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

    [​IMG]

    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

    NuclearW

    He means to imply that as soon as one person does it and posts the patch on the internet, everyone can do it and the point gets kinda made moot. I think.
     
    troed likes this.
  3. Offline

    lukegb

    Java makes this far, far easier. Not only that, but as NuclearW pointed out - it just takes one person to post a patch and it's done.

    I don't know - I'm just a general busy body so don't bother listening to me on what will actually happen - I just think this won't happen.
     
  4. Offline

    obnoxint

    But this would also imply that everyone is a potential user of cracked clients, what is simply not the fact. Of course, "do not trust the client!" must always be the highest principle, but not doing as much as possible on the client-side is naive.
    Why? Code compiled by other compilers and written in other languages can be decompiled as well. And the most cracks are made by a single person, even if it doesn't look like that, because "they" always appear as a "team" to appear bigger. Java is more simple to read than C/C++ or machine instructions. If you once tried to read Java byte-code and compare it to the source you can learn this very fast as well.
     
  5. Offline

    TnT

    Everyone forgets John...
     
  6. Offline

    Celtic Minstrel

    Six, then? (I have no idea who John is, but I'm assuming he's a Minecraft developer.)


    By the way, cracking the client to remove integrity checks wouldn't help if the integrity checks are server-side, would it?
     
  7. Offline

    Technius

    I'll state this again. Bukkit is NOT dead.
    "Will be" and "is" are different things. It's too early to switch to Spout. There is no "ex-bukkit" team. If you haven't seen it, I believe they made some commits over the past few days: http://dl.bukkit.org/compare/craftbukkit/changes/

    And hell, that's a lot more commits/day than a few weeks ago.

    Another point to notice is that Bukkit will be "phased out slowly" AFTER the official API is released. Notice "after". I strongly believe that all the bugs pointed out in this thread will be fixed as well. Some tags to make sure the staff notice: EvilSeph@Dinnerbone Grum Tahg
     
  8. Offline

    mouring

    Integrity checks require the client to not lie to the server. Only way to do this would be to provide a method to sign the client code, and allow the server to challenge and verify the signature and the checksum of the client. By forcing the game to be signed you now lose all ability to mod the code from the client side without having to first work around faking key signings and other cryptographic traps.

    However, this doesn't solve everything. You are still left with:
    - Hacked video card drivers or OS libraries altering game features without modifying the game (see FPS / MMO PvP bemoaning about seeing people hidden, impossibly perfect sniper shots, etc)
    - Post-verification memory tweaking (see Blizzard and their "protection deamon" watching for unauthorized access to the WoW client).

    It is one big mess. Only way to reduce a lot of the issues is make the client dumber, send less data (e.g only send visible blocks) to the client, and triple check everything (did the client move to quickly? Could the client have actually made it from point A to B, etc) the client stated it wants to do. And that will make it harder to abuse, but still not impossible (see VAC by Valve and all the cat and mouse games they do to detect new hacks and auto-ban folks).

    Personally I'd hope that Mojang instead invest time into cleaning up protocols, slimming down the client, etc. And over all looking at things from a correctness standpoint before doing more complex anti-hacking methods.
     
  9. Offline

    MachetePanda

    You'll have to excuse the Bub. :( Getting stone walled by the Bukkit community every time a server owner says GUI and push to clients matter to them is frustrating (literally when ever I brought it up people were flipping out 'thats not the objective of bukkit - My point was its up to the Bukkit team the objective and they can make it). As a server owner who went through the hey0 to Bukkit transition... it is hell. Especially for us themed RP servers. Now we are going from Bukkit to Minecraf API(or what ever the solution there will be) or Bukkit to Spout(or other). I know there was talk of 'trying' to keep it as compatible as possible, but 'no guarantee', we heard that from the team that was trying to hold hey0 up. So I suspect everything will need to transition which means some plugins will be abandon by their developers, others will be in transition for months.

    But, it is good to hear someone from the bukkit end of things expressing interest in client pushing. Thank you. :)

    By dead I dont mean motionless before us right now. But it probably has about 6 months left. I just dont know if its worth it to wait... You see the problem isnt that Bukkit wont be around.. .like you said and I admit; it will. The problem is a lot of plugin developers arent going to bother.

    I mean, looking at it from their stand point. They can either start switching to Spout and waiting for Minecraft API and start working on that, or they can fix everything to work on a platform that they will most likely have to completely re-code for Minecraft API. You may not mind and will update code for your plugins, but if I was in their shoes, I could see how I would not.

    But that is what I meant by dead. Will the old bukkit team update it for 1.2.3, sure. But with out the plugins... what am I looking at as a Server owner?

    Eitherway, dont get me wrong, Im not against the Minecraft API effort. Im for it. Im just saying, I need to figure out where the developers that are not bothering with the 1.2.3 bukkit, are going next.
     
    Don Redhorse likes this.
  10. Offline

    max0704

    This may not be related, but you guys need to have a "version" filter on the plugins page. you select your version on the top and it filter out all other versions.
     
    MachetePanda likes this.
  11. Offline

    Technius

    Don't quote long posts.

    @md5 TnT A snip?
     
  12. Offline

    Talavar

    I see there are quite a few very long winded complaints about the changes in the new releases.. Bukkit and Mojang are doing what they can, and the vanilla release had some really big changes in it.. the FPS drop that alot of you are experiencing is more than likely due to the fact that lighting is now supposed to be handled by the client, and not the server, this strains the server less, and puts more work load on the client side. I would assume this is to help out the people who actually run large servers with many people on line. Alot of algorithms being run unnecessarily by the server causes large memory usage spikes to the server itself. This is actually greedy in a sense that you want the server to do all the work for your client, and not have to upgrade at your end, and expect the server of the game to run out and buy 32 gigs of ram and an octo-core processor to keep you satisfied with your own frame-rate. I'm not trying to sound mean or condescending, but really, come on. We each need to do our part.. even in the hardware section.
     
    SephraelX likes this.
  13. Offline

    Otoris

    Question to the BukkitDevs

    Has the topic of Minecraft: Pocket Edition Servers come up between Mojang and yourselves?
     
  14. Offline

    Nijikokun

    What is this, MAGIC!?
     
  15. Offline

    thisguy128512

    I'm very concerned, not about change but about how to change. EvilSeph, or TnT, or anyone really, I have two questions,

    1) How difficult will the transition from Bukkit to Vanilla API actually be, as in, how many plugins will my favorite server owner just need to move through folders or convert the databases of to migrate to vanilla? And will we be able to use Vanilla + Bukkit for a while, while we transition?

    and

    2) Is there anything we can do about the glitch where you build at certain heights and blocks act up (i.e. unbreakable in Survival mode, and the duplicate back into your inventory)? We literally had to cut off building above a certain height because players might have fucked shit up that way.
     
  16. Offline

    Gravity

    I liked Minecraft a lot when it was in 1.3, but IMO most of the newer additions have been crap compared to what used to happen. Therfor, I don't agree with a lot of Mojang's recent decisions, but I still love coding for anything, including Minecraft. That's how that happened.
     
  17. Offline

    ledhead900

    That is kind of moot since if this was true Spoutcraft would suffer as well but it doesn't 1.1 works easily 80% better than standard vanilla client performance wise. Also in the minecraft.jar is a map.txt that as far as we can tell us just saps FPS for no reason a 5-10 fps gain can be seen my removing it and the in-game maps are not effected this whatsever, I and a moderator on our server have question Notch publicly on twitter about this and he has denied all such claims that it even really exists and that nothing it wrote to it. If this was the case why here are lines of jargon in that document even if place a fresh one with nothing in it to begin with ?. At this point Notch turned away and refused to speak to us about it.

    We were using the map.txt trick for about 4months until it became less useful to remove it eg, did nothing much more that 3fps.

    I am just in a bout of people of people that want to drive home some simple facts that have been overlooked by Mojang and Bukkit.

    I don't lock my server to the custom client only as I started using it full time when the local cache was implemented that saved heaps of data over the space of an hour. Spoutcraft superseded CraftProxy with essentially the same concept but built into the client.

    I can't really stress enough at this point that if your going to argue against Spout and its client to really install it and use it at least once to give it a good test run before hand so you know if it really is better or not.

    The client can be run on a server even without spout installed.
     
  18. Offline

    Sagestone

    this is fantastic news congratulations to you. :D

    my only question is how would this affect the release of a new recommended bukkit build for 1.2+ will this make it faster or slower to release is all i wonder. again congratulations getting a job for mojang
     
  19. Offline

    Talavar

    While I don't debate that there are differences in previous versions and the newer versions, there aren's really any vid lag problems i can see that can't be fixed by a better GX card. I use a Nvidia 9800 gt. It currently sells for about 40$ on sites like pricewatch. Very small cost for a Massive FPS boost for onboard using rigs. Granted you need the knowledge to plug one into your board, but such information is usually sent in a booklet with the hardware. I know that everyone can't just run out and buy one, but its something to save for, even as a kid
     
  20. Offline

    obnoxint

    I think no one understood what you were asking for or implying, including myself...
     
    Inscrutable likes this.
  21. Offline

    controlbreak

    I was afraid at the first sight... until I realize at the end it is the best new ever.
     
  22. Offline

    lukegb

    The objective of the Bukkit project itself is to do as much on the server side as is possible. If we were to begin working with the client side too, that would more than double the issues that we'd have to deal with, as well as (at least) doubling the time for updates to new Minecraft versions.

    It was decided to keep the scope focused to provide the best that we could under the circumstances. Now that they have a chance to modify both the server and the client safely, legally and most importantly working with and in constant communication with the Minecraft developers, work can be done to gradually separate out some of the issues that Bukkit, Spout (only until they get both their server and client done will this cease to apply), and other client and server modding projects have felt since even before I joined the community.

    Have you searched for a ticket on http://leaky.bukkit.org yet? If you have and haven't found one, can you please create one, providing examples as well as, if possible, a ZIP of the smallest possible map in which this occurs.

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

    gatienthe

    any OTA for the official API now ?
     
  24. Offline

    KitBallard

    Just wanna make sure I'm reading this right:

    Bukkit's now Official? And if so should I down load Official and check for updates to the plugins I use?
     
  25. Offline

    Dephurites

    No. Bukkit has been hired by Mojang as employees for Minecraft. Their main goal is to make a whole new plugin system for default Minecraft. The plugin system will be written from scratch and implemented into Vanilla Minecraft.
     
  26. Offline

    KitBallard

    ok, so I will be waiting for which one then? Just wanna be sure I know which one to look out for.
     
  27. Offline

    Dephurites

    Bukkit will continue as normal for now. You want to worry about switching over and whatnot in a few months.
     
  28. Offline

    KitBallard

    Ahh ok. Keep an eye out for a 1.2 Bukkit then after that look for a more official one. gotcha. thankie =3
     
  29. Offline

    PrinceDeo

    Congratulations to the Bukkit Team. I hope this is a step towards better server performance and modding. However my concern is that of a very soon to be server owner. I'm hearing the team say over and over "The transition will be really easy", which would mean plugin authors will not have to start their work from scratch. So, the thing is, basically, if I were to start a server tomorrow, what to I do? Should I just stuff it with the Bukkit plugins I had planned, cross fingers and hope that when the transition from Bukkit to the official API comes, it won't make my server unusable for a while? Because on the other hand, starting a vanilla server is not really the best option out there, is it?

    I'm considering using the least amount of plugins necessary, and hope that when the new API comes, there will be some time for people to rewrite their plugins and when the transition occurs, plugins such as LWC, WorldGuard/WorldEdit, Multiverse/MyWorld, and Towny are available(or at least in some form that won't cause the current settings to just reset). Then again, I'm not yet a server owner, but I'm soon to be, so this is just my speculation and concerns.
     
    LlmDl likes this.
  30. Offline

    GummiA

    Hello, im new here and i don't know where i am sopost to post this message. But, The Minecraft 1.2.3 was released few days ago. I found a build for my server supporting minecraft 1.2.3. But when i started the server with al my plugins i got so many errors and few of them worked. I see you are removing some codes and tell us to update our plugins. But what about if the plugin developer for some of my plugins has stopped updating and it's the only plugins that does this excact thing to my server? Will this be fixed in the RB build or am i just screwed? Would be loveley to get some answers so i can tell other server admins/owners.
     
  31. Offline

    Stone_Tigris

    It's up to the plugin devs to update their plugins, and if they are not updated and they don't work then you'll need to wait for an update from them. For any help go to the Bukkit Help forum, this isn't the right place.
     
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