Major things to note:
Class renames: https://gist.github.com/LexManos/44dd211f90f498ad4015279b103dff86
Tile Entities are now packed in the ChunkData packet.
Forge intends to work around this to better support large moded worlds, but for the time being modders should implement the new function carefully and only send what data they need to!
Minecraft's codebase now has annotations, these are directly from Mojang and should be adheared to!
Added support for package-info.java's containing @Nullable information for all MC code base.
Added detection of mods that rely on Java 8 and a graceful error screen.
The nag screen will be shown once a day. It can be disabled by editing the forge.cfg.
However it is HIGHLY recomended that user update to Java 8.
Main things of interest:
* IAnimationStateMachine - state machine for animations; can load
from json.
* AnimationTESR - automatic TESR for animated models.
* AnimationModelBase - same for entities.
* ITimeValue - time-varying value, used to control animation
parameters from code.
* TESRs can now be batched - look at TESR.renderTileEntityFast +
TE.hasFastRenderer.
* RegionRenderCache is not accessible to TESRs and other client-side
logic - MinecraftForgeClient.getRegionRenderCache.
Using the @Mod annotation mods can opt-in to a centrally controlled update system.
This is PURELY a notification system and will NOT automatically download any updates.
The End User can control which mods check for updates and disabel the system entirely using the Forge Config and GUI.
Format for the json the URL must point to is described here: https://gist.github.com/LexManos/7aacb9aa991330523884
Default macs to disable the new loading screen due to to many macs having issues.
Users can enable it again by editing their config.
Catch and gracefully handle more errors when starting up the Splash Screen.
LexManos