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A Solution to Your Modding API Woes

An official Modding API from Mojang has always been something expected from the Minecraft community, but any signs of something remotely resembling an official Modding API were nowhere to be seen until more recently with the introduction of data packs, and Bedrock Edition receiving a very basic scripting API which is far from modding; more like tweaking the stage. It does not make sense to not have an official Modding API considering that modding is one of the most popular things to do with Minecraft (Java Edition) when you've become bored of vanilla Minecraft, and that would especially be true of long-time players of the game where updates introduce some cool new features to play around with only to then go right back to mods after having our fun.

 

Well, there's a very simple solution to implement a robust and universal Minecraft Modding API from Mojang. In 2014, Dinnerbone had remarked that it is like rebuilding the engines of a jet in the middle of a long flight. This is not very safe, and I do not recommend this, as you could fall and die. Jokes aside, you shouldn't be focusing on fixing and rewriting the existing Minecraft engine, but focusing on making a new one from scratch, preferably in C as it will save you a lot of headaches compared to the disaster that is OOP, and after you have thoroughly contemplated a stellar and robust design, it will be easier to maintain as well as to add features and updates to the game.

I know how to go about it, but the character limit is-

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• October 15, 2020 15:10
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  • October 17, 2020 13:53
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  The new design should be pretty straightforward:

  • Use the C programming language (as mentioned in the post). You'll obtain portable and efficient code that doesn't under-utilize the hardware (as long as you use it right), otherwise you suffer the overhead of the JVM or the long compile times of C++ (amongst a plethora of problems there); on top of that, emulating function pointers in Java introduces significant overhead.
  • Make a generic, modular voxel engine and implement Minecraft on top of it. If there is to be a Modding API, the engine must be fundamentally modular.
  • These should be obvious, but: data objects are not Objects. Structs are not classes. Pointers are not references. Functions are not methods. Memory and devices, etc. are not "resources" (as Bjarne Stroustrup calls these things). Garbage collection is a significant burden for the programmer and the user as a black box that cannot be touched, only reconfigured, for better or for worse.