1.8
With all that ruckus, pre-releases, blatantly bugged full releases, “beta beta” versions and the other crabs Mojang are throwing at us, we decided to stick with 1.8 for a while.
Probably useless to mention, but keep a few vanilla backups of the 1.8 mc.jar ^^
Did I mention the quality of Mojands code is continously dropping? A mate of mine showed me the current release and the enchanting things… f.e. the 3x Drop pickaxe. Amusingly, using it on TNT drops only 2 TNT. Which means that the pickaxe isn’t even using the actual drop code (because then it would drop 0), but just adding 2 random block drops directly.
Probably most don’t understand the severity of this, but that’s the code a new 12 years old modder would write for his favourite new DirtPickaxe mod. Not something you would exspect from a programming company.
Either way, /rant
Back to fixing IC²
I think the problem is that Mojang committed to a release schedule months ago and have been rushing to fit everything they want in before it comes up. We first heard about enchantment less than two months ago; in a game as complex as Minecraft has become, that isn’t nearly enough time to do a proper job on a system that touches so many other aspects of the game in essentially arbitrary ways.
Every time you add something new, you’re fighting against the inertia of everything there. This was the rationale given for abandoning work on the original IC and starting afresh with IC². Minecraft itself represents years of work; as hard as it was to start again with IC, it’s exponentially harder – outright counterproductive, even – with a project as large as Minecraft. So the job becomes one of balancing everything against everything else, adding a new layer to the middle of the house of cards.
I’m not defending sloppy coding. But you can’t expect anything else from trying to cram a large feature like this into a game in under two months. Frankly, they shouldn’t have tried.
“Frankly, they shouldn’t have tried.”
Exactly this.
Sry, but I cant share your opinion. Minecraft is not that complex – the problem is that the 1 1/2 coders that work on MC (jeb and notch) are complete idiots when it comes to actual gameplay.
Since over a year I watch how Mojang throws in “random” stuff thats not working out and just adds to the mass of half-baked code thats already there.
Minecarts – still not working and in RC2 even more broken than before (again), Nether – one year later a few additions that still dont make it much more interesting, recent changes that raise the combat abilities of the players while the monsters are still too stupid to walk around a single corner, passive mobs that still spawn undergrounds (where they shouldnt spawn regarding to notch himself) and so on.
That guy made over 35mil and is unable to hire a handful of capable coders and gamedesigners that are able to progress the gameplay properly.
Hire someone to make them recode every thing in a completely different way at least twice before releasing it…
Win
Seconded…. Wait, Thirded. Well said and agreed. My dad’s a software engineer, and his job is fixing bugs and sloppy coding… By the way, are there any “goto” commands in Minecraft basic? Because I understand those are really sloppy.
A couple of them. And yes, goto/lbls are frowned upon as extremely inefficient and “low” coding style.
Java doesn’t have a “goto”. It is reserved as a keyword but isn’t actually used
It doesn’t have “goto xy” but instead “continue xy” (and some other stuffs). Thus you can call it “Java can use generic goto-lbls”.
Don’t confuse “low level” with a “low” style or something that is to be frowned upon. It’s not part of a social status system or something.
There’s nothing inefficient about “gotos”. They’re easy to misuse and introduce fatal bugs and that’s why they’re disliked and avoided in the current style of programming, but in processor terms they’re one of the most basic and fast opcodes that can be used, and are VERY common in assembly code. (whether this applies to java or not is irrelevant to whether “gotos” are “low” and “frowned upon”).
I read somewhere that you said that basically IC2 was where you learned java (or programming?)? Because this is common developer knowledge.
Also re-“continue”.
It’s not a goto. It’s a “skip to next iteration of loop”. The label is merely a way to indicate which loop is being skipped when two or more loops are nested. Just like “break” is also not a goto but an “exit the loop”. If you’re in a loop within a loop, you specify how far out you’re exiting. The only other way to do this is via control variables.
Break and continue are a normal and everyday of structured programming. Not gotos.
I have noticed recently with the update of 1.8 that vanilla minecraft is feeling more an more like a mod (No offence to IC2, IC2 stands alone in the modding community) and less like the real minecraft. I remember back in early beta when everything just felt like minecraft, but as I said, it feels like an average mod.
I personally enjoyed minecraft 1.7 the best, and only a few days ago updated so that I could try out the new features of IC and play on a server.
Not to have this degenerate into Notch bashing (that’s what the Minecraftforums are for. lol.) but I have to agree. Almost all the new additions feel like mods, not additions to the engine. Alchemy, enchanting, pointless endgame dimension, etc.. I’m left thinking, “Why?” The original appeal to minecraft is it went in whatever direction you, the player, wanted to go with it. It’s now becoming a medieval/magic rpg that you can build in. Now don’t get me wrong, some additions were good; the larger biomes, animal breeding, that kind of stuff. I wish Mojang would focus on things like that, which improve the base engine of the game, and optimization/stability. And leave the other additions to the increasing improving modding community. But as it stands there’s this rush to finish so other projects can be started. Hell, even optimization was left to the modding community. It’s just silly.
(deep sigh) End rant.
Always the gamer’s plea: that the developers should stop adding new things no one asked for and use the time and resources to fix long-standing bugs instead. I agree, but they never do.
What about the IC² dev team :O
There are two names spit out with a great deal of venom; Notch and Jeb. Then there are three names only spoken in reverence; Alblaka, Spacetoad, and Eloraam.
I agree with the first guy to reply to Alblacka here. Now I will give the reasons:
Alblaka: Alblaka, you and your dev team have created an incredibly solid, well-balanced mod, which builds with what Minecraft should be and is, thanks to your vision.
Spacetoad: Same reason as you, and he has created MCForge, in cooperation with Eloraam. And, personally, he’s the first French guy I don’t hate. And my hatred for French is legendary. Well, as a group.
Eloraam: See above. Except the french thing.
Yes, the minecraft is becoming more crazy every release. If you take a look, they dont even test the game before release it, there a lot of stupid bugs that they would catch at first glance.
They never stopped to think about what they are doing. See, a loot of things could be better just rearranging the code. For exemple, why a stronghold can be cut by a ravine or a mine? why a mine can appear floating inside a ravine? The map generator should make the base terrain first, including the ravine, and then make a mine taking care to not make the actually messy intercepting tunnels and floating things and then make the stronghold. So if it hit a ravine, it would build the walls around, making it a building hanging in the walls. not just flying doors.
And what about that “adventure thing” Suddenly they tried to make this game some kind of RPG. Till 1.8 minecraft is a neutral game, without been modern or medieval. 1.9 change this.
Soon, you will have to release bugfixes for ic and vanilla minecraft in order to make the game playable.
Ironically since the adventure update I don’t explore. At all. Before it I found wonderful things (a giant floating forested continent for example) now I just find flat biomes and ugly mountains.
They are making the biggest mistake:
Making things realistic.
I just hope that they’ll finally release their modding api. That api would be the whole source code, Notch or jeb said this a long time ago. So when this would happen, i would be delighted to see the modding community fixing the base code and improving it. But offcourse it would be best if we didn’t need to “improve” things.
Really, all they have to do is name things “EntityLiving.class” instead of “bc.class”(or whatever EntityLiving is), and they’re done. Seriously. That’s it. Then ModLoader and MCForge would be done, except for maybe additional hooks added for MCForge, ModLoaderMP, etc. Same for all mods. They wouldn’t have to have dozens or more references just to update to a new version.
In other words, deobfuscate code, or at least stop changing obfuscation every frigging update.
Obfuscation is done by a program (looking at the things their obfuscator does, i’m guessing it’s Allatori). To them, the code looks like regular names, but when they build it it scrambles the code
Jep, and since even 12 years old (as many mods prove) can, given the right tool (MCP), ignore the obfuscation it’s already obsolete.. since about a year.
Probably they’re just too lazy to grab a new compiler or something XD
Ironically Infiminer (an inspiration for Minecraft) was ended because the owner released obfuscated code (and felt that this doomed his entire project).
The quality of minecraft is dropping from release to release.
Its not only the code. New features are bugged / unbalanced as well:
Enderman destroy your buildings. I had to disable mobs on my server after enderman have destroyed my circuit’s and minecart tracks.
EXP Orbs are useless but can crash your server after a player dies. Who at mojang had this stupid idea to spawn this crazy and useless amount of orbs?
Block IDs are wasted. Since version 1.7 mojang uses 25 new block ids ( 97 to 122 ). Many of the new blocks do not even have new features, just different textures. Why are new stairs / stones and fences can not be inserted through meta IDs?
Before v1.9 the RedPower Mod used some of this Ids.
We should start our own engine in C++ 😛
just kidding – but if mojang continues to work like this… 😉
I don’t think C++ stuff for Windows works on Mac. I know most people don’t care about that, and there’s stuff like GNU Wine, but I also understand that Java is easier to code.
It is true, C++ needs more skill for efficient use. But its not a work of magic to benefit from it. Crossplatform programming is not an unsolvable problem. I’ve even done it by myself (Win / Linux) and I’m not a professional programmer.
Minecraft simply pushes Java over its Limit. Look at the classic version to see the beginning of Minecraft and Mojang. I think they underestimated the future evolution of Minecraft.
But neither Mojang nor the Modding Community cant change this without a complety new Project. Such a project would be awesome, hard to manage and realy crazy – but could be fun too 😉
At the downside it wouldn’t be Minecraft anymore.
I don’t mind them sticking with Java :3 Otherwise i could never have started modding it in first place (we’re NOW, month after i’ve started IC, learning C++).
Btw, Multi-threading is still open. If they would implement it into MC, it’s performance would x-fold (depending on the amounts of cores a user has).
Does x-fold include virtual cores from hyper-threading?
Depending on the size of the cores, yes. Afaik Java got a cap on how much effective CPU it can handle per thread.
Not an expert though.
Let’s just say it should run better overall.
Theoretically multiply x-fold. However, if you want to multithread *and* have it still function correctly without corruption, in reality you’d see it not get nearly close to linear in terms of speedup. Synchronization is costly overhead that just sucks when you’re not contending on shared resources, and when there is contention you’re basically no better than singlethreaded. Plus, I would *not* want to be the guy in charge of re-writing MC to be multithreaded.
Sticking at 1.8 ist a very nice idea
I wouldn´t never update to a version on that i can´t install ic² and bc2
I think the Minecraft non Beta release will be the worse update mojang ever made (ok maybe its 1.9^^)
1.8.1 is a pain in the arse server-sided! It chews server cycles like pacman magic pills! At least that seems to be better with their latest release!
So please – stop that stupid “everything was better before” rubbish… I cant hear it any longer…
I just hope Notch wises up to all of this ‘RPG’ crap and releases part of the ‘Minecraft’ base as a standalone engine where ‘mods’ can become stand-alone games in their own right, and not so dependent on the ‘vanilla Mnecraft’ base style of play…
If Minecraft is supposed to be EASIER to mod, then why are they making crappy code that makes your life harder? 1: It’s making no sense, 2: They should actually consider the quality of code they use for their game, since it’s such a big game it should actually matter to them -_-
All of you should go to http://getsatisfaction.com/mojang and say this to mojang employers.
Let’s stick to 1.8 then i think. Personally i would love 1.7 but i guess it’s too late for this
1.8 actually has a number of good features. Except XP orbs. Seriously. They shouldn’t have added those until they had a purpose.
If we really “stick” to a version, we can safely un-crap minecrafts basecode. F.e. remove Exp orbs and make the hungre system optional ^^
I *like* this idea. I like it a lot.
That, sir, would be really nice! Minecraft IC-edition, yeah.
That, sir, would be really nice! Minecraft IC-edition, yeah. Especially taking into opinion the fact that you won’t be needing those code rearrangements each time a new update pops out. I’m definitely into idea of staying right in this version.
Except the fact that you europeans are stick to those copyrights, and Mojang may not like you redistributing the actual .jar-file. But there already is an option, “MC nostalgia” if you know that thing.
Sorry for my english ^_^
Only problem would be getting all the major mods to stick to the same version. Please don’t make us choose between IC2 and the world… unlike most mods it would actually be a tough choice. 🙂
You can exspect most simple-mods to not even know of this developement and continue/live-up with a current version.
However, if IC decides to go this route, theres a viable chance BC and RP will follow. And if those do, most of the MCForge side of life will follow. Which is all you need, i hope.
I’m in a game design college at the moment, and you know what’s funny?
Alpha = the time period to add new features.
Beta = the time to test and fix bugs.
Mojang went from Alpha to “beta”, which is STILL their alpha in my opinion. It’s stupid that they even added something like XP orbs, seriously! I see absolutely nothing being used for them. Most likely it’ll be one of those long-forgotten things such as the Nether which has barely been touched for an entire year up to now.
tl;dr feature creeping marks the X marks the Spot where Mojang sunk into a pit… of feature CREEPERS. *explosion*
I thing Mojang team are just a group of coders, not familiar with game development, but too enthusiastic. So they do things just when the ideas appear in Notch or Jebb’s head. That’s waaay too lame and bad. As a worse option, they just try to collect $.
A notepad file listing all of the bugs in Vanilla MC shouldn’t take up more memory than most class files. Mojang should have actually done the code freeze in the last month like they said they would, instead of adding more content that they said they would wait on.
Sigh. EoR
True, true.
Wait they ever said they would actually fix their current code? :O
I think so, saw a post on the MC Forum regarding to a “code freeze” earlier.
the one name i haven’t seen is Flowerchild.
i think the Modding API is best done like this: privatize MCP, Modloader and Forge. that is, Mojang makes them official mods, gives the makers the direct code and those are updated when the new version launches.
some things like MCP will be obsolete with “direct code” i know.
still, it would solve a billion problems if Mojang coded such hooks DIRECTLY in the source code, render every API obsolete and making the game directly moddable.
Minecraft IMO won’t survive without modding. i play the game with mods only, Vanilla is skull-cracking boring. i prefer to build insanely complex industrial machines, spending 5 hours to automate a thing that costs 5 minutes for myself to do.
the Codefreeze and the release dates were -in retrospect- bad ideas. it would have been 10x better if Mojang had continued it’s previous path of “it’s done when it’s done”, AKA the Valve mentality.
These Forge thingy is slowly becoming a standard in modding. I hope Notch and company won’t screw this up. Because this project is slowly becoming epic.
Notice something?
Every good mod has a 2 on the end. IC2 BC2 RP2 are just some examples.
I think Notch should follow suite, completely recoding Minecraft. The result would probably be really, really good.
BC3