* One dude is maintaining Forge/MinecraftCodersPack/Fernflower, which powers pretty much every mod
* Ad-infested forums and adfly links are the preferred way of distributing mods
* The last moddable client version is 1.8.0, 1.9 is out.
* Getting a mod started is really difficult, and it's not clear what should/shouldn't be in source control.
Props to the author for finding a way around all of this.
I'm glad to see this though. I have been working on a file editor for minecraft[2] that might eventually work for keeping copies of docker logs, editing code or some such. Advanced VIM functions are not on my docket however. Baby steps.
Maybe more modders will move to mineTest if Microsoft/Mojang continues to sidestep the Minecraft modding community.
[1] http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/min...
[2] http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/min...
[1]: https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/043ab247-8771...
Update changelog: http://mcupdate.tumblr.com/
Forge is maintained by cpw and Lex, as well as a large community of modders. MCP is a completely different project and is still headed by Searge and ProfMobius (now with Mojang), among others. And I'm not sure what Fernflower has to do with anything.
>Ad-infested forums and adfly links are the preferred way of distributing mods
Partially true. Many have moved to Curse or CurseForge (which isn't any better).
>The last moddable client version is 1.8.0, 1.9 is out.
1.9 is not out, and work cannot even begin on enabling 1.9 mods until MCP is released. They'd be working with obfuscated code otherwise.
>Getting a mod started is really difficult, and it's not clear what should/shouldn't be in source control.
Having just recently gone through this, I wouldn't say it's that bad. It will generate a .gitignore file for you, and set up workspaces for both IDEA and Eclipse. Other IDEs may be more difficult to setup.
> ...
> 1.9 is not out, and work cannot even begin on enabling 1.9 mods until MCP is released. They'd be working with obfuscated code otherwise.
That's where Fernflower comes in; it deobfuscates the minecraft class files for forge and the modders. If the compiled minecraft jar were to "move enough bytecode" to Java 9 (that's a very inaccurate way to put it, but just for the sake of argument), and Fernflower were to be abandoned before then, it would be extremely difficult for forge and MCP to be updated, let alone all the mods themselves.
Edit: In addition, LexManos is no longer the sole contributor, cpw has returned, and MCP has always been a separate project which has managed to keep a core team.
About 1.9, because the minecraft code is obfuscated and very complex, updating forge to new minecraft versions takes a long time for MCP to release mappings, then forge to port etc, so I'm really not surprised that updating takes a while.
Most mods these days are distributed through curse forge, which although has adverts, is reputable and curse pays per download. The minecraft forums are as buggy and crap laden as always unfortunately.
By MDK do you mean Forge? MDK doesn't seem to be used except in one forum thread.
~ modcraft install <package> # installs <package> to your minecraft server
~ modcraft create <some_new_package_you_wanna_make> # creates a new package with your .gitignore already setup so you can make your own mod
etc. etc.
Years ago when I played minecraft I remember someone was hired specifically to make Minecraft have an API to make modding easier. What happened to that?
Minecraft's mod scene is a mess. Whatever Mojang's efforts were to make the game mod friendly have never seen the light of day. It's really sad because mod authors have done some really amazing stuff with the engine, but because every update breaks everything its too hard to keep most of the running for more than a version or two.
I've heard anecdotal reports of malware being spread through these unofficial mirrors too.
Can you imagine if there had been mods.minecraft.com from the start with some kind of central organisation?
http://www.learntomod.com/ looks like a good idea but I'm put off by the subscription model.
Mojang/MS are working on version 1.9 but the latest version released (by default) to clients is 1.8.8, the rest are snapshots of 1.9 (IE not official version releases.. which means in turn modding tools and server frameworks will not upgrade until the full release of 1.9)