Status updates for private mod pack owners

[Watchful11]

Long workday and final for my summer class at 8am tomorrow. I will try to get confirmations out to all the working packs tonight, but no guarantees. If you don't get a message, I know your pack doesn't work and am working on it. I will have lots of time tomorrow to get everything sorted.

I will also try to get the hotfixes people have submitted up tonight, but again, no guarantees.
Sorry for the trouble.

 

[Watchful11]

On vacation this week. I am trying the best I can to get pack updates done with limited internet connection. Goal is to get packs up by Friday evening, but confirmations probably won't go out till Saturday evening.

Also, I won't have as much time to reply to conversations saying I received your pack update etc.

 

[Watchful11]

Updates and new packs are uploading. The library I am online in closes in less than an hour, so I don't have time to let everything cache like I normally do. I will push the xml's at the last possible second, but it is likely the downloads will not work for an hour or two after the launcher prompts you for an update. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it's either that or wait till I get home tomorrow evening.

For the same reason, I will not have time to send out individual confirmations until tomorrow evening. Please wait at least 4 hours from now before sending me a message asking why it isn't working.

 

[Watchful11]

All packs updated and new packs are up. Let me know if I missed anyone.

 

[Watchful11]

xml's pushed, will send confirmations tomorrow.

 

[Watchful11]

I was behind before I started this week. Will work as hard as I can, but probably won't get done till tomorrow.

Stay tuned to the main news section for even more FTB news than has already gone up. Not gonna spoil the surprises/disappointments, but I will post here when stuff relevant to 3rd party packs goes up.

 

[Watchful11]

Xml's pushed. Will send confirmations tomorrow.

Again, stay tuned for news about the new launcher. Since slow is busy with the charity event it will probably be early next week after that is over.

 

[Watchful11]

Edit: This post is a good outline for a successful pack, but is no longer considered official guidelines.

Another PSA regarding "3rd party packs" and what it takes to get one.
"3rd party packs" are packs that are on the front page of the launcher, that is, they show up without putting a code in.
Since the launcher is used by many people each day, we have very high standards for modpacks to meet before we will consider them.

It has to be professional. While it is hard to qualify exactly what makes something professional, there are many things that make it not professional. Spelling mistakes just about anywhere, any kind of bugs with the pack or unprofessional conduct on the part of any of the pack authors are good examples.
It has to have a website. The pack needs a presence other than on the FTB forums. This most likely includes a separate forum board on said website.
It needs a team. While it is faintly possible one individual could run a professional modpack with a website, a pack really needs to be bigger than just that person. It needs someone who can take over if the first person disappears.
It has to be popular. Said website and forums have to have people on them doing stuff with the modpack. While it is possible a pack run on a single server could become a "3rd party pack" if the server was big enough, it really needs people using it for more than just the purpose of playing on that server.

If a pack is already popular enough outside of FTB, it could easily jump straight to 3rd party status. The Voxel pack is a good example. But don't expect to submit a public modpack and have it on the front page inside a week.
One good measuring stick. If a pack with a server address preinstalled shows up on the front page of the launcher, that server can expect to get a hundred new logins within an hour. If that isn't the norm for your server, you aren't ready for it.

Finally, don't ask unless you really think you meet all those requirements.
Don't take me referring you to this post as anything negative. I don't mind answering questions at all but I can give a more complete answer if it is in one place rather than me retyping or copy-pasting the whole thing to anyone who asks. Feel free to ask me about anything you don't understand.

 

[Watchful11]

Once again I must apologize for getting the packs up late. College hit me again.

I am waiting on slowpoke to post some stuff about the new launcher and am working as much as I can on a few things to make my end faster.

I am unfortunately not in a place I can leave the uploads running overnight, so I will have to do them tomorrow and push the xml's tomorrow evening.
On the plus side, I have most of my weekend homework out of the way and am really hoping to get some work done so things will be faster next week.

 

[Watchful11]

Finally got home. xml's pushed. Will send confirmations out tomorrow.

 

[Watchful11]

Again apologies for getting the packs up later than I should. I just don't have the time I did over the summer. Everything should be done by tomorrow evening.

 

[Watchful11]

All packs up and confirmed. I don't have time to send out confirmations tonight but will do so tomorrow.

New pack owners, if you haven't gotten a message saying something is wrong with your pack, it should be up. You are free to try the code you requested. I will send out confirmations to everyone tomorrow.

 

[Watchful11]

Getting the final confirmations sent out now. I'll wrap up the loose ends tomorrow evening.

Another PSA.
Millenaire has a file called S++tö¿F¬¬µÿÄ.txt in mod/millenaire/languages/zh_tw. This file name causes the java unzip process we use to crash. The launcher usually unzips the files to a temp location, then deletes most of the files in the original modpack folder(ie, not saves etc) and moves the temp one over. Since the thread with the unzip process crashed, it never completes the process. But it doesn't alert the user either, so it just launches the modpack that used to be there, ie, the previous version.

The file is just a language file and is hardly ever used.(and probably automatically generated anyway) I usually catch things like this during my building process, but it helps if you delete the file before submitting your zip.

This goes for any files with non-ascii characters in their names.

 

[Watchful11]

Packs updated. Confirmations tomorrow.

 

[Watchful11]

Just to put this somewhere public. There is a known bug/intentional change that breaks the downloading of some library files for forge.
http://www.minecraftforge.net/forum/index.php/topic,12785.0.html
It is perfectly fine to include those libraries in your pack submission. This should fix all the problems related to them.

 

[Watchful11]

Questions asked by aaronfranke on my profile, responding here so it will be easier to reference in the future as well as to avoid the low character limit for profile posts.

aaronfranke
1. I know that the instMods folder contains files to be injected into the minecraft.jar, in what order are these files injected? My best guess is alphabetical.
2. What minecraft versions do you support? I am thinking of making a 1.0.0 modpack to make an old mod available for people on the launcher.
3. Is the modpack version limited to just numbers or are letters and spaces allowed?

1. With the exception of forge, they are inserted in reverse alphabetical order. See this old post where I explain.
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/anyone-else-having-issues-with-multiple-jar-mods.20385/

2. As I'm sure you know, it does support 1.2.5-1.5.2. I actually have no idea if earlier versions would work. If you are serious about putting together a pack for then, I would be willing to do some tests to find out.

3. Currently only numbers and periods. Also read this post about how the versioning works.
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/thr...vate-mod-pack-owners.18371/page-2#post-391171

 

[Watchful11]

My apologies for the delay with this weeks modpack updates. The hard drive of my primary computer is on it's last legs and decided to take a nose dive a few days ago. I'm working on replacing it and getting everything migrated over.

If I have time, I will try to get the updates done from this backup laptop, but no idea when that will happen.

 

[Watchful11]

LexManos has rescued the old launcher and added support for 1.6 modpacks. I'm trying to figure out how this should affect 3rd party packs. Unfortunately this is a really bad time for me as my hard drive died and it being the end of the semester with a number of big projects due and finals looming next week. I haven't even been able to get on teamspeak for the last few days to chat with slowpoke.

Ideally the new launcher will come out in a week or two with it's fancy new 3rd party system and we can forget about all this manual updating.(see slowpoke's news post here about that) I don't want to go through a whole lot of effort updating to the new launcher system and updating everyone's packs if it will all be rendered moot before I can finish. However, we all know not to put our trust in the new launcher until we see it.

So here's what I'm going to do. The last deadline for my projects is this Wednesday night. Then I have till the next Monday when my first final is. As soon as I can I will talk to slowpoke about the potential ETA of the new launcher and make a decision on whether to do 1.6 packs on the current launcher. If so I will post here saying that and then will spend my extended weekend updating everything.

In either case you are free to update your modpack to have it ready. I will direct any submissions regarding 1.6 to this message until I post an update.

(note: as mentioned I don't my primary computer working at the moment, so I can't even really look at the format of the 1.6 packs. No idea if something will need to be changed, stay tuned)
(second note: the recommended build of MultiMC does not work with 1.6. Look on the new website, http://multimc.org/ for a dev build that does.)

Edit: Another note to the packs I still haven't updated since last week, getting closer on that, stay tuned and sorry again for the delay.

 

[Watchful11]

Had a chat with slow, we will indeed be opening up the current launcher for 1.6, 3rd party modpacks. Due to having to use my backup laptop which can't do more than 2 things at a time as well as having a bunch of projects due over the next 3 days, I am going to do my best to ignore FTB stuff until Thursday morning. At that time I will post some slightly tweaked guidelines and start accepting packs. Please don't submit before then as you will likely have to change stuff.

If you have an urgent question that you somehow need covered before then, contact me on IRC.

 

[Watchful11]

Getting there on the new guidelines. I'm trying to make the changes to format as minimal as possible.

My goal is to get the 1.5 pack updates as well as get the guidelines done by the end of today. Then I'll get all the 1.6 packs up tomorrow.