Since Searge hase been hikacked into Mojang Team nothing is going on in
Minecraft modding . No full MCP have been release since Minecraft 1.6.2 release.
At Minecon 2013,l ot of promises have been made for easier modding .
MC 1.7.5 is out not and what we get is juste a game patch for Realm , a thing thar nobody is using.
Result Minecraft 1.8.x is far away and modding is nearly dead.
Lot of modders will probably never update there mods because they have to start
again from ground up there old mods. Modding is a great part of success of Minecraft
and Mojang Team should not forget it. Poeple have done mods because Mojang Team
was to lazy to do it themself. We have things like anventure mode but Mojang has
not event considered to make a good map editor for this purpose or finish thing
like paintings who has lot of unused spaces who can only be used thru mods.
Mojang should no foget Minecraft sucess has been made by users unpaided advertising.
So i think they can do a bit more than just filling there pockets whith money by
speading there game on all gameplatforms. I know business is made by using idiots
we all player and user are. Showing a little bite more respect would be more welcome
than juste adding lot of gimmiks we dont not really need in the game.
A handfull poeple have done about 150 mods for Mc1.7.2 most need Forge and
are not really usefull of fun. Lot of them only work on MC1.7.2 server and
not working on MC 1.7.4
Minecraft is kidding us with useless Twitch and Realm.
When do we have real Creative tools like Worldedit or MCEDit in creative mode
to be able to make good adventure maps ?
If there is no more Worldedit or Mcedit for solo Minecraft and no good mods then
Minecraft will be just a game like millions other games.
I guess you're kind of right. Since the modding system has been changed, moders have to start from scratch. But, the new system opens up gateways for better mods in general. The "out with the old and in with the new" thing or-whatever-its-called.
Well of course nobody has been using Realms, since this is really the first patch that the public can start to use it.
If the mods were designed properly, they can just switch out their API calls which should be handled on a separate layer. They shouldn't have to start over from scratch unless they were poorly designed in the first place.
I'm looking forward to the plugin API because it will make it so easy for clients to switch back and forth between servers with different sets of client-side plugins.
The major setback and #1 thing that has kept modding from going forward has been the unstable status of MCP (Minecraft Coding Pack) for the more recent versions of Minecraft. MCP at the moment is the foundation for everything else which has been happening in the modding community and is so damn useful that to make mods without it makes life much, much harder.
MCP is so useful that if the current MCP team wants to bail out and stop doing their thing, I'm certain another group would come along and do the same thing. Unfortunately there is as you've pointed out a changing of the guard as it were even on the MCP where some new volunteers really do need to step up and help out with MCP, and at the same time the MCP guys need to be a little more accepting of some new blood to get things going.
The other thing that really hurts the modding community is that Risugami, the creator of ModLoader, has all but disappeared and quit updating ModLoader itself. His most recent version was for 1.6.2 (he never updated to 1.6.4 even) and was one of the few major mod development tools developed independently of MCP. For awhile I even developed mods without MCP (it is possible) simply using ModLoader. but with that also dead it means that any mods must come up with your own way to hack into Minecraft more directly. Direct class manipulation mods are still possible, but it also creates some huge incompatibilities unless you are very careful as a mod developer.
I don't completely understand the problems that the MCP team has been facing, but the loss of Searge (at least the independence that he had before) and a massive change in the code base that required remapping nearly the whole game has certainly hurt. Apparently MCP also upgraded many of their development tools at the same time.... which also slowed them down but also should make it easier for MCP to continue forward into the future.
In other words, it has been a perfect storm to really hurt the modding community. A whole lot of bad luck, several key mod developers who used to make base components that other mod developers depended on that have dropped out, and in general a turnover of mod developers in general has made the current current situation. There is another thread about speculation as to the current state of the plug-in API.... something that I'm on record as stating it too is dead in the water and not even remotely in development (the loss of Grum has been painful there and only adding to the mess).
Hopefully the mod community will pull out of this current funk and make Minecraft back into the heavily modded game it used to be. It should be alarming to Mojang though if the mod developers simply move onto other games (as I'm sort of doing myself now).
I see it like this: would you prefer to depend on MCP/Forge/Modloader for the rest of Minecraft life or would you sacrifice some downtime for a plug-in API? I don't think it was intentionally planned for mods to be stuck in limbo like this, it just sorta happened that way (i.e. the perfect storm Korihor mentioned). At this point we have two options: get MCP/Forge/Modloader back with a dead stop on the plug-in API or continue waiting it out for the API and cut the umbilical cord on MCP.
There is no such option to have both just in case anyone was thinking of wandering outside of reality. This situation stinks and we wish it to get done as quickly as possible, but in order for one of the two to happen, the other has to be let go.
The way I see it, you don't HAVE to always play the latest version of the game, at least for your modded version; I actually still play in 1.6.2, never even updated to 1.6.4 simply because there isn't any real difference between those versions (yes, the structures fix, but that has no effect on gameplay and not like I care if strongholds, etc, no longer work properly anyway since I already did all of the "quest to kill dragon" part and don't use mob farms). Actually, it has reached the point where I am updating the game for myself; I have modified over two dozen base classes at last count (so far no issues when loaded into Forge other than requiring -Dfml.ignorePatchDiscrepancies=true). Even more classes would be added to that list if I were to ever update to 1.8, such are reverting the changes to repairing (renaming no longer fixes repair cost, which would have to be reverted back as well to avoid ridiculously cheap repairs; another mod I use also depends on this to prevent you from making overpowered items).
Modders lost two good programmers on the bukkit as well. Sense Grum and Dinnerborn left bukkit updates are a lot slower. Not complaining, but it is happening to a lot of the programmers that work on the game.
Lets keep in mind as well that the mods are done for free for the most part, and most likely incorporate a lot of the modder's free time. For this privilege they get hassled about when the new update is coming out, why is this broke, how come you can't do this, that, and the other thing.
In short they get treated just like the developers of Minecraft without the paycheck.
And just about the time they get all the kinks out of their mod, someone goes and changes everything and the process drones on.
Man's gata eat. And unless your getting paid to make your mods, they can not be #1 on your list.
Well of course nobody has been using Realms, since this is really the first patch that the public can start to use it.
If the mods were designed properly, they can just switch out their API calls which should be handled on a separate layer. They shouldn't have to start over from scratch unless they were poorly designed in the first place.
I'm looking forward to the plugin API because it will make it so easy for clients to switch back and forth between servers with different sets of client-side plugins.
You can already do this with the existing client.
Just create an Instances folder in .minecraft.
Inside of that, create a folder for each unique profile you want to use.
Then launch Minecraft and edit each profile's game directory path to ....minecraft/Instances/<uniquefolder>/
It will download and create a unique minecraft install where you can place the mods and resourcepacks for just that profile
I currently have 4 unique installs that I can easily jump between which is great for testing mods out without touching my working installs.
Still, it will be nice when there is a version of the MOD API available and people can get a sense on what it really means to future updates.
No, Minecraft just changed literally a million lines of code. That's a LOT for modders to update to and a lot are recovering on how the items are now being handled.
PC gamers will always mod games, especially Minecraft. Give them time and they will have release schedules again just like before.
I don't want to mod the pre-1.7 versions. Part of what I want to do is take a stab at making a nice continent system to the new generation-style so that I can have landmasses separated by water that have a good mix of terrain on each. Rather than make suggestions like dozens of others, I'd like to give my programming degree some exercise and actually make what I want, show it off, and see how others feel about it. However, Minecraft is just not very friendly to getting into modding it at the present.
At first I waited for MCP, because it's what everybody uses. But MCP is crawling along and the reason is the API also crawling along. Neither is coming forward in a timely manner because attention seems to be split between the two - and any progress towards the API is likely contrary to progress for the MCP. Frankly, I'd rather see the API out so that I have something from Mojang to work with, but I'd even be willing to play along with the MCP team - except what I've seen of their little website doesn't make it look like they're really interested in sharing their work with others who'd consider puzzling out random strings of characters' actual purpose (deobfuscating variable-names).
As I've waited for something vaguely-resembling a development setup so that I can actually work at coding, I've noticed that those using mods further worsen the issue by insisting that they all be Forge-compatible - even looking for this when Forge is not updated to work with the current version (because, hey, it's an MCP mod that requires that bit to be done so they can do their own thing). Another reason the API really needs to come about - right now I'm waiting for mods on mods to be finished before anything I can do will even be looked at by half the people out there.
Add to this the somewhat aloof crap that is trying to set all this up. The instructions for installing MCP are known to be wrong, possibly to the extent that their own readme is erroneous information, those very instructions say "we won't tell you how to do this" (for something which is as simple as providing a link), and people will laugh if you bring up a youtube vid on how to get this development suite of MCP, Eclipse, and Forge all set up. I write code. That's what I went to college for. People telling me they don't have an installer for their software, don't want to give complete instructions on how to install it, and require the use of two other such programs to get around to actually coding have made this more of a nuisance than it's worth. It's not that I'm incapable, it's that I'm insulted to wait for months for something that's then going to then have installation instructions of, "Search for instructions on installing this product somewhere other than this product" and "Do this thing which actually everybody who has been using this software previously knows will actually screw up your installation."
As much as I want to make a continents-mod, try some changes on villagers, add some terrain-features, modify the buildings within desert villages, and more... None of that is likely to happen any time soon. I hope the API is closer than people think, and 1.8 is going to be the update where they release it - the blackout being because they're focusing so much on it that they're no longer chatting about the same old topics - because right now Minecraft itself and the community around it really discourages new modders.
Your initial argument has a huge flaw with it, we have not seen an mcp update since 1.6.2? There is a 1.6.4 and 1.7.2 build of mcp already released and they have been for a very long time. A lot of mods such as More Swords and Tinkers Construct already have builds out for 1.7.2. As a mod developer I would say the changes in 1.7 have made modding easier (Networking is so much easier now and a lot of other quirks in the game that were once road blocks to creating better mods have been cleared). I would argue that the modding community is far from dead.
I have been developing mods for minecraft since 1.0.0, every update is rather generic and easy to work with the big exception here being the 1.3.2 version of the game. With APIs like Forge a lot of the burden of updating a mod has been lifted, that's a benefit to using an API like forge. Every update from 1.3.2 forward has been rather easy for a lot of developers I associate with and myself. 1.7 was hyped up to be a lot like the 1.3.2 update however Lex and CPW and the rest of the forge and MCP team have done an excellent job as always when it comes to updating their tools and the impact that this update has had on the developers is minimal at best. Of course there will always be certain mods where there is just so much going on internally that the update has caused a few things to break however that's to be expected.
I would like to remind you that as of now there has been no official statement by the author of ModLoader over the status of the project or himself. Even so there are many alternative loaders that offer the same functionality as ModLoader and often times more however this is not the thread to debate that. I would also like to remind you that Searge is still a member of the MCP team and the quality of MCP has not deteriorated in the slightest since its first release.
I would like to remind you that as of now there has been no official statement by the author of ModLoader over the status of the project or himself. Even so there are many alternative loaders that offer the same functionality as ModLoader and often times more however this is not the thread to debate that. I would also like to remind you that Searge is still a member of the MCP team and the quality of MCP has not deteriorated in the slightest since its first release.
While there has been no "official" statement about the status of ModLoader, the fact that Risugami hasn't posted in his own thread for nearly a year and hasn't even bothered to update his mod even to 1.6.4 (1.6.2 to 1.6.4 wasn't really that big of a change) is plenty of proof that he has abandoned his efforts. This is even more remarkable when with nearly every previous Minecraft update Risugami had an update rolled out within days of the official Minecraft release and usually beat MCP by a couple of days (even the preliminary testing versions of MCP). If he was keeping consistent compared to previous releases, ModLoader for 1.7.5 should be out some time next week.
I'm not holding my breath or expecting it to happen either.
If the forum moderators want to keep lying to themselves and the rest of the community that somehow he is going to come back, you are living in some alternate reality that IMHO is an abuse of moderation tools as well. I'll leave this here, but my point is that Risugami disappearing has contributed to the dearth of mod development as well which was sort of the point of this thread in the first place. He also developed all of his software without the use of MCP, something that I think deserves some special note and showing how it isn't entirely the fault of the MCP team not having a stable build for 1.7.2 or 1.7.4 that keeps mods from being developed.
The only other significant mod loader tool is FML, which might as well be Forge as trying to get a usable version of FML without Forge is nearly impossible (at least for novice users and a simple download). There is the Blazeloader project that is in what could be considered an alpha/beta build that I think could honorably replace ModLoader, but there certainly aren't "many" different alternatives. I am not currently aware of any other alternatives, but I am open to legitimate suggestions.
The role that Searge has with MCP must simply change simply by his employment with Mojang. I realize that Mojang has let some employees be involved with community projects they were doing before they joined Mojang, but it seems in this case that Searge can't really stay in both places at the same time. I have definitely seen a hit in terms of his productivity since becoming employed at Mojang (at least with regards to MCP), and it should even be expected. There is also "inside" knowledge by being an employee that may increasingly make it harder to do more than simply be an advisor, leader, and cheerleader. I am suggesting that it has impacted the development of MCP, even if other members of the MCP are taking up the slack. It isn't even a slight against Searge, but rather knowing how his time is split and how things like NDAs and trade secret laws can mess up a 3rd party project like MCP.
Simply put, Searge is not going to be doing the same things he used to do with MCP. I think it is going to be better for the Minecraft 3rd party content development community (trying to diplomatically avoid the confusion between "plug-ins" vs. "mods") with Searge and his depth of experience helping out with what I hope is the official plug-in API development. I'll be patient in a "wait and see" kind of attitude, but it would be nice for some additional transparency and perhaps rebooting the discussion forums for the API development that have taken a hit over the past few months as well.
Minecraft 1.7 made modding easier, but it changed millions of lines of codes. millions, that is 1,000,000 lines of code, they have to go trough every line and do double-checks, also they're doing it without pay, maybe donations but its not that much, they have to work in real life to pay for their bills, food, software, etc.
Also, Minecraft 1.7 came out around December, loads of modders are probably spending the holiday season with their family, friends, relaxing, they're people too (this might be the reason why MCP slowed down?) they also need to work (most of them) to pay for their bills, food, etc etc, so just chill and play vanila for awhile or go back to 1.6.X
So for people more familiar with the project than I, when are we thinking MCP might be updated to 1.7.x? I'm aware that there are some unstable beta versions out right now for 1.7.2, but when do people think full support is coming? Is this something that many people feel like will be available in the next 6 months? Sometime in 2014? Longer? Just trying to get a ballpark idea.
Forge+MCP for 1.7.2 is actually workable at this point. It's a lot harder to install than previous forges - it took me several days and a lot of googling to figure everything out. And I actually had to manually open jars to find the deobfuscated sources. I haven't yet tried building any mods, because I have a *lot* of coding to redo, but that will probably be another day of frantic googling.
Most of the mods out so far have been "minimods" - relatively small changes.
It has been a perfect storm interfering with modding - major personnel changes at MCP, big changes for the deobfuscators to deal with, big coding changes for the modders, and, with Forge, big changes to the development system. But it's mostly done at this point and I think we'll start seeing some heavy-duty mods soon. Of the heavy mods I use, Mo' Creatures is released; Bibliocraft is supposedly a working alpha; and Underground Biomes is in the coding stage. All told, it's been about a 3 month delay - not the end of the world. And the changes to the code are definitely an improvement - several of my pet peeves have been fixed. One of the fixes created a new pet peeve but this is easier to deal with.
I think changes to 1.8 will be much faster and probably will happen on a timescale similar to what we've seen in the past.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
I guess you're kind of right. Since the modding system has been changed, moders have to start from scratch. But, the new system opens up gateways for better mods in general. The "out with the old and in with the new" thing or-whatever-its-called.
----It doesn't really give modders more freedom, it will just make it where mods can be compatible and won't have to be updated. There's a good chance the API will actually limit us. The update to 1.7 has already limited my modding.
Forge+MCP for 1.7.2 is actually workable at this point. It's a lot harder to install than previous forges - it took me several days and a lot of googling to figure everything out. And I actually had to manually open jars to find the deobfuscated sources.
Translation: "If you didn't mod Minecraft before 1.7.x, you're not likely to get it going now."
Honestly, Zeno, if you spent several days getting MCP+Forge off the ground for yourself (and you've been playing with the stuff before), it's not accessible to new blood - and that's a big problem. Modding is a hobby outlet. It's something we do because we enjoy the challenge of making the computer do something different to suit our whims. Like any other hobby, it's something that will always see the loss of long-term members for whatever reasons they may have, and it will always need an influx of new members. Yeah, you're probably going to lose about half of those newbs the minute they realize how much of a challenge it actually is, but you need the ones who're going to stay or the community will suffer for its declining membership.
I added robbing the bank to a TI-89 game called Drugwars before I had any formal training in programming, and it amused me. Now I have formal training and could write a double-recursive function to generate a dungeon-map complete with halls and doors (not really good for the chunk format of Minecraft, but it's interesting to me). But I'd still need to get to the code to do anything of note in Minecraft, and that's a convoluted set of hoops with a lot of red-herrings out there to keep me from even wanting to try.
I'm just hoping that the mod API will actually open up the gates so that modding Minecraft is its own challenge without installing the needed components to mod Minecraft being a trial. I highly doubt I'm the only potential modder who is producing nothing for Minecraft due to getting it set up being a ridiculous task in and of itself.
Translation: "If you didn't mod Minecraft before 1.7.x, you're not likely to get it going now."
Honestly, Zeno, if you spent several days getting MCP+Forge off the ground for yourself (and you've been playing with the stuff before), it's not accessible to new blood - and that's a big problem...
Posts like this convince me even more not to ever try making a Forge mod again; a serious lack of documentation and example code, even for 1.6.4 and earlier, is a big turn-off.
For example, how do I add a new world type using Forge, with my own terrain generation and everything? Surely it isn't as simple as hacking the base code to add the following line to WorldType.java:
public static final WorldType THT = new WorldType(15, "triple_height");
Or what if I wanted to use my own cave generation code (note also that the vanilla cave generator extends MapGenBase, but my version combines MapGenCaves with MapGenBase and MapGenRavine)? I actually posted a thread on this, but nobody ever replied to it (I assume because it isn't possible).
Then, all I need to do to tell the game to use my custom code is to insert code like this:
if (par2World.getWorldInfo().getTerrainType() == WorldType.THT)
{
generateTHTCaves(par1IChunkProvider, par2World, chunkX, chunkZ, terrainDataArray);
}
else
{
generateVanillaCaves(par1IChunkProvider, par2World, chunkX, chunkZ, terrainDataArray);
}
int addedHeight = 0;
if (this.worldObj.getWorldInfo().getTerrainType() == WorldType.THT) addedHeight = 128;
So it isn't compatible with as many mods, but its not like you'd want to use two different terrain generation altering mods at the same time, and even Forge mods would likely conflict.
Also, for all of the claimed changes made to 1.7 code, many classes are still very similar to the 1.6 versions, in many cases, all they changed was a few numbers (e.g MapGenCaves) and/or moved some code around (e.g. replaceBlocksForBiome (func_150560_b in MCP 9.03) was moved from ChunkProviderGenerate to BiomeGenBase). I was even able to use Java Bytecode Editor to make some mods (updated to 1.7.5 hours after it was released, taking only minutes to update), using Java Decompiler and Windows grep to find the code I wanted to edit, using the deobfuscated 1.6 code as a guide; this depends on the code not being changed too much to work (without a lot of searching). I'm sure there were more major changes in other classes, but many are still easily recognizable, even when obfuscated.
Minecraft modding . No full MCP have been release since Minecraft 1.6.2 release.
At Minecon 2013,l ot of promises have been made for easier modding .
MC 1.7.5 is out not and what we get is juste a game patch for Realm , a thing thar nobody is using.
Result Minecraft 1.8.x is far away and modding is nearly dead.
Lot of modders will probably never update there mods because they have to start
again from ground up there old mods. Modding is a great part of success of Minecraft
and Mojang Team should not forget it. Poeple have done mods because Mojang Team
was to lazy to do it themself. We have things like anventure mode but Mojang has
not event considered to make a good map editor for this purpose or finish thing
like paintings who has lot of unused spaces who can only be used thru mods.
Mojang should no foget Minecraft sucess has been made by users unpaided advertising.
So i think they can do a bit more than just filling there pockets whith money by
speading there game on all gameplatforms. I know business is made by using idiots
we all player and user are. Showing a little bite more respect would be more welcome
than juste adding lot of gimmiks we dont not really need in the game.
A handfull poeple have done about 150 mods for Mc1.7.2 most need Forge and
are not really usefull of fun. Lot of them only work on MC1.7.2 server and
not working on MC 1.7.4
Minecraft is kidding us with useless Twitch and Realm.
When do we have real Creative tools like Worldedit or MCEDit in creative mode
to be able to make good adventure maps ?
If there is no more Worldedit or Mcedit for solo Minecraft and no good mods then
Minecraft will be just a game like millions other games.
gg dice
If the mods were designed properly, they can just switch out their API calls which should be handled on a separate layer. They shouldn't have to start over from scratch unless they were poorly designed in the first place.
I'm looking forward to the plugin API because it will make it so easy for clients to switch back and forth between servers with different sets of client-side plugins.
MCP is so useful that if the current MCP team wants to bail out and stop doing their thing, I'm certain another group would come along and do the same thing. Unfortunately there is as you've pointed out a changing of the guard as it were even on the MCP where some new volunteers really do need to step up and help out with MCP, and at the same time the MCP guys need to be a little more accepting of some new blood to get things going.
The other thing that really hurts the modding community is that Risugami, the creator of ModLoader, has all but disappeared and quit updating ModLoader itself. His most recent version was for 1.6.2 (he never updated to 1.6.4 even) and was one of the few major mod development tools developed independently of MCP. For awhile I even developed mods without MCP (it is possible) simply using ModLoader. but with that also dead it means that any mods must come up with your own way to hack into Minecraft more directly. Direct class manipulation mods are still possible, but it also creates some huge incompatibilities unless you are very careful as a mod developer.
I don't completely understand the problems that the MCP team has been facing, but the loss of Searge (at least the independence that he had before) and a massive change in the code base that required remapping nearly the whole game has certainly hurt. Apparently MCP also upgraded many of their development tools at the same time.... which also slowed them down but also should make it easier for MCP to continue forward into the future.
In other words, it has been a perfect storm to really hurt the modding community. A whole lot of bad luck, several key mod developers who used to make base components that other mod developers depended on that have dropped out, and in general a turnover of mod developers in general has made the current current situation. There is another thread about speculation as to the current state of the plug-in API.... something that I'm on record as stating it too is dead in the water and not even remotely in development (the loss of Grum has been painful there and only adding to the mess).
Hopefully the mod community will pull out of this current funk and make Minecraft back into the heavily modded game it used to be. It should be alarming to Mojang though if the mod developers simply move onto other games (as I'm sort of doing myself now).
Version 2.1 now updated for MC 1.6.2
There is no such option to have both just in case anyone was thinking of wandering outside of reality. This situation stinks and we wish it to get done as quickly as possible, but in order for one of the two to happen, the other has to be let go.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Lets keep in mind as well that the mods are done for free for the most part, and most likely incorporate a lot of the modder's free time. For this privilege they get hassled about when the new update is coming out, why is this broke, how come you can't do this, that, and the other thing.
In short they get treated just like the developers of Minecraft without the paycheck.
And just about the time they get all the kinks out of their mod, someone goes and changes everything and the process drones on.
Man's gata eat. And unless your getting paid to make your mods, they can not be #1 on your list.
You can already do this with the existing client.
Just create an Instances folder in .minecraft.
Inside of that, create a folder for each unique profile you want to use.
Then launch Minecraft and edit each profile's game directory path to ....minecraft/Instances/<uniquefolder>/
It will download and create a unique minecraft install where you can place the mods and resourcepacks for just that profile
I currently have 4 unique installs that I can easily jump between which is great for testing mods out without touching my working installs.
Still, it will be nice when there is a version of the MOD API available and people can get a sense on what it really means to future updates.
No, Minecraft just changed literally a million lines of code. That's a LOT for modders to update to and a lot are recovering on how the items are now being handled.
PC gamers will always mod games, especially Minecraft. Give them time and they will have release schedules again just like before.
I don't want to mod the pre-1.7 versions. Part of what I want to do is take a stab at making a nice continent system to the new generation-style so that I can have landmasses separated by water that have a good mix of terrain on each. Rather than make suggestions like dozens of others, I'd like to give my programming degree some exercise and actually make what I want, show it off, and see how others feel about it. However, Minecraft is just not very friendly to getting into modding it at the present.
At first I waited for MCP, because it's what everybody uses. But MCP is crawling along and the reason is the API also crawling along. Neither is coming forward in a timely manner because attention seems to be split between the two - and any progress towards the API is likely contrary to progress for the MCP. Frankly, I'd rather see the API out so that I have something from Mojang to work with, but I'd even be willing to play along with the MCP team - except what I've seen of their little website doesn't make it look like they're really interested in sharing their work with others who'd consider puzzling out random strings of characters' actual purpose (deobfuscating variable-names).
As I've waited for something vaguely-resembling a development setup so that I can actually work at coding, I've noticed that those using mods further worsen the issue by insisting that they all be Forge-compatible - even looking for this when Forge is not updated to work with the current version (because, hey, it's an MCP mod that requires that bit to be done so they can do their own thing). Another reason the API really needs to come about - right now I'm waiting for mods on mods to be finished before anything I can do will even be looked at by half the people out there.
Add to this the somewhat aloof crap that is trying to set all this up. The instructions for installing MCP are known to be wrong, possibly to the extent that their own readme is erroneous information, those very instructions say "we won't tell you how to do this" (for something which is as simple as providing a link), and people will laugh if you bring up a youtube vid on how to get this development suite of MCP, Eclipse, and Forge all set up. I write code. That's what I went to college for. People telling me they don't have an installer for their software, don't want to give complete instructions on how to install it, and require the use of two other such programs to get around to actually coding have made this more of a nuisance than it's worth. It's not that I'm incapable, it's that I'm insulted to wait for months for something that's then going to then have installation instructions of, "Search for instructions on installing this product somewhere other than this product" and "Do this thing which actually everybody who has been using this software previously knows will actually screw up your installation."
As much as I want to make a continents-mod, try some changes on villagers, add some terrain-features, modify the buildings within desert villages, and more... None of that is likely to happen any time soon. I hope the API is closer than people think, and 1.8 is going to be the update where they release it - the blackout being because they're focusing so much on it that they're no longer chatting about the same old topics - because right now Minecraft itself and the community around it really discourages new modders.
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Retired StaffI have been developing mods for minecraft since 1.0.0, every update is rather generic and easy to work with the big exception here being the 1.3.2 version of the game. With APIs like Forge a lot of the burden of updating a mod has been lifted, that's a benefit to using an API like forge. Every update from 1.3.2 forward has been rather easy for a lot of developers I associate with and myself. 1.7 was hyped up to be a lot like the 1.3.2 update however Lex and CPW and the rest of the forge and MCP team have done an excellent job as always when it comes to updating their tools and the impact that this update has had on the developers is minimal at best. Of course there will always be certain mods where there is just so much going on internally that the update has caused a few things to break however that's to be expected.
Farewell everyone o/
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Retired StaffI would like to remind you that as of now there has been no official statement by the author of ModLoader over the status of the project or himself. Even so there are many alternative loaders that offer the same functionality as ModLoader and often times more however this is not the thread to debate that. I would also like to remind you that Searge is still a member of the MCP team and the quality of MCP has not deteriorated in the slightest since its first release.
Farewell everyone o/
While there has been no "official" statement about the status of ModLoader, the fact that Risugami hasn't posted in his own thread for nearly a year and hasn't even bothered to update his mod even to 1.6.4 (1.6.2 to 1.6.4 wasn't really that big of a change) is plenty of proof that he has abandoned his efforts. This is even more remarkable when with nearly every previous Minecraft update Risugami had an update rolled out within days of the official Minecraft release and usually beat MCP by a couple of days (even the preliminary testing versions of MCP). If he was keeping consistent compared to previous releases, ModLoader for 1.7.5 should be out some time next week.
I'm not holding my breath or expecting it to happen either.
If the forum moderators want to keep lying to themselves and the rest of the community that somehow he is going to come back, you are living in some alternate reality that IMHO is an abuse of moderation tools as well. I'll leave this here, but my point is that Risugami disappearing has contributed to the dearth of mod development as well which was sort of the point of this thread in the first place. He also developed all of his software without the use of MCP, something that I think deserves some special note and showing how it isn't entirely the fault of the MCP team not having a stable build for 1.7.2 or 1.7.4 that keeps mods from being developed.
The only other significant mod loader tool is FML, which might as well be Forge as trying to get a usable version of FML without Forge is nearly impossible (at least for novice users and a simple download). There is the Blazeloader project that is in what could be considered an alpha/beta build that I think could honorably replace ModLoader, but there certainly aren't "many" different alternatives. I am not currently aware of any other alternatives, but I am open to legitimate suggestions.
The role that Searge has with MCP must simply change simply by his employment with Mojang. I realize that Mojang has let some employees be involved with community projects they were doing before they joined Mojang, but it seems in this case that Searge can't really stay in both places at the same time. I have definitely seen a hit in terms of his productivity since becoming employed at Mojang (at least with regards to MCP), and it should even be expected. There is also "inside" knowledge by being an employee that may increasingly make it harder to do more than simply be an advisor, leader, and cheerleader. I am suggesting that it has impacted the development of MCP, even if other members of the MCP are taking up the slack. It isn't even a slight against Searge, but rather knowing how his time is split and how things like NDAs and trade secret laws can mess up a 3rd party project like MCP.
Simply put, Searge is not going to be doing the same things he used to do with MCP. I think it is going to be better for the Minecraft 3rd party content development community (trying to diplomatically avoid the confusion between "plug-ins" vs. "mods") with Searge and his depth of experience helping out with what I hope is the official plug-in API development. I'll be patient in a "wait and see" kind of attitude, but it would be nice for some additional transparency and perhaps rebooting the discussion forums for the API development that have taken a hit over the past few months as well.
Version 2.1 now updated for MC 1.6.2
Also, Minecraft 1.7 came out around December, loads of modders are probably spending the holiday season with their family, friends, relaxing, they're people too (this might be the reason why MCP slowed down?) they also need to work (most of them) to pay for their bills, food, etc etc, so just chill and play vanila for awhile or go back to 1.6.X
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Curse PremiumMost of the mods out so far have been "minimods" - relatively small changes.
It has been a perfect storm interfering with modding - major personnel changes at MCP, big changes for the deobfuscators to deal with, big coding changes for the modders, and, with Forge, big changes to the development system. But it's mostly done at this point and I think we'll start seeing some heavy-duty mods soon. Of the heavy mods I use, Mo' Creatures is released; Bibliocraft is supposedly a working alpha; and Underground Biomes is in the coding stage. All told, it's been about a 3 month delay - not the end of the world. And the changes to the code are definitely an improvement - several of my pet peeves have been fixed. One of the fixes created a new pet peeve but this is easier to deal with.
I think changes to 1.8 will be much faster and probably will happen on a timescale similar to what we've seen in the past.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
Translation: "If you didn't mod Minecraft before 1.7.x, you're not likely to get it going now."
Honestly, Zeno, if you spent several days getting MCP+Forge off the ground for yourself (and you've been playing with the stuff before), it's not accessible to new blood - and that's a big problem. Modding is a hobby outlet. It's something we do because we enjoy the challenge of making the computer do something different to suit our whims. Like any other hobby, it's something that will always see the loss of long-term members for whatever reasons they may have, and it will always need an influx of new members. Yeah, you're probably going to lose about half of those newbs the minute they realize how much of a challenge it actually is, but you need the ones who're going to stay or the community will suffer for its declining membership.
I added robbing the bank to a TI-89 game called Drugwars before I had any formal training in programming, and it amused me. Now I have formal training and could write a double-recursive function to generate a dungeon-map complete with halls and doors (not really good for the chunk format of Minecraft, but it's interesting to me). But I'd still need to get to the code to do anything of note in Minecraft, and that's a convoluted set of hoops with a lot of red-herrings out there to keep me from even wanting to try.
I'm just hoping that the mod API will actually open up the gates so that modding Minecraft is its own challenge without installing the needed components to mod Minecraft being a trial. I highly doubt I'm the only potential modder who is producing nothing for Minecraft due to getting it set up being a ridiculous task in and of itself.
Posts like this convince me even more not to ever try making a Forge mod again; a serious lack of documentation and example code, even for 1.6.4 and earlier, is a big turn-off.
For example, how do I add a new world type using Forge, with my own terrain generation and everything? Surely it isn't as simple as hacking the base code to add the following line to WorldType.java:
Or what if I wanted to use my own cave generation code (note also that the vanilla cave generator extends MapGenBase, but my version combines MapGenCaves with MapGenBase and MapGenRavine)? I actually posted a thread on this, but nobody ever replied to it (I assume because it isn't possible).
Then, all I need to do to tell the game to use my custom code is to insert code like this:
if (par2World.getWorldInfo().getTerrainType() == WorldType.THT) { generateTHTCaves(par1IChunkProvider, par2World, chunkX, chunkZ, terrainDataArray); } else { generateVanillaCaves(par1IChunkProvider, par2World, chunkX, chunkZ, terrainDataArray); } int addedHeight = 0; if (this.worldObj.getWorldInfo().getTerrainType() == WorldType.THT) addedHeight = 128;So it isn't compatible with as many mods, but its not like you'd want to use two different terrain generation altering mods at the same time, and even Forge mods would likely conflict.
Also, for all of the claimed changes made to 1.7 code, many classes are still very similar to the 1.6 versions, in many cases, all they changed was a few numbers (e.g MapGenCaves) and/or moved some code around (e.g. replaceBlocksForBiome (func_150560_b in MCP 9.03) was moved from ChunkProviderGenerate to BiomeGenBase). I was even able to use Java Bytecode Editor to make some mods (updated to 1.7.5 hours after it was released, taking only minutes to update), using Java Decompiler and Windows grep to find the code I wanted to edit, using the deobfuscated 1.6 code as a guide; this depends on the code not being changed too much to work (without a lot of searching). I'm sure there were more major changes in other classes, but many are still easily recognizable, even when obfuscated.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?