Minecraft: Java Edition has been obfuscated since its release. This obfuscation meant that people couldn’t see our source code. Instead, everything was scrambled – and those who wanted to mod Java Edition had to try and piece together what every class and function in the code did.
Modding is at the heart of Java Edition – and obfuscation makes modding harder. We’re excited about this change to remove obfuscation, as it should make it quicker and easier for modders to create and improve mods. Now you won’t have to untangle tricky code or deal with unclear names. What’s more, de-bugging will become more straightforward, and crash logs will actually be readable!
surprisingly fantastic and consumer friendly move from mojang, good on them
The monkeypaw says they will stop updates for the java edition or release a new version that doesn’t work on the java edition.
They probably see how many sales are generated from the free work done by modders though. If someone wants to come along and do for free the thing you might have to actually pay designers, developers, artists and all the support staff for and they still need to pay you to play it, you’d be foolish not to encourage the exploitation of free labor.
Call me ignorant, if this happened and it brought a new golden era of modding (1.7.10 style) where everyone’s playing the same version I’d be maybe the happiest player ever.
Modders backporting content is nothing new, hell, they even brought the mobs that didn’t make the cut from those stupid mob votes to life.
Let modding become the new updates, fuck it. At this point they’d likely be better realised than Microsoft’s efforts.
I was thinking the same thing. If the de-obfuscation tools are already out there, it might cost them more money to keep that layer. Their developers also have to use it to read the crash logs and the like from the sounds of it. Less layers = less maintenance = less cost. More mods = keeps the game relevant.
Complete with microtransactions and a horrible lack of customizability! Seriously I just wanted to play some Minecraft in RTX but you literally can’t use the nVidia RTX stuff outside of the demo maps, otherwise you have to purchase a different texture pack with real money. And basically everything in the Bedrock Marketplace costs real money, and very little is free.
Meanwhile Java edition doesn’t have any paid content in part because the original Minecraft license specified anyone was free to make mods and custom content but were explicitly restricted from charging money for it
I guess it just doesn’t make sense to obfuscate it when mods in general runs the Minecraft community in turn making more profit to Mojang/Microsoft. My other suspicion is potential competition. There is this game called Vintage Story which kinda directly competes with Minecraft seems gaining ground and was built to be moddable from the start.
Exactly. Community bindings do exist and are used over the official bindings already, and I think the source code obfuscation is just an annoyance by now.
They made “datapack” which is a way of playing with mods without having to use third-party mod loaders like Forge and Fabric but (don’t quote me on this as I’m not a mod developer) it’s not as powerful compare to the mod loaders.
Not sure if it’s just what they want, it’s mostly that Minecraft’s spaghetti code had a lot of things hardcoded. Lately they’ve been changing a lot of things to be data-driven, and able to be changed by datapacks
With how bad it is at writing it, I’m guessing similarly bad. It’ll do something, but odds are it introduces a ton of errors that you then have to track down. That’s the best case. Worst case, it just creates something totally different that looks similar to the input but doesn’t do the same thing.
Its 16, not 20, the earliest version “Cave Game Tech Test” was in May 2009.
They’re still actively pushing updates, a really big one is scheduled for the holiday season. Additional biomes and mini-bosses were added last year with structures hinting at development plans for a 4th dimension. The lighting engine is being actively redone.
Minecraft is absolutely not gearing down into abandonware mode.
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So, what’s the catch? Surely Microsoft and Mojang didn’t just suddenly become good?
The monkeypaw says they will stop updates for the java edition or release a new version that doesn’t work on the java edition.
They probably see how many sales are generated from the free work done by modders though. If someone wants to come along and do for free the thing you might have to actually pay designers, developers, artists and all the support staff for and they still need to pay you to play it, you’d be foolish not to encourage the exploitation of free labor.
If that happens, the modding scene would boom incredibly
And you’d have some smart nerds who take it upon them to keep updating the game much better than Mojang ever could.
It would become open source almost
Call me ignorant, if this happened and it brought a new golden era of modding (1.7.10 style) where everyone’s playing the same version I’d be maybe the happiest player ever.
Modders backporting content is nothing new, hell, they even brought the mobs that didn’t make the cut from those stupid mob votes to life.
Let modding become the new updates, fuck it. At this point they’d likely be better realised than Microsoft’s efforts.
Y’all can try and pull it from my cold, dead hands.
I should boot up the ol modpack and see what it do—oh, right, it crashes 🥹
Young generations and mobile players are on bedrock
Everyone else plays Java where you can easily self-host a server
I was thinking the same thing. If the de-obfuscation tools are already out there, it might cost them more money to keep that layer. Their developers also have to use it to read the crash logs and the like from the sounds of it. Less layers = less maintenance = less cost. More mods = keeps the game relevant.
Or a Bethesda style creation club is coming.
They already do that for bedrock.
Complete with microtransactions and a horrible lack of customizability! Seriously I just wanted to play some Minecraft in RTX but you literally can’t use the nVidia RTX stuff outside of the demo maps, otherwise you have to purchase a different texture pack with real money. And basically everything in the Bedrock Marketplace costs real money, and very little is free.
Meanwhile Java edition doesn’t have any paid content in part because the original Minecraft license specified anyone was free to make mods and custom content but were explicitly restricted from charging money for it
I guess it just doesn’t make sense to obfuscate it when mods in general runs the Minecraft community in turn making more profit to Mojang/Microsoft. My other suspicion is potential competition. There is this game called Vintage Story which kinda directly competes with Minecraft seems gaining ground and was built to be moddable from the start.
Exactly. Community bindings do exist and are used over the official bindings already, and I think the source code obfuscation is just an annoyance by now.
Havent they been making changes to help mod/datapack development for a while?
Modding is such a big part of the game, helping it would get more people playing the game
They made “datapack” which is a way of playing with mods without having to use third-party mod loaders like Forge and Fabric but (don’t quote me on this as I’m not a mod developer) it’s not as powerful compare to the mod loaders.
Yup. Mods can change basically EVERYTHING, compared to datapacks being able to change only what mojang wants.
Not sure if it’s just what they want, it’s mostly that Minecraft’s spaghetti code had a lot of things hardcoded. Lately they’ve been changing a lot of things to be data-driven, and able to be changed by datapacks
Luanti eating on their turf.
I doubt microsoft even knows what luanti is
Whats that?
It’s the platform that used to be MineTest, apparently
Lol no
I would advance: trying to keep the brand alive against the hidden giant of Roblox.
I wonder how good AI is at deobfuscating code. It seems like the kind of thing it might be good at.
With how bad it is at writing it, I’m guessing similarly bad. It’ll do something, but odds are it introduces a ton of errors that you then have to track down. That’s the best case. Worst case, it just creates something totally different that looks similar to the input but doesn’t do the same thing.
I said basically the same thing and got downvoted for it.
Hopefully the catch is nothing, but you can never be too sure.
It’s a 20 year old game going into abandonware mode. This is the nicest way for them to do that.
Its 16, not 20, the earliest version “Cave Game Tech Test” was in May 2009.
They’re still actively pushing updates, a really big one is scheduled for the holiday season. Additional biomes and mini-bosses were added last year with structures hinting at development plans for a 4th dimension. The lighting engine is being actively redone.
Minecraft is absolutely not gearing down into abandonware mode.
And they finally added copper items 😂