Computer Sense

The Minecraft 1.6 patch has landed. We dived right in, eager to start playing with the new hatches and maps added by the patch. Spiders died, cows exploded and lava spills threatened to destroy everything. Read on for an account of our first hour in Minecraft 1.6, and a video showing how you craft the new maps.

Hatches may sound like a small thing, but when I started playing with them I realised two things. Firstly, given the fact that so much of Minecraft takes place undergound, hatches are far more useful than doors for creating entrances to your underground base. It feels straight away as though they’ve been in the game forever.

They’re crafted easily enough. Simply place six planks in two layers across the bottom two layers of the crafting window. As with hatches in real life, they’re very much like horizontal doors, except only one block in size. Right clicking opens and closes them, and they can be operated by switches, at distance if need be, with the help of redstone wires.

I was playing with hatches and switches when a second thought occurred to me. What if I could use these hatches for evil in some way? A hatch gone bad. A trapdoor. When night falls Minecraft’s square hills fill up with skeletons, spiders and creepers. The new hatches would work perfectly as a night-time trap for any creature foolish enough to come near my tiny box of a house.

Original Link: http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/05/26/minecraft-1-6-hands-on-when-hatches-go-bad/