http://www.minecraftforge.net/forum/topic/66762-about-reccommended-build-candidacy/

 

So, I posted this the other day. A suggestion regarding how Forge does its releases to help modders, I won't go into the details here.

LexManos himself replied, and was frankly rather condescending in his response.

I posted again, trying to explain better why I thought it would help in a reasonable manner, even though I was upset at how I was responded to. I also voiced that I was displeased with how I was responded to, and with the implications of some things said, but tried to remain as civil as possible about it.

 

Upon coming back to the forums today, I found, instead of a response to my response, perhaps with the thread being closed after a difinitive "no" or something, that my thread had been outright deleted with no explanation. I'll be blunt here: This is not good forum management. If my behaviour was in some way unnacceptable (and I would say honestly it was at worst equally unnacceptable to how I was responded to) then I should have just gotten warning points and the thread closed. Instead I find it's just gone without explanation, without getting to see if anyone responded, or anything.

 

I don't understand why my thread, where I was trying to post a civil, well-intentioned suggestion, was deleted, when threads and posts that are obvious flaming jerks are left untouched.

Like these for example:
http://www.minecraftforge.net/forum/topic/65936-forge-server-error/
http://www.minecraftforge.net/forum/topic/66418-to-lenmanos-your-wrong-idc/

 

All I want is an explanation, because honestly, I'm hurt at how this was handled.

The whole thread was pretty unproductive & boiled down to "Why didn't you modders enough time to update" -> "We did".

Core mods aren't supported AND you can specify in 1 line of code what versions you mod does & does not run on. heres how:

https://mcforge.readthedocs.io/en/latest/gettingstarted/structuring/#what-is-mod

Quote

A dependency string can start with the following four prefixes: "before", "after", "required-before", "required-after"; then ":" and the modid.

Optionally, a version range can be specified for the mod by adding "@" and then the version range.*

EDIT: I just found out that apparently core-mods can't do this? they can only use the @MCVersion annotation

Edited October 9, 20187 yr by Cadiboo

I'm not sure what's unproductive about suggestions. The base of the suggestion had nothing to do with coremods. The point I was making is that mod authors (any mod authors, not just coremod authors) aren't given any warning before a new reccommended build comes out, and as such, have no time to make sure their mod works correctly on that version before it becomes the defacto "standard" of the modding community for that version.
 

It doesn't help to specify what versions you can and cannot run it on if you don't have enough time to react to even update that single line, and if you have absolutely no way of knowing what builds it will work with until the build is already out. The moment a reccommended build gets released, it's entirely possible that a user will download that, since it's the reccommended and it's above the lowest build needed listed on the mod page, and then find out the mods don't work, and complain to the mod authors.

 

Giving even a brief period where the build is out in the open but not the RB yet would allow mod authors to prepare. If they can't make it work with that version, it would at the very least give them time to update that line, or mention in their mod page description that it doesn't work with versions above [version].

 

I don't know how making a build with changes the Reccommended Build literally the same day those changes are implemented amounts to giving modders enough time to update. Unless they're super fast and not at all busy with other things, and are very actively watching the Forge builds, even 24 hours wouldn't be enough time to react if there was any heads-up.

 

Literally all my suggestion boiled down to:
What: Give mod authors a heads-up when a new reccommended build is coming, stating exactly what changes it contains since the last reccommended build.

How: Add some note or something on downloads page, make a tweet, whatever, that says "Build [whatever] will become the reccommended 1 week after release" or something.
Why: So mod authors have a week to make sure their mods work with the reccommended build before it becomes the reccommended build (and therefore the build most users expect any mods to work on), to avoid day-1 reccommended build downloaders flooding complaints that the mod doesn't work on the reccommended expected build.

 

And instead they focused on me using the recent coremod reccommended build fiasco as an example, complaining about coremods and how absolutely terrible they are and that no mod author should ever use them etc. etc. and shrugged off the suggestion because "it's coremods!" and replied in a tone that was somewhere between putting-down and outright condescending.

When really, this would help any mod author who might have their mod affected by builds in-between the old and new reccommended builds. Instead of needing to either wait for a reccommended then hurry to fix it, or continually make sure it works on every single latest build leading up to the reccommended, they could then see "oh that is going to be the reccommended in a week i'll make sure it works with that build since that's the build most users will probably be using in a week or so".

 

Besides. Being unproductive isn't a good reason to outright delete the thread, wiping any memory of it from existence.

Look at those examples I posted at the bottom. Those are the definition of unproductive, terrible forum behaviour, yet they weren't deleted, even after quite a while, so why was I singled out so promptly for the purge?

2 minutes ago, IdrisQe said:

Giving even a brief period where the build is out in the open but not the RB yet would allow mod authors to prepare

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the "latest" versions exactly this?

2 minutes ago, IdrisQe said:

What: Give mod authors a heads-up when a new reccommended build is coming, stating exactly what changes it contains since the last reccommended build.

How: Add some note or something on downloads page, make a tweet, whatever, that says "Build [whatever] will become the reccommended 1 week after release" or something.
Why: So mod authors have a week to make sure their mods work with the reccommended build before it becomes the reccommended build (and therefore the build most users expect any mods to work on), to avoid day-1 reccommended build downloaders flooding complaints that the mod doesn't work on the reccommended expected build.

https://github.com/MinecraftForge/MinecraftForge/commits/1.12.x

https://github.com/MinecraftForge/MinecraftForge/commit/76c138c40043431a6cdecf674570d757d89b26c7

 

4 minutes ago, IdrisQe said:

Besides. Being unproductive isn't a good reason to outright delete the thread, wiping any memory of it from existence.

Agreed

As Lex had stated in the thread (I forget the exact words, this is my approximation), modders tend to not update their stuff until they are FORCED to(in this case, by users moving to the new recommended version, which their stuff doesn't work on).

 

The breaking change that was seen most was changes in the Coremod system, which already walks the thin line of being allowed but not supported and is some of the most change-sensitive stuff.

This change(build 2763, posted 09/27/18 09:37 PM) came about a week before the release build(build 2768, posted 10/04/18 07:48 AM) went up.

 

I'm going to lock this here because anything further will just be an argument of how things should be run.