Minecraft Preview and Beta Update 1.37 for Version 1.21.40.20 Adds New Experimental Features and More

Those testing out Minecraft’s beta branch, there’s a new update for you called version 1.21.40.20. Those on consoles will see this as Minecraft Preview update 1.37 (PS5 version 1.022),  and this adds experimental features, alongside a host of bug fixes, and a whole lot more. Read on for the complete changelog available below, though be prepared for a long read.

Experimental Features

Bundles

• The “Use” button hint is now shown when a Bundle is selected in the hotbar and using a game controller input (MCPE-185504)
  • Using this button throws items out of the Bundle
• Bundles now display the bar showing their fullness level when placed in the hotbar
• Using a Bundle from the hotbar now plays a sound and triggers an animation when emptying items (MCPE-185460)
• Bundle tooltip placement now takes Screen Safe Area into account
• When a Bundle is used in the hotbar, one group of items is emptied at a time instead of everything being emptied at once
• The “Clear Hotbar” button hint is now shown when hovering the cursor over a Bundle, with the “Clear Hotbar” toggle enabled and using a game controller (MCPE-185504)
• The “Swap” button hint is now shown when hovering an item over another item with a game controller
• The “Place” button hint is now shown on all screens when holding an item on the cursor with a game controller

Features and Bug Fixes

• Made a change on Nintendo Switch which may help neighboring chunks to load quicker when player has maximum framerate set (MCPE-120971)

Blocks

• Vines placed with commands are now visible (MCPE-131854)
• “mushroom_stem” is now its own block and is no longer a variant of “red_mushroom_block” and “brown_mushroom_block”
• “skull” has been split into 7 unique instances: “skeleton_skull”, “wither_skeleton_skull”, “zombie_head”, “player_head”, “creeper_head”, “dragon_head”, “piglin_head”

Commands

• Game rule ShowRecipeMessages is no longer considered a cheat (MCPE-177299)
• Added the ‘entity_offset’ parameter to the camera command

Gameplay

• Wind Charges can’t be hit and redirected shortly after throwing them
• Interacting with a Bed now sets it as the respawn point regardless of nearby enemies (MCPE-152134)
• Players hitting the edge of the generated world will keep their velocity. Example: While flying with the Elytra, the player will stay floating instead of looing all speed instantly

Graphical

• Addressed an issue where the game would show pink on iOS when using Large Zoom (MCPE-174398) (MCPE-185373)

Mobs

• Polar bear now drops Cooked Fish when killed by fire or lava (MCPE-122488)
• Pillager’s ‘celebrate3’ sound now works (MCPE-121058)
• Wolves, Cats, and Parrots trying to catch up to their owner now seamlessly resume navigation after teleporting to them
• Wolves, Cats, and Parrots now teleport to their owner when panicking and far enough away
• Wolves now teleport to their owner when in a fight and far enough away, preventing them from being left behind (MCPE-151765)

Realms

• Added a new Realm Event. Can you discover it?
• Fixed a bug that would prevent activation of addon for a Realm via Marketplace

User Interface

• Hint about dismounting an entity no longer appears when changing dimensions and re-entering the world (MCPE-182876)
• Armor HUD now updates properly when the player’s equipped armor breaks (MCPE-103592)
• Fixed a bug where the close button subpanel in the Stonecutter panel was empty instead of hidden while using controller
• Added a new message to explain when a Marketplace Template is not available on a specific platform
• Aligned the hunger and health bars with the experience bar in Classic UI on mobile devices (MCPE-177192)
• Air bubbles now line up properly with hunger bar (MCPE-185268)
• Position of player paper doll in the UI is now consistent between Classic and Pocket UI settings (MCPE-57498)
• Potions with percentage-based effects now show the percentage sign correctly on their tooltips (on mobile devices) (MCPE-28531)
• When dying by the thorns of a Guardian, the death message now reads “‘Player’ was killed trying to hurt ‘Mob'” (MCPE-114752)
• Chat messages no longer overlap with one pixel (MCPE-119761)
• Item text no longer jumps up when looking at a non-interactable entity (MCPE-161140)
• Close and help button visuals for Smithing Table and Loom changed to match visuals for Cartography Table (MCPE-166008)
• “Hide Controller Hints” now properly hides all control hints in the Villager trading menu (MCPE-167134)

Vanilla Parity

• Creepers now drop a Music Disc upon being killed by a Bogged (MCPE-179008)
• Bogged now drops Poison Arrows when killed by Mobs tamed by a Player
• Dyeing Sheep and collars on Cats and Dogs now plays the dyeing sound as in Java Edition (MCPE-150684)
• Mushroom Stems used on the Composter have had their fill chance adjusted from 85% to 65%
• The all-sided pore mushroom block has been removed from the creative inventory
• Enchanted Golden Apples now give Regeneration II instead of Regeneration V, matching Java Edition (MCPE-103061)
• Added infinite duration option to Effect command. /effect <player: target> <effect: Effect> infinite [amplifier: int] [hideParticles: Boolean]
• Added specific effect removal option to Effect command. /effect <player: target> clear <effect: Effect>
• Placing Cocoa Beans now plays a sound (MCPE-49126)
• Beehive and Bee Nest can no longer be used as fuel in Furnaces (MCPE-128393)

Mobs

• Piglins will no longer pick up and admire Powered Rail items (MCPE-91187)

Technical Updates

Add-Ons and Script Engine

• Fixed a bug where using “bone_visibility” for a block geometry would cause the “item_display_transforms” not to be applied properly (MCPE-185868)
• Fixed issue which prevented the new 1.21.30 trade table format from loading in-game

API

• ItemStack
  • Fixed method ItemStack.getComponents from returning components that are unsupported in the current @minecraft/server version
• Fixed issue where invalid ModalFormData would never reject or resolve its promise (MCPE-178148)
• BlockLiquidContainerComponents API (water, lava, potion, snow) have been removed from beta
• BlockFluidContainerComponent API has been added to beta, replacing the BlockLiquidContainerComponents
• Moved isHardcore from beta to 1.15.0

Commands

• Added new overloads for the schedule command which allows you to clear a queued function
  • /schedule clear <function name> – Clears all queued functions matching the given name
  • /schedule on_area_loaded clear function <function name> – Clears all queued functions that are scheduled as on_area_load by name
  • /schedule on_area_loaded clear tickingarea <tickingarea name> [function name] – Clears all queued functions that are scheduled as on_area_load by ticking area name (and optionally also checks function name too)

Components

• The “restriction_type” field has been added to the “minecraft:home” component, allowing to define how an entity is restricted to its home position:
  • Its values are:
    • “none”, which poses no restriction
    • “random_movement”, which restricts randomized movement around the home position
    • “all_movement”, which restricts any kind of movement around the home position
  • The “all_movement” value is currently in [Beta] and is planned to be fully released at a later date
  • Entities that have moved too far from their home will always be able to move closer to it if prompted
  • The radius of the restriction is still specified with “restriction_radius”
  • Entities with a format version prior to 1.21.40 will be upgraded to use the new field in a way that preserves their existing behavior
• Added the “minecraft:dimension_bound” component, which prevents entities from changing dimension through portals
  • In Vanilla content, this is used by the Ender Dragon, the Fishing Hook, and some projectiles
• Added the “minecraft:transient” component, entities with this component will never be saved. In Vanilla content, this is currently used for the Fishing Hook

Editor

• Added block picking for the current block palette on middle mouse click
• Added custom block textures to now support in block images
• Added resource access protocol “block://<block_name>” to retrieve block images
• Added new API interface IStatusBar to manage IStatusBarItem objects. It can be accessed from statusBar property on IPlayerUISession.
  • Added IStatusBarItemCreationParams for status bar item initialization
  • Removed text property from IStatusBarItem in favor of getText and setText functions. Added localization support for text content
  • Renamed EditorStatusBarAlignment to StatusBarAlignment
• Renamed ‘Input Mapping’ to ‘Keyboard Settings’ action bar item and improved modal panel visuals
• Fixed a bug related to losing the block palette setting of simple blocks in hotbar between suspend/resume of application
• Fixed a bug where Quick Start panel visibility was not persisted correctly
• Fixed a bug so the hotbar fills with a list of default blocks rather than all air when creating a new editor world

Entity Components

• “behavior.fire_at_target” is no longer usable if it is missing a projectile definition and will now throw a content error if so

Entity Event Responses

• Added the “execute_event_on_home_block” entity event response, which allows the entity to execute an event on the block at its home position
  • The “event” field allows to specify the event to execute
  • For this to work properly, the entity must have a “minecraft:home” component with a set home position

General

• Made the following changes to ‘minecraft:single_block_feature’
  • ‘places_block’ now supports a list of weighted block specifiers
  • New ‘randomize_rotation’ property
  • New ‘may_not_attach_to’ placement conditions
  • Added ‘diagonal’ as a new option for ‘may_attach_to’ conditions
  • File format version increased to 1.21.40

Graphical

• Fixed bug where the tessellation of Redstone dust does not match the powered state of the dust for the following blocks:
  • minecraft:*_slab
  • minecraft:chain
  • minecraft:chorus_flower
  • minecraft:chorus_plant
  • minecraft:farmland
  • minecraft:grass_path
  • minecraft:heavy_core
  • minecraft:jigsaw
  • minecraft:sea_lantern
  • minecraft:sniffer_egg
  • minecraft:structure_block

Molang

• Molang queries “wing_flap_position” and “wing_flap_speed” now work for the Chicken

Resource and Behavior Packs

• Built-in packs now include archive files for improved load performance on some platforms

Stability and Performance

• Increased the size of biome ids in saved chunk data from 8 bit to 16 bit values
• Fixed a bug where extremely fast moving entities would cause the game to crash. Entities can now no longer move more than 16 blocks in a single tick. (For reference, an entity with Speed 255 will move ~11 blocks in a single tick.)
• Game will no longer crash when loading a world near an End City

Experimental Technical Updates
API

• Moved EntityBreathableComponent from beta to 1.15.0
  • Moved breathesAir from beta to 1.15.0
  • Moved breathesLava from beta to 1.15.0
  • Moved breathesSolids from beta to 1.15.0
  • Moved breathesWater from beta to 1.15.0
  • Moved generatesBubbles from beta to 1.15.0
  • Moved inhaleTime from beta to 1.15.0
  • Moved suffocateTime from beta to 1.15.0
  • Moved totalSupply from beta to 1.15.0
  • Moved componentId from beta to 1.15.0
  • Moved getBreatheBlocks() from beta to 1.15.0
  • Moved getNonBreatheBlocks() from beta to 1.15.0
• Moved class BlockLocationIterator from beta to 1.15.0
• Moved class InvalidIteratorError from beta to 1.15.0
• Moved property BlockVolumeBase.getBlockLocationIterator from beta to 1.15.0
• Moved enum BlockVolumeIntersection from beta to 1.15.0
• Moved class BlockVolume from beta to 1.15.0
• Added the DyeableItemComponent to beta

Cameras

• Fixed an issue where rider_rotation_lock of minecraft:rideable had no effect when using the minecraft:follow_orbit camera
• Added minecraft:camera_attach_to_player to minecraft:follow_orbit
• Added align_target_and_camera_forward option to the camera preset behavior pack JSON which can be used when the third person camera preset experiment is enabled
• 3rd person camera experiment – The radius property of the creator cameras is now constrained to a value between 0.1 and 100
• Third person boom camera will now reset to the starting rotation values specified in json when the ‘default’ parameter is passed in the camera command

Graphical

• Removed the dark aura around the moon in the Deferred Technical Preview

Now that’s one big update! The retail version also got a patch yesterday., though it’s mostly for crash fixes.

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