Mod Talk

So hey guys who are on here and play Minecraft! Found this mod... it looks like a fun time just for laughs, so I'm sharing. BUT, I seriously think this would do some bad things in a server, between lag and just having the world go poof. But still, funny to think about!

http://www.9minecraft.net/bacteria-mod/

Holy hell! This looks too cool also!!! Too bad it gives a warning right away about possible lag issues... but would still be cool to play with! http://www.9minecraft.net/little-blocks-mod/

By popular demand, I'm posting links to the texture and shader packs I'm using, and that I used to help shape my current attempt at a real mod pack. My modpack comes with optifine and a shader core, so all you have to do is get the files and stick them in the shaders and resources folders. The scope of this post (since I just lost the same post on my last sentence!!!!) is to drop links, not explain how to get things working with other peoples' packs, so if you want help there I can add some info at a later time.

SHADERS:
Chocapic13's Shaders I am running V4-High. Download links are right after install instructions.

Naelego's Cel Shaders This link goes right to the downloads. I'm running 1.0.4. Not the greatest, but nice every now and then if you want that Borderlands feel.

Sonic Ether's Unbelievable Shaders Scroll down till you see a green 'spoiler' button directly under a gray 'Legacy:'. Right above that are the download links for version 10. I'm running Ultra.

Sildur's Shaders Under the pictures you have an agreement and blocks of text, then links to the downloads. I'm running 1.051 High.

TEXTURES:
For shaders it's best to go straight to the original thread to avoid download site fuckery. Textures are ZIPs with images inside, so less can go wrong, so I'm linking to 9minecraft for ease of grabbing. All of these have download links near the bottom under images and a few blocks of text. If you're grabbing for MC 1.7.2 and there isn't a download specifically for that, grab one from the box for 1.6 and 1.7.

Sphax

LB Photo Realism This one is in the box for 1.8, 1.7, 1.6.... Only available in 128x for now, so use at your own risk.

Persistence This one is like a cross between the above realism and the above sphax. Very nice on the eyes, especially with a shader.

Ravand's


Notes: None of the texture packs I've found will have textures for every mod. That's the nature of the beast. You should experiment to find what combo suits you best. I normally run Chocapic's shaders with Sphax textures, but my current fave is Sildur's shaders with Ravand's...VERY awesome effects, especially with the dynamic lights mod in there!

Install... you can put the ZIPs directly in the folders. Shaders go in 'shaderpacks' and textures go in 'resourcepacks'. Problem is some of these peeps ZIP the ZIP... like they have the ZIP for the folder, and they add a readme or something, and ZIP them both together. If a pack doesn't show up in MC, check the ZIP to see if there's another ZIP inside. If so, unzip and fix. Questions? Call, txt, email, or post here!

YAY!!! I didn't delete my whole fucking post this time!!!!

Also by popular demand, or just demand... or just because... I'm posting a "start here to start learning modding."

Making items and blocks and such for Minecraft is done in the JAVA programming language, and once you start "getting it," it's not that bad. The bad part...wait... the HARD part is following tutorials to get started, and finding the tutorial writer decided to stop halfway through the process, then having to find a different set of tutorials and try to overlap them in your programming environment. The bad part is setting everything up so it "just works." When you mix the HARD part with the bad part, you get frustrated and want to say to hell with it.

So... rather than giving you the three different sets of tutorials I followed just to get my development environment set up, and having you run around with messy code because of it, I'm going to direct towards one set of tutorials that is actually more than 4 tutorials long and then abandoned. This guy has setup tutorials, basic tutorials, and some more advanced stuff too. His tutorials are not the best written, and his code is split up a bit, but he's trying to explain each section of code, and at the end of each tutorial, he gives a link (through ad.fly so he can get some money) to his github with his full source code for each tutorial. Also, if you have a problem or error and email him, he will get back to you quick, and he's very helpful! Hell, one of his tutorials had to get changed cuz some amateur modder found a problem with his code, and he updated it within 15 minutes!

Anyway, here we go. Before you even look around his site, start here. This page will explain where from and how to download and install JAVA for developers and the Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE). You can use others, but I haven't found a tutorial yet that doesn't use Eclipse, so it's probably the best bet (and you set it up to run a ghost copy of forged minecraft from right inside the IDE so you can test yout mod without screwing up any installs of MC). At the bottom, there's a link to his next tutorial, which is a 'fast setup'. Don't...just don't. If you're serious about getting into this, go to the advanced setup at this page. Sigh... looking at it, I wish I would've followed that tutorial instead of the others...maybe I can edit my IDE...

ANYWAY...if you get that far without serious errors, you are ready to begin! You can then start following his next tutorial at the bottom of that page, or use the menu system at the top to find something you want to focus on. I recommend following along, as items build off of knowledge from basic mod files... blocks build off knowledge from items... ETC. Again, the worst part is getting the damn IDE and JAVA and forge and gradle all working together, and these two pages should explain it all perfectly. After that, any tutorials for MC 1.7.2 or higher should be smooth sailing. Questions, lemme know!

And another thing... Do follow tutorials to get the basics down. Learn how to make an item, and a block, using the tutorial's terms to make sure you get every call and trace accurate. THEN...once you can say "hey this isn't bad," then you can add on to a block or item. A HUGE portion of my first few days' problems came from "well I'm not going to call my block tutorial_stone because I should just start building my mod as I go." It works, and my mod works, but I have some stupid naming conventions going on, a small naming issue I can't find a solution to, and some horrible code because of it.

That said, when it's time to start changing and adding on, without being fluent in JAVA, I find it nice to look at source code. In fact, one of the reasons you set everything up like the links in the last post tutorialize, is so you can access and reference Minecraft's source code. However, Minecraft doesn't do everything we want, hence mods. Not only that, but Minecraft's source is thick, and they use some crazy-ass numbering convention to call to other JAVA classes so it becomes unclear what the hell is going on. To that end, I discovered Open Source Minecraft Forge mods. With this list, one way or another you can look at the source code for many popular mods, and get a feel for how they organized code, called classes, naming conventions, ETC. This has been EXTREMELY helpful!!!! Except finding out how mDiyo made slime blocks bouncy in Tinker's Construct... have not found a single line of code for bouncy slime blocks... mainly because I still don't know what I'm looking for. But for simple stuff, looking at well-written and working code for mods you already enjoy can be very helpful and rewarding. Once you have some basics down, reading this working code is almost like a tutorial in itself. Try it!

I'm going to post a few notes for myself mainly, but feel free to use them yourself.  After one failed attempt with the Forge/Eclipse/JDK/Gradle thing and 2 rather successful workings, I decided that it would be easier to look here instead of multiple places for the information needed to make things work smoothly...  (Mind you, there will be no particular order to the notes and they will be geared for Windows 7 Ultimate 64)

Create a folder in C:\ with a name which you will instantly know what it is and what it is for.  In example, if you are making a folder to contain your MineCraft mod creations, name it MCModding, MineCraftMods or some such.  Also, make it a level 1 folder.  There is no need to bury your folder within a folder, within a folder, within a folder...  With the size of HDDs these days, losing a folder is a real pain in the ass.  I've done it.  Organization is the key!!!

Files which are necessary are: jdk-7u71-windows-x64.exe, gradle-2.2-all.zip, forge-1.7.10-10.13.2.1230-src.zip, eclipse-jee-luna-SR1-win32-x86_64.zip

The easiest (first) thing for me to do now is to extract the java JDK.  I decided to place it in C:\Program Files\Java instead of just in C:\Java because down the road there may be an issue with Java trying to autoupdate or some other thing, see the random directory and halt everything causing the world to tilt on its axis, cause butterflies to spew flames and what ever else...  After the JDK has been installed, you NEED to edit the environment variable of 'Path' on your computer.  That is getting really easy to do....

Open your START menu and right click on COMPUTER.  Pop-up menu, click on Properties.  Left side on new window, click Advanced system settings.  Another new window, near the bottom, click Environment Variables..  Yet another window appears.  In the 'System variables' block, scroll down to the variable name Path.  Single click on it and then click on the Edit button.  Another new window... *sigh*  Single click on the actual value of the variable and use the arrow keys to go as far right (to the end) of that string. If there is no semicolon, add one now and then the direct location of the java JDK bin file. In example:   ;C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_71\bin  Click OK

While we're here, we will add the JAVA_HOME variable.  In the Environmental Variables window (should still be there) in the bottom portion, click New. Enter JAVA_HOME into the Variable name spot and enter C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_71 into the Variable value spot.  Click OK (window goes away), then OK again (another window goes away), OK one more time (goodbye another window) and then close out the System window where we started this. For simple shits and giggles, open a command prompt and type in javac and hit Enter. If you got anything other than an error, you're doing great!!!!!! We are now done fucking with JAVA. For now. *Whew!!!* If you did receive an error, you will need to format your computer and start all over!

Now for the 3 .zip files mentioned above..  Extract the Gradle.zip file into it's own folder. C:\Gradle  Just make sure that when extracting you don't end up with C:\Gradle\Gradle\blah blah blah..  The Forge.zip and Eclipse.zip can (should) go into your mod folder you created earlier with parent folders, not redundant sub folders.

**More to follow** **Edit containing more to follow**

Vader... I have been trying to find something awesome and free. I thought it was github, then I thought it was twoodo, I have no idea if either will work. What I want isn't so much online collaboration, but a place to upload and share code, maintaining file and folder structure (like I stuck the current folder on drive). BUT, I also want some kind of PM or IM or chat feature...something with a thread design to hold multiple conversations, like I drop a thread about multi-block structures, so I have it AND so you can check it out, while you ask a question in a separate chat/PM about using the grid in GIMP, which I can answer while also posting a question about some bug or error I'm having. Not so much a project manager... maybe that's why I can't find it, cuz I don't know what to call it!
Know of any such animal? (I signed up for github and twoodo ({sigh} and will look further later));

That said: IF that "this.proxy.init" changed to "Main.proxy.init" works for you, it will require vocals to try to explain how I found that. Should be able to pull it off by phone though and it shouldn't take long, so no worries there. I also want a description of where you're seeing your output from that printOut command, cuz I was looking in the log and didn't see it (that's the reason I think the Main.proxy isn't actually working)...then again, I just did the first item toot and it works, and that calls through the commonproxy so maybe it's all good?

ANYWAY! The first item toot had some stuff I was gonna bypass and setup for later, but I remembered one of the reasons I'm doing it this way, and I followed the toot exactly except for changing my item name. SO... near the bottom, he gives us a texture to download and use for our item. The path he gives us for this file is:
WorkspaceRoot/src/resources/assets/modid/textures/items/tutorialItem.png.
I got confused, I tested both ways, so I wanna tell you before you get there. The 'modid' folder in that path needs to be changed to whatever you assigned as your modid in your Main.java class. Like mine is now:
/resources/assets/collect/textures/items/...

If you leave it as modid, you will have your item in the game, but it will have the black and purple checker texture.

Also, don't be concerned that your item has a stupid name in-game right now. A few toots down the road is a toot called 'language file' and that will fix the names. Yeah, I'm thinking forum isn't the best way to share this info...sigh...

**EDIT**Dammit....apparently you can open the standard google chat box from inside drive, and anybody with shared editable access to the drive can edit together in real time.... leave it to google. And all this works in google docs also, but can drive and docs and chat all work seamlessly? Hmmmm....

**EDIT 2** Just did some putzing. Github isn't all it's cracked up to be unless you're already a programmer. Twoodo is silly. BUT...with a little tinkering and a couple apps from the chrome app store, google drive can be sut up to do EVERYTHING I've been looking for, plus some! Vader, I will show you next time, but I do believe we can upload and share our complete project folders, AND have open discussions about them all through google drive. This is wild and neat!!!