Re:Games Today Shut the Door to Tomorrow’s Devs
by WorldMaker on Monday October 15, 2018 @03:52PM
(#18223086)
For what it's worth, I also consider the base "gameplay" pattern important, official "mod" tools: crafting, redstone, etc. The variety of things done with just those simple tools, no Java, rivals a lot of stuff done with "mods" to past games; don't discount it simply because it's done entirely within the ruleset of the "game" itself. Minecraft is this generation's ZZT.
Re:Games Today Shut the Door to Tomorrow’s Devs
by mental1896 on Monday October 15, 2018 @03:58PM
(#18223126)
I don't think Mojang ever tried to actively stop the mod community like, say, Rockstar did. I would say Minecraft does have modding support in the sense that the installation files are an open book, inviting unlimited modding opportunities for anyone who wants to tinker.
Re:Games Today Shut the Door to Tomorrow’s Devs
by fenwick67 on Monday October 15, 2018 @05:29PM
(#18223956)
They never tried to stop it but they never fostered it either. It was just coincidentally easy to reverse engineer the code and install mods. But the interfaces were VERY brittle, and mods had very specific version requirements.
Official mod support (with an installer and an API) was on the dev roadmap but never materialized.
Minecraft doesn't have any significant modding support from the developer. Official 'mods' are mostly limited to textures / shaders. The real modding tools that exist for Minecraft were created by the community and largely exist because Java is comparatively easy to reverse engineer in addition to some 'off the record' style support of the mod lib authors by the game developers. The whole mod scene has gone through various phases of questionable legality and unknown future. The Minecraft mod scene exists largely in spite of the game developer, not due to it.