=(Un)Offical Technic Pack Discussion Thread=


    But that also means that you believe in hard work, critical thinking, and self sufficiency. I'm pretty sure that these are concepts that the Technic Pack doesn't support...

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    this isn't about arrogance or ego, I have a block that I put a lot of freaking work into


    Every Mod Author, in existence. And yet, you STILL say otherwise.

    So Power Crystals is no longer maintaining his mods.



    Some things I found to be of note:


    For the mods themselves, I am turning the source over to the Technic team (and specifically TehKrush) who have pledged to update them. Be nice to them!


    I'll probably be in the technic pack IRC because those guys are the best and deserve all your support.



    Did PC always support them, or was he hacked?

    Hacked? That's kind of ranging into crazy conspiracy territory. Powercrystals has been with Technic pretty much since he started modding. He was the one who started programming bridges between IC2 and BC by changing EU to oil and back, specifically for the Technic pack. He's been one of the biggest Technic pack supporters in the modding side, frequently took suggestions, and hung around to troubleshoot. Shame to see him go, but life does take precedence! TehKrush will do it justice, I'm sure.


    And this is a sign of real community: rather than let his mods fall off a cliff to oblivion, he's passing it on to someone who will upkeep it. This is more than someone like Flowerchild would do, as his mod is his baby, and he refuses to give up an inch of attention. That is why the community looks bad.

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    Hacked? That's kind of ranging into crazy conspiracy territory. Powercrystals has been with Technic pretty much since he started modding. He was the one who started programming bridges between IC2 and BC by changing EU to oil and back, specifically for the Technic pack. He's been one of the biggest Technic pack supporters in the modding side, frequently took suggestions, and hung around to troubleshoot. Shame to see him go, but life does take precedence! TehKrush will do it justice, I'm sure.


    And this is a sign of real community: rather than let his mods fall off a cliff to oblivion, he's passing it on to someone who will upkeep it. This is more than someone like Flowerchild would do, as his mod is his baby, and he refuses to give up an inch of attention. That is why the community looks bad.

    Flower who? You guys still on that?


    Actually seems like YOU are the ones pushing the conspiracy card more than anyone else. Besides, who are you to say what's good for a community that's existed an entire two years prior to your involvement?

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    this isn't about arrogance or ego, I have a block that I put a lot of freaking work into


    Every Mod Author, in existence. And yet, you STILL say otherwise.

    Quote from MagusUnion

    Flower who? You guys still on that?


    Actually seems like YOU are the ones pushing the conspiracy card more than anyone else. Besides, who are you to say what's good for a community that's existed an entire two years prior to your involvement?

    We've been involved the entire time. Painterly is made by one of our guys, after all. Flowerchild just makes a perfect representative for exactly what's wrong with the community, but if you'd prefer, I could use the crazy guy who yelled at his friend in band simply because his friend tried a mod pack. I mean, that's a level of crazy obsession that really hurts everyone's view of your average Minecraft player.


    What conspiracy? You are the one that equated Goonswarm with everyone on the SomethingAwful forums, which is equivalent to saying everyone for animal rights is a member of the PETA, every vegetarian is vegan, and every Democrat is a Socialist. You're really the last one who should be throwing stones in this plate glass house.

    Quote from MagusUnion


    But that also means that you believe in hard work, critical thinking, and self sufficiency. I'm pretty sure that these are concepts that the Technic Pack doesn't support...

    Oh for Pete's sake, MagusUnion will you please give it a rest? Things have been pretty civil until you and a few others posted. I do not know why you are carrying this burning cross. Yes I agree that KakerMix should have gotten permissions from all the mod users, but honestly (as has been explained by CheapShot), the mod pack got out of his hands rather fast and if you really don't believe this then please, check the somethingawful archives and follow KakerMix's original posts about what would later become Technic.


    Even if you do not agree with KakerMix's methods, Technic has done a lot of good for the community getting modders to work together, getting others to think about how the future of minecraft modding can be changed to allow easier compatibility between mods, producing mod authors who would not have made their mods had it not been for technic and with the realese of "Tekkit" for the first time some major mods have been converted into a fully functional SMP Bukkit package.


    Those who still choose not to use Technic, I am not telling you to use it, or to like it, but please do yourselves a favor and just let it go. Every day Technic grows bigger, draws more attention, and pushes the community to achieve greater and greater things. However, no amount of screaming and crying is going to make it go away and honestly, regardless that KakerMix was wrong in not getting mod permission (again, see CheapShot's earlier post), removing Technic would probably be worse off for the modders currently involved.


    I guess what I am saying, white knights of the internet, please stand down in this if you cannot do anything but pointlessly bicker or try to fan this into a flame war.


    Also, I am going to have to agree with BrodaciousCoyote over all this "GOONS!!!!" crap I've been seeing on the different forums grumbling about Technic. SA is home to some 160,000 registered users. Not all of them view the game's subforum and certainly not all of them play minecraft let alone EVE or have even heard about Goonswarm. Yes SA carries about it a stigma of being a bunch of asshats, wont argue with you there, but so does Reddit and the various Chans and the minecraft forums themselves. The entirety of SA is not out to get you and in fact, the majority of the users are rather nice chaps (hell, look at donations and charities SA goes into). Please stop grasping at anything you can to dig your hatred into. If Technic came from 4chan you'd be screaming about anonymous, if it came from Reddit.. well, you'd be screaming about whatever they refer to themselves as. In short, it is getting old. :(

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    Every day Technic grows bigger, draws more attention, and pushes the community

    With it's design of what mods should be like... That's the point you people are trying hardest to dodge. Mod packs limit which mods can be installed into a .jar due to forced configurations of said mods. Not everyone wants the same configuration that you are promoting, and you are trying your hardest to not acknowledged this.


    THAT is a big reason to not use mod packs: because if a mod is not picked up by a 'famous mod pack', chances are great that said developer does not gain fame for his work. Hell, even one of your own said he was tired of working on his add-on/standalone mod because he has remained unknown for three months. I can easily say that it was due to being lumped into a clusterfuck of other material for users to siphon thru, and literally was lost in the content you provide.


    So if Techinc becomes the primary download source for players who want mods, how long do you think it'll take users to forget about Alba, Spacetoad, Eloraam, and the rest of the Forge team? (assuming you care, of course)

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    this isn't about arrogance or ego, I have a block that I put a lot of freaking work into


    Every Mod Author, in existence. And yet, you STILL say otherwise.

    Quote from MagusUnion

    With it's design of what mods should be like... That's the point you people are trying hardest to dodge. Mod packs limit which mods can be installed into a .jar due to forced configurations of said mods. Not everyone wants the same configuration that you are promoting, and you are trying your hardest to not acknowledged this.


    THAT is a big reason to not use mod packs: because if a mod is not picked up by a 'famous mod pack', chances are great that said developer does not gain fame for his work. Hell, even one of your own said he was tired of working on his add-on/standalone mod because he has remained unknown for three months. I can easily say that it was due to being lumped into a clusterfuck of other material for users to siphon thru, and literally was lost in the content you provide.


    So if Techinc becomes the primary download source for players who want mods, how long do you think it'll take users to forget about Alba, Spacetoad, Eloraam, and the rest of the Forge team? (assuming you care, of course)

    Going to assume you are referring to Power Crystals whose primary reason for leaving the modding community is that the dude is no longer unemployed and has a stable job now and would like to actually interact with people in what little spare time he has instead of crunching away at code. If he was leaving because he thought that Technic was making him fade away, I really do not think he would let Technic have the source code to keep his mod up to date and available to the community.


    I'm not sure I understand your other point though. Before technic, if you wanted to get the mods running that are in that pack you would have to do a bunch of bullshit mucking around with Block ID errors and class file incompatibility. Technic has made it so that this isn't even an issue any more. Yes Technic only allows for a few mods to work together, and I get your point there, but for the most part, the majority of the mods out there do not work together. This is not a fault of the authors, but more of Mojang having waited so long to work on a mod API when they've known they have had a growing modding community on their hands. Honestly I could have kept NPCs out of the game until after they hired their AI programmer and instead had Mojang work on an API sooner.


    Now, mod packs are not making this situation worse, rather they are a somewhat clumsy answer to the limit put on the modding community by Mojang's lack of support. It is unreasonable to ask all modders to make sure that their mods work nice and clean with others, in fact I would say that it is almost impossible. So because of the fact that Mojang has not been supporting the modding community we have an issue where there are a lot of awesome mods and some of them seem just right to work with each other, but because of technical limitations, they do not. So do you just tell the community to go shove off and deal with choosing one mod or the other? Or do you start looking for other answers. Currently what we have are people compiling mod packs, yes they are limited in scope, but for the same reason why it is impractical to ask mod authors to make 100% open compatible mods. These mod packs allow users to select numerous mods that they would normally would only be able to use one or so at a time. This allows multiple developers to be exposed to the public at once and you cannot tell me that the mod pack is stealing away attention from the developers when the mod pack authors refuse to take credit and keep pointing back at the original creators of the mods (even if certain mod pack authors could use better PR and be a bit nicer when dealing the community ;) ).


    So now we are coming to a situation where there are a few really good mod packs that covers several ways to play Minecraft modded (example would be the YogBox tailoring towards RPG Adventure style gameplay while Technic tailors to those who enjoy tech trees, industrious building and mega projects. Basically your survival adventurer and your builder). Some mod authors have been very cautious about this, which is an odd situation I've only seen in the Minecraft community (I used to develop mods for Morrowind and dabbled shortly in Oblivion) and I kind of blame this on the Curse forums having decided to force mod authors to include templates of VERY poorly written "copyrights" with their mods especially when the whole current legality of Minecraft Modding is in this shaky grey zone. So because of this we have Mod Developers who have grown to be, I would almost say, over protective of their mods and are cautious with this new change to Minecraft Modding called mod packs. However, as time has gone by those same developers are slowly realizing this is a good thing, as other people are doing the work for them for making compatibilities between other mods (giving them more time to work on making more content for their mods!) and they are learning from it. We have developers starting to talk to each other and from this we had the community as a whole going "Hey, you know what? Mod compatibility is an issue, Mojang IS dragging their feet on fixing this issue, what else can we do to make it so that the users of our mods can enjoy any mod they please without worry of having Minecraft breaking on us." And with that we have seen such things as Forge beginning to be be developed.


    The other thing that mod packs have allowed, and this a very recent thing, is SMP playability. Yes some mods do come with a SMP version, but usually the mod works with only itself installed on a server. Then there is the issue when you ask a mod developer if they will make their mod SMP playable they usually respond with "maybe, don't expect it anytime soon" and more often than not with just plain "no" because it does require a lot of extra codding, now ask those developers who said they would make SMP version if they would make it Bukkit as well and that is almost always met with No. With Tekkit we have a great list of mods that have been not only made SMP capable, but have been converted to Bukkit, have been compiled into a ready to launch Server set up that will pretty much run on any OS under the sun and thanks to the awesome folks working on Spout, an incredible client launcher.


    So yes, I think that mod packs are a great thing, no I do not think it is hurting mod developers, and no I do not think it is anything to get twisted over because this is just the community reacting to fill the holes Mojang has made until they can get their shit together. And isn't that what most of modding is about? Filling in the missing parts you feel a game has? Come a month of so after the release of the official mod API you will see mod packs less and less often, though probably never fully disappear. That is because packs like Technic are more than just a quick and easy install of a collection of mods, they also contain tweaks and minor mods that would not exist if not for the pack so that the mods included more seamlessly work together and projects like Tekkit will probably stay around so that we can provide some of the amazing SSP mods to Bukkit SMP servers.


    In short I guess, don't hate the mod pack, hate the poor planning from Mojang that made the need for such compatibility work around needed in the first place.

    These arguments really miss the mark as far as i am concerned. For me it's simply about morals. Forgetting about any 'legal' arguments, its simply about doing what is right from a human point of view. The creator of a mod doesn't want it in the pack then remove it, it's the nice, human thing to do. Anybody arguing against this point of view is part of everything that's wrong in this world.

    Quote from caspercat

    These arguments really miss the mark as far as i am concerned. For me it's simply about morals. Forgetting about any 'legal' arguments, its simply about doing what is right from a human point of view. The creator of a mod doesn't want it in the pack then remove it, it's the nice, human thing to do. Anybody arguing against this point of view is part of everything that's wrong in this world.


    ^

    Quote from caspercat

    These arguments really miss the mark as far as i am concerned. For me it's simply about morals. Forgetting about any 'legal' arguments, its simply about doing what is right from a human point of view. The creator of a mod doesn't want it in the pack then remove it, it's the nice, human thing to do. Anybody arguing against this point of view is part of everything that's wrong in this world.

    While valid point indeed, it's not something the other side is either going to feel bad about, nor care to give merit to. I'm glad someone else brought this up, but I'll anticipate that it'll quickly be shot down by the other side...

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    this isn't about arrogance or ego, I have a block that I put a lot of freaking work into


    Every Mod Author, in existence. And yet, you STILL say otherwise.

    Quote from MagusUnion

    While valid point indeed, it's not something the other side is either going to feel bad about, nor care to give merit to. I'm glad someone else brought this up, but I'll anticipate that it'll quickly be shot down by the other side...

    Or not, I do agree that if a mod author asks for a mod to be pulled from a pack it should be. I am pretty sure that the YogBox has been pretty good on this of late, Technic on the other hand, well, that is another story, but they did remove BetterThanWolves. Honestly the group working on Technic should really have their developers make alternative version of still "illegal" mods so that these issues are no longer there, there are not that many mods left on the list that have authors who don't wish to be included anymore.

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    I am pretty sure that the YogBox has been pretty good on this of late, Technic on the other hand, well, that is another story, but they did remove BetterThanWolves.

    The only reason they removed BTW was because Goons hated the title changes and other quirky alterations BTW does when you fire it up (which I'll agree to, because several of those title splashes were unnerving). Plus, after several long bitch-fit pages of flaming, Kakermix decided the mod wasn't worth the trouble of pissing FC off, simply due to the very slow style of game play that mod has...


    And in that regard, it appears that FC would rather create 'Better than -insert mod here-' mixes now with his design, seeing as that he's released a Buildcraft version of BTW that isn't Forge reliant at all. I'm guessing that he needed to 'steal' something so that someone would still play his mod? Regardless, it's a damn shame Spacetoad actually agreed that he could do this in the first place...


    So have fun with Minecraft, goons. Have fun with trying to steal gather mods together in a community that is slowly imploding upon itself. If Abla tolerates your presence, then I guess you aren't an evil that will mean the demise of his efforts, as to see there are other forces that will do that already from within. Personally, I still hate your guts, but there's no reason to waster energy on a losing battle, especially an epeen driven one involving programmer's that, at best, are attention whores. Besides, it's open domain anyway, so it's not like anyone can really put the breaks on your actions as is...


    Maybe Jeb might sort this illogical mess of a circumstance out. Until then, I honestly could care less anymore...

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    this isn't about arrogance or ego, I have a block that I put a lot of freaking work into


    Every Mod Author, in existence. And yet, you STILL say otherwise.

    Quote from MagusUnion

    The only reason they removed BTW was because Goons hated the title changes and other quirky alterations BTW does when you fire it up (which I'll agree to, because several of those title splashes were unnerving). Plus, after several long bitch-fit pages of flaming, Kakermix decided the mod wasn't worth the trouble of pissing FC off, simply due to the very slow style of game play that mod has...


    And in that regard, it appears that FC would rather create 'Better than -insert mod here-' mixes now with his design, seeing as that he's released a Buildcraft version of BTW that isn't Forge reliant at all. I'm guessing that he needed to 'steal' something so that someone would still play his mod? Regardless, it's a damn shame Spacetoad actually agreed that he could do this in the first place...

    There's also the fact Flowerchild is really an awful coder. That wasn't just ad hominem attacks being thrown about; he tied one of his blocks directly into Minecraft's fire code. What that meant was if his mod had a problem, things like lightning had a tendency to crash and corrupt the world. This was also a factor in the removal of his mod. The fact he's gone so far out of his way to make his mod incompatible with others, on purpose, except those he chooses, continues the whole 'Wow the Minecraft community is amazingly bad' idea most outsiders have. He's really the worst offender in the community, which is what makes him such a good example of what's wrong. I'm not surprised he picked up Spacetoad, they've both been pretty butthurt about Eloraam doing what they do, but better. Despite the fact Forge was made for mods share ideas, through the ore compatibility sections of Forge, for instance...


    But hey, if they choose to make their mods harder for people to get into, and kill their own publicity, they can feel free.

    Actually, looking at the "Better Then Buildcraft" mod, all it seems to be is a separate mod that allows you to have cross functionality between BTW and Buildcraft, which is great actually and proves a few of my points. It is good to see mods developers starting to think about providing compatibility between mods so that mod packs are not needed. I don't think it is a shame that Space Toad agreed to that, I think that people should have the right to make compatibility mods without authorization (put too many restrictions on the community and nothing will grow). I even understand why FC put BTBC as a separate mod, so as to cut down on code for BTW if you don't happen to play with BuildCraft, though I am a bit confused since I thought his stance was that he didn't want his mod having cross over interactions between others, so I am guessing that this is a temporary thing until his own mod's level of technology builds up to that point. I honestly don't have that much problem with BTW, I like the windmills and watermills and mechanical power is fun to play with, it is just that there is a lot of.. I guess I would call it bloat, that makes things a bit creepy and is not something I would wish to have my younger siblings play around with, I also really do not like the author, but that is neither here nor there.

    Quote from Enzer

    Actually, looking at the "Better Then Buildcraft" mod, all it seems to be is a separate mod that allows you to have cross functionality between BTW and Buildcraft, which is great actually and proves a few of my points. It is good to see mods developers starting to think about providing compatibility between mods so that mod packs are not needed. I don't think it is a shame that Space Toad agreed to that, I think that people should have the right to make compatibility mods without authorization (put too many restrictions on the community and nothing will grow). I even understand why FC put BTBC as a separate mod, so as to cut down on code for BTW if you don't happen to play with BuildCraft, though I am a bit confused since I thought his stance was that he didn't want his mod having cross over interactions between others, so I am guessing that this is a temporary thing until his own mod's level of technology builds up to that point. I honestly don't have that much problem with BTW, I like the windmills and watermills and mechanical power is fun to play with, it is just that there is a lot of.. I guess I would call it bloat, that makes things a bit creepy and is not something I would wish to have my younger siblings play around with, I also really do not like the author, but that is neither here nor there.

    Like Forge? There has been attempts at making compatibility, they are the things Flowerchild and Space Toad are raging against specifically and cited as the reason they're making their own. They aren't gods of compatibility. Eloraam has been doing this for a long time, creating compatibility between her mod, BC and IC2, for instance. And the claims she is copying, when so many of these ideas are rather obvious (Getting angry over manufacturing paper from the same plants? Getting angry over pipes? Pipes are a thing, they aren't some amazing idea that's never been tried before, humans have been using them for thousands of years.) It'd be like looking at someone making a mod that adds a new pickaxe and going, "YOU STOLE THAT FROM VANILLA!" I mean, it's a million times more convenient than Minefactory style conveyor belts, self-contained piping systems means nothing can interfere with the transportation of items. It's just reasoning. Basically what I'm saying is that they're not doing this in support of the community; it seems more like they're doing this in spite of community members. I mean, just look at the 180 from "This shouldn't be used with other mods" to "I made a compatibility mod with Buildcraft!".

    Quote from BrodaciousCoyote

    Like Forge? There has been attempts at making compatibility, they are the things Flowerchild and Space Toad are raging against specifically and cited as the reason they're making their own. They aren't gods of compatibility. Eloraam has been doing this for a long time, creating compatibility between her mod, BC and IC2, for instance. And the claims she is copying, when so many of these ideas are rather obvious (Getting angry over manufacturing paper from the same plants? Getting angry over pipes? Pipes are a thing, they aren't some amazing idea that's never been tried before, humans have been using them for thousands of years.) It'd be like looking at someone making a mod that adds a new pickaxe and going, "YOU STOLE THAT FROM VANILLA!" I mean, it's a million times more convenient than Minefactory style conveyor belts, self-contained piping systems means nothing can interfere with the transportation of items. It's just reasoning. Basically what I'm saying is that they're not doing this in support of the community; it seems more like they're doing this in spite of community members. I mean, just look at the 180 from "This shouldn't be used with other mods" to "I made a compatibility mod with Buildcraft!".

    Oh, I didn't even notice that FC dropped Forge, then yeah, that kind of makes his whole BTBC mod a bit of a stink. And is Space Toad raging against Forge? I haven't been paying attention to that drama, though I feel it is a shame that people have been making a fuss at Eloraam over how her mod has progressed, she is honestly one of the few level headed moderators I've seen and from the few short conversations I've had where she was answering some of my questions, is a very kind person.


    Either way, yeah, I agree FC is kind of digging himself into a hole if hes making a stink about Forge and then shitting himself when hes getting a ton of complaints that his mod wont work with other Forge mods. Really funny because isn't Forge part of the crew working with Jeb on the official API? Will FC quit modding all together when Forge is an official part of Minecraft? No what, nevermind, I really do not want to talk about FC anymore.

    Quote from Enzer

    Oh, I didn't even notice that FC dropped Forge, then yeah, that kind of makes his whole BTBC mod a bit of a stink. And is Space Toad raging against Forge? I haven't been paying attention to that drama, though I feel it is a shame that people have been making a fuss at Eloraam over how her mod has progressed, she is honestly one of the few level headed moderators I've seen and from the few short conversations I've had where she was answering some of my questions, is a very kind person.


    Either way, yeah, I agree FC is kind of digging himself into a hole if hes making a stink about Forge and then shitting himself when hes getting a ton of complaints that his mod wont work with other Forge mods. Really funny because isn't Forge part of the crew working with Jeb on the official API? Will FC quit modding all together when Forge is an official part of Minecraft? No what, nevermind, I really do not want to talk about FC anymore.

    Yeah Space Toad has been pissy since Eloraam added tubes. Which Eloraam addressed on her blog .