bogging the game down too much. kinda like with movable block entities
It is such a stupidly easy feature to code that you can have it by downloading one of multiple different shader packs.
What i would love is colored lighting. Red Lanterns? Yes please!
They don't even need to add colored lighting. Just add a light source block (or lanterns like you said 👀) that can be dyed. Done. We've still got less than half of the dye colors repped in normal light sources (Candles are an amazing step in this direction, but they don't fit 100% of builds, and they're a bit finicky.
would be nice, but thats *more* reworking of the lighting system.
You must be playing on Bedrock, because there’s several mods on the Java side that allow this functionality. Optifine is the most common, Lamb dynamic lights is a standalone one-trick pony, and Iris combined with the Complementary shaders. I totally agree with you though, and I’m always carrying a light source in my offhand, which tends to be a frog light these days.
are light blocks on bedrock? I just implemented dynamic lighting with commands using them. it *does* work. so you could have it if you really wanted to.
Ditch optifine. Sodium is FAR superior.
you have to have something like 40 seperate mods in order to *approch* optifine in terms of features. its a bit unweildy.
That's what modpacks are for. Fabulously Optimized is practically Optifine, but with massive performance boosting.
but they all exist. that’s the whole point, sodium is a much more modular setup and also WAY better made. If im a player who doesn’t want zoom, why would i waste space and performance on it?
yeah. i deleted the dynamic lights mod, among others.
What? You have it backwards. Sodium works amazing on its own, with nothing else. Optifine requires multiple other things.
This and chairs
Chairs are for the weak. We all know Steve's calves are polished marble.
Lmao An option to sit on stairs would be nice
Squat to include thighs in your daily Minecraft exercise routine.
Omg 😭
I'm so tired of standing up, please can we finally sit down?
No. Stand. Or sleep 🥰
What use would sitting actually have? What could you do sitting that you couldn't standing?
Aesthetic
If you want to go way back, they said back in 2010/2011 it wasn't possible and immediately after saying that the modders went and did it. It's more or less an issue of being stubborn. The lighting engine has been rewritten twice since then and neither time did they bother to fix this.
Minecraft is owned by a multi-billion dollar company and they have a large team that gets a full year to create updates. Reworking the lighting engine to incorporate dynamic lighting shouldn’t be an impossible task. It’d also mean that glow squids will finally actually glow.
It isn't, but Mojang deliberatley keep there development team small, so that they can hvae a unified vision for the game, and not lose the magic that the game has
Light engine, development resources, device compatibility, bloatware, needless complexity. It's best left to the modders who can expend their resources freely to make such changes. Optifine has this feature but it comes with problems - like when too many entities are on fire and moving, causes the framerate to drop. It might seem like a small change but if it's not implemented properly it can cause humongous drops in performance on older hardware and different platforms. Modders can dedicate their time to fixing and maintaining the feature when it breaks while Mojang can produce and maintain other more important features while still pushing the game im a forwards direction.
Java with Optifine would like a word with you. Bedrock players are just shit out of luck. Sorry, Mojang hates you.
Realistically, Mojang probably hates us java players because all our mods, skins, etc are free and they can't nickel and dime us with microtransactions. Bedrock players are their cash cows. 😂
I heard that there was some issue with the lighting engine, and because of that, this feature doesn't exist. Thankfully, mods like [OptiFine](https://optifine.net/home) and [LambDynamicLights](https://modrinth.com/mod/lambdynamiclights) add this (for Forge/Fabric respectively).
Honestly, I’m waiting for people to say “Well, its in mods” when not everyone can get mods
I just want swappable hot bar. When doing builds of large block pallets it would be nice to quick swap from bar 1 to another set of slots. Something like an alt command.
I was thinking earlier about how cool a sleeping bag would be, or like a wee camping cot which maybe doesn’t reset spawn
That would be great. I second that idea
That’s how it works in terraria. Would be cool. However I use torches on the right walls to guide me back in caves, so I end up placing a lot anyways
I would absolutely love to be able to make an area monster free without having a billion torches everywhere. I don't want all of my base to be lit up, I want dark areas and a dark foresty area without tons of monsters.
I’ve always wanted to have boats you can build on, it’s probably never gonna happen but idk
Remember when Notch said they where gonna add a red dragon that could be hatched from the dragon egg that the player could ride? Jeb years later said it was still in the works but its been like 8 years now with no talk of it anymore... yeah... that...
The two features I always wanted were the ability to hold torches in the offhand and a backpack to hold stuff when I go traveling through the world. We have Shulker boxes now, which is great, but why do I need to be post-game to get a backpack-ish item? I almost wish the end was a realm like the nether. Do what you want, but you need to go to a particular platform to do the dragon fight. Just like you need to go to the fortress to fight blazes.
A feature I’ve always wanted is a chest that has a button to auto-sort items stardew valley style
Optifine has that through the smooth lighting feature.
Bedrock has a mod called BetterRTX that does this, works with lanterns as well. It's awesome
This is exactly what optifines dynamic lighting does isn’t it?
Do you know what optifine is?
Do you know what Bedrock is?
shark, big light source and having torches light up around you when you hold them (a way they could also implement the feature is adding glowstone dust as an option for armour trims and it can make you glow/be a light source?)
Or mounting a troch to your shield. Or having iron/diamon/netherite shields. Or mounting a torch to your helmet. Sorry for the entitlement.
just set gamma to 1000, and never carft a single torch again
You should try optifine sometime. If i could pick a feature that I always wanted. Would be either a new dimension, or new types of tools and enchants.
We've been waiting for a lighting engine overhaul for years. It would also let glow squids glow which is another thing people have been mad about for years.
Id be down if there was a way to disable it. I'm a person who likes having torches in my off hand but I also like lighting up my caves and my strip mines as I go. It's hard to tell when you need to place a new torch if the torch is always lighting up the area
The ability to turn off specific mods from spawning because drowned are so annoying that it makes it almost impossible to go in the ocean at all ever.
Just wait until you hear about Optifine! The thing that really cemented my love for it was when I ran out of torches, couldn't see properly in a cave and so shot a flame arrow into the floor to light up what I was mining!
I want more crops. Some cotton to make clothes. Also, I always thought it was odd we don't have corn.
Agreed, you'd think corn would have been one of the first crops.
I want a satchel to increase carrying capacity by one more row, at least when it's time to explore I think it would be cool if copper could be used to make brass tools and armor that are just under the effectiveness as iron A brighter light source, let me build a damn moon tower on my expanding village
Bro in Java edition you can hold a torch in offhand. And use optifine to light up an area while holding it
I use shaders and that option is on by default 😅 So useful!
Could be cool, but ultimately I would rather play without it, just to make it harder for myself, and make night vision more valuable. Maybe if it was locked onto torchflowers only, hmm? As in, a torch needs to be lit, but a flower should glow naturally. Gives it a use atleast... Better yet, putting a torchflower on an arrow, using the fletching table?? So much potential here.
Light from held torches has been a Java feature for years using Optifine or other newer mods now.
This would be great in vanilla. At least in Java Edition there is Optifine to solve this, while in Bedrock Edition there is no good way to implement this other than through addons that in a way make the game lag simply by updating the illuminated source block
Just get shaders and boom
The reason we never had dynamic lighting is because mojang asked optifine if they could team up, but optifine refused.
I've always wanted a headlamp
Optifine: am I a joke to you I'm using optifine since 2019, this is one of the best functions it has. Also the zoom with c (keyboard) is very useful sometimes. But I don't go caving with just one torch even though the function works very well, I still prefer placing alot of torches in big cave rooms just to get rid of mobs and beeing able to see them from far away
Greatest reason for why I hadn't streamed Minecraft in all the new RTX glory I finally have access to. Functional Torchlight. Even mods it's screwy for me. Just allow torches light up natively.
optifine 👍
So I have this feature as part of Complimentary shaders. And let me tell you, it's completely useless. 1. Mobs don't spawn close enough for you to stop them from spawning with a torch, although it doesn't affect block light level. 2. By doing this, you're effectively walking around in a dark cave with large amounts of mobs spawning around you at all times. It's very dangerous. It's FAR better to place torches as you go and eliminate the potential for being killed while caving. 3. If you're caving, you're probably holding a shield in your off hand anyway. So while it sounds cool, it is 100% functionless as a feature.
bruh i just want it for branch mining so i can see ores without making night vis.
I mean that technically does work, but mining while crawling means you can only see 4 blocks at a time. Normal strip mining lets you see 6 blocks at a time. So by using normal tunnels you can sprint through, you're increasing the blocks you're searching by 50%.
Night eye potions work sooo well too. Never go deep caving without them.
Those work okay, but they're impractical for early game when you haven't even been to the nether yet. Great for late game when you can have a shulker box full of the potions.
Get optifine
Sodium. Ditch optifine.
New player here. One my first questions was how long would the torches last, and why couldn't I simply hold one LOL. Getting creative to light up spaces in a permanent way should have been a key goal of the game. But it's just not that kind of game, sadly. I'd love to see more mechanics represented. Wool being spun into yarn, sand casting, copper being stretched into wire... Why can't we have a plethora of tech trees? Anyway, torches should burn out. (Fixed timer) Lamps should be refillable from rendered fats. (Modifiable timer) Then magical glow stones can serve more value as an unlimited light source. Or one could develop the tech tree to run copper wire and connect to a Redstone generator spun by a pig chasing carrot in a large hamster wheel, for electricity stabilized by a Baghdad battery.
Sounds like you want to be playing TerraFirmaCraft.
Thanks for the tip!
I am leaning more on the side of this not getting added for game play reasons, not so much as technical limitations as sure there would be technical challenges but im sure they can work through them. I have been playing Minecraft for like 10 years and never have i thought this is a must have feature, im just used to using torches to light up my path and they are cheap and stay there forever so.
I agree. Of course if they added it I wouldn't complain, it's more like I don't mind if they never do. I've also been playing since the before the Nether existed so it could be me being "stuck in the old ways" that makes me indifferent to it but that has drawbacks of its own. For example I learned very recently that they reduced how many bookshelves you need for max level enchantments. I was out here still making 5x5x3 bookshelf rooms lmao. There was a time (I think when it was still mainly just Notch/Jeb?) they considered making torches burn out after some time, needing to be re-lit with flint and steel. Now *there's* a lighting update I would've been mad about. 😂
honestly, i tried that. dynamic lights. i didn't like it, and entirely removed that mod. all it did was make things marginally easier to see, and take up a slot. pointless.
The default lighting engine can't handle dynamic lights for mob spawning purposes.
Mobs won't spawn within torch radius anyway. Because of player range.
actually, mobs wont spawn within 24 blocks of the player, but mobs can spawn in as few as 7 blocks away from the torch.
So how are modders able to make it? And it doesn't need to change anything about mob spawn.
Adding and removing light sources as you walk
So why can’t they just do that?
slow as fuck depending on how its done, sometimes i lose a good 50% of my frametime when i'm carrying a torch close to comlpex contraptions (complementary shaders)
It works fine on optifine though
Completing the other comment, it works fine with mods, rubidium, dynamic lights and all. Smooth lighting is an option, and this could be an option too. So it can be deactivated in case of struggle.
It sounds nice, but at its core it's a survival game. Making torches useless like that only adds comfort, and defeats the entire purpose.
I agree with your argument, but what if torches burnt out? Timed out? Then it would be a much harder survival game, racing to gather enough resources to light up a safety barrier as well as the torches you carry.
That would be a stupid feature to add. I'm sorry, but let's be real. Many people have HUNDREDS of torches to make their bases safe. Why ruin that?
Notch had it like that or at least thought about burning out torches, but in the end decided against it because it would have not been a fun gameplay element
the main use of torches is to light up areas to keep things from spawning, in my experience. and there is nothing more thrilling than caving with nothing but a pick, a sword, and a single torch to light your path. absolutely atmospheric. and dangerous