Hi everyone!
While we continue working on the foundation of Minecraft itself, we'd like to get started on our promise to involve the community in shaping the official API by having our first planned Minecraft API discussion. This Saturday we're hoping to have an informal discussion on the community's thoughts and ideas on what they feel the API should provide and how it should be shaped. We already have some topics in mind of our own that we'd like to cover, but we encourage you to prepare some of your own topics of interest for the discussion for you and us to get the most out of the opportunity.
To keep things manageable, we'll most likely have to limit the amount of people that are able to talk. As such, we'll be giving representatives from modding groups that develop a modding platform, like Bukkit, Spout, etc. priority when selecting who will be provided with voice. If you're a part of a group that is interested in attending, please elect two representatives (one backup in case the first can't make it) and RSVP in a post below.
If we feel that more participants will be manageable, we'll provide other modders with the ability to participate. We wish we could just let everyone talk, but that would be a bit too crazy, sorry. If you believe that there is a better way to go about doing this, feel free to mention it in a post below and we'll take it into consideration.
If you're interested in joining us for the discussion, we're planning to hold the meeting this Saturday at 20:00 CEST on the Esper IRC network in the channel #minecraftdev. If you can't make it, we'll be providing logs of the meeting after the fact. For people who won't be actively participating in the meeting, we'll have another channel #minecraftdev-discuss where anyone is able to discuss the current topic in the meeting.
Who:
To keep things manageable, we'll most likely have to limit the amount of people that are able to talk. As such, we'll be giving representatives from modding groups that develop a modding platform, like Bukkit, Spout, etc. priority when selecting who will be provided with voice. If we feel that more participants will be manageable, we'll provide other modders with the ability to participate. We wish we could just let everyone talk, but that would be a bit too crazy, sorry.
If you're a part of a group that is interested in attending, please elect two representatives (one backup in case the first can't make it) and RSVP in a post below.
What:
An informal discussion to get an idea for what future discussions should be about, a feel for what ideas people have regarding the API and so on.
When:
This Saturday, June 30th 2012, at 20:00 CEST (check what time this is in your time zone).
Where:
Moderating meeting will take place in #minecraftdev on the Esper IRC network, irc.esper.net. Regular discussion will be taking place in #minecraftdev-discuss.
List of Attendees:
- Afforess from Spout
- Searge from MCP
- Amaranth from Bukkit
- UltraMoogleMan of WEDGE fame
- RoyAwesome of Spout GUI fame
- TkTech of #mcdevs and MCEdit fame
- Jarvix from Canary
- LexManos from Minecraft Forge
- FlowerChild of Better Than Wolves fame
- ShaRose of GuiAPI and ID Resolver fame
- Cojo of Tropicraft fame
- Corosus of ZombieCraft and Tropicraft fame
- medsouz of SocialMiner fame
- Xie of Xie's Mods fame
- Snowl of MCForge (classic) and LibMinecraft fame
- DV8FromTheWorld from Minecraft Port Central
- Kulttuuri from MinecraftEDU
- Eloraam of Minecraft Forge and RedPower fame
- sk89q of WorldEdit, WorldGuard and CraftBook fame
Agenda:
- Our plans for involving the community in the API development process for the future.
- Our considerations on how we might handle contributions.
- Our plans for keeping the community in the loop.
- The direction we're taking to prepare for the API.
- General Q&A.
Hope to see you there!
// The Minecraft Team
Cheers, totally didn't think of that. But all mods? Even optional ones like UI and textures? Also wouldn't it burden the direct-connect SP even more?
I hope you are present. I use a few of your plugins and think they are fantastic. I will be hoping you get in a question.
I think Mojang should learn from Forge and Bukkit.
I think that any new API should be "From scratch" based on what is now known and learned.
I think that Mojang is in the unique position of being able to decide to release the API spec/call interface of existing stuff in Minecraft, including the stuff that is incorrectly identified/labeled in MCP.
Should Mojang say "Lets use an API designed and made by someone that didn't fully understand minecraft, based around a design from last year, when we've gone past that and moved on to new things"? No.
There is no such thing as a single player mode anymore. There is no such thing as the user interface triggering something on the server. There is no such thing as "I'm looking at a chest, I can open it" -- instead, you have "I'm looking at a chest, I'll ask the server to open it at some point in the future".
Any old API will have baggage.
It has to be new.
It SHOULD be on that learns from what came before, both what works well, and what fails.
What fails.
If you cannot identify the BAD PARTS of the existing API's -- Modloader, Modloader MP, Forge, Bukkit, MCPatcher, Serge's MCPC system, etc -- if you cannot tell what mistakes people have made in the past, then you'll repeat those mistakes again in the future.
That has to be lesson #1.
I agree with you. It would be best if Mojang publishes the API spec before implementing it, then using the feedback from the community to improve it.
Regarding this Saturday's discussion, I will be out of town and without an internet connection, so I will not be able to participate
If anybody from Mojang is reading this post, I have a suggestion:
1.- Make an issue tracking system available to the modding community, give accounts to a select group of modders, and let them submit requirements for the modding API. Post thorough instructions about this process, so you can obtain a set of "good" requirements (see http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/5170.html)
2. - You can then select and prioritize those requirements and create a spec of the Modding API
3. - Publish the API specs, then let modders submit new issues to suggest improvements over the API spec
4.- GOTO 2
After some iterations, the API spec should be more stable, so you can start developing the API. Of course development may trigger some changes to the API spec, but they shouldn't be that big, since most of the spec would have been analyzed by the modders.
When choosing the modders who will help in this process, I would suggest to find all of those who:
1.- Are developing the most used mods, eg. Modloader, MC Forge, Optifine, etc.
2. - Are developing mods with complex features
The first group will be very helpful to define the basic features of the Modding API. The second group will provide useful insights about more complex features, which will address the necessities of mods that are currently incompatible with many other mods, because of their special features.
Chances are, Grum is already decided whether or not I should participate in this meeting, but I thought I should add an 'official' request here as well.
Background: I've been modding the game for nearly 2 years now, made an array of mods that change the game drastically such as ZombieCraft, Weather / Tornadoes, helped with Tropicraft, always looking for the best ways to hook into the game without base class edits or methods that make mods incompatible with eachother.
Also a long term op in #risucraft and help maintain MCPs naming for client and server, especially with the new AI system. I'll probably do more listening than talking.
Edit: IRC nickname and registered username is Corosus
Two things:
1. Sorry, I actually sort of got ninja'd by you (we posted at roughly the same time)
2. Good suggestion, but you need an account to vote or suggest. With a poll, everyone can join in.
Are you sure? I clicked on the link and it said "Please sign in to vote on questions and ask your own."
I can't imagine anyone not having a Google account at this stage of the Internet's life, tinfoil hats and monopoly critics excluded.
MCPatcher
ModLoader
TMI
NEI
VoxelBox
RedPower
BuildCraft
BTW
Aether
If everything is run through the API and modloader (along with everything like it) goes bai bai, not only will a lot of small time mods prolly die, but server owners may be able to control whether or not a client can have mods at all... resulting in dozens of server owners being inclined to say "HAAHAHAHAHAHA NO MODS ON MY SERVER EVER", and disabling them entirely.
Either way, I foresee much turmoil.
Quite a few people abandoned Google after they banned the use of pseudonyms.
The bad (take special note here; 100 good things isn't enough to offset the complaints generated by a single bad thing):