Piotr Machacz @pitermach@mastodon.social

Back in 2009, at the dawn of Minecraft, I wrote the first-ever custom Minecraft server software, using a small proxy to reverse-engineer the simple and unencrypted networking format. Before that, there was only creative mode client hacks (noclip, fly, superspeed) and simplistic console wrappers ("if !kick appears in chat, send /kick to the server" kinda crap).

My custom server's initial features included the first custom world generation, anti-cheats (no flying! no superspeed! no standing inside solid blocks!), the ability for server mods to turn invisible (to "spectate" new players), red player names for admins, and the ability to save/load multiple maps on the fly, (hopefully) without disconnecting anyone.

Initially everyone was thrilled and I was heralded as the "Minecraft Hacking God", but when I planned to release the software publicly for free and open-source, the community forum moderator suddenly did a 180 and threatened to ban me, taking issue with the fact that users would be able to program their own minigames before the official survival multiplayer came out.

"You're stealing money from Notch", they claimed, thinking that a quick 'n dirty Counter-Strike style "Zombies" game mode would be somehow equivocal to the premium "official" mobs that would soon follow, which included zombies as a staple, and therefore nobody would have a reason to buy the full version of the game anymore.

So instead of releasing the software for free, publicly, on the Minecraft forums... I just left my email address and told everyone to send me $10 if they want it.

A few people eagerly bought it. They didn't know how to mod it, so they sent it to the first person they encountered who claimed to be able to program. Then those people, perhaps not realizing this was paid software, would run it themselves and also freely give it away to literally anyone who joins their server and asks.

Thus, it spread like wildfire, and I only made like 10 sales total, which I almost entirely re-invested buying the game for myself and a few friends.

This is the event that started the entire modding trend for Minecraft, in general. My original server software was succeeded by a Python script, and then eventually Bukkit.

Later, Notch hired the entire Bukkit dev team to form his "Mojang" company, when he finally decided to stop working as a solo developer. Then he made a cool 2 billion dollars selling the company.

I did the opposite of steal money from Notch. Fuck.

If you are posting images, you can make them more accessible by adding a text description for screen readers.

✅ After you've attached an image, click "Edit" on it and write the description. If there is text within the image, you can add it to the description by clicking "Detect Text From Picture", which activates Mastodon's text recognition system. When you're ready, click "Apply".

The text recognition isn't perfect, it may need correcting.

#MastoTips #FediTips #Mastodon #Accessibility #A11y

The Fediverse has a lot of blind or partially sighted members who use screen readers to listen to posts. Large groups of emoji make life difficult because the reader reads aloud each emoji's text description back to back.

✅ You can make your posts more accessible to blind users' screen readers by only using individual emoji, and avoiding large groups of emoji.

For example 😃 is fine but 😀 😆 😁 👍 😃 😜 🤗 causes problems.

#FediTip #MastoTip #Accessibility #A11y #Emoji

Hashtags can be difficult for blind people's screen readers, because the reading software may have trouble telling the words apart in the tag.

✅ You can make hashtags screen reader friendly by using "CamelCase", where each word in the tag begins with a capital letter.

For example, #DogsOfMastodon is fine but #dogsofmastodon may cause problems.

#FediTips #MastoTips #Accessibility #A11y #Hashtags #ScreenReaders

So I made a group page: @imagecaptionspls This is for people who have difficulty writing image captions/descriptions for their images. Due to fatigue or lack of spoons or neurodivergencies that make it difficult or many other reasons. If you’re non-disabled or able to help with writing these, it would be awesome if you could follow that page and help out when you see someone tag it needing help with it so their post can be accessible for others too! @disabilitymemes @disability @accessibility

But what got me most of it was the first iPad app I installed and tried out. It was one that was not yet optimized for the Mac, but wow! This beats any Electron app that pretends to be a desktop app but is essentially a blown-up web page, out of the water.