Started by
Dornick
on
Topic category: Feature requests and ideas for MCreator
The main reason im asking for support for these versions, is simple really, around 48% of minecrafts modding community plays 1.8.9 or 1.12.2 .
Plus if you are making a pvp mod(fps boost, gui changes, etc) you will most likely want to make the mod for 1.8.9, likewise, the majority of other mod types are made in 1.12.2 or at least available for 1.12.2, because there is more support for mods in that version(meaning better fps and less crashing)
TLDR, if you add support for 1.8.9 and 1.12.2 more people will play the mods made using mcreator, witch means more people creating mods using mcreator.
If not support for older versions, at least the ability to make mods in older versions, im not really asking for older versions to have the newer features, im asking for it to be possible to make mods in older versions.
Well... let me counterargue (and mostly, explain).
That's not really true. Modders themselves tend to leave support for older versions, and the ones that stayed on 1.12, eventually left modding. The ones that are still supporting 1.12.2 (or older versions) are way smaller minority.
If you say about playing mods - I'd still tell that you exaggerate the amount of people playing, but nevermind about precision, that's fair, these versions are still quite popular.
This doesn't mean that they are very popular, since a lot of people just wants to play new features. And Minecraft changed a lot since these versions, so a lot of people (be it newcomers, it doesn't matter) wouldn't even stand Minecraft without a lot of QoL features that new versions added.
So, therefore:
-> this is not true either. I made backport for 1.12.2 of my mod. And sure, it was more popular than 1.14, 1.15 or 1.17 version. But comparing to 1.16/1.18? Not even close.
Well, technically... you can make mods via MCreator for these versions!
Either visit this archive or use 2020.2 which supports 1.12.2 natively from here.
If you do not ask about newer features, these are totally fine. They may (and will be buggy)? Sure! They will also have extreme limitations for features (which is really a pain)... but as said, technically you are totally able to make some mods on this version.
You seem to understand that backporting features is a pain, so I assume I don't need to explain you this, but to whoever comes across (or maybe to you, if you want clarification):
People have limited amount of time. That's really a shame. So each day Klemen and other devs put on working on old/outdated versions of Minecraft, it would mean less features for newer versions, and also a lot more bugs and - who knows - easier burnout (-> end of MCreator).
Also, as far as I know, MCreator isn't even daily job of any of us. Even if it was, it would still mean that devs could maybe (!) add few features more.
But maintaining generators is both:
1) really time-consuming (and energy consuming), since each generator needs a lot of testing, understanding of code and so on
2) sometimes it is even impossible due to technical incompatibilities (1.12.2 is such case - change of Java version in 1.17 made it so no MCreator past 2021.3 can use 1.12. Just because use 1.12 uses Java 8, meanwhile 1.17+ use newer version)
3) extremely different in code. If you ever had situation when you worked on things that are really similar, yet totally different, you will understand why you would like to avoid such situation. 1.8, 1.12, 1.14+, 1.17 and 1.18(.1/2) are really different code-wise, therefore supporting each version would be terribly confusing.
Tl;dr, it's in our best interest to want only newest generators (and maybe one, not-so-distant, popular one like 1.16 for "secondary"), because it's respecting community, devs' time, and just being open to what's coming new. Modding landscape won't change if we stay forever where others stayed.
Ending this extremely long message - if you really want to make mods for these old versions, either use what I linked to you, or use code. I'd recommend code - because yes, MCreator 2020.2 and older were really, really tough, and it's sometimes way more frustration than joy.
I hope you understand my etude, since I wanted to clarify as much as it is possible in this topic.
You are right that the majority of the modded community is in 1.12.2, but there is still a big part of the modded community in 1.8.9, in the form of client side mods for servers (Ex: Neu, Hytils, Sba,Chromahud, 1.7animations, cps, keystrokes, etc), this is mainly because a lot of servers do not update past 1.8.9 because of how controversial of a update it is.
My main goal with this post was to if not get support for versions like 1.8.9, at least the ability to make mods for said versions.
If its not possible to add the ability to make mods for versions older than 1.12.2, thats fine, it would just be nice to have the option for client side mods.
As said, you can use older MCreator versions.