LambDynamicLights v3.0.0 got released!

Authored by

LambdAurora

Published on 2024-10-09

Modified on 2024-10-11

Banner made by Akarys, my wonderful partner.

Finally! The long-awaited release of LambDynamicLights for Minecraft 1.21 has landed as LambDynamicLights v3.0.0!

This is quite a big update, and with the long delay I think a blog post in addition to my usual changelogs is due.

Changes

• Changed how item light sources are defined in resource packs:
  • Now item light sources support a wide-range of selection predicates thanks to data-driven improvements in the base game.
    • This means enchanted items can now selectively light up, this should mostly address (#89).
  • Please refer yourself to the documentation for more details.
• Updated to Minecraft 1.21 (#227).
• Updated configuration library.
  • Configuration corruption should now be fixed.
• Updated Mexican Spanish translations (#214).
• Updated Italian translations (#232).
• Updated Polish translations (#235).
• Removed block entity lighting as the use-case was extremely niche.
  • This may be re-introduced if a valid use-case is found.

License Change

One surprising change in this update is the license.

This mod initially released under MIT, which was fine at the time, and was pretty permissive.

Though I was pretty naive at the time too, and filled to the brim with good faith. I have quickly realized that the Minecraft modding community isn't always in good faith, and this has made me reevaluate my choice.

I came to the conclusion I needed a custom license, most open-source licenses are too permissive, and I felt like going full All-Rights-Reserved would be awful for everyone. With the help of my partner we came up with a new license to help find a middle-ground: Lambda License.

The goals of the license are:

• to let people be able to use the source code for contributions or source-only forks;
• but binary distribution is now much more closed: distribution requires a permission and the conditions to get such permission are laid out in the license.

There are provisions in case I suddenly disappear without a trace one day to avoid this mod getting lost to time. My goal with this license is to involve good faith from me, the author, and you, the user.

I wish I could've avoided this, but having witnessed grifters and bad-faith actors around some of my mods, with in addition to this some recent events, I believe there was no choice but to protect further my work.

I am open to discussion with the NeoForge ports for them to get permission to use the new code, my goal is not to make life harder for the good-faith ports.

Downloads

A Long Wait, and What's Next?

Yes, I am a bit late to the party. LambDynamicLights skipped 1.20.6 and finally gets an official 1.21 ports on the dawn of 1.21.2.

Turns out I've been pretty busy in my life: graduating with a Master degree in software engineering, getting really hooked into the Splatoon fandom, work, modding drama. Long-gone are the days of being a student with load of free time and a deep interest in Minecraft.

When I finally sat down and decided to get the mod released for 1.21, I had a more ambitious goal to attempt to decrease the needs for user support:

• I wanted to rework entirely the API to give more options to resource pack makers, which would avoid me getting issues about how someone wants X item to glow under Y conditions.
  • This can be seen in the changes here with a brand-new JSON format for item light sources, and a new Java API.
  • Though there are things missing: the dynamic lighting API for entities is still the good old same. I planned to rework it as well but I ran out of time. I've decided that releasing the mod as-is was more important and to take advantage of the next release cycle to start work on it.
• I wanted to fix the recurring issues of user's configurations getting corrupted.
  • This got fixed and with some investigations in the latest versions of Night-Config and some talks with its author, some issues got resolved in the library itself!
• And finally, I wanted to optimize the mod to alleviate most complaints about the mod being slow. As you may have noticed, this has not been done here, it will require a lot of work. Unlike the API where I need to stick to a release cycle due to breakage, for this one I can continue work on it anytime.

So yeah, a lot of ambitions but not much time to get it all done. At least it can give you insight into what to expect for the next releases. I will not give any ETA for any of these changes as it's quite hard to estimate, and I'm still busy.

I cannot hide that I'm a bit disappointed to have to scale back this release, especially since a bounty was placed and people added up to 60€ for the mod to release quicker. It was a good motivation though. From the bottom of my heart, thank you everyone who reached out and added to the bounty.

I hope I have reassured some people who thought the mod was gone for good. It is not yet the end of LambDynamicLights. Expect a faster release for 1.21.2.

I also had to delay some other things, I have two other blog posts that I have planned and partially worked on so stay tuned for more. As a reminder my blog has an RSS feed!

Thank you for your support and have fun!