Forge: It's time to say...

Update: 02/02/2014:

http://www.minecraftforge.net/forum/index.php/topic,27505.0.html

Fry has finally finished up the ModelLoader registry, 1.8 is officially released.

Get to going!

Update: 11/26/2014:

Whelp guys, since it's my birthday have a present:

http://www.minecraftforge.net/forum/index.php/topic,22782.msg129821.html#new

Forge: It's time to say...

In light of recent events over in the bukkit community, 1.8's pending release, and the EULA changes. It has come time to say, Forge WILL continue to be updated and developed.

I can understand everyone's feelings about the EULA changes, and the fact that 1.8 will be a colossal update, especially on the client side. It is no secret that a lot of us who are working on major projects for the community feel stressed, overworked, attacked, {insert any bad adjective/verb here}. That being said, unlike EvilSeph and TNT, I work on Forge as my sole source of income {the adsense on the forums, adfly, and a bit from Curse} I have made no secret of this. This means that I don't have the luxury of just being able to quit. Beyond that, I truly do enjoy what I do. I love to program and I love to tackle issues, digging my hands as deep into a project as I can. But at times, the stress of the community can get to me. Recently, being attacked by those in the community I trusted because they got persuaded by someone who should of never had that influence -.- Combine it with the stress of a pending update, and the 10~ projects I have to update for that u.u.

My solution, Vacation!

This was intended to start this monday, the 25th, however because of the certain person above, I started it early {last Wednesday}. For my vacation, I will be staffing a awesome anime convention called Kumoricon. I have been staffing this convention for almost 10 years so {god I feel old} so this is not unplanned. This is happening in Vancouver, Washington, Officially it is Friday-Monday, but well, staff works a lot longer then that. If anyone is in the area, or are planning on attending give me a shout. This is also the reason I am not up in Seattle with the rest of the FTB/Curse team. As both conventions are the same weekend. It kinda sucks, but Kumoricon > PAX, as we were here first, so suck it you all!

So, what does this mean for Forge?

Not much, the plan was always to take the 1.8 update slow as it is a massive re-write to the rendering system, we are taking this opportunity to re-write some things in Forge/FML that we have wanted to do to hopefully increase performance/flexibility/stability of Minecraft itself. Once I get back from the convention on Tuesday night I will probably fall into a post-con coma for a day or so. And then I will get to work updating MCP/FML/Forge/.... So just hold on to your hats.

For modders,

1.8 isn't actually that scary of a beast, the MAJOR change is to the rendering system to introduce model based blocks instead of the RenderBlocks mess. At this point I do not know the full extent of this change. Or any of the other changes that were introduced. Tho I can say just like every other MC update there is a lot of boiler plate code that MAKES things look like a big change when it's not {for example one thing you will run into is A LOT of functions have changed from taking (int x, int y, int z) to taking (BlockPos position)}. So don't worry too much, when we get closer to actually updating we will have someone make a primer of the important changed bits.

Once Forge is out for 1.8, 1.6.4 will be even MORE dead. I will expect the community as a while to start shaming those modders who are still developing for it! Everyone knows my stance on that, so I won't get into it, but please for my sanity and yours at least update to 1.7.10 u.u

So ya, I will see you all next week after con.

Note: The title is supposed to be a joke, but i'm bad at them. I fully support Seph and TNT in whatever they wish to do or not do. Life goes on I hope they find another project that is rewarding and enjoyable to them.

Update:

Okay, so I am now back from con. Few things to note, I worked 22 hour days at the con, rolled my ankle twice and am currently recovering and decompressing.

Then I come back and catch up on all the current drama that is going on in the minecraft community, most notably of which is Wolf's DMCA to Bukkit.

I will refrain from making public comment about this as 1) I am not a lawyer {tho I do have way more experience in this type of law then most of you} 2) I agree with his intentions if not the manner in which it is going down. 3) Drama dramama dramamamamamamamammamamaqmam

So, as it sits, we are going forward with updating to 1.8, we are revamping and discussing a lot of how we are going to address things that will be changing at the core level of FML/Forge/Modding. Don't be scared it's actually for the better! And should make modders lives even easier! As such I expect to have a buildable version of 1.8 done *sometime* this week, but I have no clue when a release will be coming. So just hang on.

Edit by luacs: https://twitter.com/LexManos/status/508198938629771264

Hope you enjoy your vacation. It's well earned!

<3 LexManos and all his hard work.

*hugs LexManos*

I wish I could help, but unfortunately I'm not able to. All I can do is wish you a good vacation. After all, you deserve it, mostly because there are a few thousands (maybe even a million) that can only play modded Minecraft because of you.

Have a Great vacation! I started w/ alpha and went through the whole .jar file bs for mods---seemingly forever. You have definitely changed MC, for the better, for all. Even people that I meet, that are just starting out, always ask: how do I add mods? I'm sure there are a few vanilla purists, but it's nobody that I know. Take a break, get some rest and don't stress over it. It'll all be there when you get back. The world won't end if Forge takes a little bit.

Enjoy your vacation!

If there was anyone in the MC comunity i would support on patreon it would be you

Great to read, thanks for an official word on the matter.

I did read your reply to someone asking about Forge for 1.8.0 - for some reason I can't find the thread now (ninja moderated?). In it you said we could expect a release mid-September. Are you sure? Even for an initial alpha, that is *crazy* fast.

You may have also implied that you yourself work with the MCP team in a lot of the primary deobfuscation, if this is true I had no idea you were directly involved there. I don't know what this beef - or the "recent events in Bukkit community" - is about, but it sounds like the usual stuff and I can imagine. I may only be a new modder but I've already publicly stated that, if I get to the point where people want to donate - that I would split it 50/50 between MCP and Forge if I could - you guys work very hard to do something that people like me just do for fun, it's the least we should do.

Well, some don't have anything to give I guess, so in that case the least we can do is not harass developers to update...

...anywho, thanks again for the news. Enjoy yourself!

Just had to come say thank you for all your work, hope you enjoy your vacation!! Though as PAX staff I am required to say PAX > Kumoricon!!!

Seeing as you are most likely fairly local to the PDX area I would also like to extend the offer to buy you a drink at anytime if you attend any other local events!

Thanks again for everything you do!

<3O~

If you make a patreon account, I will be very happy to be able to give you 5$ a month and I am sure there is so many others that will want to aswell.

The 1.8 changelog says 3 things that might affect my mods:

- Cleanup GUI rendering

- Changed Entity, now unique by UUID

- Rewrote the inventory system

I hope the inventory rewrite and the gui cleanup arent too big. The entity UUID, do they mean the one we register it with or all the different spawned entities ingame?

Don't think the blockrendering and new blockmetadata should give many problems as long as the old way of doing it is still supported.

Anyway have fun at the con Lex and take your time, dont stress too much. You gonna cosplay as something?

But at times, the stress of the community can get to me. Recently, being attacked by those in the community I trusted because they got persuaded by someone who should of never had that influence -.- Combine it with the stress of a pending update, and the 10~ projects I have to update for that u.u.

I've had an idea in the back of my head for a few weeks now, but never thought of a good time to say it - maybe now would be the time.

It's just an option, but have you considered maybe getting a few people to help you out purely on the community front, sort of like a "customer support" thing?

That small team of people could brunt the day-to-day constant pings, nags, FORGE SHUD HAV COPER OR and so on. Anything actually useful/worthwhile, they would then privately forward on to you. This way, you can focus purely on the actual important stuff, leaving the swathes of uneducated kids to people specifically brought in to handle them.

Just an idea

If you make a patreon account, I will be very happy to be able to give you 5$ a month and I am sure there is so many others that will want to aswell.

+1 on this. I use the adsense of my mods to pay for my server, and then entirely pay my rent & car bills too. Without you, I'd not be able to do anything like that. A patreon donation is the very least I can do to repay you.

 

I've had an idea in the back of my head for a few weeks now, but never thought of a good time to say it - maybe now would be the time.

It's just an option, but have you considered maybe getting a few people to help you out purely on the community front, sort of like a "customer support" thing?

 

That small team of people could brunt the day-to-day constant pings, nags, FORGE SHUD HAV COPER OR and so on. Anything actually useful/worthwhile, they would then privately forward on to you. This way, you can focus purely on the actual important stuff, leaving the swathes of uneducated kids to people specifically brought in to handle them.

 

Just an idea

Well, for the forums, Diesieben and I exist, but seeing as Lex's day job is Forge, he does come onto the forums rather regularly.

Enjoy your vacation! I'll wait until the release of Minecraft Forge 11.14! (For Minecraft 1.8!)

Great to hear that Forge 11 will be coming soon. Since, as you say, 1.8 will not be a very big update (only the rendering changes may turn out to be an obstacle), I will be skipping 1.7 altogether and get access to new features of both Minecraft 1.8 and mods designed for it..

Just one question: since I, amongst others will want to cram Minecraft with 200+ mods, will there be a way for Forge to store data separately from vanilla Minecraft (like a Forge.dat file; vanilla should be prevented from reading it to cause a crash)? It's just that vanilla seems like nothing but a skeletal framework next to gargantuan modpacks like the Monumental Modpack (which dwarfs even the biggest FTB creations).

One more thing: to make updating mods easier, introduce version-specific code usage. Code that can be used for one version of Minecraft should be used by a specific version of Forge - or perhaps there should be a way for code to be "translated" - i.e. the base of the code can be changed to suit the version of Minecraft but the stuff that makes the mod unique (like blocks, tile-entities and items) doesn't have to as much.

1) 1.8 will take a VERY long time, just update to 1.7.10 first.

2) Forge is not an abstraction layer, you're asking for one.

Yay!

FWIW, I thought the subject line was funny

Take your vacation - we'll all still be here when you come back, and silliness will have had time to blow over some more once people see the sky hasn't fallen. Every programmer needs vacations or we go screaming monkey mad and that's just bad.

Have a great vacation, hope you come up with a new update soon, because I love Galacticraft and it won't work with the new update. See ya!!!

Hello! I am new to this site, I just found it about a week ago & I am glad I did! Thank you Lex, for your hard work with Forge, I don't what I would do without it. Keep up the great work - your vacation is well deserved.

We love you for everything you do!

You have inadvertently contributed significantly to some of the best "family time" my husband and I have spent together.  Minecraft vanilla is still fun, but with mods it's exceptional... and all the mods worth using use Forge.

Yes, I made an account here just to say that.  Keep your head in the code and ignore the drama, countless people appreciate your efforts more than you could know.

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb369/nowaysammeh/minecraft-diamond-pic_zps9b0ab8ac.png[/img]

First let me say Thankyou!

Forge, over the time I have used it, has become a VERY mature augmentation to the game.

It has given me mods that FAR surpass the ones written for bukkit, with TWO exceptions...

Worldedit and Worldguard.  If those were ported over, My servers would ONLY have Forge for the mods.

Forge made it possible to make the game come alive for me and my friends, starting with CustomNPC's and Furniture Mod. 

The point is, that your software has made amazing things possible for the game and all of us who use my server thank you for that.

I started with bukkit, but soon stepped away realizing numerous limitations that forge addresses.

Forge, for me is the 'precision tool', compared to bukkit's 'wooden stick'  Simply put, it does what it is meant to with amazing results.

CODE ONWARD!!! 

You know, the writer of WorldEdit has to have felt an invisible punch to the gut when Bukkit went offline....  Maybe he should speed up his port to Forge...  Seems a bit more important now.

Good luck with porting over Forge to 1.8 and I am happy that you are not such drama queen like certain other MC mod devs. Since many people are waiting and you said it'll take some time to port it to 1.8, can you give status updates from time to time?

What's his twitter?