Floating Ghast Bombs / Wither skulls / Fire Charges

This happened to me in 1.5. I don't know if it was like MC-4465 or MC-5566 explains, because I was restarting the game several times.

Flickering ghast fireballs in 1.5.1
http://youtu.be/uGnBf9D3Sx8

Just had this happen to me, also on 1.5.1. What I saw was one fireball fairly close and additional flickers scattered around the area. This was on Peaceful in a newly generated section of the Nether. (I started my map back in 1.3.2 and had to get to a new area to find any quartz ore.)

Oddly enough, while attempting to take screenshots, the closest fireball would occasionally disappear briefly. Not sure what to make of that.

Managed to catch a screenshot of the distant fireballs. Also, was able to make my way over to the near fireball and hit it away, meaning it was an actual fireball and not a phantom. Next step is to see if I can get closer to where the flickering fireballs seem to be.

Edit: Alright, managed to get to one of the flickering fireballs. Turns out this one is a phantom, and seemingly smaller than a normal fireball. All the other fireballs in the screenshot seem to flash at regular intervals and in unison with the known phantom, which suggests that all the flashing ones are phantoms.

I'm beginning to think the phantoms may be a separate issue with similar causes, but I don't know for certain. As for why the real fireball appeared on Peaceful with no velocity, it is possible that, like skeletons generated by monster spawners, that a ghast is spawning for a split second and is able to create the fireball, but not assign a velocity to the fireball before it despawns, leaving it stuck in midair. Pure speculation, mind you, but still a possible explanation.

This happens if a fireball/skull gets out of the loaded chunks. You can hit the skull/fireball with a sword/bow.

the skulls kinda ruin what would otherwise have been a great screenshot

Here's a screenshot of the wither skull flash glitch. I don't know much technical information about Minecraft, but I think the problem with this is that the game remembers entities' positions when the chunk they are in unloads, but since wither skulls (and maybe the ghast fireballs too) disappear when the wither (or ghast) is killed, the game is confused about whether or not the skull (or fireball) should be there. Also, I've stood inside one of the skulls and tried hitting it and snowballing it, and it didn't explode. Oddly enough, it was facing up instead of south like i thought it would.

↑I'm talking about the "wither skull glitch.png" i uploaded

and one other thing: the skulls in the screenshot appeared for a fraction of a second, once every few seconds. I think they did it most often when activity on my SSD was at its lowest, meaning i wasn't moving the mouse or touching any keys. It took about 30 consecutive screenshots before I finally got one with the skulls in it.

ONE LAST THING! I've also seen this with shot fire charges and maybe blaze fireballs too, so I think it can happen with any projectile.

For Fire Charges: In a new world place a dispenser high in the air(>100) and shoot a bunch of them into the distance. Follow their path and eventually you'll see them flicker in midair.

I just wanted to comment in that this is happening in 1.5.2 as well (wasn't in the list of affected versions)

I just attached a picture of the phantom fireball in the most recent snapshot (13w39a). As of 1.6.2/4 and the 1.7 snapshots it still exists.

Happened to me in 1.7.2.

Happened to me again in 1.7.2.

This has been happening in 14w04x and 14w05x snapshots as well.

Observed in 14w08a.

To test if your world is full of wither skulls, use this command:

/tp @e[c=1,type=WitherSkull]

If the /tp works, then you have at least one instance of the wither skull just hanging out in a loaded chunk. To clear them all, use:

/kill @e[type=WitherSkull]

You can also find eternal arrows by using type=Arrow.

Using the new /entitydata command, I was able to pull the entity data for these WitherSkulls:

/entitydata @e[c=1,type=WitherSkull] {}
The data tag did not change: {Motion:[0:4.4E-323d,1:4.4E-323d,2:-4.4E-323d,],xTile:-1s,UUIDLeast:-5943542692992487930L,inGround:0b,Invulnerable:0b,Air:300s,OnGround:0b,Dimension:0,PortalCooldown:0,Rotation:[0:45.000008f,1:-89.999985f,],FallDistance:0.0f,inTile:"",UUIDMost:1757454117284302355L,Pos:[0:3615.696000611837d,1:16.4260386987285d,2:-7967.125136944639d,],zTile:-1s,Fire:20s,yTile:-1s,id:"WitherSkull",direction:[0:4.4E-323d,1:4.4E-323d,2:-4.4E-323d,],}

This data came from a server on 14w33a.

There are thousands of these projectiles floating about on my server. In order to deal with these problems, I've got some commands that run every so often.

Setup (run once):

/scoreboard objectives add isJunk dummy

Run periodically:

/scoreboard players add @e[type=WitherSkull] isJunk 1
/scoreboard players add @e[type=Arrow] isJunk 1

/kill @e[type=Item,score_isJunk_min=1]

I run scripts similar to this with rcon. If I use /kill directly on the projectiles, I will often get ConcurrentModificationException, but not every time. Using the scoreboard objectives eliminates the Exception.

Still in 1.8, see MC-73891

Not sure if this is the same issue, but when you have a wither (that is shooting its skulls) in a world in 1.8.1 and reload that world in 1.8.2-pre1, floating, upwards-facing wither skulls result.

@Sonicwave That was another bug which got fixed in 1.8.2.

Present in 1.8.7 for Wither skulls. Visible in 1.8.7, but the actual Wither battle may have occurred in 1.8.6

I can say with certainly that this issue is still present (in 1.8.7) with any kind of projectile (e.g., new wither battles and old ones). I have subroutines in my external tool to look specifically for floating projectiles and remove them:

https://github.com/inertia186/cobblebot/blob/master/app/concerns/detectable.rb

Typically, I have these subroutines execute when a player authenticates. Today, it found over 500 floating projectiles, which seems like a lot. I only have about 60 unique players every day on my server.

The way it works is, when a player authenticates, my app tries to determine if there are any projectiles loaded. If it finds any, it marks them with an "isJunk" objective. It then kills any projectile with an isJunk score above 1, which usually means it's frozen.

This is accomplished entirely with RCON in vanilla, not using plug-ins or jar modifications.

I have had this problem for fire charges. At first the fire charges would flicker in and out of view but now they just float there and randomly catch fire for a fraction of a second.

This bug is fixed in 15w34a. Obviously, only newly launched fireball are fixed, those who were generated in previous version won't start moving again.

Just tested in 15w36c, I can confirm that this appears to be fixed. 15w34a is no longer available for marking as fixed, so using 15w36c.

This worked for me to delete the floating fire charges on our server:

/kill @e[type=SmallFireball]

can confirm this bug still exists in 1.9 on realms, my friends MC kept crashing in the nether, i investigated and found lots of little fireballs hovering in the air. I cant shoot or destroy them. no idea how they got there.

@unknown: Was this world created in 1.9 or an upgraded old world ? If the latter, then this is normal, since this issue was fixed in 1.9. Floating fireballs from 1.8 won't get removed.

I just had a peculiar encounter with a Ghast. It fired a at me, and as the fireball neared me, both the Ghast and the fireball disappeared. I continued my travel (toward where the Ghast was), and found a floating fireball on a wall of netherrack. Hitting it appeared to only push it into the wall, and it merely popped out again. 2 hits plus a critical caused it to explode. The Ghast was nowhere to be found. I'm playing 1.9.4 and this world is 1.8 generated.