Minecraft is an old game, and old games sometimes have old bugs. In Minecraft, one of the oldest bugs was the “damage wobble bug,” which caused players to always lurch to the left whenever they were struck for damage.
That’s not the way it’s supposed to work, of course. The player is supposed to lurch in the opposite direction of where the damage came from, just like every other game since games became three-dimensional. It both signifies where the damage came from and where the player should flee, but since 2012, Minecraft players have always been nudged to run toward the left.
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As noted by Games Radar, the wobble bug used to be just a multiplayer thing, but ever since update 1.3.1 merged the single-player and multiplayer experiences into just a single game mode, the damage wobble became universal. Mojang has known about the bug since at least 2013 when it became listed on its bug counter. There it remained for nearly a decade, unloved and unresolved.
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Until yesterday. With the release of Minecraft snapshot 23W03A, which is essentially a beta release update that will eventually hit the live game after some playtesting, bug "MC-26678 – Damage wobble no longer shows direction of incoming damage" is finally listed as "resolved." Players should expect to see this fix in the live version of Minecraft with update 1.19.4.
In addition to fixing the damage wobble bug, snapshot 23W03A also fixes another ancient bug: "sprinting isn't canceled when dismounting rideable entities while sprinting." This made it difficult to control the character post-sprint on a horse or mount other critters.
While we're waiting for update 1.19.4 to drop, might I interest you in a classic song recreated using Minecraft's note blocks? Reddit user stacinator shared their version of Toto's "Africa", complete with animated background and weather effects. Yes, there's rain. Yes, there's thunder. And yes, there's a multicolored giraffe.