Can a plugin like spoutplugin be made...but better?

The whole idea behind spout is wonderful. The HUD, music, events editing and most importantly the custom blocks and mobs functions are amazing. Though there are some nasty drawbacks. For one, users cant use client side mods. There are plenty of mods out there that enhance the users experience and don't really destroy the games integrity, like rei's minimap, that I would like to permit. The Cui mod for worldedit has made my life much easier but it wouldn't work when working on my server if I was using the spoutcraft launcher. Also, players have to use the spout launcher to be able to use most of the cool features that come with spout. The problem is I don't want to limit my player base to people willing to use the spout plugin.

So I have been wondering what is it that keeps developers from creating a plugin with the cool features of spout like HUD and custom blocks/entities? Could a developer come up with a plugin with those features that wouldn't require a launcher or any action from the user that would still allow the use of client side mods. If this was possible would anyone be interested in discussing the development of such a plugin?

I hope this is in the correct forum I really didnt know where this should go cuss its more of a question to a developer though it is actually requesting a plugin.

 

Moved to a more appropriate forum.

Also, you have the Spout Plugin confused with the Spoutcraft client.

 

Well, a plugin can't do all of what Spout does. Custom blocks/entities and all of that are only possible because of Spout. Without Spoutcraft, none of the Spout features would be possible -- Which is why they're in Spout and Spoutcraft. The Spoutcraft launcher allows users to download information from the Spout server that is unavailable to Minecraft client.

Stick around for Minecraft 1.3. There's supposed to be some features that might be Spout-ish.

 

As stated above, it's not possible without some sort of client mod right now, so you'll either have to make use of what is available, or wait for however long it takes until the new official Minecraft API is available and plugins are developed that do what you want.

 

So you want custom blocks, items, and gui without a client mod?

Not possible. That's the whole point of the mod api.

 

This isn't entirely what you want, but as for the problem of Spout not working with mods, probably your best bet here's to find or have mods developed which have the functionality you are looking for in Spout. Then you could just use the mods instead of Spout and avoid the compatibility problems. Of course, having Spout compatible with (other) mods would be ideal, but this is expected to be very difficult to accomplish, as Spout hooks deeply into the internals of Minecraft.. not impossible to make it work, but I wouldn't count on it.

You mentioned Rei Minimap and the Worldedit CUI.. there are also mods to add a HUD to replace Spout's HUD (not aware of any offhand but they can be found on minecraftforum.net). Mods can also add custom blocks and music. Are there any other specific features from Spout you're looking for not available in mods?