4 min. read
As of writing this, I just released v0.1.0 of SocketMC and have successfully dealt with all of the weird stuff between Forge and Fabric. I’ve been working on this mod for a while now, and I’ve learned a lot about both modding platforms. So, which one is better for mod development? Well, it depends on what you’re looking for.
In my opinion, Fabric is way better documented. Their setup page is easy to follow and read, and their documentation pages have a lot more examples and information. Since I usually learn better with examples rather than simple descriptions, this was a huge plus for me. Forge’s documentation is good, but it’s not as detailed and descriptive as Fabric’s. I found myself having to look up a lot of stuff on the Forge forums or Stack Overflow because the documentation didn’t cover it.
Forge is older. It’s been around for a while, and there are a lot more tutorials and videos on it. This was really helpful when I was first starting out, as I could just watch a video and follow along. Fabric has some videos too, but they’re not as common or as detailed as Forge’s. If you’re a visual learner, Forge might be the better choice for you.
Fabric’s mod API is so much better than Forge’s. They have an easy to follow system for adding different modules to your mod, and they have dozens of different modules for all different kinds of things. Forge’s API is bundled together as one dependency, and it’s a little harder to understand and follow compared to Fabric’s. And, because Fabric is newer, their design is more modern and easier to work with.
Secondly, Fabric also uses a JSON format for their mod metadata, which is a lot easier to read and understand than Forge’s TOML format. This was a huge plus for me, who originated from Discord bot development in JSON, and moving on to Minecraft plugin development with YML, which is more closer to JSON than TOML.
Lastly, when you start out, Forge makes you download and entire template from their website. Fabric, on the other hand, just has simple examples available on GitHub. I don’t like importing projects with IntelliJ IDEA if I don’t need to, so that was a huge turn off for me.
Forge has a much larger community than Fabric. This means that there are more people to help you out if you get stuck, and there are more mods available for Forge than Fabric. If you’re looking to make a mod that a lot of people will use, Forge might be the better choice. Fabric is growing, but it’s still not as big as Forge, because Forge is older. I find myself being able to easily dissect and understand open source Forge mods more than Fabric mods, but that’s just me.
Fabric’s team has automated a lot more things than Forge’s team. I subscribed to the Fabric GitHub Releases page, and I get updates nearly every day about the automated changes they push. Forge doesn’t have formal GitHub releases like fabric, and I find myself looking up the maven metadata on their (hard to read) maven repository to see if there’s a new version. Fabric also has updated to newer Minecraft versions faster than Forge, which is a huge plus for me, as I like to keep my stuff up to date.
I hate Loom. It can be really hard to understand and set up, especially when first starting out. A lot of the speciifc things I wanted to do with my first mod took a good amount of time to figure out. ForgeGradle is a lot simpler to use. I like the way it’s set up, and I find it a lot easier to understand than Loom. On top of all that, the full functionality of Loom is hard to find anywhere and in the documentation.
I love Fabric for its modern design and friendly API, so it’s my personal choice. However, Forge is definetly better for beginners, as it has a larger community and more tutorials available. If you’re just starting out, I would recommend Forge. If you’re more experienced and looking for a more modern and easier to use platform, I would recommend Fabric. I’m going to stick with Fabric for now, even though I had to deal with a lot of weird stuff to get my mod working.
I also prefer Fabric because I use it personally whenever I play. All the best performance mods are on Fabric, and I don’t feel like testing my mod on both platforms anyways. If they don’t work the same with the same code, that’s not my bug to fix.