Vanilla Minecraft News Discussion

[Ulfengaard]

Guess that at least eliminates any possibility of me pulling a dumb move like updating to the initial 1.6 release :)

Wait. I thought 1.6 was going to kill BTW... or maybe it was 1.5? 1.0? I get confused with so many prophecies.

Get to it in your own time, man. We're not going anywhere. :)

[Sarelth]

Wow, the new launcher is a pain in the ass to use. I tried to use MCPatcher and now its locked my default profile out of online mode. I got the BTW profile to work right and I have an extra profile for the MCpatcher edited version of 1.6.1... Its really frustrating to use...


To explain the issue, I can not get the default profile to use the base 1.6.1 anymore, it only uses the Modded version using MCPatcher... Weird as hell...

[FlowerChild]

Wow, I just watched a portion of a tutorial vid on installing mods with the new launcher (the same one Dinnerbone tweeted). It is indeed a pain in the ass.

With this and the resource packs, I think we should be referring to this vanilla release as "1.6: When Programmers Attack".

[Sarudak]

What's changed about installing mods?

[FlowerChild]

What's changed about installing mods?

Here, watch the vid:

http://youtu.be/nb8dd696jiY

It's not so much the mod installation process that's been made more difficult, as much as it's the pain of setting up profiles for those mods.

It might be simpler in practice than the video maker is portraying it, but man, my eyes totally glazed over while watching that.

[Prof_Ion]

Well after taking a good long look at that video it just pushed me harder not to get the new launcher. I prefer the old one. The mod instillation process is no big deal but its just so much easier to do it with my good old fashioned MC launcher.

[Sarudak]

Hm... Looking at the video as a player, software developer, and mod user I have to say I like the new system more. Although I can see how as a mod developer you would cringe at how the additional options to the user would likely result in an explosion of new tech support problems...

[WeedFather]

Next person that mentions technic anything in this thread gets instantly and permanently banned.

Also: this is not the place to discuss mod installation. Go to the tech support forums.


EDIT: Actually, Poppycocks is gone both because he knew precisely what he was doing here, and because of past behavior.

Oh. My bad indeed. I still love BTW more than vanilla minecraft, though. I'll be sure not to join in with the guy who DARES mention the hideous, disgusting T-word again in the future and to stay on topic.

I couldn't find the video by Dinnerbone (unless it's the one he posted by some guy named xisumavoid), but I did find a video by xisumavoid. Now, it might just be me getting bored just by looking at the process and losing focus, but it sure did seem like a lengthy process. And like Sarelth said, it seems to mess with MCPatcher and stuff...Oh, God. It looks and sounds like a nightmare.

And yet, I'm tempted to try myself, but am a bit nervous. Partially because I like the idea of getting back alpha sounds without the use of mods (if possible), but really. They're just sound effects, and I really dread the process of trying to update my texture pack. I really like just being able to drag and drop things into a single jar or just using MCPatcher by itself to just quickly load things in and out of the jar file in a quick, clean fashion. Why do you wanna take this ease away from me, Mojang? Why don't you like user-friendliness? D:

EDIT: I saw the right video. I got ninja'd.

[FlowerChild]

Hm... Looking at the video as a player, software developer, and mod user I have to say I like the new system more. Although I can see how as a mod developer you would cringe at how the additional options to the user would likely result in an explosion of new tech support problems...

Yeah, that's the thing I'm cringing at, and the reason behind my "when programmers attack" comment.

Yes, I understand what's happening there even though it looks more like a spreadsheet than part of a game. It's basically pure functionality, no presentation, and some of the steps (like needing to copy that second file and edit it as part of profile creation) really seem extraneous.

It may simplify matters for people that keep multiple jars, but I'd say for the more average user that just runs one mod at a time, it just way complicated things .

I'm also dreading having to write the install directions for the mod under that system :)

[BlueRavenGT]

This and the fact that the local version editor is marked "(NYI)" indicate that the current situation isn't permanent.

[FlowerChild]

Yikes. I just tried 1.6 for the first time as I wanted to try out the new launcher and see how much of a pain it is in practice (still haven't installed the mod through it yet though).

I ran into my first group of horses, and the "this isn't Minecraft" sensation was overwhelming. It really does just feel like mod content that was slapped randomly into the game.

Anyways, I guess this is just a "phew" post on the decision I already made not to include them in BTW. If anything, the sensation I had in seeing them in screens and videos was way stronger actually seeing them in game.

BTW: They also seem buggy as all hell. In just a short while observing them I saw a foal walk *into* solid dirt blocks several times and take damage for it.

EDIT: After riding them around a bit and playing with their inventory...so bad. So, so, so bad. Like, zero design consistency with the rest of the game. 'Pours one on the curb for vanilla'.

[WeedFather]

At least pigs are a bit more balanced and fit into the game better. Unlike horses, pigs required a kind of "fuel" (the carrots), which made it much more important to make a carrot farm. They also couldn't jump, and could easily be killed.

IMO, while I personally like the idea of horses in the game, it really does feel like they ripped the horses straight out of the Mo' Creatures mod and just shoe-horned it into vMC, and they don't feel balanced at all. Now pigs (as far as being mounts go) are just the leather armor of the game's mounts.

*pours one onto the curb for vMC pigs*

[Sarelth]

Playing Vanilla with a friend we also noticed that there is a large amount of lag when both of us are riding horses across the land. They are just about as bad as minecart on multiplayer, worse if you factor in that if you jump while lagging you can end up in a bad situation. Jumped off 2 cliffs unintentionally. They also boot you off in deep water, we found out.

The fact that you can make the foals grow up faster by feeding them really takes away from the MC feel of them also i noticed. While I was saddened to hear that FC was planning on taking them out of the mod for BTW, now I am really starting to think it may be for the best. Though I would like to see a pack animal in the game, maybe just not one that is rideable though.

[MrLemon]

One of the biggest reasons why I think horses stand out so much and seem so out of place is becuase they don't really make sense with the other animals. All the other animals seem sort of slow, and clumsy, which makes sense becuase they are pigs and sheep are aren't expected to be agile, so it makes sense they could be made out of blocks.

The problem is that horses which are fast and agile (I assume, I've never actually seen a horse), so making them out of blocks just does't make sense. Plus, Mojang went way overboard with all the saddles and armors and everything they added.

Also riding pigs adds to the surreal feeling of the game, and makes the game more 'quirky'.

[Panda]

i think what im most excited about is leashes, not that there really useful, aside from early game hearding but. Shit tell me dragging mobs and hanging them as bait wouldn't be hella fun ^_^

[FlowerChild]

i think what im most excited about is leashes, not that there really useful, aside from early game hearding but. Shit tell me dragging mobs and hanging them as bait wouldn't be hella fun ^_^

I just played around with them a bit, and again, buggy and inconsistent.

[FlowerChild]

Meh...ok, I just successfully installed the mod using the new launcher. Here are the steps I followed:

-Created a new profile using the 1.5.2 version. Note that you can't mod this new version directly, or the launcher will just automatically "update" it back to a default 1.5.2 install.

-Went into the Minecraft directory, and created a copy of that 1.5.2 folder (in the versions sub directory), renaming it to something else.

-Went into that new directory, changed the name of the .jar and .json to match the name of the folder.

-Went into the .json file with notepad and changed the id parameter to the name of the new folder (HATE this step...my money rests on this being the #1 installation fuck-up).

-Opened up the new .jar file and installed BTW as per normal to it (delete Meta-inf, drag and drop the mod files into it).

-Booted the launcher back up. Note that the above didn't create a new "profile" but instead created a new "version" of MC (hate this part too...will doubtlessly cause confusion).

-Created a new profile making sure to set the version drop down there to the one just created.

What a colossal pain in the ass. I really have no idea how I'm going to write that up clearly in the mod's readme, and I do believe tech support for new users of the mod just became a total nightmare. The actual mod-installation just became step 5 out of 7 :\

[Panda]

Meh...ok, I just successfully installed the mod using the new launcher. Here are the steps I followed:

-Created a new profile using the 1.5.2 version. Note that you can't mod this new version directly, or the launcher will just automatically "update" it back to a default 1.5.2 install.

-Went into the Minecraft directory, and created a copy of that 1.5.2 folder (in the versions sub directory), renaming it to something else.

-Went into that new directory, changed the name of the .jar and .json to match the name of the folder.

-Went into the .json file with notepad and changed the id parameter to the name of the new folder (HATE this step...my money rests on this being the #1 installation fuck-up).

-Opened up the new .jar file and installed BTW as per normal to it (delete Meta-inf, drag and drop the mod files into it).

-Booted the launcher back up. Note that the above didn't create a new "profile" but instead created a new "version" of MC (hate this part too...will doubtlessly cause confusion).

-Created a new profile making sure to set the version drop down there to the one just created.

What a colossal pain in the ass. I really have no idea how I'm going to write that up clearly in the mod's readme, and I do believe tech support for new users of the mod just became a total nightmare. The actual mod-installation just became step 5 out of 7 :\

Sooo... 4.85 works with mc 1.6..? o.O not that im planning on trying tell u re-balance it

[FlowerChild]

Sooo... 4.85 works with mc 1.6..? o.O not that im planning on trying tell u re-balance it

Oh gods no. Please do not start such a vicious rumor :)

I'm talking about the 1.6 *launcher* not 1.6 itself.

Also, just to follow up on this one (I'm being overloaded by "win" right now):

i think what im most excited about is leashes, not that there really useful, aside from early game hearding but. Shit tell me dragging mobs and hanging them as bait wouldn't be hella fun ^_^

I just played around with them a bit, and again, buggy and inconsistent.

To emphasize this point, after playing around with the leads for the few minutes, they were so bad that I wound up asking myself if this was more mod content that Mojang just slapped into the game as is (it's got an almost identical "vibe" to the horses). A quick search on the wiki told me that it was just pure vanilla.

I'm seriously having to hold down a wave of despair right now after checking all this stuff out for the first time and remind myself that I'm moving on. It's extremely depressing.

[Gilberreke]

Sooo... 4.85 works with mc 1.6..? o.O not that im planning on trying tell u re-balance it

No, he downgraded it first

[PatriotBob]

So let me get this straight...

The new launcher supports multiple profiles. That's amazing! We can now install all the mods we could ever want and switch between them! (So... 1)

So that means that we can use multiple versions of minecraft at the same time?
Mods can be installed in a way that makes installing mods simpler for users and developers?

No?
THEN WHY RELEASE IT? It only serves to make things more difficult for both users and content developers. And if anything has been established, it's that "content" developers are mod developers, not Mojang.

Would it have been that difficult to make the launcher have access to all previous versions of minecraft from their build server. Define mod package as the mod jar with a manifest, that just defines what version of minecraft to patch. Then pull the version, patch it in a mcpatcher-like manner and shove it in a profile.

How is that hard?

[FlowerChild]

As far as I understand it, the launcher is still in development, and this will likely be a BTW-specific problem (or at least non-Forge problem).

I get the impression from various tweets that Forge is working towards automating that whole process, at which point I suspect Mojang won't care much about whether .jar mods are a pain to install or not.

On the bright side (I'm trying very hard to come up with one): it seems no harder to install a mod to a previous version of MC now (like 1.5.2) than it would be to the newest version. So, in terms of me ever deciding to not update BTW to newer versions of MC (and with each passing update and the constant downhill slide of the new vanilla stuff, I must admit that's becoming more and more tempting), this new launcher makes that more feasible. You just select the version you are basing this install on from the drop-down, and off you go.

Granted, now all versions are a pain in the ass to install mods to, but at least old ones aren't more so ;)

[Sarudak]

Well that's nice at least. So I can get an old jar from their servers if need be and I can play btw on an old version of minecraft without the update pester? I'm happy. As far as I'm concerned you never need to update to a new version of minecraft ever again...

[FlowerChild]

Well that's nice at least. So I can get an old jar from their servers if need be and I can play btw on an old version of minecraft without the update pester? I'm happy. As far as I'm concerned you never need to update to a new version of minecraft ever again...

Yeah...that's what I'm thinking. Having an unchanging code base to build the mod on would be pure bliss, and I'm thinking the hassle of manually adding any bug-fixes they implement myself to the old versions may now be lesser than doing version updates and having to deal with all the other crap they're throwing in.

Players also get the benefit of basically only having to go through this profile nonsense once, and then never having to worry about it again, just dropping new versions of BTW into that profile jar as they are released.

There's not a single new feature in 1.6 that I would have chosen to add myself, and the smaller debatable features like coal blocks, carpets, or hay bales are like under 30 minute jobs for me to add myself to the game anyways (I mean from scratch).

[Sarudak]

Also then vanilla can't steal anymore IDs from you. The one downside being that if someone has an old world that they've been updating with vanilla they can't easily port it over to BTW. But I think now that you consider this a total conversion that's less of a concern.