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Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

minecraft.net

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Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno. Apple makes exceptions for big companies and might do so for something as big as Minecraft. Also, SDL3 supports far more platforms https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL3/README-platforms Now they can release a Java edition even for PlayStation and Xbox. At least porting to SDL3 opens the door to consoles and mobiles if they want to do so.

If both sides are willing to do that, why didn't they do that the first time instead of creating Minecraft PE?

PE was created in a time where phones were VERY unimpressive when it came to compute

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#212

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

My son setup a minecraft server on a mac mini using claude, was pretty smooth. If your kids just use it in house you do no need to worry about security issues. In my case I did create a dedicated user account for the server.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#213
post #73

I'm teaching my son python programming. Anyone with experience on programming Minecraft with python? Tips?

Mineflayer, a bot framework built in JavaScript, is also available in Python. [0]

Also a more easy language to look into for Minecraft would be SkriptLang [1]. It has a big community and is mostly easy to understand.

[0]: https://github.com/PrismarineJS/mineflayer/blob/master/examp... [1]: https://github.com/SkriptLang/Skript/

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#214
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft started on Java, a massive mod and server community created around it. Consoles won't run JIT/JVM/Java, so the Bedrock C++ version was created. People don't want to give up the massive mod community, so OG pc players stay on Java, while console players and newer PC players go to bedrock (with some of those PC players jumping over to Java after servers or mods are discovered). They almost have feature parity…

It's absolutely crazy that a game so popular - let alone any game - was originally written in Java. Why did notch do that? There were next to no libraries, ecosystem, or support for Java at the time. It was such a bizarre choice. Not to mention the JVM, GC, and all the other oddities. It was super off the beaten path to have done this. Might as well have been Ruby or Perl.

I spent my first 12 hours glued to Minecraft back when it was a Java applet. Probably wouldn't have bothered to install...

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#215
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft started on Java, a massive mod and server community created around it. Consoles won't run JIT/JVM/Java, so the Bedrock C++ version was created. People don't want to give up the massive mod community, so OG pc players stay on Java, while console players and newer PC players go to bedrock (with some of those PC players jumping over to Java after servers or mods are discovered). They almost have feature parity…

It's absolutely crazy that a game so popular - let alone any game - was originally written in Java. Why did notch do that? There were next to no libraries, ecosystem, or support for Java at the time. It was such a bizarre choice. Not to mention the JVM, GC, and all the other oddities. It was super off the beaten path to have done this. Might as well have been Ruby or Perl.

> It's absolutely crazy that a game so popular - let alone any game - was originally written in Java.

It did not start being popular :)

Seriously though, I think Java helped it get so much traction initially. Writing mods was tedious but not that difficult, and it was multi-platform for free. Nowadays I assume the vast majority are playing bedrock on consoles or PC, but at the beginning it was rather nerdy and being playable on Linux and Mac was nice for some tech-minded people.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#216

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

I've been running this[0] for a few years now, moved it a couple of days ago to a portainer VM on proxmox with 6GB ram, its running perfectly fine for 3 of us, and works fine from tablets and PC.

Can also run on the nintendo switch if you setup a cname to redirect to your server IP, i.e: mco.lbsg.net x.x.x.x play.lbsg.net x.x.x.x

Then choose the "Lifeboat" server

[0] https://jamesachambers.com/minecraft-java-bedrock-server-tog...

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#217
post #172
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies for hijacking an advice thread, but I'm another dad who's had to deal with this incompatibility nightmare, and I really really want to know what the hell happened within Microsoft & Mojang to end up with this mess. No, seriously, I'm fascinated by the story. It's been over ten years . I'm happy to assume that most of the people involved are smart and good with decent intentions. I also bet there were many k…

Consoles hate having a jit vm so java is a non-starter for them. The real reason is you want to run your game on the latest greatest WiiStation(tm). if it is written in C/C++ you sit down with a copy of their development library and change your code to fit. If it is written in java you port the jvm to the device. And I don't really know how hard that is(having never ported the jvm) but most people sort of balk at tha…

> Microsoft thought it was easier/better to rewrite minecraft in C++ than port the jvm to the xbox.

I don’t think that’s quite right. IIRC, the mobile iOS version was released before the Xbox one and neither were developed by Microsoft. I think eventually it’s the mobile version that became Bedrock and replaced the older console version, which became a dead end.

The mobile version (released in 2011) could not be in Java, otherwise it could not have been sold on iOS. So at least initially it was more a business decision about which platforms to target than a technical decision to do away with Java.

All this happened years before Microsoft bought Mojang.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#218

Honestly, it seems like the way to go to have a very moddable game is a language that's easily decompiled and modified at runtime like Java or C# (or just JVM and .NET CLR if you prefer). When they do internal modifications, but also have modders in mind, you get to have an amazing modding API basically "for free".

The only thing you need to have a very modded game is a large enough user base. A little bit of binary patching and dll injection never stopped a dedicated modder.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#219
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SDL_RenderGeometry(Raw) are only capable of 2D rendering and the vertexes do not even have a z-coordinate. Genuine 3D support is available in SDL3 via the GPU types and functions: https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL3/CategoryGPU

If you want to get pedantic the hardware rasterizer in your GPU doesn't rasterize "3D triangles" either. Any notion of '3D' comes from how you project your vertices when transforming them through your coordinate spaces. Though the perspective divide needed to make perspective projection work is baked in, but otherwise NDC is a 2D space. Z only exists for the depth buffer/depth test and perspective correct interpolati…

Except perspective correct interpolation isn't something you get to disregard in a footnote.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#220
post #158
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft comes in two flavors, Java and Bedrock. All of the mobile, console ports, and windows store versions are based on bedrock. Java is the one you download directly from the website. Bedrock isn't really about custom hosted servers, but there is a way. You can run a standard Java Minecraft server however you like, and then you can wrap it to also work with the Bedrock using Gyser[1] which will protocol translat…

Apologies for hijacking an advice thread, but I'm another dad who's had to deal with this incompatibility nightmare, and I really really want to know what the hell happened within Microsoft & Mojang to end up with this mess. No, seriously, I'm fascinated by the story. It's been over ten years . I'm happy to assume that most of the people involved are smart and good with decent intentions. I also bet there were many k…

As a couple of others have mentioned, the original split between the original Java Edition and the now Bedrock Edition happened in 2011. This is several years prior to the 2014 acquisition of Mojang by Microsoft. So while Microsoft may have had motivations in Mojang promoting or expanding Bedrock adoption, that train had already left the station by the time Microsoft entered the picture.

Bedrock started as "Pocket Edition". Probably the best place to get the story is at: https://minecraft.wiki/w/Pocket_Edition

I like Minecraft quite a lot and am not concerned with interoperability between Java and Bedrock... but will only play the Java Edition because of game-play differences between the two; differences in which Java Edition comes out as being materially better than Bedrock... at least from my perspective.

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