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

    Sayshal

    From bukkit to this new thing? I will the second it's out.
     
    troed and iPhysX like this.
  3. Offline

    Kane

    Err From their Home to Mojang :p
     
    iPhysX likes this.
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    Marlamin

    I think he meant the devs physically moving, from current home location to a new home in Sweden. Dinnerbone has already confirmed on Reddit that he is, but is unsure of the other members.
     
  5. Offline

    woox2k

    I wouldnt but hey... there is only way. Move along or get stepped on and die :)
    EDIT: hehe lol in a hurry i actually though that was meant for server admins ... considering context
     
  6. Offline

    Meduax

    I recall that I read something about Dinnerbone moving to Sweden on the Reddit page.

    EDIT: Ninjas!
     
    iPhysX likes this.
  7. Offline

    Sayshal

    Oh lol. That would be pretty sweet.
     
  8. Offline

    TopGear93

    definitely! ill take the things i learned here and move forward to hopefully make better plugins. If this API is going to be as good as it sounds then i already have plans for Plugins! I wont be making " simple " plugins. When The new API is released then ill go back to Occupy.
     
    Meduax and iPhysX like this.
  9. Offline

    iPhysX

    Meduax likes this.
  10. Offline

    Windows_i7_920

    This is a huge step forward for not only Bukkit, but for Mojang and the Minecraft community. I would not be surprised if this causes another eventual spiking of Minecraft sales, and/or brings back some Alpha players who may have either quit or no longer play near as much.
     
    Zeroth likes this.
  11. Oh yes.
     
  12. Offline

    jwnordquist

    i wont do it the second it comes out, maybe 15 min after, assuming that they have a bridge, and all my plugins are working.
     
  13. Offline

    TopGear93

    lol what who said that. No good developers are the ones who have actively sat with Bukkit for the 1 year it was alive. Im talking about sk98q, matejdro, afforess, hidendra. The ones who have changed the server hosting experience. Well me? hmm how should i explain myself. I created small mediocre plugins that either had no use or just contained many bugs * i.e - Clocked *
     
  14. Guys, i'm really happy for you, and for mojang.
    i, for one, be sure that you will provide us a very cool server, and this time, you wont have to decompile it :)
     
  15. Offline

    jwnordquist

    i do wonder with them merging weather or not we will get weekly snapshots that can support mods?
     
  16. Offline

    Crent

    This is amazing, congratulation guys!
     
  17. Offline

    Lolmewn

    Achievement get: Getting employed!
    Good job guys!
     
  18. Offline

    Jozeth

    Lol, you see Bukkit Server - 24/7 now it's Minecraft API Server 24/7 lol....

    Also why change the code? Keep the same one for servers and recreate one for client side mods?

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

    Evenprime

    Most likely. As the new API should be part of Minecraft itself and directly integrated into its codebase, it should be available in all of the snapshots too. However, just like anything in snapshots, I'd not expect it to always work as expected.
     
  20. Offline

    tom

    EvilSeph representing our GTA! Congrats.
     
  21. Offline

    grandwazir

    While it is good news that the Minecraft team are finally getting around to making a modding API, I have mixed feelings about where this will take the community. I personally have a substantial time investment in Bukkit and this uncertainty over the future of API makes me nervous.

    I am also interested to find out how this will work in practice. Since Bukkit is licensed under the GPL how can they legally include the source into the minecraft server jar?

    While I understand the team themselves can just re-license their contributions they can not do the same for all the pull requests that they have accepted without contacting those contributors.

    It may explain though why my own pull request was not accepted though and instead implemented as-is by one of the team members to avoid contacting yet another contributor about a licence change. I am sure this is something they already know the answer to but it would be nice if they shared what it is.

    My main concern is the detail surrounding the new API. Is there any point in me continuing to update the rest of my plugins to the new build considering that Bukkit is no longer supported and they will all require a rewrite in the near future?
     
  22. Offline

    troed

    (Disclaimer: I do /. usually, not reddit. I'm old like that. Maybe everyone is always that positive over there compared to here?)

    It seems a lot of speculative negativity in this thread could be avoided if people read Dinnerbone's comments on reddit:

    "Bukkit was heavily restricted in what we could do, for many reasons (mostly, we didn't want to force people to use a client mod too). The new API will have none of these restrictions, and we'll allow for whatever we + the community thinks of."

    "Don't need to bug jeb :)"

     
  23. Offline

    Evenprime

    grandwazir: Bukkit in its current form will probably be still around and working for many weeks, even months, so updating them still makes sense.

    The new API will likely not reuse a lot of Bukkit code, because they now have the opportunity to do everything they want directly instead of somehow awkwardly hooking into existing, obfsucated, unmodifiable code.
     
    mushroomhostage and iPhysX like this.
  24. Offline

    Don Redhorse

    did you read this thread? If they would have planned the transation this wouldn't have happened to THAT extent.

    But I believe you, Grum also posted he doesn't know... I'm off posting... keep on having fun...
     
  25. Offline

    Milkywayz

    dead server? How exactly does a server die..? It really can't, Just get new players. Theres always, always people looking for a server, if your server that costs month goes down, maybe you should set aside money now. My server doesn't cost anything monthly, also i don't use the donations for personal use. They are there in case we need something, (my computer for instance dies, replacement, my power goes out a lot during wind storms, back up battery). Its planning for the future, its not like this is happening tomorrow.
     
  26. Offline

    Zeroth

    Thank god.
     
  27. Offline

    Mukrakiish

    That's the problem with the total lack of proper communication 'round these parts...nuclear bombs go off when something potentially world ending gets announced without sufficient information. But that's not news...
     
  28. Offline

    woox2k

    1. It's not that easy to find good players (and i'm talking about players who dont get banned in the first 10 minutes)
    2. I never use donations for myself, i also pay the rent because donations are not enough, that's why i cannot set money aside and let server go for a month or so... (also i'm not able to pay rent by myself either)
     
  29. Offline

    ChadTheDJ

    <rant>
    OK, so as a MC Admin, I LOVE hearing there is something official as it was chaotic in the past. However, hoping this means bukkit will be improving their code and make the multiplayer a better experience to manage, MC seems to be the biggest resource hog compared to any game I play (even with very few mods/plugins). I am still however, mad that managing a server is almost impossible with the map/feature updates. Mojang, can we please have a long long break on the feature updates so my map can be good for at least a solid 3+ months? Or please just stop developing for Minecraft 1 and make a new release for Minecraft 2 a year from now. My members are just mad when I want to upgrade a map to the newest version which makes survival impossible unless you want to cut and paste everyone's work to the new map... I just want to play, just like in the Alpha days but I think MC lost that originality.
    </rant>
     
    Stone_Tigris, main(), fahlman and 3 others like this.
  30. Offline

    Baer1

    Great news guys . Congrats
     
  31. Offline

    grandwazir

    I don't think it is too much to ask for the team members of Bukkit to post replies about their announcement in their own community. The fact that they are not leaves a bad taste.

    While that is the expectation I'd like to hear it clarified by the actual team.
     
    fahlman, Don Redhorse and Meduax like this.
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