Sponge support for Minecraft 1.8 and later

[InsaneJ 561]

We have run a TFC server since b78. At the time we started out with MCPC+, later Cauldron. Currently development of Cauldron has halted since it's author has now dedicated his time to Sponge: https://www.spongepowered.org/

 

Our server has been very popular with b78 server having serviced 8466 individual players. It relies heavily on Bukkit plugins so it can safely run as an open, non-whitelisted server. Bukkit plugins allow us to have the following functionality.

• Block- and inventory logging.
• Grief roll-back.
• Ticket system for support questions.
• Towny for plot management.
• Lockette to seal doors and inventories (Chests, tool racks, log piles, barrels, etc.)
• The ability for staff to view and edit player's inventories.
• Global banning system to keep known and proven(!) griefers out.
• World guard regions to provide a location to players that rather play without all the "commands-of-convience" and teleports the plugins provide.
• Multiple worlds.
• A bunch of other stuff like homes, chat channels, afk, ping, goup titles, etc.

Without these functions it would be virtually impossible to run a non-whitelisted public server. It would be griefed to pieces in days, 100% guaranteed.

 

TFC has never supported Cauldron. The decision not to do this has been explained by TFC devs/staff in the past and I can understand why they choose that.

 

What is Sponge?

Sponge is a combination of a new API (based off of Spout/Flow’s APIs) implemented on top of Forge, with assistance from other parts of Minecraft’s modding community (Glowstone, Cauldron, Spout, etc.).

It will be both a server and client API, and its target user base is pretty much anyone that wants to mod their game, including server owners. However, we may focus on the server-side portion first.

We invite any developer to help out.

 

Sponge is going to be the next Bukkit for Minecraft servers with added Forge support. It's not going to be a niche like Cauldron was. Therefore I would like to request that the TFC devs look into Sponge and consider supporting it. Supporting Sponge will allow more server owners to run public, non-whitelisted TFC servers which right now is a bit of a challenge.

 

The Sponge devs hope to have their first release for Minecraft 1.8. But it's still quite a long way off. From their news page:

Writing an API has been a huge undertaking, but we feel that we have gotten to a point where the Sponge API is usable, though there’s still (and will always be) work to be done.
The implementation (which is the code that makes the API work) needs to be in a usable state. Our implementation lags somewhat behind progress on the API, primarily because the implementation team has had to wait for the API to be completed first to write for it.

 

Thank you for your consideration.

[Pernix_8D 0]

You got my support. Gotta keep one of the best servers running strong, after all.

[VaiN 2]

Bit early for anything more than a glance. Unless you are wanting them to join the development of it. Personally I'd rather they just stick to bug fixes and improvements using what's currently stable. I gave up on the MP side of things. For a small group of trusted friends/family it's great without the extra fluff, but for a huge community there aren't really any good options available presently.

 

While we're on the topic of MC server projects...

I'd rather see the MC community be excited about something with more potential like MCServer as the performance benefits of C++/Lua would be exponential, not to mention how much less resources would be needed. This would mean smoother gameplay and less cost to hosts. But it doesn't seem to get much mention anywhere. Just because the game is made with Java doesn't mean the server should be. Just saying.. But convincing a crowd of Java dev's to leap over to C++ is a hell of an undertaking in itself. On the other hand, Lua for plugins would mean potential for larger plugins, with better performance, at a fraction of the development time. It's all just wishful thinking in it's present state though, like everything else. I'm not going to hold my breath for it at any rate.

[InsaneJ 561]

Right now mod devs can't really do anything yet in regard to Sponge other than wait and see. Which is why I'm requesting this now. So they can already give it some though and plan ahead if needed.

 

MCServer sounds nice, but it doesn't really add much.Yes, Java uses more RAM but Java isn't slow CPU-wise. It's comparable to C++ in that regard. What makes Minecraft slow is poor programming, that's all there is to it. A new Minecraft implementation in C++ has the potential of being faster then it's Java counter part. But only if they program it more efficiently which isn't an easy thing to do. If it was Mojang would have done it already. They have made a lot of improvements in that regard with Minecraft 1.8. But there is still much that can be done. Also we will have to wait and see if the C++ implementation is at all compatible with current Minecraft. And as you said mods and plugins will have to be written in C++ as well which means they all have to start from scratch again. Given all that, I don't see MCServer being a great succes. It will probably find a small niche with dedicated followers, and that's it.

 

Sponge on the other hand has a couple of well known devs in the Minecraft community behind it. That's no guarantee of success obviously. But it does stand a good chance of succeeding because of that.

[VaiN 2]

MCServer is already playable with Minecraft, it's just lacking important features like A.I. and such. It's a lot of work but if you watch their IRC channel it's constantly spamming commits so at least they are active. Also, the mods/plugins are made with Lua. Anyone with basic programming knowledge can pick up Lua fast enough that I don't really see it being any huge setback. It would be starting fresh, but I think it would be worth it. It would also mean a larger community of modders as Lua is far easier to get started with. I won't jump into the C++ vs Java performance debate, there's plenty of other more suitable places for that and it's a tired old story. I don't expect this to take off without some huge updates and a major promotion effort. Again, just wishful thinking, and worth a mention.

I do agree that sponge is far more likely to see success and I'm hopeful for it. With the support of Forge it is likely to be a far better option than anything we've seen thus far. And I'd certainly love to not have to deal with hackish wrappers to run separate API's just to get the needed MP features. Until Mojang stops slacking on the official API there won't be any standard. Hopefully something takes precedence so we don't have to worry about these issues. Right now it's most likely going to be sponge since that's what everyone is backing.

It may be worth poking around the API to see how things will work, but if it's going to have forge support than it may not be too drastic a difference to worry about yet. I doubt the forge side of things will stray too far from it's own API. This early in the game things are bound to be shifting around and changing dramatically, and without a proper testing platform there's not much more anyone can do than glance.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

TFC's compatibility with any sort of server API, be it MCPC+, Cauldron, or Sponge is entirely up to the creators of the API, and how far they stray from base forge functionality. The majority of Minecraft mods are forge mods. They use forge as a base that everythings runs off of. If you edit that base, we can't run using it anymore, and if we try to instead be compatible with the changed base, then the mod is no longer compatible with forge, and every single person who wanted to play TFC would have to install that changed base, instead of installing forge, which really isn't something realistic to expect especially since a good chunk of players are on single player, where that changed base doesn't even run.

 

The best analogy I can think of would be cars. Imagine that forge is a diesel engine, and TFC is the entire car that uses that diesel engine to run. A non-diesel gasoline engine would be like Cauldron, at a high level they both do generally the same thing (make the car go), but there are so many small changes that have been made that if you swap out the engine in a diesel car with a standard engine, things really aren't going to run well, if at all, without making a whole bunch of other changes, at which point the car will no longer work well with diesel either.

[Bunsan 323]

The sponge API is a forge mod. Last time I was looking at it they had to run just through FML as a stable Forge 1.8 wasn't available. As such it should eliminate most of the problems caused by modification of forge classes. I would also expect that anything that in the past lockette, Prisim, etc. hooked into will still function with sponge API.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

The sponge API is a forge mod. Last time I was looking at it they had to run just through FML as a stable Forge 1.8 wasn't available. As such it should eliminate most of the problems caused by modification of forge classes. I would also expect that anything that in the past lockette, Prisim, etc. hooked into will still function with sponge API.

 

Could you please point out where it says that sponge is a forge mod? Because from what I'm seeing on their FAQ page, it's not. It is an API that can be used on top of forge, which is exactly the same as how Cauldron was set up. If it was a forge mod, it would require forge to be installed in order to run, and yet it says right on their FAQ page that it can be used directly on a vanilla server with no forge.

 

Edit: Here's another good way to look at this.

 

Consider Minecraft 1.6 and Minecraft 1.7. Between the two versions, a bunch of the base engine code was changed. Because of this, 1.6 mods do not work with 1.7, and 1.7 mods do not work with 1.6. To make the 1.6 version of TFC compatible with 1.7, not only did it take months and months of work, it resulted in a final project that is no longer compatible with 1.6.

 

Read that exact same paragraph, but swap out 1.6 and 1.7 with forge and MCPC+/Cauldron. The reasoning is pretty much the same.

[Bunsan 323]

The implementation of the sponge API is a forge mod. https://github.com/SpongePowered/Sponge So how I understoof it Sponge API is Bukkit and the sponge mod and forge make Craftbukkit. I know there was some internal debates going on with a few devs still wanting to modify stuff external to forge, so maybe the ethos has changed a bit. Without the ability to contribute I've only been casually following the project.

From API release Update https://forums.spongepowered.org/t/status-update-api-release-edition-not-the-usable-server/4889

"In order for server administrators to use the amazing plugins the community creates there needs to be server software to run those plugins with. Sponge, the implementation for the Sponge API, is being worked on as well, and will be released as soon as possible. This part of the development process is more complicated and was put on hold until the API was more finalized and Forge for 1.8 was released as both of those things are dependencies for the implementation. However, now that we have a stable API release and Forge 1.8 we are able to start working on the Sponge implementation and we will be sure to give out a timeline."

[raymondbh 13]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VJ1WzHI-VUuoHEJz4SRHUbl-5XnsURbqP5fIi8B4Kyg/edit

[TonyLiberatto 364]

As a server owner I have to support this. I try to have a public forge server, it quickly show me that it was impossible to run. A forge server is OK for a few friends to get together and play, but the experience of full multiplayer can only be achieved when you play with people from all over the world. In my server we have players from everywhere and is great it creates the exchange of ideas.

TFC devs keep saying that the mod is geared towards multiplayer.

One thing I have to agree with Kitty, if sponge is supposed to be a hybrid bukkit forge, in essence a replacement for Cauldron. Using Kitty's analogy its a car that run both diesel or gasoline. Then the mod maker does not need to do anything to create compatibility. If the mod is made for forge it should automatically run on sponge.

The one thing that they could do is wait for sponge to be out and functional before upgrading to 1.8, also even after that it would be good if they could keep track of the sponge development so they do not update TFC ahead of sponge in terms of forge version.

I have no idea how realistic that is from the point of view of the Dev's. But I know that right now forge is not ready for us to make a open server.

Forge essentials is not nearly done and most of the modules are not even updated to 1.7.10, MyTown is in alpha stage and not recomended for production. So in essence there are no antigrieff tools for forge server.

Maybe we could ask pretty please for the TFC comunity and Dev's to keep a close eye on sponge, find out what forge version is the job being done under see if that will cause any incompatibilities with planed TFC upgrades. And so on.

Love and Peace, Once again thank you very much for this amazing Mod. It has been a long time since I played Vanilla.