> Known Issues
> Exclusive fullscreen mode on Windows may cause the game to crash in certain situations, especially when using multiple monitors
> Entering Exclusive fullscreen mode crashes the game on Wayland
Those, together, kinda seem like the kind of blocking bug that would usually delay a snapshot... Lets hoping it gets fixed before release lands...
> delay a snapshot
The point of a snapshot is that it's a snapshot of current main, bugs and all, even release-blocking bugs.
In my head, the order of stability expectations are (noting that minecraft doesn't do most of these levels, nor do most projects):
1. Long-term support / extended support release
2. Release
3. Release candidate
4. Beta
5. Alpha
6. Snapshot
7. Just-merged master commit
8. Unmerged pull request from a developer on the project
9. Unmerged draft pull request from a developer on the project
10. Unmerged pull request from a stranger
11. .patch file for the source code hosted on pastebin and linked by a total stranger on a cryptocurrency related discord server
12. GitHub's servers
I would expect a fairly major bug to delay a release candidate or beta.
I would expect an absolutely critical bug to prevent merge.
I would not expect any bug which passes the CI tests and gets merged to delay a snapshot, since snapshots are just effectively a scheduled cronjob of "at this date, we cut a release of current main so people can play with it and give feedback if they want without having to figure out how to compile main themselves"
You've clearly never been saved by a random .patch from pastebin, have you
Delay a release? Sure. But delay a snapshot? Why? By releasing the snapshot in this state, they learn both 1) how big of a problem those known issues are (how often does entering exclusive fullscreen crash the game on Windows? They presumably have telemetry for this), and 2) if there are other, as of yet unknown issues they need to fix before release. The earlier you learn these things, the better.
There hasn't ever been a promise that snapshots are bug free; the expectation is rather the opposite.
Are snapshots explicitly a beta channel? Or do users get auto updates to them? Testing for bugs in prod shouldn’t be acceptable unless users expect bugs in exchange for getting latest features early in something like a beta channel
Snapshots are the weekly (at least they used to be, I think they're less frequent now) development snapshots - they are explicitly pre-beta versions that you have to opt in to.
They are explicitly a beta channel, and in fact if you create a world on a snapshot you don't have an upgrade path to future releases (unless you start hacking at your world files with an NBT editor). So most of the community ignores them and waits till release.
Snapshots do let you upgrade worlds to future releases and you don't need to do any NBT editing, just upgrade the game and load the world.
Huh, I guess I assumed that based on the behavior of most of the experimental flags offered on world creation. Has that always been the case?
I think mojang is taking a turn away from experimental feature flags these days, so I guess this situation will get better over time.
Though there are of course no guarantees there won’t be problems with the world.
They're previews of what they're working on and what they're going to add to the next version. You don't get auto updated to them, you have to select them in the launcher.
As you would expect from the word "snapshot" contrasted up against the word "release", might I add.
Minecraft snapshots are beta. A default installation of the Minecraft launcher will not download and install snapshots.
You have to opt-in to it.
they're not useful to users looking for the latest features. They're useful to mod developers who'd like to see how internal changes might affect their work. For example.
(eh, most people I know occasionally touch the snapshots for new features. Way back when the nether was updated, nobody I knew was on the release version because the nether was simply so much better that it was hard to play the older versions)
Snapshots are only for testing. They are sometimes not forwards-compatible.
Pretty sure minecraft has used borderless full screen for a long time unless you go out of your way to tell it not to. Lots of platforms, services, and applications have been deprecating exclusive full screen over the past decade or so.
Yes, and any game that is frequently streamed or otherwise recorded is wise to. Exclusive full screen doesn’t play well with others.
in this same release Minecraft removed exclusive fullscreen on MacOS, i wonder why they haven't done the same on Windows & Linux - maybe people still have uses for that stuff on those operating systems? in my experience exclusive fullscreen is Awful on MacOS
> i wonder why they haven't done the same on Windows
Probably because a lot of people feel like they need exclusive fullscreen for best performance and/or latency. But in reality borderless fullscreen is exactly the same when games use the DXGI flip model. It bypasses DWM (the compositor) to render directly to the display when only the game is visible and seamlessly allows you to switch to other windows. You can even disable Vsync and it will allow screen tearing when bypassing DWM.
I consider this the fault of macOS. The way macOS handles full screen makes it a nonstarter as a gaming platform even if it had a huge gaming library.
Still, I’ll admit that Minecraft full screen on Mac is even worse than almost all other games.
I highly doubt that macOS fullscreen has that much higher latency than Windows fullscreen. The latency is so fine that I play Windows games over a capture card using OBS as the monitor. (The Mac has a 120Hz display though.)
I like to play games like ARC Raiders using that setup. Works perfectly fine. Sure it sucks that I need Windows at all for it, but SteamOS isn't an option yet due to my 3090
I’m not talking about the latency, more of the interface surrounding it and the overall feel of it. It’s kind of hard to describe what I dislike about it.
I’m not really a fan of the way it’s a three finger swipe sideways to leave and enter the full screen either.
I’m pretty sure I have had at some point issues where putting my cursor at the top of the window erroneously shows the menu bar within certain types of games.
Not sure if I’m remembering right, it’s been a while since I’ve tried playing games on Mac.
What you're describing is Spaces which is macOS's multi-desktop system. I agree it's annoying to have to tolerate a glacial animation just to switch between apps when they happen to be fullscreen. It's not a deal-breaker for me, but it's definitely near the top of my list of annoying things about macOS. But fullscreen applications are on the same level as additional desktops, basically. My personal solution is just to get good at swiping quickly but there is also now an app that simulates the trackpad gesture well enough to get instant switching.
The menu bar is supposed to appear with the cursor at the top of the screen. I have also encountered issues where it doesn't properly hide until you bring your cursor back in order to take the cursor away again and then it hides. It's a quirk but I sort of understand why it happens and it's just a small glitch to me.
Perhaps I was playing an RTS or city builder game or something along those lines and experienced that problem with the menu bar, and maybe if that did happen the developer could have prevented it with a better port.
Does macOS even have exclusive fullscreen anymore? I haven’t looked into it, but my impression is that it fakes it with borderless windowed even when the app explicitly asks for it.
it does still exist as far as i understand it. the resolution you select affects the size of the mouse cursor and then when switching away from the game you can see the rest of the system resizing back to normal
Regardless of how it worked, the game asking for it caused problems
Yes. On Apple Silicon Macs (w/ macOS Sonoma or later), native fullscreen automatically triggers Game Mode. This feature slashes input lag by prioritizing CPU/GPU resources and doubling the Bluetooth polling rate to 240 Hz for wireless accessories. Gaming works very well in this mode, even with PC titles played thru crossover.
Conversely, using borderless windowed mode instead of native fullscreen on macOS adds rendering latency due to the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) compositor. The latter is 'doing it wrong' and has the lag people don't like.
I didn't know that part about the bluetooth polling rate. That's clever.
macOS doesn't have Desktop Window Manager, it has WindowServer.
Game mode also breaks background audio playback through Bluetooth. And it's hard to turn off with no global setting. I hate it.
Tbf, exclusive fullscreen is quite exotic nowadays (as opposed to rendering into a fullscreen window). Window managers will typically apply the same optimizations to a frontmost fullscreen window as was done in the past only for exclusive fullscreen.
Well that's why it's a snapshot. It will probably be fixed in the next snapshot.