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.

  • 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
In my opinion, allowing and not allowing Litematica are two equally valid playstyles, and it's fine for a server to enforce one or the other. I've played on several tech servers that don't allow it, and several other servers that do. However, if the majority of players (or potential players, in this case, if Cemetech members are choosing not to play as a result of Litematica not being allowed) prefer a playstyle where it is allowed over one where it is not, I think that the server rules should reflect that.

I personally would use Litematica if it were allowed, for the reasons that Phoenix mentioned, and also think that I might play more often if it were.

In the discussion on the Discord yesterday, comic mentioned:
comic wrote:
Because I still see it as a way for players to either create something in creative (perhaps with world edit) or by finding blueprints online and import that into the server, thus nullifying any real challenge to copying/building it in the server.

I think that the main difference in opinion here is that those that do not support Litematica view the process of actually placing blocks down as a challenge that needs to be overcome, while those that do support allowing Litematica view it as tedium instead.

I personally take the latter view, as placing blocks requires very little skill and mental effort and there's not really a way to improve at it over time. For me, the real challenges involved with a build are designing it and figuring out how to collect the resources for it, with the actual build process being a necessary evil that's not particularly interesting. The fact that large builds take a large amount of block placing means that builds of a certain scale are no longer fun to create, which means that I don't get to face the challenges associated with designing and collecting resources for a build of that scale.

Litematica wouldn't completely remove the tedium of building things, as you still have to physically place the blocks, manage your inventory, work out how you're going to move around inside the build, and figure out what order to place things like slimestone in. However, it would make larger, more complex, and more "intellectual" builds more feasible to place, and allow players to face the design and resource-collection challenges associated with them.
_iPhoenix_ wrote:
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.


The key difference is that our PvP server was actively turning people away from Cemetech as a whole, not just our Minecraft server. Players were (1) taking the game a bit too far and (2) taking the game too personally. Our current Minecraft play style isn't hurting anyone or the community, it's just not simply the play style those Cemetech members prefer; and maybe yourself?

Quote:
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.


As I said on Discord. It's the difference between having the answer key for a test and having that test be an open book test. You can use Litematica to have the answer key in front of you, or you can have a tutorials open to use it as an open book. You aren't learning much either way but one is arguably more informative.

Quote:
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.


It's an unfortunate position to be in, to where our position on disallowing a client side mod is seen as such but that's life. It isn't the first time someone has had that view about us or other individuals, nor will it be the last.

Quote:
I’ve already built up the thing once in creative,

Quote:
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)


That's kind of the point to the ban, isn't it? We're definitely not out here to ban players from building in creative first, it's fundamentally a thing players do after all but, if you can use world edit and other tools to build a structure in creative... why would we allow creative by proxy of Litematica to rebuild it on the server? The challenge is from transposing that information yourself (or with others), just as if you were taking information from a book to answer a question on a test.

There's multiple aspects to intelligent survival. One can certainly be the ability to make the structure after the challenges of getting the resources and through hoards of enemies. Another can be from making mistakes during the build and working through the limitations imposed by the rules. A third can be working and collaborating with players to build a vision and structure. A final aspect could working with farms that are slower.

Regarding the link, I'm referencing Point 3 to be self sufficient. I'm firmly in the camp that believes the automated farms, the giant EXP farms and villager farms take the fun I find in the game, out of the game. I know I'm in the minority on both staff and server members, but it doesn't stop me from advocating for those restrictions every chance I get Razz

It's why I don't play on the server - Granted, I don't play much anyways - but I don't want to be bound by my personal rules while everyone is lapping me in other regards by following the server rules. I'm much happier building at my own pace, doing my own thing, and not comparing myself to the progress others have on the server. Y'all are farming villagers so when you die and lose an Efficiency 5 pick, you can get another one soon because of a villager. I like my progress and death to mean something and I don't feel that on the Cemetech Server.

We can't make a server that's appealing to everyone. That's a given. Though we can make it appealing to a more general audience by making things as fair as possible. If we lose a few players because they prefer something more niche, or a particular plugin/style, that's perfectly fine. There's no animosity in that.

Quote:
Building with others is one of the best parts of the multiplayer experience .... building a complicated contraption collaboratively ... requires significant trust in another equally skilled person to count things up and perform exactly your standard of work


You started this point off positively but ended on a negative note. I know I cherry picked these lines out but I wanted to illustrate your shift on the subject in the paragraph. It sounds like you're more than willing to build with others, as long as they have a blueprint so there's no mistakes, deviation, or real collaboration.

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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.

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Litematica is almost exclusively used by the technical community ... I shared a litematic since that’s the de-facto standard for sharing builds like this.

Quote:
the only thing left before I can use it on the server is just placing the blocks

Quote:
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 will come across as dismissive and insensitive, but have you considered that your play style has shifted since you started playing on Cemetech-MC? Similar to the individual in the screenshoted conversation you shared? That you prefer creating technical marvels rather than structural masterpieces? We do grow out of interests and into new ones; there are hundreds of once active Cemetech members that now lay dormant because they have moved on from calculator programming.

As I said, I know that's dismissive and insensitive but I intend for that to be an introspection based on what I quoted because I do read this as a "My play style as changed, I see others have the same interest as well. We should change Cemetech-MC to match my new desired play style"
I think most of your argument is basically, "I wouldn't change things because of my own personal changes, so you shouldn't expect things to change because of your own personal changes"

This isn't really a personal change in myself- I've always been building redstone things, it's pretty much the only thing I've done with the game since I got it. Recently is the only time where I've had both the inclination and, more importantly, the materials to build interesting things.

Anyways, I'll respond to your post bit by bit (not necessarily in order)
comic wrote:
The key difference is that our PvP server was actively turning people away from Cemetech as a whole, not just our Minecraft server. Players were (1) taking the game a bit too far and (2) taking the game too personally. Our current Minecraft play style isn't hurting anyone or the community, it's just not simply the play style those Cemetech members prefer; and maybe yourself?


I was not part of the PvP server at all, I joined comparatively later into the last iteration on 1.12 so this history is very interesting to me.

As a couple members pointed out to me in private channels when I made my post, my main point regarding the community as a whole was not shifting interests, it's that a forum about programming will attract more technical players because of just personality and interests in general.

comic wrote:
It's why I don't play on the server - Granted, I don't play much anyways - but I don't want to be bound by my personal rules while everyone is lapping me in other regards by following the server rules. I'm much happier building at my own pace, doing my own thing, and not comparing myself to the progress others have on the server. Y'all are farming villagers so when you die and lose an Efficiency 5 pick, you can get another one soon because of a villager. I like my progress and death to mean something and I don't feel that on the Cemetech Server.


I personally play on our server primarily because of the fantastic people there, I enjoy chatting and building with ya'll, my builds on the server are kind of a secondary enjoyment, I guess (I don't play much Minecraft at all outside of cemetech-mc, the enjoyment comes from playing on the server).

comic wrote:
Regarding the link, I'm referencing Point 3 to be self sufficient. I'm firmly in the camp that believes the automated farms, the giant EXP farms and villager farms take the fun I find in the game, out of the game. I know I'm in the minority on both staff and server members, but it doesn't stop me from advocating for those restrictions every chance I get


These things are pretty much the only things I find fun in the game.

In the words of fghsgh:
fghsgh wrote:
you know how in all games progression gets slower as you get further right?
like levels are more xp apart, things are more expensive to buy, it takes more real life playtime to reach the next level...
progression slowing down is much less the case in minecraft because automation is actually a thing you can do (like in real life as well)
sure in the beginning you want to build a small house to stay safe, but eventually you will want to move to a larger house, maybe eventually build a castle or something
progress slowing down as you progress is an extremely demotivating experience with many games
say it takes one day to design a farm and build it, then you have this farm
then you can use the resources from that farm to create another bigger farm
then you get resources quickly enough that you don't have to spend multiple months just collecting resources to build that castle
you want to actually spend time building the castle, not endlessly mining for resources
building the castle is what lets you be creative, what makes the game not be boring
you can't argue "mine block, mine block, check for ores, walk forward, repeat" is not repetitive
and most people do not consider repetitive to be fun except in odd cases where it can act as a break from other activity
if you like building, then you should be able to build, sure (that also includes not spending 80% of your playtime collecting resources, but anyway), every server needs good builders
if you like redstone, then you should be able to do redstone (again, spending the time doing the actual redstone and not collecting resources)
if you like collecting resources, then yeah sure collect the resources, but I have better ways to spend my time
anyway, you want to spend your time playing minecraft having fun and not doing boring repetitive tasks that hinder progression
without progression there is no sense of accomplishment
and automation (with farms) is basically the only way you can have progression
so anyway, grinding for months to get your resources even feels less accomplishing than taking one day to build a farm to get those resources for you, because of how gradual it is


This is part of why I enjoy technical play, the other part is I just like building things that work. It's the same drive pushing me towards programming and engineering, and I know for a fact other people here experience the same drive.

I do agree villagers are stupidly op, I think that 1.12 (without elytra) was the best version of the game in terms of balance and features and everything since that is terrible horrible very bad.

comic wrote:
As I said on Discord. It's the difference between having the answer key for a test and having that test be an open book test. You can use Litematica to have the answer key in front of you, or you can have a tutorials open to use it as an open book. You aren't learning much either way but one is arguably more informative.


I kinda address this in my post above, reproduced here for convenience:
I wrote:
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 Razz), 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.


In general, you seem to be interested in preserving "the grind". On a superficial level, I concur with you. Some degree of grinding is required for overall game longevity (and recent updates seem to be interested in getting rid of this, which is annoying to me and endlessly frustrating). However, the real goal here is to allow people to be creative and to have fun, and not allowing Litematica limits this.

I'm going to address more of your argument tomorrow when I have time, I just wanted to get this part out fast- I'm definitely liking this format of constructive, organized civil debate on the forums even if it does suck down a lot of time (we should look into doing this more for future discussions)
comic wrote:
_iPhoenix_ wrote:
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.

As I said on Discord. It's the difference between having the answer key for a test and having that test be an open book test. You can use Litematica to have the answer key in front of you, or you can have a tutorials open to use it as an open book. You aren't learning much either way but one is arguably more informative.

comic wrote:
We're definitely not out here to ban players from building in creative first, it's fundamentally a thing players do after all but, if you can use world edit and other tools to build a structure in creative... why would we allow creative by proxy of Litematica to rebuild it on the server? The challenge is from transposing that information yourself (or with others), just as if you were taking information from a book to answer a question on a test.


I wouldn't consider Litematica allowing "creative by proxy" more so than using layer-by-layer schematics or another instance of Minecraft running on a second monitor, or (to a lesser degree) just leaving the game to test something in creative, which most members on the server (including the admins) do regularly. It's fundamentally easier to design and test things in creative, as you can focus on whatever you're actually trying to design or test rather than being bogged down by gravity, inventory management, moving mobs around, and everything else associated with survival.

I'd agree that survival using Litematica to import things from a creative world gives a huge advantage over a world where everything is done in pure survival with no reference to a creative world. However, I don't think Litematica gives much more of an advantage than a sliced reference image of a build made in creative or a second instance of the game - at that point, it basically just saves you having to count blocks or check coordinates.
You could probably rig something together that reads coordinates off the F3 screen, then draws a transparent overlay on top of the game, which would behave exactly like Litematica except that it's not a client mod.

comic wrote:
There's multiple aspects to intelligent survival. One can certainly be the ability to make the structure after the challenges of getting the resources and through hoards of enemies. Another can be from making mistakes during the build and working through the limitations imposed by the rules. A third can be working and collaborating with players to build a vision and structure. A final aspect could working with farms that are slower.

In my opinion, the point of challenges in a game is to make the game more fun by giving you the opportunities to feel accomplished for clever solutions to problems or for developing in skill level. A new mechanic or rule can either serve as a challenge, if it provides these opportunities, or be tedious if it does not.
For example, in my opinion, creepers are a challenge, because you can either build a base to protect against them or gain the skill required to take them out and as you learn more about the game, you get better and better at managing them. On the other hand, phantoms are just tedious, as you basically have to stop what you're doing to either shoot them or sleep every night, or just allow yourself to get knocked around by them. There's not a clever way to get rid of them, as you cannot prevent them from spawning without stopping what you're doing and sleeping or building a giant ugly roof over everything. You also can't really overcome them with skill - sure, it takes some skill to be able to dodge them, but it's basically impossible to snipe them with a bow because of how the game's networking works. No matter how skilled you are at the game or how clever you are, you still have to take one of a few boring actions that take you out of what you were doing before.
In my opinion, counting out blocks, building from a reference image, and fixing mistakes while building all fall into the "tedious" category - there's not really a "clever" way of doing these, and skill really isn't a factor either. As a result, these all feel like annoyances, and you don't really feel fulfilled for "overcoming" them in the way that you would for actual challenges.

The same goes for smaller farms - the reason that building farms of ever-increasing speed is fun is that it naturally results in a stream of challenges to overcome. A larger farm for Item X means you need more of Item Y, which means you need more of Item Z. If farms are capped at a certain size, this progression is cut off, and it also results in the only way to overcome "I need more Item X" being "wait." I think people should build fast (but lag-optimized farms), but then run them less often, and only when the server can handle it. Phoenix and I have been taking this approach with our farms for the past year or so - most of them are only slightly slower than the farms used by major tech servers, but because they aren't in our bases, we only run them when we need more items, resulting in no lag the rest of the time.

comic wrote:
I'm firmly in the camp that believes the automated farms, the giant EXP farms and villager farms take the fun I find in the game, out of the game. I know I'm in the minority on both staff and server members, but it doesn't stop me from advocating for those restrictions every chance I get Razz
It's why I don't play on the server - Granted, I don't play much anyways - but I don't want to be bound by my personal rules while everyone is lapping me in other regards by following the server rules. I'm much happier building at my own pace, doing my own thing, and not comparing myself to the progress others have on the server. Y'all are farming villagers so when you die and lose an Efficiency 5 pick, you can get another one soon because of a villager. I like my progress and death to mean something and I don't feel that on the Cemetech Server.

Minecraft with farms and Minecraft without farms are basically two entirely different games. It makes sense that most people on a programming forum would find the latter more engaging, as both it and programming focus heavily on automating stuff. Technical Minecraft has progression just as farm-less Minecraft does, it's just measured by what infrastructure you've built up instead of what items you have. It took work (for me, several weeks, though I play infrequently) to create the trading hall with villagers in it, just like it took work for you to get a diamond pickaxe. Similarly, it's possible to lose progress, if you let a zombie into the trading hall, or if a creeper blows up a farm in a way that causes the rest of it to kinda fall apart. I don't think it's wise to compare progress between these two "games" - technical players have entirely different goals than non-technical ones, and the two camps view progress in entirely different ways.

comic wrote:
This will come across as dismissive and insensitive, but have you considered that your play style has shifted since you started playing on Cemetech-MC? Similar to the individual in the screenshoted conversation you shared? That you prefer creating technical marvels rather than structural masterpieces? We do grow out of interests and into new ones; there are hundreds of once active Cemetech members that now lay dormant because they have moved on from calculator programming.

As I said, I know that's dismissive and insensitive but I intend for that to be an introspection based on what I quoted because I do read this as a "My play style as changed, I see others have the same interest as well. We should change Cemetech-MC to match my new desired play style"

I don't think that this post was motivated by a selfish desire to have the server conform to his own playstyle, but out of a belief that the playstyle that the server rules are promoting does not accurately reflect the playstyle of the Cemetech members who play Minecraft. I've noticed that a lot of the currently active players have indicated that the rules don't exactly match their preferred playstyle and that, in general, most players seem to be leaning in the direction of "fewer restrictions, more technical builds," while there are people on the forums who don't play as a result of the playstyle enforced by the rules. Of course, it's entirely possible that's just my own confirmation bias talking, so I feel like maybe we should take a poll of some kind.

_iPhoenix_ wrote:
In general, you seem to be interested in preserving "the grind". On a superficial level, I concur with you. Some degree of grinding is required for overall game longevity (and recent updates seem to be interested in getting rid of this, which is annoying to me and endlessly frustrating). However, the real goal here is to allow people to be creative and to have fun, and not allowing Litematica limits this.

I agree that some degree of grind is necessary for the game to work, but for absolutely massive or extremely complex builds, the amount of grind required is unreasonable. This is unfortunate, as other parts of the game, like resource gathering and designing builds of that complexity, are still interesting challenges that are inaccessible because of the limits that the amount of grind imposes. In my opinion, using external tools to reduce some parts of the grind that are completely unavoidable with in-game mechanics can be a good thing (provided that others on the server agrees to that kind of playstyle), as it raises the upper limit of the complexity of builds and exposes the challenges associated with it in other areas of the game besides just placing blocks.
I think that it's not unreasonable to suggest that reasonable allowances be made for different play-styles. Some people like PvP, others like freebuilding, others like more technical aspects of building.

I also think that it's not an unfeasible thing for Cemetech to support, especially given some of the suggestions regarding a Lobby with various branching portals. We could take something akin to the Hermitcraft approach where the "server" is sectioned into various districts, such as the farming district, the shopping district, and the residential district. From there, rules could be imposed limiting use of mods like litematica to certain places like the farming districts, etc.

We already have a PvP-centered world, it wouldn't be too tall an order to create a world where players could mess around with imported schematics. This is if we are dead set on not allowing general, overarching use of these mods.

That being said, I do think that regardless of how individual staff feel about mods of this type, if we are losing a large swath of our community of Minecraft players due to disallowing certain mods, it no longer becomes a matter of one or two people's play-style not jiving with what the server offers, it is instead a matter of us not jiving with what a substantial majority of our members want. If a vast majority of Cemetech Minecrafters are choosing not to play on our server because of decisions the staff team has made, it is time to listen to what they are saying, if we are serious about growing the community.

Just my two cents.
Let's make an analogy to something everyone on this forum is familiar with: calculator programming. This will make sense in a minute or so.

When programming a calculator, you usually have two options: TI-BASIC or ASM. Now we'll leave out other options like C or Axe, as those aren't really as comparable to Minecraft playstyles. Anyway, let's take a look at the development process for both of these.

In TI-BASIC, all you need is a calculator. You write the program on-calc, you execute it on-calc. There are a few utilities to help you in this process, but it is perfectly fine to just use the TI-OS editor. You can also write the program in something like SC3 and then transfer it to your calc, which does have several advantages, like easier navigation throughout the program, seeing more of it at once, etc.

In ASM, all development happens on a computer. Sure, there are a few programs like Mimas that let you program on-calc, but this is impractical for all but the most trivial programs. It is also nearly necessary to use an emulator to make sure it won't crash. Anyway, after you're finished, you'll use your linking cable to transfer it to your calculator.

See where this is going? Your calculator is survival mode. The computer is creative. TI-BASIC is much like decorative builds are. As most of the time, you're just placing blocks, and you can do that in survival just as well, as you'll have to place it in survival in the end anyway. It's just that in creative you have a bit more mobility. ASM then corresponds to redstone. You do it in creative, where you have access to all these debugging utilities (think carpetmod's tick step command, or cloning whole areas of identical circuitry), then you rebuild it in survival.

Now, where does Litematica come in? Litematica is your linking cable. That's right. Such an essential part of the development process, the de-facto standard used by everyone in the calculator programming community... Just gone. So now you have to resort to copying everything by hand from your computer screen onto your calculator.

With TI-BASIC, copying is pretty easy. You can easily spot mistakes, because you can actually see the code on-calc. Just like in survival, you can easily see if you misplaced a block in a decorative build. With ASM on the other hand, you have to type in the hexcodes. Extremely error-prone, no easy way to check where that one hex digit was wrong, and if you mess up, it crashes, you get a RAM clear, and you can start over. You have already gone through the debugging phase with your emulator, and now you have to do it again? (Also, does anyone actually enjoy debugging?)

Speaking of, what if the emulator doesn't emulate the calculator perfectly and it still crashes? This refers to the PaperMC vs. Fabric debate. PaperMC changes vanilla behavior in fundamental ways which break many redstone contraptions, to get slightly better tick times and less lag. On the other hand, Fabric+Lithium doesn't modify any vanilla behavior, but surpasses PaperMC in terms of efficiency. But anyway, that's a debate for the other forum topic.

Rebuilding in survival just does not contribute to the fun of the experience of making things, other than that it lets you share it with friends, and you actually get to use the contraption for its intended purpose (e.g. farming items). Hence, it's a necessary step that you have to take, but it's the most boring part of the process and hence Litematica (and Schematica before it) was made.

Also, note that Litematica does not automate anything. It's more like a checksum on the hexcodes (that you still have to type in manually), showing you where the mistakes are. Now there's a mod that also automatically places the blocks called Baritone, often used on anarchy servers, but that one should definitely remain banned. Litematica also has an Easy Place Mode, which basically only lets you place a block if it does actually belong there. This is as if you were using a hook that only lets you insert a hex digit if it is correct and ignores the keypress otherwise. Even though this is very useful, it also makes sense to have this banned on an SMP server.

Of course, you wouldn't use Litematica for maybe a small piston door, just like you wouldn't use a linking cable for an FDCB24DEC9 program, but say you have this big project of perhaps a few thousand redstone torches, even more repeaters, hundreds of pistons, tens of thousands of regular blocks... Let's say you write a game in ASM. It has tens of thousands of bytes, and also some appvars containing sprite data... It quickly becomes the most popular calculator game ever created, except you can't play it yourself, even though you wrote it, just because you don't have a linking cable. Or even better, you do have it, but your parents won't let you use it because they think it is more fun for you to type it in manually and that you'll learn a lot from it.

Copying something as delicate as a redstone contraption is so tedious, so long-winded, so error-prone... And notice how no one is complaining about having to collect the thousands of pistons manually. Collecting the resources contributes more to the experience than placing the blocks. You don't learn anything from copying hexcodes either, right? And that's what you want, right? For us to learn? If you already made the contraption, you know how it works. If you haven't made it and you're building it together, it is still much easier for the creator to explain what's going on if both players can see an outline of the entire contraption while they're still building it. Think "Hey why does this repeater need to be here?" -> "Oh, see that piston that hasn't been placed yet, 15 blocks away? The signal wouldn't reach there."

Also, about what you said,
comic wrote:
if you can use world edit and other tools to build a structure in creative... why would we allow creative by proxy of Litematica to rebuild it on the server?

Well, would you consider assembler macros cheating? Surely not, that's just part of the development process. If anything, if you're able to generalize several parts of code enough to use a macro, that only gives you more insight. And remember, with Litematica, you still have to place all the blocks manually. If you have an extremely long contraption that is just the same part repeating over and over, say perhaps it is 300 blocks long (been there, in fact), you will still have to collect all the resources for each of those segments, and place them manually. But assume each segment is 6 blocks long, which means there are 50 segments, that means you're 50 times as likely to mess up somewhere (yes this is not how statistics work, but you get the point). If you mess up once, and (say this 300 block long contraption is e.g. a slime block flying machine) half of the machine moves while the other half stays in place, that means you have to rebuild half of the machine.

If anything, not allowing Litematica only wastes time, adds frustration, and introduces a new part to the development process that no one finds fun and no one asked for. Minecraft is fundamentally a game. It is supposed to be fun. Hence, you want to maximize the amount of playtime actually doing stuff you like doing. Building a 4-block contraption hundreds of times, where each part is exactly the same as each part before it, is not fun, no matter how much you like doing tedious things. If it takes you months to get enough resources to build a house, it is very easy to get demotivated. If you can reach the next level of progression by building a farm in one week (one week of very active playtime, that is, building farms still takes time), that gives the same amount of satisfaction, or if anything, more, than mining for months getting those resources yourself. Where's the satisfaction of finding a single diamond when you've been playing for months and already have a few stacks of them? (Now some farms, like iron farms since 1.14, are definitely overpowered, but that's another story.)

Have you ever built a properly big redstone contraption? This is as impractical as writing a properly big ASM program on-calc. Sure, you can do it, some people even have, but out of necessity, not because it was more fun. Typing in hexcodes, just like copying something from your creative world, is long, tedious, easy to mess up, boring in every sense of the word, you don't learn anything from it, and finally and most importantly, it does not contribute to the fun of playing Minecraft, for many players that do and don't play on Cemetech-MC.
I'm greatly appreciating the discussion guys. Apologies on the delays as we all work through the holidays and while I find time to read and digest these massive, informative posts.

commandblockguy wrote:
Of course, it's entirely possible that's just my own confirmation bias talking, so I feel like maybe we should take a poll of some kind.


I'm not against it but I'd want to make sure we make it as neutral as possible. Perhaps something we poll every few months to ensure the play style of the members don't drift from the server. And by that I mean we can adjust the server style to match, not banning members who sway from it Evil or Very Mad Definitely not that. No, never.

fghsgh wrote:
See where this is going? Your calculator is survival mode. The computer is creative. TI-BASIC is much like decorative builds are. As most of the time, you're just placing blocks, and you can do that in survival just as well, as you'll have to place it in survival in the end anyway. It's just that in creative you have a bit more mobility. ASM then corresponds to redstone. You do it in creative, where you have access to all these debugging utilities (think carpetmod's tick step command, or cloning whole areas of identical circuitry), then you rebuild it in survival.

Now, where does Litematica come in? Litematica is your linking cable. That's right. Such an essential part of the development process, the de-facto standard used by everyone in the calculator programming community... Just gone. So now you have to resort to copying everything by hand from your computer screen onto your calculator.


Interesting analogy. I don't have much more to add than that but I do think that was a great way to address it.




Guys, if we were to change the play style of the server. What do you think the process to adjustment look like? Just a heads up, this isn't an omission. I'm just curious so if we do go forward with this we do it correctly.
Allowing Litematica isn't really a huge gameplay shift. The transition can literally just be an announcement saying "Litematica is now on the list of allowed mods"- the people who want to use it can use it, and the people who don't want to certainly don't have to. I can guarantee that you will see an uptick in large, interesting builds.

However, I'm going to pivot back to a point in my post- in my opinion (in my long history of interpreting rules in the loosest, least binding way possible) it is best that we have a whitelist of allowed client-side mods that the community (and, of course, the admins) agree on.

In my eyes, the list should just be:

  • Litematica, a mod that shows schematics
  • Sodium, the FPS booster
  • The VR thing TallPrince was using
  • Whatever shaders the cool kids are using these days
  • and of course all of the dependencies for these mods.


An explicit note should be added saying that optifine is not allowed because it performs no optimization and provides an alternative to existing mechanics yadda yadda yadda you saw my point at the start of the thread.
Alex wrote:
Guys, if we were to change the play style of the server. What do you think the process to adjustment look like? Just a heads up, this isn't an omission. I'm just curious so if we do go forward with this we do it correctly.


I feel like we should definitely poll both current players and Cemetech members who play Minecraft but not on the server to see what playstyles they enjoy. I also think that forum discussions like these are helpful in ensuring that everyone is on the same page about how a particular change would affect gameplay and the server's playstyle. I think that for major changes, it would be best to wait until the next world reset to implement them, as a lot of the existing builds on the server are specifically suited to our current playstyle. 1.17 might be a good opportunity for that kind of reset, as there will be major changes to world generation.

_iPhoenix_ wrote:
However, I'm going to pivot back to a point in my post- in my opinion (in my long history of interpreting rules in the loosest, least binding way possible) it is best that we have a whitelist of allowed client-side mods that the community (and, of course, the admins) agree on.

In my eyes, the list should just be:

  • Litematica, a mod that shows schematics
  • Sodium, the FPS booster
  • The VR thing TallPrince was using
  • Whatever shaders the cool kids are using these days
  • and of course all of the dependencies for these mods.


I personally think that there should be a set of guidelines for what type of client mod is allowed, plus a list of some common client mods and whether they're allowed or not. My main issue with having a strict whitelist of client mods is that if you want to use a new mod, you would have to wait for it to be approved by the entire admin team, which at present seems like it would take quite a while.

There's also the case of Tweakeroo, a mod that contains a multitude of small client-side tweaks that can be individually enabled. When considering the mod as a whole, I think it definitely shouldn't be allowed on the server, as it includes some absurdly cheaty tweaks including what's effectively a client-side spectator mode. But it also contains many tweaks that, if they were their own mod, would probably be allowed, including minor changes to the inventory GUI like showing the contents of a shulker box as an inventory, lag-preventing features like the ability to turn off client side light updates, massively reducing the FPS drop from flying machines, and miscellaneous bug fixes. I don't think it's fair to prevent players from using the non-cheaty options because they happen to be packaged in the same mod which has cheaty options, but at the same time, it would be unreasonable to ask the admins about each individual option you want to use out of the hundreds available.

Finally, there's also homemade client mods, which Cemetech members have made themselves. I personally have developed a few, so I don't think it's unreasonable that another Cemetech user or I might want to use one on the server in the future. These naturally wouldn't work well with a whitelist system.

In my opinion, the guidelines should look something like the following, though there's obviously room for debate here:

  • Mods that don't affect gameplay at all (e.g. ReAuth, changes to non-inventory menus, optimization mods) are always allowed.
  • Mods that only affect the graphics of the game without providing a gameplay advantage (e.g. resource packs, shaders) are allowed.
  • Mods that change the control scheme of the game (e.g. VR mode) are allowed so long as they are not designed primarily to give a gameplay advantage and do not simplify otherwise complex actions (e.g. macros/Baritone).
  • Mods that change or add new functionality to inventories (e.g. ItemScroller, shulker box peek) are allowed, provided that the end-user directly requests each action (e.g. no autocrafters).
  • Mods that take data that the player already has (e.g. data from outside the game, inventory contents, F3 screen contents, chat contents) and record it or present it in-game are allowed (e.g. MiniHUD, Litematica, a chat logger).
  • Mods that give the player capabilities that affect gameplay and that they wouldn't otherwise have (e.g. x-ray, fly hacks, reach extension) are not allowed.

I think that covers basically all "legitimate" uses of client mods while excluding everything that's obviously a hack.

If we do switch to a whitelist-based system, I think that a few other mods should be added:
  • MiniHud, which allows you to basically create a custom F3 screen.
  • ReplayMod, which allows you to make recordings of the game, though there should probably be restrictions on how you can use it.
  • some limited set of Tweakeroo tweaks
  • MultiConnect, which allows a 1.16.4 client to join a 1.16.2 (or basically any other version) server.
  • ReAuth, which prevents the "invalid session" error that requires you to restart the game.
  • JustEnoughItems / JustEnoughResources / whatever they're called nowadays - provide an in-game reference for things like crafting recipes and world generation.


I'm sure there's a ton of other mods that don't really affect gameplay that people will bring up in the future.
So I realize I've been putting this off far longer than needed. I'm not going to pass the buck or throw anyone under the bus on the moderating team here.

We shifted Cemetech Minecraft to a PvE Survival server as a way for the community to play and survive together; working as one to experiment, fail, and ultimately build the amazing. We firmly believe that transposing a build by hand or creating something from scratch and the failures and collaboration that comes with it is a big aspect of our play style.

Unfortunately, allowing Litematica means we'd be giving up on that play style. By working with others without this tool, we indirectly encourage dialog to happen that will influence creative collaboration within the build. Sometimes the build is rigid but other times it is fluid. Through this team building you'll develop leadership and communication skills that will shape various aspects of your life and career.

We're open to expanding the server as much as possible to people who share our ideals and play style, since the more people on the server the more variety of interesting things we have to see and do.

We appreciate you guys bringing this debate to the moderating team. We know the three of you are passionate about this mod but we also hope you guys understand our decision. We won't be offended if you find a server more suitable server to your play style but we of course hope you'll stick around.
At the end of the day, the most attractive part of our server has been (and will continue to be) the people active on it.

I definitely appreciate the time and energy you have put into this, even if we haven't gotten the result we want Razz

Anyways, one last note from me, for now Smile

Quote:
We shifted Cemetech Minecraft to a PvE Survival server as a way for the community to play and survive together; working as one to experiment, fail, and ultimately build the amazing
I believe that allowing litematica will result in more of this- not less of this. Litematica is a wonderful thing for teams. It's like Jira, Git, and <package manager of choice> combined. It's useful for both the technical player and the non-technical.

Also, it's not really just the three of us- I kinda roped Michael2_3B into getting litematica today and he's gone from "i'm tired of this whatever" (which was my fault, I sent him a bad litematic) to high praise.

I'm a little afraid that my poor wording in the initial post has skewed this argument, particularly the bit about trusting players. That was easily the most hastily written part of my post- I meant something along the lines of "players are unlikely to work with others, besides those they have worked with in the past. Litematica provides a bridge that makes it easier for anyone to work together on a project, even if they have never interacted before". It kinda went off the rails- I put emphasis on the wrong parts of the argument, and it ended up sounding rather nasty.
  
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