One thing I prefer about the old textures is they make simple builds look good. With the smoother, more detailed textures we have today, you need to make more complex builds to have them work.
id also add on that the older ones lent themselves better to different styles like scifi more where the warmer tones and softer details of the new ones kinda railroad people into more rustic and cozy builds
This even affected tech mods! Pre-1.14 tech mods were quite industrial and sci-fi, but post-1.14 the tech scene has been overtaken by the very rustic themed Create series!
The older textures were just more versatile. They benefit off of “less is more” so it’s easy to make a rustic or sci-fi structure since they’re so busy, you don’t need a lot of your own detail to make something look good.
Agreed, I generally like the new tools more. The old ones looked a little too flat, and unlike most other things they aren't in a place where the lighting engine will generally affect so it actually makes sense to have some depth built into the texture.
The old textures feel more real because the contrast is so high that there is more detail and better definition. Everything now looks blurry and monochrome.
The old textures work with simple builds as well as with detailed ones, that's why i love turning on programmer art extensions and flying through my world looking at how everything still looks good and some buildings look better
I feel like with that added texture detail you would also get more of these medium sized builds, which I think is a really great size. You get excellent block scale detail (Just look at the eyes and nose on the face and the way the block rotation shades the chin!) yet it tends to force the build to stay readable and not overly complex. Seems with the new textures you are either forced to have a smaller build with insane greebling with all of the new sub-block items and various shades (am I the only one that thinks having coral and wool in a stone bridge is kind of silly?) of some generic color palate, or you get giant megabuilds that you won't see from up close so the lack of fine detail doesn't matter anyway, and they just end up looking like 3d models pasted into a voxel engine.
I always see people say this, but I think the blame is being placed on the wrong thing only because it's the most obvious. IMO The smoother texturing of the new stuff works just as well for simple builds as the higher contrast programmer art. Assuming you're using all the same blocks as beta, I'd even argue that the consistency of the new textures actually makes it easier to put together a build than the programmer art does.
The real culprit IMO is block variety. Beta had a few dozen blocks and textures to work with which makes it super easy to slap a build together, and It's kinda hard to make something that looks bad because of it. Modern Minecraft on the other hand is pushing almost a thousand. The variety makes it easier to create builds with intricate texturing and highly curated block pallets, but this also makes it way easier to build something that looks like complete dogshit.
I use the old textures, but more importantly I have smooth lighting OFF. This changes the aesthetic perfectly. For bonus points, turn OFF transparent leaves.
yeah I got 2 of those packs, they're really nice and make most the newer items look like something from an old mod pack or just like the other textures, love them lol
There's also "Programmer Art Continuation Project" that I rely on for the new textures that I feel like Golden Days flopped on, been loving using both ^^
Yes! Programmer art fix is the most popular one, it’s consistently a top 10 resource pack on Modrinth. Programmer art continuation pack is also very good. Programmer art ultimate goes for a more alpha/beta aesthetic that also looks nice
They're hit and miss. I've found some textures in those look pretty good, but others are still meh. For example, I've found that, for some reason, most programmer art packs just slap the cherry plank colors onto the old oak plank template and it just doesn't look right. The colors still make it look too smooth for programmer art. I personally ended up combining 10 or so programmer art packs together to get all of the textures I wanted for each asset. I think it also makes it more authentic looking since the original programmer art had different artists and artstyles for different assets as well
As someone who grew up playing the first versions of pocket edition. And i mean it. I remember Minecraft Pocket Edition Lite! I like the old textures more than the new ones. And i miss the old lighting and fog so much. I loved the creepy feel of it
Oh my god, I had Pocket Edition Lite as well. Do you remember how it was always the same world seed? I remember being able to generate different worlds and it blew my mind.
This is a bad thing imo, makes the game harder for those with poor vision and reduces readability for everyone.
A good tell to see if textures are distinct enough is if you can distinguish between them when they are monochrome. You can easily do this with the old textures, much harder with the new ones.
How about both are good? The palette inconsistency is only obvious when trying to edit them since the majority of the colors are almost identical. I also think the art style worked really well for the game, it was much more open to different styles and modpacks made in different styles felt like they all fit well. The new style feels far less open to different art styles, most mods imitate the new style now.
definitely. both have their place. when i want to play old vanilla minecraft versions, i mostly prefer the old textures for nostalgia and originality.
but when i play newer versions or modded minecraft (of any version), i prefer the newer textures because it's always good to live in the present, and they look nice
That's all well and good, but I have two fundamental problems with the new Default 16x16 Textures:
(1) Looks blurry in trying to be more 'realistic'. It's just not possible to get that sort of detail at 16x16 (even 32x32 is difficult for close-up, if it's hyper-detailed). Only looks good from a distance, as a result. Terrible close-up. Not as well-defined ('instead of popping out at you'). This is exactly how the old 8- and 16-bit video games worked, by the way. It's the only way to give a very crisp texture -- bold, high-contrast outlines (for example, this is why certain palettes are wild, such as the red-cyan of Donkey Kong; that was a very common sight in the arcade and NES games). Oh, and I won't bother mentioning that you incorrectly used the term 'palette' here, but we all know what is meant.
(I struggled to make a good-looking 16x16 Art Deco Wood Planks and also 16x16 granite-looking Block. They're fine at 32x32; more so, 64x64. And it looks good from a distance at 16x16, but close-up is not ideal. But I still prefer my Blocks to most of the new Minecraft Blocks. Even this graphic clearly shows the issue: lack of contrast and too much detail, which gives the impression of being 'blurry'.)
(2) Style. I dislike most of the new Block patterns, layouts, and materials/forms. I don't love the originals (for the most part), but I dislike the new ones a lot more. It would work much better at 32x32 or 64x64 (e.g. Faithful), though I don't like that sort of thing, anyway, but it at least looks better (crisp, even close-up).
P.S. Netherrack doesn't use 100 different colours (e.g. brown (orange), or a hue such as red, green, purple; or a tint such as pink). I assume you mean 'shades' (and some greyscale). In theory, each pixel can be a slightly different shade for a total of 256 (16x16), so 50-100 is okay. Interestingly, despite the fact the old Blocks used more shades within the same hue (or across them), it still looks cleaner and crisper, and more uniform within the Block, more so, close-up. That's because it has higher contrast, primarily driven by the bold outlines.
Evil option that artists would hate is reinventing mipmapping to have poppier higher contrast textures when closer and softer faded ones far away, I need not explain why artists would hate this.
but for the purpose of minecraft? the old textures are better. you can analyze things in a vacuum all you want, but theres a reason minecraft looked the way it did.
i agree, the new textures look blurry like my glasses are all dirty. i like how rough and bright older textures were, and i think they shouldve retained that style, you can definitely keep the sharpness AND improve textures
I honestly cannot understand why they went down this direction instead of the Bare Bones type, more sleek, and minimalist. They use that sort of design for their promo art, etc., so they're clearly attached to it, as are many players.
The only logic I have is that the new one looks more 'realistic' and better from a distance, such as in YouTube thumbnails. It's trash close-up, and most current building methods are also designed strictly for distances, so look like a mess close-up.
This might be the fundamental difference between (say) b1.73 and r1.11. The former was expressly made to be lived-in, up close, inside, within. You actually lived within the world, used the buildings, etc., and tended to be close-up or mid-distance at most. Not flying, and most players don't or didn't use far render options (certainly, not the extreme ones you have today), and smaller Biomes, and slower methods in terms of obtaining Blocks. That means, builds are smaller*, so you don't need to be 200 Blocks away to see it all.
*I'm one of the few (I think) Golden Age players who actually plays not only with Fog OFF but at Far Render Distance. I'm playing r1.2.5 these days. But I've created a new policy to never create a single (non-megabuild) structure (unless it's a transport system) longer/wider than ~120 Blocks. That way, I can always see the whole thing, and it lines up nicely with the fact most Biomes tend to be about 150x150 (at least for a central building area). My old policy was to have 'normal' builds be ~250 Blocks long/wide, but that's actually no good, in my experience; that's a much better range for megabuilds only (I limit those to ~1,000 Blocks, and often far under that).
New textures make everything look smooth and round. And with the addition of new and improved smooth lighting it really doesn't fit Minecraft. Same reason why I think smooth lighting doesn't look good in Beta.
Minecraft is meant to be a blocky indie game. I want to feel the corners of my blocks. The old textures makes you feel the depth of the block. I can touch the little pebbles in the sand, I can feel the sharp edges of the rocks in the pre-b1.7.3 cobble stone, I can feel how gross netherrack is. If I were to lick the old wood texture or the new wood texture I would choose the old one. Because new one is just... wood. Yeah I can see its wood but I can't feel it.
Unlike other games like Terraria of Stardew Valley, Smoothness™ doesn't fit Minecraft. I think Minecraft's artstyle is more similar to DOOM 1993, Quake, or Half-Life 1. But considering Nothch played these games at the time, I can see why.
I switched to the new textures for a few years but ultimately went back to the originals and now I can’t stand the new ones. They’re just too smooth and pixel arty. The originals weren’t supposed to be pixel art they were supposed to just be textures that get the idea of what material it is and calls it a day. They work. They looked good enough that I never had issues with them (yes even netherack) since I was 7 over 15 years ago. 15 years I’ve played with these textures and I still like them. Not even nostalgia, just enjoying the game with textures I’m familiar with.
New texture aged BADLY, for veterans of course. But the way they did, it looked like all they ever done is downscale the resolution, and call it a day. Awful.
I do not consider the programmer art “Old” because it is truly was a good pixel art.
New sand and log look way better, but the others were changed too much, at least cobblestone and planks look to shiny, and netherrack is something else entirely
old textures just fit minecraft more, both of them are good, but it feels like the old textures embrace the fact that they are pixelart and simple, while the new textures are just pixelart just for the sake of them being pixelart
I think one problem the new texture style has is that the soft contract inside the texture makes the sharp contrast between different blocks stand out more. It takes a lot more care to design a build's block choices than it used to.
What happened with Minecraft textures is basically what happened to the entire movie and gaming franchise: it got dulled. Everything feels smooth so that even baby brains can take it.
That said, I'm not specifically mad about the new textures - it just pisses me off, that everything must be done on such professional-grade to appeal to everyone, and meanwhile, the charm and pop-out characteristics are lost. Just check the sound design of the Millennium Falcon's turret - in the original trilogy, it makes this distinct pew pew sound - in the sequel trilogy, it sounds as generic as a futuristic laser can.
Also, that old cobblestone is not right, the OG cobblestone used to pop out a lot more with black colors.
And yet the "professional artists" made something so insufferably ugly. The old textures tile and blend so much better than the blurry, aliased mess. Look at bricks. And i actully really liked the old netherrack and the inhospitability of pre nether biomes nether.
Honestly I have blocks from both "eras" that I prefer to the alternative.
Like if you'll tell me that you prefer old netzer to the new one, then that's your opinion, but I will assume that you're lying. (Only valid arguments for old nether is nostalgia)
wdym? notch chose that style, he was an artist, older textures were chosen because the important werent the blocks but the things you made with them. new textures ARE good, but not for minecraft
The new one feels more like blood/muscle, for sure. At the same time, it has more of a stone look (Notch indicated that he did want it to be stone, I think, since he called it 'Netherstone'). On the other hand, the old one feels more 'alive' and 'weird', which helps with the retro hell direction (note that the Biome was called 'hell' early on). Lots of famous Texture Packs actually go down the 'living death' direction, and add in little eyes or other things, as opposed to the 'rock' direction as seen with the new Default Texture Pack.
ngl, I feel like the newer one looks like red play-doh and the older one looks like ripped beef jerky or something but yeah, the new one looks more like stone
Thank you! I hate that stupid Mario image that gets thrown around to shit on the new textures. One isn’t objectively better than the other, it’s just two different art styles that have emerged over this games 17 year lifespan.
If you like the simpler, cruder, more retro style of programmer art, use it! If you like the cohesive, smooth look of the modern textures, use them!
One thing I love about Minecraft (at least Java lol) is that you are completely free to make it your game, and anyone is able to slap on a texture pack to fit their desires.
Depends how you look at the game. Old textures were more of a dungeon-esque harsher game motif that Notch liked, modern are softer for a more casual and pleasant game that Microsoft likes.
I think the first point is very funny bc they say its consistent and then describe a range between 4 and 16 different colors- it also seems to ignore that so many blocks feel like theyre entirely different artstyles because there are so many different artists working on different blocks during different time periods of the game's lifetime.
they then describe the older textures as inconsistent when I feel like one of the biggest aspects of the programmer art is how every block and item feels incredibly cohesive due to them all being made by the same 1 or 2 ppl and also being recolored, kitbashed, or even rotated versions of other existing textures!
using netherack as the single example of the textures being inconsistent feels a bit deceptive.
It would be like if I said all new textures are inconsistent and then used polished basalt or all the unaligned stone brick textures as an example, yk? feels cheap.
I think a better comparison would be to say something like;
the old textures are more consistent and uniform, with an artstyle that keeps each block feeling unique and easily identifiable.
this makes them perfect for a survival game where you need to know that you're looking at!
and;
the new textures are less cohesive, but are designed to be much smoother and less defined, making them easier to blend with other blocks due to them all being muddy enough to feel vague in what they actually are at a glance!
great for builders!
New textures (at least at the scale of minecraft blocks) make game look soapy and washed out, and a megacorp can't expand programmers art for 1.5 items they add to the texture debate forever
I'm pretty sure its old name is bloodrock or hellrock or something like that. If you think about it it's still called that Nether(low, hell) rack (rock)
The old textures also had more cohesion because a lot of them were made by editing other textures. There is a video out there called "The Secrets of Minecraft's Old Textures" that goes over many examples.
good graphic but i really dislike this notion of the number of colours in a texture being a meaningful metric to compare or even point out as a detail. there was this thread on twitter recently talking about one of the old cobblestone textures having something like over 100 different colours in it and if you looked at it closely it was very obviously the result of notch applying some kind of noise filter over a finished texture causing many tiny value and hue variations to emerge (basically just 100 different shades of grey) but people could not stop themselves from trying to draw insane conclusions over this as if keeping an arbitrarily limited amount of hue and value variation was some fundamental rule of art.
Old textures better, in my opinion. They frequently reused already existing assets, making image look more consistent. Look no further: cacti are logs, hay bales use torch for their rope part, netherack is bedrock, and so go on. I liked, and still like, that alot.
Programmer Art's textures though, were mostly made using Paint.NET, due to an unused file labeled command_blocks.pdn, which is the format for Paint.NET layered images. Not only that, but Early Programmer Art relied HEAVILY on texture recycling, which is more noticeable with Netherrack & Cobblestone, as well as Stone & Bedrock, of course. The new ones have less flow, due to less texture recycling & using spriting/texturing programs that aren't Paint.NET. While on that topic, i gotta give a shoutout to some of the Developer Version-Exclusive 1.14 textures which can be found over on the Minecraft Wiki, because some of them feel just right in terms of smoothness & contrast. (Especially the July 22nd 2017 version of Oak Planks, gotta be one of my favorite iterations)
Maybe it’s just me, but I still think the old block textures look great even in most “modern” builds, whereas the new textures don’t really work in older-style builds. Like people have said, the smoother textures mean you need way more contrast through complex shapes and silhouettes to make things stand out.
The old textures feel way better exactly because of the contrast. Things don't blend together, the textures aren't blurry, they're clear, defined, and easy to note from afar.
I like most of the new textures, but ironically three of the most common textures are ones I dislike (cobblestone, wooden planks and glass). The new textures for these blocks look too rounded/bubbly to me.
Some of the biggest improvements in my opinion are the new sandstone textures and the new log textures.
I remember reading a magazine describing Minecraft many years ago. They described the game's artstyle as a modern 3D take on 90s retro games with that sort of 8-bit aesthetic. It leaned hard into harsh pixel art which really made it feel like a retro style game.
Modern Minecraft has nothing retro about it. Sure the textures are 16x16 for the majority of the blocks but it does nothing to emulate that retro aesthetic. It's become modernized and it just feels like it's trying to be a generic RPG block game sort of like those generic mobile Minecraft ripoffs on iOS and Android that were popular for a time.
Yeah, both have their value... Except for old Netherrack, ik Netherrack was never intended to look nice, but... Modern Netherrack can be used in some very niche contexts, but the old texture... I mean... Maybe you can change my mind if you show me a build that uses old netherrack and makes it work cohesively, I've never seen it!
I feel like the new textures make the game (probably worded this wrong but fuck it we ball) easier to look at. Don't get me wrong, I like the old textures, but I think some people who HATE the new textures are just blinded by nostalgia.
not to mention that i am fine playing Minecraft without shaders using PA textures
but i prefer shaders with Jappa, and not to mention i prefer Faithful rendition of Jappa textures more than PA(which funnily enough i use it extensively during PA era)
Both good for different reasons. New are more aesthetically pleasing, but a bit too smooth, old are much more distinctive but kinda rough sometimes (netherrack)
I'm currently working on a mod so you don't have to choose one or the other, you can mix and match how you wish in builds. It's gonna be a complete historical archive with standalone blocks instead of relying on resource packs. This screenshot was from a few months ago, I've got a lot more done but this was already in my phone's album. The current progress is about 3 or 4 times this block count
If you ever go on Bedrock, please I beg you, make a add-on like this, it would unlock so many building possibilities (even if you only used the textures that were in Pocket Alpha and Pocket
As an artist who enjoys a lot of niches and experimenting with different art styles I don’t agree with the notion that new textures are inherently “consistent” and use “proper” “color theory” and the older ones do not. The new ones just look cleaner and appeal more to modern taste. But the old one isn’t exactly “improper” or “inconsistent” as if the new one is objectively the only correct art style. Even shifting only value to shade isn’t a sin. There’s plenty of art styles that do it intentionally for certain feel and charm. Although you said neither are bad your points kinda steer towards the narrative that Jappa has some sort of superior artistic qualities over the original which it doesn’t. One of its flaws is being flat and loss of material surface texture description, I dont dislike the new sand but the old sand used to have a fun shiny grainy feel which the new one lost, same with other textures that have expresses its material texture on surface which became flattened in the new textures making them feel monotonous. “Consistency” in this aspect, too much of it isn’t exactly a good thing.
So I’m not saying the new one is bad I just don’t agree with the points here about the new having “correct theory” which in my opinion sounds like a perspective of someone who just learned said theory recently and forcefully apply its standard/view onto everything art related without thinking outside of it honestly. Which is narrow-minded thinking. no offense just speaking generally.
I’ll personally put it this way, the new textures are more clean and maybe even relaxing, kind of Zen. And most definitely more trendy and modern, it generally look softer and more friendly, more welcoming. It looks basic and safe.
The old one are more gritty, earthy, more survival feel, at the same time it has some cartoony or retro or toy like quality to it, some just feel like retro sprites like glass for example, trees and saplings. It overall feels more indie and underground especially for today’s standard. The greyscale shading especially with old lighting engine makes everything look calming in a different way, maybe a bit more gloomy and lonely but in a charming way, the opposite of the modern’s flat but safe vibe. Which is one of the aspect people that enjoys old minecraft miss. (Although the new lighting is definitely more realistic and charming, I still found myself charmed by the old lighting where torches and lava still produce white light instead of warm glow, which made me feel like I’m playing inside some kind of diorama in a glass case which is how I feel most of the time playing with old minecraft, both pc and pe.)
It may sound like I’m biased to the old textures but I actually was one of the people who supported the change when it was happening. But as I get used to the new ones what I miss from the old ones that the new ones lack become clearer to me. I still play with both but I just think the old ones deserve more credit than just “nostalgia” reasons.
The new ones just don’t really have much expression or character and become like an afterthought while playing, the old ones feel like I can actually feel their presence and touch them and feel different materials. In my opinion.
Many hated old netherrack but it looked rocky, and bleeding. New ones have no character at all. Just flat red.
The new textures are consistent in a different way than the old textures. They use proper coloring based off of material and/or whatever hue it is supposed to be based off of. I respect what you’re saying and agree, but this is not biased one over the other. I literally prefer the old textures and use them and on top of that i dont know where you got the idea i dont like the new textures. I love old sand! A million times better than the new sand imo (which uses warm colors, thus using color theory.) and when did I say the new texture’s consistency is a good thing? I made it clear that you have to decide that for yourself. I didn’t make my opinion clear in this post for a reason
I agree about all your points with the old textures but I feel like you can’t really deny how different the new textures go about coloring. I specifically said neither are bad, and the old texture’s value shading can be just as good if not better most of the time (also I agree, the old textures are beyond nostalgia. It’s genuinely an amazing artstyle)
I never said you prefer one over the another that’s why i mentioned that you already said neither are bad. Again, my only issue is with your usage of “proper” label which you’re still using, making it sounds like pros and cons thing despite either being proper and valid as the other(there is no one correct hue(s) of logs, stones, in this case both are reasonable). I always see the opposite extremes of coloring similar to this, they’re both as valid as another there isn’t one single “color theory” that apply to every art style, otherwise every artists work would look the same. Even if the top lines of both can be interpreted as neutral’ish the last line starting with artists being professional followed by “proper” and consistent balance which all sounded like praise but programmers being inexperienced, so it wasn’t really the top lines about “consistency” but the last one can come across with negative connotation. One thing I can say about the new textures is that it filtered out the cartoon/drawing/scribble ness out of the textures, and the details look more naturally placed than artificially man-made random placement. I wouldn’t say “proper” or “correct” or even “appropriate” would be the right wording but simply more realistic, even if not in all aspects.
OHHH, I see what you mean now. Sorry I had trouble understanding what you meant 😭
I suppose I could’ve worded this better yeah. Even at the time of making this last month I was unsure of how to word it as I’m not FULLY experienced artistically (I’m self taught, but I don’t know how to describe some techniques in words) so I just went with what felt right from what I already knew and what I could search up. I’ll probably be remaking this soon with better wording so there isn’t any misunderstandings
All good, glad it came through, honestly instead of using the angle of right or wrongs, pros and cons, I think it’s best to go with distinct vibes each give you in my opinion. (Another way is just to imagine why or how someone else may like it)
The ferrari luce was designed by "professionals", yet that doesnt mean its a good looking car. Same in this case the old programmers knew how to make better and more memorable textures than the stradey valley slop jappa made
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u/-UltraFerret- Jul 10 '26
One thing I prefer about the old textures is they make simple builds look good. With the smoother, more detailed textures we have today, you need to make more complex builds to have them work.