Minecraft Forums

Quote from Kyuubis Slave

I get this funny feeling on these forums that a lot of the users here simply love to complain about everything.

I agree. You get funny feelings. And...

Quote from Kyuubis Slave

No instead he wants a half finished feature that limits us all.

... that's because you fail to interpret what people are saying.

Quote from Kyuubis Slave

Sometimes I hate being a part of the gaming community as any type of online message board or meeting place is full of whiners who love to complain about the smallest of things.

I simply find it amazing (but unlike you not enough to hate this community) that some people so easily degrade and diminish other people's complaints, because they are simply not affected by these problems. Take you for instance: You call "the smallest of things" the fact we don'y have mod support since version 1.7.2 and the fact the Plugin API is being promised for 4 years. Well done in completely ignoring and degrading your fellow players for whom this is a problem.

Quote from JorgTheElder

Be careful what you wish for. More and more Java apps are requiring code signed classes. If Mojang goes this way, it will be much harder for modders to inject code. Once the API is done, Mojang will likely tell everyone to use the plug-in API and only allow signed classes to run.

A friend of mine was actually saying something to this effect the other day too. I can appreciate the potential problems this could bring, if the Plugin API was incomplete, hard to work with, or otherwise ended up becoming an undesirable option that forced many modders to keep working with Forge or modding directly. But let's face it, this is just an appeal to fear. Like you said, we don't have a Plugin API yet. So we don't know if it is going to be any bad. And there's also no indication that Mojang has plans to sign their jar once it is out. An option that won't do them much good. It's far from being full-proof. The .Net signing mechanism is one of the strongest I know and yet it is incapable of stopping even a modest hacker. I don't think Java could top it. They would be much better off by enforcing the current EULA on any stray modders and community websites.

If all of these things end up becoming truth, then we will have another problem to deal with. What we can't do however is to think that problem is going to happen and consequently we should stop wanting to have a Plugin API developed.

Quote from Kahr

To offer a concrete example, blocks in 14w06 can have custom models defined via a json file (bzd.class for the curious). Now is this useful for an eventual Plugin API? Absolutely. Is it necessary? Definitely not. Plugins could just as well render their blocks in Java code using the same methods the game has been using for years now. This is a feature that could have been added later.

To be honest, where I personally in that spot, I would want to come up with those changes to my program architecture BEFORE rolling out a plugin API. This is so because those are the exact type of changes that can provoke backwards compatibility issues with former APIs. And once a Plugin API is out in the open, you'll want to avoid forcing modders to adjust their mods because the new Plugin API broke them. One of the advertised advantages of the Plugin API is exactly to stop with this terrible burden modders have been going through.

---

But here's the thing, they just keep on pilling and pilling and pilling changes to the game architecture. They just don't stop. There should be a time when they should just say "Let's stop! Let's just make the bloody API already!". They have been on this for years and there's no sign it will ever stop. They just seem drawn into a typical coder endless circle of perfection that invariably is not leading them anywhere. All these changes that exist (as they say) solely for the purpose of a Plugin API, amount to nothing if they don't develop the bloody thing. There must come a time when they must realize this has been on long enough.

And that time hasn't come up yet because unfortunately the modding community is either small or not loud enough. I'm still stuck to 1.6.4 because Minecraft to me is not an option any longer without mods. Long gone is the time I could enjoy vanilla Minecraft. But after nearly 4 years, I think it is understandable that for some of us, vanilla is just not of any interest anymore. I mean, for how long can one take playing the same game over and over again?

And what does this mean, being stuck to 1.6.4? That I have missed on everything introduced in the game since then. All these updates, all these new features... players in my position don't benefit from them. We are closing in 1.8 and no Plugin API in sight, or even an estimate. Meanwhile Forge is still being tested on 1.7.2; the buggy update we all want to forget. Ahead of it there are still the changes and additions in 1.7.4 and 1.7.8. Never before was Forge so compromised by a Mojang decision. There's no indication we will get a Forge for 1.7.8 before the next update rolls on. Many modders have stopped and are waiting, some probably slowly losing the drive and interest to eventually update their mods when Forge finally catches up (we are still waiting to see the real extent of the damage to the modding community introduced with 1.7.2). So, 1.7.8 is almost certainly out as an option for finally playing an up-to-date modded Minecraft. We've been out of mods for 3 months and 2 versions. We may be out for a lot longer. No one really knows...

And all we get from the developers WE WANTED to respect and cherish, is a bunch of laconic statements, half-truths, non commitment and the distinct impression none of them really cares one iota they aren't treating their community with a bit more of respect.

Quote from aary33

https://twitter.com/...432688734863360
Truth or lie?
I believe 95% is over exaggerated.

I think Dinnerbone would do great in marketing. His claim is one of those situations where we can say "With the truth you fool me".

He's almost certainly not lying, because whatever they do, it will affect or help implement the Plugin API. But I can be creating this great AI in preparation for my strategy game, but what will that mean if I don't actually end developing my strategy game?

They have been preparing the plugin API for 4 years. It's another sort of message that we should be getting. Not the same ol' stuff we have been listening since the formation of the solar system.

Quote from The_Pastmaster

99% of all percentiles related to work are over-exaggerated.

Which would mean 100 - 95 * 0.99 is the amount of actual work put on the Plugin API. That is 5.95%.

Quote from CommanderEwok

My computer tends to crash or CTD when playing some games, its done that a couple of times now, is that it do you think?

It's hard to say because in your case you do manage to save and quit, which should work alright. You might need to check your computer for things that may affect file reading and writing. Could your anti-virus aggressively be scanning opened files and stepping on Minecraft toes when it is trying to save your player dat file? Stuff like that. Perhaps try to run the game a few times without the anti-virus on and see how that goes.

I greatly minimized my chances of lost research by getting into the habit of periodically going into the main menu screen (you just hit the escape key during the game). When you do this, Minecraft always saves the game, as you can check if you keep the launcher opened and go to the Development Console tab. I'm not sure if this is going to help you, because clearly you have something in your computer interfering with proper file I/O.

Quote from raa1337

Sounds like you're playing offline. If I remember, research is saved per character. Thus, offline mode is changing you to MiscSteve###### every time you log in... and causes it to 'reset' because MiscSteve55555 and MiscSteve55556 are not the same. I may be wrong, as research has done an overhaul at one point.

No. Offline mode always creates the same player name. Can't remember which, but it is always the same player.

I think his problem is another. Something is corrupting his data files. All issues I've had with lost research happened to me when I get power cuts (which are unfortunately rather frequent in my current location). When the game doesn't properly save a player file, my research gets corrupted. Because his does save and quit the game, something else in his system is corrupting that file. Either a rogue mod, a virus, or something else.

Quote from Sketch

Good point, but then will mod's code be limited to what plugins can do?

No. Modders who don't want to use the Plugin API, will keep modding outside of it. It's only modders who want to use the Plugin API that will have to be restricted to what it offers.

EDIT: I probably also advise you to drop the mod-slash-plugin distinction. It's not only pedantic, but unnecessary. It's not because the API is called Plugin API that we now have to call our mods plugins. And very likely, because of the traditional use of the word, we will keep calling mods to all but the simplest of plugins. A vast number of games offer modding APIs just like Minecraft is planned to offer. And in all those communities they keep being called mods.

It will depend on what this Plugin API (if it ever gets done) will offer modders.

1. Will it expose all of the required Minecraft objects and methods? I won't be able to use it, if they forgot to implement access to the world generator and I want to create a new biome.

2. Will it be bug-free? I won't be able to use it, if bugs are many and varied, take years to be fixed and will invariably affect the quality of my own work. Mojang track record in this area isn't particularly good.

3. Will it be performant? I won't be able to use it, if my mod ends up resulting in a poor performance experience because the Plugin API adds an unacceptable overhead to vanilla Minecraft.

4. Will it be transparent and easy to use? I may refuse to use it, if modding for Minecraft ends up forcing me to write spaghetti code that makes my mod hard to maintain.

5. Will it be consistent across versions? I may not want to use it if I end up being forced to constantly update my mod to keep up with new versions of the Plugin API that break the old ones. It's enough already (but understandable) I may have to update my mod because of game changes. I don't need the aggravation of having to change it because Mojang keeps changing classes or methods names, or introducing deprecated flags all the time. Backwards compatibility is another area where Mojang doesn't have a stellar track record.

Quote from Zeno410

I think you have this image of Minecraft as being written in a "classic" OO format, with tightly encapsulated private classes implementing public interfaces that don't expose the data. It's not like that at all. It's more like what a C programmer writes when they're just learning C++ and object-oriented programming. There's not much of interfaces/ facades/ etc. for indirect access.

Well, indeed I was assuming Minecraft had either been built, or, after all this time, modified to implement proper encapsulation across the board. What you are telling me is a bit disappointing, but it does explain your criticism of Forge's adoption of type annotations.

I remember Jeb (or someone else?) criticizing a few years back the code for its lack of a more strict adherence to OO principles. It seems Notch was a bit sloppy about it. But until today it never occurred to me encapsulation at the class level was one of the problems.

Quote from WilchHabos

Update: According to Dinnerbone's Twitter, yes, very much so. Go check it out!

I think you mean this twitter? Well, that's the type of stuff we have been hearing since 2010. How can such a laconic statement that ignores years of failed promises (as if this was the first time he or anyone else at Mojang promised the plugin API) can be made out to be a definite Yes?

I think some readers of this thread still didn't get it, maybe because they didn't read the whole thread yet. We have been promised the Plugin API with statements like those since 2010. Alright?

Quote from Zeno410

Got it. You're right, that is hidden, or it's *supposed* to be. But Java reflection allows you to get at private access fields and methods - one of the reasons Java is no longer considered "safe" for browser use.

Reflection is extraordinarily expensive for non event driven applications. We are talking about a method of accessing external package-private classes that up until recently was an order of magnitude (10x) for method calls with lookup and 3x more expensive for method calls without lookup.

It simply isn't possible to create a performant plugin API like Forge based on reflection. And this is the reason why they didn't do it in the first place. I suppose it could have been done for some parts of the code that don't need to run on a frame-by-frame basis, but then you'd have a inconsistent API that forced you to mishmash several methods of programming. That is undesirable. And would still not answer the performance issues it could bring in to the game.

Quote from Zeno410

Forge also uses a lot of code patches, where they change a compiled file prior to loading it.

I suppose. Type Annotations (or Reflection, since we are also talking about this possibility) can't answer all the modding needs. Particularly when it comes to actual behavior changing of existing methods. But if you are implying the Forge API could be coded on this principle, you must consider that what this means is that Forge would in fact have to patch the whole Minecraft code base, which would essentially make it a complete Minecraft binary. No mod API is created on a patch principle for this reason. It's just not possible to patch the entire code base and expect this to become a reliable and efficient API.

Quote from Zeno410

I don't know if annotations can be used to get around hidden code

By "Minecraft doesn't expose any of its classes", I mean these are not public classes that can be accessed from external code. Expose is being used in the context of Java OO access levels.

I'm not sure what other methods you say exist that allow you to tap into package-private classes and that can be reliably and efficiently used for the development of a mod/plugin API. But I'd honestly like to know.

What's your method for tapping into Minecraft? You replace the whole class file with your own code?

Quote from Zeno410

My only beef with Forge is how they use annotations for programming. It short-circuits all the type-safety and compile-checking that Java provides. I have literally spent hours trying to figure out why something isn't working when I've annotated improperly (most recently on an event screening call); if this had been done in a traditional OO manner with something like abstract classes I'd have gotten the whole thing right as soon as my type-ahead options popped up.

I don't do any modding at all, but I find this argument of yours a little strange. I do agree with everything else in your post.

Type annotations are prime candidates for a pluggable system such that which is offered by Forge. Since Minecraft doesn't expose any of its classes, your only access to their code is through type annotations (once their classes names are deobfuscated and their general functionality understood).

Sure, you could abstract this away from the modders by creating a proper OO interface to the type annotations. Essentially, hide the Forge details from the modder and present instead a OO centric approach to modding. But I think the overhead would be too much for modders to be able to code all but the simplest of mods.

Because Minecraft doesn't expose any of its classes, type annotations are the most reliable and direct away to plug in to the code at runtime. And modders just have to learn to live with the difficulties of this programming paradigm.

Quote from aary33

What other reason caused the change of numerical ID's? Simplifying mapmaking isn't such a large reason to make such a sudden change.

The removal of numeric IDs is one of the most important changes to the game in recent times. It's, at least in my opinion, by far the best thing in the whole 1.7 branch. Even better than the new biomes, and the new blocks. Personally, I simply love this change in the game and my love for it has nothing to do with the Plugin API (for one, because as you know, we don't actually have a Plugin API).

This change can take effect immediately and is going to take effect immediately on many mod makers that can right now start changing their mods to support it. So long item ids clashes. One of the most ubiquitous problems with modding. With our without the Plugin API, with or without Forge, the change to items IDs is already a great benefit to the modding community.

Quote from aary33

If they were to not actually release an API, they would have told us so. This removes all the hopeless thoughts of an API, and people would continue with their lives as they already do now.

I would hope so. I think the problem is however a bit more complex. If Mojang comes out and openly says the Plugin API is a dropped project, questions will arise about how are we going to support mods in the future. Will we ever be dependent on Forge? Will the Forge team be able to always respond to code changes? Will code changes like 1.7.2 that invalidate Forge rapid response happen more often?

There's a certain backlash that Mojang risks if they openly admit they were not going to develop the Plugin API anymore. It's just not pretty to see a game developer refusing to provide mod support for their game. So, in a way I can understand why Mojang is reluctant in admitting it. But I do agree they should just say it and be done with it. Maybe even strike a deal with the forge team along with a non disclose contract to save some (not necessarily all) of their troubles in deobfuscating the code.

EDIT: Just saw Zeno410 reply above me and that's pretty much in line with my reasoning. All this could be avoided and Mojang be freed from an obvious headache if they thought out ways to facilitate the work of the Forge team, or simply incorporate their work in Minecraft. After all, someone already did a Plugin API. And they didn't even have access to the code. It's only Mojang that doesn't, despite all their promises.