I am still working on 1.29.

It will be a major release, but it’s still early days. Have a look at the image below:

Nothing special?

In the unlikely case you recall the addition of stair corners a year or so ago, you might figure something’s fishy on the picture.

There is an outside stairs corner there. As you know, the game currently does not support them, and for a very good reason. The stairs can be rotated, placed upside down and put in an inside corner state. This takes up all 4 bits of extra data space associated with the block. I would need an extra bit to add outside corners.

To get extra bits, I need to make all blocks 32 bit instead of 16. This has been long talked about, and pretty much every new feature I added to the game was more or less crippled by only 4 bits of data. Think: why can’t you place logic gates on the floor/ceiling? Why can’t you paint stairs or slabs? Why can’t you have more LED colors? And many others.

So the news is I am making blocks 32 bit for the next release. And going back over all existing features to update them to take advantage of it. Stairs already work, as you can see above.

When I’m finished with this tedium, I have plans for a new grand feature that will need every single one of these new bits. It has been long postponed, because the bits were not there. Now is the time. I never talked about it, so you have no idea what it is. Still, I think you’ll love it — if I can only pull it off :-)

Btw. if anyone guesses what I have in mind I am going to start believing in dowsing and fairies.