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

    feverdream

    You guys are sort of giving the development community - the people who write plugins - the cold shoulder. Just be aware of that.
     
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    mbaxter ʇıʞʞnq ɐ sɐɥ ı

    Oh hardly! Converting to the new system would be quick and easy. I've been restating this a lot today, but it took me 30 minutes to convert a 8000 line plugin from hmod to bukkit back when that happened. :)
     
    acuddlyheadcrab likes this.
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    Celtic Minstrel

    I like how you have (at the time of this posting) 4 facepalms, 2 likes, and 1 agree on that post. I too agree with most of what you said there.
     
    ACStache likes this.
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    Gravity

    Being a dev, I would disagree. I think they are making a decision that will benefit everyone including devs in the near future. Re-writing stuff is never ever a bad thing.
     
    acuddlyheadcrab and bobbysmithyy like this.
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    ezzitthehezzit

    make it so that single player mods such as more ores and the aether can be installed by dragging the files into the craftbukkit.jar PLEASE! all my players beg my to install some cool mods and im always sad to tell them that i cant unless they get it too. try your best mojang/bukkit! we are counting on you!
     
  7. Offline

    TnT

    Personally, I'd rather see you join a server - and the server pushes the mods that are needed to the client! Why should your players have to do anything to play? I am excited at the possibilities this annoucement brings.
     
    rymate1234 and Zeroth like this.
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    Celtic Minstrel

    Not possible. The craftbukkit.jar isn't something you can drag things into. What's wrong with putting them in the plugins folder, anyway?
     
  9. Offline

    Television

    I maintain a plugin that forms the backbone of a large-ish server. The plugin totals 17,829 lines of code. Yeah, that's going to be fun to rewrite.
     
  10. Offline

    B45op

    this would be something I would love! I'm running a modded server and the biggest hassle is getting the client mods installed for other players, installers work sort-of but a spot like setup where the user joins has the mods downloaded/updated and is instantly playing would be AWESOME!

    also Congrats Bukkit team! well done.
     
    Zeroth likes this.
  11. Offline

    eddie017

    Bukkit (I think) was already being sponsored by curse, but I think now that curse is working with Mojang mojang'll be paying bukkit :) so ite more like a pay rise. :p
     
  12. Offline

    TACTICALboom

    When I saw the bold-ed statement saying they had partnered, I almost cried. Seriously though, that's exciting!
     
  13. Offline

    Zeroth

    :O The idea of that makes me so excited. Please, please, try to figure out a safe way to do this!
     
  14. Offline

    Avarice

    That's definitely one of my fears, worried about possible restrictions that extend to Bukkit, standards that have to be met, etc., etc.,

    One of the things that make this game great is the freedom and potential that has been displayed thus far by the community. Mojang has picked up and implemented some community-born ideas, however we have still had more freedom as a whole using Bukkit than we have been granted by the people at Mojang.

     
    Don Redhorse likes this.
  15. Offline

    Tanite

    As a server operator, that probably sums up my feelings.

    As for the nerd battle (my server forum post today was titled "MANY NERDS FIGHTING" rofl), this reminds me quite a bit of the dev.bukkit.org roll-out. Lots of cries of "Why didn't you talk to us?!", but... done was done. And, of course, ultimately it didn't turn out quite as bad as many feared, and most people fell in line.

    Hopefully the future is as bright as the now :)
     
    Don Redhorse likes this.
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    Blackstorm72

    Congrats, all I have to say is that you guys have been great, especially in 2011 when I had a 100-slot server from August. Without you guys, it wouldn't have been the same.

    I do remember in January in 2010, when hMod died. Niko and sk89q... ported with build 17. I opened our server in build 23, ended in build 1080 or so.

    Levelcraft, iConomy, and yes... I don't know how but Lockette were the most important. We all had a MySQL and such. It was fun while it lasted.

    I got frustrated with the threading of CPU's... 30 people = issues and just didn't follow through. With your new API, I will be watching - Multithreading. RAM reduction perhaps? Probably not, Java is notorious for that. But please, do not do the hMod/Bukkit Port chaos there was.

    Make it good - and congrats team!
     
  17. Offline

    Owexz

    With everyone hoping for a system that when you mod a server, the client automatically downloads the mod, that is exactly what Spout does, apparently the Aether devs will be porting it to Spout as well.
     
  18. Offline

    bhsgoclub

    So...does that mean that we are going to have to re write EVERYTHING? (Congrats though)
     
  19. Offline

    joshcvb

    Does the Bukkit team truly believe they will write what they want now? I don't think so, they are not the lead on the minecraft mod api, a mojang employee is, and they will direct what mojang wants done. Bukkit will be left in shambles after 1.2, don't try to sugar coat things. Bukkit disregarded the community and Evilseph and a few others I have seen in chat totally put down others that like Spout and think Bukkit and the mod api are the next holy coming.
     
  20. Offline

    TnT

    Yes, but IF this comes to the Mojang client/server, not a single person on my server will need to get a different client to use the mods. Not quite the same thing you mention.
     
  21. Offline

    joshcvb

    Your overlooking what Spout does though, at its core is multi-threading with no code relying on mojang, and will not break with every update that they do. The mod API will be dictated mojang, not the bukkit core
     
    Windwaker and Owexz like this.
  22. Offline

    Technius

    I'm excited to put in a plethora of features into my Skyrim-themed plugins. As it did say on the dl.bukkit.org page: The possibilities are endless!
     
  23. Offline

    ACStache

    This is awesome news! Congrats bukkit guys! can't wait to see what the future brings.

    Only one thing concerns me though... With Minecraft, it seems updates only come around every so often. Would you make the effort to implement the same update style for the Official API as you do now and had planned with DLB? (Dev, Beta, Release)?
     
  24. Offline

    Owexz

    You need to go and download a new client, big deal, what do you think people had to do when they got minecraft?
     
  25. Offline

    TnT

    The Bukkit team can work on those issues now. Mojang has added four new developers to Minecraft. Bukkit won't need to dictate the API - the four developers Mojang just hired (and Jeb of course) will now create the API.

    When Spout has a feature complete server out, you can tell me all about how awesome Spout is, and I'll listen heartily. Until then, you're telling me how awesome Spout will be, and in response I'm telling you how awesome Minecraft - straight from Mojang - will become.

    Either way, I hear awesome things are coming in the future.

    Seems to be a big deal to the vast majority of Minecraft players that use the vanilla client.
     
    Azareal and troed like this.
  26. Offline

    --GJ--

    You do realize that the Bukkit team now works for Mojang, right? They are now Mojang employees. So yes, a Mojang employee will the the lead on the Minecraft Mod API.
     
  27. Offline

    Godwar101

    Congratulations bukkit team :)
     
  28. Offline

    lostuser

    I finally made an account on bukkit just to post this :)

    The server that I have been part of for the past two+ years has used bukkit ever since the hmod developer lost interest. Ever since then, I've been keeping track of everything bukkit, not only because your API is what made our server awesome, but because bukkit has always been a source of great inspiration to me, and many others. To think that not only could you build what you want(in minecraft) AND even change the way that the game operates(with bukkit) baffled my mind, since all I've ever played before minecraft was console games. That inspiration made me continue playing and coding, with the knowledge that even the little guy can do something great; you don't have to make a game or high-budget program to be an inspiration.

    To have been following this project from its inception to now really puts some manly tears in my eyes. You guys deserve every bit of donation and praise you have earned, and that extends to everyone who has filled bukkit over the years. Not only have you made this game even more interesting, but you've been an amazing source of practice with java and plugin creation.

    In short, con-freaking-gratulations on not only getting the job(s), but earning it. If I ever meet any of you in person, I will give you really good high fives; the ones that make you think "holy crap, that was a good high five." Keep being awesome, may your code always compile, and your bukkits always be full <3

    -Lost

    PS: if only hmod kept developing, then they may be in the position your team currently is...
     
    Bone008, TnT, mbaxter and 1 other person like this.
  29. Offline

    ray73864

    i dislike spout, never really been a fan of it.
     
    Afforess likes this.
  30. Offline

    md_5

    Without dragging this offtopic, I am going to try and do everything in my power to make that happen, Dinnerbone likes teleporting!
    Congrats to all the Bukkit team!
     
  31. Offline

    Don Redhorse

    Yes, I was dev.bukkit. I stepped down because I didn't have the time to live up to my expectations to help out. Also I was told to not speak openly about my opinion (like other moderators) from EvilSeph.
    Nope, there is a forum for dev.bukkit staff, there are a lot of posts in there concerning how to handle dev.bukkit, how to improve and asking for information. There are almost NO replies from the team.

    Take a look at Bleeding, it was promised to open it up, Sleaker (which isn't really a bad developer, can word his comments a lot nicer than me and isn't a spout fanboy) asked some very important questions about bleeding. No answer, just take a look in almost EVERY thread in suggestions and look for replies of EvilSeph, Dinnerbone or Grum (well Tagh doesn't even post here). Nobody in CHARGE really posts here.

    EvilSephs posts announces and only comes back to stop shitstorms... up to than he tells moderators to not interact with the community.
    I totally agree on that, the team did a good job, and a lot of people are doing a good job too. But some people didn't live up to the expectations or can't keep promises.

    I haven't seen anybody really showing me proof that this is an open community where qualified feedback is valued (which probably means not my posts but a lot of others). There are exceptions I know.

    and no I don't hate, I'm just highly frustrated to see again another community go down because the powers on the top are not able to handle it.

    And no.. having no time isn't an excuse. If you don't have time you delegate, embrace the community and get help, or let somebody else take over that job (not me).

    I have an issue with EvilSeph and he with me, I don't have an issue with the team. Like others said I also would have taken the opportunity, but I would have never left the community in this state..

    Oh and in case nobody beliefs me, just look at the irc quotes (not the first one which was totally unnessecary to post) Afforess posted, take a look what EvilSeph announced and take a look what we have.

    The fact is EvilSeph can't control the community or his staff without censoring or micromanagement. And the frustration and fear you see here is mainly based on the bukkit teams failure to interact with the community.

    oh, yeah... is there a reason why a lot of people save their comments to a text file?

    I think there is..

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 24, 2016
    sorklin, MightyOracle and main() like this.
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