All stories have an ending

Published by Klemen on
All stories have an ending

I know this post is probably a big shock and not expected, but as said, all things have an end, unfortunately. I will try to explain everything as much as possible in this post.

 

 

EDIT:

There are more updated news around this here, as some parts of the future plans got changed and/or polished and better explained here: https://mcreator.net/news/67886/minecraft-116x-and-future-mcreator

 

 

I still remember the day my brother Matej (also developer, moderator, and co-maintainer of MCreator) showed me Minecraft and told me it is written in Java, this was all the way back in the days of Risugami's modloader. I immediately got the idea for MCreator. Since then, the project has kept on growing and becoming better and better, and the community got bigger and bigger, and things started to move faster and faster.

With its growth, there was more and more time needed to maintain the project and the community. In the past few years, I have become very overworked and have reached the point of burn-out, unfortunately. I have another job at a robotics company that pays and will pay the bills, while MCreator is a free project. Unfortunately, I can't maintain both of them. MCreator is time-wise-looking another full-time job for me. My day no longer consists of free time and I had to cut down on all other activities and things I love in order to be able to sustain MCreator while working and studying at the same time.

I was somehow hoping open-sourcing would improve this, but it turned out being an open-source maintainer, no work was taken from me, just additional work of managing pull requests and planning the work was added to the mix. I have big guilt that I gave a false hope with the open-sourcing move as many community members really bit into the opportunity and helped a lot with contributions and new feature additions, but unfortunately, I was not able to foresee the outcome of open-sourcing properly.

What will happen now?

I do not find it fair to just shut it down immediately, as many contributions from the community were already made, so I will try to work with the community to finish the MCreator 2020.5 update in the next few weeks. I will try to add some of the pull requests to the update, but will very likely not be able to add all of them, especially not larger ones. For this reason, I am also asking contributors to slow down with PRs to the official repository, as they might not all get into the update, to avoid any disappointments if I will not be able to merge them all.

I was hoping for a stable 1.16.x Forge to come sooner, but it didn't, so there likely won't be an MCreator update adding support for this Minecraft version (this is not definitive yet, it depends on the time I will have in the first university semester). After the 2020.5 update, I will eventually halt my development of MCreator software.

Open-sourcing might have given MCreator an option for a second life, on the other hand. Some members of the community and contributors might recognize themselves as possible future maintainers. I will keep the MCreator name, as it is part of my life, it is my child. But if there will be community interest in running the project forwards under a new name, new website, and new lead after the 2020.5 update, I will gladly support the new project by promoting it as a successor of MCreator on the website in the future. Keep in mind that I am quitting development entirely so I will not be able to offer any help on the potential future development.

I plan on keeping the website alive as the community is not dying with the end of software development. Matej plans on running mod of the week to the end of this year and making one final yearly recap video. I might be revoking wiki contributor and moderator roles in the future (depends on the need of them and the activity of the users having these roles) but will keep running the website for some time after that, and then once in the future (probably far in the future, depending on the activity of users), put it into the read-only mode.

I would like to thank each member of the community, we were an awesome family. MCreator's community is one of the friendliest and most supportive communities I was ever part of. Big thanks to moderators, wiki contributors, people who helped on forums, thanks to code and translation contributors, thanks to donors who helped me work on this project, thanks to all the people who were making tutorials for MCreator, and thanks to every single user of MCreator that was part of this story. I will be revoking monthly donations as I don't find it fair to receive any more donations from this point on.

I know MCreator plays an important role in the lives of many of you, and believe me, it is very hard for me too, especially after working on this project each day, even during weekends, for almost 9 years. It was a big part of my life and me growing up and I am writing this with tears in my eyes thinking back to all this. But as the title of this post says, all stories have an ending, and this is MCreator's ending.

It was an amazing journey, thank you for everything!

Klemen

EDIT 15. 9. 2020

Thank you for all the positive comments you wrote. I am still reading them and will try to respond to them as soon as possible, but it is a really hard time for me right now. MCreator was all for me, but unfortunately, life has its own ways.

I noticed new versions started to emerge and I really like this. I would like just point out that naming new projects something like MCreator + adjective could be a bit confusing for users regarding the maintainership of the software. Ideally, I wanted the names to be something like XYZ - The successor/fork/next thing/ ... of MCreator. If you still want to use "MCreator + adjective", just make sure to clarify this is a new version and new software based on MCreator and is not MCreator itself. Naming it MCreator 2 or similar is not acceptable as this is still the original name and too confusing.

Another thing I want to clarify is that MCreator is licensed under the GPL-3.0 license, so all forks need to use this license too due to legal implications and need to be open sourced under this license. Make sure to understand all the requirements of GPL-3.0 when making forks and distributing them (including things like keeping the original copyright notice for the year 2020 and only adding new ones for the modifications of the source code).

TLDR variant

Some users don't read all text and make assumptions and spread incorrect information, so here is a short summary for such users, excluding reasons and backstory. 

In short, the software development will stop after 2020.5, the website and community will remain up, so will downloads and plugins, open sourcing allows others to make new variants of MCreator under new names. MCreator is not dead-ending, nor shutting down, but the development will be halted in the future. The software will still be downloadable and usable, the website will still be up, and the community will still be here to be part of.

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Comments

Yeah, this was hard to swallow, but the community totally understands. Doesn't matter if MCreator is updated or if it isn't, because that project you had in mind years ago is completed and everyone is proud of you and proud of using MCreator.
So idk about you guys, but i will still be here, making mods, making friends, and I'll be never satisfied. For you Klemen! Thanks for all the fun you brought to us!

Thanks for all you've done throughout the years Klemen. It's been an honor working with you, and good luck on your future endeavors.

Klemen.. Thank you so much for your very hard work, you made my dreams come true, and made part of my childhood, I hope you get everthing that you want and and conquer your dreams. I am here on Mcreator for years, trying to make a perfect mod, and with all work that you have done, now i can make this true. I hope see you on other locals, because i love your work and if i could see you making and realing stuff i will be very glad. Try to make a Twitch or maybe a twitter or something like that please! Thank you so much for make my and other people's life better with your creations, Stay Safe!

A year ago, my daughters dragged me into the game of Minecraft, half a year later I found MCreator and I wanted to create something, at the same time I persuaded my girls to help. I created a few mods, now I'm trying to make a map on the mods, I'm learning all the time, trying to understand the commands, procedures, but the language barrier and the lack of free time due to work prolong my progress. I understand your decisions, I do not always have time to sit at the computer myself (work, family), but thank you for MCreator, I am not in the community for long, but I appreciate the effort of everyone involved. The program you created is great, I wouldn't do anything without it, I don't have time to learn Java or any other programming language.
I greet and wish you all the best in life.
Marek (PL)
P.S. I hope that at least some of these words make sense (the google translation ;-)

Klemen, thank you so much for getting me into the minecraft modding world. MCreator honestly changed my life, I've been using it for years, and it honestly brought out such creativity deep within me. I wish you well with your future endeavors and look forward to seeing if the community brings upon a successor. Thanks again, Klemen, for the years of fun and bringing on a community that has helped me open up creatively!

So im guessing we can still use mcreator and the website. I hope that the community makes new updates to the software so it doesnt die. I guess all good things come to an end. Well, at least i can still make mods using it, even if it shuts down.

Oh man, I can feel your emotions... I can understand this. I will propably cancel mod I had in development, since it couldn't be maintained without new minecraft versions. I was here 3 years and I saw so many nice people. I wonder if there will actualy be worthy succesor. Anyways, I can't say I support you or not support you. I understand it's your choice and you have full right to do it. Anyways. I have read this article not fully (I was skipping words while reading). So, you might have said this, but what will you work on next? Anyways, thanks a lot for these 3 awesome years.

First, I will work on myself, then I will try to live a bit more relaxed life, it was really intense last years, and this is not healthy. Don't cancel your mod, it can still be for 1.15.2 ;) Some people plan to work from my code with new variants, that will likely support existing workspaces based on that they will start from current code. We will see how they will go, I hope the best for them ;)

I already decided to cancel it. I wanted this mod to improve vanilla and saves of this mod (minecraft world) to be portable to new versions with minimal corruptions, it would be pointless to make this mod without ability to update mc version. Anyways, I am sad about it only half. On one side I really wanted to finish it, but on the second side, I want to be game developer mainly, not mod developer :D. There is one kinda sad pro from death of Mcreator, I don't need to choose if I will work on mod or game everytime I get back from school. Anyway, enjoy your new free time. Thanks for every stupid question I ever had about this software, and thanks for staying calm with every duplicate issue I made XD

Without this piece of software, I wouldn't have been able to even think of modding/modpacking for Minecraft.
No matter what happens, we'll be there somehow.
;-;



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