Minecraft in 20 seconds explained in 20 minutes - Additional Notes

Note 1 (5:30 to 6:50):
a. The odds listed throughout this section are mostly ballpark estimates and shouldn't be taken as absolutely exact numbers. The ruined portal chest can also contain a fire charge instead of a flint and steel since it can serve the same purpose. The odds for the chest loot are on the order of 1 in 100 because of the Silk touch enchantment, which has odds of roughly 1 in 7 of appearing.

b. About Blaze spawns: a blaze can spawn randomly anywhere in a Nether fortress, but it cannot spawn within 20 blocks of the player, so a spawner even closer than that is optimal. Although the spawner is 7 tiles away horizontally, it's about 10 tiles below as well, but it's still faster than a random spawn 20 tiles off.

c. (also referenced at 17:50) About The End: the conditions in were actually sub-optimal. There's a wall in the way, so it takes a bit of additional maneuvering to reach the final portal to beat the game. While there will always be at least one pillar in the direct path towards the portal, it's not impossible that there could be an even more optimal seed with had a more direct path to the end that wouldn't require multiple enter pearl throws.


Note 2 (6:50): Due to the way world generation is done, the script could look at supergroups of 65,536 seeds called structure seeds. This reduced the total amount of possibilities from 2^64, or 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 down to 2^48, or 281,474,976,710,656. The only variable factors between different seeds within one structure seed is the biome distribution and the spawn location. Once the script found a good structure seed, it was only a matter of finding the right biome distribution and spawn location within that group.

Note 3 (9:35): At least, it's no longer that dumb. For many years, the duplication glitch worked with Alt+F4.

Note 4 (10:05): While he started with two pearls, he only duped them 4 times - the final dupe was only for obsidian and wood. Also, he throws a pearl when he has 16 (8 in inventory, 8 in chest), so he ends up with 30.

Note 5 (12:09): In earlier versions, villages had windows made of glass blocks, and in later versions, glass was added deep underground.

Note 6 (13:00): The direction blocks are sent in in the explosion is random, so despite having a tool to mitigate this randomness, Dylan had to spend many rerecords on this section until the wool behaved exactly the way he wanted.

Note 7 (13:12): He actually only needs one more crafting table, not two. Making a second one didn't cost any extra time because he needs to wait in the portal for 4 seconds anyway

Note 8 (13:49): Technically, the game sets your spawn point on the bed, and when respawning you, it will place you next to the bed if it's unobstructed.

Note 9 (15:49): In the context of the TAS, the section with the Blaze took multiple tries to get right, and the Ghast was forced to spawn. RNG manipulation doesn't work in Minecraft the way it works in a typical console TAS, so Minecraft TASers sometimes resort to other means to force perfect luck.