I think we can forgive an off topic comment in a thread about administering infrastructure from within a video game. HN isn't that pedantic yet.

I'm hoping someone can chime in with more information. I don't think LexManos (Forge et al) reads HN.

This is true. MeddleAPI[1] is the new hotness as it allows mods to be version-agnostic, however it's still early and there's little documentation. Mojang has been talking about potentially releasing some kit for modding for years, but with the C++ based "Minecraft Windows 10 Edition" out, I see little chance of that happening now.

I'm glad to see this though. I have been working on a file editor for minecraft[2] that might eventually work for keeping copies of docker logs, editing code or some such. Advanced VIM functions are not on my docket however. Baby steps.

Maybe more modders will move to mineTest if Microsoft/Mojang continues to sidestep the Minecraft modding community.

[1] http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/min...

[2] http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/min...

Microsoft seems to be taking it far more seriously with the release of the Minecraft modding tools for Visual Studio[1].

[1]: https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/043ab247-8771...

I had not seen this. It's not Microsoft throwing developers on maintaining Forge though or some official API, just a few templates. Seems to me more like a push to promote VS than Minecraft modding. Maybe a sign of good things to come.

Minetest is very... opinionated... when it comes to modding. Gluing a Java webserver to it as I've done with Minecraft wouldn't be possible, as far as I can tell.

I haven't done any Minetest modding, but I'm sure a pretty large part of that is due to the lack of a JVM. Forge can easily enough unpack the jar for clean enough source to plug into. C++ requires the Minetest devs themselves to guess what modders want to do and build Lua entrypoints. With the new Windows 10/Pocket edition of Minecraft being C++ as well, they'd have to do the same thing I would think.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. When I looked I couldn't work out how to build my own Lua "entrypoints" - mainly because I don't know Lua.

Docker 2.0 will fix all this. Oh wait you were talking about minecraft

Couldn't agree more about how difficult it is to mod the game... but 1.9 definitely is not out yet.

Update changelog: http://mcupdate.tumblr.com/

Sorry, got mixed up with 1.8.8

>One dude is maintaining Forge/MinecraftCodersPack/Fernflower, which powers pretty much every mod

Forge is maintained by cpw and Lex, as well as a large community of modders. MCP is a completely different project and is still headed by Searge and ProfMobius (now with Mojang), among others. And I'm not sure what Fernflower has to do with anything.

>Ad-infested forums and adfly links are the preferred way of distributing mods

Partially true. Many have moved to Curse or CurseForge (which isn't any better).

>The last moddable client version is 1.8.0, 1.9 is out.

1.9 is not out, and work cannot even begin on enabling 1.9 mods until MCP is released. They'd be working with obfuscated code otherwise.

>Getting a mod started is really difficult, and it's not clear what should/shouldn't be in source control.

Having just recently gone through this, I wouldn't say it's that bad. It will generate a .gitignore file for you, and set up workspaces for both IDEA and Eclipse. Other IDEs may be more difficult to setup.

> And I'm not sure what Fernflower has to do with anything.

> ...

> 1.9 is not out, and work cannot even begin on enabling 1.9 mods until MCP is released. They'd be working with obfuscated code otherwise.

That's where Fernflower comes in; it deobfuscates the minecraft class files for forge and the modders. If the compiled minecraft jar were to "move enough bytecode" to Java 9 (that's a very inaccurate way to put it, but just for the sake of argument), and Fernflower were to be abandoned before then, it would be extremely difficult for forge and MCP to be updated, let alone all the mods themselves.

I disagree with it being difficult to get a mod started, you simply download the mdk (like a mod template) and follow the instructions on the readme. I'm not sure, but they might even have a git ignore in the mdk these days.

Edit: In addition, LexManos is no longer the sole contributor, cpw has returned, and MCP has always been a separate project which has managed to keep a core team.

About 1.9, because the minecraft code is obfuscated and very complex, updating forge to new minecraft versions takes a long time for MCP to release mappings, then forge to port etc, so I'm really not surprised that updating takes a while.

Most mods these days are distributed through curse forge, which although has adverts, is reputable and curse pays per download. The minecraft forums are as buggy and crap laden as always unfortunately.

Ah I didn't realise cpw had come back. That's good news.

By MDK do you mean Forge? MDK doesn't seem to be used except in one forum thread.

The mdk (renamed from src zip, because it no longer contained the forge source) is a zip containing a template mod, gradle buildscript, and instructions on setting up your ide, you c an download it here: http://files.minecraftforge.net/

Thanks for this, I might take a look on the weekend.

Strange, why isn't there a homebrew/bower/npm/whatever package manager for minecraft?

~ modcraft install <package> # installs <package> to your minecraft server

~ modcraft create <some_new_package_you_wanna_make> # creates a new package with your .gitignore already setup so you can make your own mod

etc. etc.

Years ago when I played minecraft I remember someone was hired specifically to make Minecraft have an API to make modding easier. What happened to that?

There are several modpack launchers available now (Tekkit, FTB, ATLauncher, etc...), but mod authors get butthurt when you don't visit their ad infested download links and there is infighting between the different groups.

Minecraft's mod scene is a mess. Whatever Mojang's efforts were to make the game mod friendly have never seen the light of day. It's really sad because mod authors have done some really amazing stuff with the engine, but because every update breaks everything its too hard to keep most of the running for more than a version or two.

What's really hurt the mod scene is fragmentation - search for Minecraft Mods on Google and the unofficial-official Curse forums will probably come up but there's also many other sites that re-host (with more ads).

I've heard anecdotal reports of malware being spread through these unofficial mirrors too.

Can you imagine if there had been mods.minecraft.com from the start with some kind of central organisation?

I actually tried doing something like this maybe a year back, but it got out of my scale in terms of complexity vs the amount of time I was willing to put into it. Having to manage jar and asset patches, replacements, additions, deletions (as well as the same things for the items within each jar, for example), as well as having to handle config files and other random messes that mods created, without any sort of breakage was quite difficult, especially considering how incorrect installation order of mods would often cause conflicts (meaning that even if modloader and forge, for example, worked alone and forge could be installed before modloader, installing modloader first might break forge). Making this work without an accidentally Turing complete build system is very difficult. Maybe a standard MC build system and API would help clean this all up to the point where Mojang could create a working system to handle all of this properly while interfacing with the launcher's profile system.

Omg, the mod forums are so terrible. I forbid my kid from downloading any but even I can't distinguish the ads from the download link.

Please don't forbid them completely. If they're still really into Minecraft it's worth looking into a few of the more popular mods. (Depending on age, there's some really good mechanics/electronics mods).

http://www.learntomod.com/ looks like a good idea but I'm put off by the subscription model.

Depends on what you want to do, but writing a server side plugin will usually be easier than the mod route. I believe this is what the author of this hack did.

The Minecraft modding community is (and has always been) so ludicrously toxic it's amazing the whole mess hasn't collapsed already.

Not to mention open-source is kind of an alien concept to most of the community. People are really anal about usage rights. At least with texture packs it got to the point where they had to start forcing everyone to choose a license. I think there were even "unions" that popped up to help prevent people from being ripped off.

Forgive me for nitpicking, but your second to last point is incorrect.

Mojang/MS are working on version 1.9 but the latest version released (by default) to clients is 1.8.8, the rest are snapshots of 1.9 (IE not official version releases.. which means in turn modding tools and server frameworks will not upgrade until the full release of 1.9)

Yep, you're correct.

Well Microsoft owns Minecraft. So I imagine modding will get more official support in a year. Probably a nicer API too.

Mojang have been promising this for years, nothing has ever happened and I doubt any modding api they release will have the flexibility to edit the base game that MinecraftForge has.

About this time last year I was working on an animal mod. The tools and documentation were pretty abysmal. Doing anything interesting required a lot of messing around. I'm not doing any more modding of MineCraft until official work is done on an API.

The author got around it by using a completely alternate, but client compatible, Minecraft server: https://github.com/cuberite/cuberite