This post is a disaster as far as organization goes. It is mostly a braindump of evidence I have to support Litematica with a couple of rebuttals against some claims I have heard tossed around
Litematica is fundamentally a mod that allows you to take a section of blocks and create a blueprint, so you can build it again later or share it with others. It has tools for verifying that you built these "litematics" correctly and displays an overlay of blocks you need to place. It is most commonly used by technical players to distribute redstone builds, so allowing it on our server is one critical step in fulfilling our goal of being an “intellectual server”.
The fact that we do not allow Litematica on this server is quite possibly the #1 reason why there are so many “intellectual” Minecraft players in Cemetech that do not play on Cemetech-MC. In the words of one active Cemetechian and Minecrafter who does not currently play on our server, disallowing Litematica “shows that the people making the rules don't know what they're doing” and “definitely contributes” to his not wanting to play. This member is quite possibly one of the smartest people I have met on cemetech, and they would definitely contribute to the server in a positive way. In this image, he is violating his usual civility to remark (in no uncertain terms) how terrible this rule is.
We allow players to play with mods like MiniHud and stuff like minimaps (or at least, nobody seems to care about people using them)- these are things that give players sizable advantages over those who do not use them- yet we balk at a mod that would help fulfill our stated goals of being an “intellectual server” and “making cool things; teaching cool stuff”. More than once, I have abandoned a project that would have certainly been interesting and educational to others because it was too much of a pain to make without something like Litematica.
There is very little difference between Litematica and having two instances of Minecraft open, except that one is kinder on users’ expensive hardware and is more convenient, and the other is having two instances of Minecraft open.
With Cemetech being a highly-technical community, most of our Minecraft-playing members have more than a passing interest in complicated redstone. When Minecraft comes up in our discord server or in chat, many people are interested in sharing their computers/adders/interesting devices. Litematica is almost exclusively used by the technical community- it was developed by masa, a SciCraft member and an excellent programmer and technical player. When I made my calculator I did not share it in the conveniently sliced layers I made for myself, I did not provide a world download, and I did not produce a tutorial- I shared a litematic since that’s the de-facto standard for sharing builds like this.
In my eyes, the fun in the build comes from designing it, making it the best it can be (by some metric, at least), and then sharing it with others or using it. I even enjoy the resource acquisition. The build is easily the least enjoyable part of this process, especially if I have to build it alone. I’ve already built up the thing once in creative, I’ve discovered all the magical bits and pieces making the thing work (heck, I’ve usually designed the thing), the only thing left before I can use it on the server is just placing the blocks.
With the design done, I’m basically just mindlessly clicking buttons- it’s in this weird area where the build is easy and systematic (hence not requiring a lot of mental attention) but dozing off for even a second results in mistakes. This is a really annoying state to maintain for extended periods of time, moreso “just for fun in a game”. Many large builds are made out of repeating units, sometimes hundreds of them. The calculator was so big and repetitive I put off building it for months before engaging in it.
Building with others is one of the best parts of the multiplayer experience, and with Cemetech’s fantastic community, there are a wide number of players (pretty much everyone, in fact) who I would enjoy building with. You get to see your build go up twice as fast, you can interact with a like-minded individual for an extended period of time, and you’re getting things done collaboratively- I love every part of this. However, building a complicated contraption collaboratively without Litematica requires significant trust in another equally skilled person to count things up and perform exactly your standard of work- this is an unrealistic and unhealthy expectation for anyone to have, at any time. Instead, both players opening the same schematic at the same place streamlines collaboration and promotes a healthy building atmosphere.
Our Minecraft server is extremely unrepresentative of cemetech as a whole. As stated above, when Minecraft comes up in #cemetech, many people seem to be more interested in their redstone creations than general survival- surely the official cemetech Minecraft server should do what it can to be representative of players. In the past, cemetech Minecraft has realigned itself to be more with its players’ ideals (i.e. the PvP server)- I think it’s time to do that again with Litematica.
Now, potential problems with allowing Litematica.
I am not suggesting that we switch to a pure redstone creative server like the Open Redstone Engineers despite how wonderful that server is- this is unrepresentative of our existing demographic.
This leads to a larger discussion about what mods are allowed. I think that instead of using the fairly ambiguous blanket phrase “hacked clients are disallowed”, it is much better to have a list somewhere of mods that are explicitly allowed.
I think that the previous criterion of “providing a substantial advantage over others” is a good starting point. One of my more controversial opinions is that Optifine should be banned for 1.17- it performs no optimizations for 1.16+ because the dev got lazy, and the zoom feature is an actual part of Minecraft in 1.17+ (and it costs a fair bit in materials to get).
I don’t want this thread to turn into “the fight for mods”- this thread is about one specific mod, Litematica, and I’m most interested in that mod.
What are your thoughts? Do you think Litematica should be allowed? Why or why not?
There was a significant discussion in the discord server about this yesterday, and it would be nice if we could log our opinions here for future reference. While you're here, though, you might as well take a look at the case for using fabric over paper
Litematica is fundamentally a mod that allows you to take a section of blocks and create a blueprint, so you can build it again later or share it with others. It has tools for verifying that you built these "litematics" correctly and displays an overlay of blocks you need to place. It is most commonly used by technical players to distribute redstone builds, so allowing it on our server is one critical step in fulfilling our goal of being an “intellectual server”.
The fact that we do not allow Litematica on this server is quite possibly the #1 reason why there are so many “intellectual” Minecraft players in Cemetech that do not play on Cemetech-MC. In the words of one active Cemetechian and Minecrafter who does not currently play on our server, disallowing Litematica “shows that the people making the rules don't know what they're doing” and “definitely contributes” to his not wanting to play. This member is quite possibly one of the smartest people I have met on cemetech, and they would definitely contribute to the server in a positive way. In this image, he is violating his usual civility to remark (in no uncertain terms) how terrible this rule is.
We allow players to play with mods like MiniHud and stuff like minimaps (or at least, nobody seems to care about people using them)- these are things that give players sizable advantages over those who do not use them- yet we balk at a mod that would help fulfill our stated goals of being an “intellectual server” and “making cool things; teaching cool stuff”. More than once, I have abandoned a project that would have certainly been interesting and educational to others because it was too much of a pain to make without something like Litematica.
There is very little difference between Litematica and having two instances of Minecraft open, except that one is kinder on users’ expensive hardware and is more convenient, and the other is having two instances of Minecraft open.
With Cemetech being a highly-technical community, most of our Minecraft-playing members have more than a passing interest in complicated redstone. When Minecraft comes up in our discord server or in chat, many people are interested in sharing their computers/adders/interesting devices. Litematica is almost exclusively used by the technical community- it was developed by masa, a SciCraft member and an excellent programmer and technical player. When I made my calculator I did not share it in the conveniently sliced layers I made for myself, I did not provide a world download, and I did not produce a tutorial- I shared a litematic since that’s the de-facto standard for sharing builds like this.
In my eyes, the fun in the build comes from designing it, making it the best it can be (by some metric, at least), and then sharing it with others or using it. I even enjoy the resource acquisition. The build is easily the least enjoyable part of this process, especially if I have to build it alone. I’ve already built up the thing once in creative, I’ve discovered all the magical bits and pieces making the thing work (heck, I’ve usually designed the thing), the only thing left before I can use it on the server is just placing the blocks.
With the design done, I’m basically just mindlessly clicking buttons- it’s in this weird area where the build is easy and systematic (hence not requiring a lot of mental attention) but dozing off for even a second results in mistakes. This is a really annoying state to maintain for extended periods of time, moreso “just for fun in a game”. Many large builds are made out of repeating units, sometimes hundreds of them. The calculator was so big and repetitive I put off building it for months before engaging in it.
Building with others is one of the best parts of the multiplayer experience, and with Cemetech’s fantastic community, there are a wide number of players (pretty much everyone, in fact) who I would enjoy building with. You get to see your build go up twice as fast, you can interact with a like-minded individual for an extended period of time, and you’re getting things done collaboratively- I love every part of this. However, building a complicated contraption collaboratively without Litematica requires significant trust in another equally skilled person to count things up and perform exactly your standard of work- this is an unrealistic and unhealthy expectation for anyone to have, at any time. Instead, both players opening the same schematic at the same place streamlines collaboration and promotes a healthy building atmosphere.
Our Minecraft server is extremely unrepresentative of cemetech as a whole. As stated above, when Minecraft comes up in #cemetech, many people seem to be more interested in their redstone creations than general survival- surely the official cemetech Minecraft server should do what it can to be representative of players. In the past, cemetech Minecraft has realigned itself to be more with its players’ ideals (i.e. the PvP server)- I think it’s time to do that again with Litematica.
Now, potential problems with allowing Litematica.
- It will be used as a replacement for tutorials and people learn things from tutorials
- I’m a little skeptical about the assumption that people learn things from tutorials. I really don’t watch tutorial videos myself (either just copying from a few still frames or using a world download or litematic :P), so this is a little weird to me. Beyond learning some of the terminology used, tutorials don’t have much value after a certain point- they don’t really explain much that can’t be learned better by building the machine and watching it work. The goal of a tutorial is to show you how to build it, not to teach you anything! In order to become even passable at redstone (like any skill), you need to play around with it, and copying from a tutorial isn’t really that either. I think the benefit of being more appealing to players who are skilled in advanced redstone will pay dividends as more interesting contraptions are built and shared. I don’t think being a replacement for tutorials is a bad thing, if anything it’s a good thing- people can build more things in the same amount of time and they get effectively the same amount of learning done. Consider the fact that most of the programmers on Cemetech got their start examining examples, not being actively taught programming. This kind of self-motivated learning is much more effective than being given facts in passing.
- Litematica can be used to pull builds out of survival into external worlds
- This is the reason why I initially assumed Litematica was disallowed, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. If users use this to find ores and caves, that’s xraying and instantly bannable as such per the rules. If users use this for preservation- well, I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing, but that’s a different discussion entirely and out of place here.
- Mods are all bad and we should not have any mods.
- Though I agree that mods complicate matters of discussion like this, that is like banning essay-writing because you don't like one person's ideas- it's best to specifically codify what things you don't like and work from that.
I am not suggesting that we switch to a pure redstone creative server like the Open Redstone Engineers despite how wonderful that server is- this is unrepresentative of our existing demographic.
This leads to a larger discussion about what mods are allowed. I think that instead of using the fairly ambiguous blanket phrase “hacked clients are disallowed”, it is much better to have a list somewhere of mods that are explicitly allowed.
I think that the previous criterion of “providing a substantial advantage over others” is a good starting point. One of my more controversial opinions is that Optifine should be banned for 1.17- it performs no optimizations for 1.16+ because the dev got lazy, and the zoom feature is an actual part of Minecraft in 1.17+ (and it costs a fair bit in materials to get).
I don’t want this thread to turn into “the fight for mods”- this thread is about one specific mod, Litematica, and I’m most interested in that mod.
What are your thoughts? Do you think Litematica should be allowed? Why or why not?
There was a significant discussion in the discord server about this yesterday, and it would be nice if we could log our opinions here for future reference. While you're here, though, you might as well take a look at the case for using fabric over paper