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
I’d say its more like going to a fancy ice cream shop with amazing ice cream and ordering vanilla (hehe see what I did there?) or a fancy pizza place known for their amazing topping combinations and just getting a slice of cheese pizza. Its perfectly fine and probably better than some other places you’ve had vanilla ice cream or cheese pizza, but holy crap are you missing out!
Yeah dude I totally agree! Mods are great in their own right, but there’s something to be said for the insane variety of gameplay you can get outta the base game!
Sodium, Let Me Despawn (prevents servers from going under 20TPS), No Chat Reports, and other QOL no content mods are essential for even running a server with vanilla clients tbh
I think they might be anticipating LLMs possibly being able to do a decent job at deobfuscation in the near future. This is an opportunity for Mojang to earn friend points. They might as well take credit for something that is going to happen anyway.
Oh I see it’s that time of the year where Mojang gives the community a bone after stomping on them the rest of the year.
Anyways as someone who has worked on Java projects extensively since 2020, very little will actually change from this. The main problem of Mojang’s asinine version numbering will continue to be a problem for any modding, server, building and resource pack projects past 1.19.
Previously, they had the versioning system 1.MAJOR.MINOR, where Major referred to a feature update, and minor referred to bug fixes or other non-breaking technical changes
The first instance where they broke this was 1.16.2 by adding the Piglin Brute, but this was so minor that hardly anyone really cared, and hey, free feature with a minor update!
Well, now they have update “drops” where the minor version means either what it used to, or it’s also a feature update, just not as big as a full update.
the problem is that the way version numbers are handled now, it’s more like 1.MAJOR.MINOR, with no real definition of what counts as a “minor” update, so it’s hard to tell which versions are compatible. i feel like this problem would mostly go away if they either added another number to the version to signify patches, or actually used semver properly (they could mix these approaches to do something similar to java, so the next version would be 22.0.0)
i feel like this whole version debacle is only gonna get worse because microsoft is planning to move to a “content drop” model, with smaller more frequent updates, which means even more pressure on the “patch” version. so unless their update model or versioning systen changes, we’ll probably be playing 1.21.37 in a couple of years, and good luck figuring out which of those versions are actually compatible
Mojang started adding in substantive resource pack changes in the patches for 1.19. Which made it more annoying for resource pack artists to support the update their since it required 2 separate versions of a pack to be made and maintained just to make sure it works properly. Let alone the annoyance of having to constantly deal with people complaining about it not working when it is an issue Mojang made.
There is also Mojang’s censorship of their community that began in the 1.19 patch versions which allowed Mojang to just ban anyone for saying something they didn’t like. Servers largely just disable it since it’s a headache to deal with and it doesn’t benefit them at all, only Mojang.
Then in 1.20 and 1.21 Mojang began adding content in the patches so it makes it a nightmare to support the patch versions since they now function differently than they used to. Which only makes it harder for servers to update and makes the experience of joining servers more frustrating. So plenty of servers on those updates just blacklist certain versions just to make sure things are able to function.
Oh and at some point Mojang added censorship to player skins. And it can be triggered by just mass reporting any individual skin for any reason.
Basically Mojang made a fuck ton of problems where none needed to be or used to be.
Also I just want to add this, but I was sounding the alarm on the patch version problem back in the 1.19 days. The community at the entire either ignored me or called me crazy for pointing out how it was problematic. Now the community is growing more and more annoyed and I’m just sitting over here saying I told you so.
I’ve mostly stopped playing the game because of Mojang’s constant shitty choices and because of the community refusing to call Mojang out on their bullshit.
The no chat reports mod and having community hosted servers that don’t really need to give a damn about what Mojang thinks (I’ll convert my server to support cracked accounts if I have to) kind of pulls the heavy lifting to allowing players to keep playing without having to give a shit about overall moderation by the company.
The no chat reports mod is great but it still is an uphill battle to get players to install it. We also need to focus on putting on Mojang to remove the problematic system in the first place so the experience is better for everyone including Bedrock players.
Installing the mod (or plugin) server-side strips all player chat messages of the information that makes them reportable, so no requirement is needed for the client (Although recommended for complete protection and for usage on non-compatible servers)
ALSO can Mojang get my goshfuckin ALPHA account back that Microsoft deleted because I wasn’t paying attention to their bullshit during COVID and now it’s gone forever even if I make a Microsoft account which I will never do and now I have to pay money to Microsoft (which I will also never do and have never done)?
I’m pretty sure it was promised to me that I’d have Minecraft access forever because I bought an alpha account, but I guess now I have to give point to a horrible soulless corp to buy it again.
from what I understand mod loaders will need to remove the part where they deobfuscate code then translate mods. this update will break modloaders for a while but in the end it should simplify the process and make modding easier.
As I understand it no, the modloaders will still handle things like file management and conflicts and load orders and etc. Individual mods could implement solutions for that, but it makes more sense to centralize that effort around the modloaders.
What this will do is make it much less tedious to develop the mods in the first place.
(I may be wrong and the role of modloaders may have changed in the six years since I was last active in the modding scene without my knowing it)
Modloaders also mainly exist due to the onerous terms of any mojang/minecraft API for java edition that would exist - Forge/Fabric/etc… are designed to rip open the game and then stitch it back together with the desired goodies. Anything official would probably still have strings that would bind the modders, so modders won’t embrace the system wholeheartedly (similar to how datapacks can’t replace mods).
Wasn’t log4j originally found by 2b2t players, then used maliciously and reported later on, then going onto get fixed by every major server framework like bukkit, paper, fabric, and more?
This paired with the bedrock gdk release and changes to the file path so that we don’t need to use iobit unlocker to mod rtx files is some hella good vibes
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
I’m not super familiar with Java, but does this mean Java edition is basically source available, or is it still compiled Java bytecode but with proper variable names?
Indeed - most Java IDEs have FernFlower built in, so it’s dead easy.
Decompiled Java is surprisingly close to the original, especially compared to eg. decompiled C++; good luck with that. You get all the class, function and variable names back on the original line numbers.
What you do not get back is any comments. So you can see what and how, but not why. Admittedly, most comments are kind of useless and do not explain ‘why’ very well, but for weird-but-critical code they can be essential.
I haven’t found fun modded ‘communities’ since like 1.7.10. All Forge modded servers I’ve tried either seem to be ‘commercial’ servers with zero render distance and basically no community, or ghost towns.
I’m playing on moddedmc.net or something rn. There isn’t many on the server. I haven’t played in a few years and so I’m making my rounds. I don’t have any friends especially with a PC so I mostly just solo by myself for a few weeks until I get bored.
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They should officially support the mod loaders at this point
Playing minecraft without mods as an adult is like eating a plain potato, or like going to a party without inebriating substances.
I’d say its more like going to a fancy ice cream shop with amazing ice cream and ordering vanilla (hehe see what I did there?) or a fancy pizza place known for their amazing topping combinations and just getting a slice of cheese pizza. Its perfectly fine and probably better than some other places you’ve had vanilla ice cream or cheese pizza, but holy crap are you missing out!
Once Create Mod came out, vanilla was dead to me
Not… Really? I mean I get it if you like mods, i do too, but Minecraft offers so much out of the box that I find it extreme to claim that…
Yeah dude I totally agree! Mods are great in their own right, but there’s something to be said for the insane variety of gameplay you can get outta the base game!
Sodium, Let Me Despawn (prevents servers from going under 20TPS), No Chat Reports, and other QOL no content mods are essential for even running a server with vanilla clients tbh
Server hosting and using mods to improve performance/server moderation tools is a bit different than playing with mods.
Fair, although stock Minecraft without QOL is rough around the edges (especially if we’re talking performance or accessibility)
Even client mods are almost a must for things like saturation monitoring or ease of navigation
Every Minecraft update just makes me hum “Where’s the modding API” again.
It’s datapacks
Finally we can view Mojang’s shitty server multi-threading implementation in all its glory.
spoiler
I think they might be anticipating LLMs possibly being able to do a decent job at deobfuscation in the near future. This is an opportunity for Mojang to earn friend points. They might as well take credit for something that is going to happen anyway.
Oh I see it’s that time of the year where Mojang gives the community a bone after stomping on them the rest of the year.
Anyways as someone who has worked on Java projects extensively since 2020, very little will actually change from this. The main problem of Mojang’s asinine version numbering will continue to be a problem for any modding, server, building and resource pack projects past 1.19.
They do what now?
Previously, they had the versioning system 1.MAJOR.MINOR, where Major referred to a feature update, and minor referred to bug fixes or other non-breaking technical changes
The first instance where they broke this was 1.16.2 by adding the Piglin Brute, but this was so minor that hardly anyone really cared, and hey, free feature with a minor update!
Well, now they have update “drops” where the minor version means either what it used to, or it’s also a feature update, just not as big as a full update.
From the wiki:
That’s close to how the numbering system works! It’s MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, Mojang just doesn’t use the major part at all.
Also I completely forgot the piglin brute existed! Also netherite templates got added it the 1.16 patch versions too if I am remembering right.
It’s kind of like Java itself, Sun dropped the leading 1 after 1.4, following it up with Java 5.
the problem is that the way version numbers are handled now, it’s more like 1.MAJOR.MINOR, with no real definition of what counts as a “minor” update, so it’s hard to tell which versions are compatible. i feel like this problem would mostly go away if they either added another number to the version to signify patches, or actually used semver properly (they could mix these approaches to do something similar to java, so the next version would be 22.0.0)
i feel like this whole version debacle is only gonna get worse because microsoft is planning to move to a “content drop” model, with smaller more frequent updates, which means even more pressure on the “patch” version. so unless their update model or versioning systen changes, we’ll probably be playing 1.21.37 in a couple of years, and good luck figuring out which of those versions are actually compatible
Mojang started adding in substantive resource pack changes in the patches for 1.19. Which made it more annoying for resource pack artists to support the update their since it required 2 separate versions of a pack to be made and maintained just to make sure it works properly. Let alone the annoyance of having to constantly deal with people complaining about it not working when it is an issue Mojang made.
There is also Mojang’s censorship of their community that began in the 1.19 patch versions which allowed Mojang to just ban anyone for saying something they didn’t like. Servers largely just disable it since it’s a headache to deal with and it doesn’t benefit them at all, only Mojang.
Then in 1.20 and 1.21 Mojang began adding content in the patches so it makes it a nightmare to support the patch versions since they now function differently than they used to. Which only makes it harder for servers to update and makes the experience of joining servers more frustrating. So plenty of servers on those updates just blacklist certain versions just to make sure things are able to function.
Oh and at some point Mojang added censorship to player skins. And it can be triggered by just mass reporting any individual skin for any reason.
Basically Mojang made a fuck ton of problems where none needed to be or used to be.
Also I just want to add this, but I was sounding the alarm on the patch version problem back in the 1.19 days. The community at the entire either ignored me or called me crazy for pointing out how it was problematic. Now the community is growing more and more annoyed and I’m just sitting over here saying I told you so.
I’ve mostly stopped playing the game because of Mojang’s constant shitty choices and because of the community refusing to call Mojang out on their bullshit.
The no chat reports mod and having community hosted servers that don’t really need to give a damn about what Mojang thinks (I’ll convert my server to support cracked accounts if I have to) kind of pulls the heavy lifting to allowing players to keep playing without having to give a shit about overall moderation by the company.
The no chat reports mod is great but it still is an uphill battle to get players to install it. We also need to focus on putting on Mojang to remove the problematic system in the first place so the experience is better for everyone including Bedrock players.
Installing the mod (or plugin) server-side strips all player chat messages of the information that makes them reportable, so no requirement is needed for the client (Although recommended for complete protection and for usage on non-compatible servers)
I am aware, all the servers I work on have it installed.
Fuckin right?
ALSO can Mojang get my goshfuckin ALPHA account back that Microsoft deleted because I wasn’t paying attention to their bullshit during COVID and now it’s gone forever even if I make a Microsoft account which I will never do and now I have to pay money to Microsoft (which I will also never do and have never done)?
I’m pretty sure it was promised to me that I’d have Minecraft access forever because I bought an alpha account, but I guess now I have to give point to a horrible soulless corp to buy it again.
Go join mc: consequences edition https://discord.gg/mojanglawsuit (Website link in case you don’t wanna use discord: https://lawsuit.gg/)
Would the people developing mod loaders need to completely rewrite their source code to fit this new deobfuscated minecraft?
from what I understand mod loaders will need to remove the part where they deobfuscate code then translate mods. this update will break modloaders for a while but in the end it should simplify the process and make modding easier.
Well… my producer and I will certainly be playing versions before 1.22 then…
Is that going to kill the need for the various modloaders?
As I understand it no, the modloaders will still handle things like file management and conflicts and load orders and etc. Individual mods could implement solutions for that, but it makes more sense to centralize that effort around the modloaders.
What this will do is make it much less tedious to develop the mods in the first place.
(I may be wrong and the role of modloaders may have changed in the six years since I was last active in the modding scene without my knowing it)
Modloaders also mainly exist due to the onerous terms of any mojang/minecraft API for java edition that would exist - Forge/Fabric/etc… are designed to rip open the game and then stitch it back together with the desired goodies. Anything official would probably still have strings that would bind the modders, so modders won’t embrace the system wholeheartedly (similar to how datapacks can’t replace mods).
I look forward to several critical CVE being discovered like log4j
Wasn’t log4j originally found by 2b2t players, then used maliciously and reported later on, then going onto get fixed by every major server framework like bukkit, paper, fabric, and more?
Nah, it was found sometime before november 24 2021, publicly disclosed in december 9 2021, and only used by 2b2t players on december 10 2021.
That would be good though. Better the communities finds them and they can be patched than when only some black hats know them.
Unironically, me too. They’re there now, waiting to be discovered. We can find them now on our terms or be surprised by them later.
This paired with the bedrock gdk release and changes to the file path so that we don’t need to use iobit unlocker to mod rtx files is some hella good vibes
Can’t say I saw that coming, particularly after Microsoft bought them. Nice to have a surprise be pleasant once in a while.
The most profitable decision for MS is to leave the golden goose alone.
So, what’s the catch? Surely Microsoft and Mojang didn’t just suddenly become good?
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 said basically the same thing and got downvoted for it.
Hopefully the catch is nothing, but you can never be too sure.
I would advance: trying to keep the brand alive against the hidden giant of Roblox.
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 😂
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
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.
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.
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
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
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 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.
I’m not super familiar with Java, but does this mean Java edition is basically source available, or is it still compiled Java bytecode but with proper variable names?
You can use tools like FernFlower to help turn that bytecode into actual Java.
Indeed - most Java IDEs have FernFlower built in, so it’s dead easy.
Decompiled Java is surprisingly close to the original, especially compared to eg. decompiled C++; good luck with that. You get all the class, function and variable names back on the original line numbers.
What you do not get back is any comments. So you can see what and how, but not why. Admittedly, most comments are kind of useless and do not explain ‘why’ very well, but for weird-but-critical code they can be essential.
The latter
I like to think that Luanti caused this.
Nice I just got back into all the mods 10 last night
Do you play on a server?
I haven’t found fun modded ‘communities’ since like 1.7.10. All Forge modded servers I’ve tried either seem to be ‘commercial’ servers with zero render distance and basically no community, or ghost towns.
I’m playing on moddedmc.net or something rn. There isn’t many on the server. I haven’t played in a few years and so I’m making my rounds. I don’t have any friends especially with a PC so I mostly just solo by myself for a few weeks until I get bored.
I have been playing re-console mod pack lately because I prefer 4J’s version of Minecraft the most.