As always, rules for this thread:
-DO NOT post suggestions.
-DO NOT critique unreleased features. Wait until you've had a chance to try them before passing judgement.
With that out of the way:
I'll open up with a screenshot that summarizes the mod's development over the last week:
Spoiler
Show
After the BWF induced chaos of the past while and all the stress it caused, I decided I was in need of a break from modding to chill, and reevaluate the direction I'm heading in with the mod. In the end, it turned out to be a full week before I really felt like returning back to working on BTW, and I began back in on it this morning.
Honestly, this whole thing sucks on multiple levels. Not sure how many of you can really relate to spending a year and a half pouring your heart and soul into something like this just to have it blatantly ripped off, but I can assure you that it really isn't a pleasant sensation :)
The net result was that I was almost completely drained of all desire to continue producing free content for people that would do something like this, very similar to what happened with the Yogaboo invasion, or with my troubles while part of the Forge, for those of you that have been with the mod for a long time.
It doesn't look like that sensation will ever fully go away either. To give you an example, when I returned to work on the mod this morning, I looked over my todo list for my first task. One thing that caught my eye was a few additions I wanted to make to the Block Dispenser, but before then, I wanted to refactor the existing code for the BD to clean it up and put in hooks for add-on authors.
This seemed like a good place for me to start back into things, but as I considered the task further, I had a thought:
"Wait a second...the BWF guy hasn't implemented the Block Dispenser yet".
You see, the guy is obviously deobfuscating and reverse engineering my code. This allows him to develop at a relatively rapid pace given that he doesn't actually have to think through the related problems himself but has a ready made solution in place from which he can then rewrite/plagiarize the code.
Given that, by refactoring and cleaning up the code, I'd actually be helping him in that process. This is obviously not palatable to me, as I'd much rather see the dip shit suffer whenever possible.
But herein we have a problem, because now I am working at cross-purposes to myself. I desire to work on things with the mod, but I in no way desire to help him rip me off, and with that, any joy or satisfaction I may take from working on such stuff goes out the window.
And really, from now on, this isn't just the story with regards to refactoring code, but also with regards to any new content I might desire to add as well. Do I really feel like working on new stuff when I know he will just be ripping it off as well, and that any work I put into it will directly benefit him? Do I go out of my way to make my own code as annoying to read and work with as possible because that will be to his detriment, knowing all the while that I'm also hurting myself in having to deal with that code in maintaining the mod in the future, and also likely hurting add-on authors?
I obviously don't want to go that route, but I think the above illustrates how quickly your thought process can become muddied under such a scenario, and why it rapidly ceases to be any fun.
So what to do? That's primarily what has been running through my head over the past week, even while I took a break.
I don't have a clear answer at present. The only thing I do know is that something has to change, as I do not think I will want to continue modding MC under such conditions. I may keep going for awhile on fumes, but I think it's becoming clear to me that BWF, and the overall trend it represents is killing my love of what it is I've been doing with BTW.
As you probably all know, I make BTW for fun, and this just isn't fun.
So I've been considering my various options for how to proceed in the future, especially where RTH is concerned, and while I do not have any clear direction as of yet, one option has definitely become more appealing to me, and that is creating my own game instead of modding MC.
That is a LOT more work, and obviously all the negative points I've made about that idea in the past still stand. However, this BWF thing in particular has me really wondering if it just might be worth the trouble after all in order to get myself away from this Minecraft modding scene once and for all, and create an environment for myself in which I can continue developing in relative peace.
It also plays into another set of questions I've been asking myself as of late with regards to just how far I want to go in modifying the underlying architecture of MC in order to get the functionality I want out of RTH. The stuff I'm considering (extended metadata is one example) is of course very doable, but problems start to arise when you consider what happens if Mojang themselves start changing the underlying architecture upon which it is based, at which point, I begin to say to myself "yes, it's more work up front, but how much more than what will be required for ongoing maintenance to adjust to those changes?"
And honestly, I think most of us are of a similar mind now that we're not really expecting anything further of good quality to be coming out of Mojang in the future, given the nature of their recent releases, so why do I want to pay the "price" in terms of maintenance for code I don't even want in the first place?
Then of course, there's also the issue of this upcoming mod API. I haven't heard anything definitive about this, but if the rumors are to be believed, then it sounds like Mojang will be discouraging, or potentially even disallowing base class modifications, in which case, what happens to RTH at that point given that it will most certainly require some heavy duty changes to the way MC works, at a much more fundamental level than BTW does?
So, all told, it has me asking some very hard questions about whether I should be sticking with MC or going my own way entirely.
From a player perspective, me going my own way would likely suck pretty bad at the start. It would likely mean several months of no new playable content, and when you did get your hands on some, it would likely be many more months before it was even up to the level of what is in vMC, never mind BTW. As I've mentioned many times before, that also sucks from my perspective as that time would be spent doing what I consider to be "infrastructure", not actual gameplay, which as you all know is what I primarily enjoy.
It's definitely a heavy price to pay, so the question is then whether it will be worth it in the long run. Will the design freedom it affords me and the reduced maintenance cost due to not having to update to new versions of MC make it all worth it in the end? There's no easy answer to that.
Anyways, that's what's been going through my head these days :)
Regardless of which route I take though, the clear task at present is finalizing BTW, and that's what I returned to working on today. I started off with resolving an inventory management bug, and that turned into a rather large refactor of the inventory handling code for the mod. I'll likely take a look at a few other outstanding bugs today to clear those off my plate.
Due to decreased motivation, I'm still moving relatively slowly, but I'll just keep plugging away moving towards the point at which I consider BTW "complete", whatever it is that I decide on doing afterwards.
Oh, and in case any of you are wondering, none of the above affects my ongoing support of BTW. Whether I create a new mod, make RTH an extension of BTW (which seems less and less likely as time goes on), or make my own game, I will continue to support and update BTW for the indefinite future.
