IDEA, the Mediator plugin AND Client Mod.

Dear moderators, I didn’t put this in the plugin suggestion list on purpose! I think this idea encompasses way more than just a plugin. If you disagree feel free to move it.

I’m sure you all know by now Notch is opening up the Minecraft code for mod developers! This provides some interesting oppertunities.

So whats this great idea?
What if there was a plugin in which other plugins (lets say Minecart Mania) can feed in all their entity/item-physics behaviour, the plugin would pass this info to a client side mod which implements all non-standart Minecraft physics in the current game session.

What use would that have?
This would end most of the ‘server forcing client to update’ lag!
In case of MM, I have always experienced severe client sided lag because my client predicts the cart to slow down, and the server forces it to change the speed and position about twice a second, resulting a quite uncomfortable experience on my side.

I dont use MM why would this benefit me?
I dont use it either on my server, its just a good example. But this system could also be used to instruct the clients on things like entity behaviour (friendly creepers?) or explosion behaviour (double range, block damage on/off) or even FINALLY give servers the power to add new creatures!

We could pass on a great deal of the server-sided mods to the client to provide a much smoother expierience to our players!
But what if someone doesnt have that mod?
The plugin could tell you ‘you dont have the Mediator mod installed! This will reduce your games performance on this server!’, the old ‘server forces updates onto the client’ system will still work, the server will still be arbitrary in decisions like who hit what or exactly how much damage is done.
In case of adding significantly different things (like a new mob) the plugin could kick the player with the message ‘You do not have the Mediator mod installed, without this you cannot enjoy all the features our server has to offer! Get it here [...]’

Wow, that would be huge! is this even possible?
Ofcourse it is, but is it plausible that our community of part-time hobby-developers can pull this off...? I dont know.

If it’s done decently... Notch stated that he would merge good mods with the official MC
And if this gets popular, the server sided plugin part could become a part of Craftbukkit perhaps.

Plugins already work together via internal APIs, take iConomy as example, dozens of plugins hook up with it.

I cant imagine it to be impossible complex to adapt the MC client to use other values for minecart speed or slowdown, or make it accept another value for ‘mob-awareness’, or walking speed, etc. And such (temporary) values could easily be provided by the server via a plugin.

Great idea! when will it be ready?
I dont know, I have zero knowledge of java. I’m hoping this idea gets picked up by one of our talanted developers ( @fullwall ?, @sk89q ?, @EvilSeph ? @anyone else I dont know by name but thinks he can fit in this list?)