With the Idea of allowing Bedrock players to access the server, there are several issues that arise from the idea, and I have outlined them below. Some of these may change as the plugin
GyserMC develops but waiting for a 3rd party to solve issues is not something we look at on MCME.
Firstly, the concept of allowing Bedrock clients to our Java server has been discussed numerous times before. They were all rejected due to the insane amount of work that would be required to get it “working” for the Bedrock clients. The Plugin you listed
GyserMC(Github) is one of the main plugins available currently which allows such possibilities.
While it can be seen that it would be relatively simplistic to set up the plugin on the MCME network, there are greater issues at hand with how a Bedrock client would work with the current plugins and methods of building on MCME.
Firstly, for more detailed building and construction (Gondor and Moria) we use custom textures/models which are assigned to specific block states. To allow for easy building we use something called the custom inventory. How this works is that the player can pull an item from an openable inventory and that item then allows them to place a specific block state. Within that system the player has the left and right click in this “inventory”.
Limitations of GyserMC taken from this page about the limitations of GyserMC, they cannot “Distinguishing between left and right clicks in inventories” This is vital to how the custom inventory works and how players build on MCME.
To get this to work fully and allow Bedrock Clients to effectively build within the MCME building community, could take countless hours of development work and bug fixing across Java and C++.
Additionally, this would also double the load on checking for derps in our resource packs when changes are made to them. As seen with the Moria pack recently, it was not checked if the pack would work in a normal vanilla Java client and half of the blocks were removed. This would also have to be checked for bedrock as well. Additionally, any changes made to plugins and other parts of the server would also have to be checked on bedrock as well.
Another argument is that Bedrock clients are limited with how custom models and textures work. On MCME we heavily use “Alternate Textures”
Models. This allows us to make our textures less repetitive and have a more detailed look. However on Bedrock, this is not a feature and it would make a lot of our newer builds look oddly plain and repetitive. Thus it would be a worse experience for players to explore our map using a bedrock client which is not a great thing to promote.
Another issue with the textures is that we heavily use Custom Models for many of our blocks. For areas such as Eriador and Rohan, where we do not use these, the experience for a Bedrock Client would be fine, however when it gets to locations such as Gondor or Moria, where there is heavy usage of the Custom Models to help detail the area, the experience would be extremely poor. For our Bedrock converted Minas Tirith, the Custom Model blocks had to be removed as they would not work, thus yet again the experience for a Bedrock Client would be poor.
It is also not known whether or not our various custom resource packs would be automatically applied to the Bedrock Clients via the plugins we use to manage them.
Additionally, everyday we receive various questions asking about how to connect to our server, how to get our custom texture packs working and how to go about building. Allowing Bedrock players to access our server via this type of Plugin would at minimum double the amount of questions and support queries. While we have a lot of dedicated players happy to help out, this increase in load could very well overwhelm many. More so, the support would be split across 2 platforms increasing confusion and increasing the base amount of knowledge needed to help players out.
Also, if you have not seen we do have our Minas Tirith map ported across bedrock, with our Partnership with Nvidia displaying how their RTX software works on bedrock and displayed.
Minas Tirith in Bedrock RTX. This took a considerable amount of time to put together and required a lot of work to get the resource pack working.
In my honest opinion, allowing Bedrock Clients onto our server via a plugin like this would neither be worth the time nor the effort required to implement or maintain it.
-Drao
