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Breaking every mod every time is more a side effect of mods being written using decompiled and deobfuscated source than some nefarious plot. Once the API is released that'll change somewhat, but until then it's kind of misguided to treat mod incompatability as a black mark against patching.
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Apr 5, 2013 04:31
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EvilDrWong posted:Breaking every mod every time is more a side effect of mods being written using decompiled and deobfuscated source than some nefarious plot. Once the API is released that'll change somewhat, but until then it's kind of misguided to treat mod incompatability as a black mark against patching. This is the rub right here. 3 years and counting.
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Apr 5, 2013 04:42
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Wasn't the API supposed to be the flagship feature of version 1.3 or 1.4? Still waiting on that.
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Apr 5, 2013 05:28
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jivjov posted:Wasn't the API supposed to be the flagship feature of version 1.3 or 1.4? Still waiting on that. They were planning for it to be in 1.3 and then they delayed it saying that it would be a 1.4 feature, and then they delayed it again and are no longer making any estimations. https://twitter.com/Dinnerbone/status/197618477924757504 It's really hard to find specific year-old tweets so I can't find anything concrete for what they said about the API prior to this.
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Apr 5, 2013 05:38
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Shukaro posted:This is the rub right here. 3 years and counting. jivjov posted:Wasn't the API supposed to be the flagship feature of version 1.3 or 1.4? Still waiting on that. Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:They were planning for it to be in 1.3 and then they delayed it saying that it would be a 1.4 feature, and then they delayed it again and are no longer making any estimations. Here is the thing, they realized that a fully functional API that exposes as much of the code as possible to be tweaked and modified for modding use was not only a much bigger project than they thought it was, but that there were major problems that had to be addressed in order to get a functional API out. The last few patches, since they have shut up about the API and when it will be released, have been dealing with that. People just don't seem to realize that. -1.3 was the first major refactoring of the code that MC has ever received. -1.4 began exposing parts of the game code, results of this that also affected vanilla game play were additions such as the command block as well as a making GBS threads ton of NBT options. Large parts of the lighting code were also touched, while lighting has not really improved, hooks were added. People who follow the modding community will remember that these lighting updates majorly hosed with mods such as RP2. -1.5 was all about rewriting the redstone mechanics, what people also don't seem to realize is that they rewrote it so that redstone could be more easily hooked into with modified code (with the help of the eventual API). There were also a ton of rendering updates behind the scenes, TFC devs are still updating to the new systems. -1.6 will include an updated launcher and updated lwjgl files. -1.7 will include the fully rewritten rendering engine (Jeb has stated it needs the above changes in 1.6 need to be shipped before they can introduce the new rendering engine, which is done), something that was done not only to improve MC's overall performance, but also to make the engine open for modification. Basically MC as it stood is in a very poor shape having been developed by Notch for the longest time. Much of the game in such a way that it needs to be recoded for an API to be able to hook into it properly. The other major issue is that a lot of MC's core is loving broken. They acknowledge this, it really isn't the current dev team's fault. If they shipped an API now, which they could, not only would it not fully expose the code, but the API would most likely break the next patch that tries to address rendering issues or lighting issues, and if that is the case the API is completely worthless. So besides opening up the code for eventual API implementation, they are trying their best to "fix" the game and make it so that the core engine is running as smoothly as possible so that they don't have to gently caress with it, thus breaking the API, in the future. Remember their stated goal is to eventually have the game shipped as an engine with the actual game play of MC being a plugin that sits on top of it. So yeah, sorry to rant a bit, but it is just kind of old to see people moan about the API and throw out the cries of 1.3 or its been X years when they've really been working their asses off getting a ton done so that they can make a successful API. It is the kind of attitude I see a lot on the MCF where people are constantly quoting Notch or Jeb when he first took over as lead developer and make cries of the dev team being lazy or that they have been lied to. Oh well, big deal. I'd rather them take as long as they need to make the API work right instead of releasing a half finished product that would brake on the next patch causing a wave of anger and bitching. 
Enzer fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Apr 5, 2013 |
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Apr 5, 2013 08:04
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People are moaning because hard work means nothing when it isn't resulting in the API being in modders' hands. Yeah, they've worked their asses off for years, as you've said, but the key word being "years." This is not a Blizzard title. I mean, what are we talking about, a 1.7 or 1.8 release for the API? Is that another nine months out? It's an already released indie game and things taking literally years to materialize is incredibly frustrating to witness. I have no doubt that the people they have working on it are working incredibly hard, and they're doing good things rewriting the rendering engine. But at some point you just think that this API is taking so long to come out, that they should maybe spend the hundreds of millions of dollars Mojang has accrued over the last few years on Minecraft to make this stuff happen at a slightly faster pace than "glacial."
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Apr 5, 2013 08:25
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I can see where both of you are coming from. I'm quite jaded when it comes to the Minecraft development in general, because I've bee playing on and off since alpha like many others and the development pace didn't pick up until Jeb took over. Cue the joy when they actually recruited more than one developer, it was great to see. But, honestly, they shouldn't have stopped there. As was posted earlier, the game just broke 10M sales  It's easy to justify their slow pace when you see into it as well as you do, Enzer, but for the regular guy it just looks like they're doing very little with all those money. Even if they added more people only X months in order for the previous batch to familiarize themselves with the code, by now we would have a somewhat healthy number. At least that's what I like to think v  v
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Apr 5, 2013 08:38
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I know it's all too easy to scale up too quickly and have your business spiral out of control. But I still feel like they just didn't staff up MC quick enough. Notch was too paranoid about other people touching his code and it took Notch leaving to have more than just Jens on the project. Then after that, I feel like they definitely could have staffed up at least a little bit more aggressively. Keep the AI guy on MC (which is what he was hired for) and hire an additional AI guy for Scrolls. If they hired an additional engine programmer a year ago, how much faster would that rendering rewrite happen? It just seems like Mojang is stumbling out of the gate. Not at an individual level, but at a company level.
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Apr 5, 2013 08:42
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I just wish (going a couple pages back) that texture packs could have more than 1 texture per block. I want a bit of variety in my life dammit. (The pipe dream would be procedurally-generated cobblestone/brick/etc walls out of stored per-brick textures, but I realize how horrible that would be performance wise...)
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Apr 5, 2013 08:54
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If the tinted glass isn't a part of 1.6, I will do something very drastic. Like writing a disgruntled Tweet to Jeb or something. Teasing about something like that, only to use it as an April's Fool joke is mean 
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Apr 5, 2013 08:57
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Going to preface this that I am bitter and jaded from dealing with the community over on the MCF and elsewhere. :PDr. Video Games 0031 posted:People are moaning because hard work means nothing when it isn't resulting in the API being in modders' hands. Yeah, they've worked their asses off for years, as you've said, but the key word being "years." This is not a Blizzard title. I mean, what are we talking about, a 1.7 or 1.8 release for the API? Is that another nine months out? It's an already released indie game and things taking literally years to materialize is incredibly frustrating to witness. I have no doubt that the people they have working on it are working incredibly hard, and they're doing good things rewriting the rendering engine. But at some point you just think that this API is taking so long to come out, that they should maybe spend the hundreds of millions of dollars Mojang has accrued over the last few years on Minecraft to make this stuff happen at a slightly faster pace than "glacial." More like less then a year. Notch admitted after the fact that he never wrote a single bit of code for the API. Jeb never touched the API when he was the only one working on the game after the games "release", too much on his plate and too big a job for one person, and at Minecon they were very open about the matter for what was going on when the Bukkit was hired on. Dinnerbone started working on the framework of an API, realized there was way to many problems with MC's core engine, stopped, went to Jeb, Jeb held an internal meeting. This meeting broke down into the following things: 1) What needs to be changed in MC to make a successful API. 2) What does the modding community need from an API (this resulted in one of the devs, Grum, rubbing elbows with a lot of the "modding bigwigs" and hanging out on the forgecraft server playing around with the actual mods and mod devs). 3) What did the dev team want from the API and how did they want to go about implementing things. First step was refactoring MC, that was done in August of last year. So that is 'officially' when they began work on the API and when they started to shut up about release dates. Should they have kept their mouths shut, especially Notch? Yes, but Mojang is horrible with their PR (as in, it is nonexistent). The whole "been working on it for years" thing is from stupid fan hear say based on a quote from Notch that he went back and corrected himself on and apologized to the community for not following through on. Though to be honest, I would not want Notch touching the API. It really isn't a matter of not enough man power I think, they have been moving at a pretty brisk pace in regards of releases, averaging about 3 months per Update if you discount things like time for conventions or charities. I mean hell, 1.5 just came out and 1.6 is coming out next month, if Jeb is to be believed. Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:I know it's all too easy to scale up too quickly and have your business spiral out of control. But I still feel like they just didn't staff up MC quick enough. Notch was too paranoid about other people touching his code and it took Notch leaving to have more than just Jens on the project. Then after that, I feel like they definitely could have staffed up at least a little bit more aggressively. Keep the AI guy on MC (which is what he was hired for) and hire an additional AI guy for Scrolls. If they hired an additional engine programmer a year ago, how much faster would that rendering rewrite happen? It just seems like Mojang is stumbling out of the gate. Not at an individual level, but at a company level. lordfrikk posted:I can see where both of you are coming from. Yes, Notch was probably one of the worst things to happen to Minecraft and Mojang, oddly enough. Way to touchy about his code, but I am not going to begrudge him that, it was his baby and is why he has moved onto another pet project, MC grew bigger then he was. To be fair in regards of the Rendering Engine, it has been hinted that it was finished by the time they did the 2012 MineCon, the issue is is that they needed the new launcher (already coded) and the updated lwjgl which has been an outside issue (some Macs, certain OSs and older hardware do not like the most updated lwjgl and so they have been trying to figure out a way to keep compatibility with those users for about a year now, not really their fault). The biggest problem I think is that Mojang has bad at communicating with the public. Jeb rarely talks, DB talks a bit, Grum and EvilSeph don't talk at all. Their change logs are a mess (they said they like people to stumble upon all the features because they are able to find more bugs that way, still think it is a bad idea), so a lot of the stuff they do go unnoticed. Hell if you look at the bug tracker, something that was recently made by the newer members of the team, they have made an incredible effort on fixing bugs. Sure MC is still buggy as poo poo at times, but the amount of bugs they have fixed, including old ones, is astounding. Hell, I am pretty sure in one update they fixed more bugs then Notch ever did in his entire time working on the game. So yeah, communication is a huge issue, unless you really dig into multiple sources and keep a finger on the dev's pulse, it does seem like they are loving around. Jeb is a much better development leader than Notch was, but he still has a lot to learn. For reference, I love how Starbound has addressed the issue of people asking how the game is comming along with their "Roadmap". While I'm not asking for something so fancy, having an official page that tracked various background poo poo needed to be done for the API to be released and keeping the progress of which up to date would go a long way. sfwarlock posted:I just wish (going a couple pages back) that texture packs could have more than 1 texture per block. I want a bit of variety in my life dammit. Look up MCpatcher, it uses this amazing thing called CTM. SMP has his pack set up that stone isn't this same texture on every side of block for a lot of things, this creates things like rock faces with varied faces, giving it a lot of depth. Recently MCpatcher added the ability to have blocks apply textures based on what biome they are placed in, so you could have slime coated stone in mycelium biomes, frost touched blocks in taiga, etc. Iacen posted:If the tinted glass isn't a part of 1.6, I will do something very drastic. Like writing a disgruntled Tweet to Jeb or something. I think I posted on this before, but there is major issues with MC's engine that makes me think they might not push the tinted glass out. MC is unable to handle something called zbuffering. If you still got the 2.0 version, do a bit of an experiment. Stack a bunch of different colored glass in a line then look through the whole thing. You'll notice the only block that renders is the one you are looking through first, the others are not there. This issue applies to all blocks with transparencies when you look through tinted glass including water (you just see the ocean floor). The new rendering engine might solve this issue, but zbuffering is increadibly resource intensive. The issue is that fancy things like blended color lighting and proper zbuffering which is seen in other games is all done in set pieces. The game designers set up stages so that players approach these things only from certain angles so they are able to fully control how and when bits of the game that requires zbuffering is done. In MC, it isn't so simple. There is no way to predict some guy stacking ten, fifty, a hundred different colored tinted glass and looking through it. Suddenly the game has to render each of those blocks and calculate light level variance and then color filtering.. on each block. This would kill most clients and since servers are being reworked to do more of the rendering with each update, players would be able to easily kill servers using huge arrays of colored blocks. It is frustrating, it is just a limitation of the game. Sure they could push out tinted glass as is in 2.0, but then they would also hear nonstop bitching about the rendering issues. Really it was a stupid idea to include that in the 2.0 April fools joke, but then again who knows, maybe they are actually going to implement and deal with the bitching over how bad it looks.
Enzer fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Apr 5, 2013 |
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Apr 5, 2013 09:30
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I do wish that as an interim thing they'd stop obfuscating the source code, given that it all gets deobfuscated anyway and all they're doing is causing extra frustration to the mod community. Or at the very least, share the source or an unobfuscated version with, if not with everyone, with the people doing forge/modloader/whatever the fan API of the month is.
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Apr 5, 2013 09:48
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Combat is still a loving joke (and the joke is on you, the player), the Nether remains a nigh-worthless detour only necessary for a meagre handful of "rare" components, there are no underground biomes, there's a severe lack of interesting things to find underground, but it's ok, we'll have horses. I am seriously starting to see why people mod this game until it's unrecognisable.
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Apr 5, 2013 12:16
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My question is, if the API was such a huge amount of work, why did they promise its release to come with a specific patch/date in the first place? I'd rather hear "The API is coming, we promise, we're still working on it" than "The API will be released with the 1.3 patch"...."The API will be coming with 1.4, sorry for the delay"...."whoops, we're not releasing the API in the foreseeable future because we bit off more than we can chew but were too proud to admit that in the first place"
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Apr 5, 2013 13:18
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Fuego Fish posted:Combat is still a loving joke (and the joke is on you, the player), the Nether remains a nigh-worthless detour only necessary for a meagre handful of "rare" components, there are no underground biomes, there's a severe lack of interesting things to find underground, but it's ok, we'll have horses. A lot of things in Minecraft suck and are half-baked, but the Nether lets you travel 8x faster through the overworld and I think that's all it needs really
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Apr 5, 2013 13:33
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jivjov posted:My question is, if the API was such a huge amount of work, why did they promise its release to come with a specific patch/date in the first place? I'd rather hear "The API is coming, we promise, we're still working on it" than "The API will be released with the 1.3 patch"...."The API will be coming with 1.4, sorry for the delay"...."whoops, we're not releasing the API in the foreseeable future because we bit off more than we can chew but were too proud to admit that in the first place" In a nutshell, because Notch is both bad at code and bad at PR. I'm sure Notch thought it was just a matter of "adding" an API, but as Enzer said, you can only add an API when the game is otherwise done. Adding an API then making changes to the game that affect the API means it's not an API. So basically they've been spending this entire time trying to un-gently caress Notch's outsider-art this-works-lets-keep-it self-taught speed-code to make the game actually function well enough to even start incorporating an API.
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Apr 5, 2013 13:42
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nippon nifties posted:A lot of things in Minecraft suck and are half-baked, but the Nether lets you travel 8x faster through the overworld and I think that's all it needs really I've honestly never seen the need for the 8x faster travel. Because there is no real reason to travel in the first place. If there were rare biomes, or buildings or something that really made a form of quick travel necessary, then I could understand it, but now? Hell, now multiplayer servers can just use command blocks to send people to the far reaches of the server, instead of elaborate tran rides through the Nether.
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Apr 5, 2013 13:49
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Iacen posted:Hell, now multiplayer servers can just use command blocks to send people to the far reaches of the server, instead of elaborate tran rides through the Nether. Command blocks ruined my last world on my server. People just get too bored and don't bother to build things if you just give them an easy way out. New map is legit struggle map only, it's amazing how people have come together to build infrastructure. 
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Apr 5, 2013 13:58
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Someone needs to get the dev's attention and tell them to make a iron spike block, would damage stuff like a cactus but unlike a cactus you could stick them to pistons or side by side, imagine pistons removing a wall or a floor to have the old timey video game spikes of death pushed out. I'm serious someone please get their attention for iron spikes.
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Apr 5, 2013 14:01
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Boat posted:I'm sure Notch thought it was just a matter of "adding" an API, but as Enzer said, you can only add an API when the game is otherwise done. Adding an API then making changes to the game that affect the API means it's not an API. Somehow a bunch of modders add api´s to their mods from states that can only be described as "early beta", and manage to update their mods heavily and regularly while maintaining a functional API that keeps working interactions with other mods. All for free. In their spare time. Also, forge. Mojang has hundreds of millions at their disposal and the capability to hire as many competent developers as they need (hint, bukkit is dead and dying and forge is thriving, but they hired bukkit devs). Their excuses are really bad. The problem isn't that is too much work, it's that their management is a loving joke, they sent good developers from one of the most popular pc games ever to some stupid dead end project, refuse to hire more capable developers, and then faf about making empty promises and slowing mod progress with pointless updates. And then they add witches and horses.
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Apr 5, 2013 15:03
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Taffer posted:Somehow a bunch of modders add api´s to their mods from states that can only be described as "early beta", and manage to update their mods heavily and regularly while maintaining a functional API that keeps working interactions with other mods. I get what you're trying to say here, but I think it's a bit unfair to call all the updates mojang is making to the base game pointless. There are many people out there who play minecraft completely vanilla, with no mods, and the official updates are their only source of new content.
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Apr 5, 2013 15:07
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jivjov posted:My question is, if the API was such a huge amount of work, why did they promise its release to come with a specific patch/date in the first place? I'd rather hear "The API is coming, we promise, we're still working on it" than "The API will be released with the 1.3 patch"...."The API will be coming with 1.4, sorry for the delay"...."whoops, we're not releasing the API in the foreseeable future because we bit off more than we can chew but were too proud to admit that in the first place" It has been almost over a year since they said the API would be complete. That's the funniest part, to me. jivjov posted:I get what you're trying to say here, but I think it's a bit unfair to call all the updates mojang is making to the base game pointless. There are many people out there who play minecraft completely vanilla, with no mods, and the official updates are their only source of new content. At this point they can't really add too much new content without stepping on the toes of modders and upsetting the bee's nest of "my copyright" idea nazis, because of how slow they have been about it. For almost every good idea for Minecraft there is a mod now, and I think this may have an effect on how fast they are moving through whatever they want done with Minecraft outside of bugfixing. I kind of wish I lived in an alternate reality where Minecraft completed development, the modding community wasn't such a disaster and the game reached its best possible outcome, being a game with cohesive and fun base base gameplay, enhanced by a bunch of mods working together without scanning your username to check against a list of specific people the modder doesn't want to use his mod, or without storing your password in unencrypted plaintext and saying poo poo like "Thems the breaks," when called on it, or scanning the directory of your Minecraft folder and then refusing to work or corrupting your savegames if it has "Tek" in it. Devoyniche fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Apr 5, 2013 |
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Apr 5, 2013 15:10
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jivjov posted:I get what you're trying to say here, but I think it's a bit unfair to call all the updates mojang is making to the base game pointless. There are many people out there who play minecraft completely vanilla, with no mods, and the official updates are their only source of new content. Hundreds of millions. They can hire anyone the want. They just refuse to. They can hire more people to add the simple pointless poo poo to appease the vanilla players, while the rest work on updating the base code. Didn't they say the Mo creatures guy did most of the work on the horse? Hire him. Their budget is bigger than most AAA games or movies, and it's not even borrowed money. That's cash they have in hand.
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Apr 5, 2013 15:16
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Taffer posted:Their budget is bigger than most AAA games or movies, and it's not even borrowed money. That's cash they have in hand. I'm not sure you know how much it actually costs to produce a AAA movie or game. Also, although he sure does have a buttload of money, it would be stupid to spend a lot of it to appease fans of a game who's money you already have. Usually when games have a multi-million dollar budget they need to recoup that much and then begin to profit. Notch started by wildly profiting and now putting money into the game is just spending that money. You're not going to give him an extra $5-10 for an API or some mindless vanilla features and neither will most people. They've already paid and those people are not a significant source of income. I mean, it's not going to cost millions of dollars to "fix" Minecraft, but from a business perspective why bother spending that money when it's already net profit.
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Apr 5, 2013 15:33
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Putting more cooks in the kitchen isn't going to simmer the stew any faster, just like putting dollar values in italics isn't going to impress the codebase enough that it'll unfuck itself. The time it's taken for the API to happen is frustrating, sure, but given the way Mojang seems to be run it's probably better that there are only a few people working on it in peace while Notch comes up with some baller rear end microtransaction based marbles game.
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Apr 5, 2013 15:36
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So I'm starting to get back into this game after a year or two's hiatus. Are there any decent survival multiplayer serves people would recommend?
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Apr 5, 2013 15:52
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This sounds a lot like why Valve eventually stopped doing any sort of press coverage of major projects until suddenly launching an ARG a couple weeks before the game's release. They originally tried to update their fans on projects and progress, but since Valve prioritizes quality over speed, they realized that they couldn't really put deadlines and release dates on the things they were creating while still achieving a quality they were satisfied with. Similarly, the team working on Minecraft wanted to bring certain things to the table, but kept finding that the mess that needed to be cleaned was much worse than they originally thought. They've been giving the API as much attention as they reasonably can, but it's taking time, and will still take an unpredictable amount of time to set the stage so their promises will work well. I can see why people are frustrated, especially since a lot of people are misinformed about why the delays happen, but personally I'd rather they take how long they need and do the job right then meet a strict deadline and give us something that isn't ready. FYI, I'm somebody who spent a long time being annoyed with Valve and their media silence about Half-Life 3/ep 3, so I WAS one of those people who would complain about developers "being lazy" and other idiotic things. Somewhat related, I find it odd how the modding API has taken so long to get finished in Minecraft, whereas in Amnesia, according to the developer blog, modding was literally something they thought of and implemented in the last 2 weeks of development. I'd imagine Amnesia was originally programmed, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that kept the game and the engine more separate, making a modding API much easier to tack on at the last minute.
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Apr 5, 2013 16:08
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EvilDrWong posted:Putting more cooks in the kitchen isn't going to simmer the stew any faster, just like putting dollar values in italics isn't going to impress the codebase enough that it'll unfuck itself. Notch basically hired friends and people he knew to work on it and is fine with it and we're stuck with those decisions.
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Apr 5, 2013 16:14
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EvilDrWong posted:Putting more cooks in the kitchen isn't going to simmer the stew any faster, just like putting dollar values in italics isn't going to impress the codebase enough that it'll unfuck itself. What? This comparison doesn't make any sense. Adding more developers to a project does speed it up, or do you think that it would've taken one developer the same amount of time to code a modern day big budget video game than it does the entire teams that they have to do it now? I think the funniest thing about Minecraft is despite its ridiculous success and boatloads of money that Notch throws away at every indie project he can see, they still loving outsource poo poo like translation to its fans instead of hiring professional translators. And then you get poo poo like Racial Slurs in Translations because they're too loving lazy to either hire professional translators or spend 10 minutes to check to make sure their translators aren't pulling poo poo like this.
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Apr 5, 2013 16:22
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EvilDrWong posted:Putting more cooks in the kitchen isn't going to simmer the stew any faster, just like putting dollar values in italics isn't going to impress the codebase enough that it'll unfuck itself. Hiring more devs does make stuff go faster. They could have (and can) afforded to hire an entire team of game devs to completely write an engine from the ground up specifically tailored for minecraft, and it could have been done in a matter of months. It would be faster, require fewer resources, easier to add features to, be easier to integrate with an API, and easier to mod for. And it would barely dent their wallet. The problem is, when Notch was in charge, he only hired friends, and even now that he's not in charge, they still only hire people who have modded minecraft before, and have limited Java experience. They aren't hiring enough people, and the people they're hiring are hobbyist programmers, not professional developers.
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Apr 5, 2013 16:41
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ChewyLSB posted:What? This comparison doesn't make any sense. Adding more developers to a project does speed it up, or do you think that it would've taken one developer the same amount of time to code a modern day big budget video game than it does the entire teams that they have to do it now.
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Apr 5, 2013 16:47
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You guys get boring when you stop talking about building with blocks and start talking about your indignant rage at modding API. So lets look at my blocks! I've been playing on a vanilla server, so everything I've got was collected and made by me.  Including a collection of mini-biomes!  And with the addition of item frames I've been able to make a storage space I'm really keen on.  Funny thing is I'm mostly using it as storage space for a bigger project. I'm attempting to construct a village, but first I'm building walls around it so they can't just wander off. It's something like 256 by 192, and requires somewhere above 14k stone bricks.  I'm only done with about 1/8th of the wall, but hopefully it'll all look like that.
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Apr 5, 2013 17:18
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:Someone needs to get the dev's attention and tell them to make a iron spike block, would damage stuff like a cactus but unlike a cactus you could stick them to pistons or side by side, imagine pistons removing a wall or a floor to have the old timey video game spikes of death pushed out. http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Spike_Block It was one of the first things Dinnerbone said he wanted to add. It kind of got lost like the lectern he was working on, which even had a model. http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Lectern Taffer posted:Somehow a bunch of modders add api´s to their mods from states that can only be described as "early beta", and manage to update their mods heavily and regularly while maintaining a functional API that keeps working interactions with other mods. Forge is not an API. Forge likes to label itself as an API, but it is not. Forge is a library of various calls and hooks, it is a patchwork job that uses custom code sits on top of the game proper in order to work. What Forge is unable to do is fully access MC's base code b/c the code is not actually open in most places, if Forge was an actual API the devs wouldn't even bother. Forge isn't able to do certain things, it was never able to hook into redstone functionality for example, because the calls for such a thing never existed until 1.5, instead they made custom bits that simulated redstone. It is all very hacky when you start digging into it and I really wish Forge would stop calling itself an API. As much as I hate the guy, it is one of the other reasons why FlowerChild dropped Forge and stuck with base class editing. Sure base class editing is loving horrible, but it is actually interacting with the actual code instead of making additional patchwork works around. Forge only does very specific things, it is just a library of special hooks and calls to be used by various modders so that they are all using a common set of code for better compatibility and mod-mod interaction. If it was an actual API, it wouldn't keep breaking. I am not sure why you are so loving angry about this, they are making headway on the API, it just takes time to do it right. Just because some group of jackasses (and trust me, the guys behind Forge are not all loving smiles and roses, there is a reason that Mojang met with them and then decided to hire the bukkit devs instead). Also comparing the Bukkit and Forge, though Bukkit is for SMP plugins instead of mods, Bukkit is a lot easier to use. The reason bukkit is dying is because Mojang took the best developers from their team. For those not in the know, Dinnerbone literally did like 90% of the work required to do an update, he and Grum wrote all the tools from scratch that were used to make Bukkit. He goes into it a bit here: http://dinnerbone.com/blog/2013/01/06/story-bone-and-bukkit/ Mojang, despite having a large amount of capital right now, is still a very young company. They cannot just expand irrationally just because they had one game that sold a ton. Eventually that game is going to stop selling. They have a lot of their income right now tied into a game, Scrolls, that may not even sell. They are hoping that their "brand" well get people interested in it, but honestly I don't think there is much of a market for online trading card games, though I could be wrong. So lets say they hire a poo poo ton of people to get Minecraft working at a faster pace, then Scrolls is released and bombs, they are going to have to start downsizing and hope that Notches little space game side project sells as well as Minecraft. Not every game developer has a poo poo ton of employees. There is also the issue that a lot of these guys are really young and it is the first time they've been inside the industry. I mean hell, Dinnerbone is like 24. Your claim of fafing about adding stupid poo poo is also a bit stupid. Witches were added in 1.4. Patch 1.4 included a poo poo ton of stuff:
As for horses, it is one thing they have showed for 1.6, they haven't showed any other features yet, they've been working on 1.6 way before 1.5 was even released. I Do not understand why that is a focus here. EvilDrWong posted:I suppose we both exaggerated our point a bit, but yeah - You're right. It's just that Mojang has a pretty bad track record with regards to hiring folks to work on Minecraft, what with siphoning nearly all of them off to Scrolls, Cobalt, or that space game with the wobbly light. The pace they've set is slower than I'd like personally, but the alternative seems to be pulling everybody off of it to start another side-project or fedora competition or nerf war. Taffer posted:Hiring more devs does make stuff go faster. They could have (and can) afforded to hire an entire team of game devs to completely write an engine from the ground up specifically tailored for minecraft, and it could have been done in a matter of months. It would be faster, require fewer resources, easier to add features to, be easier to integrate with an API, and easier to mod for. And it would barely dent their wallet. Notch doesn't do the hiring, he isn't also the CEO of Mojang, surprisingly enough. I don't understand the "only hired friends" bit, I don't think Jeb and Notch knew each other before Minecraft. The reason they hired "hobbyist programmers" from the bukkit team was because they were familiar with the code and familiar with modifying it. So there was almost no downtime from when they were hired to when they started being productive. I also kind of disagree that throwing more employees onto to the task would make things go faster. MC's code is a loving mess and having like ten people trying to fix it at once is going to create chaos. Hell the first thing DB did was work carefully with Jeb on refactoring the code and they had to be careful about it, each checking what the other just did, you can see this in their time lapse video. The guy who is running Mojang is trying to make sure that the nest egg fund that Minecraft created doesn't dry up to fast and Scrolls has a poo poo ton of people working on it draining away funds, if Scrolls sells well, I can see more people being hired. However, hiring a ton of people right now to do things quickly is kind of a crap shot, everything is all polished and fixed and then what, do you just fire those extra people? The current devs have been working at a decent pace of about 2-3 months per update when you take out time for things like conventions and charities, that is way more then most triple A tiles get ever. If scrolls fails, they would have to definetly downsize. The issue I think a lot of people are missing is that they are litteraly suriving off the sale of one game, they quite a few employees now and they had to buy a new office because of the increase in employees. They are self published, they do not get extra funding. A lot of game studios get investment money to the tune of several million dollars per game from their publishers. Heck, Tim Schafer said that a sequel to psychonauts would cost around 18 million to develop and that is actually not a very large amount when it comes to game development. Just because Mojang made millions off a single game doesn't mean they can be willy nilly with their funds. :/ Again, I think it is an issue with Mojang having bad PR, the devs not communicating well, and people making assumptions on how much work they are doing and just writing them off as lazy when most games don't get the attention MC gets after release outside of major MMOs where you have to keep content pumping in order to keep subscriptions up. If they were so well funded, they would have stopped MC development and moved onto another new game, they wouldn't be pushing out MC Realms to get server subscription money, they would hire more people. I don't think people realize how fragile Mojang's situation is.
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Apr 5, 2013 17:38
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Scrolls is going to fail, without a doubt. They've barely reinvested anything into their one game that is still selling well today and is what made them into a real 'company'. Mojang is just about the most mismanaged game developer I've ever seen, and that is why people are angry at them. They don't get stuff done that other companies have shown time and time again that they certainly could have. I'm not going to say they're lazy because that's a really dumb thing to say when they're obviously at least doing something right now, but I am going to say that they could be doing so, so much more that they're pretty much a joke at this point. For reference https://minecraft.net/stats 11,853 ($319,438.35 before taxes) copies sold in the last 24 hours. They are not strapped for cash. Syenite fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Apr 5, 2013 |
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Apr 5, 2013 17:48
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And you talk as though they couldn't monetize minecraft. Hire some real game developers, sell some expansion packs and poo poo. You're acting like its impossible for a game company to survive off of having one IP, when that one IP has sold 10 million loving copies. And fan outsourcing for translators is just inexcusable. EDIT: Speaking as a professional developer yes of course rewriting minecraft from the ground up to not be a piece of poo poo is a huge project, but it certainly isn't impossible.
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Apr 5, 2013 17:50
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Enzer posted:Forge is not an API. Forge likes to label itself as an API, but it is not. Forge is a library of various calls and hooks, it is a patchwork job that uses custom code sits on top of the game proper in order to work. What Forge is unable to do is fully access MC's base code b/c the code is not actually open in most places, if Forge was an actual API the devs wouldn't even bother. Forge isn't able to do certain things, it was never able to hook into redstone functionality for example, because the calls for such a thing never existed until 1.5, instead they made custom bits that simulated redstone. It is all very hacky when you start digging into it and I really wish Forge would stop calling itself an API. As much as I hate the guy, it is one of the other reasons why FlowerChild dropped Forge and stuck with base class editing. Sure base class editing is loving horrible, but it is actually interacting with the actual code instead of making additional patchwork works around. Forge only does very specific things, it is just a library of special hooks and calls to be used by various modders so that they are all using a common set of code for better compatibility and mod-mod interaction. If it was an actual API, it wouldn't keep breaking. I never said that Forge was an API, but it is acting as a placeholder for one. It is, once again, something made for free by people in their spare time. It's hackish, but that's because it has to be, they're working off of deobfuscated code because Mojang continues to obfuscate it every update, so it's impossible for it to not be hackish. It's provided an incredibly powerful framework both to help people make mods, but more importantly, to help mods work together. It's filling the role of an API even if it isn't one, strictly speaking. The modding scene that exists right now would be impossible without Forge. Remember how impossible it was to get stuff working before Forge? Now, we can assemble gigantic modpacks with relative ease. It's far from perfect, but considering the conditions in which it's created, it's drat impressive. The point I was making is that a few people making something for free, in their spare time, constantly fixing the complete and utter breakage caused by every official MC update, have done a faster and better job than Mojang themselves have at enabling a functional modding platform. That's what's pathetic. Like Shukaro said, it's not like they're not doing anything, it's just that what they're doing is hopelessly disorganized and underscaled. They throw tons of developers at dead-end projects while all but ignoring their absolutely massive cash-cow that is pouring money at them and doesn't seem to be slowing down. It wouldn't even be a stretch of their resources to code an entire new and fully functional engine in a matter of months. But they just won't do it. You jump to their defense because it's a massive undertaking, which is absolutely true, it is - but they have the means to deal with a massive undertaking, just not the will or the management.
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Apr 5, 2013 18:07
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Shukaro posted:Scrolls is going to fail, without a doubt. They've barely reinvested anything into their one game that is still selling well today and is what made them into a real 'company'. They're so mismanaged, look at all the money they're making!!!11
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Apr 5, 2013 18:12
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Schweinhund posted:They're so mismanaged, look at all the money they're making!!!11 As crazy as it sounds a fat fedora-wearing man can happen upon a blockbuster combination of ideas that make him millions of dollars and at the same time mismanage a company. Then, when someone else steps in it's also possible for them to continue mismanaging said company. Syenite fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Apr 5, 2013 |
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Apr 5, 2013 18:14
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"Hiring more devs does make stuff go faster." Although I agree with most of the criticism, I thought the opposite of this was true; adding more developer doesn't make a project faster.
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Apr 5, 2013 18:32
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ChewyLSB posted:And you talk as though they couldn't monetize minecraft. Hire some real game developers, sell some expansion packs and poo poo. The problem with that is there are a LOT of people that bought the game in Alpha who would get all of those expansion packs for free, and with as open as minecraft is to modding, any expansion packs would have to be pretty drat exciting to get people to pony up more money rather than just finding an equivalent mod.
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Apr 5, 2013 18:41
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