Official modding API

[Winkerson 1]

I never watched the whole thing because the questions section was just... painful with half of the people asking questions specifically covered in the panel before it or either that had nothing to do w/ the api discussion, 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.

[varradami 26]

... 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/.

[Enzer 60]

API is not slated for 1.5 (wild rumored started on a few places including the MCF's new section which incorrectly reported such and took a day to correct their info), which has a tentative release date of January. However some things they discussed on the API panel will be in the 1.5 update. This include updates to the rendering engine, the support for HD textures of all sizes, custom water/lava/fire and support for animated textures. Dinnerbone's twitter confirms this as well.

They also talked about a new system where block IDs and the such were no longer going to be hard coded (something to do with the future plugin system and bettering modding, however they did note that this would impact texture packs so that future patches would not break textures and if Mojang pushed new items or blocks, instead of rendering as pink cubes with unupdated texture packs, the game would automatically use the vanilla texture for the new items). It really wasn't all that clear if this system was being pushed with the rendering/texture stuff for the 1.5 update or was something that would come in the future with the API.