Bukkit: The Next Chapter

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

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  1. Offline

    EvilSeph

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    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
    [​IMG]
    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

    Jacek

    I change d my mind, this is a great thing. Even though the API is changing it will presumably be event based still so while it may need a bit of tweaking to get your plugins working it's going to be possible without starting again.

    I will be continuing with the projects that I was considering giving up and and will keep working on everything that I am now.

    Plus the potential for somethign as easy as Bukkit for single player is amazing !! (and I never use double punctuation).

    Lets stop complaining and start asking for details on the new API they haven’t even considered yet. What colour will it be ?
     
    troed and iPhysX like this.
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    iPhysX

    EvilSeph maybe change the announcement on the forum index?

    Hopefully a light green or a navy blue..

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 24, 2016
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    number1_Master

    congrats
    nice!
     
  5. Offline

    lukegb

     
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    ZachBora

    And so started the downfall of minecraft... I'm just kidding! I'm hopping this team up will make minecraft run better.
     
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    Milkywayz

    Well i don't know what to say, personally i don't like server hosting as its crap in my experience not to mention you are forced to get donations. It is very true that bukkit needs more communication, this announcement sent everything spiraling and everyone buzzing. Server owners crying. plugin developers questioning. players are mostly unaware. Im just sure that the hmod -> bukkit deal won't repeat itself, they will find a way to smooth into this and allow developers to put out there latest plugins for the APIs. They will probably release the developmental API for 1.3 before 1.3 releases and give about 2-3 weeks for the plugin devs to go to work. I mean bukkit released the r5 api weeks before r5 so devs could change to latest event system.
     
  8. Offline

    TnT

    I do not feel that way at all. IF it all goes away tomorrow (it won't), my contributions to the community remain. Thousands of servers are running, or have ran based off the help Bukkit Help has provided. I consider this an accomplishment, and nothing can take that away.
     
  9. Offline

    iPhysX

    TnT your contribution has been a good one, and i thank you for that. You have changed my mind with that post, It's not a waste.
     
  10. Offline

    dockter

    3 words, Bukkit Sold Out, shame shame, what happen to your commitment to open source?
     
  11. Offline

    Torrent

    Wooo can't wait to get some videos done for this. :)
     
  12. Offline

    dockter

    What this really means is that every bukkit server admin is completely screwed. Nothing will work correctly using Bukkit's API post 1.2, the new Minecraft API will require plugin admins, server admins to rewrite EVERYTHING!,
     
    fahlman and Mercury like this.
  13. Offline

    Sayshal

    Here here!
     
    hikingmonk likes this.
  14. Offline

    woox2k

    Yes, renting server is pain in the ..., but most of us just just cannot host server ourselves (from home or something like that)
    Ofc you may think i just came here to hate but actually i'm trying to make sure that hmod > bukkit wont happen again, after seeing so many people unhappy with this situation i decided to agree with them and make it bit worse so people who can make a difference notice us and will make difference just because so many people are unhappy!

    Also i see this thread is slowing down and this will be my last post here!
    RIP Bukkit, it was nice to host server with you!

    Have a good time playing/deving everyone, i'm out!
     
  15. Offline

    Dinnerbone Bukkit Team Member

    Okay some FAQ in the order that I read them from this thread.
    Will this new API reuse Bukkit code?

    No, but it will be compatible to an extent.

    Why use different code for Client and Server?

    We're not done (by a long shot) designing the API, but here's a rough plan of what *I* want it to look like:
    (Disclaimer: This is just a very rough idea that we may not even humour. Don't take this as "this is what will happen")
    Server - As it is now. Mostly functional plugins, with little visual stuff.
    Client - Made "dumb", and stripped of logic. Mostly visual plugins, little functional.
    For clarification, see this post.

    Will there be CraftBukkit for snapshots?

    Probably not, sorry, but we'll consider it. It's still a lot of work, if we were to do it then the snapshots would have to be slowed down and we don't want that.

    Is this a full employment or just consulting? Are the Bukkit guys moving to Sweden?

    It's proper employment. We work for Mojang now. I'll be moving to Sweden very soon (next couple of months hopefully), the rest of the time won't be *for the time being*.

    Is Bukkit dead now? Who will carry it on?

    No it is not, and the same people who were working on it before. Nothing has changed for Bukkit for now, except maybe we'll get updates faster (hopefully immediately). Bleeding will still happen, pull requests will still be transferred, code will still be maintained and pushed. Bukkit will likely be phased out *eventually*, but probably like half a year before you'll notice it.

    Congratulations!

    That's not a question but thank you to everyone who's congratulated us. Really, it's touching <3

    Why not use any other mods? Spout is cool! MCP is fun!

    Not a question I can answer but lots of people have asked me this. However, I can tell you that Mojang talked to a lot of mod groups before picking us, and we will collect feedback from everyone we can when designing the new API.

    Will Minecraft/the new API support Multithreading?

    Probably. I don't know. This is a huge internal change and will require a lot of work, but I'd love to give it a go. It's really important too so we'll try to give it our best. No promises though.

    Will modders have to rewrite from scratch?

    Assuming you mean bukkit plugins; no. We'll try to make most of your code compatible, you'll just have to change a few key things and recompile. No promises though, compatibility is really tricky to pull off.

    If you mean other mod authors, they'll do the same as they do now.

    Will it be Open Source?

    That's not up to us. If it will be closed source, I'll try to make it as transparent as I'm allowed; we can't write an API for you to use if you cannot give feedback.

    How long until the new API?

    How long until you win the lottery? I can't say. We're hoping for a few months for the basics that you can use, but no ETA for when it'll be "finished" - is an API ever really finished?

    Will you undeprecate things?

    It's a good idea, I'll shoot it around with the other guys, but probably not. Remember: Bukkit is *not* dead.

    Also, it'll probably be a good idea for us to start deprecating even more things to align up with the new API, to make as little changes required as possible from authors. Just a thought though!

    Is 1.2 going to be the last CraftBukkit?

    Not likely. But who knows when 1.3 will drop, if it's half a year away then maybe? I honestly can't say. Bukkit isn't dead, there will be updates. We'll probably cut back on updating bukkit when the new API is large enough, but that's not a guarantee.

    Should people still use CraftBukkit when the new API hits?

    That's entirely up to them. I'd recommend it until there's a large plugin community already.

    Should devs stop helping Bukkit with pull requests and bleeding branches?

    Absolutely not. We're still alive, we're still going to improve.

    How will this effect other mod groups like Spout or MCP?

    That's up to them. Either they can rewrite to use the new API internally, which will be a lot of help to them, or they can just continue doing what they do now. It's really their choice.

    Why not just use Bukkit and not start from scratch?

    We've made a lot of mistakes in Bukkit, we have no issues admitting that, and we've learnt from it all. Designing an API on this scale is such a hard thing and it's really tricky getting it all right. Starting from scratch will let us improve where we previously couldn't, and we won't be held back by any design issues. There's a whole legal side to this too, but I honestly don't see that as a consideration compared to the logical aspect.

    Will you be working on the server only, or just the client?

    Both. See my previous FAQ for some details.

    What will happen to the community? Will there be a new one?

    We can't control communities! :D But, I'm hoping it will slowly move to the new API when it's out and hang around here until then. We'll certainly try to have a nice mod system in place for finding and distributing mods, better than any system Bukkit previously (or currently) has - but there's no solid plans right now.


    If I've missed any - I'm sorry, there's a lot of feedback and it's hard to spot all the questions! Feel free to ask some more and I'll go through and update this with new ones as I get them.
     
  16. Offline

    emericask8ur

    Awesome! Lets see what Bukkit can pull off next :)
     
  17. Offline

    DrBowe

    See: Smex

    No community comes without its fanboys, Spout is no different. In any case, it will be interesting to see how things play out from this point on.

    To the Bukkit Team: Congrats on landing a full-employment with Mojang. All things considered, that's rather impressive. Just try not to forget about us over here.
     
  18. Offline

    Mukrakiish

    Yeah...no argument there. I was specifically referring to the Spout Dev's not any fan boi's that follow in the shadow of the various projects.
     
  19. Offline

    Milkywayz

    Reading that gave me the jitters o.o, Im going to go work on my plugins again, thanks for the communication, it really cleared up a lot of things.
     
    iPhysX likes this.
  20. Keep up the good work guys, it seems whatever you guys set your mind to ends up being gold anyway. :)
     
  21. Offline

    Don Redhorse

    THANKS!

    nice damage control..
     
    Inscrutable, iPhysX and Marlamin like this.
  22. Offline

    Connor Mahaffey

    Just an additional question/thought. Where will the community go (eventually)? When the official API is out will plugin developers be stuck posting to things like Minecraft forums?

    One of the greatest things about Bukkit was that, at 17, I was able to easily create a plugin, and then distribute it to a huge community. Today said forum post has 100,000+ views and my plugin has probably been downloaded ~5,000 times.

    Are there any plans for an "official" community for mods? Or are you guys planning on third parties providing this? It would be a shame to have this awesome API but no way to connect people to cool plugins. Resorting to unofficial forums seems like a step backward IMO.

    I'll understand if you can't answer this right now. Thanks for your followup post and congratulations! You guys deserve it.
     
  23. Offline

    Jacek

    What colour will it be ? ;)
     
    Inscrutable likes this.
  24. Offline

    Dinnerbone Bukkit Team Member

    What will happen to the community? Will there be a new one?

    We can't control communities! :D But, I'm hoping it will slowly move to the new API when it's out and hang around here until then. We'll certainly try to have a nice mod system in place for finding and distributing mods, better than any system Bukkit previously (or currently) has - but there's no solid plans right now.

    Updated FAQ. I hope this answers your question!
     
  25. Offline

    D3matt

    It seems like this is good news, but I'm a bit concerned as to what this will mean for the portion of the community relying on really deep mods with a lot of dependencies and changes, I.E. buildcraft, IC2, and the like. I run a Tekkit server right now and it's hard work keeping it running, but I really don't want the project to die because it won't work with the new API.
     
  26. Offline

    Meduax

    What do you mean by that?
     
  27. Offline

    Gravity

    Great job, team. I think done right, this could mean amazing things for both the community and the game, as well as fulfilling some un-kept promises by Notch ;)
     
    Meduax likes this.
  28. Offline

    Connor Mahaffey

    It does. Thank you :) Enjoy Sweden, they have fast internet /jealous
     
  29. Offline

    imjake9

    I'd just like to say congratualtions as well! It's been a wild ride. Ever since I switched from hMod, I've been a proud Bukkit user, and I've even been a minor plugin dev. I truly believe that you will be able to make Minecraft even better.

    As for the last FAQ post: thanks for clarifying that Bukkit will continue. It really is amazing how virtually every server in all of Minecraft uses Bukkit. There's nothing like that in any other community. Keep it up!
     
  30. Offline

    itorrent

    GL with development and HF ;)
     
  31. Offline

    Tanite

    I'm guessing it means more security, relying more on the server to control what happens to the server and less on the client. But I could be making that up :p
     
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