Computercraft is dying.

Some of you might disagree with me, but hear me out, Computercraft is dying, there are almost no computercraft-focused servers that have active players and the community is shrinking.
So, here are my solutions:
1: A load of players go and advertise computercraft off-forums, this would increase the amount of players, many would quickly leave, but at least 25% would keep joining. (This would solve the "Community is shrinking" problem)
2: Create a large amount of new servers that have more mods than just computercraft (CC only servers tend to lose their playerbase after a few weeks and then die after a month or two) the new servers also must be lightweight (To avoid what I call "TechCorp syndrome" the extreme bloat that causes the server to crash due to buggy mods that cause memory leaks) and must keep their playerbase any way possible (To prevent what I would call "Lurcraft syndrome" a good server that lost the majority of its playerbase and the remaining players become "Toxic" to newcomers)
3: Merchandise. Yes, you heard me correctly, this is my "Sledgehammer on fly" solution to the problem, It would be quite expensive to manufacture and sell Computercraft merchandise, but, after a few weeks, the community would exponentially increase in size due to the "Silent publicity" of seeing computercraft stuff out in the world.
-Terra1, also known as Terrariola and Terra.

I think the main reason is that ComputerCraft hasn't been getting any updates. CC veterans are getting bored of the lack of new features, while at the same time players are moving on to newer Minecraft versions. Thanks to the mod going open source, this should hopefully change in the near future.

I think it is mostly because all of the veterans "outgrew" ComputerCraft in a way. Many of them first learned to program through ComputerCraft and once they got a taste of what it's like to program real-world applications, they moved on. I do think the lack of updates and publicity has also had its effect. I remember at a previous MineCon there was a panel of modders and almost all of them said ComputerCraft is there favorite mod in Minecraft. Furthermore, there used to be a lot of ComputerCraft related activity in the FeedTheBeast community, where many of the "die-hard" Minecraft modded players reside. In fact I remember our very own BombBloke used to be very active in that community some time ago. Now we have come to a point where few FeedTheBeast players use ComputerCraft at anything more than a basic level.

I think what would seriously help this community is if we went back and held "CC Jams" hosted by well-known Computercrafters and then maybe advertised Computercraft to the modded community as a whole by making an enticing video of the winner(s) and posting it on the FeedTheBeast forums/reddit, as well on information on how those players can get started with Computercraft and potentially join a CC Jam themselves. One thing about CC Jams though is that they should definitely be hosted by a "veteran" member. I do recall there being many such CC Jams but they ultimately did not gain the traction they expected until oeed hosted one with properly layed-out rules and format.

I do agree, this is why I host the AirWaves server, which is an up-to-date minecraft and ComputerCraft server, but in the past year I have seen servers going from like 25 players to 2-4 if you're lucky and because so many people offer servers, all the players are split up; well what's left, and you're so right; the older players are outgrowing ComputerCraft to get jobs and work on different things. It's a shame, I think to get people using it more they need to release CC for MC 1.11.2 and 1.12 properly.

Axiom, on 08 July 2017 - 07:14 PM said:

I think what would seriously help this community is if we went back and held "CC Jams" hosted by well-known Computercrafters and then maybe advertised Computercraft to the modded community as a whole by making an enticing video of the winner(s) and posting it on the FeedTheBeast forums/reddit, as well on information on how those players can get started with Computercraft and potentially join a CC Jam themselves. One thing about CC Jams though is that they should definitely be hosted by a "veteran" member. I do recall there being many such CC Jams but they ultimately did not gain the traction they expected until oeed hosted one with properly layed-out rules and format.

CCJam 2017 is scheduled to begin in August. And oeed has never hosted a CCJam, but has appeared as a judge in two of them and will judge for a third time next month. I hosted CCJam 2016 last year, which is probably the "properly laid out" one you are talking about, and I am hosting it again this year.

I'd like to think of CCJam as a reunion as well as a competition, because we may find that old CC users come back to CCJams as that one time of the year where they check up on the community and see what they can make. For example, 1lann and Nitrogen Fingers, who are largely inactive today but have been very influential community members in the past, are both planning to come to CCJam 2017 as judges.

3d6, on 08 July 2017 - 08:24 PM said:

Axiom, on 08 July 2017 - 07:14 PM said:

I think what would seriously help this community is if we went back and held "CC Jams" hosted by well-known Computercrafters and then maybe advertised Computercraft to the modded community as a whole by making an enticing video of the winner(s) and posting it on the FeedTheBeast forums/reddit, as well on information on how those players can get started with Computercraft and potentially join a CC Jam themselves. One thing about CC Jams though is that they should definitely be hosted by a "veteran" member. I do recall there being many such CC Jams but they ultimately did not gain the traction they expected until oeed hosted one with properly layed-out rules and format.

CCJam 2017 is scheduled to begin in August. And oeed has never hosted a CCJam, but has appeared as a judge in two of them and will judge for a third time next month. I hosted CCJam 2016 last year, which is probably the "properly laid out" one you are talking about, and I am hosting it again this year.

I'd like to think of CCJam as a reunion as well as a competition, because we may find that old CC users come back to CCJams as that one time of the year where they check up on the community and see what they can make. For example, 1lann and Nitrogen Fingers, who are largely inactive today but have been very influential community members in the past, are both planning to come to CCJam 2017 as judges.

Hmm I believe oeed has indeed hosted a CC Jam; the one I recall is perhaps in 2014ish? It was quite a while ago but I do remember it was quite a success.

Axiom, on 08 July 2017 - 08:57 PM said:

3d6, on 08 July 2017 - 08:24 PM said:

Axiom, on 08 July 2017 - 07:14 PM said:

I think what would seriously help this community is if we went back and held "CC Jams" hosted by well-known Computercrafters and then maybe advertised Computercraft to the modded community as a whole by making an enticing video of the winner(s) and posting it on the FeedTheBeast forums/reddit, as well on information on how those players can get started with Computercraft and potentially join a CC Jam themselves. One thing about CC Jams though is that they should definitely be hosted by a "veteran" member. I do recall there being many such CC Jams but they ultimately did not gain the traction they expected until oeed hosted one with properly layed-out rules and format.

CCJam 2017 is scheduled to begin in August. And oeed has never hosted a CCJam, but has appeared as a judge in two of them and will judge for a third time next month. I hosted CCJam 2016 last year, which is probably the "properly laid out" one you are talking about, and I am hosting it again this year.

I'd like to think of CCJam as a reunion as well as a competition, because we may find that old CC users come back to CCJams as that one time of the year where they check up on the community and see what they can make. For example, 1lann and Nitrogen Fingers, who are largely inactive today but have been very influential community members in the past, are both planning to come to CCJam 2017 as judges.

Hmm I believe oeed has indeed hosted a CC Jam; the one I recall is perhaps in 2014ish? It was quite a while ago but I do remember it was quite a success.

No, but he did participate in the 2014 CCJam.

apemanzilla, on 08 July 2017 - 10:15 PM said:

Axiom, on 08 July 2017 - 08:57 PM said:

3d6, on 08 July 2017 - 08:24 PM said:

Axiom, on 08 July 2017 - 07:14 PM said:

I think what would seriously help this community is if we went back and held "CC Jams" hosted by well-known Computercrafters and then maybe advertised Computercraft to the modded community as a whole by making an enticing video of the winner(s) and posting it on the FeedTheBeast forums/reddit, as well on information on how those players can get started with Computercraft and potentially join a CC Jam themselves. One thing about CC Jams though is that they should definitely be hosted by a "veteran" member. I do recall there being many such CC Jams but they ultimately did not gain the traction they expected until oeed hosted one with properly layed-out rules and format.

CCJam 2017 is scheduled to begin in August. And oeed has never hosted a CCJam, but has appeared as a judge in two of them and will judge for a third time next month. I hosted CCJam 2016 last year, which is probably the "properly laid out" one you are talking about, and I am hosting it again this year.

I'd like to think of CCJam as a reunion as well as a competition, because we may find that old CC users come back to CCJams as that one time of the year where they check up on the community and see what they can make. For example, 1lann and Nitrogen Fingers, who are largely inactive today but have been very influential community members in the past, are both planning to come to CCJam 2017 as judges.

Hmm I believe oeed has indeed hosted a CC Jam; the one I recall is perhaps in 2014ish? It was quite a while ago but I do remember it was quite a success.

No, but he did participate in the 2014 CCJam.

Ah, actually I found what I was referring to, "Codewars - Reloaded", back in early 2013 - http://www.computercraft.info/forums2/index.php?/topic/12586-codewars-reloaded-round-2/.

My apologies for confusing it with CC Jam, but it does appear the concept is similar haha.

Well I have been wandering the corridors of this forum for the last month or so and today is the first I have heard of CCJam. What does that tell you.
I for one would maybe start by talking to the people who are currently promoting CC and do some customer research.
I would first be contacting the Youtubers who create CC content and get them to ask their subscribers for input.
Get a ComputerCraft facebook pages, As much as I love the forum format and the ability to build conversation, forums no longer provide a point of contact for newcomers.

There is a big enter barrier that needs to be looked at.
Pretend you are a newbie and take the steps needed the have CC working and you sitting on a server ready to play.
You have to be darn determined this is what you wanted in the first place. If you just want to check it out (because it sounds fun)
the steps involved in getting on a CC server is a big investment for the average user.

Just my two cents worth.
P.S you can find me on AirWaves: V2

I do agree with a lot of the sentiment here. I think loosing members over time as they move on is inevitable. You just start to want to do bigger better things on other platforms. There are probably a lot of factors at play, but I think the best way to get newer (and probably younger as a result) players is through mod packs. I first discovered CC on the original Technic pack and I know a large number of people would have too. I'm out of touch with the mod pack world now, but I would hazard a guess and say that maybe we need to try and get the mod integrated in to more mod packs again?

Axiom, on 08 July 2017 - 10:23 PM said:

Ah, actually I found what I was referring to, "Codewars - Reloaded", back in early 2013 - http://www.computerc...oaded-round-2/.

My apologies for confusing it with CC Jam, but it does appear the concept is similar haha.

Yeah, I actually couldn't remember myself at first. You could kind of call it the prequel I guess.

My own thoughts:
I think the first thing that we need to realize and accept is that Minecraft in its entirety is going to, or is already (depending on who you ask), dying. That said, it should be expected that communities will eventually fizzle out. Computercraft is unfortunately just the tip of the iceberg in regards to communities that are/will be falling apart.

Note, I could be totally wrong, this community could grow far beyond what it has been ever before, and things could work out. My rule of thumb is to expect and prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. Worst being the community ceasing to exist, Best being the community thrives.

On to what Oeed said:

oeed, on 09 July 2017 - 05:32 AM said:

I think loosing members over time as they move on is inevitable. You just start to want to do bigger better things on other platforms. There are probably a lot of factors at play, but I think the best way to get newer (and probably younger as a result) players is through mod packs. I first discovered CC on the original Technic pack and I know a large number of people would have too. I'm out of touch with the mod pack world now, but I would hazard a guess and say that maybe we need to try and get the mod integrated in to more mod packs again?

Essentially that would require a big enough hoo-rah from the people that we do have in the community directed at a group like technic or forge or curse, just a community with more people. That way, they recognize the mod and (hopefully) add it to their packs. On top of that, as I have already said Minecraft itself may or may not be dying, so we really have to factor that into our deliberations.

Kaos-Net's efforts to withhold the inevitable:

Kaos Network I cannot say under any circumstance has the following of groups as large as Technic, FTB, or any other 'popular' modpack developers. I can say that we are trying to shake things up a bit with some mod packs in development. Maybe, as a community, and when the server is ready, it will become a flagship server for computercraft. I think one of the major flaws with a lot of the modpacks that have computercraft in it, it is the center focus of the entire server. Kaos-Net has admittedly made this mistake, a majority of it being on my behalf (rip krakenkraft). In the future, this has to change. Under no circumstance should one, or even two mods be a highlight of a server. They all need to compliment each other equally, or proportionally. Obviously we are taking this into account as soon as we begin to develop the modpack. More information will hopefully be posted, stay tuned! (I mean it, this one's a game changer ;)/> )

"ComputerCraft is dying because it isnt getting new updates"

Seriously, search before saing such things: https://github.com/d.../ComputerCraft/ and http://cc.crzd.me/

ComputerCraft is very well, thanks to kindness of dan and the hard work of him and SquidDev we could get CC for 1.12 (i dont see OC builds for it yet).

Just because nothing was posted on the main blog doesnt mean there's zero work on the mod, look around.

Sorry about the rant, but this type of topic is kinda useless.

vico, on 09 July 2017 - 09:41 AM said:

Just because nothing was posted on the main blog doesnt mean there's zero work on the mod, look around.

Whilst I agree with you, there sadly is a big difference between crazed's build server and an "official" release on CurseForge. The vast majority of people and, more importantly, major modpack developers, will only look at Curse. I think a great example of this is Computality which is another fork of ComputerCraft for 1.11.2 - it has over 70k downloads, which is far more than build server has, despite it is much less stable.

On the rest of this topic, I really don't think marketing tactics is the answer. Merchandise, Facebook pages and YouTubers is really not the answer here. This is a mod for a voxel game we're talking about here, not some fancy startup.

Honestly, I feel this thread isn't going to go anywhere - it's just an excuse for everyone to moan about things :)/>.

SquidDev, on 09 July 2017 - 09:53 AM said:

vico, on 09 July 2017 - 09:41 AM said:

Just because nothing was posted on the main blog doesnt mean there's zero work on the mod, look around.

Whilst I agree with you, there sadly is a big difference between crazed's build server and an "official" release on CurseForge. The vast majority of people and, more importantly, major modpack developers, will only look at Curse. I think a great example of this is Computality which is another fork of ComputerCraft for 1.11.2 - it has over 70k downloads, which is far more than build server has, despite it is much less stable.

Ugh, i didnt knew about this fork, and at the first glance i didnt like it, it already have another random dependency we need to install, nah, i prefer your solution (1.11/1.12 forks) :P/>

We need official releases for the newer versions of Minecraft, 1.10 and 1.11 at least (1.12 is still in the early phases). Once this happens and there is an official stable release it will start to make it's way into not packs and people will start using it. Having a few big YouTubers (direwolf20) using it would obviously help as well!

So if we want to avoid this becoming just another ranting topic we need to start polishing up the code ready for release. Perhaps we could get a beta release up on curseforge to start off a coordinated effort to get a stable release?

blunty666, on 09 July 2017 - 03:25 PM said:

We need official releases for the newer versions of Minecraft, 1.10 and 1.11 at least (1.12 is still in the early phases). Once this happens and there is an official stable release it will start to make it's way into not packs and people will start using it. Having a few big YouTubers (direwolf20) using it would obviously help as well!

So if we want to avoid this becoming just another ranting topic we need to start polishing up the code ready for release. Perhaps we could get a beta release up on curseforge to start off a coordinated effort to get a stable release?

Agreed. We also need more servers with better hardware and more active staff.

blunty666, on 09 July 2017 - 03:25 PM said:

So if we want to avoid this becoming just another ranting topic we need to start polishing up the code ready for release. Perhaps we could get a beta release up on curseforge to start off a coordinated effort to get a stable release?

Official Releases are up to Dan. I thought he'd have released for 1.10 by now, but he is a little busy.

KingofGamesYami, on 11 July 2017 - 03:40 PM said:

…but he is a little busy.

Yeah that's a pretty decent excuse! :D/> There's loads of good stuff happening on the GitHub repo though so fingers crossed it happens soon.

Lignum, on 08 July 2017 - 05:52 PM said:

I think the main reason is that ComputerCraft hasn't been getting any updates. CC veterans are getting bored of the lack of new features, while at the same time players are moving on to newer Minecraft versions. Thanks to the mod going open source, this should hopefully change in the near future.

This.

Axiom, on 08 July 2017 - 07:14 PM said:

I think it is mostly because all of the veterans "outgrew" ComputerCraft in a way. Many of them first learned to program through ComputerCraft and once they got a taste of what it's like to program real-world applications, they moved on. I do think the lack of updates and publicity has also had its effect. I remember at a previous MineCon there was a panel of modders and almost all of them said ComputerCraft is there favorite mod in Minecraft. Furthermore, there used to be a lot of ComputerCraft related activity in the FeedTheBeast community, where many of the "die-hard" Minecraft modded players reside. In fact I remember our very own BombBloke used to be very active in that community some time ago. Now we have come to a point where few FeedTheBeast players use ComputerCraft at anything more than a basic level.

I think what would seriously help this community is if we went back and held "CC Jams" hosted by well-known Computercrafters and then maybe advertised Computercraft to the modded community as a whole by making an enticing video of the winner(s) and posting it on the FeedTheBeast forums/reddit, as well on information on how those players can get started with Computercraft and potentially join a CC Jam themselves. One thing about CC Jams though is that they should definitely be hosted by a "veteran" member. I do recall there being many such CC Jams but they ultimately did not gain the traction they expected until oeed hosted one with properly layed-out rules and format.

And this.

Those are the 2 biggest reasons imo. If you want to keep playing MC (which is, imo, overrated and gets boring after 10m - time enough to build a nice house and you're like..now what?) and keep programming then making mods is the way to go.
However, most veterans move on to more real-life applications, but I'll admit every now and then it's fun to go revisit creating an OS (been creating a kernel in my spare time lately - pretty cool) but those (like myself) who have jobs with real-world programming applications…what's the real point of going back to a virtual, game-based programming platform?

Minecraft is for the younger-viewer scene, always was. People get older, programs get older and Minecraft gets older. It's now very old and there are lots of better games out there (better being a more relative term but also in a sense of "most people would agree…").
People be holdin' on to MC out of sentimental reasons be silly.

Dave-ee Jones, on 17 July 2017 - 06:57 AM said:

People be holdin' on to MC out of sentimental reasons be silly.

I don't think this is silly at all.

It's a game that many people have shared in good times or bad and have helped out a lot of people with getting rid of stress, finding friends, etc. so I don't think holding on to the game for sentimental reasons is silly.

CLNinja, on 17 July 2017 - 12:19 PM said:

Dave-ee Jones, on 17 July 2017 - 06:57 AM said:

People be holdin' on to MC out of sentimental reasons be silly.

I don't think this is silly at all.

It's a game that many people have shared in good times or bad and have helped out a lot of people with getting rid of stress, finding friends, etc. so I don't think holding on to the game for sentimental reasons is silly.

Yes but it's also for this reason that people can't move on, they can't leave things behind so they become stuck in this little world of "everything will be alright as long as I keep playing MC..". It's not healthy at all. Sure, it's fun to play older games with friends for sentimental reasons every now and then, but holding onto it that much is a little bit too much..

Not to mention it's also caused stress and grief for people as well, so it doesn't just go one way of "MC made everyone happy".

I am by no means a pro at ComputerCraft, but I do think it's important to get new players to enjoy it.

I enjoy ComputerCraft, and so I'm doing a YouTube series which is based around it. Hopefully people who are new to the mod will become interested and try it out!
(That's a goal of mine, I don't do it as well as I'd like to, but hopefully people will pickup the mod and enjoy it anyways.)

What I don't really understand is why everyone is moannig about the mod not being used in multiplayer. I mean, I sort of get it. Multiplayer is supposed to be fun to some people or something. But it's hardly the be all and end all of uses for minecraft. And for me at least CC has always been the mod I want in my singleplayer world where I can devote tens of hours to fine tweaking my automated turtle warehouse or some such. If I am playing multiplayer that's not something I can do because I want to use my time to actually interact with those multiple players instead.

Than again I am an actual programmer IRL and using computercraft in order to bring the thing I love most into minecraft so my vision might be skewed.

I myself love computer-craft. I use mc 1.7.10, but you should add support to 1.12.0

EveryOS, on 04 December 2017 - 03:54 PM said:

I myself love computer-craft. I use mc 1.7.10, but you should add support to 1.12.0

The mod is already compatible with 1.12.0 but there's no release yet.

If you want to get the newest version see this and this.

Luca_S, on 04 December 2017 - 04:29 PM said:

The mod is already compatible with 1.12.0 but there's no release yet.

If you want to get the newest version see this and this.

While this is true for proper builds of it, if you want most of the features of CCTweaks as well, you can install
CCTweaked