(002) Still brewing, still thriving

👋 Hey there,

Great to see you. Whether you're new here or a returning friend — grab your mug and let's dive into this week's topics. ☕️

🔎 Single Bean - Mining Forks

After some digging around, I found a small gem of a mod by SirSquidly. Released roughly a month ago, it hasn't surpassed 100 downloads at the time of writing.

Mining Forks brings a prospecting twist that goes beyond your standard press button, find ore formula. Instead of a generic ore scanner, you craft specialized mining forks - each tuned to detect only the material it's made from. Swing one, and it sends a resonance pulse through surrounding stone. If a matching ore is nearby, you'll get a unique particle and sound response back. Miss your read? That's a durability tick gone. What makes this mod genuinely worth isn't just the mechanic itself - it's how it plays well with others.

GitHub (source and issue tracker)

CurseForge (Download)

🔗 Integrations By Default

Out of the box, Mining Forks ships with automatic compatibility for selected companion mods:

installing Deeper Depths swaps Emeralds in crafting recipes for Amethyst, and enables a Copper Mining Fork that detects copper-type blocks added by the mod.

throwing Unseen's Nether Backport in to the mix adds a Netherite Mining Fork tuned to sniff out Ancient Debris.

📦 Why Modpack Devs Should Care

Every default fork is defined through a definitions system that lets you:

Add entirely new forks for custom ores

Remove or modify any default fork

Rename forks and redefine which blocks each detects

Configure detection distance, range, and loot generation (forks also spawn in Abandoned Mineshafts, with configurable odds and durability)

Tl;dr: If your modpack's progression could use a more deliberate, skill-based approach to ore discovery, give Mining Forks a go. The definition system alone makes it a no-brainer for packs with custom ore generation.

📝 Roaster's Notes: Meet @strubium.bsky.social

To keep my promise this week, I invited Strubium, aka Smeagle, to a digital cup of coffee to chat about his current projects, questionable monetization models, and shady mods best avoided like a burnt brew.

Why is Vazkii your favorite mod author?

Enderman: This question may sound a bit off at first, but in the last issue, I was talking about moddex.gg - the website to review all Minecraft-related projects across CurseForge and Modrinth. There, you wrote a review about Quark: Oddities - an addon for the popular Quark mod. Why did you critique it so heavily?

Strubium: Disliking Vazkii isn’t really what I want to be known for, but I feel Violet Moon Modding is trying to extract as much money from its users as possible, and is therefore making some questionable decisions, like shipping Quark Oddities as an empty jar to make it “easier to maintain”, which as a dev I don’t really believe. Later, I sent someone into the Violet Moon Discord to ask about this and they said:

“I don’t want to have to update Quark in the Oddities repo every time I want to update anything Oddities related”

What Oddities repo? It doesn't have one. This also takes like two minutes max.

“the original intent was just discoverability and ease of use”

Y’all do not list the features of Oddities so what are they discovering?

The worst thing you encountered during your work on OpenEngineering?

Enderman: I've noticed you started sharing screenshots of an upcoming Immersive Engineering rewrite, a mod primarily known for its dieselpunk aesthetic. From a developer's perspective, it was always hard to touch, as both the assets and the code were under a proprietary license, and the 1.12 branch was abandoned ages ago. So since starting the project, what's the worst thing you've encountered so far?

Strubium: Thankfully for my work on OpenEngineering I literally cannot look in the code base anymore (due to license infringement), but when I was in the models folder about a week ago I found that IE has a ie_item_base.json for all the item models. But this just extends the Minecraft item/generated base model so it’s completely unnecessary. Truly emblematic of IE.

View post on Bluesky

Why did TheOneSmeagle remove the offset from the top left corner?

Enderman: Let's stay on the topic of your projects. You also maintain a fork of The One Probe, called TheOneSmeagle, an in-game HUD displaying additional information about the things you look at in your world. After switching to your fork, I noticed that the default offset from the top-left corner of the screen was missing. Was that an intended change?

Strubium: I think I changed it by accident at some point? Now I like it the way it is.

Which mod would you like to never have existed?

Enderman: Alright, last question for today. Of all the mods players can choose from, is there one you'd wish had never been made?

Strubium: Without a doubt essential.gg. Here is a list of some of your data Essential collects when you use their mod:

Geo-location information

Usage Information

Behavioral Information

Metadata (from screenshots or files)

Third-Party Information, which they also buy from other companies to 'supplement' what they already collect

What else?

Enderman: Awesome. Thank you for taking the time. Anything else you want to mention, or any socials where others can find you and your projects?

Strubium: Feel free to check out my projects on Curseforge and go install EndeavourOS. 🐧

💬 Counter Talk

Alright what are the things discussed in various places?

🍰 The Aether Mod turns 15!

July 22nd, 2026, marks 15 years since the original Aether mod released. They also announced the return of their Aerbunny plushies, so if you want a companion for your next adventure, go grab one!

View post on Bluesky

🕶️ Will Optifine become obsolete soon?

When trying to improve performance in Minecraft, for the longest time, there wasn't really a way around OptiFine, especially if you wanted to run shaders in your world. In more modern versions, it's used more rarely, as there are now other mods that handle shaders for you, like Oculus or Iris. But 1.12 always lacked a competitor. There have been multiple attempts over the past few years, but within the past week, two separate devs started posting screenshots of WIP implementations. (check the ALTs for credits)

There are a still things OptiFine provides that haven't been ported yet including HD textures, dynamic lights, fog control, skyboxes, extended mob models, etc. - but getting shaders working independently is without a doubt one of the bigger milestones.