Oh Boy! Mojang at it again!

[hordekips]

It seems that mojang is going to do a major update to redstone changing the way redstone works and behaves...
Although it might seem as a positive thing it may break some existing builds.

here is the full feature list:

Spoiler

Show

Planned changes

Note: Most of the changes listed here have no detailed references since most of them were mentioned at MineCon 2012. Especially the Future Updates with the Minecraft PC Team respectively the The Future of MOD API talk
---Redstone improvements
More predictable and consistent redstone behavior
The functionality of BUDs will be affected
Eliminating directional quirks
Most of the timings of redstone contraptions will change
Overall redstone will be more like analog signals
Redstone signal strength will matter (for some blocks)
The Capacitor block
Only outputs a signal if the input has a specific strength
Configurable like a repeater
A way of sucking up items into a container/transport items between containers
This will most likely be a revised form of the Allocator idea
Weighted pressure plates
Outputs a signal with a strength corresponding to the weight of the entity (e.g. storage minecarts) sitting on the pressure plate/detector rail
Perhaps a Daylight Detector
Outputs a signal with a strength corresponding to the intensity of the sunlight
Redstone repeater lock improvements[citation needed]
Some Redstone bugfixes
Perhaps a new ore for crafting the new redstone devices
Will most likely be available only in the Nether, encouraging exploration of the dimension
---Minecart improvements
New ways of transporting items
Using minecarts similarly to Railcraft systems
New uses for storage minecarts
Filling and emptying of storage minecarts
Specific rails to empty them
The possibility of linking minecarts together (driven by furnace minecarts)
Rails to unload mobs and perhaps players when reached
---Rendering engine rewrite
Current engine has some bugs
Will require a higher OpenGL feature-set
Will include some sort of fallback for older hardware
Support for high resolution textures
The internal layout of texture packs will change
Every block will have its own texture file
Supports the use of animated textures for all blocks
The geometry of individual textures can differ
Not intended to support HD skins
Much faster overall rendering, resulting in more frames per second (FPS).
Lighting fixes similar to the ones first introduced in snapshots 12w39a/b (during 1.4 development)
The features were:
Support for fancy lighting control
Support for more realistic lighting, such as active furnaces only giving off light from their front surface
---Other
No new mobs planned
Perhaps fireworks for New Year's Eve
Will be a safe explosion
Perhaps a method of enchanting equipment with paper
The player would enchant the paper, then use an anvil to combine it with equipment
The anvil cost to do this would be very high
The Possibility of Ghast Fireballs' sizes to be edited via third party programs
Slabs made up of Netherrack/Nether Brick

Discuss your opinion!

External links:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/11/26/mojan ... ne-update/
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_Update

[Wafflewaffle]

I think this is being discussed at Morvelaira's News Compilation

Here is a link viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2964&start=2425

[Elevatator]

I think generally it looks good, interesting, and even a bit promising. Maybe because some of the features remind me of the mod.
I really like the idea of the signal strength, as long as it don´t f*ck up any existing builds (what I doubt)

"Weighted pressure plates
Outputs a signal with a strength corresponding to the weight of the entity (e.g. storage minecarts) sitting on the pressure plate/detector rail"
If mobs will have a specific weight, this could be very useful for sorting. Reminds me a bit of Sarg´s weight sensor, and Btw´s buoy(spelled correctly?)
All in all I look forward to it.

p.s.: the news thread is thought to be for news only. small discussions are fine, I think. But an update like this deserves an own thread.

[agentwiggles]

I had mixed feelings reading through this list.

*I'm pretty happy about the Nether brick half-slabs.

*Much of it seems fine but things like "make redstone consistent" and "eliminate bugs" are obviously going to sound appealing - but we'll have to wait to see how well they manage to fix anything in a beneficial way.

*The "analog redstone" idea is not all bad - I like some of the ideas about it. If they implemented it right, I think it could preserve the current use of redstone but also add another layer of complexity that we didn't have before in circuitry - as in, your current contraptions would still work fine, because there's still a difference between "powered" and "unpowered," but maybe in your next build you're going to think a little more about the lengths of your wires to try to take advantage of the new stuff.
But, despite the fact that there's some interesting ideas, I can't even put into words how stupid I think it is to change such a popular, unique, and well-loved game mechanic, especially when doing so could result in some of the community's most impressive builds being rendered useless. Remember the guy who was building a fucking computer out of redstone? What happens to builds like that?
The obvious solution as stated in the news thread would be to place that functionality in some new system instead of changing redstone. But honestly, I could continue to do without this whole analog redstone thing.

*The nether specific redstone thing seems pretty stupid. What a half-assed way of trying to force players to the Nether - and so ineffective, since there's no motivation to go there and build some kind of device. Though it could actually be sort of cool for BTW users, since we actually might have a reason to be spending a few hours of gametime there.

*Minecart stuff I can't really comment on, I have very little experience with them as I haven't done much with them at all. iirc there is some similar functionality planned for BTW, but some of it sounds like it's going to be a little OP if Mojang follows their usual pattern. However, I will say that I think the current system is pretty undeveloped, so maybe this stuff could be good.

*As someone who maintains a custom texture pack, I am not too excited for each block to have its own texture, but I can see how this may be useful so neutral on this part, as for the related changes to the rendering engine... I guess I just hope they don't create more problems than they solve.

*The "Enchantment on a piece of paper" thing... seems so familiar to me, but I can't imagine why... sarcasm aside, I'm doubtful that Mojang's idea of balance and FC's are going to mesh... though I suppose that feature is a moot point for BTW users.

[EpicAaron]

Mojang will find a way to mess this up. They always do. Best case scenario: They get distracted by a new flying mob or plant containment device and decide to procrastinate/never do any of this.

[dawnraider]

It is all pretty much meh for me, except for the strong possibility of messing up LOTS of builds with the redstone changes. Minecart stuff, however, is somewhat concerning, seeing as it could render lots of cool minecart loaders/unloaders already in the game (game, not mod. BTW is not a mod. It is a way of life.). In general, the (EDIT: minecart) changes are rather OP.

[FlowerChild]

It is all pretty much meh for me, except for the strong possibility of messing up LOTS of builds with the redstone changes. Minecart stuff, however, is somewhat concerning, seeing as it could render lots of cool minecart loaders/unloaders already in the game (game, not mod. BTW is not a mod. It is a way of life.). In general, the (EDIT: minecart) changes are rather OP.

Yeah, that's the impression I'm getting as well. On the bright side, it may motivate me to finally get the Hopper Cart into the mod sooner rather than later so that I'll be prepared to rip out Mojang's version when it arrives ;)

[haphazardnuke]

I'm always nervous when Mojang announces additions or changes, and this redstone one sounds really easy for them to mess up. If they pull it off right, it could be really cool.
- Capacitors? Sounds like an RSNOR latch + monostable, but remembering the input signal strength.
- Daylight detector?... Oh, right, vanilla users don't have the Lens.
- A Nether ore? Great, something to break up the netherrack monopoly. It's still terrain-gen change, and that worries me.
- On a lighter note, the ghast fireball bit seems random, but I can already imagine some hilarious stuff. I should find time to get back into Minecraft modding... maybe actually release something :p

The "revised Allocator suggestion" is what's got me a little giddy, though. I tried that mod out a while back, and IMHO, it meshes really well with BTW. It's like a Hopper turned on its side, which makes for some really neat build ideas. It's not as effective / compact as water current transportation, but in the Nether, a few Allocators lined up, properly spaced and pulsed, would be a good replacement. Though, I tried out pistons back when they were a mod, too, and Mojang's version was... different. Better in some respects (cost, sticky version) and worse in others (look up piston wave generators).

In the end, though, Mojang can steer their ship however they want; FC's got all of us loyal lackeys aboard his version. It's a little sad that a mod's content is more exciting and more thought-out than the vanilla game's, but such is life.

[FlowerChild]

The allocator thing may be a major issue and potentially one I'll have to rip out.

I'll have to wait and see how it turns out, but obviously, that kind of thing can seriously mess with the mod's balance, and if I thought that kind of thing was a good idea, it would likely already be in BTW.

[Vitreous]

Some of these features sound good. I like the idea of Minecarts that empty mobs out when they reach a certain point. Could be an interesting addition to automation. Nether half slabs, took long enough...

I have to dear the redstone change ideas, I think it could be a better idea just to add a completely different stone that acted as analog and keep redstone the way it is, or even just having to craft redstone with something. I don't like that they want to change one of the things in the game that actually works and is fine how it is when they have so much broken shit and crap features to fix.

Every block having their own texture file seems interesting.

And I prefer Arcane Scrolls to enchanting paper by far...

[EpicAaron]

Woah, I didn't see the part about giving every block its own texture file... That will most likely destroy my WIP texture pack, and every other texture pack aswell! I guess after the initial cutting and pasting the process of texturing will be a bit easier, but the work involved in transfering to this new texture system will be maddening!

[thygrrr]

I personally think Minecraft is not being developed in the right direction (whereas Better than Wolves is quite spot-on where Minecraft ought to have gone).

I think their updates will help, but unless their Mod API really opens up the game (i.e. allow extension / reimplementation of every game element), it's not going to catch on.

The whole game is in desperate need of a technical "2.0" release, with what basically amounts to a clean rewrite of the engine and the way resources like textures, block IDs, skins, etc. are handled. You can't really bring that about gradually. I think they did it when they went from classic to what MC is now, and they need to do a quantum leap like this again (after years of gradual evolution and diffuse/random feature development).

[FlowerChild]

Woah, I didn't see the part about giving every block its own texture file... That will most likely destroy my WIP texture pack, and every other texture pack aswell! I guess after the initial cutting and pasting the process of texturing will be a bit easier, but the work involved in transfering to this new texture system will be maddening!

Man...I really hope that's not the case and the wise up to including functionality for splitting existing textures files when they are loaded.

Severe pain in the ass otherwise. Yes, it's a simple task, but an annoyingly time-consuming one that applies to all the mod textures as well.

Has anyone noticed that all the work they've done so far for the "mod API" has made modders lives more difficult rather than easier? They're killing off mods left and right for the sake of supporting them further.

[Sarudak]

Ah the good old cry of rewrite... In the real world it doesn't work that way though. Rarely ever is it more practical to rewrite a piece of software than to simply improve it incrementally. Which they are doing btw. They are making some dramatic alterations to the rendering engines.

[FlowerChild]

Ah the good old cry of rewrite... In the real world it doesn't work that way though. Rarely ever is it more practical to rewrite a piece of software than to simply improve it incrementally. Which they are doing btw. They are making some dramatic alterations to the rendering engines.

Hear hear. You'll notice BTW is one of the few big mods out there that has never undergone a complete rewrite for precisely that reason. I refactor sections of code as I feel is necessary...and that's it.

Are there things in the mod that I wish worked differently? Sure. But that hardly ever justifies the cost both to me and players if I just throw out existing functionality completely and start from scratch.

MC is a mature game with a mature modding community that Mojang should be intent on preserving. Meanwhile, this continual barrage of sweeping changes is discouraging existing modders and causing them to drop support for their mods. I've managed to keep up with the updates (which is amusing considering BTW is probably the most base-class heavy mod out there), but looking through the MCF modding forum looks like someone took a shotgun blast to the version numbers of various mods, so obviously people are having a very hard time keeping up.

This really isn't the way to go about doing things. I really wish they would have just focused on providing hooks to various commonly used functions (much like Forge was intended to do when it was created) over time and ditched this whole concept of an "ideal" modding solution and automatic mod distribution system. I get the impression there won't be that many mods left for them to automatically distribute by the time they're done with this.

[Sarudak]

Indeed a rewrite would probably be a deathblow to most of the mods out there as it would virtually require a rewrite on their side. As far as the modding community is concerned I can't think of anything much worse they could do than a total rewrite. They'd be better off if they just stopped working on minecraft altogether... :P

[FlowerChild]

Indeed a rewrite would probably be a deathblow to most of the mods out there as it would virtually require a rewrite on their side. As far as the modding community is concerned I can't think of anything much worse they could do than a total rewrite. They'd be better off if they just stopped working on minecraft altogether... :P

Man, I so wish they would just stop working on it. Given the extensive list of planned changes above though, it looks like the rumors about that were baseless.

Seriously though, aside from the tech changes, wtf do I do with something like the allocator? That pretty much just blows the mod right out of the water right there.

I think I really need to start considering going TC with BTW. This shit is getting retarded. I had plans in place for isolating myself from all this, as I could see it coming a mile off, but those plans themselves were contingent on Mojang's announced (and even partially implemented) plans for providing extended blockIDs.

But...of course they never followed through with that, so now I'm rapidly getting trapped between a rock and a hard place with the mod's design.

[Sarudak]

I think I really need to start considering going TC with BTW. This shit is getting retarded. I had plans in place for isolating myself from all this, as I could see it coming a mile off, but those plans themselves were contingent on Mojang's announced (and even partially implemented) plans for providing extended blockIDs.

But...of course they never followed through with that, so now I'm rapidly getting trapped between a rock and a hard place with the mod's design.

Hehe... Well you know how I feel about the TC idea. I think it would be the best thing you could possibly do. I know you feel bad about people losing their worlds. But people who care that much can simply never upgrade IMHO. There's always that option. Plus I think most of them would be won over in time when they realize how much more awesome your version of MC is...

PS: I almost accidentally edited your post instead of quoting it... Lol

[thygrrr]

Indeed a rewrite would probably be a deathblow to most of the mods out there as it would virtually require a rewrite on their side. As far as the modding community is concerned I can't think of anything much worse they could do than a total rewrite. They'd be better off if they just stopped working on minecraft altogether... :P

The mod API would be that same death blow; I assume. You can't possibly expect that to be both flexible and coexist with existing mods, meaning as more and more API-based mods appear, more and more pressure on the old style hack mods would be exerted, forcing them to be rewritten for the sake of interoperability. That said, many of the popular mods are (technically) hacks that could use a clean implementation using an actual API for things.

I don't mean "rewrite" as in "rewrite it all from scratch", but rather a "redefine a new, refined architecture roughly based on the old code, but doing away with concepts that sucked and introducing fresh solutions for things we didn't know we wanted back when 1.x was fresh". And then stick with that for a certain period of time, without changing the game below it too much.

Various such rewrites have happened in various games with great success (Minecraft being one of them).

Definitely beats tacking on more and more things, which I fear is one of their core causes for long update cycles and weird (downright embarrassing) regression bugs and fixes that are basically rollbacks to old versions. I'm also not too impressed by Jeb, he seemed rather... let's call it jetlagged on the Minecon videos, and couldn't clearly communicate solid answers to questions. Not something I'd have expected of a senior coder on a mature, yet evolving project like Minecraft. I never heard him talk before, but I was kind of underwhelmed.

[ziyakaz]

I think I really need to start considering going TC with BTW.

What is TC?

[Sarudak]

What is TC?

Total Conversion

Definitely beats tacking on more and more things, which I fear is one of their core causes for long update cycles and weird (downright embarrassing) regression bugs and fixes that are basically rollbacks to old versions. I'm also not too impressed by Jeb, he seemed rather... let's call it jetlagged on the Minecon videos, and couldn't clearly communicate solid answers to questions. Not something I'd have expected of a senior coder on a mature, yet evolving project like Minecraft. I never heard him talk before, but I was kind of underwhelmed.

You also need to remember that english is not his first language. Anyway let's not turn this into another ignorant Mojang bashing party.

[thygrrr]

True, though his written English is pretty solid (as is the case with most Scandinavians these days), so it wasn't the vocabulary. :)

I'm curious which direction Mojang will go with its portfolio (including Minecraft), I have lots of respect to them for their spirit, but they need to land another million seller hit first for me to lose some of my scepticism.

[FlowerChild]

Hehe... Well you know how I feel about the TC idea. I think it would be the best thing you could possibly do. I know you feel bad about people losing their worlds. But people who care that much can simply never upgrade IMHO. There's always that option. Plus I think most of them would be won over in time when they realize how much more awesome your version of MC is...

The thing is man...there's so much up in the air right now, I have no idea how to proceed with this.

Extended blockIDs would make a huge difference and would open up avenues to me that would largely solve this problem while not impacting people's existing worlds. They're totally MIA though, and I refuse to do what the Forge and other mods are doing in using the partially implemented code in there to extend them, as I suspect it will likely blow people's worlds up when the official solution comes around.

Going TC on the other hand...I'm not even sure if that's going to be possible with this whole mod API fiasco. Will it provide me with the flexibility I need to truly go that route? Mojang seems to be saying that it *eventually* will, but even if that's true (which I highly doubt), when the fuck is that going to happen? Is there going to be a long period where the mod is forced into limbo because I won't be able to mod MC in the way I do now, but I also won't be able to get the functionality I want out of the API?

Just WAY too many variables at present. Every time I think of proceeding in a bold new direction these days I'm slapped with huge question marks as to whether they'll remain viable in the future, and Mojang's repeated statements of "the mod API will do EVERYTHING!" do not reassure me in the least.

[Detritus]

Mm...
Well, I'm sure we'll all appreciate almost anything you do; whether you go total conversion or not, stay with ModLoader, or even don't pick up the API when it's released(if it is before Mojang get bored and do something else), we'll still enjoy your mod, and keep playing it. Or those of us that matter will. :P

[Sarudak]

Hmmm... Last time we talked about it your perspective was more of "Is this the way I want to go?" and it seems you've progressed to "Is this practical?" I'm certain I'm not qualified to help you answer that question so I would only say that I fully support the idea of you going TC if it's practical. I think it would dramatically lower your stress level and you would see an explosion of creativity as you'd no longer be tied to Mojang's updates and wouldn't have to worry about breaking people's existing worlds/machines.