varradami

Thanks varradami, I think I remember my fiend stating he used some online tutorials section to get started at first. I usually use JCreator LE for my IDE because its lightweight and I like the windows. I've used Eclipse before and didn't like some things on it, but I'm willing to try it again. I can't remember, though, does Eclipse have auto-complete on the free version (if in fact there are different versions...)?

Oh, there are some things I don't like about Eclipse either. :-) It certainly isn't lightweight. I've tried IntelliJ but don't like the feel. I haven't used Netbeans or JCreator.

Of course it has all the basic things like auto-complete, syntax highlighting, continuous compilation, and so forth. Any IDE without those features isn't worth speaking of.

There are many different packages of Eclipse. That's because Eclipse is a plugin-based architecture - these different packages are mostly just different groups of plugins. You can easily install additional plugins through Eclipse itself. The "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers" contains all the plugins you should need.

There are some non-free plugins and packages of Eclipse (produced by various organizations). You don't need those.

Does anyone know a good place to learn the API and class structures of Minecraft?

At this point you might just want to wait for the official API to be available. It will be available soon ... probably ... maybe. They did create a repository a few months ago, but it doesn't have anything useful yet.

You might want to familiarize yourself with Maven and Git. You don't need to delve too deeply into Maven - just understand how the run the commands, the basic lifecycle (compile - test - package - install - deploy) and dependency management. If you haven't used an IDE before, might want to grab one of those too - I use Eclipse (download "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers", comes with Git and Maven support), but you might prefer Netbeans or IntelliJ.

If you don't feel like waiting, I can't really help you because I haven't written any mods. But this might be a good place to start: http://www.minecraftforge.net/wiki/Tutorials

I learned a bit of visual basic at school but nothing too fancy, i did got the hello world example but by a youtube tut that didnt explained why i was doing that, i was just a robot there.

The purpose of "Hello world!" is pretty much just to make sure you have a working development environment. It's a trivial example which demonstrates you can successfully compile and run some code.

A typical Java example (as I suppose you've seen) would be:

public class HelloWorld {   public static void main(String[] args) {	  System.out.println("Hello world!");   }}

In Java, every program starts execution in some method called "main". When you run java.exe you tell it which class's main method to use. The args parameter is an array (e.g. a list of values) which contains the command line arguments. That is your starting point and you can call other code from there. If you are writing code that plugs into something else (e.g. a Minecraft mod) then execution isn't starting in your code so you don't have to worry about having a main method.

Beyond that it isn't too important for you to understand everything in that example. You will come to understand it as you learn the different concepts.

Unfortunately I don't really know good teaching materials for programming newbies, but there should be plenty out there. Head First Java was a pretty decent introduction to Java (even if outdated), but maybe doesn't explain the concepts well enough if you're new to programming.

These are the main concepts I think you'll want to understand:

• Variables
• Methods
• Classes and objects (basics of Object-Oriented Programming)
• Loops (while, do-while, and for)
• Arrays (the most basic data structure provided by Java)

Using an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) such as Eclipse or Netbeans is generally very helpful, but I'd avoid it initially. Work with a text editor (Notepad++ is a good one on Windows) and the command line so you can understand how things work - this will be easy enough for some simple tutorials.

i know nothing about java, i have tried to make some code for minecraft, made just a block and a recipe.but then i had lots and lots of trouble compiling my code.

The thing that interest me the most is terrain generation, i would really like coding such thing like true mountains and better environments like "Realistic forests" XD

Do you have experience with other programming languages, or are you new to programming in general? Were you able to get a "Hello world!" Java example running?

Once the official API is around there will probably be some good introductory material written (or at least I hope so).

Yeh. They should have started optimizing their code since like before they added pointless crap like Dragons and Potions, but It seems they are more concentrated on getting more and more recycled and silly and Unfinished, (I mean look at those Villagers, they've been in MC since what? Beta 1.8 and they only "trade" and multiply and spawn an Iron Golem and still have the AI of a cow) stuff to their game so that they can whore it out to the 10 year olds that comprise 80% of today's Minecraft population.

Maybe that's why notch stepped down from leading the project and handed it over to Jeb. Maybe notch wanted to work further on the code but Mojang was more interested in racking up the millions of sales from all those kiddies that began rampaging into Minecraft as soon as they heard the words Dragons and Enchantments. Or maybe it was completely the other way around.

You should get your facts straight before making accusations about people. Architectural improvements (meant to increase performance and stability) have been part of the past few releases. If anything it is under Jeb's leadership that performance has been a focus. Yes, new features are being added, but underlying improvements are also being made.

If anything, Mojang should be criticized for having such a small team working on Minecraft - I think it's still only four people. Given the revenues Minecraft brings in, they could certainly afford to hire more staff.

Bioxx learned java by modding. I learned it in high school. It can be difficult to learn on its own. I find the best way to learn any language is to learn the absolute basics, like what arrays are, how loops can be useful and such. Once you have that, you can just read the java documentation to figure out how to code it.

Then once you understand how to program in Java, you read Effective Java to learn how to program in Java correctly.

If you're already familiar with languages such as C++, Java is pretty easy to learn. If you're not too familiar with programming, it's still probably one of the better languages to learn on. It's a fairly simple language, although it does have its quirks.

Completely necessary seems like a huge exaggeration... Stone markers, torches, signs, it's pretty to keep track and you can help everybody else you're playing with.

I'm not playing with anyone else.

Those techniques work OK when you know points A and B, but when you're wandering this way and that trying to find stuff leaving a trail (and then cleaning it up later) it's a pain. Also, I don't spend that much time playing, so I'd rather use my time enjoying other parts of the game.

... but they did in fact mention that SOME of it would be in 1.5. Just sounded like it would mostly be the new texture system (named textures instead of numbered or mass texture files, animated textures, w/e) and maybe some other small client side things. As to the whole API, who knows? How long have they been promising this thing for anyway? Probably sometime around 2020 heh.

I don't recall if they mentioned that any of the actual API would be in 1.5 ... I doubt it.

What I do remember them talking about is they will be making some engine changes. IIRC they are moving more from the client-side to the server-side and various rendering engine changes. Dinnerbone is still working on the lighting engine too, but he didn't seem to certain of success. Part of the engine changes are also to remove the hard-coded block and item IDs. As part of this they are, as you mentioned, changing the texture system. Not only allowing animation of any texture but also HD textures will now be supported (yay!).

I don't expect the API to be finished before the end of 2013 (at least). I am just hoping the API will be started (with some public releases) in the next few months.

EDIT: Content-wise, apparently there are some big changes coming to redstone: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/27/seeing-redstone-mojang-details-minecrafts-1-5-update/.

We have no right to stop you, but it makes me kinda sad that you wouldn't want to play TFC the way we wrote it

Why does that make you sad? Different people have fun in different ways. If people are having fun with what you created - even if it's in a way that you didn't intend or don't like yourself - shouldn't that be a good thing?

Well isn't using something like Rei's minimap acting against what this mod is about?

Speaking only for myself, it's completely necessary. I have no sense of direction whatsoever. Not just in games, in real life too. It's fucking ridiculous how easy I get lost. :-(

In vanilla MC I don't need to explore right away though, and by the time I'm ready to do so I can have the in-game map item so I have some chance of finding my way around.

In TFC I'm screwed. No in-game map item that's even remotely accessible, and exploring around is much more important to get anywhere. I also need to take note of a lot more areas, since I need to know where I've found various ores and other resources.

I don't think I would be able to enjoy TFC without Rei's minimap. I promise it's challenging enough. :-)

A video of the full session is online.

About the 11 minute mark Jeb is talking about making money from the mods. Apparently you won't be able to sell through their repository, but it's not clear if you can sell your plugin otherwise. I guess they can't really prevent you from doing so (legally speaking) as long as you're sticking to just their API.

He also says you cannot claim exclusivity over an idea, which I expect will anger some people. Of course, you can't do that anyway so it shouldn't be a big deal.

True, true. And half of them won't be able to figure out a built in API.

They won't have to. They'll try to connect to a TFC server, they'll get a message prompting them to install the plugin(s) they need, and they'll click "OK". At least, that is the stated goal.

Regarding the speculation of the API being done in Jan. or 1.5 - it would be virtually impossible to finish in that timeframe. What I am hoping is they start API development by the end of January. They need to start getting pieces in the wild so they can be tested and iterated on.

If the API system can be completed by the end of next year I'll be shocked.

Except the problem is usually the first release, not any of the subsequent releases...

That's my point - you can no longer tell from the version number whether this is a "first release" or a "subsequent release".

Too many limitations make a sandbox not playable, hence the limited height in a game like minecraft isn't a feature that everyone likes.

TFC places the emphasis on survival and believability, rather than creativity. We already have cave-ins, trees collapsing, and dirt sliding down. It doesn't seem much of a stretch to say that if you want to build a skyscraper, you need to use suitable materials and provide sufficient support.

It would add challenge to construction beyond the simple (and often tedious) acquisition of resources.

EDIT:

Please note that I am not suggesting anything so extreme as Physicscraft. I'm not sure what license it is being offered under - it's probably not possible for Bioxx to use it, and implementing such a system from scratch is a lot of work and probably out of scope for TFC.

What I am suggesting is something more along the lines of calculating the stress on any given block. Each type of block has a limit to the amount of stress it can take - for example, wood's maximum stress would be less than stone bricks. If a block's maximum stress is exceeded, it breaks. Then there can be some computation to see if the blocks it was supporting collapse - this is similar to cave-ins.

Probably it is much more complicated to implement than I am making it sound. There's also the question of performance. However, I think that would fit quite nicely into what TFC already does.

However the stress points are a good idea, but for now you cann apply them only in the support beams.

What I want is for such a system to be generalized to all blocks. There should be one unified mechanism, where support beams would work just like any other block (keeping in mind that different blocks provide different amounts of support).

This would have some interesting consequences for construction, not only in needing to properly support your constructs, but even in things like limits to how tall buildings can be made because the material can only support so much weight.

Bioxx: I noticed that as of v53 you're no longer adding a letter for the smaller patches.

Since major feature releases tend to break things (including maps) and have plenty of bugs, I feel it would be very helpful to use separate values for major releases versus smaller changes (whether that is 53b, 53.2, Beta 3 Build 3, or whatever).

Please consider changing your versioning scheme.

There's a game called StarForge which is currently being crowdfunded. It allows construction cube-by-cube in a Minecraft-like fashion.

I bring this up because they have an "Engineering Mode" where you can see the stress points on your building. It is shown briefly in the video (start at 3:05). They show a building collapsing because it's not properly supported.

I don't know how feasible this would be in Minecraft, which has much simpler physics, but something of this nature would be very appropriate for TFC IMO. Such a system might even be merged with the cave-in system.

I'm not implementing them for killing... I was inspired after watching National Geographic... :/

That's a relief. I suspected you were inspired by Boatmurdered.

By the way, elephants could make for some awesome pack animals ... of course now I have an image of a storage room where all the chests have been replaced by elephants (you know someone would try it).

Despite my support for a simple experience system, I'm going to point out the problem.

We've all agreed (I think) that the XP system shouldn't be essential - there shouldn't be anything you are able to do with XP that you couldn't do without. But this means it may be easy for some people to simply ignore XP. If they die all the time they may never build up enough to miss it. So it's possible it wouldn't solve the problem.

You could make the benefits larger of course, but then you risk making them overpowered.

Perhaps if there were some things you could accomplish, or accomplish much more easily with experience ... perhaps some sort of resource only found in deep water (pearls?) where you'd need to be able to hold your breath for awhile to obtain. Or maybe a mob that is very dangerous, and even with good equipment you will probably need plenty of health, but that mob has lots of treasure (troll? dragon?). Nothing essential of course. Not sure if this could be accomplished gracefully, and it kinda kills the advantage of simplicity.

Anyway, I'd be happy to have a simple XP system regardless.

-Pack animals! Used to transport more than the player can with a pack saddle. Have them haul carts for even more carrying capacity.

Any sort of pack animal would be massively useful. Forget about carts, just make a donkey or something which is effectively a mobile (and killable) chest. It would make transporting goods to and from my distant mines sooooo much easier.

Of course, Bioxx would probably take this as an opportunity to nerf the player inventory.

As the mod currently stands maybe, maybe at night; however skeletons zombies and so on are foretold to soon not be spawning in the world other than in random crypts, in which case the only entity threats to be concerned of will be wolves/bears/whatever other devious predator that gets added.

Where's the fun of Minecraft if you don't fear the night? Anyway, that's a different discussion, and actually irrelevant. Suppose you starved to death? Well, respawning you in the much the same condition but without even the benefit of your things isn't likely to get you very far.

All I want out of this is a game where you fear death intensly ...

TL;DR: Death should fuck you up. Hardcore as is gives a magnificent caution and increased enjoyment to your playstyle in reaction to the consequences of death. ...

Most players do not like hardcore (as demonstrated by Bioxx's own poll). Most players do not want to fear death intensely. The goal is to make the cost of death sufficient to discourage it. To encourage you to actually try to survival (that being the goal, after all). People put many hours into this game and undoing too much of their work will make it not fun for most.

I understand you enjoy this but most of us do not, so if you want to recommend a "severe death" option that is fine, but please stop pushing this as the default.

A death penalty is a generally bad approach. Instead remove the death benifits like full health, full hunger, teleport home. Make respawn happen with 2 hearts of hp and 1 meat worth of hunger. Also a configurable death spawn location that is within 100-200 blocks of the death, or at a set graveyard location on servers.

As I believe has been pointed out in this thread already, this leaves a player who died in a position where they're very likely to end up dying repeatedly.

Similarly, I think the punishment should be to the world that made the player strong. The player losing all of their items is a good example of a punishment following this idea.

As dsmith77 pointed out, this is impossible to implement in SMP, making it a non-option. However, even if it was an option, it's a bad idea because most people don't want to start over just because they died (6% solo hardcore players in Bioxx's poll).

Here's the best question to ask:

Q: Why are we having this discussion?

A: Because player death is being abused.

Q: How is this being abused? What benefit does the player incur?

A: Fast travel. The players put their items in a chest and die to teleport back to spawn or their bed.

Since players can't transport items this way, I do not believe this is the primary motivation for abusing death. Bioxx's example was of players ignoring hunger, since if death doesn't matter hunger doesn't really matter either.

In general, lack of a death penalty allows players (a) to take risks with impunity, knowing their is little risk for poor judgement; as well as ( b ) being able to essentially ignore various game challenges.

A Few More Thoughts

Essentially all progress in Minecraft comes in the form of the resources obtained. This is a key source of the problem with death. It is very difficult to address this problem in a way that covers all loopholes while not being too extreme.

An experience system can address this easily because it is not a resource the player can store (in vanilla Minecraft this isn't really true, but vanilla's "XP" are mis-named). Since it is tied to Steve - and to an individual player - it is easy to remove on death. By making it non-essential and of significantly less importance than other resources, you can make death hurt without it being very frustrating.

However, lets suppose we don't have such a system, so we must address resources. In that case we will probably needs several pieces to fully address the problem. Here are a few things which might help (all of which I've mentioned before):

1. When you die, instead of your stuff simply dropping on the ground it ends up in your corpse, or in some tombstone block or something. It would then be guarded by some creature (unless in a spawn-protected zone). This would force you to work to recover your items. (The better items you had, the tougher the guardian could be.)

2. Lose ownership of pets, possibly other things as well. They will still be there, so they could be re-acquired (assuming some other player doesn't acquire them first), but it will require some work.

3. Chests which are outside of spawn protection may have some chance to be destroyed / raided, or perhaps mobs will simply take a liking to them. In any case, this can address the issue of players dropping their items into chests when they know they're about to die.

None of these is especially severe - they will make death inconvenient, but fully recoverable with some work.

A could live with an increase in strength or speed or stamina overtime but those shouldn't be based on experience point just on how much you run or jump or whatever.

There are some pros and cons as I discussed above. I would support such a system.

Another thing I have previously supported is removing "ownership" - e.g. losing control of your pets and such (you're not the same person after all). I like it because you can recover ownership but will have to do some work. But I don't think that's a big enough part of TFC to stand on its own. Maybe in the future with the "Kingdoms" changes.

I don't really care that much about the particular solution, as long as it isn't too harsh.

Regarding being incapacitated rather than killed, maybe having the player be transported back to their bed on revival would make it more workable. They could have some sort of injury that would be an annoying penalty and somewhat difficult to recover (perhaps a minimum amount of time needed also). Could be random: for example, you might have "broken leg" (can't sprint, slower speed), or "wounded" (half usual maximum health). Not as realistic of course. Still has a problem if the player died very near their bed (e.g. "hey, I'm still surrounded by zombies but now I'm also injured"). Also, if there is a point at which they truly die what is the penalty? Should they truly die, or only be injured to a maximum amount?

Does that seem in line with your thinking? (sorry there have been a bunch of different posts and I'm forgetting if you've suggested this before)

I'm for experience but only for the use in a single area (preferably enchanting or brewing or something magic-ish). We have said from the beginning we want all physical traits to be with Steve and all mental traits to be with the player therefore the "experience" should not exist in anymore than the players mind and should only exist to better teach players how to play not teach Steve how to play.

My suggestions for experience have been all toward physical traits: increasing health, breathing time underwater, movement speed, and so forth. No limits on, for example, what can be crafted. Is that acceptable?

The reason I am pushing experience is just one thing: simplicity. Pretty much every other proposal I've seen requires different special cases and complex rules. But if someone else can solve the issue of death as simply I'd be perfectly happy with it.

It... seems legit. It's just that... well, it would make sense to become better at what you are actually doing, instead of getting better at everything, when you receibe experience. 'Cause... sure, i will become better at smithing by going a saturday morning to the beach and fish all day long ._.

Certainly possible, and I'd have no objection to such a system. Just trying to point out that a levelling system doesn't need to be complex or especially RPG-ish.

A system where you improved the skills you used is similar to Oblivion (and Skyrim?). It would certainly be more realistic / believable and could be pretty cool. However it could lead to abuse if not properly implemented (such as people constantly doing that activity just to level-up faster). Also it would need to be implemented completely from scratch, whereas what I suggested can use a lot of existing functionality.

I would be happy with either.

Sorry, i didn't see this while posting. Yeah, you respawn in the same spot. Just twice, and that's apparently what people find hard to understand -unless you weren't speaking of my suggestion :-.

Sorry, I didn't mean that as a response to you particularly. Just a couple of quick things I was too lazy to find direct quotes for.

Regarding the idea of falling unconscious rather than dying straight off, I'm not convinced it is a meaningful solution. If you're in a situation where you've been knocked unconcious, what are the odds that you will manage to come back from that rather than it just being a prelude to death? Of course it may resolve a few cases but I don't see it as a good general solution.

Not that there isn't some potential in the idea of being temporarily incapacitated rather than dying straight off. But it's complex and I don't think it will be a great solution to this particular problem. Actually I think it would be more fun as part of SMP where other players might be able to revive you before you died.