Hear the sound of thunder everywhere

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IMO working as intended, at least that's working like this since the introduction of thunderstorms in Minecraft.

Is this still a concern in the current Minecraft version? If so, please update the affected versions in order to best aid Mojang ensuring bugs are still valid in the latest releases/pre-releases.

I can confirm that problem. I'm on Y 10 and the thunder is audible.

Just had this problem in 13w37b. Someone please update the affects versions list.

Can't imaging what purpose there is to hearing ground-level weather when we're near bedrock. While this has been resolved as "works as intended", I'd like this to get another review to question whether it should work like that at all.

Also note that this thunder is audible and loud when the audio for weather is low and even off. I'm guessing that's a separate issue?

v1.7.4

This needs to be fixed. People are exploiting this on servers to find people in a very unfair way. The way it was explained to me is this:

"Thunder (or lightning) only happens within a certain radius of a player. There are clients that can track or pinpoint this thunder, and the player that caused it to generate, withing certain degrees.
Meaning that when it rains and thunders, your coords or the general area of your coords, can be logged for someone to come and raid you."

This issue is actually more complicated in that it really applies to ANY sound produced in Minecraft. This is because all the sound you hear is radius based, meaning no matter what is between you and the origin of the sound (be it air or 3 metre thick iron) you will hear the sound exactly the same because you're in the correct radius. It's only more noticeable for thunder because of the high radius it has. This same issue could also apply to for example hearing hostile mobs in caves very clearly, even though there could be a metre or two of solid rock between you both. There is no form of attenuation other than distance amplitude loss.

While reducing the radius could fix this I don't believe this would be a ideal. Partly because thunder is ruddy loud and can be heard for miles in our reality (so if anything the radius should be increased), but also because if I'm at Y10 (or lower) I should be able to hear thunder if there is a clear shaft to the sky where the sound would easily reach me without obstructions.

Sound audibility should ideally be dependant on what lies between you and the origin of the sound rather than radius and amplitude alone. I've noticed some modern games, particularly those using FMOD (which Minecraft does not), do account for obstructions when calculating sound attenuation pretty well. Perhaps a feature for a future major release.

Edit: What could also go really well with such a major sound update is distance based delay. For example, sound travels at ~343 metres/second. If a lightning strike is 343 metres away then you should see the visual effect immediately but not hear it for a whole second. Probably not that difficult to calculate this in Minecraft considering each cube seems to be roughly 1 cubic metre anyway. (FYI this is a little tip on knowing how far away a storm could be IRL.) Minecraft of course was never designed with realistic physics in mind. 🙂

I am also hearing thunder deep underground in Windows 10 version 1.0.3. I am mining at level 11 (one level above all the lava lakes) and I am periodically hearing thunder. The blocks above me are stone (not air) as I am not under a ravine or huge cave system. It doesn't make sense for me to be hearing thunder when there are 50+ blocks of stone between me and ground level.

I agree but apparently this works as intended.

I can't say how thunder would sound underground as I've never been deep underground while a thunderstorm is roaring on the surface. (Perhaps a current/former mining industry professional could share their experience of this, if they have it.) I would definitely expect the sound to be attenuated strongly though. All the high pitch frequencies would not likely travel through the thick rock leaving just the deep bassy notes perhaps highly reverberated according to the size and shape of the cavity you're in.

That's all likely too realistic for Minecraft anyway. Some basic attenuation functionality of all sounds based on blocks between you and the sound source should be a given no matter if you're surface or subterranean though.