Flower's Dev Diary (Week of November 12th)

[walker_boh_65]

"Good news this only affects the client"

How is that good news in any way at all?

[thekyz]

How is that good news in any way at all?

Server operator (apparently) don't need to update the server for clients to work with it.

[destineternel]

Well we might see a 1.4.6 though due to the ghost torch bug still not fixed as users are reporting.

Bugtracker link.
https://mojang.atlassian.net/browse/MC- ... ment-22149

[magikeh]

Hey with that small implementation of the ability of fire to stay burning on the side of a concentrated hellfire block opens a new method of killing. You just need to make a hallway (2 high) with a waterstream, then replace the highest block with concentrated hellfire and light er up! The mobs float past and take fire damage, also you can configure how much damage you want each mob to take with how long the hallway is. ^_^/ Mad props to you man!

PS: Don't burn yourself out too hard man!

/me waggles finger

[SterlingRed]

Well we might see a 1.4.6 though due to the ghost torch bug still not fixed as users are reporting.

Bugtracker link.
https://mojang.atlassian.net/browse/MC- ... ment-22149

Reading the comments it would appear that it didn't work because mojang literally copied and pasted the code posted by the user without renaming the variables named by MCP.

*face palm*

[Graphite]

This is just getting embarassing to watch... bugfixing for dummies:

1. reproduce the reported problem locally
2. attempt to fix it
3. check whether the change actually fixed it

How the heck can any serious coder not know those steps.

[FlowerChild]

Yikes. Yeah, that thread is getting embarrassing. It really looks like they implemented his change (poorly) without even trying it themselves, and declared it "fixed". This also means that they never bothered to even understand why the bug had occurred to begin with, and just copied it verbatim. Dinnerbone was then snarky enough to basically imply it was the solution presented at fault.

Wow. Wtf? I saw that thread and had the bug solved and tested in a total of about 5 minutes.

[Sarudak]

Sad day. Apparently not only are they terrible designers they're not even competent coders? That or no one over there even wants to still be working on this project?

[SterlingRed]

without even trying it themselves, and declared it "fixed".

I seriously wonder how many of the other 100 plus bug fixes are "fixed". It seems to me that a bug fix to mojang means to throw a bandaid at whatever they feel like might be the problem and then release it.

[FlowerChild]

I seriously wonder how many of the other 100 plus bug fixes are "fixed". It seems to me that a bug fix to mojang means to throw a bandaid at whatever they feel like might be the problem and then release it.

Yeah, that's precisely my feeling. There's only two of those bug-fixes that I've looked at directly: item collisions, and the particles. Both were broken in a rather fundamental way.

Granted, that's a small statistical sample, but it doesn't exactly have me overflowing with confidence at the moment. Frankly, it makes me REALLY worried about what's going to happen with the mod API and this rendering rewrite they're undertaking.

When we also look at what happened with the SMP merge, where basically the client was suddenly subject to all the problems of SMP, and where the SSP game (which as I've mentioned before, is what the vast majority of people play) became lesser in the deal, the magic 8-ball begins spitting out some pretty dire shit.

[Sarudak]

We can always go back to an earlier version if it gets bad enough... I guess...

[kaos78414]

Yeah, wow. I'm not sure what to think about this. I generally try to assume that everything Jeb and Dinnerbone and all of them are doing is on the up and up, but these design decisions and "bug fixes" are starting to pile on such that it's starting to look like laziness on their part.

That comment by Dinnerbone in that thread is especially disheartening.

[SterlingRed]

I know its easy to judge mojang, but what the masses don't get here is that this isn't a programming issue. Bug fixes is fundamentally problem resolution at its core. And mojang has proven over and over that they don't follow any standard procedure for problem resolution. It appears to be the same issue with the api in that mojang is approaching it wrong from a fundamental level. It seems to be a cultural problem with the company that hasn't been rectified by adding new talent.
This makes me have no hope for the API launch going anywhere remotely smoothly. If it weren't for btw with a competent designer at its head, I would have abandoned mc long ago.
Its frustrating to see your skill spent so much on putting out mojangs fires when you seem capable of doing so much more with btw if only the platform was stable. I really appreciate what you do to make btw!

[DragonMaus]

I think we'll all breath a sigh of relief once Mojang finally drops support for Minecraft.

[muggsbud]

I think we'll all breath a sigh of relief once Mojang finally drops support for Minecraft.

Anyone else think that it's kind of sad that we're hoping a developer quits supporting it's own game?

back when notch was the only one working on MC he said he'd never 'be done' with it, that it would be his hobby. I'm kind of hoping he comes back and rescues his baby from Mojang's evil clutches. the way he built wolves may have been a bad idea, but at least he had a goal with them.

[FlowerChild]

BTW guys, I found another broken "fix" while finalizing the release. Turns out they "fixed" the minecart sounds, and now they spam out noise at a very high rate when carts are rolling downhill. It's extremely loud and annoying.

Go go bug fix meisters.

[Thorium-232]

Granted, that's a small statistical sample, but it doesn't exactly have me overflowing with confidence at the moment. Frankly, it makes me REALLY worried about what's going to happen with the mod API and this rendering rewrite they're undertaking.

It's truly unfortunate that the Minecraft ToS forbids forking of old versions, because it's looking more and more like this whole thing is going to snowball into a maintenance nightmare for you. This keeps up, and pretty soon it will be easier to code a whole new game to apply the mod to rather than fix Minecraft's problems.

[dawnraider]

I think we'll all breath a sigh of relief once Mojang finally drops support for Minecraft.

Anyone else think that it's kind of sad that we're hoping a developer quits supporting it's game?

What are you talking about? We don't want FC to quit!

On another note, this is all really quite sad that they can't even bother to test their "fixes" for as FC said 5ish minutes. And the fact that they didn't even try to figure out the cause.

[devak]

he means Mojang, not Flowerchild

[Elevatator]

he means Mojang, not Flowerchild

Oh, really?

[Uristqwerty]

Eh, the bukkit team was just as bad back when they were completely separate from Mojang. One early pull request to fix rail direction updates broke wool colors (the person who "fixed" it didn't understand how obfuscation worked, and it was entirely a fluke that their change made rails work again), and that was only required because Dinnerbone broke that while fixing half slab placement. So of course the most logical thing to do was to put it in the next official CraftBukkit update, without nearly enough testing, forcing servers to have to put up with only having white wool blocks for however many weeks it was until they fixed it, plus however many weeks after that before it made it into a non-test release.

That the bukkit policy of never testing things and Mojang's lack of required bugfix testing lead to this sort of thing is not at all surprising.

[dawnraider]

he means Mojang, not Flowerchild

*facepalm*

To explain the joke:

Spoiler

Show

I meant that FC is the dev of the "game", not just a stupid toy that isn't even fur anymore.

[Sarudak]

I think that might have been a tad too subtle for the internet :)

[FlowerChild]

not just a stupid toy that isn't even fur anymore.

I think the real question is whether it ever really was fur or not, although it does explain me stroking my monitor and saying "my precious" so often.

Coming soon to a splash screen text near you:

"BTW: Fur for the whole family."

[devak]

he means Mojang, not Flowerchild

*facepalm*

To explain the joke:

Spoiler

Show

I meant that FC is the dev of the "game", not just a stupid toy that isn't even fur anymore.

My experience with sarcasm and such on the internet, is that the "it's sarcasm" clue has to be fairly obvious.

You see, 80% of our communication is body language. Sarcasm is a higher form of communication that does not translate well over the internet.