A meeting with Mojang Specifications

On Wednesday morning, as I'm sure most of you already know, the Bukkit team had a meeting with Mojang Specifications regarding their popular game, Minecraft. Going into the meeting, we were hoping to tackle the licensing issue right out of the door. Unfortunately, due to some people being unable to make it, it turned out to be a different type of meeting than we had intended.

With only the developers of Minecraft able to attend, the meeting quickly turned into a technical discussion about what ideas we all had for Minecraft, how modding should work and so on. As we learned a lot from this meeting, we felt we should share some of the points with you. However, please understand that absolutely nothing said in the meeting is set in stone or final and can change at any time.

So, here's what we learned:

• Modding support will likely start as server-side only at first, then later is hoping to expand to the client-side
• Single player is most likely going to be changed to run through a local server (this is also to enable modding)
• They are hoping to make texture modification easier, without having to modify the client
• They like what we're doing but need to provide us with a better alternative to the way we're doing it

Some ideas they're considering:

• Generic gui support
• Server -> client communication to allow popping up an interface, etc
• Being able to tell clients to follow different rules, like physics
• Giving modders the ability to (make signs) show text

While we did not have time to address our licensing issues, we believe we can honestly say that this meeting was just the beginning of a long-term relationship with Mojang Specifications. Nonetheless, we're hoping to contact Mojang Specifications specifically about our licensing issues soon.

 

Jobs, no, but they're trying to Go Legit (TM) with Mojang Specifications. This is a pretty big deal. I'm pretty sure the line you think they're not trying to cross, is actually the line they had the meeting in order to discuss crossing.

 

Puzzler is right, but I would like to add something; If there are so many problems with Minecraft, why are they starting on another game? I understand they need to make money, but the last time i checked there's still about eleven thousand people buying the game every 24 hours. I would also add the server problems they are experiencing. If there are so many people buying the game, why not purchase more space to accommodate? "The servers that were too small" is an incorrect statement, they experience problems to date. It seems every time I attempt a log on, the servers are crowded. I get through maybe once every half hour. Now, I'm not complaining, I understand that a developing studio such as Mojang will have problems, especially if they grow that fast in such a small amount of time, and it would be a challenge to please everyone. To everyone who is bitching about bukkit/etc, take it easy, eh? Go have a beer and calm down. Seriously. Who gives if you don't have your perfect administrator commands. Your server is still up, and people are able to partake in Minecraft engineering feats, or annihilation, if you have griefers. In that case, ban their IP. It's not a science. Just take it in stride, no need to get heated over something you can't control.
--- merged: Feb 23, 2011 9:27 PM ---

Lol. Served.