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dirt-piper · 1 year

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Where’s the next NSSS update?

The last patch to NSSS came out 3 months ago, and the last major update - 1.1.11 - nearly 2 years ago. Where the hell is 1.1.12? Or the new launcher? Or the website, the wiki, the forums, and trailers???

Let’s tackle these one-by-one:

1.1.12

This is the single most ambitious update NSSS has ever had, which is saying a lot since 1.1.11 was also a ‘most ambitious update NSSS has ever had’. But it’s true! The two main features of this update - weather and seasons - have both required a ton a work in both design and implementation to make a reality. Seasons are now pretty much done, but weather is proving to still be an irritant. A large portion of that is due to how I’ve decided to implement it - based directly off of an ancient post to r/Minecraft by AbouBenAdhem suggesting a dynamic cloud system as opposed to Minecraft’s static bitmap. Notch thought the idea was wicked cool - and I do as well - but ended up passing it by.

When he did finally implement weather in Beta 1.5, it was a somewhat rudimentary system where the entire world would experience the same weather at the same time - if it was precipitating in one place, it was precipitating everywhere. The weather itself is also fairly boring - rain doesn’t sound particularly interesting (the sound effect is essentially just white noise), and the most gameplay-effecting phenomenon is thunderstorms, which (just barely) make the surface dark enough for hostile mobs to spawn during the day and can spawn lightning bolts, which can start fires. The challenge of thunderstorms is, of course, made totally moot by the fact that the player can skip them using a bed.

I don’t like the weather system we ended up with, and to my knowledge that’s a fairly common perspective. “Better weather” mods have existed for Minecraft since weather itself, but the design angle I have always thought had the most potential gameplay value was to couple it to a dynamic cloud system much like the one AbouBenAdheim had suggested back in 2010 - where the weather could be just as interesting as the infinite, procedural world itself.

A good portion of the delay in finishing this new weather system is the amount of times I have gone back to the drawing board. An attempt might end up being too slow, or too janky, or not interesting enough, or just flat-out doesn’t work. It’s been a major effort trying to get a system like this to fit neatly into Minecraft’s existing codebase and structure - a fair amount of shimming and shaving has been needed, though thankfully with each failed attempt some more useful shims have been added to make the next attempt a bit smoother. I believe I’m currently on implementation number 5.

But the biggest portion of the delay has been life. I can’t really afford to work on NSSS full-time (though I wish I could!) - the money I’m making off of patreon, while deeply appreciated, isn’t quite enough for me to be able to justify pouring all my time into this. And even if I could, I’ve been consistently interrupted by various health emergencies - in the past year alone I’ve had to deal with bone bruises on both my feet, COVID, Appendicitis, and C. Diff. Aside from the health emergencies, I have other obligations - I work as a museum docent/restorer, a martial arts instructor, and I have tons of other projects that command various quantities of my time. Life is also responsible to a large degree for all of the other following delays:

New Launcher

The last update to the official NSSS launcher came out so long ago that I don’t even care enough to check - 3 years ago? Maybe even 4 by now? It was so long now that the Microsoft account migration was announced, began, and ended during the timespan since the last update. With the end of Mojang accounts, it is no longer even possible to log in with the old launcher. As such, I’ve been hacking away at adding support for Microsoft accounts to the new launcher using Oauth, which has been nothing short of a nightmare.

The actual documentation on interfacing with this API is fairly comprehensive, but the problem lays in the encryption side of things. Pretty much half the point of the NSSS launcher is to be able to run the game on legacy operating systems - operating systems that are so old that no other launcher available today will run on them, despite Minecraft itself having been available on them back in the day. A large part of this is down to Java’s security support - the oldest version of Java that any version of Minecraft (every version up to release 1.8 or so, really) will run on is Java 5, which will run on Windows 9x, OS X 10.4, Solaris, etc. - but Java 5 lacks support for TLSv1.3 encryption, which is what Microsoft’s API absolutely totally 100% requires you to use if you want to interact with it. The oldest version of Java that natively supports TLSv1.3 is Java 8, which, while it still has fairly wide OS support, does not have the same legacy outreach as does Java 5.

So why not cram TLSv1.3 into Java 5?

Well, you can! Tons of companies are still maintaining massive, mission-critical codebases that they can’t easily update to modern versions of Java, so the need emerged for a third-party, pure Java library to handle more modern encryption methods - and thus one was made, called Bouncy Castle. Bouncy Castle does everything I need - the problem is I have no clue how to use it.

This is apparently a common problem - most of my google searches for “how do I do [X] with Bouncy Castle” turn up with results saying “you can, but there’s no documentation on how”. What I’m trying to do is so simple it baffles me how hard it is to get working - from what I have found this fix ought to be literally two lines of code to add the Bouncy Castle security provider to the list Java uses when making https connections, but so far nothing has been anywhere near that easy. I had briefly broken down and started using a proxy endpoint that Vulpovile wrote in PHP to strip all the encryption out of the GET and POST requests I was making, and I did manage to get logging in to work flawlessly with that system, but I scrapped it because it just felt too sketchy. The launcher will be released the instant I can figure this out - and if you do comprehend Bouncy Castle, then dear god please tell me what the hell to do.

The Website

This is mostly done, to be honest. I just need to get around to upgrading my hosting plan so I can set up Apache Tomcat. Once it’s up, you’ll see it here. Be wary that playing the game in-browser will take a while to be ready - applets are not my forte.

The Wiki

This is getting there! I recruited some folks to help get the wiki set up based on archives of Minepedia as it was in September and October of 2010, with NSSS-specific features and fact-checking sprinkled throughout. Most of the block articles are done, and you can check out our progress here.

The Forums

These are a bit of a mess, at the moment. I’ve been wanting to set up a proper dedicated forum for NSSS for a while now - the discord server is not adequate as a centralized place for discussion, and discord honestly kinda sucks at things like distributing mods and world downloads and discussing basically anything more than one topic at a time. The forum will be phpBB, just like the original Minecraft one, though I am having difficulty in getting a theme set up that looks (and works) right. Once the forums are done then the discord server will still remain, albeit with far fewer channels - everything that is currently a ‘discord forum’ will get archived.

Now you’re all caught up! Stay tuned for some more ramblings here about game design and junk.

-DirtPiper

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peterbromley · 3 years

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FOR YOUR CONTEMPLATION May you find and enjoy peace to love fellow humans…. Abou Ben Adhem Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace; And saw, within the moonlight of his room, Making it rich, and like a Lilly in bloom, An Angel writing in a book of gold. Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the presence in the room he said, “What writest thou?” The Vision raised its head, And with a look made of all sweet accord Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.” “And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,” Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low, But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then, Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.” The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night It came again with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed. And lo, Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest. ~James Henry Leigh Hunt~ Artist credit: Celebration of Peace, 2020 Betty Acquah, Ghanaian artist . . . . . #celebrate #peace #peaceofmind #mentalhealth #ptsd #donoharm #bethechange #ghana #ghanaart #reality #selfknowledge #selfawareness #leadership #aboubenadhem #leader #thursday #wisdom #values #dream #vision #culture #angel (at Clearlight Evolution) https://www.instagram.com/p/CaFKfOSuRXK/?utm_medium=tumblr

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