[charcircuit]

>never provided any sort of modding support

Bedrock added support for modding in 2016, 9 years ago, with resource packs and behavior packs. You can make custom entities, custom items, custom blocks, etc. There is also a marketplace available to distribute these to players, built right into the game.

Java edition also has had similar things for many years.

[darknavi]

We've worked a lot on the Typescript/JavaScript APIs available for Bedrock so most content on Bedrock platforms (console, mobile, etc) is heavily script-based.

It will always be more limited that Java modding but is catching up in large areas of functionality.

Amazing seeing what people are making in Bedrock running on old Android phones, Switch, and company.

[makestuff]

I remember when the c++ edition came out, but have not really followed since then.

Are all of the servers/mods still written in Java and it was just the desktop client that was rewritten in c++? Or is there a division between Java mods and c++ mods?

[charcircuit]

Behavior packs, for Bedrock, are written in JSON and TypeScript. The client and server software is written and C++. Most people make mods using the built in modding support as I mentioned and are not making C++ mods. Most C++ mods are hack clients.

[throawayonthe]

two versions still exist in parallel: Java edition for PCs, and Bedrock edition (c++) for everything else

the main modding community is around java edition

[natebc]

Spot on. You can also play Bedrock on a PC if that's your poison.

[tialaramex]

Java edition is night and day different.

Take the pack I'm re-playing at the moment, Compact Claustrophobia.

Even the opening moments of that pack are nothing related to the Minecraft game you can buy. Scraping materials from the bare walls? Not a thing in Minecraft, but the mod adds that because otherwise how are we going to make even a block of dirt. Oh right yeah, no dirt, we start inside an unbreakable [as far as we know] object and we have to burrow deeper and deeper into recursively defined Compact Machines, none of which exists in the Minecraft game. Your character in Compact Claustrophobia needs their own faeces to survive - if you've read "The Martian" you know how that goes. Base Minecraft of course does not have poop, so they add that.

To make all this happen requires a lot of reverse engineering. Are Microsoft doing everything they can to stop it? Not at all. But they're also not some benevolent entity adding hooks left and right for the modifications.

[charcircuit]

>Not a thing in Minecraft, but the mod adds that

Did you read my post? I'm saying that Bedrock has mod support built in with public documentation. There are a bunch of hooks. You can add new blocks. You can make things happen when clicking in them. You can add brand new items.

[tialaramex]

Yes, it's night and day as I said. Take the most fundamental naming element of Compact Claustrophobia - the Compact Machine. This is a block which has a pocket universe inside, we have to be able to make this, place it down, enter and exit, and have the inside of the block continue running because after all the outside is still here with us, and also the edges of the outside block correspond arbitrarily to portals inside the block for transmission of... oh right yeah, Bedrock doesn't even have a electrical power system...

With the approach they're taking in Bedrock maybe the Compact Machines I was first playing with years ago become possible (if somebody puts in a lot of labour) in ten years, or in twenty - if sanctioned. But they've existed for years in Java, so why bother?