Better Than Wolves Forum

So, as the days and weeks go by, something is becoming very apparent to me:

For various reasons, I hate being tied to the Forge.

Ever jumping on board with that thing has become a very large source of regret for me and has sucked a lot of the fun out of making this mod.

I wanted to open this thread up to general discussion as to how people would feel about such a move, and how it would impact them.

Please try to keep it civil. I understand this will likely be a passionate subject for many, but I am bringing this topic to the table to give you guys a chance to voice your opinions before I make any decisions.

Well, first, it goes without saying that ultimatelly you should do whatever you think is best for the mod. If you can't properly add new functionality with whatever restrictions the Forge has, then maybe you should drop it.

Then, could you elaborate more on the reasons you feel like dropping forge? I remember asking this before and that you didn't want to get into the subject, but its a little hard to have a proper discution on it without more information.

Am I allowed to ask why forge has

FlowerChild wrote:sucked a lot of the fun out of making this mod.

?

And, the only major change that would happen would this might (almost guarantied to) break 100% compatibility with the other popular mods (i.e. BC, IC2, EE, RP2 etc.), and this in turn my confuse a lot of users as to why their mods worked in 1.8.1 but now it 1.0.0 they crash.

I know Forge introduces a ton of incompatibilities with other Mods. This happens every time someone tries to introduce a new standard:
I for one would welcome it TBH. There are only 2 mods i want to use: BTW and Watershader. From what i can tell, Forge is the main cause for stopping the two mods working. If i could get these two mods running, i would be a very happy Miner.

Hmm, this is a major decision in my opinion. Right now, if I want to play any of the Forge mods together, I just drop all of em in the /mods/ folder and they work (not exactly, sometimes it's the jar, but that's not the point). Compatibility with other mods is at an all-time high. Even though I'm leaning towards less and less mods, I'd say the largest part of your user base does care a lot about compatibility.

Here are my thoughts on the current state of Forge: it's obvious that this is NOT in fact an open source project, this is major. In theory, it's OS, but to commit new features, I need to contact Eloraam or SpaceToad, two notoriously hard to reach people. Even then, I've noticed patches taking weeks to finally make it into Forge if they are written by other people. In terms of updating to new versions, Forge is slow to update, due to multiple reasons, mostly the fact that Toad and Elo are alone to update it and the fact that it's a rather large code base.

Considering all that and reasons of your own I don't even know about, I can see the problem clearly. Towards the user-base, however, there is a BIG value to having BTW Forge compatible. Currently I'm leaning towards this advice: drop the Forge if necessary, but keep compatibility if possible in any way. I'm not sure how far I can take this discussion implementation wise, but I can see options where you keep Forge compatibility while not relying on it as an API.

One last thing to consider: recent tweets and reddit posts indicate heavily that Notch is going to support one official API, be it self-created or support of an official one. Rumor seems to indicate he is going to ask the Bukkit guys to create one for him.

I was determined to keep this out of the public eye, but since one of the other parties involved seems to have no problems publicly justifying her actions:

Well, it comes down to two things:

-My participation in the Forge has facilitated the creation of unauthorized mod-packs.
-I can't stand working with Eloraam.

I have nothing but respect for SpaceToad, but Eloraam's ever increasing trend of ripping-off functionality from other major Forge mods, and dominating the development of what was supposed to be a communal API to suit her own development agenda, turning it into this bloated mass that only she's able to maintain, is just not something I have any desire to collaborate with.

She's an extremely talented programmer, and I used to get along with her quite well, but a month or two ago (around the time she released Flax and Pipes in RP), I realized I couldn't stand it anymore and largely dropped out of development of the Forge. Considering she's now the primary developer on the API, and I don't even want to talk to her anymore, leaving BTW dependent on her is not something I'm at all comfortable with.

Since then, I haven't submitted a single hook and have just gone back to making my own base-class modifications to avoid having to deal with her. That obviously leaves me as an outsider in the development of the API, and considering how dependent BTW is on it, I'm feeling increasingly uncomfortable about it.

So yeah, that's the story. I've been keeping it under my hat for the sake of preserving the peace, but it's reached the point now where it makes very little difference whether I do or not.

Well, those sound like some pretty serious gripes, and not anything that we really can work around.

One of the things I spend a lot of my time on is Roleplaying in Lord of the Rings Online. We get a lot of collaboration there too, and we all work together to make something (namely the story of our characters). Sometimes, a situation very similar to this will occur. The most responsible and adult thing to do is to try and work it out with someone that is being unfair to others. Failing that - and not every situation can be worked out - you excuse yourself politely from the situation. Sometimes /everyone/ will excuse themselves from the situation simultaneously to escape the problem person, but this can't be expected either.

Now in LOTRO, when I excuse myself from RP, I just affect me. You will affect all of your users by excusing yourself here, but I still think it's the best, most responsible thing to do. If it were a technical problem, that'd be one thing, or even a misunderstanding. This however sounds like a personality conflict, and there's only so much you can do to solve those.

The only 3 mods that I really want to use together are BTW, optifine, and Somnia. If you can keep compatibilty with them I'm 100% onboard with any decision you come to.

I really hope this doesn't come across the wrong way, but I am just wondering, have you voiced your thoughts on this to either SpaceToad or Eloraam?

I was expecting this to be the main reason yeah. The Railcraft guy has similar problems. He had to write his own API on top of Forge, just because his patches never went through, forcing incompatibility between him and Steve's Carts, the other major cart mod.

Seeing that the situation has evolved into "I can't work with her", I propose you just drop it. I see no good coming out of you trying to use an API you are frustrated with. The user-base is better off with one good incompatible mod, than a possible train wreck waiting to happen.

You having to keep coding on top of the bloat that is Forge right now is not worth it, just for compatibility's sake.

That said, ideally BTW would be Forge compatible, while not relying on it. Is that an option at all?

As for the illegal modpacks, maybe been on the forge facilitated their creation, but isn't it probably due to the fact that the mod is compatible with all other mods in the forge? I mean, BTW is a very popular mod, and as log as it is compatible people will try to add them to mod packs... I don't think this has so much to do with Forge as it has with the compatibility itself and the popularity.

The other problem is bad.... If it is really impossible to change this situation between you and Eloraam, then well, the mod has no future. This is just going to escalate until you can't add anything new to the mod because of the Forge restrictions. The way I see it, there are two options... Try to find some common ground with Eloraam so you can add whatever hooks you need in the Forge, but if that's impossible I think dropping Forge will be the only way. There will be quite a shitstorm your way though, the MC forum thread will probably loose control over this issue. Or maybe I'm been a pessimist, but I don't see the "gen pop" been very understandable of this decision. It should probably be a last resort thing.

Thats my oppinion..

morvelaira wrote:If it were a technical problem, that'd be one thing, or even a misunderstanding. This however sounds like a personality conflict, and there's only so much you can do to solve those.

It is a technical thing too, a lot of recent Forge edits have become largely pervasive to the game and compatibility with other mods, just for the sake of having complex RedPower features.

morvelaira wrote: Now in LOTRO, when I excuse myself from RP, I just affect me. You will affect all of your users by excusing yourself here, but I still think it's the best, most responsible thing to do. If it were a technical problem, that'd be one thing, or even a misunderstanding. This however sounds like a personality conflict, and there's only so much you can do to solve those.

Yeah, affecting the users is where this becomes a question for me rather than just a clear-cut decision. Honestly, if not for the people using the mod, and how it would affect them, I would have ejected from the Forge long ago.

I don't use other mods, so from a personal standpoint, I really couldn't care less about compatibility. However, I know a lot of other people do, and have no doubt about it: if I took this step, you wouldn't be able to play BTW and ANY Forge mod together. Compatibility would be completely broken in a far more pronounced way than before the Forge existed.

That's largely why I wanted to discuss this here. I'd really like to know how such a move would affect the people that play BTW the most.

Gilberreke wrote:It is a technical thing too, a lot of recent Forge edits have become largely pervasive to the game and compatibility with other mods, just for the sake of having complex RedPower features.

^^^^ This ^^^^

She really has no sense of moderation when it comes to these things and routinely rewrites large portions of vMC to get the features she desires, which also leads to her being the only person that knows how the whole thing works, and whom is capable of maintaining it.

We got into big arguments about that when the Forge first came together, but I eventually conceded, which in retrospect, was a huge mistake.

FlowerChild wrote:That's largely why I wanted to discuss this here. I'd really like to know how such a move would affect the people that play BTW the most.

Well, as for me, even though I would prefer it remain compatible, I can definetelly live with the decision to drop the Forge if there is no other way. If keeping working with Forge will affect the mod in a negative way, the mod itself should come first.

FlowerChild wrote:That's largely why I wanted to discuss this here. I'd really like to know how such a move would affect the people that play BTW the most.

Yeah, not having BuildCraft available and not having working mine-carts is a bit of an issue for me, but I'd rather have BTW solo than all the other mods together, so it's all about BTW for me.

Would a user-maintained compatibility patch be an option here? I'm just thinking out loud.

Personally, I never use any other mod besides BTW, so the only effect this would have on me would be I'd have less I'd need to install on every fresh jar. But in general, I'm supportive of any change that makes the mod less frustrating and more enjoyable to work on.

Gilberreke wrote: Would a user-maintained compatibility patch be an option here? I'm just thinking out loud.

I'd have to think about it, but I doubt I'd authorize it since it would necessitate redistribution of mod-files and leave the door open for Technic (let's call a spade a spade here).

Hey, the only two sad parts I see in this is how drastic your opinions seem to have changed about forge and that you'll lose infinite sprites... two things you voiced for at the time of the 'forge wars' at MCF.
I tend to try to always be a 'middle man' kind of guy in situations, but you seem to have strong reasons for this considerations. So I guess it ain't my thing to butt in on....

Honestly I only need my beloved BTW to make vMC to be the game I loved at first try (except for Legend of Zelda OoT, I have some heavy childhood memories associated there).

I don't honestly know Eloraam's stance or situation in this, but this seems like an unexpected snowball effect... and only very professionalism would be able to solve it....

Dude, this is your decision to make, and I'd only say: do what's best for you primarily, secondary see if you'd have the will to keep a good relation with the modding community. Although it's probably not worth it if some of the larger modders are so communication allergic.....

Edit by a ninja storm, and a ninja: First part mainly, bolding as my main statement...

What about overrighting the forge classes and add the hooks you need yourself? I don't know how hard to mantain this would be, or even if you are allowed to do that... Assuming you are though, after you have whatever methods you need, you'd probably just have to copy/paste them over whenever the forge was updated, which doesn't happen all that often anyway...

Well, I don't know exactly how adding hooks to the forge work, so tell me if I'm speaking madness :P

CreeperCommando wrote:Hey, the only two sad parts I see in this is how drastic your opinions seem to have changed about forge and that you'll lose infinite sprites... two things you voiced for at the time of the 'forge wars' at MCF.

No, I absolutely won't be losing infinite textures. The main work that would be involved for me in detaching from the Forge would be to write my own routines to do the same thing.

EDIT: And BTW, I do still believe in what the Forge represents. I just think it's unfortunate that what had great potential for being a collaborative effort turned out to be dominated by a single modder with a very definite agenda.

If it wasn't such an inconvenience for you, i would most likely say something else, but since this seems to be bringing you down so much, just drop forge continue to do what you want to do with the mod.

I'm also one of those who also use only BTW (and OptiFine). So, personally I'd be largely unaffected.

The picture you're painting looks like that of strife. I suspect you are not going to be the last to leave Forge.

Just want to chime in and say that I personally don't care about compatibility. I only ever use BTW (Not counting MCPatcher and the occational install of TMI for texture testing).

I can understand why others would like it though.