[MC-4465] Floating Ghast Bombs / Wither skulls / Fire Charges

Died while multiple Ghasts were shooting me. I'm assuming that the Nether closed up at the point and everything stood still, therefore leaving the shots in the air. I have terribly put a picture together of three instances of such. I know that MC-27 refers to this issue, however i wanted to provide proof and didn't know how to add it. Also, bear with me, as this is my first post!

EDIT: forgot to mention that I posted this because this glitch is still here despite it being said to be fixed in 1.4.4

MC-5566 mentions some ghast bombs were there as user entered the nether while in peacefull.

Linked issues

is cloned by 1

MC-197646 Projectiles can get stuck in the air if shot very far away horizontally/into unloaded chunks Reopened

is duplicated by 20

MC-4782 If a Ghast shoots a fireball and the player switches to peacefull it will remeain in the air. I left and re-entered the nether and the fireball is still in the same place! Resolved

MC-4928 Floating Ghast Fireballs Resolved

MC-5566 Random ghasts fireball Resolved

MC-13218 Wither particles bug. (Flickering Bug) Resolved

MC-14973 Weird random flames from torches/spawners are appearing Resolved

15 more links

relates to 1

MC-96320 Fireball trail Resolved

Attachments

Comments 31

MisterSanderson 2013-03-14T15:39:42Z

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.

Marios 2013-03-24T00:13:49Z

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

Carl Lystad 2013-03-30T08:12:15Z

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.

Carl Lystad 2013-03-30T08:30:57Z

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.

chewsterchew 2013-04-21T01:28:25Z

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

21 more comments

clamlol 2013-04-26T23:16:25Z

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

clamlol 2013-04-26T23:16:50Z

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.

clamlol 2013-04-26T23:18:22Z

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

clamlol 2013-04-26T23:25:04Z

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.

clamlol 2013-04-26T23:28:32Z

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.

Tails 2013-05-06T18:16:26Z

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.

Ryan OSullivan 2013-06-02T07:20:22Z

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

Andrew Thomas 2013-09-26T17:57:56Z

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.

MisterSanderson 2013-11-02T23:03:18Z

Happened to me in 1.7.2.

MisterSanderson 2013-11-12T23:45:05Z

Happened to me again in 1.7.2.

Spencer Stith 2014-02-02T02:34:04Z

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

Anthony Martin 2014-03-03T18:13:03Z

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.

Anthony Martin 2014-08-14T15:53:38Z

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.

Anthony Martin 2014-08-14T16:03:23Z

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.

kumasasa 2014-10-31T22:49:10Z

Still in 1.8, see MC-73891

Sonicwave 2014-12-19T05:12:33Z

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.

violine1101 2014-12-19T06:35:29Z

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

a 2015-06-25T04:20:17Z

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

Anthony Martin 2015-06-25T06:08:59Z

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.

Bigman1103 2015-07-12T13:25:21Z

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.

mrpingouin1 2015-09-04T12:02:19Z

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.

Torabi 2015-09-04T14:36:54Z

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.

Mike Pontillo 2016-02-14T18:07:43Z

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

/kill @e[type=SmallFireball]

Joel Cullis 2016-03-19T20:24:47Z

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.

kumasasa 2016-03-20T00:39:59Z

@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.

Niknokinater 2016-05-29T05:09:46Z

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.