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Minecraft comes in two flavors, Java and Bedrock. All of the mobile, console ports, and windows store versions are based on bedrock. Java is the one you downloa

by AkBKukU 3mo ago

Minecraft comes in two flavors, Java and Bedrock. All of the mobile, console ports, and windows store versions are based on bedrock. Java is the one you download directly from the website. Bedrock isn't really about custom hosted servers, but there is a way. You can run a standard Java Minecraft server however you like, and then you can wrap it to also work with the Bedrock using Gyser[1] which will protocol translate it on the fly. It can require some workarounds on the more restrictive bedrock clients but it does work. That will let you setup and control the server from Java which has more options available. [1] https://geysermc.org/ https://geysermc.org/

tialaramex 3mo ago
Geyser sounds very interesting especially if you know some or all players wouldn't be willing or perhaps able to play Java Minecraft and so they have to run Bedrock, but some would play Java and they'd enjoy being together. Java Minecraft is just a better toy, I'm not altogether sure it's a better game, depending on how you define game, but it's a better toy because it's so flexible. I assume Geyser can't magically donate much of that flexibility to a Bedrock client, but if the players can co-exist then that's a boon in itself.
- augusto-moura 3mo ago
  Aside from being more flexible they are mostly the same game. The original excuse for bedrock was that Java was slow and a native game would render much better, it was also easier to put shaders in a a native codebase. But Java edition is pretty performant nowadays and computers also got much more stronger than the game became heavier
  - Philip-J-Fry 3mo ago
    As far as I can remember the origins of Bedrock are the original console releases which couldn't ship a JVM. So a whole new codebase was developed, and ultimately it was more performant as it had to run on 7th gen consoles.
    - ThatPlayer 3mo ago
      Console releases were done by a different studio originally, 4J Studios. Bedrock spawned from the mobile ports, and eventually replaced the console editions and had different features.
  - LtdJorge 3mo ago
    Java edition still horribly underperforms. It’s mostly single-threaded and even if they’ve rewritten the lighting engine a few times (those decade old black-block bugs disappeared), the Sodium family of mods show you how much it can be improved.
    - avarun 2mo ago
      Sure, but the fact that you can just install Sodium completely obviates the need for the Bedrock version to exist at all.
yoz 3mo ago
Apologies for hijacking an advice thread, but I'm another dad who's had to deal with this incompatibility nightmare, and I really really want to know what the hell happened within Microsoft & Mojang to end up with this mess. No, seriously, I'm fascinated by the story. It's been over ten years. I'm happy to assume that most of the people involved are smart and good with decent intentions. I also bet there were many kinds of commercial and organisational pressures, especially because it's (a) Microsoft and (b) one of the biggest gaming acquisitions ever. Does anyone here have any insider knowledge they could share?
- bl4ckneon 3mo ago
  No insider knowledge but as far as I know, bedrock is written C++ not Java. They did that for porting to other devices and consoles, as well as preformance. It also allows them to sell skins, server hosting, more micro transactions since it's more locked down. So I think it's just a thing that happened, and it has been going on for a while and if they did anything to either the Java edition or the bedrock edition then it would make a lot of people really mad.
- somat 3mo ago
  Consoles hate having a jit vm so java is a non-starter for them. The real reason is you want to run your game on the latest greatest WiiStation(tm). if it is written in C/C++ you sit down with a copy of their development library and change your code to fit. If it is written in java you port the jvm to the device. And I don't really know how hard that is(having never ported the jvm) but most people sort of balk at that step. Microsoft thought it was easier/better to rewrite minecraft in C++ than port the jvm to the xbox. There was a big enough customer base attached to the original java version they did not want to discard it(backlash would be too huge and messy).
  - 0x3444ac53 3mo ago
    In Microsoft's defense at the time the java code base had a ton of technical debt and overtime they've essentially done a full rewrite of everything. That said, I'm convinced that 90% of the reason that the current mess exists is because Microsoft was convinced that most users would be migrating from Java to bedrock. And they probably would have (modding and other things aside), had the Microsoft team not decided to "fix" many aspects of redstone. Since then there's been the constant issue of parity between the two versions, which will likely never be achieved. And 90% of the time it's because the Microsoft developers working on bedrock edition decide they know better than mojang does, so they can implement a feature in a different way, or just implement a new feature entirely. Ugh it's a mess, and I've spent way too long thinking about it.

by AkBKukU 3mo ago

tialaramex 3mo ago

Geyser sounds very interesting especially if you know some or all players wouldn't be willing or perhaps able to play Java Minecraft and so they have to run Bedrock, but some would play Java and they'd enjoy being together. Java Minecraft is just a better toy, I'm not altogether sure it's a better game, depending on how you define game, but it's a better toy because it's so flexible. I assume Geyser can't magically donate much of that flexibility to a Bedrock client, but if the players can co-exist then that's a boon in itself.

augusto-moura 3mo ago
Aside from being more flexible they are mostly the same game. The original excuse for bedrock was that Java was slow and a native game would render much better, it was also easier to put shaders in a a native codebase. But Java edition is pretty performant nowadays and computers also got much more stronger than the game became heavier
- Philip-J-Fry 3mo ago
  As far as I can remember the origins of Bedrock are the original console releases which couldn't ship a JVM. So a whole new codebase was developed, and ultimately it was more performant as it had to run on 7th gen consoles.
  - ThatPlayer 3mo ago
    Console releases were done by a different studio originally, 4J Studios. Bedrock spawned from the mobile ports, and eventually replaced the console editions and had different features.
- LtdJorge 3mo ago
  Java edition still horribly underperforms. It’s mostly single-threaded and even if they’ve rewritten the lighting engine a few times (those decade old black-block bugs disappeared), the Sodium family of mods show you how much it can be improved.
  - avarun 2mo ago
    Sure, but the fact that you can just install Sodium completely obviates the need for the Bedrock version to exist at all.

yoz 3mo ago

Apologies for hijacking an advice thread, but I'm another dad who's had to deal with this incompatibility nightmare, and I really really want to know what the hell happened within Microsoft & Mojang to end up with this mess. No, seriously, I'm fascinated by the story. It's been over ten years. I'm happy to assume that most of the people involved are smart and good with decent intentions. I also bet there were many kinds of commercial and organisational pressures, especially because it's (a) Microsoft and (b) one of the biggest gaming acquisitions ever. Does anyone here have any insider knowledge they could share?

bl4ckneon 3mo ago
No insider knowledge but as far as I know, bedrock is written C++ not Java. They did that for porting to other devices and consoles, as well as preformance. It also allows them to sell skins, server hosting, more micro transactions since it's more locked down. So I think it's just a thing that happened, and it has been going on for a while and if they did anything to either the Java edition or the bedrock edition then it would make a lot of people really mad.
somat 3mo ago
Consoles hate having a jit vm so java is a non-starter for them. The real reason is you want to run your game on the latest greatest WiiStation(tm). if it is written in C/C++ you sit down with a copy of their development library and change your code to fit. If it is written in java you port the jvm to the device. And I don't really know how hard that is(having never ported the jvm) but most people sort of balk at that step. Microsoft thought it was easier/better to rewrite minecraft in C++ than port the jvm to the xbox. There was a big enough customer base attached to the original java version they did not want to discard it(backlash would be too huge and messy).
- 0x3444ac53 3mo ago
  In Microsoft's defense at the time the java code base had a ton of technical debt and overtime they've essentially done a full rewrite of everything. That said, I'm convinced that 90% of the reason that the current mess exists is because Microsoft was convinced that most users would be migrating from Java to bedrock. And they probably would have (modding and other things aside), had the Microsoft team not decided to "fix" many aspects of redstone. Since then there's been the constant issue of parity between the two versions, which will likely never be achieved. And 90% of the time it's because the Microsoft developers working on bedrock edition decide they know better than mojang does, so they can implement a feature in a different way, or just implement a new feature entirely. Ugh it's a mess, and I've spent way too long thinking about it.