MCreator 2020.5 is out. Now it is time to talk about the future of the software and the website a bit, as I promised. I will also explain about 1.16.x situation. More in the article!
Short summary
So around two months ago, I have announced I will have to stop developing MCreator. This article here is to explain a bit more about why, when, and how this will happen.
So why will I stop working on it? The truth is, I love working on MCreator, and now when it is open-source, it is even more fun to work with all the people and manage all this, I really like doing this. But the problem is bills have to be paid, but MCreator is a free project. So I can't do MCreator as my full-time job and thus needed to get a job. This new job took me a lot of time from MCreator and while MCreator is fun, it is also a job. I need to review pull-requests, fix bugs, add features, help many people asking on the forums, tracker, maintain servers, website, moderate website, fight with spammers on the website, and much more. Due to all this and another job, I was getting really overworked and even experienced quite severe burnout two months ago. Currently, I paused the job due to my final year of university, so I got a bit more time to work MCreator, as we can see in the 2020.5 release :D I may have a few more months of time, then I will do my master's degree and after that (and possibly during that too), I will no more have enough time to do all this.
Software future
So due to the reasons noted above, I had to take a hard decision I will have to stop developing MCreator in the scope I did in all these years. This means in the future, I will no longer code MCreator the way I do now and add new features to it. Because MCreator is open-source, I am quite sure it will live under new names in new forks (eg. MCToolkit, ...).
So what will happen to the MCreator software? Well, the plan is that I will no longer work on it as I did now, but downloads will stay and so will servers, so it will continue to work in the current shape (forever). I may release occasional updates in the future, but these would not be feature updates, but only bug fixes and possibly updates to the future versions such as 1.17.x in the far future. Keep in mind this is not a promise, just a thing I may do if I will start to miss MCreator's code and will have some spare time :D In case some fork will completely take over, I may not do this at all (or may, who knows ;) ).
So the software status will essentially be "low maintenance only" in the future. This means some minor bug fixing or Minecraft support updates may happen in the future but not in the pace it used to be as I don't have the time I used to have.
Website future
The website will remain up even after I finish the last update. It will not just go down, as some speculated. I plan to keep the servers running as long as the ads can somehow cover the expenses of the website. I will still try to help on the forums from time to time, and moderate the mods and plugins posted. New moderators and wiki contributors are still welcome, and the community shall live ;)
Minecraft 1.16.x
So many of you asked if 2020.5 will add 1.16.x support. Well, it did, but only for Bedrock Edition. So I promised a chance of 2020.6, the very last update, that would add the full 1.16.x support. I was thinking a lot about this and decided I could probably handle this. So the news is, 2020.6 will happen. But due to the fact that the year 2020 is ending and I don't know how long updating to 1.16.x will take, it might be actually a 2021.1 release.
Roadmap for 2020.6/2021.1
So what is the plan for MCreator 2020.6/2021.1 update? I currently plan to do 2 snapshots:
Snapshot 1:
- Bug fixes
- Externalization and translations
- Support for 1.16.x (Forge and data packs)
Snapshot 2 (pre-release):
- Some minor new features (the scope depends on the time it will take us to fully update to version 1.16.x and my time)
- Bug fixes of the new 1.16.x generators
Contributors are welcome to help in the process (eg. porting some procedures, mod elements, and such to 1.16.x, testing, ...), following the roadmap, of course.
So that's it for this article. I hope I have covered all the commonly asked questions from the community and explained things well. If you have any more questions, suggestions, or doubts, feel free to leave a comment.
Comments
"So what will happen to the MCreator software? Well, the plan is that I will no longer work on it as I did now, but downloads will stay and so will servers, so it will continue to work in the current shape (forever). I may release occasional updates in the future, but these would not be feature updates, but only bug fixes and possibly updates to the future versions such as 1.17.x in the far future. Keep in mind this is not a promise, just a thing I may do if I will start to miss MCreator's code and will have some spare time :D In case some fork will completely take over, I may not do this at all (or may, who knows ;) )."
It is now open-source as you said, so feel free to touch it yourself, and add new features. Open-sourcing means anyone can work on it, including you. I am waiting for the 1.12.2 contributors to appear and if/when this happens, 1.12.2 will get new features. This is the concept of open-sourcing ;)
I've got an idea that might make you able to continue development! maybe we could have a premium to where we can monetize our mods and its a subscription with a percent cut of the profits that are made. but not with features locked behind payment walls. I extremely dislike programs that do that.