Thanks! I worked on it on and off for a long time, about 3/4 a year thus far, though I didn't start spending every ounce of my being on it until the last month and a half or so (what with Technic and all!)
1) I would only be offended to the extend anyone pretended it was their own work or just didn't give me credit. The parts of the mod I'm proudest of are the Area system, both how it merges multiple chunks into larger Areas and the naming convention system (eliminating name components that fit together awkwardly even required a bit of graph theory, along with some well thought out design). I'm also fairly proud of the Roflconda (both in premise and in actual code (the block-sliding was a PITA!)) Finally, I'm proud of how I implemented the recent additional block textures, in that they're HD compatible but don't change resolution themselves (H/M just blows up the texture and pastes it into the terrain.png image in memory) I'll be using plenty more textures under this scheme. A lot of things already extend from the Area system, from level progression to dungeon management, and much more remains to happen with it. I might extend core features like this and release mod dependencies some day.
2) I don't know enough about Forge to say, but I was under the impression ModLoader was more widely used and was planning on at least supporting that at some point. The Technic guys seem to also have this planned major mod-integrationg for Hack/Mine in the distant future (perhaps to go in Yogbox or the like? I'll be very impressed if they do), but some minor things now like Optifine compatibility go a long way. I really want the mod to be accessible to everyone, so helping lower-end computers and promoting HD texture packs seemed like a high priority.
Speaking of Optifine (god how I love it and the man who developed it), it's recently posed a few difficulties in creating the mod. I've just added *see below* which will be included in H/M v 0.5 this weekend (and I'm stoked about it), but making the Camera's positioning positionable for it went from changing one measly line of code to subclassing two entire pre-existing classes, along with an hour and a half of frustration thinking I couldn't actually both implement the new feature and have Optifine. Glad I was wrong! There is still the issue of the new grass colors not showing in Optifine, however... we'll see about that one.
3) Oops, I may have answered this a bit in number 1 XD Areas, dynamic texture loading, the fast radar, the spell system... there's a lot I'm happy about Adding a complicated spell takes mere seconds, it's just a matter of thinking of something good. For example, I experimented with a "Whirlwind" spell for the Warrior, but wound up getting severe headaches and straying away from it :/ Apart from coding, I am proud of some of the creative work that's gone into the mod, mostly in the naming conventions and such. I'm sure some people could do without the humor, but nothing beats a pair of "Dream Stompers," a "Sweaty Axe of Lube," or even the "Legendary Broadsword that Won't Come Out of the Damn Sheath." Once villages of varying races have been added, I'll be adding some more serious Elvish/Dwarvish name generating systems (unless I can think of a way to screw with them as well).
4) Some players will be getting their height optionally nerfed this weekend... 3-4 different options, to be precise. Also, now that a lot of the major bugs are getting fixed, I can focus on adding more mobs, and hopefully the first boss mob before then. I can't decide if I want him to be a giant, overworld soaring Cockatrice-Serpent (as the first Ubermob!) or a slightly-above-Steve sized Ghost-Armor wielding a giant flail (the first Boss Mob!) The Cockatrice will of course be related to the Dire Chicken
5) Compatibility is a tough question. It will vary from case to case, mostly depending on whether or not they've modded the ItemStack, Inventory, EntityLiving and EntityPlayer classes specifically. I may be able to shift things around a bit. There's also some networking involved for the new magical properties, but this is only one change in the Packet class as of this moment. Battlegear has been mentioned frequently since its release, but adding several of the core features available in Battlegear may actually be easier than trying to integrate the entire mod. Plus, it would give me a lot more creative leeway in how to handle dual-wielding and shields.
The Technic team has expressed a distant-future interest, as a short and potentially overlookable comment, in incorporating Hack/Mine into another grand-scale mod already selectable from the Technic launcher. I don't want put any words in anyone's mouth, especially considering this would be a highly laborious undertaking It may also depend on just how successful H/M becomes (keep rooting for me!)
6) It's an interesting question. Adding mobs to the new systems is actually by far the easiest part-- users will even be able to create XML files full of normal and rare mob features for any additional mobs (I could even make an editor to go in-game for this!). What's tricky are the more logical, high level aspects-- for example, Zombies and Skeletons no longer set on fire during the day, in order to increase the variety of mobs at all times-- there is no trivial way to achieve this or detect cases to the contrary without modding the Zombie and Skeleton classes themselves, so user-added mobs with such behavior will simply burn up and die if nothing complicated is done to prevent this. Suppose someone adds a mob that drops a pickaxe of 1000% added dig speed? While it may be compatible with the mod, it would entirely break the pacing of the game (something RPGs rely on a good bit more than, well, what Minecraft is.) Adding general compatibility is still more than doable, however, it's just a matter of doing it right
Most all of the vanilla mobs have been incorporated into Hack/Mine, there's been no trouble there. Wolfs currently die too easily, I should say XD
7) Passive? I haven't given regular animals any thought (besides expanding them into DIRE animals!!! jk... I'll be limiting that to the Dire Chicken He was my first mob, man!), but mobs that don't attack until provoked are certainly on the menu. Actually, it might not be a bad idea to go ahead and add some, considering how everyone seems to get constantly ravaged by aggressive mobs wherever they go.
Favorite pizza would be... not a pizza, but a calzone from Depalma's, right nextdoor to me in downtown Tuscaloosa, Alabama! Possibly the best restaurant in the area, and I get to order takeout every other day. Tip is a little more than a buck, more if it's a busy night.
