The Future of FTB Modpacks.



An incident has just come to our attention with regards to a conflict between 2 modders that ultimately ended in code being added to a mod that would have caused peoples games to crash. I don't really want to go into details about this specific incident as it really isnt our place. However it has caused us to take a look at various aspects of how we could and should deal with situations like this in the future.



Before we get into the details of how we will handle this and future similar situations, there is something I would like to make clear. Whilst this particular issue is symptomatic, it only serves to highlight various problems we face and take a long look at measures that we need to take to help limit the fallout from anything like this that may happen.



So I think it is important that the main point we cover here is this idea of mods that contain code designed to crash games. This one is fairly simple, as far as I am concerned this is as close as a person can get to distributing malware with their mod. Any mod that is found to contain code like this will be removed from a pack. If possible in order to preserve the integrity of existing worlds we will try to roll back to an earlier version of a mod. In the event of a mod leaving code like this in, we will no longer include that mod in any future mod packs.



Also this seems to be a good opportunity to highlight a longstanding but rarely highlighted policy that has pretty much always been in place. If any mod author approaches me and makes it clear that they do not wish their mod to be distributed alongside another mod then quite simply we wont do it. This does not automatically mean that we we will remove the 'other' mod. Just we will not distribute them together.



The construction of modpacks is not a simple one. Especially if you want to make good mod packs. They need to have a focus and a vision and you need to try and pick mods that ultimately play nice together. In the case of FTB ultimate and more recently the 152 test packs, the intention was to be something for everyone. However moving forwards we will probably have to redesign the 152wgt and 152ngt packs. More details on these redesigns will be out shortly.