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Playing “Minecraft” without Minecraft (2024)

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Re: Playing “Minecraft” without Minecraft (2024)

#21

I think it's amazing to have a massive commercially successful game such as Minecraft give the fans the ability to be very liberal with what they can do with it. Now we have open-source re-implementaions that are pretty close to vanilla!

MS is slowly killing off Java so they can push Bedrock (much less flexible) on everyone though. And all my daughter's friends use Bedrock :-\. I have a server with GeyserMC running to let them play together but it definitely isn't what it once was.

No they're not? Vanilla Java gets updates too, and even if they were, the modding scene is as vibrant as ever.

Re: Playing “Minecraft” without Minecraft (2024)

#22
post #10

I think it's amazing to have a massive commercially successful game such as Minecraft give the fans the ability to be very liberal with what they can do with it. Now we have open-source re-implementaions that are pretty close to vanilla!

Minecraft is wierd because all that amazing modding that is done is in spite of mojang not because of them. I have not played minecraft in a few years but I think nothing has changed. Mojang, even pre microsoft, has never provided any sort of modding support. I grew up on quake where ID would give you the game code and tools necessary to make mods. Mojang gave nothing. modding on minecraft involved decompiling the by…

The developers decided to not provide mod support because the modders have infinite freedom the way they are doing things right now. More freedom than if they gave you a modding toolkit like Bethesda does. It's the Bedrock Edition of Minecraft that's crippled with its official modding support.

Re: Playing “Minecraft” without Minecraft (2024)

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS is slowly killing off Java so they can push Bedrock (much less flexible) on everyone though. And all my daughter's friends use Bedrock :-\. I have a server with GeyserMC running to let them play together but it definitely isn't what it once was.

Bedrock might be more popular, but I think there is a large community with absolutely zero interest in ever moving away from Java. I will never go back to playing Minecraft without Distant Horizons after experiencing it, so Bedrock is absolutely not an option for me unless they added real LOD features natively.

Distant Horizons is awesome. Too bad my computer really does not agree :P

Re: Playing “Minecraft” without Minecraft (2024)

#24

I think it's amazing to have a massive commercially successful game such as Minecraft give the fans the ability to be very liberal with what they can do with it. Now we have open-source re-implementaions that are pretty close to vanilla!

MS is slowly killing off Java so they can push Bedrock (much less flexible) on everyone though. And all my daughter's friends use Bedrock :-\. I have a server with GeyserMC running to let them play together but it definitely isn't what it once was.

I find bedrock has much better performance than java. It runs very nicely using the MCPE launcher on linux.

Re: Playing “Minecraft” without Minecraft (2024)

#25
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bedrock might be more popular, but I think there is a large community with absolutely zero interest in ever moving away from Java. I will never go back to playing Minecraft without Distant Horizons after experiencing it, so Bedrock is absolutely not an option for me unless they added real LOD features natively.

Distant Horizons is awesome. Too bad my computer really does not agree :P

It's a bit hard on the CPU for sure, but running a server and pregeneration both help.

Re: Playing “Minecraft” without Minecraft (2024)

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bedrock might be more popular, but I think there is a large community with absolutely zero interest in ever moving away from Java. I will never go back to playing Minecraft without Distant Horizons after experiencing it, so Bedrock is absolutely not an option for me unless they added real LOD features natively.

The kids all seem to use tablets or windows with bedrock though, my own are the odd ones out with Java on Linux.

A lot of windows users use java on windows too.

I do think that I have yet to see a bedrock player on windows as compared to java player on windows & I have been playing minecraft for so long and joined so many discord communities of minecraft related as well and that's my experience.

Java is really peak minecraft, with modpacks as well. You should try out prismlauncher, its open source and works quite smoothly on linux and you can try a lot of modpacks which the bedrock players can't play.

Fabuously Optimized is a must have modpack given how efficient it can make minecraft / give fps boosts

Re: Playing “Minecraft” without Minecraft (2024)

#27
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft is wierd because all that amazing modding that is done is in spite of mojang not because of them. I have not played minecraft in a few years but I think nothing has changed. Mojang, even pre microsoft, has never provided any sort of modding support. I grew up on quake where ID would give you the game code and tools necessary to make mods. Mojang gave nothing. modding on minecraft involved decompiling the by…

I don't know if it was done with modding in mind or not, but the transition to data packs was a non-trivial addition of mod support.

At the cost of inner-platform-effecting all the game code. Long-time software engineers know all about the inner platform effect - if not, see [1]. Instead of writing directly what you want, something like:

new Block("mymod:mystone").setShape(Shapes.CUBE).setTexture("mymod:stone_texture").setStepSound(Sounds.STEP_ON_STONE)...

you now have to do some of this inline (the part that can't be customized in data packs):

new Block("mymod:mystone").setStepSound(Sounds.STEP_ON_STONE)...

but the rest is looked up across 5 different cross-referenced JSON files full of magic values with no autocomplete or syntax highlighting. Start with an indirection layer in assets/mymod/blockstates/mystone.json: [2]

{"variants": {"": {"model": "mystone"}}}

then of course you have to actually specify how to display the block: [3]

{"parent": "minecraft:block/cube_all", "textures": {"all": "fabric-docs-reference:block/steel_block"}}

(you see that? there are inheritance and variables in Minecraft's ad-hoc JSON language)

You need a second file to specify how to display the item when it's held in your hand. Usually it's similar boilerplate. But have a look at the abomination that is "item property overrides" [4] [5] as an example of inner-platforming. Instead of render(is_cast ? cast_model : uncast_model); there's this whole infrastructure of a registry of item property predicates written in Java which can then be referenced in JSON to select a different model file under specific conditions.

[1] https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_inner-platform_effect

[2] https://docs.minecraftforge.net/en/1.12.x/models/blockstates...

[3] https://docs.fabricmc.net/develop/data-generation/block-mode...

[4] https://docs.minecraftforge.net/en/1.12.x/models/overrides/

[5] https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Models#Example:_...

Re: Playing “Minecraft” without Minecraft (2024)

#28

I think it's amazing to have a massive commercially successful game such as Minecraft give the fans the ability to be very liberal with what they can do with it. Now we have open-source re-implementaions that are pretty close to vanilla!

I played the original a lot, and lots of modding, but I prefer Luanti these days. There are lots of great games in it, and many of them are very much Minecraft, others explore entirely different approaches which can be very interesting as well. I'm spending some hours playing with my 5 year old too, and it's great.
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