Minecraft Forums

Hazzat: I've got lots of ideas for new features for all three types of music, and possibly in the future some BookTunes. If you have any suggestions, feel free to air them here!

GrandChaos9000: This mod has been in development for roughly a year now, and is tested for both Java 6 & 7, but I'm still always paranoid it won't work for people Have fun with it!

I have sent you a Pull Request in GitHub, featuring a almost-working update checker (I couldn't set up Eclipse with your mod, so you'll need to organize imports etc.)

Now go and work on the fun bits of your mod

EDIT: Never mind, Mod Update Manager looks way cooler. IGNORE MY PULL REQUEST.

I've got an LGPL open-source mod with an update system. My system:

• Checks for updates once in the mod's constructor (in a thread)
• Only tells the user whenever a new version is first found (in practice, about once a week). This reduces annoyance.
• Keeps the updates in a java.util.Properties file on Dropbox (or GitHub) and separates them by Minecraft version
• Downloads and swaps the new version into your mods folder. Considering those who do not like this feature on principle, it must be triggered manually with a button in a gui.

I'll clean up and comment my update package and see if I can send it to you or put it in your GitHub. Good luck!

Five months later: You can override method "renderEffect" (or something close) in your particle class, and insert the following code:

  int particleTex = Minecraft.getMinecraft().renderEngine
    .getTexture("/com/minetunes/resources/textures/particles.png");
  Minecraft.getMinecraft().renderEngine.bindTexture(particleTex);
  super.renderParticle(par1Tessellator, par2, par3, par4, par5, par6, par7);

This binds your custom texture before rendering the particle. Be sure to include a sheet of your own particle textures, put your texture on it, and set your particle's texture index correctly.

I had this problem before, when rendering text onto the screen during normal ticks, e.g. when Entity.update() is called.

I understand that in Forge, you need to register your TickHandler to listen for TickType.RENDER, specifically. Tell me if this works -- if it does, I'll start using it!

EDIT: And also do your rendering at the end of the tick, and no sooner.

I was rather sleepy, and launched off on how my non-Forge mod does update checking instead of actually answering his question

That code has nothing to do with updateURL as it stands today, leave updateURL blank (that is, as a "") until its function is defined.

You have to do updating code yourself.

I just happened to start learning Forge today... the documents on the Wiki claim that the updateUrl field is unused currently. Pity, that.

Technically, you should put a pair of empty double quotes ("") in its space.

I've just started looking into Forge, and they have a couple wikis, on GitHub and their website. Tutorials are everywhere on the internet, of every vintage and of every level of quality imaginable. There's also a posse on here, it seems, who will get you help pretty quickly on anything Forge-related if you put [Forge] in your topic's title.

This tutorial got me rolling pretty quickly: http://www.minecraftforge.net/wiki/Basic_Modding.

My mod, MCDitty, has an update checker that uses Dropbox (popular free cloud-file-storage site) to host the version file. It also has an updater that runs in-game, and only when you explicitly press an Auto-Update button.

The update checker works as follows: on Dropbox, I share the link to a text file, say, modVersions.txt. It looks like this:

mc-1.4.6-latestVersion=0.9.9.04
mc-1.4.4-latestVersion=0.9.1.01
mc-1.4.6-latestDownload=http://dl.dropbox.com/blahblahblah.zip
mc-1.4.4-latestDownload=http://dl.dropbox.com/blahblahblah.zip

This file can be loaded with the Java Properties class: just open a stream up to the shared link, and load the Properties from it. As you can see, it is sorted by minecraft version: a consideration to those who still use, say, Minecraft 1.4.4.

Every time the mod starts, I download and check this index for new versions. If there's a new one, I tell the player. Note that you should only tell the player once per new update released: OptiFine in particular is a jerk about this. My mod has a "lastVersionFound" in its config file, so it can remember not to tell you about the same new version twice.

Finally, Auto-Update is an option in my mod's main menu. It downloads the new version's zip file (also on Dropbox) and patches it into a copy of minecraft.jar after removing the current version of the mod. When the JVM exits, I swap the updated jar with the current one.

Edit: My mod is API-independent.

I have only the sketchiest knowledge, but I understand ForgeModloader lets you make one set of code that works with both client and server?

r g b a -- red, green, blue, alpha. OR, a scambled version of those. Color components range from 0 to 1 each, with all zeros being black and clear and all 1s being the orb's natural color and opaque. Alpha is transparency.

Another alternative is Java Reflection. It will work even if the int is 'private' or 'final.' The more you get into modding (esp. without an API), the more you will love Reflection.

Oracle's Reflection Tutorials are a good place to learn about that, but remember that when accessing a field by name, when your mod is reobfuscated all Minecraft field names become gibberish. Then you have to get clever: use reflection to fetch a list of the fields (or variables) in the class, and use logic to find the one you want without using the name. I.E., if there's only one int, search the list for a field of type Integer, if there's multiple but yours is always equal to "5" at start, look for Integers that are equal to 5, etc.

It sounds complex, but once you figure it out you can easily poke almost any value in any class without editing it!

There aren't a lot of general guides on this, that I've found. The best guide is Minecraft itself.

After modding with no APIs for a year, my best friend is the "Ctrl+H" shortcut in Eclipse: it lets you find what code uses what methods, and where. When in doubt, find something similar to the effect you want and imitate it. If you can't figure out how a system works, just use Ctrl+H to surf Minecraft until you find and understand its parts.

There are some parts of ModLoader / Forge that are easy to replicate yourself. Registering network packets, blocks, etc. can be done by reflection (and have I learned about reflection doing this). If you extend a block class, you can put code in its constructor that acts nearly the same as ModLoader's "onLoad()," and if you have that spawn a thread that checks for and places a dummy Entity in the World, its "update()" method is the same as ModLoader's "onTick()." Etc.

If you have any questions in particular, PM me and I can try to offer advice!

There's a long way around: every tick you mod is updated, check to see if the mouse is clicked and whether Minecraft.objectMouseOver isn't null: this will tell you when you've left clicked on something. Then just make sure that the player is holding your banana, and if they are, let the fruit fly!

This is what I use in my mod, and I'll post the code here if you need it.

Your mod sounds pretty apeeling!