Joseph Collins

New images and post grabbed from duplicate MC-55451

Summary: Minecraft loads your Resource Pack's "steve.png" file as a 64px x 64px file even if it's a 64px x 32px file.
Details: As of 14w11b onward, Minecraft will load your Resource Pack's default skin {"steve.png") into the game as if the image dimensions were 64 pixels-by-64 pixels, even if the file is 64 pixels-by-32 pixels.

Steps to replicate:

1. Load any Snapshot version of Minecraft beyond Release 1.7.9.

2. Play offline or disable your skin.*
   (In Snapshots 14w19a and onward, you can also die or teleport to see the skin display on your avatar.)

3. Play in any world, offline or online.

4. Press F5 or your inventory button to examine yourself in-game.

Expected Results: You should see a dirty man in a cyan shirt with blue pants.
Observed Results: You see a very mangled monstrosity of a man with several transparent areas on his body and textures on the wrong faces.

Comments: I'm sure this is one of those cases of "it's not a bug, it's a feature", but I lean toward the opinion of "it's a bug". Minecraft loads 64px x 32px skins from the web servers just fine, but not from texture packs, whereas release version 1.7.9 loads 64px x 32px skins from resource packs just fine. It's very odd that the recent snapshots would behave that way, unless Mojang is forcefully phasing "old-style" skins out in this way. But still, why does the client load remote skins 64px x 32px skins but not load "steve.png" from Resource Packs under those dimensions?

Edit: I guess this needs to be said: If you update the steve.png file in your custom Resource Pack to 64px x 64px, it will display fine. The default steve.png in the default Resource Pack displays just fine since it is 64px x 64px. It's only 64px x 32px steve.png files in custom Resource Packs that display incorrectly in the snapshots.

But that doesn't explain why loading 64px x 32px skins from the skin server works fine under snapshots.

@[Mod] Ezekiel
I did use the search function, but I couldn't find what I was looking for. Sorry.
And thank you for linking this into the existing issue, MC-46090.

@Steven Verberne
Fixed. I wanted to put it under "Snapshot 14w11a", but onlyl 14w20a/b is on that list, so I figured "1.8 future version" was the best catch-all.
I also added an addendum, despite the fact I mentioned it in-detail in the post anyway. That doesn't explain why the game can load 64px x 32px file from the remote server just fine, despite being 1.8 snapshots.

Thank you for your feedback.

As far as I can tell, here's what happens:
The game communicates with the skins server ONCE AND ONLY ONCE – when you first join the server. If you die, take a trip to the Nether/End, or need to completely reload your UI for ANY REASON AT ALL, the game doesn't communicate with the server and reload your skin again. Thus, you get stuck with the default "steve.png" skin for your texture pack.
This only seems to happen CLIENT-SIDE, as other people can see your skin just fine regardless of where you wander to or how many times you die. (Probably due to how the game handles remote skins or something). I'm not entirely sure why it tries to read steve.png as a 64x64 file even if it's 64x32 however, since 64x32 skins work just as fine as 64x64 ones...

My question is why doesn't the local game client keep your skin loaded into memory at all times? It's not like it can change without you closing the game down entirely. Ever since there's been custom skins, if you die or warp to another dimension, your skin has to reload. I never understood it. It baffles me to this day and seems inefficient...