Interview with iChun of Portal Gun
Q:Good day iChun, Nice to have you here with us today. How have you been?
Doing alright, just updated the portalgun mod to 1.2.3 of Minecraft a few hours back. Currently 4.15 am in the morning where I'm at but no big deal.
Been down with a cold for a week though... But I'll live.
hahaha, wow. That's a lot of dedication.. whenever I stay up that late I can't function the next day. A lot of people don't know the modders but more by their mods, so while on the subject, could you tell us about how you came to play minecraft?
It started around the end of 2010 when one of my friends suggested playing Minecraft online. Previously I've never heard of Minecraft at that time so I wasn't very sure about it. We spent quite a while trying to get an alpha server up.
Oh indeed, server management is quite fun isn't it ;)
Eventually we finally got it working but found it pretty buggy, smp wasn't known to be very stable back then, but we managed somehow and it turned out pretty good
At the time you still couldn't kill mobs and you couldn't be hurt by mobs and all inventory was still client-side
and how was your first server experience?
Well my first impression was that the game was pretty buggy. But it was understandable since the game was still alpha and all. We shelved Minecraft aside for a while until the health system worked. After that did we only get a better and smoother experience playing Minecraft
what was the thing about minecraft that attracted you? the gameplay or the building aspect?
Well at first it was the gameplay. Never seen a game made out of blocks like that so it caught my interest. We didn't build much at all at the start, just basically working our way and living underground
and how was your first creeper experience?
Eventually as it progressed I lost interest in survival and started being more interested in building stuff, the creative aspect.
Well my first creeper.. hmm it was so long ago I can't really remember. But my friend had already told me about them so I knew what to expect
thank you for sharing ^_^. now what inspired you to add portal guns to the game? Of course Portal was one but what prompted you to start modding?
At first, I lost interest in Minecraft for a while. This was while Minecraft smp didn't have a proper health yet. Then one day another friend introduced me to mods. The one that really got me interested was a mod called builders. One where people would spawn and randomly would start building structures. I played Minecraft every once in a while with mods, even trying out zombiecraft one day.
Then while randomly chatting with said friend, I got the idea of wanting to do a Minecraft mod. Initially I didn't know what to do, nor how to do it, so we thought for a while. Eventually he mentioned the portal gun and that became the basis for the mod. Yeap, the idea for me to make the portal gun mod actually came from a friend of mine. So that day I started to learn how to use MCP and learn java at the same time. I came on irc and went into #mcp-m
hahahahaha, this really makes things interesting. Programmers mostly come from doing independent work, not through school. And this is a prime example of it. But do continue :)
Well as I stated earlier I had no experience in java whatsoever and only started learning it as I worked on the mod. I did have a year of experience in JavaScript, and some experience in modifying plugins for Sourcemod (Left4Dead2), but that was it at the time. I started off by looking at another mod called MineColony, which had a public source. So then I began modding. At the very beginning I got a lot of help from oku and _303, but as times passed
I was pretty secretive at the time too. Even though oku and _303 were helping me with my issues I never actually told them what mod I was making
Good tactic, prevents competition ;P
It's more of a trait of mine rather. I never really tell others about what I work on.
that's always a way of going at it I guess. Keeps the people guessing.
So let's talk about Portal gun, it has gone through it's first aniversary recently and Many things are changing, could you share with us some of your plans for the future?
There are some things I can say, but these are just plans, not promises, of course
I think that would be good. ;)
A clear plan would be to bring back most, if not everything, that used to be in the mod before I decided to recode it
At this point, after the update to 1.2.3, only the radio and the checkpoint block remains, though I'm thinking twice about the checkpoint block.. I would probably do it in a very different way or not return it at all
What made you think twice?
Basically just the way it works. Also one of the reasons I initially didn't want to bring the High Energy Pellets back.
Some elements of the mod... Weren't really stable and bug free in the old mod (before the recode)
Rather have it working well :)
The spawners, hep, and checkpoint were one of the few in my opinion. Which is why I had to think it over. The spawners had to come back, clearly, since they had a huge use. The HEP, I only decided to bring back after huge demand for it on the forums, which leaves the checkpoint block... I'm still thinking about that.
The next clear plan would be SMP, of course. This would probably take a while to do, especially since the last port took over a month of coding and testing full time. Sadly I don't have that much time anymore.
I do spend a lot of time on the mod
hahaha of course, the mod doesn't bring in the bread and butter :P
That's quite the news for server admins of modded servers :)
There's also at least one more feature addition I'd like to implement before SMP, not yet in the works but next on the list. I won't say what it is here, but I have mentioned it a few times in the #direwolf20 channel. RichardG, who's working on IndustrialCraft, seems particularly impatient about it :P
Is it related to the game?
Minecraft or portal rather?
Because I would love to take a wild guess at this.
Yes. This was meant to replace the HEPs not returning.
You can guess, but I can neither confirm nor deny your assumption
That's how unfair I am :D
I'll just guess the cores :3
I would love see those ingame
Speaking of the future, can you comment on the direction of the future of modding for minecraft?
Ah okay, this will be one exception.. it may be sad to see this, but I have no plans in the near future to make cores or glados. I honestly find not much of a point in them
No cores~ hahaha I guess not. Oh well.
One day someone will do that :)
Though plans might change, at any time, I'm just saying that there's none of such at this time
Then hope isn't all lost.
Some may remember that I said I had no plans to make the mod SMP, period, back in the day.. That clearly has changed.
However in the future I may implement my own version of Light Bridges and Gels. One such example was the original Aerial Faith Plates mod by LokiDarkfire.
Then we'll have a fully functional Portal 2 in Minecraft :) or might at least in the future
There was someone who made Portal 1 sometime last year... CompC was his name iirc.
It was completed. I lost track of what had happened to it though.
His post can be found somewhere in mcf with a bit of digging, I'm sure.
Speaking of the future, can you comment on the direction of the future of modding for minecraft?
The future of modding... That's a little shady. I remember back in May, notch came to talk to the Modders about making a modding API for Minecraft
Here we are now, in March the next year, and Minecraft still doesn't have a modding API. Many plans were discussed but were none carried out?
Do you think the API will allow compatibility across the mods?
It is mentioned that jeb will include the API in the next major Minecraft update, 1.3. It is only something I've heard, only a rumour thusfar imo.
But honestly I think the way Minecraft is handling at the moment with mods is fine.
Jeb said that the modding API would be advanced enough to allow redpower to port to it. Assuming he means redpower 2, we can expect an API similar to that of Minecraft Forge, hopefully
Thus meaning, compatibility, of course.
That would be pretty amazing.
I would certainly like to see some major mods that aren't compatible to work together
(What major mods don't work together? O.o)
Better than Wolves is one prime example.
Thank you for your time and knowledge iChun, is there anything you would like to say to the readers before we close?
Yeah, I'd like to just shoutout to the awesome #direwolf20 community on irc, which made working on the mod so much more enjoyable to do. Thanks for reading, its been a pleasure with you SR, thanks for any support I've been given, and pretty much thanks in general.
And thank you for being here today iChun, I hope you have a nice day and we're all looking forward to your mod. Thank you everyone and Come back next time for another Interview with the Community.
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