A Minecraft player has turned a pig bioluminescent by using commands, offering a new take on the classic in-game animal. Bioluminescence may remind players of the fireflies that were recently cut from the latest update for Minecraft. Originally meant to be part of The Wild Update, fireflies were removed as they were meant to be a food source for Minecraft frogs until developers learned that, in real life, fireflies are poisonous to frogs.
The defunct fireflies are just one example of how lighting is an especially important asset to consider when playing Minecraft. While lighting can be very useful visually when designing a build, it also has an impact on the gameplay itself. Lighting, or light levels as often referred to by players, not only affects how well the player can see around them, but how fast crops grow and whether mobs will spawn in an area. The light levels range from 0 to 15, with 15 being the brightest. Players that want to avoid monster mobs spawning in certain spots, like their Minecraft home base, should keep the area well-lit with bright objects such as torches or glowstone.
Redditor Freaking_Crossing_Fan has impressed Minecraft fans with their bioluminescent pig, taking lighting to the next level. While commenters joked the real reason fireflies won't be in Minecraft is because this pig ate all of them, when asked how this was done the Redditor gave a full explanation. Firstly they used the Optifine mod, as it "activates Dynamic Lights" while putting the following command in the chatbox: "/item replace entity <UUID> armor.head with minecraft:glowstone." They go on to explain that the "<UUID>" part would have to be replaced with the UUID of the entity the player's crosshair is touching. The UUID, aka the universally unique identifier, is a series of numbers used to identify and separate different instances, like individual pigs for example. This essentially means that this pig was combined with the lighting effect from glowstone.
This command begs the question of what other Minecraft entities and mobs could be made bioluminescent. Glowstone is a popular source of lighting among players, as it can be found in abundance in the Nether, turned into lamps, and gives off a warm comforting glow. That comforting glow gives off a light level of 15, which as previously mentioned, is the brightest you can have in-game. Thus being able to use its effect on things like non-glowing blocks or other animals is appealing. If Minecraft developers ever decide to bring fireflies back, perhaps this could be a fun effect of having mobs come into contact with them.
Whether it's from fireflies or the proper text commands, this bioluminescent pig is an adorable sight for Minecraft players to see. Having a glowing pig that's not only charming to look at, but might even be useful for keeping Minecraft monsters at bay, sounds like the perfect pet for Minecraft. Meanwhile, the mental images of other glowing animals, like a flock of glowing chickens keeping zombies at a distance, are enough to delight fans enough to want more.
Source: Freaking_Crossing_Fan/Reddit