Modding Tutorials

[jackatthekilns]

I am have trouble finding any tutorials on modding Minecraft that don't involve forge. Does anyone know of any?

[FlowerChild]

Not sure. The MCP website used to have a bunch which might still be in their archives or something.

Heck, I'm so out of touch with the general MC modding scene that I'm not even sure if ModLoader is still around, so I'm probably the wrong guy to answer this :)

[jackatthekilns]

As best I can tell Modlodder stopped updating a 1.6 something. The MCp readme has instructions on decompling and recompiling and I think I could figure things like adding a new type of ore, or changing recipes. It's the more complicated stuff like multi-block structures and custom rendering that I don't think I could pull off just from reading the MC code.

Thanks for the reply though.

[FlowerChild]

As best I can tell Modlodder stopped updating a 1.6 something. The MCp readme has instructions on decompling and recompiling and I think I could figure things like adding a new type of ore, or changing recipes. It's the more complicated stuff like multi-block structures and custom rendering that I don't think I could pull off just from reading the MC code.

Thanks for the reply though.

I'm not sure if any tutorial will really teach you that stuff man. Once you know the basics of how to add a block to the game or what have you, it's largely on the individual modder as to where to takes things from there.

If you have access to the source code, you basically have access to the ultimate source of documentation on how that code works.

When I started BTW, if I remember right I read through one tutorial on how to create a basic block on the MCP website, and that was it. Everything since has largely been figured out on my own through looking at the deobfuscated source code. I'm still going through that process to this day :P

If I can offer any advice, and it's the same I've given to aspiring modders for years now, it's this: start with something simple like adding an aesthetic block and build upwards from there. If you plan too big you're going to get frustrated and give up.

As a concrete example, here's how BTW started:



And this is with me having a lifetime of game development experience. I wouldn't even recommend getting involved with anything redstone related if you're just getting started.

[jackatthekilns]

When I started BTW, if I remember right I read through one tutorial on how to create a basic block on the MCP website, and that was it. Everything since has largely been figured out on my own through looking at the deobfuscated source code. I'm still going through that process to this day :P

If I can offer any advice, and it's the same I've given to aspiring modders for years now, it's this: start with something simple like adding an aesthetic block and build upwards from there. If you plan too big you're going to get frustrated and give up.

Thanks for the encouragement. I will start giving it a try.

[BinoAl]

There are also plenty of open source mods you could take a peek at, seeing how others have pulled things off helps.

[matty79321]

From my experience, modding just takes a little bit of java programming experience, and maybe a look into some of the source code. I'd recommend getting a decent understanding of java before starting though, as that is likely 99% of Minecraft modding. There are tons of java tutorials on the web (TheNewBoston is pretty good, link to java tut.: http://thenewboston.org/list.php?cat=31), and if you have access to a college java book from your local library that wouldn't be a bad place to start either. Once you learn the basics to class inheritance, you should be able to look at the basic MC classes and figure out what you're doing. Hope this helped.

[FlowerChild]

I'd recommend getting a decent understanding of java before starting though, as that is likely 99% of Minecraft modding.

Well, yes, but only if you don't have any programming experience, particularly object oriented. If you do, there's really nothing in Java you haven't seen before and if you know C++ it becomes more a matter of learning what you can't do anymore rather than what you can.

BTW was literally my first and only Java program...ever. Took me all of an afternoon to familiarize myself with the syntax and I just jumped straight into coding it without consulting any Java specific references other than the code itself. Despite having worked on BTW now for 3 years, I still wouldn't know how to setup a basic "hello world" Java program as I never had reason or desire to check.

As for it being 99%...I dunno man. Again, guess it depends on your previous programming experience in that yes, you certainly do need to learn how to code. Assuming you do though, I'd say the bulk of what needs to be learned is the specific code-base and how everything works within it.

[matty79321]

@FC I forget I assume those asking for help are new to programming in general (I deal with a lot of those types in my life away from the internet, so I tend to be locked in that state of mind). Like you said, given experience with a language like C or C++, java would't be hard to figure out from what you already know. As for the whole 99% thing, that might be an exaggeration, I haven't really tried modding in a long time and I don't know how much has changed.

[FlowerChild]

Well, don't get me wrong: I think you very well might be right in this case about the level of experience involved.

I haven't really tried to put it into words before, but I get a weird vibe when people recommend going to books to learn to code before tackling modding.

This might be due to my own history with coding. I first learned how to do it a very long time ago largely by typing game programs in from the back of magazines. As I went along, I picked things up, and it slowly mutated into me creating my own.

I don't even know what kids these days do in that regard. Back then, it was probably the only way for me to go as programming books were scarce, never mind ones focused on games programming, which were pretty much non-existent, and if someone had handed me a textbook I probably would have quickly gotten bored and gone back to hacking things together on my own. I know if I had started to read about code structuring techniques intended for large scale projects with multi-person teams, or about the "proper" way of doing things when I just wanted to get shit done, my eyes would have glazed over entirely as it would have been completely irrelevant to my situation at the time. I basically figured out everything on my own as there just weren't a lot of other options available, and I think in the end it made me a stronger programmer in the process, as really, problem solving is the core skill set, and that's something you can never learn from a book.

Anyways, in the modern world, I guess to me modding seems like a brilliant bridge for people to start having fun with coding right out of the gate. Much of the grunt work in terms of infrastructure is already done for you and you can focus on doing cool shit from the get go. You've got a code base you can poke and prod at, try changing small things here and there to see what happens, and have cool results pop up on screen for positive reinforcement.

Yes, your code is likely going to be rubbish by professional standards, but really, at that stage, who gives a fuck? You're having fun, learning as you go, and building up a sense of accomplishment to carry you forward.

I guess I just get a strange feeling when people jump straight towards more formal forms of education as a recommendation to people just starting out. To me it's almost akin to going on about engineering standards after first handing a kid a Mechano set. I think I often worry that it's more discouraging than anything else as if someone hands you a brick of a book when you're first wanting to learn about a subject, it'll likely only serve to discourage you and make you wonder what you're getting into.

[lostone1993]

-snip-

I have to agree with this, I always feel weird when someone suggests going to a book rather diving on in and it discouraged me until I went fuck it and started pulling things apart to learn what works and breaks....horribly
I started a private mod for minecraft and it is coming along nicely even though I have no knowledge of java and I have not got nearly any experience coding( I have some modding other games, nothing like this though) compared to some of guys on this forum

to the op
try looking though the last pages of the minecraft forums tutorial section, there should be some old ones there that may give you the basics, though you will have figure most of it out yourself also a tip I made the mistake of at first, stay away from modloader .etc work with the decompiled "clean" minecraft untill you have idea of how to do things and how things work

also starting with adding a block to the game is a good choice, the basic world gen(example replacing the top layer of grass in some of the biomes with cobblestone) is pretty easy to modify as well.

[VegasGoat]

I first learned how to do it a very long time ago largely by typing game programs in from the back of magazines.

I remember doing this with programs from Compute's Gazette, although it didn't really teach me anything because the code I was copying was in MLX. It was an amazing feeling though when it actually worked.

Anyway, I'd definitely agree that just jumping in to coding something is the best way to learn. I still can't learn anything programming related by reading a book, I have to actually try it out.

[jackatthekilns]

Thanks everyone for the replies. So everyone knows, I have been tinkering with programming since I was 14, so about 20 years now. I am almost entirely self-taught and most of my experience has been in C# (which I greatly prefer to Java) and ASP.net. Most of what I have done has been programming for websites, which when I go back to desktop apps, I realize how different the thinking often is.

The desire for a tutorial is two-fold, I learn from books. I can generally get through one of those massive programming books in about a day. I am not the guy who tears things apart and puts them back together. It's just not my personality. It isn't that I can't look at the source code and figure stuff out, its just a more difficult, slower process for me.

That leads to the second reason - time. My time to work on projects like this are limited.(right now my problem is that my free time is spent playing BTW).

All that said, I am not going to let the lack of tutorials stop me from trying and your suggestions on where to start have been both helpful and encouraging. I have already started looking through the code and cleaning it up a bit. I am using the newest MCP for 1.7.2 and there are a lot of obfuscated fields left.

[jackatthekilns]

So I made a copper ore block. You guys were right, not all that difficult.

I do have a question though. I am attempting to mod 1.7.2 because I would like to do something useful with the new biomes (give them advantages/disadvantages and reasons to find each of them). The current MCP leaves a great many methods and fields with unhelpful names and is is making my job of figuring out what is going on that much harder. So my question is, is there I reason that I should not just start with the code from an older version that is more completely mapped and add the biomes in as I can, in other words, is there an advantage to using the newer codebase. have they fundamentally changed the code so that the effort of learning it pays off. I can add biomes to any version, people have been doing that for years.

This is starting to ramble. If nothing I said made sense let me know and I will try again after some caffeine.