- cross-posted to:
- gaming@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- gaming@beehaw.org
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
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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.
Finally we can view Mojang’s shitty server multi-threading implementation in all its glory.
spoiler
___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.
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.1.7.10
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 🥹
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
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.
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.
Luanti eating on their turf.
I doubt microsoft even knows what luanti is
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.
It’s a 20 year old game going into abandonware mode. This is the nicest way for them to do that.
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Its 16, not 20, the earliest version “Cave Game Tech Test” was in May 2009.
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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 😂
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They started providing deobfuscation maps 6 years ago
TIL
I look forward to several critical CVE being discovered like log4j
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.
That would be good though. Better the communities finds them and they can be patched than when only some black hats know them.
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.
Then I must be the most plain motherfucker out there. I meddle with Create and Biomes o’ plenty every couple of years, but about 90% of my worlds are vanilla with the exception of a couple of Vanilla Tweaks data packs.
I tried Feed the Beast once… never again. That was the worst Minecraft experience I’ve had in my entire life!
I started with one of the optimized packs and then added stuff I thought was useful: maps, minimaps, backpacks, way stones, ultimine via enchants.
After I played that for a while and beat most of the game I wanted to, I tried a vanilla plus pack, betterMC. It had a lot of the same mods but more. After I finished that, I went with allthemods10, but at that point you do need youtube and discord open to ask questions or look up how to do certain things.
Anyways, had a blast with all of it, I’m on vacation now so I’m playing no mods on my steam deck and as long as I turn on keep inventory its not bad at all. The new copper update is pretty cool!
Edit: just want to add that applied energistics and mekanism are fantastic mods, I’d put them up there with create, so if you haven’t tried them it might be worth just adding one or both to an otherwise unmodded playthrough.
Feed the Beast is commonly overloaded and also commonly shoves things like progression and questing, which are not to everybody’s liking.
The best approach is always to add the mods you want manually to tailor the experience.
I personally had most fun with Terrafirmacraft, Thaumcraft, Electrical Age, and GregTech. But those were the days gone, and most of them got stuck at 1.7.10
Terrafirmacraft and Gregtech do actually have modern 1.20.1 versions! I am currently actually playing a modpack with some friends called Terrafirmagreg, which as the name implies is tfc and Gregtech integrated, along with a bunch of other QOL and add-ons. It is a very fun, and very very long pack.
Edit: I believe there is a 1.7 version of the pack as well
Nice! Heard of new versions of TerraFirmaCraft, but I believe it is community maintained, as the main author seems to focus on Vintage Story. But since you mention it works fine, I might as well give it a spin! Didn’t know Gregtech updated to newer versions.
most of them got stuck at 1.7.10
As did I :) The few times I boot up MC it’s the same old modpacks on the same old versions.
I too find myself returning back there :)
So many great mods died after this version that it was impossible to recreate the experience - and I feel bad for those who joined the party later and never knew what 1.7.10 (or 1.6.4, or 1.5.2 for that matter) has to offer.
It goes so bad that when I recently loaded a newer version, I was like “what the hell is going on here” :D
1.7.10 (or 1.6.4, or 1.5.2 for that matter)
1.3 was another nasty one. That was the one where multiplayer and singleplayer were merged and LAN play was introduced. Before that mods were released specifically for either single or multiplayer and authors would have to specifically build 2 versions of every mod if they wanted to enable use in multiplayer. This shift killed a ton of mods and version 1.2.5 was a peak for mods like Red Power for example
If you use an alternate launcher like Prism Launcher it is trivial to install tons of modpacks for any version of Minecraft and manage many different mod loadouts (with handy search and auto-download of both modpacks and individual mods, plus it makes it super easy to modify a modpack you downloaded and add/remove mods) Its really the best way to play modded Minecraft (and has been since the fork from MultiMC) plus unlike most launchers which are super-simplified to not scare newbies, Prism Launcher also exposes tons of handy technical stuff if you want to dive deeper, such as optionally displaying full logs, java version and argument management, world edit and other tool integrations and more.
It goes so bad that when I recently loaded a newer version, I was like “what the hell is going on here” :D
Duude. I was super big into reading all of the changelogs and learning all of the undocumented changes from the wikis for every version and preview from when I first started playing back in Beta 1.7.3 until around version 1.6.4 or so. Booting up modern… 1.20something? I can’t even remember whats currentish anymore…anyways I’m so lost and then I try to play like a Beta 1.7.3 player and everyone else just goes “the fuck are you doing?”
No need to advertise Prism - using it already :)
Also, UltimMC is a decent offline fork for pirates and privacy enthusiasts (Disclaimer: I do not promote piracy and own a legal Minecraft license)
I’m so lost and then I try to play like a Beta 1.7.3 player and everyone else just goes “the fuck are you doing?”
Happily, I joined Minecraft when it was already 1.7.2 (release versioning, not Beta), so my ways are not THAT outdated, and obviously I never had issues with 1.7.10 because it’s literally my first version with two minor updates. Who would have known that it will all stop there…
Also, I struck some delicate balance with mods at version 1.21.1, but it is for sure still a much different experience.
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!
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
Why not go open source? What are they so afraid of, given anyone can now see the source code by using a simple tool?
Open source includes unlimited distribution. The game is still paid and they want to reserve distribution rights.
Open-source and source-available are used interchangeably. Releasing the source does not mean the license will allow any form of redistribution or recompilation.
If you decompile the game yourself you can infinitely distribute the game as well. This is not an argument.
No don’t look it up, simply assume that you know what it means without ever seeing a definition because your brain is just better than everyone else’s.
The Open Source Definition
Page created on July 7, 2006 | Last modified on February 16, 2024Introduction
Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open source software must comply with the following criteria:
…
Open source and source available are not and cannot be used interchangeably. They mean two extremely different things!
The comment said why not go open source, not why not go source available though.
To add to this, it’s exclusively available on the Microsoft Store, which has gotten so bad lately that I refused the terms on their most recent update and haven’t had it installed on any machines since.
It isn’t? Minecraft: Java Edition (which is getting deobfuscated) is available on their website for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Minecraft: Bedrock Edition has nothing to do with these news.
I could be mistaken but I’m 90% sure the website redirects you to buy it on the Microsoft Store, which is also how it will be installed and launched.
No it isn’t. On Windows there are two versions of Minecraft. “Minecraft: Bedrock Edition” available as a UWP using the Microsoft Store, written in C++ and supporting crossplay with the Minecraft releases for consoles and mobile phones and “Minecraft: Java Edition” available through minecraft.net, written in Java and supporting crossplay with the MacOS and Linux versions.
The Java and Bedrock edition came bundled together for me. Maybe theres a way to redeem it somewhere other than the store, but I am still pretty sure its been the way I described ever since Minecraft was purchased by Microsoft.
You can use the same license for both, and your purchase includes access to both versions regardless of how you buy it, unless that’s changed very recently when I wasn’t looking.
Officially, both versions also explicitly require you to create (or already have) a Microsoft account to sign-in and play. Unofficially, the Java version is dead easy to pirate.
Here’s the link to the MSI for Minecraft Java: https://aka.ms/minecraftClientWindows
Do you mean source available or actually open source?
I mean releasing the source under a license like GPL (or whatever the modern equivalent is).
Because then anyone could fork it and redistribute the game which I presume they don’t want.
It would be sweet for us if they did, but I can see why they don’t want to do that.
Things like Minetest exist.
Yes, but Minetest/Luanti is not a fork of Minecraft, it is its own separate thing.
Precisely.
They could distribute source ports of the game, but you’d still have to buy the game in order to make use of them. Textures, sound effects, animations, etc. are (usually) not source code.
That’s why people still buy Doom 2 even though it was open-sourced in 1997.
Fork it and use your own texture and sound pack doesn’t sound like much work tbh. Any major modpack could just redistribute the game as a fork and it would be awesome. But Microsoft probably don’t want that.
The small amount of sales of doom 2 today is not at all comparable to the massive amount of minecraft sales and minecraft-related microtransactions that microsoft is raking in. Doom has many modern sequels that are far more popular today than doom 2, while minecraft does not have any official sequel.
Open-sourcing Doom increased, rather than decreased sales.
Doom also went open source long before there were any sequels, and while it was still the hottest shit in PC gaming.
And Hytale got shitcanned!
It’s actually amazing that in an industry so hell-bent on copying successful formulas ad-nauseam (e.g. Quake&Doom spawning the whole genre of First Person Shooters), Minecraft has not seen anything reach the status of spiritual successor in over 15 years of charts-topping sales performance. Not from its own studio, not from its former creator, not with the Late Hypixel Studios.
There are survival games and base-building games and exploration games, but none of them are “Minecraft-likes” in the way that early FPS were “Quake-likes”. CS has Valorant. LoL has Dota. Tekken has Street Fighter. PUBG has Fortnite has Roblox. Minecraft somehow remains truly one-of-a-kind, a gaming UFO that eludes suits looking for a replicable formula. I actually believe Mojang themselves don’t understand why Minecraft works in the first place either, which is why every update seemingly either underwhelms or angers everyone. That game is lightning in a bottle and no-one knows what to do with it.
If Nadella had a stroke so bad he decided to make Minecraft FOSS, I’d be really interested to see what would happen. If any for-profit company was allowed to make direct Minecraft derivatives, I do think we would see a level of creativity and innovation that would dwarf even the already extremely prolific current modding scene.
What proportion of those sales are for Java edition? This sounds like an attempt to make mods and therefore java edition into a more popular/appealing product. They know that most users are not going to do anything with source code.
I thought they were still hoping to convince people to use Bedrock so they had to buy Windows.
I’d love to see that but realistically I don’t ever see it happening.
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.
I like to think that Luanti caused this.
Started experimenting with modding Luanti just last week. Was realy suprised how accesable and easy it is, even for an idiot with no experience like me!
When I’m finished with my current game (a 2D platform-adventure game made in Godot) I’m thinking of prototyping my next game in Luanti. It’ll let me experiment with ideas for a large, open-world game without needing to implement my own world-generation system and, since everything is block-based and the expected graphical fidelity is low, it’ll make creating the content a lot easier.
Every Minecraft update just makes me hum “Where’s the modding API” again.
It’s datapacks
Absolute cowards. Won’t even release the comments.
“No” - Bartosz Boq 2025
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)
I have been playing re-console mod pack lately because I prefer 4J’s version of Minecraft the most.
Obfuscation got more and more useless, as there was a serious pressure that AFAIK even tools popped up to specifically de-obfuscate Minecraft.
Not only tools, Mojang themselves eventually provided obfuscation maps.
They’ve had something for quite a while now that made it so names weren’t changed between releases so stuff would work better. I don’t remember what it’s called. Like it used to be that a new version meant figuring out everything again.
