Slow news day

Haven’t posted for a while, so thought I better give a progress update.

With the Halloween update released, no doubt a lot of mods and texture are being updated, and so will Minecrafter. I’ve briefly tried out some texture packs and mods. 16×16 texture packs still work (although obviously with the missing textures of the new blocks) and some mods surprisingly still work (Autocart in particular -note: doesn’t actually work, I had pre-compiled mods on :-/). The HD texture fix is broken as I expected, so don’t try launching any of HD texture packs, or else Minecraft will freeze halfway during load up of your map.

What does that mean for Minecrafter? Well, obviously I won’t release until Xau gets his texture fix updated for the new update. I’m hoping that will fix the custom water/lava issue I was having. Feature wise for Minecrafter, it depends on how long it takes for Xau to get his release out. Guaranteed features/fixes are:

• Fixed issue with Minecrafter sometimes not loading up packages folder when saving mod packages
• Multi threaded launcher – that means Minecrafter won’t look like it’s non-reponsive. You’ll be able to cancel the launch process as well if Minecrafter is stuck.
• Re-doing all the forms using a proper layout manager. Previously all the forms were doing via an absolute layout which created some UI positioning issues when running on Mac. Hopefully this will make the positioning of controls accurate no matter what the OS is.
• File aliases – another word for renaming files. Helpful for mods that don’t use a proper folder structure. For example, if a mod has items.png file, you can rename it (create an alias) to “gui/items.png” and that will properly place it in the gui folder.

And a whole bunch of smaller usability fixes. Most of what’s listed above has already been implemented or close to being finished. So over the next week there will should be lots more features. I’ll try to add a FAQ page for the new users who are having problems with Minecrafter.

1.1.2 to fix a show stopping bug

Totally missed a show stopping bug on 1.1.1. Everyone should have experienced this bug when creating a new mod package

Changelog

• Fixed crash on Mod Package Editor where creating a new mod package and closing would cause the program to close abruptly

Links:

Windows (EXE Version)

32-bit: Multiupload
64-bit: Multiupload

Windows (JAR Version) – Should use if you are having problems with the EXE version

32-bit: Multiupload
64-bit: Multiupload

Mac OS X

32-bit: Multiupload
64-bit: Multiupload

Linux

32-bit: Multiupload
64-bit: Multiupload

—–

For those on Mac who have just discovered my program, I’ve created a tutorial on how to use Minecrafter all done on Mac. Check it out here.

v1.1.1 out

Another day, another release. This release contains some interesting additions and fixes:

• RAR support – open RARs in mod package editor or launch through mod quick launch.
• Folder support – Add folders into the mod package, and they will be treated like archives.
• Add normal files **experimental** – Add images or class files in mod packages. Currently there is no support for prefixing folders, so you’re out of luck on that note.
• Mod Quick Launch using folders – great for texture modders who want to quickly see and make changes to their textures.
• Command line support for launching mod packages or quick launching – as you’d expect, works for both archives and folders, except without a GUI.
• External program launch support – specify an application in the options tab and it will be loaded on launch.
• Any errors/exceptions that occur will be written to error.log in the Minecrafter folder.
• Fixed Mac bug where launching would disable sound and would freeze if you changed the volume.
• Config file is now saved in the Minecrafter folder
• Fixed missing cleanup routine on JAR compilation
• Fixed missing cleanup on closing mod package editor
• Fixed scroll bars not showing up in base folder form
• Fixed bug where compiled mod is not deleted after use
• Usability improvements on mod buttons in mod package editor
• Compilation will now always return boolean instead of throwing exception if it cannot open a file
• Invalid archives/files will show an error message rather than a silent exception

Quite a bunch of additions/fixes for a 0.0.1 release. I’ve updated the documentation as well so read up on the new additions.

Windows

32-bit: Multiupload

64-bit: Multiupload

Mac OS X

32-bit: Multiupload

64-bit: Multiupload

Linux

32-bit: Multiupload

64-bit: Multiupload

Additional HD texture fix features a no-go

Unfortunately getting Custom water/lava and better grass is a no-go. It seems like the source code for the HD texture fix is not the latest, so running any of these featuresd will cause an exception in Minecraft. All we can do is wait for Xau to push his latest changes to his Git repo.

On to better news, there were some discussions on the Minecraft forums about providing a feature where you could run my mod packages as a self-extracting archives. So basically you could distribute these files and all the end-user would need to do is run it, and it would be automatically installed onto Minecraft. It sounds good to me and would be pretty easy to implement.  This will probably be my next major feature for the next version, so stay tuned for that.

v1.1.1 on the way

The next version is coming along nicely, with the following features/bugs that will be present:

• RAR support –  Still need to test it on Mac and Linux, but I’m confident it will work.
• Folder support – Add folders into the mod package, and they will be treated like archives.
• Mod Quick Launch using folders – great for texture modders who want to quickly see and make changes to their textures.
• Command line support for launching mod packages or quick launching – as you’d expect, works for both archives and folders, except without a GUI.
• Fixed Mac bug where launching would disable sound and would freeze if you changed the volume. But for some reason, it always disables the sound, but at least it doesn’t freeze. This has nothing to do with the actual JAR compilation, just weird Mac quirks on launching Minecraft.
• Config file is now saved in the Minecrafter folder
• Fixed missing cleanup routine on JAR compilation

Here are a few more features/bug fixes planned:

• Better grass option
• Custom water/lava option
• External program launching

There may be a few more, but that depends on how much time I have. Expect to see 1.1.1 released around mid-week, next week.