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Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

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Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#171

Post by superb_dev »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #96
superb_dev wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the norm these days! There are popular mod loaders like curseforge that pulled from moderated repositories. It’s still not bulletproof, but a far cry from trusting some installer executable

I prefer modrinth as well, both are good but curseforge has done some things which makes us require an api etc. for true automation where modrinth is genuinely nice. I used to use prism launcher which would just give me a search box and It on the side would have things like modrinth / curseforge etc., Usually I preferred Modrinth but there were some modpacks just on curseforge only but I never really downloaded a sha…

+1 for Prism Launcher and Modrinth! I use Prism on my Steam Deck. I would’ve mentioned them both but Curseforge was the only name I could remember

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#173

Post by unleaded »

bityard wrote: post #115

Asking from a place of sincere ignorance: TFA says the code was obfuscated from the beginning, and that they deliberately kept it obfuscated all these years, and acknowleded the huge community that built mods for Minecraft in spite of it. But what TFA doesn't say: Why did they keep it obfuscated for so long even after it became readily apparent that almost everyone buys Minecraft to (eventually) play the mods? Why di…

"It does have some technical benefits for us, but it is a symbol that this game is not open source. You still can't publish the maps or the code decompiled, even using the maps."

https://twitter.com/Dinnerbone/status/1169242801508376582

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#174

Post by Nextgrid »

maeln wrote: post #22
armchairhacker wrote: post #2

Minecraft, Roblox, Geometry Dash, Trackmania...these are games that succeeded because of their communities. Alone, they don't provide much for the average player, but creative players build interesting things that appeal to everyone. I think one of the reasons Vision Pro and metaverse have been struggling is because their engines are bad. Not just locked down, but hard to develop on (although I don't have personal ex…

> I think one of the reasons Vision Pro and metaverse have been struggling is because their engines are bad. Not just locked down, but hard to develop on (although I don't have personal experience, I've heard this about VR in general). If you want to build a community, you must make development easy for hobbyists and small users*. I believe this has held even for the biggest companies, case in point the examples abov…

I think there’s a difference between “indie dev” aka either an experienced SWE trying it or some really motivated person with an established identity, credit card & income stream and a kid/teenager tinkering around.

In a “free for all” setting, anyone (including kids) could potentially learn enough (or even just download pre-made scripts) and try their hand at modding software/games.

In a modern situation with developer registration, etc someone would need some sort of established identity, potentially going through age verification, paying some nominal fee for a license, accepting an EULA and so forth. This is a huge barrier to entry for kids/teenagers just wanting to tweak the game experience for themselves/their friends. I remember my first time trying to install Apache on Windows I guess around 2008-09, and the (very well-made!) install wizard asked me for a domain name. At the time I wasn’t aware of how DNS/etc worked and was scared to continue, thinking I would either take up some other company’s name or not being “allowed” to use a random name I’d pick and get myself/my parents in trouble.

All these “regulated” ecosystems make it scarier for well-meaning but inexperienced devs to get started, while doing little to deter dedicated attackers who know the game and know actual cybercrime enforcement is both lacking and trivial to defeat in any case.

The “free for all” environment made me the developer & sysadmin (or DevOps person as the techbros call it) I am today despite no formal training/education and I am sad to see this opportunity go for the younger generations.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#175

Post by the_hoser »

mort96 wrote: post #166
singron wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proguard can also apply optimizations while it obfuscates. I think a good JVM will eventually do most of them itself, but it can help code size and warm-up. I'm guessing as JVMs get better and everyone is less sensitive to file sizes, this matters less and less.

And there's no way to do only the optimisation part? Surely you could optimise without messing up class and method names..?

One of the biggest optimizations it offers is shrinking the size of the classes by obfuscating the names. If you're obfuscating the names anyway, there's no reason that the names have to be the same length.

"hn$z" is a heck of a lot smaller than "tld.organization.product.domain.concern.ClassName"

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#177

Post by taneq »

Romario77 wrote: post #161
pavo-etc wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am currently being radicalised against OOP because of one specific senior in my team that uses it relentlessly, no matter the problem domain. I recognise there are problems where OOP is a good abstraction, but there are so many places where it isn't. I suspect many OOP haters have experienced what I'm currently experiencing, stateful objects for handing calculations that should be stateless, a confusing bag of meth…

You could write crappy code in any language. I don't think it's specific for Java. Overall I think java is pretty good, especially for big code bases.

You gotta admit, though, that a language which strongarms you into writing classes with hidden state and then extending and composing them endlessly is kinda pushing you in that direction.

It’s certainly possible to write good code in Java but it does still lend itself to abuse by the kind of person that treated Design Patterns as a Bible.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#178

Post by taneq »

devjab wrote: post #165
beachy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time I have heard of object-oriented obfuscation. I get it, but in general I don't get the OO hate. It's all about the problem domain imo. I can't imagine building something like a graphics framework without some subtyping. Unfortunately, people often use crap examples for OO. The worst is probably employee, where employee and contractor are subtypes of worker, or some other chicanery like that. Of course in th…

I think the OO hatred comes from how academia and certain enterprise organisations for our industry picked it up and taught it like a religion. Molding an entire generation og developers who wrote some really horrible code because they were taught that abstractions were, always, correct. It obviously weren't so outside those institutions, the world slowly realized that abstractions were in many ways worse for cycloma…

Much like Agile, or Hungarian notation. When a general principle becomes a religion it ceases to be a good general principle.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#180

Post by gretch »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #51

It's extraordinary to me that Minecraft is both the game that has the most robust mod community out there and that the modders were working from obfuscated, decompiled Java binaries. With elaborate tooling to deobfuscate and then reobfuscate using the same mangled names. For over a decade! What dedication.

In 2004 I played an MMO game on a pirated server. The owner of the server somehow got a version of the server binary, and used a hex editor (!) to add new features to the binary over time.

It's the closest I've ever see to someone literally being one of the hackers from Matrix, literally staring at hexadecimal and changing chars one at a time

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