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Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

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Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#61

Post by krackers »

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.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#63

Post by criddell »

stronglikedan wrote: post #40
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…

The Meta Quest is very easy to develop for. There's tons of games of all caliber from solo devs up to full studios. The reason the Metaverse is failing is because no one wants it, even though they keep shoving it down people's throats. VR gamers just want to play games, not dick around in "worlds". Meta is tone deaf to this.

I don't think they're tone deaf, they just know that inexpensive gaming headsets can't make them enough money. They've invested something like $100 billion into VR and "only" sold 20 million headsets The revenue generated annually is almost nothing.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#65

Post by kvam »

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…

Agree! We saw this a lot. Launching with the Quest 3, we were often the first company to do X, Y, Z despite being months after new features had been released in the SDKs because they were poorly documented (and often even conflicting).

Diverging even slightly from the demo use case would quickly feel like Sisyphus; so close, but never succeeding in getting over the hill.

Good for marketing in certain cases (to be the first), but bad for the community of builders

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#67

Post by willis936 »

kragen wrote: post #34
ajkjk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, I think they're looking for the official game to be open sourced... that's much more appealing than a knockoff since it's the version everyone actually plays.

It's much less appealing because it's much harder to mod.

It's much more appealing because it has a much more vibrant modding community.

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#68

Post by _vqpz »

ecshafer wrote: post #59
_vqpz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He sold the game to Microsoft, his promises kind of don't matter anymore.

I think you meant to reply to the parent comment, I never mentioned Minecraft

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#69

Post by bitexploder »

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.

Over time people learned the key APIs and classes that you needed to interact with. And obfuscated Java is like an order of magnitude easier to work with than machine code. Once someone figured out how to do something it was generally pretty easy to use that interface to do your own thing. Modders of course still often hit edge cases that required more reversing, but yeah, it was really cool to watch over the last 15+ years :)

Re: Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

#70

Post by 1313ed01 »

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 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?
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