Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition • Hacker News Board

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#231

Post by qwertytyyuu » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:01 AM UTC

beachy wrote: post #137

userbinator wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More proof that you don't need the source code to modify software. Then again, Java has always been easy to decompile, and IMHO the biggest obstacle to understanding is the "object-oriented obfuscation" that's inherent in large codebases even when you have the original source.

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…

That's why we use depedency injection now~~!

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#232

Post by twothreeone » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:03 AM UTC

gretch wrote: post #180

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

That approach is also super useful if you're manually flashing an image onto some embedded thing (like an ECU, or other types of boot rom). Of course on many modern systems you'll have to get around the checksum guards, but there's typically all sorts of glitch hacks to do that.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#233

Post by quantified » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:03 AM UTC

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.

I watched one of my young children power themselves through the obfuscation to learn advanced modding. There was zeal for the knowledge and mods in that community.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#234

Post by rasz » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:08 AM UTC

rcruzeiro wrote: post #181

devjab wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This, this, this. So much this. Back when I was in uni, Sun had donated basically an entire lab of those computers terminals that you used to sign in to with a smart card (I forgot the name). In exchange, the uni agreed to teach all classes related to programming in Java, a…

And now you know how Nvidia CUDA got so popular.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#235

Post by quantified » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:08 AM UTC

pavo-etc wrote: post #143

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 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…

Separation of data and algorithm is so useful. I can't really comment on how your senior is doing it, but in the area of numeric calculations, making numbers know anything about their calcs is a Bad Idea. Even associations with their units or other metadata should be loose. Functional programming provides such a useful intellectual toolkit even if you program in Java.

Sorry to learn, hope you don't get scar tissue from it.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#236

Post by nullfield » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:11 AM UTC

One and only account (Mojang) that I can think of that I lost because it got taken over, and I couldn’t get support to help fix it (something about “go make another Mojang account”?)… and since I don’t really get the migration process they did or final outcome, it’s more of a “oh well losing that sucks”.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#237

Post by vintermann » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:13 AM UTC

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #132

krackers wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. Having only a vague familiarity with the game, I thought that mods were using some official plugin system. I had no idea that minecraft modders (presumably kids/teens?) were not only reverse engineering things but also creating an entire ecosystem to work around proguard.

Most modders aren't reverse engineering the game. There's a small community that are doing the obfuscation and then everyone else is effectively working from normal Java code.

It's that way for most modding scenes. Someone makes an API/mod loader which makes it easy, then a lot of enthusiastic players make mods.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#238

Post by vintermann » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:18 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #120

1313ed01 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am terrified by Minecraft mods always being distributed from dodgy download sites and not rarely come with their own Windows EXE installers. And as far as I know there is no sandboxing at all in the game (uhm, no pun intended) so once installed the mod has full access to your computer?

As someone whose kid has pulled me into the world of using mods (though not (yet) making them for Java Edition) I think this PSA is worth sharing of how to use minecraft mods without pain and with minimal risk, in case anyone is getting started, or has gotten started and finds it frustrating: 1. Use MultiMC to manage instances with various mods, since mods are rarely compatible with each other, and since each version…

Curseforge is OK, Modrinth is a less commercial alternative. The ten first Google hits if you search "Minecraft mods" are probably NOT OK, most Minecraft-related stuff is SEO optimized to hell by sites which are very fishy.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#239

Post by I_AM_A_SMURF » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:20 AM UTC

_vqpz wrote: post #54

NelsonMinar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 2010 Notch promised > Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source. https://web.archive.org/web/20100301103851/http://www.minecr...

Notch has said he would do many things and rarely follows through with them. I'm still waiting for 0x10c.

TBF sales didn't start dying

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#240

Post by userbinator » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:29 AM UTC

krackers wrote: post #61

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.

Me too. Having only a vague familiarity with the game, I thought that mods were using some official plugin system. I had no idea that minecraft modders (presumably kids/teens?) were not only reverse engineering things but also creating an entire ecosystem to work around proguard.

I wonder how much overlap Minecraft modders have with the Android custom ROM/app-modding community, another thing that the easy "reversibility" of Java has spawned.