Vanilla Minecraft News Discussion

[BinoAl]

In the second part of their conversation Grum sais they will drop multiplayer support for older version in the future. Meaning people won't be able to log in on the servers. This would kill multiplayer btw :(

Well I think that the 'online-mode' option in the server.properties file would allow connecting to an unsupported server, so have no fear for the multiplayer of BTW ^^

Sure, but that allows people to connect with any name they want using certain programs. It would wreak havoc on any server

[FlowerChild]

Again: don't start a panic off of some conversation snippet. I'd ask for the subject of BTW multiplayer hypothetically breaking with a future Mojang change to be dropped.

[Rob]

This might have been covered, but does anyone else read this FAQ as saying that only players who use 1.8 will be able to take advantage of the name change feature?
Source.

I might have to buy a new Minecraft account to have the handle I really want after all. Shame.

[FlowerChild]

This might have been covered, but does anyone else read this FAQ as saying that only players who use 1.8 will be able to take advantage of the name change feature?

Yes, I think that's the case based on this:

Is this compatible with 1.7.5?

No, sorry. We had to change the protocol to support the new player formats.

Just a guess, but I suspect that they need to keep track of the original account name somewhere so that people don't use this to bypass server bans and such. Thus, while you might change your in-game display name, I doubt you're changing the name that is used to track you. Otherwise it would just be total chaos where bans would become meaningless and you might even potentially be able to whitelist yourself by changing your name to match someone else's.

Anyways, I suspect then that the server would need to be updated to display the changed name in-game rather than the original.

Just at a glance, depending on how it's implemented (...and...Mojang..) I see a huge potential for chaos with something like this for what amounts to a bunch of wankery that could have easily been avoided with a simple "Don't like the name you chose for yourself initially? Oh well".

[EvanT]

As long as the server admin does not know the original username bans will have to check the whole username history to identify a player.. and then you could find yourself blocked or whitelisted because you had a username another person had at a different time.. That is why one should use player ids for that instead of strings if you plan to allow editing.

[FlowerChild]

As long as the server admin does not know the original username bans will have to check the whole username history to identify a player.. and then you could find yourself blocked or whitelisted because you had a username another person had at a different time.. That is why one should use player ids for that instead of strings if you plan to allow editing.

Yup, exactly. Hence why I see potential for chaos here. It's the kind of thing you either accommodate from the start or just live with down the road and grow a pair when it comes to saying "no" to players.

[retep998]

I thought they were going to use a user ID system of sorts, where every player has a unique ID that servers can ban against, and your username is nothing more than a nickname. Nothing functional is done against your nickname, only your user ID.
At least, this is what I think Mojang is doing, I may be entirely wrong, but I seriously hope not.

[Niyu]

I thought they were going to use a user ID system of sorts, where every player has a unique ID that servers can ban against, and your username is nothing more than a nickname. Nothing functional is done against your nickname, only your user ID.
At least, this is what I think Mojang is doing, I may be entirely wrong, but I seriously hope not.

From the FAQ that rob posted:

That’s a lot of numbers, but now Minecraft 1.7.6 pre-release 1 is available for testing! This is a huge step towards one of the most requested features since the birth of Minecraft; Name changes! This version provides complete support for identifying players through unique IDs and not by names, so that no matter what a player is called they will remain banned/whitelisted/oped/etc on servers

[devak]

On the rest of the modding community front here's a long chatlog with a modder and Grum
(...)
and an overall a general lack of understanding of the modding community...

I think it gave a nice bit of insight of how things go at mojang:

Spoiler

Show

[01:44] <Grum> the roadmap is 'working towards the api'
{....}
[01:46] <Grum> Yes, but why would we care you already have a mod for something?
[01:46] <Arcanis_> Because you should care what your users use. granted not everyone uses mods.
[01:46] <Grum> ooooh really?!
[01:46] <Arcanis_> Nowhere near everyone.
[01:46] <Grum> ;)
[01:47] <Arcanis_> Buut. Features should be secondary to fixing and patching things.
[01:47] <Grum> also, 99% of the 'features' added to the game are 'spare time'-things. which they are
[01:47] <Arcanis_> Alright, I can take that.
[01:47] <Grum> 4/5 people are working almost exclusively on hacking the code clean. jens adds stuff and splits time between PC and PE
[01:47] <Grum> so in fact its 4/4.5 people almost exclusively cleaning up the code

(modified to make it more readable)

[01:49] <Grum> every change we need to do touches ~40% of the codebase
[01:49] <Grum> there is HUGE overlap even in our team of 4 working on cleaning up

[01:51] <Grum> we could perhaps use 1 extra person
[01:52] <Grum> but even that will mean i'll have to spend 50% of my time making sure everyone is doing what they should be doing in the way they should be doing it while not creating a new mess or causing conflicts
[01:52] <Arcanis_> Being a project leader... not an easy task.
[01:53] <Grum> i'm not a project leader -- thats the thing
[01:53] <Arcanis_> A lot is expected of you.
[01:53] <Grum> but i am the one who is by far the most critical of 'how code looks'
[01:53] <Arcanis_> Which makes you the key player. Not technically in charge, but definitely in authority.
[01:54] <Grum> yes, i make people rewrite their code plenty of times a week :P
[01:54] <Arcanis_> That certainly slows everything down needlessly.
[01:54] <Grum> needlessly?
[01:54] <Arcanis_> I mean
[01:54] <Grum> if i cannot read the new code they've written they are writing shitty code?
[01:54] <Arcanis_> Yes, I'm agreeing with you.
[01:55] <Grum> remember that thing i liked so much? "Code should be self-documenting - when possible meaningful names and good design should make comments unnecessary"

[01:15] <Grum> even for ourselves, with 5 people, we run into eachother all the time
[01:15] <Grum> because its a huge pain in the ass tightly clustered ball of spaghetti code right now
[01:15] <Grum> that has to be untangled
[01:15] <Arcanis_> Alright. Well until you do open to your community, your community will continue to be incredibly frustrated. There is a lot of it going around.
[01:15] <Grum> and for a simple frikking change like 'not having the code decide which texture goes where on a block' you end up hacking at the code for two weeks, doing changes in over 100 files

The TL;DR version:

Mojang is still working on the API.
Their code is a mess.
They're working to make it a non-mess
Because it's a mess, making changes is horrible
Because it's a mess, and apparently people still don't properly code (by which Grum means "self ducumenting")
because people don't properly code, Grum makes people rewrite it so it's basically double work, all the time.

On modding he kind of has a point. It's suggested to him to have others help Mojang because crowdsourcing, then Grum basically bites back saying "if forge takes forever to update, shouldn't crowdsourcing make it fast?".

On the updates breaking everything, he basically blames MCP and Forge for it. He also basically says that if people wrote API's for what they needed, rather than everything, stuff would go faster.

[logorouge]

So those chat logs are basically explaining that a whole team at Mojang are wasting the majority of their time making the code look pretty in the hope of eventually pursuing the fabled mod api. Wow, just wow. And then there's this:

He also basically says that if people wrote API's for what they needed, rather than everything, stuff would go faster.

Yeah, if only people did that...

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, if only people did that...

Hehe...yup. That one totally deserves a:

<golf clap>

4/4.5 people spending almost as long as it took Notch to make the game "cleaning up" the code just so they can start working on the mod API. That situation has transcended tragedy and is barreling into outright comedy.

[Stormweaver]

You know, if instead of trying to dissect what's left of the dying horse and sew it back up all neatly, they just admitted that they wanted to rebuild minecraft from scratch - I'd support that. Hell, I'd probably buy Minecraft 2 if/when it came out. Throwing massive amounts of money in terms of development hours into a fetid swamp of code doesn't exactly sound...like there's anyone at mojang thinking business. or practicality. Or common sense.

Maybe there's some master plan they have, that doesn't defy logic in all it's forms, that the common man isn't privy to. I'd really like to believe there is.

[FlowerChild]

Throwing massive amounts of money in terms of development hours into a fetid swamp of code

The thing is...it wasn't a fetid swamp. Was everything perfect? No, of course not, but things hardly ever are in production code.

Never stopped me from getting big things done and done fast...alone...with deobfuscated source. The way that chat log sounds, it's as if things are somehow impossible to do with the current code base, yet one look at the modding community for MC and you can see that's obviously not the case.

This isn't a result of the code being crap. It's a result of making overly ambitious plans that didn't suit the game architecture and other things I'll refrain from speculating on due to my current aversion to drama.

However, while I disagree with the base assertion that any of this was necessary or reasonable, I do agree that if *they* felt it was, a sequel would have been a much more reasonable way to approach it.

[hawk]

"Poor is the pupil that does not surpass his master". Look, grum is obviously frustrated that a team of 4-1/2 including him can't improve on the the work of one. FC was able to stand on the shoulders of a giant and make a valuable contribution (can't wait to see what you do as an independent) that furthered a ground breaking concept while these guys can't even get out of their own way to maintain it. It's sad really... almost as sad as attacking the syntax of the guy who's code the sole reason you have a job to bitch about in the first place.

[MoRmEnGiL]

Look, readable code is one thing but this

<Grum> yes, i make people rewrite their code plenty of times a week :P

is juvenile.

Get your act together mojang. I wish notch would step in and tell everyone to fuck off and retire the curent mc codebase and build minecraft 2 with the goals in mind from the start. And Carl is a bad CEO if he just lets this go on.

OTOH, new slimeblocks are cool ;p

[FlowerChild]

It's sad really... almost as sad as attacking the syntax of the guy who's code the sole reason you have a job to bitch about in the first place.

^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^

Every time I hear some junior programmer with zero industry experience bitch about Notch's code I have a mild stroke. The guy moved mountains and implemented the kind of game concept that the world had never really seen before, largely invented a form of architecture to make that happen at reasonable levels of performance, and managed to do that largely on his own.

He got shit done. Major shit where if you look at the games that have come and are coming since, it has totally changed the nature of game development. Were corners cut along the way to make that possible? Fuck yeah, and gods bless him for having the good sense to do exactly that for the sake of expediency.

Watching these guys wanking it for years on end and blaming his code for their lack of forward progress is truly astounding. Even more amazing is when I've seen him act all apologetic about his code over twitter or what have you.

Makes me simultaneously want to give him a hug and slap to snap him out of that ass-backwards way of thinking about what he's accomplished :)

[Yhetti]

Get your act together mojang. I wish notch would step in and tell everyone to fuck off and retire the curent mc codebase and build minecraft 2 with the goals in mind from the start. And Carl is a bad CEO if he just lets this go on.

OTOH, new slimeblocks are cool ;p

I always thought Minecraft 2.0 would be a good place to start again, they could start over as a completely new game and even charge money for it in hopes that it would increase their motivation and give them an idea of where they stand with their consumers.

[TheGreatIntelligence]

Get your act together mojang. I wish notch would step in and tell everyone to fuck off and retire the curent mc codebase and build minecraft 2 with the goals in mind from the start. And Carl is a bad CEO if he just lets this go on.

OTOH, new slimeblocks are cool ;p

I always thought Minecraft 2.0 would be a good place to start again, they could start over as a completely new game and even charge money for it in hopes that it would increase their motivation and give them an idea of where they stand with their consumers.

There you go Notch. Minecraft 2.0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkIJsnLBA4c

[Yhetti]

There you go Notch. Minecraft 2.0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkIJsnLBA4c

It's sad that I am watching that movie right now.

[devak]

Makes me simultaneously want to give him a hug and slap to snap him out of that ass-backwards way of thinking about what he's accomplished :)

doesn't have to be mutually exclusive :P


But, given that the updates are hurting modders, takes a crapton of work just to get done with 4 people...


Can't they just fire 3 of the guys and keep 1 guy, working on the code, building cool stuff?

it saves:
-modders a headache
-players an update frenzy
-Mojang 7 people's worth of pay (4 people doing double work reduced to 1 productive)
-gives new cool proper features.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I think a code freeze on a game is one of the best things that can happen for modding. Rearchitecting the game on the other hand is the worst.

It's rather amazing what's happened when looked at from that perspective. As far as I understood it, the mod API was originally intended to facilitate modding (although it seems to have mutated since into facilitating downloading and installing mods instead with the actual modding that would give people something to download taking a back seat), when really the pursuit of it has been doing the exact opposite for the past couple of years.

Modding an alpha game is hell due to the constant adaptations it requires, and they've basically put MC into a perpetual alpha state.

[barcode]

Yeah, I think a code freeze on a game is one of the best things that can happen for modding. Rearchitecting the game on the other hand is the worst.

...particularly at this time. I don't know the latest sales figures of Minecraft, but I certainly think the novelty aspect of it is wearing off rather quickly. If this effort was undertaken in the background to build - like it was said - Minecraft 2, that would be fine, but re-coding the game? It's not like the code was so broken that modding wasn't possible, so what's the benefit? Less work on the API? Who's going to need the API if all major modders get sick of the Mojang crap?

[JiiKoo]

Well, sounds like there's some talk about changing the EULA regarding servers and people making money off of them. There's a video that sheds some light on the situation. After reading parts of the pastebin chatlog with Grum I'm just disgusted by the people there. Bloody immature, entitled kids. "We're making our money off of your game even though it's directly against what we agreed on, what do you mean we won't be allowed to do so? That's unfair!" and "We (multiplayer servers) made Minecraft! You can't tell us no!". I'm honestly surprised Grum entertained them at all. And all that whining even after they were told Mojang was discussing ways to allow the server folk make some money off of it legally.

Those possible EULA changes probably won't affect our little piece of heaven here or anything, but figured it's still some sort of news related to vanilla and could be of some interest to some folks.

[RandomObj3ct]

Firstly I really must say Grum is lucky to be working for Mojang, right or wrong a lot of other companies would have fired him for the PR nightmare he has created.

disgusted by the people there. Bloody immature, entitled kids.

As someone who has done hosting people like you have been really annoying me reading through comments, you clearly have no bloody idea about any of this. I've seen a trend where server owners a rightfully worried but short sighted players like you are pouting that crap.

Minecraft servers are expensive, all those large servers are VERY expensive. By that time your paying for the large bandwidth, DDOS protection(believe it or not, people actually pay to get competition DDOS'd), you also have to pay for a decent website capable of managing a few thousand unique players and lets not forget some of those big servers require hiring Staff, minecraft servers are a career for some, whether that be plugin creation, maintain the community or whatever other task the server needs.

From what it looks like now donations are the only acceptable method of asking for money under the future system, the problem is donations simply don't work without any intensive for users to pay. Have you donated to wikipedia? I highly doubt it.
This is the problem, a great many servers which aren't doing anything ethically wrong won't be able to survive, with so many making money doing minecraft related stuff as a job it's putting them out of work.

If they didn't want this to happen they should have acted a long time ago, not when an entire industry had formed around it, doing this in this way now is going to cause huge damage to the community.

Statements like "you *cannot* create your business around something you are not allowed to make profit on -- well you can, but you'd be rather daft"(Seriously, there is a reason grum is pretty well disliked outside of the 'ass kissing' mc fanbase) don't help the situation either as it shows a strong lack of not understanding of what's been going on and only adds more fuel to the fire.

/rant

There is nothing to truly been decided yet but if this goes through with everything being discussed, there is going to be a lot of servers shut down and a lot of people out of work, best thing is for people to stop stirring up drama (grum especially) and wait to see what actually happens..

[JiiKoo]

I have to agree on the PR nightmare front.

-snip-

You did read the chatlog or at least parts of it, right? There were people there that seemed to be simply screaming at him for telling them a change was going to happen, and that they were going to be enforcing their rules. Saying that MC is going to die, that servers are what makes it or that Grum is a bitch or seemingly yelling at him for starting enforce their rules aren't really productive things to repeat. They make it sound like Mojang owes them something, which to me it looks like they really don't. Hence entitled. Immature was aimed at those just cussing at Grum, and one of them admitted to being 15. Hence kids.

Of course it sucks that you have to rethink how you get your money, but as Notch tweeted it seems like you could possibly just charge a fee for being let on the server. Will it be enough? I don't know. As you say, I don't do hosting and I am not sure how high the costs are, exactly. The video I linked mentioned some numbers, and I am aware it is not cheap. But I also feel that if people have made a career out of something that was expressly forbidden they have only themselves to blame if the rules are enforced and that something is taken away. You are right it doesn't help the situation any, but it is the truth of the situation.

I do get that it sucks that Mojang hasn't been enforcing it from the get-go and it led to a possibly bad situation but it is well within their rights. Maybe they didn't think it would get this bad, and so just let things go. However, it was said they were looking into allowing people to make money off of the game legally, so it's not like they are simply cutting everyone off. It could very well be people don't want to play on servers that require a fee to play on, but if they previously ran the servers on microtransactions or what have you, I would believe there is enough money there to stay afloat. Just might not be as easy to have people part with their monies in larger chunks. There's a reason microtransactions are a thing.

Obviously there are server owners who are, as you said, rightfully worried about how it's going to affect them. However, the people I saw in the chatlog seemed to me to just be ranting, and they were the people I was disgusted by. If you want something, cussing at the other person is rarely the way to do so. Mayhaps my wording was too strong, I was annoyed by the chatlog at the time. My intention wasn't to stir up drama, just share the "news". I also agree on the waiting part, it's not like the new EULA's out yet and it doesn't seem like they are yet enforcing the rules, so it's all just talk as of now.