Plugin not loaded

Sorry if my question has already been posted, I am very new to modding.

I am trying to load the NoExp Sponge plugin into my local Minecraft 1.8.9.
I use MultiMC 5 and already have Forge 11.15.1.2318 installed, so I added SpongeForge 1.8.9-1890-4.2.0-BETA-1762 into my mods list, as it is the latest available for Minecraft 1.8.9. And SpongeForge does show up in Minecraft’s mods list.

But when I add NoExp into my mods list in MultiMC (which effetively moves the mod’s .jar into /mods/), it doesn’t seem to be recognized as a plugin/mod by anyone.

Am I doing something wrong ? Do I need to load Sponge plugins differently than Forge mods ? Is the plugin even compatible with this version of SpongeForge ?

Link to my server log

Thank you for your help

That plugin is not compatible with your version of sponge. That plugin has a minimum version of API 7 (minecraft 1.12.2). Its likely you downloaded a newer version of the plugin (api 8+) which changed the boot loader and therefore you got no message in your log.

You will be hard pressed to find any plugins for that really old version of sponge. When it was around the Ore website wasnt a thing so developers uploaded there plugins here on the forums. But they had to provide there own links … And most links are probably broken considering Minecraft 1.8.9 came out 9 years ago

Hope it helps

I see. So what you’re saying is, since Sponge API is not backwards compatible with older Minecraft versions, if I want to use a plugin which uses Sponge API 7, I need Minecraft version 1.12.2.
And if I wanted to develop my own plugin for Minecraft 1.8.9, I’d need to use Sponge API… prior to 5.1 ? The Sponge API versioning page doesn’t go that far.

Thank you for your help

Short answer

Correct to both.

Long version

The versioning doesnt go that far back on that page as i could only find betas when creating the page, so i didnt include them.

You can still use maven/gradle to gain the spongeapi for beta 4.2.0 so there isnt anything stopping you (i would advice you dont use the sponge gradle plugin as im not sure it will work - but the maven/manual way will still work). From what i can remember the method and class structure was similar in 4.2.0 to api 7, its just api 7 is so much newer

As for backwards compatibility. Sponge isnt designed to be forward or backwards compatible (minecraft isnt, so sponge shouldnt be), that being said, methods and classes will only change when needed (or in api 8’s case, when everything else is being changed that it makes sense to just break more for a better future) so in some extreme rare cases where the developer hasnt tested prior sponge versions, you maybe able to use a plugin designed for a newer api on yours … However with yours being 4.2 … I would only try api 5 at a push and even then, expect it not to work

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