Would Forge, MCP and Spigot teams be willing to work with Mojang?

[Starless]

Now that there's a C++ client (which performs orders of magnitude better than the Java client in my experience) Mojang needs to make it moddable. Certainly no easy task, but they could use the years of expertise of Forge and MCP people to speed up the progress considerably. Would the unsung heroes of the Minecraft modding community be willing to get hired by Mojang? My suggestion is that those teams of devs take the iniciative and get together and develop a prototype or a schematic approach for a modding framework and present it to Mojang.

 

Also, how hard do you guys imagine it would be to write a modding framework for C++ minecraft? No class loader, no JIT, no runtime. Is it even possible?

[Ernio]

Unless something THIS BIG was able to pass before my eyes (and whole google search engine) unnoticed - it doesn't exist.

 

PC edition for MC is Java only.

 

If you are referring to official clients that are written in C++, you are talking about extended Minecraft Pocket Edition for Windows 10 (and few other platforms).

 

No - those are not even close to Java Minecraft which will stay (Java version) in development for at least quite many years if not even forever.

If we were to expect C++ ports anytime soon - questions like these have been alredy asked and answers revolved around Forge being made for JAVA and if we were to get C++ version - it is possible that someone (even from forge contributors) might start working on it.

 

As to hiring and all other stuff - highly unlikely.

As to C++ capabilities - well, yeah, it would be possible but way I see it the modding would be totally different from current one (and much harder considering even Java is quite too hard for some here - I am refering to ppl that have no clue about coding and try to write a Mod. Said that - mastering C++ is waaaay harder).

[SuperGeniusZeb]

Honestly, I think that the Pocket/Win10/Gear VR Edition will get an official mod/plugin API within a couple years, once the 2 teams working on the edition (Mojang's PE team and the Win10 Edition team from MS) have achieved feature-parity with the Java edition and they can shift their priority to something else. I'd almost be willing to bet that it gets its mod API before the Java edition, much like BUD blocks, fixed boats, pistons-pushing-block-entities, etc.) At that point, depending on how powerful the official API is, the community for the C++ edition might build their own API on top of the official one to allow for more complex changes/additions.

 

As for right now, the C++ edition is not yet ready to replace the Java edition and to do so needs to achieve feature parity, get ported to OS X & Linux, and get a mod API. The modding community for PE is pretty small right now, due to a lack of modding tools as powerful as Forge and lack of proper dedicated server software. C++ is also considerably more difficult to mod without an existing official API (which is why one is so essential), and the majority of the Minecraft modding community has experience in Java, which is mainly due to the fact that up until recently, the only edition worth modding was written in that language. (It was only a couple years ago that PE had finite worlds, no hunger/experience, no Redstone mechanics, and only a couple mobs.)

 

So basically, the Java edition's modding community is either not experienced enough or not going to want to bother making an API for the C++ edition, seeing as that an official one is not too far on the horizon. One day the C++ edition will become the dominant platform, but there needs to be feature parity, the official API, and Mac/Linux support first, and it will take time for the existing community to move over and for new people with C++ experience to start modding.

[Starless]

But I don't think the mods would have to be written in C++ necessarily. C++ gets compiled into machine code, so as long as a piece of code externalizes an API it can interact with anything, because, in the end, it all boils down to the hardware instructions. I believe we would still have a considerable performance gain if our mods targeted .NET, with minecraft running pure machine code and offering numerous API entry points with which the CLR on top of it could use to run our mods. It would probably be a gargantuan project to implement, but with Microsoft backing Mojang up I think they are up to the task.

 

In the end it all depends on how interested Microsoft is in making this happen. And I think it would be foolish of them to not consult with the developers of the modding tools like Forge, Spigot and MCP. Lots of enterprises fail because big shots from the outside look at a bunch of data to figure out how the inside is like, instead of just asking someone who's been inside all his life.

 

PC edition for MC is Java only.

 

If you are referring to official clients that are written in C++, you are talking about extended Minecraft Pocket Edition for Windows 10 (and few other platforms).

 

Yes, I was refering to Minecraft client for Windows 10. It's a beta. They're working on it. I believe it won't be long before it gets all the features of the java client and more. Only problem I foresee, as of course is the topic of this thread, is how will they manage modding.

[Ravenleft]

The Windows 10 client isn't intended to "take over" as the primary Minecraft version on desktop computers, it's the pocket edition version meant for Windows 10 devices other than PCs (ie phones, xbox one, tablets, etc..apparently it even runs on the hololens...which sounds incredibly cool).

 

However, what you're asking for though has, in a way, already happened.

 

Searge, the founder of the MCP project, was hired by Mojang a couple of years ago and has been an active dev of the PC version of Minecraft ever since, while still working on the MCP-project.

 

Mojang hired the Bukkit team to work on the official mod API back in 2012 and then promptly had them locked away in a dungeon never to be heard from again (I haven't heard anything from/about them since, probably due to me not paying attention but it's more fun to assume that they're being kept hidden in a dungeon somewhere).

 

Yet, still no official mod API. Personally I doubt we'll ever see an official API, not because they can't do it but because they don't want the headaches involved with supporting it. Maybe in the PE edition(s) but not in the main client.

 

[Koward]

Searge, the founder of the MCP project, was hired by Mojang a couple of years ago and has been an active dev of the PC version of Minecraft ever since, while still working on the MCP-project.

So he works on the deobfuscation of the code owned by the very company he works for.

 

    ¯\_(シ)_/¯

[Draco18s]

Funnily enough, I was actually contacted about working on the XBox version of Minecraft.  If it weren't for the fact that my C++ skills are virtually non-existent I'd have taken it.