Bukkit: The Next Chapter

Discussion in 'Bukkit News' started by EvilSeph, Feb 28, 2012.

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  1. Offline

    EvilSeph

    [​IMG]

    What follows is a written account of Bukkit's story. If you'd rather know what the big news is, skip to the bottom. However, we'd appreciate it if you read through our entire story as it gives us an opportunity to show appreciation and give thanks to the many people, groups and companies that helped us throughout our adventure.

    When we started up Bukkit in December of 2010, we decided we wanted to do things right. Right from the beginning we wanted to be sure we were bringing about a positive change to Minecraft, one that Mojang themselves would approve of. To that end, we set up a meeting with Mojang to get a feel for their opinions on our project and make sure we weren't doing anything they didn't like. The gist of the meeting was that Mojang "liked what we were doing" but not how we had to go about doing things. Unfortunately, we both knew that we had no alternatives, so we continued along - albeit now with the reassurance that our project would most likely not be shut down any time in the future. We decided to create Bukkit to provide the Minecraft community with better tools to manage and extend their server, but our ultimate goal has always been to give the Minecraft community what it needed and wanted to make our favourite game even more enjoyable and being able to do so in an official capacity is our dream.

    Shortly after the launch of Bukkit, after I had posted an innocent announcement to get developers interested in Bukkit, our project exploded with activity. While I had anticipated developer interest and had planned for such, the added interest from the community as a whole was simply overwhelming. So much so that it had begun to put a strain on my dedicated server and actually was pushing it to the point of hardware failure. Luckily, it was around this time that Curse approached us and offered to set-up a temporary Amazon EC2 instance while they purchased new servers for our use. Unfortunately, the Amazon EC2 instance also could not keep up with the demand and was proving to be too costly. So, we asked around for help and Multiplay's Steve Hartland put us on one of their boxes free of charge while we waited for new servers to be purchased and delivered.

    One of the goals of the Bukkit project, or maybe just my personal goal, was to solve what I felt was a big problem within the Minecraft community: it was largely impossible for someone new to Minecraft to discover the unlimited potential of Minecraft modding. Not only would they have to deal with unwieldy and clunky forums, but there was also no central place for sharing your work. In answer to this problem, we endeavoured to create a new service dubbed Fill which we hoped would address all the needs of the community but were unable to gain any ground. We were simply not experienced enough to run something of this magnitude nor did we have the resources to pull it off. One day we were discussing the idea of Fill and our desire to provide a central download solution for the modding community and the WoW players on the team brought up Curse and the success they've had with WoWAce. At that point it all came together, not only did Curse have the resources to pull off something as large as we were envisioning in Fill, but they had the success, experience and scalable software with WoWAce to do so. With that, it was clear to everyone that Curse was the best route to take and dev.bukkit.org was born.

    When news broke out about Mojang organising a Minecon, the entire community was alight with excitement and anticipation. Even today, I still find the sheer dedication from the fans unbelievable and overwhelming. Though we were also excited about Minecon, there was no way we would be able to go since Bukkit is an open source, free project. Much to our surprise, though, Curse had other plans in mind. They decided to fly us over, cover our tickets and accommodation, host us in their booth and setup a panel for us. I've never met a company that cares more about gaming than Curse: when the possibility of their supporting the Bukkit project first came up, we were all blown away. Curse wanted to throw themselves behind our project. They wanted to provide us with the support and resources we needed to continue functioning, no questions asked and their desire to send us to Minecon further reinforced this opinion we had of them. Thanks to their support, we were able to go to Minecon, have a great time and put together a panel filled with our fans, as well as sneak off to a secret meeting with Mojang.

    Back in December of last year, my team and I were invited to Stockholm, Sweden by Mojang to discuss the future of Minecraft - and most importantly the future of Minecraft modding and the official Minecraft modding API. Having just recently met in Minecon, we mostly knew what to expect but were blown away by Mojang's hospitality and the surreality of actually being in Stockholm with them. Not only were we able to visit the Mojang HQ but we were also given the opportunity to be part of the launch of Cobalt (which was simply fantastic) and got to meet the entire team of talented individuals at Mojang. We spent the majority of our time with Mojang shooting ideas back and forth and getting a taste of what was to come and how we might be able to become involved.

    Which leads me to today. Our meeting at Minecon was just the beginning and after having flown us out to Stockholm to get to know each other, it was clear that the potential to do truly great things together was there and we were eager to explore it. After all, we had already been given a direct line to the Minecraft team, the source code and were actively providing Mojang with (exploit) patches and improvements. The next logical step was to figure out the best way to continue working together, perhaps in a more official and intimate capacity. After careful and lengthy consideration, the best course of action became clear. My team and I had already achieved what we wanted to when we started the Bukkit project: provide server admins with the means to easily customise and run their server and provide developers with an easy to use, properly designed API to bring their insane and cool ideas to life. The next obvious step was to make it more official and with news breaking out that Mojang was interested in developing an official Minecraft API, we knew just how to do that.

    I am extremely pleased and proud to announce that, as of today, the Bukkit team has joined Mojang. When discussing the possibility of a modding API publicly, Mojang was concerned that they would be unable to provide the community with a suitable and powerful enough solution and we honestly feel that our experience building Bukkit will help them do so. Thanks to our work with Bukkit, we have a years worth of experience, failures and lessons to help us develop a proper modding API and intend to do whatever it takes to produce one that satisfies the needs of the community. Now that we have an opportunity to design the official Minecraft API, we intend to make it a suitable replacement for Bukkit, if not a significantly better one, while bukkit.org will remain a community for modders for the foreseeable future.

    Official announcement from Mojang with more information: http://mojang.com

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    A big "thank you!" is due for the many sponsors we've had over the life of the project:
    [​IMG]
    Curse
    eXophase.com - for hosting the project at the beginning and helping us get off our feet
    Unimatrix
    Arcdigital
    Multiplay - especially Steve Hartland
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    AllGamer - especially Clinton and Scott
    Our Staff who work tirelessly and thanklessly to keep everything in order
    and, of course, Mojang for giving us a chance, taking us seriously and supporting what we’re doing.

    And to you, our community and our family: thanks for sticking by us through thick and thin, we really would not be where we are today without you.
     
    jflory7, Acharige, iiHeroo and 88 others like this.
  2. Offline

    imjake9

    I'm getting a bit tired of this "Bukkit is dead, Spout is the only future!" attitude. Partially because of the whole tone of the retaliation. This was a post by Afforess on Spout.org. Read it. It's disrespectful, condescending, and ungrateful with very few facts to back any of it up. It's pretty much just wrong.

    The Bukkit team is kind, understanding, and helpful, aka everything Spout hasn't been. If you want my respect, Spout, stop the attitude that seems to think you're superior in every way. Here's my post on the Spout forums, read it if you wish.
     
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    Cronos Dage

    RIP CraftBukkit. Lets hope this is awesome, as long as Vanilla servers still remain!
     
  4. Offline

    Dark_Balor

    Notch could be a philanthropic that it will not change the purpose of a company. But for me Mojang gain in every "board". Getting very good dev with a real knowledge of their soft, of the community and moreover of what the dev want, to code. And they are slowly getting rid of something that they didn't liked in the beginning (like said the post of Evilseph).

    To be honest, I'm just afraid to see bukkit having less and less attention from their creator. Like said Nijiko, I'll do exactly the same as them if I have the chance to be in front of that opportunity ! And I'm completely agree on that.
    I just want to be sure that the transition will be smooth, and not rude. To do that, the only way is to make the team react, like we does. Tell them our fear about what will happen, and make them remember that they create an awesome thing that we love.

    Dinnerbone Grum EvilSeph Okay Bukkit is a caterpillar and MC API is the ButterFly ... but please don't forget the chrysalis ...
    (And still CONGRATZ :) )
     
    Klotzonator and Don Redhorse like this.
  5. Offline

    Mukrakiish

    Fan boi'ism is incredibly irritating. Agreed. Both sides should shut up because yeah...its just plain irritating.

    Afforess is his own entity not = Spout as a whole. So take a shot at him sure...but don't lump all of Spout into it. That'd be like taking a shot at Evil Seph and equating Bukkit as a whole. So don't make the situation worse by taking what is said by one person (accurate or inaccurate) and smearing it across other peoples work either. It devalues your post & argument.

    Plenty of Bukkit dev's are awesome...but say little. Same goes for Spout. Lets drop the fanboy crap and carry on.
     
    Don Redhorse, Inscrutable and imjake9 like this.
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    grandwazir

    Dinnerbone

    It is good to see a more practical explaination of how this affects us, thank you for posting that. It might be useful to put your FAQ in a seperate thread of its own so more people can find it rather being buried in this one.

    I think I will wait and see what happens.
     
    Don Redhorse likes this.
  7. Offline

    Mukrakiish

    Agreed. Dinnerbone did the the best possible thing by posting the FAQ...but it really needs to be upfront alongside the OP.
     
    Don Redhorse likes this.
  8. Offline

    imjake9

    Agreed, but it's really not just Afforess here. A whole lot of the Spout community seemed to have jumped the bandwagon, assuming Afforess's word was infallible. It's not, and I hope people can see that he acted a little out-of-line.

    Either way, I agree with you here. Both sides need to calm down. We don't need a flame war.
     
    Don Redhorse and Mukrakiish like this.
  9. Offline

    Dark_Balor

    Well that only by announcing the MC API ... now imagine what it will be when the API will be released ...

    If I'm right lately Afforess had some different with people of the bukkit team, making him to think that they are incapable, that could explain the "hater" post. (I'm not founding him an excuse, just try to find an explanation).
     
  10. Offline

    Inscrutable

    First, Congratulations on your new jobs, Bukkiteers. Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow you may get Flamed.
    If this had happened six months ago, I would be celebrating. :p
    Perhaps further down the track we'll see a noticable impact of this development, but what happens between now and
    then is critical to the community here. This is the tipping point we have reached.
    As it is, Bukkit seems a bit stale now. Spout pulled up stumps and went in a different direction.
    That direction seems to be the right one for me, Bukkit is now just a crutch to help me limp there.
    This isn't a Spout-vs-Bukkit rant. Each to their own. The software is only one of the deciding factors.
    Which is not to say I'm ungrateful to all the folk who helped make Bukkit what it is today.
    But there are problems in this community that come from the top, and there appears no will to change that attitude.
    So I've migrated to a community where I feel welcome, useful, and where I trust the admins.

    ...I wonder how long it will be before Minecraft becomes open-source (as Notch said he'd do eventually)?
     
    Don Redhorse likes this.
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    Blairjam

    wow, congrats! I think you all will be able to do great things with the API!
     
  12. Congrats guys! You deserve it.

    I for one as a server admin will be looking forward to this, having an official API with the backing of Mojang will be alot better than what we have now, granted there will be a period of catching up for plugins and such but considering what this will unleash as a result I cant wait.

    Having the server as 'the server' rather than some complicated dance with the client, sounds great, hope you guys take into consideration performance as well as usability but from what im gleening from all the info it seems as though adding our own content (and i mean real content not server trickery) will become alot easier?

    Dinnerbone

    You mentioned also about the server 'hosting' new textures? Will this replace a texture for a block that doesnt exist in the client? (I understand that what you said are just ideas on the table but i was wondering what your vision was)
     
  13. Offline

    Pieinminecraft

    Will plugins/mods still be available in a similar way as now? I really like just being able to drag a .jar file into a folder to install and just having to drag it out to uninstall... So much easier than editing the server.jar file
     
  14. Offline

    Milkywayz

    People will still be able to create APIs for the server.jar, which means you will still be able to drag and drop.
     
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    bobbysmithyy

    Wow this is amazing, congrats guys!
    I am just really concerned, I just got a bunch of custom plugins done and I am a little confused, is bukkit being somewhat, "discontinued"?
     
  16. Offline

    Gravity

    Adding a bit to this ^

    First, yes I am on the BukkitDev staff, and am involved with the Bukkit community far more than the Spout one, and that makes me bias towards Bukkit in this situation. But I have also been a strong user of Spout in the past and praised it's features. So I'm trying to write this from a non-bais standpoint, but it's really up to you to decide. I'm just going to try and point out some things. So with that said, here is my very PERSONAL opinion on this.

    Bukkit is a well-managed, well-developed community and project that focuses on user experience and quality. This is the reason I think Mojang chose to add them to the development team. The fact is, Bukkit and Spout appeal to two TOTALLY different audiences who think different ways. I think that the Bukkit team will be able to work well with Mojang to make a global API and make everyone happy with some compromise. Nothing will EVER be easy, fellow developers.. But with some work we can make 1) The community happy 2) The players happy (yay, modding) 3) The devs happy (Yay, more users) 4) Server admins happy (Yay, no more waiting for Bukkit updates) and they will work to get the best for all of us. Change is necessary sometimes.

    Spout has some pretty damn cool features. I mean, really, some of the stuff they do is a bit mindblowing, personally I don't favor their API but hey. There's all kinds of crazy stuff you can do with Spout, and despite them deciding to peel off I still hold the utmost respect for every single one of their developers, they think about new ideas, and make them happen. However, personally I believe that the Spout project exists more as a "Look what we can do, isn't it awesome" type of situation, and that isn't always a good environment to be around, but it IS good for a lot of things, a lot of innovation comes out of that.

    The two audiences that these projects appeal to are completely different and exists for two different reasons and purposes. I believe that Spout will still happily live on while the new API does, but in this scenario I don't think that Spout is the route that Mojang wants to take with their game, and based off their judgement in the past, I don't think it really fits the game for a lot of people out there. If you want to do something really cool, Spout is your guy. Check it out and have fun. For the majority of the community, the Bukkit API and model gives a more operational server. Trying to compare them is like trying to find similarities between a pair of scissors and a potato; they are made for different purposes, and your wasting your time arguing about them.

    For the Minecraft community to get anywhere, people just need to chill. There's no competition between the Bukkit and Spout projects, and there never should be. Chill guys. For real, your playing a game based around placing blocks. ._.
     
  17. Offline

    Didz

    No Bukkit is still being developed on, and it will continue to be developed on for months until the Minecraft Modding API will be out. Nothing whatsoever has changed in the development process of Bukkit following this news!

    When the official Minecraft Modding API will be released, plugin developers will start to drift over to new API that will be a lot more feature-complete and be integrated purely within the official Minecraft server software.
     
    bobbysmithyy and Milkywayz like this.
  18. Offline

    Milkywayz

    Well put
     
  19. Offline

    Derthmonuter

    Congratulations to all of you!
    Minecraft wouldn't be the game I know and love otherwise.
     
  20. Offline

    Avarice

    I and my associated hugely appreciate all of the work that the developers and supporters of bukkit have put into the project, however we're not too comfortable with the idea of the Bukkit developers being Mojang staff.

    I don't care much for the Bukkit vs. Spout drama, however I have to say h31ix, your last bit about it being a game about placing blocks only applies to standard users. For developers and server owners, it's more about creating a game within a game, a whole other type of construction that encompasses providing an experience for players that go above and beyond the limits of the vanilla features. To minimize it so blatantly is just asinine.
     
    Don Redhorse and heavy1metal like this.
  21. Offline

    bobbysmithyy

    You my friend are WRONG,

    1st off, I could have sworn you were a staff member of bukkit and if anything your the one who should be helping the community out if you were given staff at one point or another.

    2nd, BUKKIT DOES THEIR BEST TO RESPOND TO THE PEOPLE ON THE FORUMS!
    I bet if you were an owner of these forums you couldn't respond to one damn thing because of all the stuff they have to deal with. They do a great job with handling the community.

    3rd, if anything, bukkit has done more help than harm for the minecraft community, I don't know where I would be without bukkit today.

    STOP HATING DON!
     
    Zeroth likes this.
  22. Offline

    acuddlyheadcrab

    This really made my day :) This game has gotten me into circuitry, programming, and learning how to administrate.
     
    bobbysmithyy and Zeroth like this.
  23. Offline

    NullCity

    Well goodbye canarymod :p
    Anyways time to port my NCEssentials plugin to bukkit now.
     
  24. Offline

    Laserhog

    Honestly, what i really wish we could be told, is what could possibly be DIFFERENT in this soon-to-come "Official Minecraft API" than what is currently in the CraftBukkit API.
    So does this mean it will be somewhat similar to Spout and Spoutcraft? Or simply allow other modders (ie. Equivalent Exchange, IC2, BuildCraft, etc) an easier means to port their single player mods into multiplayer. I sincerely hope it is something like Spout (because I very much like the plugin and the things that a dev can do with it).

    And to the people that are saying "Bukkit is dead", it in no way is, they are simply joining forces with Mojang, which you may hate now, but later you will be grateful as this will give them the means to create the perfect server modding API for us all, which hopefully gives us all a lot more freedom to do what we want.
     
  25. Offline

    Mukrakiish

    Nothing to add except that I LOVED this little pieces at the end of it all. =D
     
  26. Offline

    heavy1metal

    If this continues, the legacy which bukkit has created, I'm extremely excited to see the progress. For the bukkit team's career, I congratulate you for turning your hobby and off-time-interests into a tangible career.

    However now the Bukkit team cannot make their own decisions, and have lost control over any of their goals/ideas. My gut tells me, this will become the next AppStore. Developers will have to pay for a "developers kit" and server admins will have to out-right buy plugins. The bigger servers will grow, the smaller ones will die off. We'll probably see a lot of fart-noise plugins.

    As a small server host (35-40 player), this move makes me nervous. I truly hope for the best, that Mojang/Notch stays out of Bukkit-team's way and just cut them a check.

     
  27. Offline

    derpium

    “The plan is to build a fresh server API, and then extend it to support client-side modding (in one way or another). We will try to make it easy for bukkit users to convert if they wish to do so, but backwards compatibility is not guaranteed. We will, however, help bukkit to be compatible with 1.2, to avoid having a long gap while you wait for the official Minecraft server to catch up.”

    Does this mean that we will see client side support as something similar to SpoutCraft?
     
  28. Offline

    Didz

    The Minecraft Modding API will be free, Notch agreed on this a while ago after a big backlash when he wanted to charge something like €5 for it. Unless Mojang want that kind of backlash again, I doubt this would be changed.

    Similar yes, except it's integrated into the real Minecraft client, not some addon that you'd need to download. :)

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 24, 2016
  29. Offline

    MRDRMUFN

    dude waygroovy your avatar reminds me of my old avatar.
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
  30. Offline

    Dephurites

    This update is monumental for the further development of Minecraft. I've spent a chunk of time reading through all of the drama over the past 13 pages, and it's all a piece of shit. Spout is not comparable to Bukkit, as they are simply different ways of conquering a goal. Sure, Spout has all of it's nifty changes to the client, but how can that be compared to Bukkit? The two are in no way competing.

    Bukkit isn't over. This has been said twenty times more than needed. Bukkit will still be maintained and developed while the Minecraft API is in the works, and for a great chunk of time afterwards. If the new API doesn't include compatibility, someone is likely to create a conversion plugin (or whatever they'll be called).

    Now, I do have a few questions. With the new system, will plugins be able to send blocks, textures, models, ect. to the client to be used per-server? All of these are very fundamental parts of mods, and if a full conversion to plugins is desired, then that's pretty much the only option, unless we want client-plugins for each server that has any custom blocks.

    Will us developers get any access to the API in the weekly snapshots? Will there be any sort of documentation for the snapshots, or are we left guessing?

    Oh, right. Forgot to say, Congrats Bukkit Team!
    I honestly can't wait for the update. I hope the community is kept in the loop on information.
     
  31. Offline

    varunax

    Congrats Bukkit Team.
     
    Afforess likes this.
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